The Great Escape

My Labor Day weekend could best be summed up by the National:

So happy I was invited
Give me a reason to get out of the city.

I've stayed in town for enough holiday weekends to jump at a chance to go elsewhere when I get an offer.

In this case, it was the northern neck and points beyond for a few days.

Our adventure began in Morattico, a tiny former fishing village on the Rappahannock river.

And although I've visited there dozens of times (my parents live there), this time I had a first-timer with me, so I wanted to play tourist.

That is, to the extent you can play tourist in a one-horse town with no stoplights.

Luckily, there's the Morattico Waterfront Museum, housed in the former general store, so that's where we headed on arrival.

My parents have been living the river life since the '80s, so I remember when the place was a working store, albeit one with more than a few cans that looked like they were older than me.

But with the nearest real grocery store a half an hour away, the general store had been invaluable for milk or even the odd baking ingredient.

But when it was a store, it had occupied only a fraction of the building, as we discovered going through the museum.

In addition to the store area, the museum also encompasses the storage areas and the living quarters above it, meaning room after room of old stuff and pictures.

The stove was still in the center of the store area, as were the old cases, but everywhere there were pieces collected from locals.

The docent pointed us toward the manual typewriters and old spice jars and baking equipment.

Turns out she'd been a typist and one of the typewriters was hers.

She also claimed to have a talent for baking cakes ("But not cookies," she said. "I burn them. And I let my husband make the pies"), scoffing at how unused the sifter on display appeared. "Mine looks just like it, 'cept it's about worn out."

Upstairs was more interesting, with great big pictures of the old crabbing and oysters wharves and the local men who had worked them everyday.

One photograph showed a man "tonging" oysters dressed in a vest, tie, button-down shirt, jacket and trousers on a boat.

The card said he dressed the same everyday, whether tonging or not.

There were pictures of the old houses in the village, including my parents' house, which had also been a store and a theater at one time.

By the time we'd seen every room on every floor, the museum was technically closed.

But Morattico is an hospitable place and the docents allowed us to linger as long as we wanted, even exhorting us to come back soon and watch the video about the town.

I'll put it on my to-do list next time I'm down there playing tourist.

Dinner was at the Lancaster Tavern, a 1790 building that stands in front of the enormous "hanging tree" and across the street from the county jail with its few and tiny windows and the dollhouse-sized clerk's office.

But inside the tavern was clearly everyone in the county who wanted to go out to dinner on a holiday weekend.

Tables continued to fill up during the nearly three hours we were there.

My father, ever the wit, pointed out a group at a table in the next room, saying, "That's Frank. He's a Republican but not a prick. Unlike his wife who's a rabid Republican who doesn't shut up."

It's a charming place, low-ceilinged since people were shorter back then and with a fireplace in every room.

A place where the server tells you whose local garden the grape tomatoes in the salad came from.

The kind of place that has a "chef's chicken of the day," which on this night was a fried chicken breast with white pepper gravy.

Neither my Dad nor I could resist such southern charm.

My only disappointment was that it was a boneless piece of breast, but the abundance of gravy almost made up for it.

And while I didn't ask whose garden yielded the zucchini and squash in the vegetable medley, I bet our server knew.

My mother had insisted we have dessert at home and her big, beautiful lemon meringue pie was a fitting end to a day spent looking back in time.

Thus stuffed, two of us spent the rest of the evening digesting on the dock, enjoying the soft, salty air around us.

Ducks quacked nearby, we could hear but not see fish jumping in the water and the recently full moon made a dramatic showing behind ominous looking clouds.

It's so quiet down there that it almost hurts my city ears.

Next morning, after a pancake and sausage breakfast, we drove off for the main event.

Crossing the Wicomico river, silvery and placid in the morning sunlight, we ended in Reedville, where we were catching the Chesapeake Breeze to Tangier Island.

The hour and forty minute trip out into the bay to get to the island was spectacular - a gray sky allowed us to stand on the upper deck and enjoy the breeze and the view the whole way out without frying in the sun.

Like the night before, we couldn't help but drink in the soft, salty air all around.

Thoughts of the city were long forgotten.

Once on the tiny island, we made our way to one of the five restaurants there, Fisherman's Corner.

It had been started thirteen years ago by two women who wanted to earn money while their husbands were out fishing every day.

Conveniently, their husbands were happy to supply them with fresh fish and seafood daily.

Given the island's reputation for crabs ("soft crab capital of the nation"), we both ordered the Tangier-style soft-shelled crab sandwich and a plate of the house fried onions.

The plate of onions attested to the kitchen's talent, delivering delicately-battered pieces of onion, crisp but no greasy and positively addicting.

Once our lunch came, we found out what Tangier style meant: five small soft shells perfectly fried and served on thick white bread with house-made cocktail sauce.

That's right, five crabs on one sandwich. It probably should have been called a soft shell poor boy given its girth.

We learned from a Southern Living article framed on the wall that when the place had opened, it had been considered the fanciest place in town because they used glasses instead of plastic tumblers.

I'd have sipped out of a tin can to eat one of those sandwiches, but looking around at the blue-striped and blue-flowered tablecloths, I could see where the place might have seemed a step up.

Once fortified, we set out to explore the mostly marsh island.

At five miles by one mile, it seemed like an easy enough trek, although most of our fellow shipmates opted for golf cart tours.

Close to fifty historical markers were scattered around the island, providing information and old pictures of structures long gone.

A kid on a bike pedaled by, his fishing pole laid across his handlebars, a dollar bill between his teeth.

Houses were tiny and the roads between them barely wide enough for a golf cart.

Wooden bridges were everywhere over the inlets that thread their way through the island.

Even more plentiful was wildlife; we saw a great white egret, so still it looked like a statue, herons and ducks.

We mounted Hoisting Bridge, built at the highest point of land on the island (five feet rather than four feet above sea level) and learned of its function.

It was where young couples had gone to court for years.

The local rule of thumb was that no more than three couples at a time could woo on the bridge - one at each end and one at the center.

The preferred position for courting, we learned, was with the guy sitting on the railing and the girl standing in front of him so their lips would be conveniently at the same height.

Walking on, we saw the first house on the island built with two bathrooms, despite it being 1961 construction.

This was a notable enough fact that it was included on the historical marker.

We saw an American flag made of painted sea shells laid out in a tiny front yard.

Most yards held graves because that' where you buried your kin, close enough to maintain and fenced in in case they started to wash away in a storm.

After zig-zagging the entire island for an hour and a half to ensure we saw everything, we stopped at Spanky's, which promised air conditioning, ice cream and music (alright, the music was country, but at least true country and not that modern country crap).

It also gave us a chance to hear the Elizabethan-era English the locals speak.

Eavesdropping on one of the servers on her phone, I struggled to understand her archaic sounding speech while eating my mint chocolate chip hot fudge sundae.

In the bathroom before we left, I respected the sign on the wall.

Gentlemen: Your aim will help. Stand closer. It's shorter than you think.
Ladies: Please remain seated for the entire performance.

Unintelligible or not, the sign's meaning showed a decided sense of humor.

Wandering back to the Chesapeake Breeze for the return trip, I felt like we'd been away for more than just a day.

It began sprinkling as we headed back toward the mainland, but eventually stopped, allowing us to return to the front of the boat and the intoxicating breeze.

Back on land, you could say all we had to show for our day was full bellies, bug bites and a well-worn map of Tangier island.

But the truth is, it had been a couple of days in another world, a world where fishing remains supreme and a lot of things are still done the old ways.

Just the kind of reason we needed to get out of the city.

Even waking up today, I felt a lingering languor from our escape.

Back on Grace Street for my walk, though, I was pulled back to reality.

"Whoa! I'd recognize that sashay from a block away," called the bicyclist from the street and I looked over to see one of my regulars pedaling by.

Almost home, a guy passed me on Belvidere, sending out an incredibly loud wolf whistle as he went by me.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.