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Skipjack News
| At the 2004 Smithsonian Folklife Festival |
Adaptability, Reverence for Past, Key to Eastern Shore Survival - by Frank Van Riper
"Decades ago, when the weather was good and the fishing was better, young Ron Fithian could look up from his books at school, see out the window, and know he would be making money that evening. (Dozens of tourists listened as he told his story.)
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The skipjack Joy Parks had its new mast carved and stepped (put in place) on site during the Folklife Festival. Photo © Chris Spielmann, Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network |
"I can remember sitting just up the road in school seeing the boats comin' in with a little bit of a list to them and I could determine that they had had a good day's fishing," Fithian recalled with a noticeable nostalgia. "When I got off school, I could easily get a job that evening helping pick fish out, helping one of the buyers pack ‘em up or load ‘em on trucks. There were always job opportunities for young people back then."
Fithian grew up in Rock Hall, on Maryland's upper Eastern Shore. Rock Hall was among the Mid-Atlantic maritime communities honored this year at the 38th annual Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival on the National Mall. This year's event, one of the most popular summertime tourist attractions in Washington DC, drew more than 820,000 visitors over 10 days in June and July. It featured a wealth of talent and artistry from the Eastern Shore, not to mention what arguably was the biggest attraction of the show: the now-retired skipjack Joy Parks. Huge and serviceable, the workboat basked in the sun, propped on supports in an incongruous dry-dock just a few feet away from the elevators leading to the DC Metro's Smithsonian subway stop. (After a career plying the inshore waters of the Chesapeake, the Joy Parks became a teaching vessel and now will become a tourist attraction at Piney Point Museum in St. Mary's County MD.)Other attractions this year included:- cooks and storytellers from Crisfield and Smith Island
- master woodcarvers from the Calvert County Marine Museum on Solomon's Island
- popular Rock Hall singer Tom McHugh and his music group
- an ingenious National Marine Fisheries Service demonstration of how pollution can threaten the Chesapeake watershed
- a "sail your own" model ship basin, letting children play with wooden sailboats (often powered by energetic lungpower)
- a tiny, beautiful, scale model (yet still navigable) "Tall Ship" provided by DC's National Maritime Heritage Foundation
The Rural Development Center at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore helped fund the Eastern Shore of Maryland's participation and the Lower Eastern Shore Heritage Committee helped identify subjects to be featured.
This year's Folklife Festival was, as usual, a multi-faceted affair featuring a foreign component (Haitian culture), a musical one (Latino music) and a domestic element concentrating on a particular region of the country (Mid-Atlantic maritime culture). From the opening day in late June, it was clear that Maryland's Eastern Shore exhibits had a sizable number of admirers. We ranged from the curious who had never ventured east over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to those like me who seek it out for its Brigadoon-like evocation of a simpler time.
But as the Smithsonian's Betty J. Belanus notes, communities on the Shore cannot expect to survive if they only preserve old ways and ignore contemporary realities.
"Maritime communities often adapt to changes," notes Belanus, an education specialist at the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural heritage and co-curator of the festival. "When one species of fish becomes scarce or unmarketable, you fish for another. When crabbing with wire mesh pots proves more efficient than trot-lining…you buy or learn to make pots. When recreational fishing catches on in your area, you fish for bait or get a charter-boat license. When the oyster-shucking or crab-picking plant shuts down, you get a job cooking at a local seafood restaurant or a nearby school. It's all about adaptation, flexibility and survival.…"
Certainly, what went on during the idyllic childhood of Ron Fithian, an ex-fisherman who now is Rock Hall's town manager, is largely a memory.
"I probably spent a third of my life around Hubbard's pier," Fithian told visitors at an open-air symposium that also featured Rock Hall mayor Jay Jacobs and 86-year-old retired fisherman Capt. Pie Edwards. "As a kid it was a great place to grow up, around the waterfront. As a young man, getting married, getting out of school, the seafood business was a great life. I mean the harder you worked, the more money you made in most cases. We worked hard, we played hard, we enjoyed ourselves. Unfortunately I think we are all living to see that type of industry come to an end."
On the Eastern Shore, overfishing and disease have taken their toll to the point where, Belanus notes, "the blue crab harvest in Maryland (where the crab is the ‘state crustacean' and a popular tourist symbol) has declined so dramatically [that] crab meat is now likely to come from North Carolina or as far away as Asia, prompting manufacturers and restaurants to advertise ‘Maryland-style crab cakes.'"
Happily, Eastern Shore communities like Rock Hall in Maryland, Chincoteague in Virginia, and others have sought to strike a balance between a dwindling commercial fishing industry and a growing tourist market. Mayor Jacobs (himself a former seafood wholesaler) recalls that his Rock Hall business "was located next to Hubbard's pier and now that's a marina. There were several major packing houses in the harbor itself. At one time I had 42 boats that sold to me [and] most of the [other] people had 20-40 boats backed up with major amounts of fish inside of them waiting to unload. There was a lot of activity in the evening because that's when the packing was being done. Trucks were being loaded and sent to the various states…The major money was made in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston--and they had to go every night."
But the transformation of Rock Hall's waterfront into a site geared mainly to pleasure craft also has helped local fishermen. Mayor Jacobs observed, "People always ask me why it works so well, you know, with the watermen and the so-called out of towners. They co-exist well because they both need each other. The people who have their sailboats there love to see the watermen and their boats when they come in with their harvest. And the watermen, I think, realize the necessity of the people who are there on the sailboats who are spending the money that is kind of keeping everything going.
"We've made it through the transition fairly well," Jacobs concluded, "with a few casualties, but as a whole I think the town has done well."
And it was that proud face that Maryland's Eastern Shore maritime communities displayed this year at the Folklife Festival.
Expert crab picker Joyce Fitchett of Crisfield demonstrates her skill to visitors. Photo by Kat Harting, UMES
(Left to right) Ron Fithian, Jay Jacobs, and Capt. Pie Edwards with moderator Shelly Drummond swap stories of Rock Hall past and present. Photo © Frank Van Riper
The National Maritime Heritage Foundation's "Tall Ship" was a magnet for children. Photo © Frank Van Riper
Tanya Dobrzynski with the National Marine Fisheries Service demonstrates a watershed pollution exhibit. Photo © Frank Van Riper
"Binky" Dize (red shirt) and "Hon" Lawson (center) both of Crisfield, were among the local folk selected as "tradition bearers" to share their ways with festival visitors. Photo by Kat Harting, UMES
James Lane, Joyce Fitchett, and Ramona Whittington, all of Crisfield, gave pointers and shared recipes in the Maritime Kitchen demonstration tent during a "Crisfield Cooking" session. Photo by Kat Harting, UMES
Frank Van Riper is a Washington-based professional writer and photographer who worked as a New York "Daily News" editor and as a White House correspondent. He is author of several books, including his portrait of life on the Chesapeake, "Faces of the Eastern Shore." His latest book, "Talking Photography" (Allworth Press), is a collection of his "Washington Post" columns and other photography writing over the past decade. He can be reached at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Links
2004 Smithsonian Folklife Festival: Water Ways: Mid-Atlantic Maritime Communities
http://www.folklife.si.edu/festival/2004/waterways/index.html
The Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network
http://www.baygateways.net/builders.cfm
The network is a partnership system of over 120 parks, wildlife refuges, museums, historic communities and trails in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Gateways are the places through which you can experience and learn about the Chesapeake.
Lower Eastern Shore Heritage Committee
http://www.skipjack.net/le_shore/heritage/
The Lower Eastern Shore Heritage Committee is a grassroots, nonprofit organization whose purpose is to preserve, protect and promote the cultural, natural and historical heritage of Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester counties.
"Delmarva on the National: Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2004 Plans Feature Crisfield, Smith Island, and Rock Hall," March, 2003. Skipjack.net feature article.
http://www.skipjack.net/article.asp?StoryID=19 |
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