Tidewater Times November 2020

Page 97

Island Odds and Ends by A.M. Foley

As it has for many, hibernating for health has caused me to explore some long-neglected corners of my house. In a closeted box of files and audio tapes, I rediscovered transcribed interviews that Freddie Waller and I made in the last millennium, while researching Elliott’s Island: The Land That Time Forgot. As the sole surviving participant, I feel now is the time to share a few nuggets that could possibly have caused embarrassment at the time

of our book’s publication, or that might simply have been overlooked. Miss Leila When I knew Miss Leila, she was in her nineties, commuting by van before dawn five days a week to a seafood packer across Fishing Bay in Toddville. After their own Elliott Island crabhouse had burned, she and her neighbors (not one of the ladies under seventy) had to ride over an hour to pick crabs, or else

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