The Cornfield’s Past Lives
- Details
- Written by Kris Legates
A parked truck is just the latest witness to our region’s endless development
By Bill Newcott
Illustration by Rob Waters
From the April 2024 issue
The source of the melancholy that sweeps over me as I make the turn off Cedar Grove Road onto Mulberry Knoll, near Lewes, is at once obvious and elusive.
At the southwest corner spreads a cornfield — at least, as of this writing. It is midsummer: a time of growth, green and hopeful, the stalks topping out just at eye level. Far, far in the distance, a stand of trees marks the field’s western boundary; a here-and-no-further wall that has, perhaps for a century or so, defined the demarcation between agriculture and nature’s last stand.
And there, parked diagonally near the intersection, is an old Chevy panel truck, lovingly maintained yet defiantly utilitarian. “247 Single Family Lots For Sale,” a sign on the truck proclaims.
Shall We Dance?
- Details
- Written by Kris Legates
A lifelong dance floor shuffler tries to step up his ballroom game
By Bill Newcott
Photograph by Carolyn Watson
From the Winter 2023 issue
‘We’re gonna go for a stroll on the boardwalk,” says Thom Pemberton, which is a tad confusing as this is a dance class in the basement of the Cape Henlopen Senior Center and we’re a good quarter-mile from the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk.
I squint at him quizzically, and I catch on Pemberton’s face the fleeting realization that he might be dealing with an idiot. He gestures elegantly to the linoleum floor.
“This is our boardwalk, right here,” he reassures me. “And I want us to just, you know, walk in a big circle here as if we were walking along the boardwalk.”
My wife, Carolyn, smiles sweetly.
“He knew that,” she lies.
We link arms and stroll in a wide circle to the sound of Sammy Davis Jr.’s not-at-all annoying “Candy Man,” slowing occasionally to avoid colliding with the four or five other couples here for Pemberton’s regular Thursday morning beginners class. My mind knows those pairs have barely more dance experience than I have; my sinking heart realizes that, compared to me, they are the reincarnation of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Night of the Oysters
- Details
- Written by Kris Legates
This annual winter fundraiser in Georgetown is one shell of a time
By Bill Newcott
Photograph by Scott Nathan
From the Winter 2023 issue
Table 3 is waiting for more oysters. A dozen or so men in ball caps and sweatshirts are shuffling anxiously from foot to foot, most of them fidgeting with the handles of the short, rounded knives they clutch in their hands.
A few puff impatiently on cigars. The thick smoke curls toward the ceiling of the Georgetown Fire Company garage, churning into a growing cloud fed by countless more fat cigars and glowing cigarettes in this enormous, but closed, space.
Some 800 men are crammed into the firehouse, and a lucky hundred or so have spots at the eight 10-foot-long oyster shucking tables: rustic, rectangular wood affairs, slathered with generations of green paint. A shelf rises in the middle of each one, topped with containers of ketchup, vinegar, hot sauce, salt and black pepper.
Also up there are bags of oyster crackers, which I’d always assumed were named that because they look like little oysters. Not so, it turns out: They happen to be a traditional oyster side dish and frequent ingredient in oyster stew.