Tidewater Times October 2023

Tidewater Times

October 2023

OAK POINT

Constructed by Amish craftsmen: Exceptional 4,500 sq. ft. home with commanding views across Broad Creek from a prominent point w/over 1,000’ of shoreline. Charming guest cottage. Pool. Dock w/8’ MLW! $3,795,000

WILLESLEY GROVE

Just 2 miles outside St. Michaels near the end of Church Neck Road: Exceptional 4,400 sq. ft. home constructed in 2015. Conditioned 30’ x 75’ “Car Barn.” Over 19 acres of fenced pasture and woodlands. $1,485,000

MISTY POINT

Perfect Eastern Shore Family

Compound near St. Michaels: Stylishly renovated “Lighthouse-style” main house; two guest cottages; waterside pool & pool house. Substantial dock.

Fabulous SUNSETS! $2,750,000

BLACK WALNUT POINT

Near the southern tip of Tilghman Island: Enjoy sunrise AND sunset views from this bright, spacious and modern 3 bedroom home. Top-of-the-line kitchen and baths. Waterside screened porch. $749,500

About the Cover Photographer

Barrie Barnett

Barrie started formal art training at the age of nine in classical realism in Baltimore, MD. She is the great granddaughter of a prominent American Impressionist and was encouraged by her family and teachers to pursue art seriously. She got her first commission at age 12.

By age 20, she had worked her way up to the level of painting portraits, and began studying with top portrait painters. Barrie then spent 15 years painting children, mainly for families in the American Southeast. She was picked up by agents including Portraits South and Portraits, Inc. in New York.

In 1998, she switched to specializing in dogs for the next 15 years after she was offered a solo show of dog paintings in New York’s Upper East Side, then had two more solo shows in Palm Beach, Fl. and Carmel, Ca. Focusing on dogs was fun, she says, and so was being flown all over the country to do them. It also led to a body of commercial work creating images for gift products.

Barrie became known as a top pastellist, and was invited to teach at the Pastel Society of America in New York. For a 2011 feature article on her, one of her agents said

“her work in pastel is the best I’ve ever seen for a living artist. It is extraordinary.”

She now works in charcoal, pastel and oils, loves all three for different reasons. The choice of which to use depends on the nature of the subject and client preference. Barrie paints a variety of subjects: children, adults, dogs and horses, all of which are in private collections.

The cover shot was taken last October at her home in Royal Oak in the early morning mist.

Barrie teaches at the Academy Art Museum in Easton and is always on the lookout for great visual imagery.

Feel free to contact her barriebarnett@mac.com .

The Memoir of an Unreliable Narrator

by Helen Chappell

Every summer I pick up my copy of Swann’s Way, and every summer I swear this is the year I, by God, finish Proust. Of course, I never do. I only know one person who actually read all of Proust, a stoner buddy in college.

But every year I try.

Instead of sucking me into the land of childhood counterpane, however, Proust’s detailed prose just leads me to recall scenes from my own childhood.

The older you get, the sharper and clearer the memories of your distant past become as they rush, unbidden, into your mind. The houses I grew up in, the people I knew then become clearer than what happened yesterday. This usually happens before I go to sleep or when I’m trying to clear my mind in order to meditate.

They’re like still photos. Snapshots of The Farm we owned on Ross Neck, as if I’m walking up the driveway. Things like that that go way back into my childhood emerge clear and sharp, unlike the trip to the recycling station I had to beat myself into taking an hour ago. I can see Phillip’s Creek as if

I’m sitting on the porch among the adults, trying to catch a breeze off the water in the endless heat. Sitting at the big round kitchen table reading a book while my father sat at the head of the table reading his Civil War books or the newspaper. All of the people in these pictures— my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents—are long dead. But they’re alive in my memory.

I have a very clear memory of my grandfather tossing me up and down as he sat in his favorite chair and I squealed with delight as he pitched and caught me while Mum Mum and my mother and aunt told him not to do it. I was having so much fun, and I was just a toddler, but I knew Pop Pop would never drop me. This remains one of my happy memories of him, because he died shortly after this. But he lives on in my heart because I knew he loved me as much as I loved him.

My first memory is of standing up in my crib, clutching at the bars and looking out the window above my head. I can remember seeing the town cemetery in the

Unreliable Narrator

distance, away on a distant hill. I also remember thinking that it was a shame no one could see me do this, as I was just learning to walk. Years later, I tried to tell my mother about it, but she didn’t believe me. After all, I still couldn’t walk yet!

In our house in Pennsylvania, there was a great staircase where my brother and I took sofa cushions and bobsledded down the risers. We also had a game we played under the dining room table, where one of us would jog around the outside while the other laid in wait underneath, reaching out to trip the runner. For some reason, we called this game Puddy Ding Ding, and I have no idea why, but it made perfect sense to our kid brains.

go out and run around the neighborhood doing who knows what. I didn’t know until much later, but it reinforces my feeling that my brother is one of the coolest people I know.

Later, I found out my brother used to sneak out of his room at night, thanks to easy access to a window over the garage roof. He’d

We had a fishpond in our backyard. At the start of every spring, my mother would drain it out, scrub it clean, refill it and stock it with goldfish. If we were lucky, it would stay clear and fish filled for a month before the water got stagnant and the goldfish disappeared. It was kind of magical.

If I ever had any doubt I was a round peg in a square hole in Kennett Square, living in a Spanish Colonial house in Pennsylvania Quaker Chester County wiped that out of my mind before kindergarten. I was born different, and I was always going to be different. My father had done his medical resi -

Unreliable Narrator

dency in Panama and had fallen in love with the Spanish Provincial look. When he bought a practice in Kennett, he built himself a Spanish Colonial on what had been the apple orchard of an old farm.

It’s still there, and I have driven past it, painted a coral pink now rather than the white we had. But as friends’ parents die off and people I went to school with move away, there’s less and less reason to go past my childhood home.

Strangers live there now, and while I’ve thought about asking for a tour, I know it’s not a good idea. You can’t go home again. Your memories aren’t real. Some-

one else is making their memories there now.

But I can still see it inside my memory.

Anyway, the great Satchell Paige did better than Marcel Proust when he said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead . Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.

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Puppy Pleasure by

Bonna L. Nelson

Happiness is a warm puppy!

~ Charles Schulz

“How many more puppies do you think we have left in us?” my husband, John, asked me recently. He had been searching for another addition to our family. We have had the pleasure of owning many pups over the years and already had two dogs. I wasn’t so keen on the idea of having THREE DOGS!

Cooper, our snuggly, loving, fluffy golden retriever and house pet, is only four. Winter, our beautiful,

independent, outdoors-loving whiteand-liver-spotted English setter, is an old man of eleven. Both of our boys provide us with companionship at home and John with companionship hunting in the fields and blinds. Why did we need more?

After several weeks of discussions, during which all my requirements were met, serious puppy research began.

Is there anything much sweeter

Puppy Pleasure

than a new puppy? They are soft, warm and cuddly. They crawl up into your neck and fall asleep. They smell fresh. Their fur is so soft. All they need is food, water and your love, play and attention.

John’s rationale and urgency to find the next perfect puppy was based on Winter’s age and health issues. He wanted the time to prepare, develop and train a new pup to be a hunting companion before Winter was no longer comfortable in the field.

John expected that Cooper and Winter would accept a new member of the pack because of their sweet dispositions. He couldn’t imagine what a terrific big brother Cooper would turn out to be. For Cooper,

the pup is like a new toy. He assists with puppy training, plays with him and entertains with rope tug-of-war, wrestling, chasing, jumping, walking and napping together. The puppy energizes Cooper. Winter is tolerant, acting superior and above the fray with the little one.

An example of the puppy being welcomed by his big brothers comes to mind. On the puppy’s first night in his new home, after traveling from Kentucky, we placed him in a crate located close to us. He cried and whimpered.

He was missing his mom, which is natural, and missing his brothers and sisters. We were attentive to him, but he was inconsolable and very vocal. We decided to place his crate in a room with Cooper and Winter. He immediately fell asleep and has slept peacefully ever since.

So, where did this puppy come from? John had anticipated purchasing a puppy from a Pennsylvania premier breeder of English setters. Timing seemed right based on the kennel’s breeding program and litter availability and Winter’s age and health. John held a place in the queue to select a puppy. But the purchase fell through.

John’s Plan B for purchasing a new pup was using a breeder that a good friend and fellow hunter used. John has been hunting with Chris for fifteen years or so and had reintroduced Chris to bird hunting, which he had not done since he was a

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kid. They hunted sharp tail grouse in Montana and South Dakota, pheasant in North Dakota and quail and pheasant at local hunting preserves.

A while back, Chris started looking for a hunting dog. He was interested in Llewellin setters (also known as Welsh setters), which are like but not the same as English setters. Chris had fond memories of hunting with a neighbor when he was a young boy living in Delaware. He experienced the charm of hunting native quail over a trained pointing dog, a Llewellin setter.

After extensive research, Chris found a Kentucky breeder of a 100% purebred original Llewellin setter line and pedigree. He bought his

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Puppy Pleasure

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first dog from the breeder and successfully hunted with the Llewellin. He now has three Llewellins and takes them all to Kansas every year to hunt mostly quail and occasionally pheasant.

Chris is primarily interested in quail hunting, which used to be prevalent on the Eastern Shore and in Southern Maryland. John hunted quail on his grandfather’s farm in Southern Maryland as a young boy, but very few quail are native to those locations now. They have been in decline since the ’60s. Chris found that Kansas still had an abundant native quail stock, and that has become his favorite hunting destination.

When John changed course on

Puppy Pleasure

receiving the Pennsylvania puppy, he called Chris to talk to him about his research. John had been impressed with Chris’s Llewellin dogs. Chris was helpful in guiding John’s decision. John reached out to the kennel recommended by Chris and learned that they had three males available from a recent litter.

After we looked at the adorable photographs, we selected the one with the sweetest face. John knew that the kennel was credited with a consistent breeding program that produces quality dogs with superior lineage. The breeder was very selective with his breeding program. John knew that the pup would become a great bird dog prospect, whereas I was looking for the “cuteness” factor.

John engaged puppy transport folks that he and Chris had used previously when our pup reached eight weeks of age. Over several days, they brought the new boy from Kentucky to Easton as they were transporting other dogs. The young couple arrived with smiles on their faces. They said that they had fallen in love with our little one and that we had “picked a good one, so sweet.”

Transporting dogs is their business. They do it all the time. They were instinctively correct. Our new little boy is a good one and the sweetest.

Scout is named for the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird. John

has always liked that name, and he thought it appropriate for a dog that is trained to scout for birds. The one-syllable name makes it easy for issuing commands and training. We fell in love with the little fella immediately. He is a precious bundle—spunky, frisky, energetic, adorable, loving, friendly, handsome and calm. He loves to be held and cuddled and sweetly licks an offered hand. He is pure pleasure. He loves to play with us and his brothers. He is very aware of the creatures in the world outside the window and is on the lookout for squirrels and birds in our yard.

Scout is expected to grow to a height of 24” and weigh up to 65 pounds as a full-grown Llewellin setter. His coat is soft, medium length

Puppy Pleasure

and flowing. His ears are as soft as a baby’s cheek. His coloring is called Orange Belton: white with orange speckled or ticked patterns that will evolve as he grows. He has long legs, a long, lean body and a long tail that whips when he is happy, which is all the time except when he is napping, like a baby, three to four times a day.

Scout was immediately happy, friendly, loving, licking and accepting of commands and direction. He was already housebroken. As I mentioned previously, the beginning of his first night was a bit upsetting for him until he was placed with his brothers, and then he was down for the count.

So as control Scout’s socialization process and not overwhelm him, we gradually introduced his brothers to him one at a time. Cooper was curious, tail wagging, friendly and sniffing. Winter sniffed and then moved on, with little curiosity, aloof as always, not much interest in humans or puppies. John says that Winter, who has hunted all over North America, is like a grizzled old man—unflappable, seen it all, done it all. He looks much like Scout’s parents in coloring, but not in temperament. He doesn’t bond with or play with Scout or Cooper.

For Cooper, Scout is like a new toy, like nothing he has seen before. Scout was hesitant at first, but now

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Puppy Pleasure his crate with his brothers nearby. He is just like a baby. He is like a pile of warm noodles in our laps, slipping and sliding. He likes to snuggle up into our necks and licks gently, not obsessively.

Every pup needs toys to challenge and entertain them. Scout’s favorites, which he shares with his brothers, include bones, ropes, fuzzy squeeze toys, balls and an old towel. He loves to play toy tugging games with Cooper. Cooper loves to tease Scout and hold toys high in the air so Scout can’t reach them. Scout likes to jump on Cooper and then run away before he gets in trouble. It’s all healthy play for the boys.

the two of them are fast friends. They are comfortable with each other—playful, healthy interaction, though Cooper has made it clear who is boss.

In addition to being housebroken, Scout arrived crate trained, collar trained, accepting of leash and with an identity chip imbedded. It’s hard to believe how much had been accomplished with a little one only eight weeks old. Add that to his playful, loving personality and good habits, and we did find a gem of a pup.

Scout’s typical day goes like this: wake up early, eat, play, nap, play, nap, eat, evening lap and cuddle time and then to bed for the night in

After they wear each other out, they roll on each other and wiggle in the grass. Next thing you know, they are both passed out, either in the grass or inside on the rug.

John is taking Scout to beginners obedience training class weekly for six weeks. In addition to the benefits of learning commands, Scout enjoys being with other pups. The instructor was impressed with his calm demeanor, sweet behavior and focus.

Our pup has visited our veterinarian every two weeks for his series of required puppy vaccines. Despite being poked and prodded, he is still happy at every visit and charms the staff. He is also a big hit at the Easton Farmers’ Market on occasional Saturdays. He accepts being the focus of attention and

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Puppy Pleasure

petted by strangers with calm joy.

Soon Scout will train with Chris’s Llewellins in the field. He will be introduced to birds, quartering back and forth in the fields and retrieving bumpers. He will gradually be exposed to field work over guns.

The Llewellin setter has been bred for hunting and companionship. The hunting instinct is in their genes. They have excellent noses. They point and hold the point. They don’t flush. They retrieve and are biddable (take instruction well). They are known for their exuberance and are active in covering ground and fi nding birds. John is hoping for plenty of good hunts with Scout and Chris and his dogs. Depending on Scout’s progression and development, he may train over released birds in a few months.

Regardless of his talents outside the home, Scout will continue to give us plenty of puppy pleasure as a lap pup, just like Cooper, who at four years still thinks of himself as a puppy.

So, how many more puppies do we have in us? Time will tell…

TIDE TABLE OXFORD, MD OCTOBER 2023

SHARP’S IS. LIGHT: 46 minutes before Oxford

TILGHMAN: Dogwood Harbor same as Oxford

EASTON POINT: 5 minutes after Oxford

CAMBRIDGE: 10 minutes after Oxford

CLAIBORNE: 25 minutes after Oxford

ST. MICHAELS MILES R.: 47 min. after Oxford

WYE LANDING: 1 hr. after Oxford

ANNAPOLIS: 1 hr., 29 min. after Oxford

KENT NARROWS: 1 hr., 29 min. after Oxford

CENTREVILLE LANDING: 2 hrs. after Oxford

CHESTERTOWN: 3 hrs., 44 min. after Oxford

3 month tides at www.tidewatertimes.com

Slot Docks Ready for Fall!

• Kayak Docks

• Re-Decking

• Pressure Wash & Seal

• Boat Lifts, PWC Lifts

• Gangways

• Solar Dock Lighting

• Floating Piers

• Rowing Docks

• Kayak Racks

• Ladders

• Dock Boxes

• Piling Caps

A Ghostly Intervention by

Dan Hoyt

It was a chilly March evening in 1988, not unlike most evenings in England during that time of year, my life took an unexpected turn. I was 22 years old, had a beautiful wife, a lovely 18-month-old daughter and was living in a foreign country. I believed I had encountered most of what life had to offer for someone my age. Little did I know, a new experience awaited me; one that would change my life forever.

The night began like any other. I was heading out with my daughter, Sara, to pick up my wife at

work. It was late, around 10:30 p.m., and after a long day of work, I was exhausted. Sara was sound asleep in the backseat of our baby blue 1967 Ford Cortina: a classic English car with the driver’s seat on the right side. Positioned beneath the right-hand side of the dashboard, a small cassette player loyally accompanied me on every journey, playing music of my favorite bands. That night I was listening to The Rolling Stones, one of my favorites.

I was serving in the United States Air Force, stationed at

Ghostly Intervention

RAF Alconbury, but living 7 miles away at RAF Upwood in Cambridgeshire County England. It was a modest remnant of World War II Royal Air Force, now pri -

marily used by USAF personnel. The main base, RAF Alconbury, was where most of us worked. My wife, Dawn, worked at the base movie theater.

Just outside the main gate of RAF Upwood stood a stop sign, dividing the road. To the left was the quaint village of Upwood, while to the right, the road that led to RAF Alconbury. Unbeknownst to me at the time, those next few moments would be forever etched in my memory. As our car rolled to a stop, a sudden jolt of surprise startled me when the rear right door, nearest to Sara suddenly creaked open. Simultaneously, a rush of air went through the car sending shivers down my spine.

In that instant, I felt a presence— a comforting one, unlike anything I had ever encountered. When the car stopped, without hesitation, I reached back and closed the door tight. I then looked to my left, catching a brief glimpse in my rear-view mirror, and noticed someone or something sitting in the middle of the backseat, next to Sara in her car seat. Even now I can still vividly recall the figure’s shadowy form gazing back at me through the mirror. It’s clothing bore beautiful yet muted hues of blue, green, and yellow, with a faint hint of red. I quickly looked over my left shoulder to see what was back there, only to find nothing there, just my daughter sleep-

ing in her car seat, with a small hint of a smile on her face.

I continued driving by turning to the right towards RAF Alconbury, only to be surprised again when the cassette player stopped playing. Maybe it was only a coincidence, but the song playing at the time was “Sympathy for the Devil.” Without thinking I said, “So you

Ghostly Intervention

don’t like the Stones huh?” I don’t know why I said this but talking to this presence seemed very normal at that moment. I’ve thought back to that moment many times since that night and assume that since my feelings towards the presence were pure, that the spirit must not have liked my choice of music or the subject in the song playing. I slowed the car down, and fiddled with the tape player for a moment, but quickly lost interest and continued down the road.

lane. Though it was several hundred feet ahead, I didn’t think much of it at the time. We encountered a few more vehicles on those winding lanes, yet the presence of our companion continued to soothe us.

In the English countryside, the roads wind like narrow threads, especially at this stretch with its sharp curves. As I drove, I noticed a car ahead of us moving considerably faster than the posted speed limit. The late hour had emptied the roads, seemingly catching the other driver off-guard. My attention was drawn when, negotiating a steep curve, their headlights crossed the center line into our

In a matter of minutes, we arrived at Little Raverley, a small village marked by a handful of farmhouses. Blink and you’d miss it – that’s how small it was. The road ended at a Y intersection, graced by a solitary stop sign. As I brought our car to a halt, an onslaught of events, seemingly synchronized, caught me off guard once again. The back door creaked ajar once again, the tape player resumed playing precisely where it had left off, and a rush of air coursed through me. With this, the presence that had been with us dissipated as abruptly as it had arrived. The surge of emotions overwhelmed me, and in that moment, I found myself grappling with questions. “Was it a ghost” I wondered “Or perhaps an electrical glitch?”

Since that mystical night, I’ve

revisited these questions countless times. Yet, in all the uncertainties, one conviction remains the same. It must have been a spirit, a guardian angel sent to shield us from a threat still hidden amid that evening. Maybe its purpose was to divert us from the car we passed. I remember, I had slowed down momentarily to fiddle with

the tape player, a slight delay that might well have positioned us to avoid that car, careening across the center line during one of the road’s many twists.

The exact truth of that night may forever puzzle me, but this much I know – it transformed my understanding of ghosts, spirits, and guardian angels. The ghostly intervention left a permanent mark, shaping my beliefs in ways that time could never erase.

Dan Hoyt lives in Moline, Illinois, with his wife Dawn and their goldendoodle Nellie.

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Chesapeake Music Welcomes the Abeo Quartet

Chesapeake Music presents the award-winning Abeo Quartet in concert on Sat., Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton. This is the final 2023 concert of Chesapeake Music’s Interlude Concert series, which focuses on presenting chamber artists and composers on the cusp of breaking through to national and international careers.

The quartet will delight the audience with performances of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 12, Op. 127 in E flat major and Brahms’ String Quartet Op. 51, No. 1 in C mi-

nor. The Little Things, a new work by 24-year-old Iranian-American composer Kian Ravaei, will also be featured. Inspired by the writings of Emily Dickinson on aspects of nature, this seven-movement composition for string quartet premiered at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in June and is scheduled for performances across the country. The three pieces chosen for the concert reflect a wide range of emotion and expression that the quartet hopes will “take the audience on a journey that shows the breadth of the human experience.”

The Abeo Quartet: violinist Rebecca Benjamin, cellist Brian Gadbow, violist James Kang and violinist Njioma Grievous.

Formed at the Juilliard School in 2018, the quartet went on to win the 2019 Silver Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Concertgoers will likely remember Abeo’s outstanding performance in the 2022 Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition, where they also garnered the Silver Prize. Since then, the quartet has participated and been a prize winner in other national and international competitions and is currently the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the University of Delaware under the mentorship of the Calidore String Quartet.

Comprising violinists Njioma Grevious and Rebecca Benjamin, violist James Kang and cellist Brian Gadbow, the Abeo Quartet has appeared on concert stages nationally and internationally. During their time at Juilliard, Abeo studied regularly in the Honors Chamber Music Program under the tutelage of the Juilliard String Quartet.

Living up to the name Abeo / ah-bey-oh/—an expression of joy in Nigerian dialect—the quartet’s performance in Easton is sure to reflect their love for playing chamber music and sharing it with others.

To learn more about Chesapeake Music or to purchase tickets for this concert, visit chesapeakemusic.org.

Taking a Peaceful Pause with Pursoma

by Tracey F. Johns

What struck me most upon meeting Shannon Vaughn—founder of the Talbot County-based national wellness brand Pursoma, now with more than one million baths sold—was her beauty. I felt a little starstruck when we met at Eat Sprout in Easton one August afternoon, which makes sense because Vaughn hangs out with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and other wellness celebrities.

Her dewy, flawless skin and the way she tilted her wide-brimmed hat to protect her skin from the day’s scorching sun were captivating. Vaughn modestly attributes her dewy skin and being the founder of a beauty company to her simple daily wellness routine, protecting her skin from the sun, drinking lots of water and taking a daily soak.

Carrying herself with a relaxed

Pursoma

yet purposeful manner, Vaughn also has a worldly, sophisticated grace about her, cultivated from time living in France, Beirut and various countries of the Middle East Gulf region.

home, an Eastern Shore farm, I learned that her beauty runs just as deep on the inside.

I knew Vaughn spent years building a career as a Ford model and had lived in Manhattan, which fueled my assumption that she was a “come here,” a term often used to refer to people who weren’t born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, or those referred to as “from heres.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I love a green juice made fresh from my juicer as much as a fried scrapple sandwich dipped in maple syrup,” says Vaughn, who grew up in Dorchester and Talbot counties and moved back after living in Manhattan.

“I remember sleeping in my first apartment in Manhattan and going crazy from all the sirens while my roommates were sound asleep,” she says. “The next weekend, I invited them to come down with me to the Eastern Shore.

After spending more time with Shannon and her team during a later, casual porchside chat at her

“One was from Warsaw, the other from Los Angeles, and I remember them both waking me up in

Pursoma

the middle of a hot, humid, sticky August summer night on the Shore asking, ‘What is all that noise?’

“They were talking about the ‘night sounds,’” she says. “You know, all the bullfrogs, bugs and locusts that you hear. Which to a Shore girl like me is like a white noise machine and earplugs on a busy Broadway Boulevard.”

Vaughn says her memories of growing up on the Shore have always held a special place in her heart. She recalls returning in the fall and summer and being met with the strong stench of fertilizer carried over a balmy breeze, sure signs she had arrived home.

“Growing up, we were at home with a simpler life. We had gardens, and we knew our local farmers and watermen,” she says. “I still love being able to arrive at restaurants by water and picking crabs and eating everything with my hands. Plus, people mind their business here, and when they ask you how you are, they mean it.”

Soon after Vaughn moved back to Talbot County in 2014, she bought a 1979 Ford 150 off the side of the road in St. Michaels out of frustration at always having to ask neighbors for help hauling on the farm. Later, she taught her then-six-year-old daughter how to drive on the farm that’s been home ever since.

Vaughn’s daughter attends the

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same school she did while growing up here, and Vaughn, an avid cyclist, is often seen riding the backroads of Talbot County. She says she especially appreciates the casualness of the work and play dress codes here and how she can cycle in good weather seven months of the year.

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Now, Vaughn uses those same principles of a simpler, purer life to guide the company she founded, Pursoma, a concept that began in 2013. She also still drives that truck, sometimes delivering Pursoma products to locals, and finds joy in the friendly waves she returns while out and about wherever she goes.

Vaughn created the brand after

Pursoma

facing a severe health crisis in her adult life. Product development and ingredient sourcing came from engaging in holistic therapies that emphasized detox and rejuvenation and brought good health back to her life. The concept wasn’t new to her, having grown up with a hippie mother who made her own serums and balms and served green juice to Vaughn as a child before it was ever a thing.

Pursoma came out of the gate in 2014 with celebrity endorsements and a line of products available at national retailers like Ulta and via niche luxury wellness companies like GOOP and the Four Seasons hotels. During COVID, the com-

pany packaged by hand right here in Talbot County.

Since then, Pursoma has been able to drop its price point through a partnership with an automated packaging and production company while adhering to the same quality ingredient standards repeat customers count on.

Led by Vaughn and a team of five women, the company has products positioned at retailers like Target, Walmart and Kroger group. Local pick-up is also available in Easton, and the full line of Pursoma products is available for purchase on the company’s website.

Pursoma’s soaks and body treatments are intentionally designed to facilitate respites from the devices that infuse us with anxiety,

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insomnia and harmful chemicals. The products are made from the cleanest, most sustainable ingredients to detoxify, create calm to ease anxiety and promote higherquality sleep.

“I’ve researched what it takes to live a healthy life by being my own guinea pig. I was desperate when I was sick,” says Vaughn. “My goal is to give people of all ages access to products that are accessible and can create healthy evening routines that will create peace and calm before bedtime. The period of rest before bed is crucial to our bodies and minds restoring from what usually is a stressful day. We

rely on our customers to take that time alone in the bathtub, and we do the rest.”

Shannon and I met for a second time on her farm, where her team members joined us for a chat about Pursoma. First, we hopped on her four-wheeler to take in the garden where she has grown some of Pursoma’s ingredients, as well as to visit an old cemetery on the property, where we stopped to eat local berries. She had prepared a plate of delicious nibbles and a pitcher of iced tea for our gathering as we all sat in the shade while overlooking the river.

We talked about words that would describe Pursoma if it were a person instead of a brand. “Col-

“Why settle for less when you can settle with the best!” e Mid-Shore’s Leader in Real Estate Title Services

Melissa Grimes-Guy Photography

Pursoma

laborative, visionary, innovative, caring, pure, and inclusive” were the words chosen by the team to sum up the spirit of Pursoma.

Vaughn commented that the brand’s targeted audience is people who already value the benefits of bathing, while Account Manager Shelley Harris remarked that she wasn’t a soaker before joining the Pursoma team in 2020.

So I asked, by a show of hands, how many were now enjoying the benefits of soaking with Pursoma products in the bathtub, and each raised their hand. They commented how hard it was to make the time, but that each had formed a nightly ritual of bathing with the

products they sold and personally endorsed each day. Shelley wasn’t the only convert—this was a new routine each had adopted, without expectation.

Having been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease in 2005, I have my own aches and pains, including arthritis and a recent knee injury that kept me limping for more than three months.

For my knee, I spent months trying the rest, ice, compression elevation (RICE) treatment and took baths with Epsom salts that didn’t make a difference.

I continued hobbling until I took a long soak with Pursoma’s Sweat and Rest product as research for this story. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was gobsmacked by how much better my knee felt after one bath. And now, after several soaks, the pain has subsided. My linen closet is well stocked with Pursoma products because I know how much better they make me feel. I even purchased some for a friend.

“We have a very high rate of repeat customers,” says Vaughn. “It’s easy to understand the wellness and detoxifying benefits of our products once people try them.”

Vaughn says Epsom salts were made famous by the spot in England where they were discovered for healing benefits, and people have “taken to the baths” for centuries to heal aches and pains. Bathing and hot water immersion

is an ancient healing tradition for many maladies. The Epsom on the market today is typically highly refined, processed and then sprayed with artificial fragrance. However, natural sea salts, like the variety used in Pursoma bath treatments, are used in their raw, natural state and then delicately scented using all-natural essential oil blends made by the in-house aromatherapist in Talbot County.

“As such, they’re chock-full of healing and beauty-enhancing minerals, which aid in deep pore cleansing and mega skin hydration,” she says. “Sea salt baths help create gorgeous skin through deep

She says Pursoma’s sea salt contains vital trace minerals, which can help fire up your circulation from the intense mineral content and the hot water immersion.

“Natural sea salts may have antiinflammatory properties, which can help soothe achy joints and muscles while easing anxiety,” says Vaughn. “This is why emerging from a sea salt-based bath treatment can feel so euphoric. A deep sense of mental clarity combined with major bodybalancing is possible with just one soak.”

This author wholeheartedly agrees. It’s one thing for a brand to tell you what it does, and another when it shows you. Just take a look the next time you see me walking

down the street without the limp that plagued me over this past summer.

Pursoma makes products for babies, children and adults, with bundles and gift cards available, and a popular “Self-Care Sunday” subscription package. Don’t forget to save using the coupon in this issue of Tidewater Times , with more online at pursomalife.com .

Tracey Johns has worked in communications, marketing and business management for more than 30 years, including non-profit leadership. Tracey’s work is focused on public and constituent relations, along with communication strategies, positioning and brand development and project management.

“Coconut Beach”

Leslie Lumeh

Easton Map and History

The County Seat of Talbot County. Established around early religious settlements and a court of law, Historic Downtown Easton is today a centerpiece of fine specialty shops, business and cultural activities, unique restaurants, and architectural fascination. Treelined streets are graced with various period structures and remarkable homes, carefully preserved or restored. Because of its historical significance, historic Easton has earned distinction as the “Colonial Capitol of the Eastern Shore” and was honored as number eight in the book

With a population of over 16,500, Easton offers the best of many worlds including access to large metropolitan areas like Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington, and Wilmington. For a walking tour and more history visit https:// tidewatertimes.com/travel-tourism/easton-maryland/.

“The 100 Best Small Towns in America.”

Chesapeake Film Festival

Prepares for September 30 Opening

The Chesapeake Film Festival, now in its 16th year, will once again transform downtown Easton into a film lovers’ destination this Fall. The LIVE Festival kicks off on September 30 at the historic Avalon Theatre, followed by a second day at The Ebenezer Theater on October 1. The festival will also feature a 7-day Virtual Festival from October 2 to October 8, showcasing 37 outstanding documentaries, narrative films, and animations. Plan your visit and buy tickets today at www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com .

“All of us at Bluepoint Hospitality are delighted to support and promote the Chesapeake Film Festival. The festival is a wonderful partner and contributor to Easton’s robust artistic community. We look forward to hosting the second day of screenings and events on October 1st at The Ebenezer Theater.”

~ Aynsley Schopfer, Manager, Prager Family Center for the Arts.

The LIVE Festival starts with the Maryland Premiere of Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection , a captivating documentary about the singer’s life and musical legacy. Don’t miss the chance to engage with the film team, including Writer/producer Randy Schmidt, Executive Producer Andy Streit-

feld and Associate Producer Jon Gann, who will be present for audience questions.

The opening day includes blocks of documentary and narrative shorts, as well as the World Premiere of ICEMAN: Book One , directed by Harold Jackson III, an award-winning director, and Chesapeake Film Festival Board Member. Day One concludes with the Environmental Opening Night, featuring two local productions –A Passion for Oysters and Windshipped – followed by a panel dis -

Film Festival

cussion, including directors Dave Harp and Jon Bowermaster, and moderated by Ryan Conrath, Associate Professor of English in the Film Program at Salisbury University.

Day Two at The Ebenezer Theater begins with the documentary The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall , followed by a Q & A with director Judith Dwan Hallet. The day continues with a series of film blocks – Outdoors Maryland, Animation, Student and Comedy Shorts – each block includes Q&A’s with filmmakers. Day Two concludes with The Automat, an engaging documentary with Mel Brooks, followed by Q&A with director Lisa Hurwitz

moderated by Martin Zell, CFF President.

The 2023 VIRTUAL Festival continues online October 2 and runs through October 8. Enjoy 37 carefully curated independent films in the comfort of your own home for one amazing price! Explore brand new titles including Chesapeake, A Love Letter to a Watershed; 2020: Chaos and Hope; Outside Line; Whitman Brook; By My Side; Mapping Love; Spokespeople; Symphony of Courage; The Red Creek Sessions; Waves Apart, Requiem; Arctic Song; Four Metagraph Animations and many more. Please be sure to join us for this celebration of international talent you can find nowhere else.

Film Festival

For a full list of 2023 Virtual Films and to purchase tickets visit www. chesapeakefilmfestival.com .

Be a VIP and enjoy access to every film and special event! Look forward to joining Festival filmmakers, directors, and contributors at the VIP Opening Night Reception on September 30 at 5:30 p.m. at Easton’s Academy Art Museum. The event is catered by Celebrity chef Jordan Lloyd of Hambleton House, and you can indulge in freshly-shucked oysters, generously provided by local contributors Tom Horton, Dave Harp, Sandy Cannon-Brown, and Richard Tilghman. Access to this exclusive experience is available for $125 per ticket, covering the VIP reception and access to all films and events during the LIVE Festival.

CFF showcases films from seasoned professionals, emerging filmmakers, and students. Films are selected for their creativity and originality, as well as story and direction. Generally, films that are

not available online - or at least not until after the Chesapeake Film Festival - are given priority for the LIVE Festival. Highly-rated films that can be shared universally are selected for the VIRTUAL Festival, providing filmmakers and the festival audience with a global reach.

The Chesapeake Film Festival is generously supported by the Shared Earth Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Prager on behalf of Bluepoint Hospitality, Enel Green Power, The Nature Conservancy, Maryland Film Office, Shore United Bank, Choptank

Easton Utilities, Maryland State Arts Council, Talbot Arts, Talbot County Department of Tourism, Artistic Insights Fund, Richard and Beverly Tilghman, U.S. Small Business Administration, and the Ravenal Foundation.

For more information, please contact Cid Collins Walker CFF Festival Director, artisticdirector@chesapeakefilmfestival.com , (410) 822-3500 or visit www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com .

Dorchester Map and History

Dorchester County is known as the Heart of the Chesapeake. It is rich in Chesapeake Bay history, folklore and tradition. With 1,700 miles of shoreline (more than any other Maryland county), marshlands, working boats, quaint waterfront towns and villages among fertile farm fields – much still exists of what is the authentic Eastern Shore landscape and traditional way of life along the Chesapeake.

For more information about Dorchester County visit https://tidewatertimes.com/travel-tourism/dorchester/.

TIDEWATER GARDENING

by K. Marc Teffeau, Ph.D.

Autumn Undertakings

Fall has arrived! Days are getting shorter, the air temperature crisper and the landscape is starting to color up with yellows, reds, oranges and browns. The geese are starting to fly. Fall is my favorite season on the ’Shore. The cooler days provide lots of opportunities to prepare the landscape and garden for the coming winter. One sign of fall is the leaves

dropping from deciduous shrubs and trees. However, gardeners don’t expect the same behavior from their so-called evergreens. When I was the Talbot County Extension agent many, many moons ago, I always expected calls from homeowners about their pine trees losing needles in October.

In reality, the only reason pines, rhododendrons, spruces, arbor -

vitae, junipers and similar plants appear green all year round is that they have several seasons’ worth of needles or foliage all at once on the plant. These plants add a new set of needles in spring and drop their oldest set in fall.

A close look at most of these cases shows that only the innermost or oldest foliage is involved. The tree is merely going through a normal aging process, one that is routine for a healthy plant. The older needles and leaves are less efficient in the photosynthesis process, so they are let go. In some species, like white pine and arborvitae, the dying of the foliage takes

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place rather suddenly and the trees presents an alarming appearance that usually lasts for just a short time. As soon as the dead needles are brought down by strong winds or heavy rain, the trees regain their normal appearance.

However, there are reasons why evergreens can experience a particularly heavy loss of needles or leaves. White pines planted in wet, poorly drained soil often shed more needles than normal. Drought can have the same effect. Poor nutrition will also mean short yearly growth and premature leaf or needle drop. A tree in poor vigor

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can lose many leaves prematurely, too, or its needle growth will be stunted.

If you have evergreens with poor color or weak growth, they may respond next spring to fertilizer applied between mid-October and mid-March. I would recommend applying the fertilizer after the first hard frost. In addition, a light pruning of both needled and broad-leafed evergreens is recommended in late fall to encourage a strong framework that will help the plant overcome snow damage. Remove any weak or crowded branches that you find in the plants. Remember to water evergreen shrubs thoroughly before the ground freezes, especially if

we have a dry fall. Evergreens continue to lose water during winter through transpiration, but when the ground is frozen, the roots cannot replenish the water lost through the leaves or needles. They will go off color with grayish green or light brown foliage. This is especially true of boxwood. Their foliage will turn an off-orange color.

October is a good time to do maintenance on trees and shrubs. While you can still identify them easily, prune dead and diseased branches. Old, fallen leaves may contain disease inoculum for next year’s plant infections. Remove any infected debris from around the plant’s base and dispose of it in the trash. We usually recommend

mulching newly planted trees and shrubs to reduce weed problems and to conserve moisture. In fall, however, it is usually a good idea to wait until soil temperatures have reached 32°F before mulching. Mulches applied too early can do more harm than good. Mulch is used to keep soil temperatures constant and prevent frost heaving—not to keep plant roots warm.

In October, trees and shrubs start the hardening process that prepares them for cold weather. To encourage this process, remove any mulch from around their stems for a distance of one to two inches. This will also discourage mouse and vole damage to the stems during winter. Avoid piling mulch against the main stems of woody plants, especially those with thin bark, as this practices encourages bark rotting when the mulch traps

moisture against the stems in cold weather.

Roses should not be pruned now, as any new growth that might result would be subject to winter injury. The rose garden should be raked and cleaned, removing all fallen leaves and mulch to prevent black spot and other diseases next year. Replace the existing mulch with a new layer. If your climbing roses are in an exposed location, tie them up firmly with broad strips of rags or padded foam tape so the wind will not whip them against the trellis and bruise the bark.

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Tidewater Gardening

You probably have vegetables in the garden that you hope will ripen before the first hard frost. Tomatoes need an average daily temperature of 65°F or more to encourage the ripening process. You can speed up the ripening process when daytime temperatures are consistently below this threshold. Pick fruits that have begun to change color and bring them inside to ripen. Use recipes that require green tomatoes, or place a ripe apple in a closed container with green tomatoes to encourage them to turn red. Ripe apples give off ethylene gas that causes tomatoes to ripen.

pumpkins and squash are subject to damage by chilling. At temperatures above 60°F, they gradually lose moisture and become stringy.

If there is a threat of frost at night, harvest your warm-season crops like cucumber, eggplant, melon, okra, pepper and summer squash so the fruits are not damaged by the frost. Hot peppers store well dry. Pull up the entire plant up and hang it in a cool, dry place. You can also pick the peppers, thread them on a string and store in a cool, dry place as well.

Harvest winter squash once the vines die back, but definitely before a hard freeze. After harvesting, pumpkins and butternut and Hubbard squashes need to cure at temperatures between 70–80°F for two to three weeks. After curing, store them in a dry place at 55–60°F. If stored at 50°F or below,

Harvest-extending row cover fabric like Re-may can help to prolong the season a bit in the vegetable garden. Cover the plants in the early evening and uncover in the morning. This may carry you through for a few weeks or more, especially if we have a mild fall. This material will not protect the

Tidewater Gardening

plants when we get a really hard frost, however.

with spunbonded polyester material and uncovered in spring just before bloom produce up to 60% more fruit than plants given the conventional straw or hay mulch cover. It is too late do any fertilization of strawberries.

As an alternative, some root crops such as carrots, onions and parsnips can be left in the ground and dug up as needed if your garden soil is well drained. Apply enough mulch to keep the ground from freezing, and the crop will be kept fresh until it is needed. If you grew a fall crop of broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage, it can take a light frost without any damage. If we have a mild fall, leave your broccoli plants in the garden after cutting the main broccoli flower head. They may send out small flower shoots that you can also harvest.

A final weeding of strawberries, blueberries or raspberries will help keep weed problems to a minimum. Strawberries covered in fall

Clean up home orchard and small-fruit plantings. Sanitation is essential for good maintenance. Dried fruits or mummies carry disease organisms through winter that will attack next year’s crop. Prune out dead blackberry and raspberry canes down to the soil level.

You can keep your chrysanthemums and asters blooming for quite a while longer if you take the time to provide a little frost protection for them. A small, simple frame covered with cheesecloth or an old bed sheet placed over your

plants on frosty nights can add a month or more of garden blooms.

With a little planting effort in October, you can speed the timing of that first new growth next spring by as much as a month. Spring-flowering bulbs of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, Siberian squill, dwarf irises, anemone and crocus should be planted after

the soil temperature drops below 60°F. Be sure to select healthy, disease-free bulbs. If any of the bulbs that you purchased are soft or have an off odor, discard them in the trash can, as they have begun to rot. A standard fertilizer recommendation for bulbs is 5-1010 incorporated into the bulb bed at planting time.

Some gardening experts recommend adding bone meal or a bulb fertilizer to the planting hole as you prepare the soil, but I don’t. It takes a long time for bonemeal to dissolve and the nutrients to become available to the bulbs. Most spring-flowering bulbs should be in the ground by the early part of this month, with the exception of

Tidewater Gardening

cool, dark area. Dahlia and begonia tubers should be stored in a box of slightly moist peat moss. Gladiola corms can be stored in a paper bag without additional packing.

If you are growing winter squash and pumpkins, late October is the time to harvest them. Two good indicators that these crops are mature is that they are fully colored and the rind is hard enough that you can’t push your fingernail into

tulips, which may be planted up until early November.

Gladiolas, dahlias and other tender bulbs should be dug up before the ground freezes and stored in a

it. Winter squash and pumpkins can also be left on the vine until the first frost (not hard freeze) has killed the vines. Proper storage is important for winter squash and pumpkins. Store them off the ground in a cool, dry location with good air circulation.

October is also a good time to divide and replant overcrowded perennials. Most are easily divided, and if you have too many, you can always give the extras away to your gardening friends.

If you like to start your own annual flower transplants or direct seed annual flowers in the spring, now is the time to save the seed from annual flowering plants like cleome, zinnias, cosmos, celosia and marigolds

for next year’s planting. Place the seeds in paper bags or envelopes, label them and be sure to store them in a cool, dry location.

While you are in the process of pulling up the annual flowers in the landscape, you can add some background color by replacing the annuals with pansies, fall asters, ornamental kale and cabbage, parsley, kale, mustard greens and Swiss chard.

Happy Gardening!

Marc Teffeau retired as Director of Research and Regulatory Affairs at the American Nursery and Landscape Association in Washington, D.C. He now lives in Georgia with his wife, Linda.

St. Michaels Map and History

On the broad Miles River, with its picturesque tree-lined streets and beautiful harbor, St. Michaels has been a haven for boats plying the Chesapeake and its inlets since the earliest days. Here, some of the handsomest models of the Bay craft, such as canoes, bugeyes, pungys and some famous Baltimore Clippers, were designed and built. The Church, named “St. Michael’s,” was the first building erected (about 1677) and around it clustered the town that took its name.

For a walking tour and more history of the St. Michaels area visit https://tidewatertimes.com/travel-tourism/st-michaels-maryland/.

Winning Pairs by

A.M. Foley

This year marks a watershed moment in our history. One hundred fifty years ago, in 1873, Jacob Davis patented a creation destined to enrich the life of nearly every man, woman and child in America and to spread good feeling globally. Strictly speaking, Davis’s creations could be called Youphes’s rather than Levi’s.

Jacob Youphes, a 23-year-old tailor, sailed from Latvia in 1854 with a dream of a better life. After a brief stint at his trade in New York, he became a nomad, morphing along the way into entrepreneur Jacob Davis. He first headed to Maine, but the undertow of an ebbing California

Gold Rush lured him back to sea, bound for San Francisco, with a mid-sail trek across Panama. From San Francisco he headed for Canada, where he panned for gold on the Fraser River, sold tobacco, wholesaled pork and probably fell back on tailoring. For certain, he courted German fraulein Annie Parksher, who took a chance on the wanderer. They wed and began a family, which ultimately included six children.

Within two years, the couple migrated from Victoria, B.C., to Virginia City, Nev., where the massive Comstock Lode had unearthed a vein of silver. Next, he and Annie moved nearby to sparsely populat-

Winning Pairs

ed Reno, a river crossing destined to become a railroad stop, among other things. There, Davis invested in a brewery. Somehow he lost money betting on beer amid a desert inhabited by miners, lumberjacks and gandy dancers. Again he reverted to tailoring, making wagon covers, tents and horse blankets.

One day, a woman came to Davis to order durable, custom-made work pants for her woodcutter husband. His daily job required a tough pair, large enough for a man outsized for ready-wear. Davis devised a pair of “waist overalls” in sturdy cotton duck cloth. He fortified stress points (below the fly buttons and on

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side and back pocket corners) with copper rivets used on horse-blanket straps. A Paul Bunyan lookalike in unique workwear must have looked striking. Even at a hefty $3 per pair, Davis was swamped with orders, some off-white duck cloth, some blue denim.

A competing tailor followed Davis’s pattern. Davis knew about patents from an earlier fling experimenting with steam power, but after the brewery fiasco, he lacked the $68 application fee. His escalating fabric purchases came from a dry goods wholesaler, Levi Strauss. Strauss was prosperous and enjoyed a reputation for generosity of spirit. He had sailed into San Francisco at the peak of the Gold Rush,

a year before Davis ever left Latvia.

Levi Strauss & Co. imported clothing, fabric and sundry goods from his family’s New York firm to supply mining and railroad camps and small stores around the West.

Davis and Strauss shared much, both being European–Jewish immigrants who had been lured from New York to California during the Gold Rush. Davis wrote Strauss, describing his improved design and proposing equal partnership on a patent. The duo filed a joint application to patent an “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Openings” on traditional work pants. Even before approval reached the West Coast, Strauss initiated production arrangements and Davis relocated

Oxford Map and History

Oxford is one of the oldest towns in Maryland. Although already settled for perhaps 20 years, Oxford marks the year 1683 as its official founding, for in that year Oxford was first named by the Maryland General Assembly as a seaport and was laid out as a town. In 1694, Oxford and a new town called Anne Arundel (now Annapolis) were selected the only ports of entry for the entire Maryland province. Until the American Revolution, Oxford enjoyed prominence as an international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations.

Today, Oxford is a charming tree-lined and waterbound village with a population of just over 700 and is still important in boat building and yachting. It has a protected harbor for watermen who harvest oysters, crabs, clams and fish, and for sailors from all over the Bay. For a walking tour and more history visit https://tidewatertimes. com/travel-tourism/oxford-maryland/.

one last time, leaving tiny Reno to settle his family in bustling San Francisco, where he would supervise Levi’s factory. One month after the Davis family settled, the approved patent reached California. Quite literally, their ship had come in.

While planning expansion into work shirts and overalls, they dubbed their improved jeans “XX,” designating the highest grade of denim. To further distinguish them from competition, Davis added double seams in orange thread, an innovation registered as U.S. Trade Mark No. 1339254. Later, when the original patent

expired in 1890, they retired the XX label. The lot number then under production, “Levi’s 501,” was trademarked, as were all future refinements. At the same time, Strauss incorporated Levi Strauss & Co.

Over the years, further model numbers and terms, such as Red Tab, Levi’s and Dockers, were registered. The distinctive back pocket “batwing” pattern, in use since 1873, was trademarked as Arcuate stitching. Derived from the Greek for “bow,” Arcuate has been defended successfully against infringement in numerous international lawsuits. Nettlesome as proliferating competition has been, the company has survived worse,

having risen Phoenix-like following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and resultant fires.

Levi Strauss died in 1902, four years before three-day fires consumed company offices, stock and factory. His nephews inherited the corporation and had the means to rebuild while still paying idled employees and financing less fortunate businesses. One year after the catastrophe, Davis sold his portion of the patent to the corporation but remained production manager until his death one year later, when his son Simon succeeded him.

Traditional “shrink-to-fit” 501s remained popular for decades, mainly among Western working men. When early motion pictures

Winning Pairs

fueled the popular image of cowboys, dude ranches sprang up and Western wear began migrating eastward. In the 1930s, Esquire magazine pronounced zippers the “newest tailoring idea for men.” Button flies faded into history. (A Swedish-American electrical engineer patented these “separable fasteners…to increase flexibility and security.”)

After the outbreak of World War II, the War Production Board deemed jeans commodities essential for defense workers. Production continued, but modifications were required. Thread was regulated. The batwing stitching deco -

rating back pockets became outlawed. For the duration of the war, ornamental batwings were done in water-soluble paint. Rivet numbers were reduced to meet metal rationing. Complaints that rear rivets scratched furniture had already necessitated covering them with denim, so they were simply deleted. Appropriately, Rosie the Riveter, as a defense worker, qualified to buy the rationed garments. Postwar, everyone from Marlon Brando to Albert Einstein was photographed in Levi’s products. Then came the ’60s with James Dean and the counterculture, along with counterfeiters and designer jeans. Still, Levi’s enjoyed an iconic, all-American image.

Winning Pairs premium, especially in Communist countries where Levi’s were officially unavailable. (Coincidentally, the USSR dissolved shortly after Bruce Springsteen exposed his batwings on the album cover for “Born in the USA.”)

Hippies hitchhiking across Europe to seek Nirvana put extra Levi’s in their backpacks. They could satisfy their needs by bartering Levi’s at a

In 2022, memory of a dark episode in U.S. history arose when vintage Levi’s were discovered in the abandoned shaft of a New Mexico gold mine. The jeans, speckled with wax from miners’ candles, bore a legible label proclaiming Levi’s “The Only Kind Made By White Labor.” The racist label dated the pants to the 1880s, the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Described at a New Mexico auction as being in “good/wearable condi-

Oxford Business Association October 2023 Calendar

Until November 12 - Duck, Duck, Goose - Presenting Talbot County’s Decoys and Carvers - Oxford Museum exhibit; Fri.-Mon., 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Oxford Museum, 101 S. Morris St. More info at www.oxfordmuseummd.org.

10/5 - Bring Your Own Piece Furniture Painting Class - $65, includes 4 oz. jar of paint. 5-8 p.m. Limit of 3 participants. The Treasure Chest, 111 S. Morris St. For more info or sign up, go to www.treasurechestoxford.com or call 410-924-8817.

10/6 - Rachel Franklin-Magnificent Movie Music - explore movie music with this renowned pianist. Oxford Community Center, 7 p.m., $15; https://www.oxfordcc.org/

10/7 - Cars and Coffee - Come out and enjoy cars, coffee, and camaraderie. Sponsored by Prestige Auto Vault. Oxford Community Center. Free; 8:30 -10:30. www.oxfordcc.org ; 410-226-5409.

10/7 - A Carver’s Shop - Decoy carving demonstration by Bruce Eppard, 10-4 at the Oxford Museum. More information on the exhibit and special programming at www.oxfordmuseummd.org

10/8 - Pancake Breakfast - Oxford Volunteer Fire Department, 8 – 11 a.m.

10/12 - Matt Pluto - Riverkeeper Update - Oxford Community Center https://www.oxfordcc.org/ .

10/13 - Triad - Trumpeter Dominick Farinacci, vibraphonist Christian Tamburr, and accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman. 7:30 p.m. For more about TRIAD https://www.dominickfarinacci.com/triad . More info and tickets at https://www.oxfordcc.org/ .

10/13-14 - Quilt Workshop - JKThreads will be hosting a two full day workshop at the Community Center in Oxford. The subject will be Painted Forest, based off the pattern from Blue Nickels Studio. More information and registration at https://www.jkthreads.com/retreats

10/18 - Sign Painting and Transfers Class - $36 - All materials provided. 5 -7 p.m. Limit of 4 participants The Treasure Chest, 111 S. Morris St. For more info or sign up, go to www.treasurechestoxford.com or call 410-924-8817.

10/21 - 5k Run/Walk for Mental Health - sponsored by The Christopher Foundation and OCC. 9 a.m. at Oxford Community Center. More information and registration at https://www.oxfordcc.org/

10/21 - Harvest Moon Dance - Dinner, Dancing & Silent Auction fundraiser for Oxford Community Center. Blue jeans and bling and a little line dancing! More information and tickets at https://www. oxfordcc.org/ .

10/25 - Beginner Chalk Mineral Paint Class - $45, all materials provided. 5 – 7 p.m. Limit of 3 participants. The Treasure Chest, 111 S. Morris St. For more info or sign up, go to www.treasurechestoxford.com or call 410-924-8817.

10/26-11/5 - ‘The Fantasticks’ presented by the Tred Avon Players at Oxford Community Center. More information and tickets at https://www.tredavonplayers.org/schedule

10/28 - Rummage Sale - Oxford Volunteer Fire Department, 9 - noon. Drop off 10/27, 9 - noon.

Ferry opens 9 am daily, call 410-745-9023 for last trip time and closures. Yoga and Steady & Strong Exercise at Oxford Community Ctr –https://www.oxfordcc.org/ Check restaurant and shop websites or facebook for current days/hours.

Winning Pairs

responsibility. Levi’s retail stores recycle, accepting used pairs of their brand for cash or store credit. Their website secondhand.levi. com sells thrift and vintage jeans and jackets.

tion” and “one of the oldest from the Gold Rush era,” the pair sold for $87,000. Levi’s interprets the label to mean the company did not maintain sweatshops.

The auctioneer called Levi’s “the holy grail of vintage denim collecting.” Growing popularity of vintage clothing dovetails with Levi’s cultivated image of social

Two months after the 1880 jeans sold, Reno auctioneers presented an unlabeled pair of jeans, which they said “could be the world’s oldest pair.” They said the five-button fly and general resemblance to today’s Levi’s (“close, though not technically identical”) suggested they could have been bought in San Francisco from Levi Strauss. Actually, the jeans lacked Davis’s rivets and were salvaged from a ship sunk sixteen years before he and Strauss began production. The

October 21st 6-11pm

ctober

Dinner, Dancing and Silent Auction

Catered by The Ivy Tickets $85 ($65 is tax deductible)

Attire: Blue Jeans & Bling

Special Attraction: Line dancing

inner, Auction Tickets $85 OXFORDCC.ORG

jeans were discovered in a passenger’s trunk, lost when an 1857 hurricane sank “The Ship of Gold” off North Carolina.

SS Central America was bound for New York from Panama with an estimated 21 tons of gold coin and artifacts. Passenger John Dement of Oregon lost the trunk but saved himself, one of 153 survivors

out of 578 aboard. Though generic, no-name denim jeans, Dement’s shipwrecked work pants possessed

Winning Pairs

a romantic aura of their own. They ultimately sold for $114,000.

Levi’s flagship retail store in San Francisco honors its roots with an in-house tailor sitting in the window, available to hem your purchase and assist with personalizing. Outlet stores such as that in Queenstown, Md., are not full service, but elsewhere Levi’s “mainline” stores include tailor shops.

Levi’s corporate ethos famously pursues two things: progressive social policies and aggression against trademark infringers (perceived or flagrant). They once sued Yves Saint Laurent, claim-

ing a pocket tab infringed on their trademark. Peace ensued after the Frenchman ornamented a denim jacket for an AIDS benefit. The famous designer called blue jeans “the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity— all I hope for in my clothes.”

CrackerjacksToys.com

Jazzminton!

Still plenty of time to get outside and hit that birdie!

Levi Strauss himself, who insisted employees call him by his first name, was memorialized as a “liberal, public-minded citizen” with “broad and generous love for and sympathy with humanity.” On the other hand, within his patent’s first year, he had filed two lawsuits against competitors. The more anonymous Jacob Davis is denoted over the years as progressing from “tailor” to “manufacturer,” and finally to “capitalist.” Partnerships often end badly, but the relationship of Davis and Strauss endured to the end.

Forty-some years ago, A.M. Foley swapped the Washington, D.C. business scene for a writing life on Elliott Island, Maryland. Tidewater Times kindly publishes Foley’s musings on regional history and life in general. Published works are described at www.HollandIslandBook.com .

410-822-7716

7 S. Washington St., Easton

Muffins - A Pleasant Wake-Up Call

The irresistible aroma of freshly baked muffins is sure to get your family up on the right side of the bed. They will think you’ve been awake for hours, but only you will know how quick

and easy these treats really are. When time is short, bake several batches a week or two in advance and freeze for later. Cool them to room temperature and seal tightly before freezing. Later, remove the

muffins from the freezer, carefully unwrap them and let thaw at room temperature. To serve warm, reheat the unwrapped muffins in the microwave for 30–45 seconds on HIGH. Or, heat the oven to 400°F; place the foil-wrapped muffins on a baking sheet and warm for 10–15 minutes.

If you make the muffins the morning you are serving them, there are some shortcuts you can take. Cooking the bacon in the microwave will speed up Bacon and Cheese Muffins even further, and mixing the fruit and liquid ingredients in the blender hastens the preparation for Banana-Poppyseed

Muffins. Batter for these quick breads should be stirred only until the dry ingredients are moistened, so you won’t spend much time mixing them. Experts say when it comes to muffins, the less beaten the batter, the better. Lumps are part of their charm! The short baking period allows you to prepare the juice and get your sleepyheads to the table for a tasty start to the day!

Banana and Poppyseed Muffins

The citrus glaze makes a welcome eye-opener!

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon poppyseeds

2 ripe bananas

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup expeller pressed vegetable oil

2 teaspoons orange juice

1 egg

Citrus glaze (recipe follows)

Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Place bananas in container of an electric blender and process until smooth. Add sugar, oil, orange juice and egg, then blend thoroughly. Add liquid mixture to dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened. Spoon into greased muffin pans, filling two-thirds full. Bake at 375°F for 20 minutes. Remove from pans immediately, and glaze. Makes 1 dozen.

Citrus Glaze

1 cup sifted powdered sugar

1 teaspoon grated orange rind

1/4 cup orange juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients; stir well.

Bacon and Cheese Muffins

1-1/4 cups flour

2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

10 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Tidewater Kitchen

1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley

1 egg, beaten

3/4 cup milk

1/3 cup expeller pressed vegetable oil

Combine first 7 ingredients in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Combine egg, milk and oil; add to dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened. Spoon into greased muffin pans, filling twothirds full. Bake at 400°F for 20–25 minutes. Remove from pans immediately. Makes 1 dozen.

Orange Muffins

1-1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 cup golden raisins

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup Expeller pressed vegetable oil

1 teaspoon grated orange rind

1/4 cup orange juice

1 teaspoon orange extract

Combine first 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Combine egg and remaining ingredients; add to dry mixture, stirring just until moistened. Spoon into greased muffin pans, filling two-thirds

Tidewater Kitchen

full. Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes. Remove from pans immediately. Makes 1 dozen.

Jelly-Topped

Peanut Butter Muffins

1-1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup chunky peanut butter

2 tablespoons honey

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup jelly of your preference

Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Combine peanut butter

and honey; stir in eggs and milk. Add to dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened. Spoon into greased muffin pans, filling threefourths full. Spoon 1 teaspoon jelly

in center of each. Bake at 375°F for 20 minutes or until golden. Remove from pans immediately and cool on wire racks. Serve warm with additional jelly, if desired. Makes 1 dozen.

Refrigerator Bran Muffins

Can be stored up to 6 weeks, so I usually double the recipe!

1-1/4 cups sifted flour

1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup All-Bran cereal

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup shortening or butter

1 egg, beaten

1 cup Bran Buds

1 cup buttermilk

Mon.-Sat.:

a.m.

410-228-3830

3127 Airey’s Spur Road, Cambridge, MD Just look for all the cars and t��cks!

Tidewater Kitchen

1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Sift first 3 ingredients. Pour boiling water over All-Bran cereal. Set aside. Cream sugar and shortening. Add egg, then blend in buttermilk, Bran Buds and soaked All-Bran. Add dry ingredients and stir until moistened. Stir in raisins. If you don’t want to bake immediately, place in a container in the refrigerator. They will keep for 6 weeks.

Fill greased muffin tins and bake at 400°F for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Sweet Potato Muffins

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1-1/4 cups canned mashed sweet potatoes

1 cup milk

1-1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup chopped pecans

Cream butter; gradually beat in sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in sweet potatoes and milk. Combine flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg; add to creamed mixture, stirring just until moistened. Stir in raisins and pecans. Spoon into greased muffin pans, filling twothirds full. Bake at 400°F for 25 minutes. Makes 18 muffins.

A longtime resident of Oxford, Pamela Meredith, formerly Denver’s NBC Channel 9 Children’s Chef, has taught both adult and children’s cooking classes. She currently resides in Easton.

For more of Pam’s recipes, visit the Story Archive tab at tidewatertimes.com.

All Quiet on the Sound

A novel by B. P. Gallagher

Chapter 2: In with the Tide

The journey home from the Blackwater began with a winding voyage through the marshland, following the twists and turns of the narrow river with which it shared a name. The slender corridor snaked between riverbanks overgrown with bay grasses, cattails, and reeds, among which muskrats made their homes and dicky birds flitted to-and-fro, trilling their songs. Quieter this time of year than in the warmer seasons, when the air

would be abuzz with insects and the croaking voices of frogs, but humming with life, nonetheless. Stands of loblolly pines reached skyward in the distance where the tidal marshes firmed, trees taking root where the three-square and cordgrass thinned. Fox squirrels nested in the crooks of their boughs and red foxes prowled the brush below, hoping to make their acquaintance. Redtailed hawks perched in the upper foliage, scanning with unmatched acuity the marsh meadow and for -

All Quiet

est floor for the furtive movements of rabbits, mice, voles, and shrews. Rounding Blackwater Point, the brothers rowed south toward the mouth of Fishing Bay, where, weather permitting, they would cross the Tangier Sound to Moore Island. If the weather was poor or the day growing too late to be out on the big water in a rowboat, they would put in at a slip on the eastern banks of Fishing Bay and hitchhike home. They might have to wait a while, but somebody or other would come through on their way back from the mainland. Earl and Leon were friendly enough with their neighbors that most passersby would offer them a ride, especially with a couple ducks in it to sweeten the bargain. Oftentimes they could hoist their rowboat into the bed of whoever’s truck was driving by or, if that wasn’t an option, come back and retrieve it later in Pop’s old clunker. Betsy was best reserved for traveling to and from work, though. These days they could scarcely af-

ford the petrol to get them to the marina and Margaret to the cannery, much less repair the vehicle should it break down.

Conditions were amenable to rowing home this afternoon, despite the sinking sun and quickening breeze. The morning mists had fled before the upstart wind, and Earl could see clear across the water against the brilliant backdrop of sunset, the sky changing hues as if viewed through panes of stained glass. To the west, watermen in their workboats clogged the Hooper Strait, which connected the greater Chesapeake Bay to the Tangier Sound and separated the point at

TANGIER SOUND

BLOODSWORTH ISLAND

HOOPER STRAIT

CHESAPEAKE BAY

Bishop’s Head from Bloodsworth

Island to its south. Earl wondered idly whether the Jimsonweed was choked up in that throng, enroute to reunite her captain with his missus. Or to remove himself as far from her company as possible, on the off chance there was any truth to his and Leon’s macabre speculations. The chop and traffic that way made him glad he was headed the opposite direction.

“Better them than me,” said Leon, revealing a like frame of mind.

Moore Island was not a proper island, at least not all the time. Situated about two miles east of Bloodsworth Island at the conver -

gence of Fishing Bay, the Tangier Sound, and the Nanticoke River, it was connected to the Eastern Shore by a narrow land bridge to its northeast. But whenever the tides rose, the land bridge and sole road connecting Moore Island to the greater Shore washed out, rendering it inaccessible except by boat until the tide receded again, which happened only twice daily—infrequently enough that the island earned its moniker well. For as long as Moore Island had been inhabited, its residents had constructed their routines around that constancy of minor change, sustaining themselves upon the perpetual ebb and flow of brackish water and its bounties.

“Looks like Dave Howell beat us

Events for October & November 2023

October 6, Forever Tina, Tribute to Tina Turner, 8pm, Avalon Theatre

October 13, The Weight Band, 8pm, Avalon Theatre

October 14, Caitlin Canty, 8pm Avalon Theatre

November 1, Neil King Jr., Speaker, 6pm, Stoltz Listening Room

November 2, Two Crows For Comfort, 8pm Stoltz Listening room

November 4, Session Americana 20th Anniversary Tour, 8pm Avalon Theatre

November 10, the Rough and Tumble, 7 pm, Stoltz Listening Room

November 11, Charlie Mars 7 pm & 9 pm (two shows)

November 15, Word Girls, Speaker, Author, Poet, 6pm Stoltz Listening Room, 6pm

November 17, JETS: The Music of Sir Elton John 7pm, Avalon Theatre

November 18, Livingston Taylor, 7pm Avalon Theatre

November 19, Donna the Buffalo, 7pm, Avalon Theatre

November 25, Seldom Scene, 7pm Avalon Theatre

All Quiet

in,” said Leon as they approached the landing.

“Musta had better luck.”

“That boy always did have a horseshoe up his ass,” grumbled Leon. “I guess Geezer Gibbs is home too, but that might just be ’cos he turned in early or never cast off at all. I’m surprised the old windbag even gets out these days.”

“Better not let Maggie hear you call him that. You know she turns right around and gossips to Clara.”

“Let her!” said Leon, doubling down. “That old man is so deaf he probably wouldn’t hear it anyways, even if Clara did tell him.”

“I hope so for your sake, ’cos you can be damn sure she would if she heard any such thing! You know how that girl is with her Pop Pop. He dotes on her.”

“That I do,” said Leon, who had run afoul of the elderly Mr. Gibbs before. Needless to say, he’d been cautious about courting Clara ever since.

“Plus, we can’t afford for him to stop shuttling Maggie back n’ forth to the cannery, so you best not say nothin’ to offend him or Clara,” said Earl. “Unless you wanna make a detour on the way to the marina four times a week, and I don’t know if Betsy’s got the extra miles in her.”

“All right already, I get it! Seems I musta heard this sermon ten times before.”

“Heed it, then! And hush up before the whole island hears you dredging our neighbors’ good names.”

“Just hand me that line, will you?” Leon was grinning as he hopped overboard into water no higher than the crotch of his oilskins and splashed toward the gravel landing. “We’ll tie up to the pier while we take the catch in, haul the boat up later.”

“Might as well take care of it, shouldn’t we? Rather get it over with now than in the dark.”

Leon grudgingly agreed, as Earl had known he would. His brother was no fool, despite his habitual procrastination. Leon just tended to get excited about the next activity before the current one was finished. He got by fine for the most part, though, so long as he had Earl to corral him along. Within ten minutes they had hauled the rowboat to the top of the ramp and secured their oars and decoys underneath its waxed-canvas cover. Lugging their shotguns and the sacks containing their kills over their shoulders, they started up the road toward home.

Geezer Gibbs himself was in attendance as the Higgins brothers walked past, sitting in his rocker on the porch with a lit cigarette clasped between his slow, arthritic fingers. He observed their passage with rheumy eyes, lifted his cigarette to lips permanently chapped

by smoke and sun and salt spray, and offered a stoic nod in answer to Earl’s wave. Slow those seasoned fingers may be, but skillful, just as his eyes were rheumy but watchful. For all his earlier bluster, Leon sure did clam up under the old waterman’s gaze.

The Gibbs household was much reduced from its former stature, just as the Higgins household was much reduced from its own. Just as was Moore Island itself, the very earth of which eroded bit by irretrievable bit into the surrounding waters each year. Crumbling away, slowly but surely. Liza Gibbs—Clara’s mother—was interred beneath that crumbling soil, as were Mom and Pop, taken before their time. Others taken even more abruptly, whose tragic losses hardly bore thinking about. Plenty of proper long lives had gone to ground here as well, entire genealogies planted underfoot. Many of those lines had since shriveled, leaving behind only bones like withered roots. Emily Gibbs— Clara’s grandmother—was buried here, and Earl’s Mom Mom and Pop Pop, too, theirs likely to be the last generation wholly laid to rest on the island. People went ashore even to die these days.

Mostly, though, they went ashore to find work, more and more since the economy had crashed and jobs had grown scarce. The water always

offered work, but the life of a waterman wasn’t for everyone, even those born into it. The farther folk ventured for other opportunities, the less apt they were to return to the island of their birth. Fortunately, the marina where Earl and Leon worked every weekday but Mondays and the cannery where Margaret took day shifts had remained somewhat insulated from the turbulence of the distant stock markets. As was Moore Island itself, so long as the Bay stayed bountiful. Nowhere was wholly shielded, however, and far worse misfortunes than economic crises could befall folk against which the island guarded none at all. Just ask the eponymous Moore clan about that, if you could manage to find a living member within a hundred miles.

Hell, just ask any scion of the Higgins family. All surviving descendants of that humble clan could still be found occupying the house their great-great-grandfather built, a modest three-bedroom colonial with fixtures little changed from the time of its construction. The Higgins house stood at the end of a dirt lane, with no mailbox, number, or nameplate to mark the property theirs. The house was not unique in this; none of the residents of Moore Island received mail at their personal addresses. Those that bothered with correspondence at all maintained letterboxes at the post office in nearby Nanticoke. Also like

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the rest of the island, the house had no electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing of any kind and was served by a sturdily constructed outhouse in the backyard that had endured generations of Higgins derrieres.

But what it lacked in the trappings of modernity it made up for in familiarity, every knotted board and inch of splintered railing known intimately to its inhabitants. Through those storm-shuttered windows with their antique panes of glass occluded by bubbles and imperfections, Earl and Leon had longingly observed countless fairweather afternoons while their long-suffering mother endeavored to homeschool them at the kitchen table. Some lessons had stuck better than others, yet always the open sky and wide water had beckoned from outside, their simple charms far outshining the erudite stuffiness of spelling and arithmetic. And come evening Mom would be eyeing the windows herself, watching for Pop to putter up the driveway in his truck after a long day at the marina or stroll up from the landing after a day on the water, just as his sons now did. Later, after losing two children and his wife, Pop had kept the curtains drawn when he was inside. Margaret, in turn, had torn them down after he passed.

In all seasons, generations of

Higgins children had played in the grassy front yard, maintained through the years against weeds by the diligent hands of Higgins women and the idle ones of underfoot progeny in need of distraction. Today the front yard was orderly but sparser than in its heyday even by autumnal standards, a touch more ramshackle than when Mom’s militant hand ruled over it. So too the whitewashed exterior of the house, which was peeling in places, and the shingled roof, which lately seemed to have sprung a leak for every room. Earl didn’t even want to think about the work the latter would require before the first snowfall; that was an issue better left to another day. Notwithstanding some much-needed upkeep—and perhaps in part because of the devoted care it demanded—the old house was quintessentially home, pure and simple. And although ownership of the property was nowhere advertised, the sight of Betsy parked out front declared it the Higginses’ as sure as any signpost could. But this afternoon there were one too many vehicles in the driveway.

“Any notion whose truck that is?” said Leon, his tone and features suspicious.

Earl eyed the strange truck, a Ford pickup with red paint faded to a rusted brown the color of dried blood. He had seen it before, back when the veneer was closer to its original cherry, but not in a few

All Quiet

years. Not since before Pop died. The sight did not evoke pleasant memories. “I think that’s Pete Calhoun’s truck.”

“Preacher Pete?”

“Believe so.”

Leon’s features hardened. “Better go see what the hell he wants, then.”

“In here!” called Margaret from the kitchen as her brothers came in the front door. She was seated at the table across from a cleanshaven man in his later middle age. The visitor had sandy hair flecked with white and chilly, flint-grey eyes, and looked put-together in brown slacks, jacket, and a crisply starched white button-down. He rose from his chair as Earl and Leon entered the room, stooping slightly to avoid bumping his head on the hanging lamp.

“Hi, Maggie,” said Leon, the unstated question naked in his tone. What the hell is he doing here?

“If it isn’t the Higgins brothers, larger than life!” said their unexpected caller. “Good to see you, boys. Or perhaps I should say men, since it’s been so long since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing your faces among my pews on Sundays. But God is good! You look hale and healthy. May I ask how old you are now?”

Leon dispensed right away with niceties. “Who else were you expecting to find here? It’s our house, ain’t it?”

“Do you have to be so surly all the time?” scolded Maggie, adding apologetically to her guest, “Leon’s twenty-two, Pastor, though you wouldn’t know by the way he acts! Probably in a mood ’cos they had a poor hunt. And Earl’s nearly twenty-one himself.”

“Hunting was just fine, I’ll have you know,” snapped Leon, dropping the sack of dead ducks to the floorboards with a soft thud.

“Pastor Calhoun,” said Earl, ignoring his snarking siblings. He didn’t shake the preacher’s proffered hand, even after depositing his things in the corner, somewhat more gently than Leon had. “What can we do for you?”

“The pastor was kind enough to drive Clara and I home from work today,” said Margaret. “We were having a nice chat ’til you showed up.” She shot Leon a resentful look.

“Well, my dear, I see no reason we couldn’t continue our conversation another time,” said Pastor Calhoun. Leon gave a derisive snort that said he could think of several reasons—as could Earl, for that matter. But the man of God either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Pivoting effortlessly, the preacher continued, “And I, for one, consider it a blessing that your brothers arrived when they did!”

“Why’s that?” said Leon, scowling.

“I admit, giving your sister and Miss Gibbs a lift home today wasn’t

All Quiet

purely an act of altruism, or at least not the sole purpose of my visit,” said Pastor Calhoun. Earl, having guessed as much already, nodded for the preacher to go on. “Times are tough, and folks are stretched thin, especially with winter upon us. Oh, we shall endure so long as the good Lord watches over his flock, but it doesn’t hurt to come together as a community during these times of hardship. To seek comfort through our brotherhood in Christ, if you will.”

Leon harrumphed, but Pastor Calhoun, well accustomed to exultant outbursts from Sunday worshipers, was impervious also to derisive interruption. With the air of an oft-rehearsed sermon—or sales pitch—he continued. “In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, therefore, I hope to take up a collection among the families in the area, if you’d be so kind as to contribute. A food pantry of sorts, where folks exchange a little of what they’ve got left over extra so nobody’s short on everything at once. Folks have to stick together, times like this.”

“Feeling neighborly now, are they?” Leon sneered. “I don’t recall any such charity from folks on the Shore when Pop died and left us in a lurch. Nor from yourself when we lost Mom.”

Earl shot him a warning look. Leon had every right to be cold

toward the preacher, maybe even hostile, but he was being downright combative on account of the whiskey he’d been imbibing all day. Suddenly Earl wished he’d kept Leon from drinking so much, but that was easier said than done. Yet his brother’s confrontational words fell on deaf ears.

“Every little bit helps,” said the pastor, placid as a frozen pond.

“Can’t we spare nothing?” asked Margaret, looking imploringly from Leon to Earl.

Earl shrugged. He might not be as brazen as his brother, but he had no compunctions about refusing the preacher’s solicitations either, given their history. Leon had other ideas, though. He rummaged around in his sack for a moment before producing the limp, bloody carcasses of a mallard and a pintail, which he pressed without further ado into Pastor Calhoun’s bare hands.

“There’s your offering, preacher Pete,” he said. “It’s on some other sucker to clean ’em, though.”

“Leon!” said Maggie, aghast. “At least wrap them in something first. You’re getting blood all over the Pastor’s nice shirtsleeves!”

“Oh, I’ll get the stains out, my dear, never you worry,” said Pastor Calhoun. “And thank you for your…gracious donation, Mister Higgins. I’m sure it will be much appreciated. I suppose I’ll be going now, see about putting these on ice. Wouldn’t want to miss the tide, af-

ter all. Please do consider my offer, Margaret! It truly is a worthy cause, and like I said, I’m certain we could work out some sort of minor compensation if it comes down to that. Until our next meeting, then. God bless you, Higgins family!”

“Goodbye, Pastor, and God bless,” said Margaret. She saw him to the door. Earl and Leon watched sullenly from the hall as Peter Calhoun exited their home. A tall man, the pastor was forced to stoop again in the doorway to avoid bumping his head, but like with the lantern over the kitchen table he did so with accustomed ease. Despite the intervening years, it seemed he hadn’t forgotten his days as a frequent guest of the late Elisabeth Higgins. For some reason, that incensed Earl.

“That sumbitch has some nerve setting foot in our kitchen,” said Leon as the rusty Ford rattled up the lane. “Asking us to open our larders to his flock as if they didn’t push us out already themselves. And who the hell’s got anything left over these days, anyhow?”

“Why are you so mean?” said

Maggie. “He seems plenty nice to me.”

“He ain’t,” said Leon emphatically. “Take it from me.”

“Leon’s right on this, Maggie,” said Earl. “You’d be wisest to steer clear of that preacher.”

“Why? I know Pop always hated him, but he seems all right. Surely not bad enough to turn down a ride home from the Shore.”

Leon glowered. “Might be you’re too young to recall, but we’re not. He’s no good, you hear?”

“Well, I didn’t have much choice but to come along when he offered to drive Clara, did I?” Margaret protested. “Her Pop Pop won’t budge these days unless it’s on her behalf, you know that. Pastor Calhoun was only trying to do a good thing, and he was telling me the funniest stories about Mom and you two from when you were kids! Plus, he offered me and Clara work drumming up donations for that food pantry of his. Small time, mind, and he said he might have to pay us in canned goods some weeks instead of cash, but still—work is work!”

For more information, to make a contribution, or to volunteer as a mentor, call Talbot Mentors at 410-770-5999 or visit www.talbotmentors.org.

“Well, you’re not doing it,” said Earl, angrier than ever. Where the hell did Pastor Calhoun get off, using Mom’s memory to recruit Maggie to do his grifting for him? “I’m sure Clara will be help enough, and if that means Mister Gibbs can’t pick you up from the cannery as often, we’ll figure something else out.”

“Just steer clear of him, all right?” Leon reiterated.

“I suppose,” said Maggie.

“S’pose nothing,” said Leon, managing a passable impression of Pop at his most imperious. “Just heed me! Now go grab your knife and put your gloves on. There’s game to clean before supper.”

With a disdainful sniff, Margaret turned on her heel and marched off, leaving Earl and Leon to exchange a weighty glance. Earl could see in his brother’s eyes the same question that was on his mind: After all this time, why the preacher’s sudden interest in sniffi ng around the island? The Higginses had been estranged from his flock since the day of their mother’s burial nearly a dozen years ago. Prior to that, only her fervent insistence that they be a churchgoing family had seen them in the pews on Sundays. Quite a jaunt to make each week for nothing more than droning sermons and dusty hymnals, in Earl’s opinion, and following the indignities of Mom’s passing, Pop had been of like mind. Pastor Calhoun

had grown scarcer on Moore Island after that, encountered only in passing on the Shore or at the petrol service station up the road. But now he had reappeared on their doorstep, offering work. Why? Because times were tough? That was nothing novel, only more widespread these days. Surely the Calhoun clan had plenty of employable progeny without the preacher poaching Moore Island stock for his charitable endeavor. Maybe he thinks a pretty face will garner more generosity. Probably some truth to that, and Margaret was comely enough for the purpose with her long reddish brown tresses and big, mischievous brown eyes. Clara Gibbs was a looker, too, by many folks’ reckoning—Leon’s, for one, and Earl tended to agree. If that was Calhoun’s game, he’d made reasonable picks, though whether that was an appropriate judgment for a pastor to be making about the young women of his constituency was another question. Regardless of the preacher’s motivations, Earl didn’t want Margaret involved. There was something slimy about the whole affair, and something about Peter Calhoun that made his skin crawl.

Brendan Gallagher is a 2013 graduate of Easton High School and is currently finishing up a Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology at the University at Albany.

ACADEMY ART MUSEUM CRAFT

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October 27, 5:30–9 pm

VIP tickets include a custom portrait from artist Michael-Birch Pierce.

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Weekend admission: $10 Members, $12 Non-members

Glass blowing demonstrations by Valencia Glass all weekend.

Carl and the Cyclone

by Louis C. Wainwright in 1941

Transcribed, edited and with notes by James Dawson from an old manuscript he found

In the early 1880s, the freest man on Deal’s Island down Tangier way, perhaps, was Carl. He could have had a schooner, a bugeye or even a “cunner,” as the canoe was called there, had he so desired, but he preferred the life of a progger, an unostentatious life, far removed from slavery to wealth, show or style; a hard life for those used to superfluities, but one in which his nature-loving heart and strong constitution delighted. There were not many dishes on his table, no Limoges china nor Dresden ware, but the dishes were filled, thanks to no man but Carl himself. A hard life? Yes, but one of variety and the joy of success, for Carl got what he sought.

Maybe the great world despised his homely fare, but made service, and lack of the shew of prosperity, but Carl cared not. He knew and loved the haunts of nature and was himself a kind of Hiawatha, depending chiefly on trap, rod and gun.

Carl was clean built, lithe and rather handsome, could you overlook his “careless flowing hair” and the sunburned brown of his face.

He knew little or nothing from

the schools, but three things, or four, he did know. He knew guns, oysters, fishing grounds and traps. How much the wealthy spend, unsuccessfully, to gain some extended knowledge in just these things. If he guided any to the fishing grounds, they were sure to return with an ample supply—which he caught.

He would have made a handsome soldier with braid and stripes and

all; but he was a progger “by profession,” as one since told me, and was content with boots, trousers and two or three shirts.

“Coats were in the way and let in too much cold.”

Carl and the Cyclone merely dipped them up with a crab net, out of the tide ditch, where the great blue claws oared their upward way with the incoming tide, and their outward way with the outgoing tide. Oysters, raw, stewed, fried or roasted? There was the thoroughfare and his skiff and nippers, and with care ten-inch oysters waiting to be lifted from their bed. Meat? There was the abundance of fowl, and game.

Carl lived with his father on Deal’s Island and their house had but one room on the lower floor and one room upstairs, the two connected by a ladder. The house was located near the end of the thoroughfare bridge and just across the tide ditch, on a high marsh or meadow, with nature’s bounties in easy reach.

Did he wish deviled or soft crabs? He paid no two dollars a dozen, but

Carl knew how to live without great labor or care. The missionary from the Laos country, north of Siam, told me the people of that region, noting the elaborate preparation of plates, dishes, cooking and what not, assured him that the white man eats with difficulty.

Carl thought something similar. His table was simple, as were his table manners, but they were scarcely as simple as those of the Lapps, whose only author I saw eating after the manner of his northern land. He had a strip of meat, one end of which he placed between his teeth, and holding the other end he deftly cut the strip near his mouth with his knife. Except that Carl was rather handsome, and that he lived “by the side of the road,” a location that Walt Whitman, when writing for effect, said he preferred, there was little to distinguish Carl from hundreds of others. History had reserved no page for him. He and his father both lived and died as does the race.

They lived on the wind-swept high ground of an extensive marsh meadows, and though their possession of real estate was small, their use of the broad acres and their sway over the extensive marsh meadows was undisputed. None interfered with them. Besides they were kindly, more so by far than some of the local grandees and, indeed, than some possessing high office in the state.

Some three or four things gave Carl the headlines in local gossip. The generations of which he and his father were members could not overlook them in the tales that were told of “The I’lent” and its various and widely differentiated folk. Did one visit Deal’s Island and meet

Carl and the Cyclone

its prominent people, among local characters of whom tales were told, one would surely hear of Carl.

In process of time Carl married, but before his marriage he and his father lived in the house I have described. Now in that land, the Sound’s edge, there are at times high tides and violent winds that bow the pines and sometimes break them. Woe betide the little schooner or canoe that is near to harbor when these cyclones chop a path through the woods. Sometimes it seems impossible for the smaller craft (at least) to keep afloat on the choppy waves of sound and bay. A very high tide, also, might threaten Carl’s house on the “mash.”

Years ago there was a cyclone which swept across The Island, near the thoroughfare. Carl’s house was in its path. The unusual fury of the wind made the two men apprehensive.

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The open range of the marsh and the wide sweep of the Sound prevented early alarm since always the winds were blustering about Carl’s place.

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This time the disturbance was so tempestuous that Carl and his father sat and waited, expectant of disaster. Then the cheeks of the gale burst, it seems to them. The house rocked and seemed to move. The father bethought himself of investigating. Then he committed

the supreme folly and opened the door to look around. The house which when closed, though besieged, defied the assaulting gales and flurries, now that the line of its defenses were broken by the open door, the cyclone hurled its roaring shock troops of the gale, and with a rush crowded into that unprotected house, which as though it had wings lifted from its foundation. The open-mouthed old man vainly tried to close the door. The wind entered and seized all the bases and rushed up the ladder as though in search of Carl.

The old man could not shut the door, and the influx of cyclone felled the little house, throwing the old man behind the door, while the

wind taking possession lifted the house from its block foundations and deposited it some sixteen feet distant. The old man averred that a pitch fork stuck in the ground by the side of the house was still standing and the house was on the other side of the fork. There are no responsibilities in his tale, as any one of extended acquaintance with coastal waterspouts knows, but I am narrating only and assume no responsibilities in the matter.

The old man had evidently removed his clothes or maybe the wind did that for him when he made the adventure with a cyclone, for the doctor on The Island told me that the old man came to his house for treatment, and that he had nothing

Carl and the Cyclone

on but a shirt and a sheet which he had wrapped about him. This want gave Carl and his father a place in the legends of The Island.

The self-control of Carl gave me cause for a certain admiration. As I have stated or have intimated, he was a good marksman—none better in the region unless it might be Cale Preston, whom Carl very infrequently assisted when “hands” were scarce, for he esteemed his traps and hunting were equally as profitable, perhaps more so.

At times I watched him with his gun. He was never in a hurry to

shoot, never flurried, but waited till the snipe or duck wheeled into range and then quick as a flash he shot.

He stood so carelessly indifferent, while the ducks were a-wing that I wondered.

Perhaps one of his finest shots was from the thoroughfare bridge, which at that time must have been a quarter of a mile long, maybe somewhat less or more. He was two hundred or more yards from shore looking out over the thoroughfare. As I approached him, I said, “Carl what are you looking for from the bridge? I do not see anything.”

He lowered his gun and laughed. “O, yes,” said he, “there are three

ducks making up their minds where to light.” He gestured, and I looking up saw three ducks each wheeling the arc of a different circle and, as it seemed to me, wholly beyond the range of a number 12 gun. “You cannot reach them” I said, and he laughed. “No, not yet, but they will come closer.”

Just then one duck wheeled nearer, but Carl did not shoot. “Why did you not shoot?” I asked him. His reply was, “I shall when they get in line, when I may bag all three of them”; and he did just that. It was an amazing shot.

When Carl found love, Alice was her name, and Alice lived in wonderland, but without the cyclone thought Carl. There were no costly

nothings that he could command, but he sent her those great oysters which had slept so long and grown so large in the thoroughfare. Perhaps he found soft crabs; he dried the duck wings for dusters or sent her birds. Romance is very inventing. They took moonlight walks on the great bridge. Coyly his arm slipped around her waist, and she feigned indignation, but turned her face toward Carl and he, naughty man, kissed her as they do in the movies.

The merry stars looked down and laughed and winking seemed to say, “There it is again—Earth’s old game.”

One night with a blush and a thrill Carl said, “When I got a plenty

Carl and the Cyclone

of everything ’cept style—the house is on the marsh, but the crabs troop by, the ducks come over, there’s oysters and the pigs, and I am young and strong.”

“And what?” coyly queried Alice, to which he blurted, “Marry me, won’t you Alice?” The stars blinked, and Alice said, “I reckon I moit as well, for if I don’t yo’ll not give me any peace.” Alice pretended, but in the starlight, the movie stars were outdone.

Carl’s wedding gave the Island jokers a great opportunity for rude good-natured pranks. They even invaded the upstairs. Some, also, brought plain gifts.

Carl and Alice were launched on life’s sea, as happy in their way as others were in theirs.

Time dropped love’s flower on Alice’s bosom, and they gave it the tender rude care they knew.

But after a year or two the little flower faded. Alice grieved; Carl stared into the distance. Said he, “Alice do yo’ think it’s up there with the stars?”

The funeral services were tenderly arranged, the minister read the service impressively, and Alice stood and wept alone. Said Carl, “I don’t want to know it’s gone, Alice. I can’t go up front and see.” Strangely, but not indifferently, Carl sat on the fence rail at a little distance—just in hearing. After the service he

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Carl & the Cyclone

brushed away a tear, and joining Alice he walked in silence.

That night they sat in the doorway till the stars appeared. “Alice,” said he, “look up at the stars. They seem brighter tonight—for somehow I think, Alice, there’s a new star up there.”

I pitied Carl. Yes, the style was lacking, but he had a kindly heart, and in his knowledge of nature he was interesting.

He placed a stone to mark his father’s and child’s resting place. The stone-cutter left out a word and then made a caret and inserted the word above the line. It incensed me. It was unfeeling. Carl did not know, perhaps, but I am sure he never

botched anything like that.

Notes by J.D.: A progger was one who made his living foraging and hunting for food in marshes and along the shoreline.

The thoroughfare is the little bay of water that separates Deal Island from the mainland.

Old-timers often used duck wings with the feathers still attached as dusters when doing housework. This was before the age of the Swiffer.

Nippers were used to tong oysters in shallow water.

A caret is an editor’s mark like an upside-down v used to add a missing word.

On June 22, 1868, a terrific storm of hail, rain and wind was reported in Neck District in Dorchester County and the lower Eastern Shore. Trees were uprooted and crops damaged.

The cyclone that wrecked Carl’s father’s house could also have been the hurricanes of either September 1876 or October 1878, both of which caused much damage around the Bay.

And, of course, soft crabs are no longer $2 a dozen. As of this writing, Jumbos are $68 a dozen. That’s what you call crabflation.

James Dawson is the owner of Unicorn Bookshop in Trappe.

Caroline County – A Perspective

Caroline County is the very definition of a rural community. For more than 300 years, the county’s economy has been based on “market” agriculture.

Caroline County was created in 1773 from Dorchester and Queen Anne’s counties. The county was named for Lady Caroline Eden, the wife of Maryland’s last colonial governor, Robert Eden (1741-1784).

Denton, the county seat, was situated on a point between two ferry boat landings. Much of the business district in Denton was wiped out by the fire of 1863.

Following the Civil War, Denton’s location about fifty miles up the Choptank River from the Chesapeake Bay enabled it to become an important shipping point for agricultural products. Denton became a regular port-ofcall for Baltimore-based steamer lines in the latter half of the 19th century.

Preston was the site of three Underground Railroad stations during the 1840s and 1850s. One of those stations was operated by Harriet Tubman’s parents, Benjamin and Harriet Ross. When Tubman’s parents were exposed by a traitor, she smuggled them to safety in Wilmington, Delaware.

Linchester Mill, just east of Preston, can be traced back to 1681, and possibly as early as 1670. The mill is the last of 26 water-powered mills to operate in Caroline County and is currently being restored. The long-term goals include rebuilding the millpond, rehabilitating the mill equipment, restoring the miller’s dwelling, and opening the historic mill on a scheduled basis.

Federalsburg is located on Marshyhope Creek in the southern-most part of Caroline County. Agriculture is still a major portion of the industry in the area; however, Federalsburg is rapidly being discovered and there is a noticeable influx of people, expansion and development. Ridgely has found a niche as the “Strawberry Capital of the World.” The present streetscape, lined with stately Victorian homes, reflects the transient prosperity during the countywide canning boom (1895-1919). Hanover Foods, formerly an enterprise of Saulsbury Bros. Inc., for more than 100 years, is the last of more than 250 food processors that once operated in the Caroline County region.

Points of interest in Caroline County include the Museum of Rural Life in Denton, Adkins Arboretum near Ridgely, and the Mason-Dixon Crown Stone in Marydel. To contact the Caroline County Office of Tourism, call 410-479-0655 or visit their website at www.tourcaroline.com .

Queen Anne’s County

The history of Queen Anne’s County dates back to the earliest Colonial settlements in Maryland. Small hamlets began appearing in the northern portion of the county in the 1600s. Early communities grew up around transportation routes, the rivers and streams, and then roads and eventually railroads. Small towns were centers of economic and social activity and evolved over the years from thriving centers of tobacco trade to communities boosted by the railroad boom.

Queenstown was the original county seat when Queen Anne’s County was created in 1706, but that designation was passed on to Centreville in 1782. It’s location was important during the 18th century, because it is near a creek that, during that time, could be navigated by tradesmen. A hub for shipping and receiving, Queenstown was attacked by English troops during the War of 1812.

Construction of the Federal-style courthouse in Centreville began in 1791 and is the oldest courthouse in continuous use in the state of Maryland. Today, Centreville is the largest town in Queen Anne’s County. With its relaxed lifestyle and tree-lined streets, it is a classic example of small town America.

The Stevensville Historic District, also known as Historic Stevensville, is a national historic district in downtown Stevensville, Queen Anne’s County. It contains roughly 100 historic structures, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is located primarily along East Main Street, a portion of Love Point Road, and a former section of Cockey Lane.

The Chesapeake Heritage and Visitor Center in Chester at Kent Narrows provides and overview of the Chesapeake region’s heritage, resources and culture. The Chesapeake Heritage and Visitor Center serves as Queen Anne’s County’s official welcome center.

Queen Anne’s County is also home to the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center (formerly Horsehead Wetland Center), located in Grasonville. The CBEC is a 500-acre preserve just 15 minutes from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Over 200 species of birds have been recorded in the area.

Embraced by miles of scenic Chesapeake Bay waterways and graced with acres of pastoral rural landscape, Queen Anne’s County offers a relaxing environment for visitors and locals alike.

For more information about Queen Anne’s County, visit www.qac.org .

Kent County and Chestertown at a Glance

Kent County is a treasury of early American history. Its principal towns and back roads abound with beautiful old homes and historic landmarks.

The area was first explored by Captain John Smith in 1608. Kent County was founded in 1642 and named for the shire in England that was the home of many of Kent’s earliest colonists. When the first legislature assembled in 1649, Kent County was one of two counties in the colony, thus making it the oldest on the Eastern Shore. It extended from Kent Island to the present boundary.

The first settlement, New Yarmouth, thrived for a time and, until the founding of Chestertown, was the area’s economic, social and religious center.

Chestertown, the county seat, was founded in 1706 and served as a port of entry during colonial times. A town rich in history, its attractions include a blend of past and present. Its brick sidewalks and attractive antiques stores, restaurants and inns beckon all to wander through the historic district and enjoy homes and places with architecture ranging from the Georgian mansions of wealthy colonial merchants to the elaborate style of the Victorian era.

Second largest district of restored 18th-century homes in Maryland, Chestertown is also home to Washington College, the nation’s tenth oldest liberal arts college, founded in 1782. Washington College was also the only college that was given permission by George Washington for the use of his name, as well as given a personal donation of money.

The beauty of the Eastern Shore and its waterways, the opportunity for boating and recreation, the tranquility of a rural setting and the ambiance of living history offer both visitors and residents a variety of pleasing experiences. A wealth of events and local entertainment make a visit to Chestertown special at any time of the year.

For more information about events and attractions in Kent County, contact the Kent County Visitor Center at 410-778-0416, visit www. kentcounty.com or e-mail tourism@kentcounty.com . For information about the Historical Society of Kent County, call 410-778-3499 or visit www.kentcountyhistory.org/geddes.php . For information specific to Chestertown visit www.chestertown.com .

Changes: Flashing Lights in the Rearview Mirror

Excerpt from a Memoir by Roger Vaughan

13. Music: Part 2 - Herbert von Karajan

Strength of will is what Herbert von Karajan is looking for when a conductor walks to the podium— will that translates into control, Karajan’s primary modus operandi . He speaks with heartfelt admiration of those professionals who can ski, drive, or sail better than he can, of those whom he had hired over the years to help him become more proficient in sports. But respect is too strong a word for Karajan to apply to those who work closely with him in the preparation and performance of music. Respect includes esteem. Praise of that level can weaken control. Karajan would not consciously do anything that would diminish his control.

With most coworkers, Karajan employs the control factor all the time, often in brutal ways, like the day he took the blind shot at a set designer during rehearsals for the opera Rosenkavalier. He had

known this man for many years, worked with him often. But in this instance, the set designer had suggested in a mild way that a bit more light might enhance a certain scene. The man was sitting next to Karajan twenty rows back in the theater that was populated solely by the production staff. Karajan

Flashing Lights

waited until the house lights went up and the attention of the staff had been shifted to where he was sitting before he made his move. Lord knows what the set designer was thinking about. Not much, probably, other than dozens of details about his set he was now accessing in full scale. Certainly he was not on guard, sitting in a safe, familiar theater with a man he had worked with for many years. Not that Karajan hadn’t attacked him before. Karajan is the maestro, after all. One shrugs, one forgives all too casually, it would seem. Or perhaps one continues to hope, so treasured is the work, so otherwise acceptable is the artistic compromise.

One shrugs, one forgives all too casually, it would seem.

Karajan struck like a serpent. He looked at the man, who was expecting nothing more than the usual light post-rehearsal banter, looked at him for a moment, then said, “You have brown eyes, the eyes of a traitor.” The man froze. The color drained from his face. “I never noticed that before,” Karajan said, half to himself, half to those within earshot. Then he chuckled, got up, and left.

Gustav Kuhn, a conductor from Salzburg who had studied with Karajan, drifted between admiration and disdain when he spoke of

the maestro. “I am a strong critic of him,” Kuhn said. “His life, his personality, but I love what he knows about music, conducting. Eighty percent of my profession I learned from him, from talking with him, watching him, listening to him. I admire him totally as the leading figure in his field. But five or six years after I had been with him, I went kind of crazy, sweating, red in the face because I began to see him as The Godfather himself. All the defects of his personality roared in on me. The hero worship I had at the beginning faded in the same way that at a certain age one’s parents become human, fallible. It was necessary that I make the separation between the man and his music. I had to decide that he was the greatest, the last great one, the last of the period that started with von Bulow in 1850. His power, his tyrannical attitudes that prohibit discussion make him the last of a type. Look at his face. It is a lonely old face, not a happy old face. If you are not going to love the world, if you are going to live only to gain power, then that is what you will get.”

Many young conductors share the dichotomy of feeling that Kuhn expresses. Their criticism is harsh, they decry Karajan’s behavior. But late at night, when the wine is low in the bottle, their voices soften

Flashing Lights

and their eyes acquire a faraway look as they recall a performance by Karajan and the Berlin that awed them, challenged their own capabilities with a standard they can only dream of achieving. Even to come close, they know they will have to discover their way, just as Karajan has discovered his.

Karajan’s power is worth study because, as Gustav Kuhn says, he represents the end of a certain era of conductors. He’s been called the last of the dinosaurs. Today’s younger conductors spread themselves thin, employing jet travel to make international careers guest conducting rather than building power bases at home the way Karajan did in Berlin, and in Salzburg and Vienna. The emancipation, through organization and unionization, of orchestra players in the last twenty years has served to bring conductors down somewhat from the dictatorial heights they once enjoyed. And gone are the days when a conductor had the option to record nearly any piece for the first, or even the third time. When Karajan began cutting records in 1937, the libraries were very thin. When he recorded a symphony, chances are it was the only version available. He also had the vision—“the nose,” as he puts

it—to estimate the vast potential of the recording industry. Not only did he record enthusiastically on wax masters when his fellow conductors shunned the frustrating task (after the Herculean effort, wax masters would often crack in transport in unheated airplane baggage compartments), but he was also in the forefront of each major step in the development of electronic recording: the LP, stereo, quadrophonic sound and compact discs. He has made more than 800 records.

When he recorded a symphony, chances are it was the only version available.

Karajan’s power was far reaching in the late 1950s and ’60s. Simultaneously, he was music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, artistic director of La Scala (opera house in Milan, Italy), artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, artistic director of the Vienna State Opera, and music director of the London Philharmonia Orchestra. “General Music Director of Europe,” he was called, and with good reason. Everyone wanted a piece of Karajan in those days, and that was fine with him. The lean postwar years had left their scars. His hunger was deep, his ambition limitless, his music mission was driving him. He was fifty years old, having already served a long apprenticeship in Germany’s small theaters. He consciously sought power, mainly for his own security.

Flashing Lights

“Early in my career,” he told me, “I saw a man fired out of hand. It was unjustified. I hate injustice and situations that can overpower me, that are out of my control. I said to myself then, this must never happen to me.”

For ten years, his life was a mad dash from city to city—Milan, Berlin, Salzburg, and London—with foreign tours, guest appearances, and a recording schedule that resulted in twenty records a year. His superstar was ascending, and it was driven by superhuman effort. He held important meetings in airports between flights. When he conducted in Berlin, he insisted the concert end in time for him to rush from the podium to his car and make the 10:40 overnight train to Vienna from the Zoo station.

wrote upon observing the maestro’s reception in New York in 1982, “It would seem Karajan has passed over into the saintly sphere that leading conductors seem to inhabit by right as they reach elderhood.” Elderhood, for conductors, is a time when the talent, the accomplishments—the power—become hopelessly entangled with the myth. The result is a mystique unlike that attached to any other profession.

His superstar was ascending, and it was driven by superhuman effort.

Ultimately, he decided he didn’t like being an administrator (those he administered got mighty weary of it as well, by all accounts), so he pulled back to his Berlin Philharmonic base, stopped guest conducting, and cleverly reduced the scope of his responsibilities without diminishing the range of his power.

In his seventies, he had the additional leverage of age. As Donal Henahan of The New York Times

Conductors can also work well into their elderhood, as many have proved. In 2022, at age 87, Seiji Ozawa was conducting—elegantly—from a wheel chair. Neither would Karajan stop working as he aged. Opera had long been a priority for him, a true love he courted in the small theaters where he worked in his youth. Opera continued to be the highlight of “his” Salzburg Festival, which he continued to dominate into his late seventies. As always, he would record the opera before its Festival performance. In 1985, it was Richard Strauss’s marvelous Rosenkavalier. Watching him work during recording sessions was engaging, and so different from the harsh face he often brought to the Berlin Philharmonic’s podium. But this was the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestral tradition.

The very music sheets the Vi -

Flashing Lights

enna plays from have been marked by the hands of Brahms, Toscanini, Furtwängler, Richard Strauss. The Vienna uses special horns (brassier, less bright), and their oboes are made locally. Many of the instruments, including a complete set of strings, are the age-old property of the orchestra and are passed from player to player. John Moffat, a young violinist from Canada who had been admitted to his probationary year with the orchestra, said he had been studying in Vienna for seven years, playing in chamber groups and learning to play “the Viennese way. No harsh attacks,” he said. “We sort of sneak in, and sneak out again.” He said that playing in the orchestra one listens, becomes flooded by “the way,” until one learns by osmosis. And always he is accompanied by the imposing immensity of tradition, which rises grandly on all sides, and which is honored the way an initiate bows to the mores of a monastery.

All this explains how one hundred musicians can sit together and play a waltz the way the Vienna does, with the introductory ritardando in exquisite unison and the famous way in which they hurry slightly (together!) the second beat of each measure just a little so there is the slightest hesitation before the third beat—a technique

that unfailingly provides the listener with one of the true musical thrills. But it does not explain it all, by any means. Such phrasing cannot be conducted. Even Herbert von Karajan lets the Vienna have its head when it comes to such moments.

Karajan seemed comfortable with the Vienna, relaxed. And it was his beloved Rosenkavalier for, what, the sixth time? Who could remember. He loves working with singers. At one break he sat in the control room between Kurt Moll and Anna Tomowa-Sintow, two of the best at the time. Karajan’s eyes were closed as the tape played. One hand moved with the music. He would work on a section, singing gently to Moll, talking, praising the good parts, polishing the sticky places, with Moll mouthing the words, nodding as Karajan pointed out improvements he wanted. With Tomowa-Sintow, he took an even softer approach—sensual, flirting with her and touching her arm, working on one word over and over, laughing at the silliness of it, then over and over until she had it right.

During one take, the esteemed mezzo-soprano Agnes Baltsa had missed a high E flat. A Karajan favorite, Baltsa was a young woman of good humor with a marvelously sexy, frizzy-haired look about her. Karajan brought her into the control room to hear her flub. Karajan seated her next to him. The tape

Flashing Lights

was played. Karajan tilted his chair, leaned his head toward Baltsa and looked into her eyes. He entwined his left arm in hers while his right hand moved in the air. He hummed with the music. When the flub came, she grimaced. Karajan laughed, ran his hand through her hair. They sat together quietly, listening and talking for ten more minutes.

[Fast-forward to the opening night of Rosenkavalier at the Easter Festival in Salzburg, 1983. I was backstage, not prepared to see a dozen members of the Vienna Philharmonic in mufti, with their instruments, gathering under a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, ten feet from where I was standing. On cue they began playing one of Strauss’s magical waltzes. The backstage music. For and to me. It lasted only twenty seconds or so; twenty seconds that would last a lifetime.]

The elder Karajan continued working as he wished, but he was also spending more time as a sportsman, his other lifelong passion. The maxi boat he purchased was far beyond his modest skills as a yachtsman. And the basics of maxi racing, where even steering is a physical workout, is a trial for an older person, especially one with a chronic back problem. Fortunately, a crew of strong young military cadets had been made available to Karajan by the French authorities,

and in addition to Conner, Hood, and Jobson, there were always capable sailors in the boat’s afterguard. Sailing out of St. Tropez, the boat’s home port, the maestro begged off several days because of his ailing back. But previously he had entered the yacht in regattas and had enjoyed fraternizing with fellow maxi owners. He loved telling a story of one regatta at the elegant Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Sardinia. “Gary Jobson was sailing with me,” Karajan recounted, “and we were at the yacht club afterwards. The Aga Kahn was there, he founded Costa Smeralda. He was sailing on another boat, and Jobson said to him ‘You guys didn’t do too badly today.’ I pulled on Jobson’s jacket and said to him, ‘You don’t say You guys to the king!’ And Jobson said, ‘He’s not my king.’” Karajan always roared when he told that story.

In June of 1983, Karajan’s back suddenly demanded attention. He could not ignore it, or continue to live with it, any longer. A soughtafter back specialist at the time, Dr. Madji Samrii, who was chairman of the Neurosurgical clinic in Hanover, Germany, cleared his schedule to rush to the maestro’s side. “Karajan was suffering from a progressive compression of the cervical spinal cord,” he wrote. “There had been a steep downhill

course in the couple of weeks just prior to the operation when he was barely able to walk…any further postponement would have been catastrophic. The operation took three and a half hours.”

“I watched the whole thing on videotape five days after they did it,” Karajan said. “It was fascinating.” Karajan looked good. Most notable was the absence of the pain that had been constricting the muscles of his face. He looked younger, fresher. His energy level was high. In a few weeks he would appear in Salzburg, ready to go back to work on the July production of Rosenkavalier.

While the operation had made it no longer necessary for Karajan to pull his right leg after him as he walked, it gave him new problems to contend with. His balance was compromised. The return to a more normal way of walking would take practice. As usual, he was up to the challenge. Once when I was walking with him near his home in Anif, he stopped to rest and to watch the eagles soaring above their roost on the rocky ledges of the nearby zoo. “They don’t soar just to look for food,” Karajan said. “Of this I am sure. They have a joy of flying. They spend the day in the mountains, then they come to the zoo at night where it is safer. When I am in my sailplane they look furious if I hit an updraft and ascend faster. They hate me.” Karajan paused, studied the eagles and chuckled to himself. “I have thought in my next life I will maybe be a falcon.”

I asked him if he were serious about a next life.

“I am so serious I can’t even discuss it,” Karajan said. “I like what Goethe wrote about this. He said ‘I have so many things think about, to do, and to meditate upon, and my body refuses to follow me, then nature must give me another one.’ Must give me another. Not maybe.”

Herbert von Karajan died from a heart attack on July 16, 1989.

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