You Can't Never Get To Puckum

by Hal Roth

First edition. Three page introduction by Helen Chappell. With some Delaware interest especially relating to Colonel DuPont and his hunting. Ink stamp of former owner on title page. xiii, 177+ 1 pages. stiff paper wrappers. 8vo..

178 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1997

Reviews

[Liz]

My father, now almost 92 years old, was born in Williamsburg, Maryland, a tiny town between Federalsburg and Hurlock, which aren’t exactly big places, themselves. Relatives lived all over the area, in Rhodesdale, Brookview, and East New Market, in Maryland, and across the state line in Seaford, Delaware. Somewhere in the midst of these was Puckum. It has become a joke among my cousins and me, because our parents, would talk about it, tell us about learning to drive on the road to Puckum, or traveling on the Puckum road to visit family, but none of us to figure out where in the world Puckum was! So imagine my glee at finding this book – You Can’t Never Get to Puckum – in a used book store. It’s a collection of stores and essays from interviews and conversations by the author, who wrote them down to help preserve the history of our area, the Delmarva Peninsula. Here are the stories of the Burnt Swamp “monster” that we heard and told when I was growing up. There’s a collection of wisdom and cures from the old folks, like carrying a potato in your pocket to cure rheumatism, blowing pipe smoke into a child’s ear to cure an earache, and not eating every piece of food on your plate, lest you become an old maid. And nope, nobody can agree on Puckum – for whom it was named, how to spell it (Puckham?), and especially not where it is!