Talk about hometown pride! When I asked a grizzled waterman who lives on Smith Island, Maryland, whether he would like to accompany me to one of the other nearby villages, he replied, “Nope, I’ve been there.”
While the twinkle in his eyes suggested he wasn’t serious about the reason for his decision, the fact is that residents of Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay good-naturedly tout the superiority of their town over the other two. Along with being chauvinistic about their small island and even tinier towns, Smith Islanders also are hardy, self-reliant, and welcoming to visitors.
Despite its name, Smith Island actually consists of three miniscule islets, each occupied by a small village. Ewell and Rhodes Point are connected by a short wooden bridge, while Tylerton stands alone.
Capt. John Smith spotted the diminutive archipelago during his exploration of the Chesapeake Bay in 1608. Some present-day residents can trace their ancestry back as much as 12 generations to the early colonists.
Their unique way of speaking comes from the original settlers. Most were English and Welsh, and vestiges of their Elizabethan dialect persist, leavened by touches of Southern and rural Maryland colloquialisms. I soon realized that “air” means “our,” “why” translates to “way,” and “tie-yum” refers to “time.”
Following in the bootsteps of their ancestors, most men eke out their living from the gray waters of the Chesapeake Bay. That means dropping traps or trotlines for crabs during spring and summer and dredging for oysters in fall and winter.
Locally built workboats venture forth often well before daybreak, returning as much as 12 hours later. As overharvesting, pollution, and disease depleted the bay’s oyster population in recent decades, the island’s economy has come to depend largely upon crabbing. Smith Island has evolved into a center of the country’s soft-shell crab industry.
The waters are thick with multicolored buoys bobbing in the waves, each marking a wire crab “pot.” Male crabs are the usual bait, luring females that enter anticipating a mating ritual only to end up eventually on someone’s dinner plate.
Brought back to land, “peeler” crabs—those that are about to lose their hard cover and become soft shells—are placed in “floats.” Water circulates through large trays to keep the crabs alive. As soon as a crustacean sheds its shell, it is plucked out and prepared for shipment to a restaurant or market.
Hard-shell crabs face a different, if no more fortunate, fate. Some end up, still living, at restaurants not far from the waters where they grew up. There they are sprinkled with a peppery mixture of spices, steamed until the shells turn from blue to red, and often washed down with cold beer.
Strolling around the three towns and traveling by bicycle and rental golf cart, I was introduced to a unique way of life. After all, how many places have you visited where two golf carts passing each other constitutes rush hour? Another inviting way to get around is by canoe or kayak. A system of marked water trails leads through creeks (called “guts”) that offer panoramic views of the scenery, which consists primarily of tidal marshes and mud flats.
They also provide opportunities for close encounters with wildlife, including herons, pelicans, bald eagles, and many other resident and migratory birds. Some visitors hire a boat to fish for striped bass (rockfish), sea trout, flounder, and other game fish.
Back on land, each village is built around a church that acts both as a kind of unofficial government and center of community life. While some residents own a vehicle, traffic usually ranges between little and none. As one local explained to me in his appealing drawl, “traffic signals are not re-quared.”
Neither, in fact, is any kind of vehicle for visitors. Tylerton, population about 35 at latest count and only two by four blocks in size, hardly calls for any mode of transportation other than feet. A five-minute boat ride brought me to Ewell (about 130 residents), which is connected to Rhodes Point (home to 30 or so) by a strip of bumpy asphalt about 1.5 miles long, which locals mockingly call “the highway.”
The closest thing to a tourist attraction is a small, recently renovated Visitors Center and Cultural Museum in Ewell, where exhibits and an excellent film depict the history, economy, and traditions of the island. The 20-minute presentation portrays the work of watermen and life on Smith Island, much of it recounted by residents in their own words.
One “must” for visitors is to throw diet to the wind and sample Smith Island Cake. It’s a towering delicacy of usually eight or nine thin layers that has been designated as the official dessert of Maryland. Most common is yellow cake with chocolate icing, but flavors such as coconut, fig, and orange also tempt the taste buds.
No matter how good the flavor of that unique treat—and it is—the lifestyle of the proud people who choose to live in such splendid isolation is reason enough to visit with them.
