"I have plenty to do," says the teenager. "We play basketball, go bowling in Easton, or Seaford. I play the organ at Concord Methodist Church - mostly at weddings and funerals."

    "after graduation I'll probably stay around here and get some secretary work," the soft-spoken girl adds.

    Brenda, like her parents, identifies politically with Alabama's Gov. George Wallace. She isn't sure why, but figures she'll go along with her parents judgement. In both a straw poll election in high school and in the actual 1972 Democratic primary, Wallace won easily.

    Ellis Collins and his wife Loiusa, are Brenda's distant relatives and neighbors. Now semi-retired Collins lives in a comfortable ranch house near the American Corner interesction.

    :I just tend the chickens and watch TV I suppose," Collins says.

    Firing off words like "noisy, too crowded" and "gets on my nerves," Mrs. Collins dismisses city life. Socially, the Collins stick with Canasta. "But we don't play for much money," Collins asserts. His wife giggles in concurrence.

    Repeatedly, the ideal of the simple, unhurried life crop-up like soy beans in conversations with the residents of American Corner. Problems, if they exist, are said to be personal, not social. And remedies are a private, not a public concern.

    "The folks here are less pretentious," says the managing editor of the (Caroline) County Record Emory Dobson , "but I wouldn't say they're more virtuous. It's just," he inserts with a twinkle, "that they don't get caught."

   There are people in American Corner that don't get caught by the newspaper, by the government, or by the neighbors. The rural ethic of self-reliance and individualism is evident in the painful existence of American Corner's poor.
 
 

    Within the house there are gaping holes in the ceiling, and only a wood-burning stove for heat. One loaf of bread wrapped in plastic dangles from a nail in a wall. Rags are stuffed at the base of the door and plastic covers the windows to shut out the cold. Mrs. Johnson's apartment is furnished with a roll-away metal frame bed, two throw-away kitchen chairs and a depressing lounge chair. Her rent is six dollars a week.

    "I wouldn't call this home, Mrs. Johnson shrugs, "but it's all I got and I keep it clean and I keep my cooking utensils clean."
    With her only source of income a one day, five hour job as a maid Mrs. Johnson receives four dollars, Mrs. Johnson is eligible for food stamps, but can not get to Denton to collect them.

    Despite solidly middle-class values and the adequate homes of most of American Corner's residents, they do not share the same affluence as their counterparts in more urban counties. No statistics are available for the village itself, but the socio-economic picture for Caroline County borders on the grim.

    The 1979 census pegs the median  family income in Caroline ounty at $7,430 per year. This compares to median income __????__ figure of 10,290.
    The county, which is the only landlocked one on the Eastern Shore, has a population of 19,781, and an assessed tax base of only $62 million.

    As their first county administrator, the Board of Commissioners selected David Cartes, who having served four tours of combat duty in Vietnam, knows something about adversity.
    Perhaps due to 22 years in the military, Cartes is candid about the problems in his county.

  Cartes terms the American Corner section "one of the poorest" in an already poor county.
    What makes the situation worse for the rural community is that many of the most productive citizens between the ages of 20 and 50 leave the county to find jobs in urban areas.

hat leaves Caroline with 15 percent of it's population in school and fully 20 percent over 65 and qualifying for tax exemptions - which means they earn less than $5000 a year.

    "We've become a county of young children and grandparents," Cartes says, commenting on the huge dependent population. "The county's aid to the indigentas jumped ten times in the last seven years.

    "What's really frustrating," the ex-Special Forces officer says, "is that federal programs are available, but we can't qualify for them because we don't have the transportation to service the people."
    The future looks equally bleak as the era of the small, independent farmer sinks rapidly into oblivion. Newsman Dobson, an observer of Caroline County for 30 years, says that the small 150-acre farms so common around American Corner are "a vanishing breed."
    "I think the people are beginning to realize that we cannot count on agriculture exclusively," Dobson says. "Pretty soon there will be no such thing as a small independent farmer."

 use Cartes words, the residents of American Corner, white and black, have made a trade-off.
    "They've traded friendship and a relaxed life for the pleasures of having money," the county administrator comments. "They're tied to it, so they make the best of it."
    As Caroline County's representative in the General Assembly, John Hargraves, says, "We don't have racial problems because they're all in the same stew."
    "Just remember," Hargraves cautions, "there are a lot of American Corners."
    Yep, just down the road a piece.