The Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck have a special connection to Tangier Island. For generations the islanders have come to the rivers of the western shore to oyster in the winter, and crab and fish in spring and summer. Many came to live here after the August Storm of 1933 that flooded the island.
Urbanna, Morattico, Irvington, and other small waterfront communities were blessed to have island families move there and make it their home. The area’s seafood industry today has many descendants of those folks who moved there after the storm.
Island story
In the 1980s and 90s, Jerry Pruitt and Micky Parks were building wooden deadrise boats together on the island. During an interview with the two at Pruitt’s Boatyard, they shared this story.
Most boatyards and seafood docks have cats or dogs hanging around. Jerry and Micky’s “hanger arounder” was a crow. Every day, the crow showed up around lunch time to get small bites of bread from their sandwiches.
One day, a customer showed up to enter into a contract to have a boat built. At that time a 42-foot wooden deadrise workboat cost $30,000. The customer was to pay $10,000 up front, $10,000 when the hull was flipped and $10,000 when the boat was completed.
The man wrote them a check for $10,000 and Jerry stuffed it down in his shirt pocket and after the buyer left they went back to work. There are no banks on Tangier Island so it would mean a trip to the banks in Cape Charles near the end of the week to deposit it.
At lunchtime Jerry and Micky sat down to eat their lunch when the crow showed up. The edge of the check was sticking out of Jerry’s shirt pocket. After the crow got several bites of bread, it flew up in the air and like a dive bomber came right back and surprisingly in mid-air grabbed the check out of Jerry’s pocket and flew off.
Jerry and Micky chased the crow all over the island and when it finally flew over the channel it dropped the check into the water. They got in a skiff and went out and picked up the floating, soaked check. Jerry took it home and dried it out with his wife’s hair dryer and at the end of the week took it to the bank.
“That was the last time I stuck a $10,000 check in my shirt pocket when that crow was around,” said Jerry.
It Happened Here in Rivah country!
