Crisfield, MD

With all of the activity related to the earthquakes in Haiti, I have been remiss in writing about our trip to Crisfield, MD on January 13th. Right before we left, we heard that Pete had sent a text message that he was okay. Our trip was much more relaxed after that. I can only imagine what parents of missing college students and others are going through when they have no idea what condition their children are in.

Crisfield is at the very southern tip of Maryland's Eastern Shore, on Tangier Sound, right above Virginia. It is an old oyster fishing town that has seen better days. We went there to get my new banjo. They would have shipped it to me but I wanted to go and I wanted Anne to meet Pat and Patrick Costello and Pat's wife Trudy. Anne wasn't all that excited about the five hour ride down and the five hour ride back, but I think she had a good time. We had a nice dinner with the Costellos. Anne and Trudy discussed quilts and sewing and such stuff, while Pat, Patrick and I talked about some of the finer points of the music business. The Costellos facilitate the construction of the Somerset line of banjos, which are very high quality at reasonable prices. The neck for my banjo was made by Neil Turner in Buzzard Mountain, Georgia, sent to Chris Via in Rich Creek, Virginia and then Chris builds the tone ring and pot, finishes the neck and puts it all together.

Since it is a five hour drive down there, we stayed over night at a bed and breakfast. The place was okay, but not quite up to our bed and breakfast standards. The couple that owned the place were very nice indeed, but the house needed some renovations which they were slowly making. The breakfast was fine, but Anne pointed out, that since we were the only guests in residence, we could have been given a choice of what to eat.

A long drive to get something that the UPS man would have been happy to deliver at a fraction of the cost of the trip and overnight, but, these are good people and I want to stay connected with them. Actually, the UPS man did get in on the act because Chris forgot to send the case with the banjo so he sent that directly to me and it arrived on Friday, the day after we got home.

If you ever find yourself in Crisfield, why that would be I don't know, but if you do, you should visit the Blue Crab Cafe near the municipal harbor which is owned by the same people that own the B&B. Therein you will find a relic of history, or so the legend goes. The proprietor's great, great grandmother and grandfather ran a hotel in the 1860s, in Washington, D.C. where the National Archives now stands. One day when Grandma was scrubbing the floor, a man came in and she asked him to remove his spurs and boots because he was getting the floor dirty. He said he had only come in for a drink and went to the bar. Grandma then told Grandpa to get him out of there, so he asked him to leave. Indignantly, the man left and went up the road to a hotel run by Mary Elizabeth Surratt. History buffs may recall that Mary's claim to fame was to have been hung by the neck until she was dead for participating in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The gentleman with the dirty boots was said to have been John Wilkes Booth. Could it be that if he was allowed to stay in Grandma's hotel, her fate might have been that of Mary's? Anyway, the brass foot railing upon which the same John Wilkes Booth rested his dirty boots is now in the Blue Crab Cafe in Crisfield, MD. Oh, also, the last lynching in the country supposedly took place in Crisfield. Who knew? Now you know. I should charge for this blog with all of the information that I dispense here.