Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 33. FIFTY WHEELBARROWS AND FIFTY SHOVELS (Pp 65-66) The roads in Charlton
County used to be little more than paths through the woods but they started being improved when automobiles became more common. I helped build the roadbed for the ten-mile section of U.S. One between Racepond and Uptonville. Emory Dean, R. D. Bowman and I contracted the roadbed job which was a necessary procedure before it could be paved. We bought fifty wheelbarrows and fifty shovels and hired fifty men from Silco to dig the ditches on each aide of the road. The sand they
took from the ditches was used to build up the roadbed. I was the straw boss who looked after the men and kept the work going, I picked the work crew up on Mondays in Camden County and brought them to the construction site and they camped in the woods in tents during the week, cooking their meals over campfires each evening. Then I took them home on weekends. When we came to a creek as we were building the road we hauled dirt with a mule and wagon and
filled it in, Later, after a good rain, the road washed out and the cars that traveled through there just took to the woods, went through the saplings the best way they could and then got back up on the road. When we completed this project my partners and I divided up everything and I got a third of the wheelbarrows, a third of the shovels, a third of the profit, a two-horse wagon and a truck. Before there were many cars we used a buggy pulled by our
horse, Buck. Riley Roddenberry had a candy-pulling one evening with lots of people attending and I took Laura Gowen to the party in our buggy. As we were going back to her home we came to a crossroad and Buck turned the corner too sharp and the buggy wheels bumped up over a mound of dirt. This turned the buggy over on its side and dumped Laura and me out on the ground. We weren't hurt, neither was Buck. But one of the buggy shafts was broken. It was nearly midnight and
since we weren't far from Pearce Lambert's house, I told Laura to stay with the buggy and I would go to Pearce's and borrow a set of shafts so I could take her on home. I woke up Pearce and we went to his barn and got the shafts. (Laura was afraid to stay with the buggy and hid behind an oak tree in Pearce's front yard.) Pearce helped me turn the buggy back on its wheels and we put his shafts on it, and I took Laura on to her house. Pearce laughed about
that afterwards, saying that he had never heard of anyone borrowing a set of buggy shafts before, much less doing it at midnight! | 
