Picking and Singing...Crab Picking that is.

     For many years, I have had the privilege of a unique friendship with a lady from Harkers Island.  Her name is Karen Willis Amspacher (pronounced Ams - packer).  She is descended from a long line of Harkers Island, Cape Lookout and Diamond City fisher folk.   I came to know Karen from my early days with the N.C. Fisheries and her early days at the beginnings of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center.  We have worked together on many projects over the years that include the N.C. Seafood Festival, the Core Sound Decoy Festival and Waterfowl Weekend, the N.C. Commercial Fishing Show, and the list can go on and on.
     And of course, I am now working with her on another project called Saltwater Connections.  I was invited to Hatteras Village this weekend to work with her at the village's Day at the Dock event.  This event celebrated its Island watermen and was a wonderful event.  Children's activities, educational displays, seafood cook-offs, demonstrations, a Blessing of the Fleet, and an evening Waterman's Dinner rounded out the weekend's activities.  Four women from Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay were invited to come down to Hatteras and demonstrate the art of crab-picking and provide intimate details of their lives living on an isolated island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay.
     Below is a short video of their crab-picking demonstration.  They sat to a table "picking and singing", trying to provide visitors with a small glimpse of what REAL Island women do.  The only thing they were missing were blue aprons and mounds and mounds of the crustaceans to pick.

Click the Play button in the middle of the video to play.  Video courtesy of Heidi Hewitt Merkley.

    Later that evening at the Waterman's Dinner, one of the ladies named Janice Marshall (in the white hat in the video) spoke to the watermen and their families.  She explained the geography of where she lives...only accessible by boat, a one-room school house for their children, and of course, every Island child has a skiff and outboard.  But, she also explained that the Island women are the backbone of their community.  Yes, their husbands all work hard on the water crabbing and oystering, but it is the women on the island who shed the soft crabs, box them up for market, pick the crab meat, fix the daily meals, handle the day to day activities on the Island.
     But it is also the Island church that brings them all together.  They work hard Monday through Saturday, but on Sunday, it is the day for the Lord.  At the conclusion of the evening, Janice and two of the other Smith Island ladies, ended the dinner with a poignant, picturesque and powerful story of the women picking crabs, watching a storm come up the bay, knowing their husbands and sons are out there crabbing or their children out in their skiffs....and they begin to sing...."In the dark of the midnight have I oft hid my face, while the storm howls above me, and there's no hiding place.  'Mid the crash of the thunder, Precious Lord, hear my cry, keep me safe till the storm passes by...."
     It was so powerful of story and song, that not even the strongest fisherman there could resist a tear.  It so reminded me of the wonderful women on Goose Creek Island who have also worked along side their husbands.  I could vividly see Beulah Ross, Katie Lewis, Nina Jarvis in these Smith Island women...wives of watermen, who worked at the crab houses, worked in the community, worked at home and worked to serve the Lord.  It is these Island traditions that Karen and I are so passionate about preserving.  The days of picking crabs in Lowland and Hobucken may be long gone, but we can still continue to remember those days, those people, and those special memories of days gone by.