THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 20, 1994 TAG: 9407200379
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AROUND THE BAY IN 50 DAYS
Earl Swift is exploring the geography, history and people of the
Chesapeake Bay on a 50-day kayak trip that began July 1.
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
Resignation crossed Dickie Parker's creased face. ``Boats and women'' he said slowly, rubbing his bare, voluminous stomach. ``Boats and women have cost me a lot of money in this world. A lot of money.''
Don Aalders chuckled. ``Boats and women.''
``Boats and women,'' Dickie sighed.
A moment's silence passed. ``But what are you going to do?'' Don said quietly. ``You can't give 'em up.''
``Whoa-ho no, sir,'' Dickie agreed. ``I love them both. There's nothing I love more in God's world. ''
We were sitting around a picnic table on a hillside overlooking the tiny rectangular harbor at Bivalve, Md., 6 miles up the Nanticoke River from Tangier Sound. This was once a working harbor, filled with wooden boats that crabbed in the summer and, each winter, cruised the river and Chesapeake Bay in search of the once-plentiful shellfish for which the town was named.
Oyster harvesting dates back hundreds of years here: Before white settlers arrived in the 17th century, when the harbor was a narrow, marshy rivulet, Indians left millions of spent oyster shells on the shore. The hillside we sat on, now sheathed ingrass and shaded by cedar trees, was a leftover of those bumper harvests.
Most of the boats tied up at the harbor today are pleasure craft. The Bay's oysters have been decimated by disease, the shellfish industry erased.
Dickie has a boat in the harbor. He is in construction, finds work sporadically, spends most of his free time at the harbor. He's had a lot of boats through the years - 12 to 15, he figures - since he got his first at age 5, 58 years ago.
Like the 31-foot ketch he bought and owned for just 19 days. ``It was my dream boat,'' he said. ``You could set the main, set the mizzen, and throw the tiller away. She was that fine. She was the best boat I've ever had in this world.''
He and his girlfriend nearly stayed aboard the boat one night but decided against it. Before dawn the next morning, a buddy of his ``just came flying into the driveway, and he normally drives about 5 miles per hour. He threw open the door, and I was standing there as naked as I could be, as naked as the day I came into this world. And he said, `Dickie, get your clothes on. Your boat's down.' ''
The ketch rested on the bottom of Bivalve Harbor, both masts down, water lapping around its cabin roof. It was the only wooden-masted vessel in a cluster of aluminum, but lightning had threaded its way through all that metal. The bolt had followed the main mast's wire stays and blown holes through both sides of the hull. ``One of them you could have fit a basketball through,'' Dickie said. ``The other one, well, I guess a baby could have swum through it.'' He shook his head, ``It was the worst damn thing I've ever seen in this world.''
Dickie had the boat hoisted from the water and dropped into a cradle in the harbor parking lot. Within a few days, lightning hit the boat a second time. At that point, told that fixing it would cost a huge sum, Dickie scrapped the ketch. He gave the main mast to a friend who mounted a security light on its crown and erected it on his farm. Not long after that, lightning hit the mast a third time. The farmer took a chain saw to it and burned it in his fireplace.
Dickie hung his head. ``Boats and women.''
The story is legend in Bivalve. I paddled into town in the afternoon, met Dickie almost as soon as I beached the kayak, and later in the day struck up a conversation with another local, Steve Hoeffner. Steve and I wound up driving around the area in his pickup, visiting washed-out steamship wharves and a crumbling hotel from days when travel meant taking to the water, rumbling along pitted dirt roads, crossing through fields of corn. Lightning flashed in the distance. ``Let me tell you a story about lightning and Dickie Parker,'' Steve said.
The following night I had dinner with Don and Anne Aalders, who live next door to the harbor. ``Dickie's really something,'' Don said over soft-shelled crabs the couple had snared in pots just off the shore from their back yard. ``You know, he had a boat struck three times by lightning.'' ILLUSTRATION: Map
STAFF
Photo
EARL SWIFT
Dickie Parker, 63, of Bivalve, Md., lost his 31-foot ketch to
lightning just 19 days after he bought it. ``It was the worst damn
thing I've ever seen in this world,'' he said. After the boat was
struck again, Dickie scrapped it. But a friend wanted the mast,
which he used to make a light pole. Sure enough, a third bolt hit
the mast not long afterward.
by CNB