Driving through the countryside. Autumn.  Leaves changing.  Warm days mixing with cool nights.  Heavy dew.  Canada geese moving into the region, flying atop cold fronts out of the north country.

A few more weeks, temperatures dropping a few more degrees, hours of daylight growing scantier, and then come the snow geese.

On the waters of Delmarva, watermen have turned their attention from crabs to oysters. Sensing dropping temperatures, crabs sink into deeper water, moving much more slowly now.  Cold-blooded.

They don’t yawn, but if they could, now they would.

Soft, muddy bottom beckons.

Burrowing with the fins that make them such beautiful swimmers, crabs eventually come to rest, pulling up their muddy blankets, their rudimentary thoughts returning to where they were before they were born.

Sleeping, hibernating, crabs won’t stir again, and stretch and test their fins and claws once more, until next spring’s longer days and warmer temperatures wake their minds and their stomachs and their natural drive to reproduce.

And so the cycle goes.

In browned, late soybean fields, white-tailed does stand chest high, filling their bellies against the coming cold.  Farmers watch them with cussing disgust while bucks stand in the edges of woods surrounding the fields.  They eye the does with that different sort of longing hunger that seeps, inexorably, like flooding waters, into their being each year as fall thickens.

What they see and what they smell combine into an irresistible feeling over which they have no control.

A few evenings back, driving through a forest, I watched a doe leap out of the woods, running fast across the road.  I slowed, and then more movement caught my eye.  A buck with antlers of ten points or so followed the same route as the doe.  He no more saw me than stars in daylight.  Single-minded he was.  The rut is on.

I’ve heard similar stories at least three times in the past week.  Outside the shop in a boatyard, I saw a small black car with a round dent in its driver-side door. A boat builder was hauling in sheets of plywood for a new vessel.  I caught his attention after he set the plywood aside.

“Did a deer do that?”  I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said.  “Not sure how that happened, but that’s my dad’s truck over there.

It looks good now but the day he bought it, brand new, he didn’t even make it home before a deer ran out in front of him and caused a few thousand in damage.”

Deer are on the move. Be careful. The stories of collisions between cars and deer repeat themselves as endlessly as the reproduction cycles.

This time last year I was crossing the peninsula just about dusk, when deer seem to be more on the move. I didn’t hit it, it hit me, right on the passenger side door of my truck.  I heard the hard, heavy thump at just about the same time as I saw the deer, way too late to do anything about it.

You guessed it.  Several thousand in damage.  Now I drive more slowly out where the deer live, especially at dusk.

This year they might cause even more damage. There are so many acorns and other nuts on the ground in the woods this fall, deer can’t help but be putting on the extra pounds that can give them extra force.

The layer of natural food falling out of the trees and onto the dirt is called the mast. Some say the heavier the mast, the harder the winter ahead.  It’s prescient nature’s way of providing a source of extra insulation for warm blooded animals that live their lives outdoors.

Deer would cause a lot fewer problems if they just managed their feelings a little better and burrowed into river and bay bottoms come wintertime like crabs do.  But that would mess up the whole attraction thing.

Does and bucks wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful when they emerged in the spring with their sleek coats caked with mud.

Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County. 

In a world hurtling, slashing, cussing and bruising headlong into the 21st century, Chestertown’s Downrigging Festival last weekend offered a refreshing breath of the ancient and durable analog world still moseying along beneath the surface of our increasingly digital existence.

People strolled down busy High Street toward the riverfront, marveling at tall ships and small ships, interloping on a war of 1812 encampment, commenting on the debris line that marked the level of the storm-driven high tide the day before, listening to bluegrass music from beneath a distant tent, enjoying the slower pace of an era measured not by gigabytes, but in the larger, comprehensible units of wind, time, tide, and actual, face-to-face conversation.

Bathed in the light and air of late October, the superbly organized and executed festival unfolded gracefully; effortlessly as Giants Hall of Fame centerfielder Willie Mays making a basket catch of a high arching fly ball.

Nice.  Marvelous. Civil. Gentle.  Like the colonial town’s namesake river.

On Saturday afternoon, the sun worked its way to the west. The steady south wind following Friday’s storm blew straight up the river past the festival grounds toward the old drawbridge.  The crews of five tall ships – Chestertown’s Sultana, Wilmington’s Kalmar Nyckle, Norfolk’s Virginia, Nantucket’s Lynx and Baltimore’s Pride – boarded full loads of ticketed passengers for one of the festival’s signature events.  The Living Classroom Foundation skipjack Sigsbee also joined the cruising fleet.

Singles, doubles and families walked the docks to the vessels tied along the wharf-like Ts of the town’s marina. In slips on either side of their walk, privately owned vintage Chesapeake vessels and Echo Hill Outdoor School’s skipjack Elsworth, buy boat Annie D, and Stanley Vansant-built bateau Ric added to the dynamic nautical display.

The tall ships and Sigsbee cast off their lines, hoisted sails to effect the full flavor of the festival, and eased their way down the river.  Against an incoming tide, they proceeded slowly toward the big bend at Primrose Point and Devil’s Reach. A flotilla of every shape and size of sailboat and motor boat accompanied the fleet, echoing a bygone era when arriving and departing ships made for extra excitement and busyness along the town’s waterfront.

A quarter mile below the point, out of sight of town and the south wind now more favorably on their beam, the vessels came about. With all their sails pulling, two of the vessels fired their cannons when they re-rounded the point, eased their sails for the dramatic downwind leg, and signaled to the town and festival goers as they became visible that their grand return parade was underway.

Back at the docs, sails furled and rigging secured, the vessel crews said goodbye to their passengers as the setting sun pulled away the day’s remaining light.  That set the scene for the festival’s Saturday night fireworks show over the river while volunteers and town crews started cleaning up after the day’s success and readied for repeat performances on Sunday.

By midnight the town’s pace had slowed to that of the tide, ebbing and flooding eternally in the quiet Chester.

This is the view of the Chestertown skyline seen by passengers and crews coming up the Chester River. In the left half is Washington College’s competition sailing center, a nod to the town’s nautical heritage, and First Methodist Church’s white-painted steeple. To the right, Chestertown’s riverfront residences, marinas and downtown heart.

Led by the Pride of Baltimore, tall ships Virginia, right, and Lynx – flanked by skipjack Sigsbee – navigate the flat Chester below Primrose Point on their return back up the river.

Midweek. Mid Afternoon. Late September. Bright sunshine, 68 degrees or so, a day to be outside.

A side street flanked by classic, red-brick Baltimore row houses, in the Locust Point section of the city, just south of the inner harbor. A section of industry and working class people.  A section that when the north wind blows, scents of furnace heat, sugar spiced here and there with tones of molasses and warm quilt, all blend and waft through the streets. They’re in the steam rising from the Domino Sugar factory and its glowing orange sign that lords over the harbor in the dark of night.

Small front yard with a patch of green grass. Black, white and brown dog, six or seven.  Man and woman in their 70s; he’s tossing a rubber ball for the appreciative dog, a few feet here, a few feet there; the dog retrieves and places the ball at his feet; his wife sits on the white stone stoop, her black blouse and shorts soaking up the sun, watching the man and dog, watching the day go by.

Walking by on the sidewalk, I stop to chat, to have some simple human fun. I place a hand on the fence; the dog stops his game and eyes me warily with some curiosity mixed in, but no growling. He sees no threat, smells no threat.

Engaging the man and woman with my eyes, I make a statement to get things started.

“Somebody told me Justin Tucker lives in this area.”

Nobody really told me that but I thought it would be a fun way to start a dialogue. Justin Tucker is the place kicker for the Baltimore Ravens who last Sunday kicked an astounding, record-breaking 66-yard field goal in the last seconds of the game to beat the Lions of Detroit. People were jubilant, ecstatic even, but not surprised.  Tucker is the best kicker in the National Football League, maybe the best kicker ever.  A Baltimore hero.

He crosses himself before every field goal attempt.  I’ve never asked him why he does that – religious of course – but never really got into the religious nitty gritty of it.

But I tell myself he’s not asking God to help the kick make its way through the uprights to score three points and win the game by two. Rather, I tell myself that Tucker is simply asking God to help him be the best he can be.  Noble humility.

The woman laughs in an unbelievable sort of fashion.

“No,” she says, looking up and down the street as if to say Tucker wouldn’t live in these humble surroundings.  “Justin Tucker doesn’t live around here.”

“Do you know who Justin Tucker is?”

“Who doesn’t?” she says.  Celebrity.

She tells me the dog is a border collie. It waits patiently as the man holds the ball and looks the other way up the street.  He’s still thinking celebrity – celebrity and sports.  Baltimore loves its sports teams, especially baseball and football.

“Down there, on the corner, see those apartments?  A friend or a relative of one of the Baltimore Orioles built those a while back.  Can’t think of the Oriole’s name.”

“Brooks Robinson?”

“No it wasn’t Brooks. But you know something? Brooks was probably the best third baseman the Orioles ever had.  Maybe the best third baseman ever. But guess what.  He never made more than $50,000 in a year.”

The woman chuckled, maybe thinking about Justin Tucker, and what ritzy neighborhood he might live in.  “These days that would be $50 million,” she said.

He chimed in again.  “Brooks used to own a sporting goods store downtown.  Every Christmas – during the holidays – he would be in the store, talking with people, that kind of thing.  We would go down there, not necessarily to buy anything, but just to see Brooks, be around him.”

Star power.

“And you know Johnny Unitas?”

Famous Baltimore Colts quarterback – hard-nosed, broken-nosed, flat-topped tough guy who led his team to championships.

“Yeah, Johnny Unitas,” he said.  “You know what he did in the offseason? He sold paint.  Went around to stores in the Baltimore area and sold paint to them for their customers.  Paint salesman.  He had to.  Wasn’t making enough money playing football to feed his family. Things are a lot different now.”

The people I was with were blocks away by now, heading back to the harbor, back toward the scents of the Domino Sugar factory and its Orioles-orange night-time sign.  I figured I better end this scene, though the sun-soaked conversation under a clear blue sky made me want to linger.

“Well, you folks have a nice day,” I said. “Nice chatting with you.”

“You too,” they both said, the dog still waiting patiently.

“Let us know if you find Justin Tucker,” the woman said with a smile.

“Sure will,” I said.

Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County.  Photos by Dennis Forney.

I write from time to time about crisscrossing Delmarva novelist and poet Gilbert Byron. His life totally dedicated to literature took him from Chestertown to Dover to Lewes and eventually to a hand-built cottage on Old House Cove, San Domingo Creek, St. Michaels.

We spoke one day in his humble dwelling, his vision clouded by his 80 or so years, but his mind still sharp, inquisitive, and – at that point in his life – reflective.

On the subject of writing he made a comment that felt simple at the time, but somehow has stuck with me.

“I’ve concluded that nostalgia is not enough,” he said.  We were discussing his most highly acclaimed novel The Lord’s Oysters and a sequel titled Done Crabbin’ that took him a long time to complete.  Noah, the boyhood protagonist in The Lord’s Oysters, remained the center of Byron’s next novel, but as a college graduate and adult moving out of innocence and into a different, more complicated era.

Byron’s nostalgia comment felt to me like resignation mixed with a dose of self-indictment for not having reached greater heights.  Not an uncommon trait for we humans as aspirational beings.  “I coulda been a contender.”

But in these confused and uncertain times, nostalgia and its comfort of selective memory offer us the illusion of a safer harbor, even though it’s not one our compass can lead us toward.

A nostalgic scene from days of yore on Delmarva greeted me this week when I opened the pages of The Chesapeake Bay Scene by artist Jack Lewis. Lewis illustrated some of Byron’s poetry collections.  In turn, Lewis sprinkled a number of Byron’s poems throughout his Chesapeake book which includes many of his paintings and drawings.  They represent scenes of the people, towns and villages of the tidewater region, reproduced in color and black and white.

Lewis’s limited edition book was published first in 1947, with a second edition – dedicated to his friend Gilbert – published in 1970.

It’s the kind of book you find occasionally in used book stores and at auctions, along with Lewis’s paintings.  I’ve owned one of the books, along with another by Lewis called The Delaware Scene, for decades.

In keeping with the craziness of the times, Becky and I are moving for the second time in 10 months, from one side of Grace Creek to the other.
Moving leads to lots of winnowing and a significantly shrunken library.  Boxes of books are heavy! But Byron’s and Lewis’s books have made the cut.

Unpacking The Chesapeake Bay Scene one more time led me to open its pages and once again discover its many gems.

The Lewis scenes feel nostalgic now but they were anything but nostalgic when Lewis first produced them along with his engaging, pithy and well-crafted commentary. Each drawing and painting is accompanied by three short paragraphs, in three categories: Human Interest, Composition, Philosophy.

The painting at the top of this piece is titled Store at Earleville, from Maryland’s Cecil County, at the top of the peninsula.

Its commentary provides a good taste of Lewis’s style and insight.  It also captures a bit of what I’m feeling in this moving time.

Under Human Interest for this painting, Lewis wrote:

“Goosy Buxom sat at one side of the store.  In a discussion of politics, Goosy was heard to remark; ‘Boys, I don’t know your politics, but I do know this: be one thing or the other.  The Democrats can get some scoundrels in, and the Republicans can get some scoundrels in.  Vote for one, anyway. Some government is better than no government at all.’ He said ‘Drink it! It’ll do you good!’ I answered him and said ‘It won’t do me no good ‘cause I feel good already.’”

Under Composition Lewis wrote:

“There is something strong about the order of things placed in rows in a general store. In this sort of store there seems to be no hurry to sell.  The people who come in become expansive and friendly.  They are orderly, cheered by the effect upon themselves or rows of this and that – all put away on the shelves.”

And under Philosophy: “Could it not be that they congregated in old stores because they feel relieved that everything is put away, work is all done, and they will not be called upon to do this? Aside from the companionship, here, at least, is a place free ‘of putting things away.’”

This all makes me think that the mind of the artist bubbles with all kinds of thoughts while he or she goes about their task. What a meditation.

Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County. 

A Labor Day weekend bicycle ride carried us from the waterman’s village of Bozman to the former ferry terminal village of Claiborne, both in Talbot County west of St. Michaels.

No hills obstructed our views; there are no hills due west of Easton in this crenellated peninsula riddled with necks and creeks and ending with the island of Tilghman where Choptank River and Chesapeake Bay meet.

Drying fields of corn, with morning glory vines climbing stalks to show off their delicately blue mid-September flowers, flanked our back-country ride. We passed a few residents quietly weeding patches of lillies and tending borders of late-season roses as we eased into Claiborne. Roadside stands featuring red tomatoes, yellow squash, green cucumbers and striped watermelons added color to the scene.

A few small cars parked along the road that once led to the Eastern Shore terminus of the Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry brought a handful of families for a holiday outing at the small beach and fishing point nearby.

They were a far cry from the millions of vehicles and foot passengers that made their way across the Delmarva Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century from Maryland’s Western Shore to the ocean beaches via the ferry. In the decades leading up to completion of the first bay bridge in 1952, ferry traffic grew steadily. The ferry company constructed another terminal at Matapeake on Kent Island in the later years of its bay crossings to serve the eastbound Annapolis traffic.  That siphoned off most of the Claiborne terminus traffic, even though a Claiborne to Kent Island ferry connection was added with construction of a terminal at Romancoke.

The 1952 opening of the bay bridge effectively ended Claiborne’s ferry era. Heavy timber pilings bound with thick wire cables and the paved ramp where vehicles once boarded and exited the ferries are the last evidence of that era.

A few picnic tables overlooking the Claiborne cove and launching ramp, at the entrance to Eastern Bay, provided a good place to take a break from the bicycles and bask in the clear sunshine of the early September weather.

Another narrow public road in Claiborne ends at the centuries’-old, tree-lined entrance to Rich Neck Manor.  An historical marker there explains that this was once the home of Matthew Tilghman, one of Maryland’s most notable Revolutionary figures.

The heavy-metal, raised- letter marker – included in a photograph here – relates Tilghman’s prominent role in the Revolutionary movement as he made his way back and forth across the Chesapeake from the family’s ancestral home near Tilghman Point for pivotal deliberations in Annapolis.

Those into the sanity-enhancing qualities of mindfulness sometimes allude to a piece of Taoist philosophy stating that the past is frozen, the future is uncertain, and all that we really have is right now. That came to mind as we peered down that long lane, contemplating its countless events of the past and its unknowable future in this ever-changing world.

Dominant, however, was the serenity of the moment in the quiet of that country road with a few Vs of resident Canada geese flying low overhead.

Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County.

Photos by Dennis Forney

No business likes losing one of its big customers.  But that appears to be what will be happening to Delmarva Central Railroad when NRG closes its Indian River Power Plant in Delaware in 2022. The mega-energy company announced those plans recently.

 

“It’s a melancholy situation,” said Cliff Grunstra, Chief Marketing Officer for Delmarva Central’s parent company, Carload Express.

“It’s sad for us to see a customer leave, especially one that has been using the railroad to haul coal for its plant since the 1950s. But we understand that folks have to make business decisions to make things work for them.”

Delmarva Central locomotives haul thousands of tons of coal each year to the plant on Burton Island in Indian River. After hooking up around New Castle with the cars that come out of Pennsylvania coal mines, Delmarva Central pulls the loads down the spine of the Delmarva Peninsula. The trains rumble through the Delmarva countryside, engineers blowing their whistles, passing through Dover, Harrington, Georgetown, and Millsboro, drivers at flashing-lighted intersections looking anxiously for the last car to come into sight.

“Their unit trains of coal are the largest contiguous trains that we run on the peninsula,” said Grunstra.  A unit train is a train dedicated entirely to one category of freight, such as coal. The unit trains serving the Indian River Power Plant usually include locomotives and 105 carloads of coal. Grunstra said the annual volume of coal shipped to Indian River varies depending on the amount of power the plant is generating. “The plant is currently refilling inventory; they must be generating this summer.”

I speculated:  “Maybe it’s the heat and the high demand for electricity for air conditioning.”

“Perhaps” said Grunstra.

NRG isn’t the only customer that contracts with Delmarva Central for unit trains.  Poultry firms buy unit trainloads of corn and other grain products for growers to feed their chickens. Delmarva Central pulls some of those trains to a loop track north of Seaford for Allen-Harim where the cars are offloaded into giant, concrete grain bins before returning to Ohio and other mid-western states for more loads to be brought east. Other railcars go to Mountaire facilities in Frankford and Princess Anne.  

Although Delmarva farmers grow millions of bushels of corn and soybeans each year, they’re still not enough to feed the hundreds of millions of chickens raised here. 

As large as the demand has been for feed and coal trains, they’re nonetheless not Delmarva Central’s biggest customer in terms of total volume of freight brought annually onto the peninsula.  That distinction, said Grunstra, goes to aggregate stone brought out of Pennsylvania for highway and other construction.  Grunstra said H&K Group’s Dagsboro Stone Depot brings in unit trains of about 100 cars to its Dagsboro offloading and distribution facility. The weight volume of that stone – for asphalt and other purposes – is many times the weight volume of coal and grain making it the single-largest category of freight carried by Delmarva Central.

‘The demand for aggregate [chips, pebbles and crushed stone] is strong,” said Grunstra. “Transportation projects and housing developments all use lots of stone.  Wherever you see fields turning into new communities you’re seeing demand for aggregate. The Delmarva peninsula is just a big flat, sandy pancake with no stone to work with. There will always be a need to bring in aggregate.”

H&K Group mines its aggregate out of quarries near Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.

Residential, commercial and poultry consumers also use propane delivered by Delmarva Central to rail terminals throughout the Eastern Shore. DCR also brings in lumber and other construction supplies. The railroad in recent years partnered with DelDOT to improve the Ellendale to Milton and Georgetown to Harbeson lines which are owned by DelDOT but operated by Delmarva Central.

So while Grunstra is sad Delmarva Central is losing NRG’s Indian River Power Plant as a rail customer, he said business is still strong – and growing – for its other segments.

“We market hard, we’re investing millions in the railroad, and we always strive to provide best-in-class service.”  He thinks that will continue to be a winning formula for the Delmarva Central Railroad and its 188 miles of track on Delmarva that make it the peninsula’s largest railroad.”

Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County.