husband come down regularly to watch the boats, he returned with a brochure. American Canadian Caribbean Line. Two- and three-week tours up and down the Bay and the East Coast. He was ready to sign up, his wife was not. Getting on a boat to visit her sister on Tangier Island was more than enough seafaring for her, she said. What did she think of the condominiums, I asked her. “Crisfield is changing,” she replied. “We natives don’t see it yet, but it will be good in the end.”
That Crisfield is changing seems to be accepted wisdom all around. Sterling & Son Hardware offers a good example. That business, which began in the 19th century as a tin shop, has already made plans to change with the times. It was Skippy’s idea that we stop in. We had just spent a few minutes admiring the wide blue beauty of Tangier Sound from the sunset pier and had started walking uptown when the store’s open door, the cool shade and the happy odor of hardware and marine supplies drew Skippy in. “He’s welcome to come in,” Susan Sterling and Karin Schneider called out, encouraging his trespass. I followed suit, while Hal wandered up the street. The store, actually two stores—one predominantly hardware and the other marine supplies—is planning some changes to meet what is expected to be a wider market in recreational boaters, Sterling told us. “We will be carrying more recreational boating supplies,” she said. “Perhaps the store will be divided into a part for watermen and part for recreational boaters.” (The urge to protect the watermen is a determined counterpoint to Crisfield’s acknowledgement of the need for change—or at least its inevitability.) At the hardware store, Sterling said, there are plans to add polo shirts and other leisure items, “kind