My Crab Club

When I was a kid, we spent summers, weekends, and lived for a short time on the river in Southern Maryland.  My mom’s dad and her grandmother had houses side by side that sat right on the Patuxent River.  From their back yards, we walked out onto the pier and crabbed, fished, water skiied, swam, and spent hours on the boat. We gardened, made fake soup out of jellyfish (which we called sea nettles), chased down the ice cream truck barefoot, made regular visits to the big farmers market, swung on the hammocks hung between two big shady trees next to the water, and played on the sandy beach of the big river.

At the time, the crab population in Southern Maryland was amazing. My mom grew up with that lifestyle on the river, so she was quite the crabber.  She actually earned herself the nickname of the Crab Queen – a title she bore proudly. When we were little, we were taught how to crab also. In a day, we’d catch bushels of crabs on floating lines, baited with eel or chicken necks, attached to buoys out in the water. We had a few small crab traps, but mostly, I loved when we’d catch them right off the pier.  We’d tie a weight to the end of some heavy string, tie a raw chicken or eel part to the end of the line, and lower it down into the water and tie it off around the pilings.  After letting it sit for a bit, we’d go out with the net.  One person would be the one slowly pulling up the string, and the other would be leaning over the edge of the pier (since we were smaller, sometimes we’d even be on our belly on the pier with our arms and net hanging over the side) with the net to dip and catch the feasting crab as it was raised close to the surface of the water.

I have such vivid memories of sitting in the back yard of my great grandmother’s house where she’d sit in her gingham dress and oversee us as we’d sprinkle the seasoning on the crabs we’d caught, then we’d use our big metal tongs to put them in her pots for steaming. She’d take them inside and steam them right in her kitchen. The crabs would clamor around in the pots as the heat turned up, so she’d put weights on top of the big pots to keep the crabs from climbing their way right out of the pots and spilling over onto the floor.  They’d spread out newspapers all over her big table, pass out the wooden hammers, and we’d pick the crab meat of all the crabs we caught. My great grandmother was famous for her crab cakes, and dinners were a feast with food caught from the river, grown in the garden, or made from scratch.  I wish I could go back now and take part in those dinners again now that I have more of an appreciation for how good the food was that we were eating!!

However, not all crabs were for eating.  We had the luxury of being choosy with the crabs we caught, so we ate big, blue males.  Everything else got thrown back.  I, however, made a collection of some of the little crabs we caught and formed a crab club.  I would line up my crabs at the very end of the pier on a long bench that sat facing the water, and I’d “teach them tricks” (or so I thought) and put on little shows. 

The excerpt below was from a writing assignment I did when I was little that my mom saved and put in an album for me. 

Who would have thought after all these years, I’d get a crab club back!!!!