Stories of life on Chesapeake collected for heritage festival

CRISFIELD, Md. — Binky Dize has a story to tell. Now he has an audience to hear it.

“My daddy, when I weren’t big as a minute, he always told me — he said, ‘Don’t ever be afraid of the water, but respect it.’ I tried to.”

So begins the story of Mr. Dize, a 67-year-old Crisfield waterman whose family dates to the 1600s on nearby Smith Island.

The Library of Congress sent researchers last week to collect stories from Mr. Dize and other longtime Crisfield residents, children and community leaders. The Smithsonian Institution will use part of the exhibit in next year’s National Folklife Festival, held on the National Mall.

Crisfield is one of about 15 communities to be featured in the Smithsonian’s 2004 festival, “Mid-Atlantic Maritime Culture,” said Betty Belanus, the program’s curator. It’s the first time Library of Congress folklorists, who are cooperating with the Smithsonian, have worked in Maryland.

“Crisfield has had a lot of changes in the last couple of generations, with the decline of commercial fishing and new people moving in, and some of the fish-processing industries moving out,” said Miss Belanus, also an education specialist for the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

“These are communities that are on the verge of losing some of their traditions,” she said.

Crisfield, with its own heritage foundation and museum, is trying to preserve its 340-year-old history while looking toward economic rebirth. The tiny town at the end of State Route 413, more than a two-hour drive from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, may soon be welcoming a fast ferry service connection to Reedville, Va., that would expose it to the world.

Mr. Dize enjoyed the attention from the researchers and quickly settled into the interview last week, adjusting his dirty billed cap and leaning back on a bench in the comfortable shade just feet from the Chesapeake Bay. Researchers from the Library of Congress’ Folklife Field School sat on the opposite side of a picnic table, a microphone perched between them.

They asked him what being a waterman meant to him.

“I wouldn’t trade it for nothing in the world,” Mr. Dize said. “It is the best life I can possibly think of.”

Pointing toward the Bay, he tried to put into words what he loved about the water.

“Have you ever been out on the water before the sun comes up? The water, there’s not a ripple. It’s like a mirror, and then you see the sun peeking up.”

The researchers are quiet when he adds, in a whisper: “And there’s nothing else like it in the whole wide world.”

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