William Elihu Palmer 
Child of the Great Depression 
Growing up Poor but Proud on the Eastern Shore of Maryland

In this book, Child of the Great Depression, I try to recapture and revive the lore of the enduring legacy of Powellville. My, but there are so many things to remember: riding atop a load of tomatoes and throwing a tomato at every mailbox along the way, shooting marbles in the alley by the general store, playing baseball, splashing naked in the swimming hole in the creek in the woods. Those were just childhood activities.

The real legacy of the town is based on the sharing of lifes journey among all those who lived there: the hardship, the sacrifice, the happiness, the tragedy, and all the bad and good of human nature. In short, it is a portrait of the trials and the struggles, the humor and the woe that most Americans shared during the years of the Great Depression.

Circa l’autore

They called me Billy in Powellville, where I was born on October 3, 1931. Powellville, a country town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, had a tragic history, and as in all tragedy, in the end, it died. Or should I say it was killed off by changes in traffic patterns and the decline of small farms. But during the Great Depression, Powellville was the center of the universe for me. It was widely feared and generally avoided by travelers from neighboring towns. There was no trespassing by strangers.

In the local county, Powellville was like an outlaw—too dangerous to deal with, and for good reason, because fights and brawls were as commonplace as sermons on Sunday at the Methodist Church. Nothing happened in Powellville that wasn’t elaborated, extrapolated, embellished, and, finally, enshrined in the lore and luster of that country town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.