The Bounty of the Land
It seems as if everybody has an opinion these days about hunting and fishing. Things sure have changed over the years in regards to how the catch is utilized. I remember my grandmother telling me that the depression didn’t really affect things around here much because there was always something to eat courtesy of the land and sea. She had her garden, as did most people, and grew most of what she needed. My grandfather was always ready to race down to Roaring Point and bring home a bushel of rock fish (striped bass). What they didn’t eat or give to the cats, they froze. He could catch the bushel in about a half hour. He still did this up until the 1960’s, by which time he was past 70 and slowing down to the point where he needed more time to get his usual full day of work done.
I never saw crabs growing up but I have heard of a lot of people who “chicken necked”. This entailed using a piece of string with a chicken neck tied to it and dipping it in the water until a crab grabbed it. You would then bring it up real quick with the crab still clinging to it with all his might. Picking it up and putting it in a basket was sometimes rather tricky but the people who did it seemed to enjoy the thrill of the hunt.
Speaking of hunting, I worked down in Nanticoke for thirty years and knew many men who hunted deer both in and out of season. I never had a problem with someone hunting any time of the year if they were hunting to put food on the table. I would much quicker condone this than I would someone shooting a deer and just leaving it out in the woods. It kind of reminds me of how things used to be. The game and fish are there and man needed them to survive. It seems like such a simple solution except that modern laws have complicated everything.
Duck and goose hunting was used as a supplement to the food supplies, but was more of a sporting venture than anything else. Hunters came from everywhere to hunt on the Shore.
During WWII, the government urged everyone to grow a “victory garden”. Most everyone grew something and usually enough of that one thing that they could share their production with someone else and receive something different in return. That way everybody benefited. How many gardens do you see today? Usually, it is just tomatoes and it doesn’t take too many plants to produce a whole lot of tomatoes. Although I’ll have to admit that they are a lot tastier than the kind purchased in the grocery store.
Back “before the bridge”, the Eastern Shore had nearly everything it needed and didn’t have to rely on trucking things in to sustain itself. People shared what they had and it seemed as if nobody wanted for anything. How times change!
