plus easy access to town, a truly great marina, down-home people with some quirky yet charming habits, and plenty of places to satisfy the inner boater have made Crisfield one of the Bay’s favorite destinations.
So Skippy, Hal and I were fairly humming in anticipation. (Actually, Skippy is fairly humming to be on his way anywhere, so he doesn’t count.) There was only one issue that threw a shadow over our happy project. Were we too late? Had Crisfield already gone from quaint to wall-to-wall condo? That was certainly the talk I’d heard from Solomons to Salisbury: It’s all over, they said, they’re building condominiums in Crisfield! Or, alternately: They’re building all these condominiums in Crisfield, but I wonder who’s going to live there? If you can’t find blue cheese or a good dry cleaner anywhere in town you may not be able to sell condominiums.
That last comment came in a round-about way from Whitey Schmidt, a 10-year Crisfield come-here and cookbook author with a title of his own, the Blue Crab Guru. I had called him when I decided to make Crisfield my first landing site of the season. “They have started building a few highrises wherever there’s waterfront and a view,” he confirmed. “So, it’s beginning. New life is coming to Crisfield.” Crisfield is a quiet town now, he continued, but once there were a hundred or more oyster-shucking houses at the dock; now there is one. Terrapin soup was found in every restaurant in America; now we don’t eat terrapin. The trains are gone, and a lot of the fishing industry has left. So, all things considered, Schmidt says, the condos may be a move in the right direction. “Besides, someday you might even be able to buy blue cheese in Crisfield.”
But were recreational boaters