Cecil Soil Magazine

We have been told by many of our readers that the CSM Mailbox is the first thing they read when they open a new issue. We certainly love getting swamped with tons of your letters and consider every one for publication. We want to hear from you so keep those letters coming! While you’re at it, include a photo and we’ll publish it along with your letter. Be sure to include your phone number and complete mailing address. If your letter is chosen for publication in a future issue, you'll receive a free one-year subscription to Cecil Soil Magazine.

Dear CSM,
I very much enjoyed the recent article on Dr. Johnson. Every spring my dad would take my brother and me to visit his office for a physical, shots and the dreaded blood test before going off to summer camp. Years later Dr. Johnson was one of my first patients when I started practice in my father’s office. I remember him as a fine doctor who would readily share his knowledge to a shiny new grad. My dad was a dentist on West Main Street for 67 years and died two weeks shy of his 90th birthday. I went on to become an orthodontist (was the first one in Elkton) and although probably will not have my father’s longevity have been practicing in Wilmington for the past 50 years.
Best Regards,
Dr. Fred S. Fink
Wilmington, Delaware

Dear Ed, Carol, and CSM Staff,
On behalf of the Kemp and Smith families I would like to thank you for the publication of my story, “Remembering Rose Hill Farm” in your Nov/Dec 2009 issue. I can not express enough just how much it meant to be given the opportunity to remember and write about the love with all the good and sad times we experienced during our years that Rose Hill was home.
After the story was published, I received numerous phone calls and emails from family and friends all with memories of their own. I know my father “Slim” is proud of his little girl for writing a story making many realize just how important families are. I also want to thank you, Carol, for helping reunite us with Debbie Pearce-Brooks. After reading my story, she contacted me and thanks to your help we are now back in touch after so many years. She was like a sister to my sister Pat and I, but over the years we lost contact.
I love your magazine and only wish you great success. By the way, I renewed my subscription and am looking forward to my future issues. If any of your readers have any info on Rose Hill today please contact me because I would love to hear.
Sincerely,
Nora Kemp-Lane
Crumpton, Maryland

Richard MacDonald

Dear Editor,
We are subscribers to the Cecil Soil Magazine and love to read all the interesting stories and see the printed pictures and photographs. We are members of the Farm Bureau in Cecil County and proudly call ourselves gardeners. We love to have a garden each year and grow fresh vegetables and fruits. This past fall, we had a bumper turnip crop. We were giving them away to anyone interested in having some. The seeds were planted at the right time and the rains and cool weather made them grocer, plump, and tasty. We love to slice them thin and sprinkle with fine sea salt and eat them raw. Yum!
Enclosed is a photo of one of the really large ones! Seven inches across and approximately four pounds! It was large yet firm. Fortunately turnips are a good “keeper,” so we are still enjoying some of the crop. Thought you or your readers might enjoy these photos of fresh garden beauty.
Sincerely,
Gloria & Richard MacDonald
Rising Sun, Maryland
P.S. You previously heard from us in a letter and photo you printed in “Letters” June issue. This is a follow up from that time.

Dear Mr. Belote,
Thank you for your call yesterday. I was most pleasantly surprised, pleased and proud to learn that you are going to publish my letter with the picture of my mother, Edna Ruth Patton, in her uniform.
Mother was born September 5, 1918, and died March 24, 1981. As you can see she was quite young when she worked at Triumph Explosive as well as being a young wife and mother of two daughters. She was from a large family of eleven children, six brothers and four sisters with her making eleven. Her parents, my grandparents, were farmers. After the war we lived next to them until we moved to Charlestown, Maryland again in search of work. I attended elementary school in Charlestown (a one room school) and then North East High School where I graduated. My childhood memories of the time I lived with my grandparents are full of missing my mother and loving my grandparents, of knowing that family was all around me as I had aunts, uncles and cousins within walking distance.
My memories of Cecil County include steamed crabs, church dinners of crab cakes, fire hall dinners of chicken corn soup, swimming in the North East River and the beach at Charlestown. In the summer at the beach we could pick up a case of coke bottles for a nickel and as we got older dance to the juke box. People from Pennsylvania had cabins there built on stilts and would spend the summer or weekends. The water was so clear. I remember a classmate of mine lost her high school ring while we were swimming and we just walked around in the water looking at the bottom until we found it. That’s how clean the water was. I haven’t been back in a long time but I doubt that it is that way now as nothing is constant but changed.
I didn’t mean to ramble on but perhaps this gives you a different perspective of the past. I am an amateur historic preservationist and genealogist so I tend to want to preserve and remember.
Thank you again for your work with Cecil Soil.

Please send your letters to: Cecil Soil Magazine, P.O. Box 645, Rising Sun, MD 21911. You may also fax them to 410-658-3242 or use this handy form. All letters become the property of Cecil Soil Magazine and Back Porch Publications, LLC, and may be edited for clarity or space. All letters received are given due consideration for publishing. Beginning in January 2010, writers of letters selected for publication in future issues will receive a free one-year subscriptions to CSM, or extensions to their existing subscriptions, when applicable.
* IMPORTANT: YOU must call 410-658-3286 to claim and arrange for receipt of your free subscription!!