I mean this:

Blue crab population diminishing in Chesapeake Bay

I am not originally from the Chesapeake area, but I went to the University of Delaware, just a little ways off (in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic coast, everywhere is close to everywhere else). I had a boatload of friends from Maryland and Virginia, and therefore I claimed the Chesapeake as a little bit mine.

I used to go eat Maryland crabs at the Crab Trap on Elkton Road in Newark, Delaware. I understand it’s closed now and the building demolished, but all-you-can-eat crab night was awesome. They’d cover the tables with newspaper and serve up pitchers of beer and mounds and mounds of crabs, and we’d eat them with lots of Old Bay Seasoning until we were ready to fall over dead. (Well, the beer probably helped, too.) To this day, I keep a can of Old Bay in my kitchen spice rack. Not necessarily to use, but sometimes to just open up and breathe in the smell, and remember.

On some rinky-dink docks on odd bits of the Chesapeake, we’d fish for crabs this way: you tie a piece of spoiled raw chicken to the end of a piece of string and dangle it in the Bay. And wait until you felt a tug on the line, whereupon you’d pull up your string and there would be a crab holding on. You didn’t get big crabs that way, true, and shelling and eating them was a hell of a lot of work. But it was so cool to do. A day spent fishing for crabs in this way, with the Bay spread out in front of you, was as restful and refreshing as a week’s vacation.

Good God, do I miss the Delmarva Peninsula. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I was still there (although Pennsylvania or New Jersey would do nicely, too). So I’m really sorry I read about the vanishing crabs and the closing of the Crab Trap. But memories are like that; reality gets way too far ahead of them, and sometimes you’re best off not trying to go back home.

URGENT CRAB UPDATE: After posting, I got a total crab up my ass and called up my husband and said idda wabba Crabs and Old Bay and I MUST IMMEDIATELY COOK OLD BAY CRAB SOUP FOR TONIGHT’S DINNER. And he’s all like Okay, honey, whatever floats your boat. This despite that it is (a) Southern California, (b) high summer and (c) 83 degrees. I love him so much.