Gary Crawford - November 2011

The Taylor Rescue

by

Gary D. Crawford

Doesn’t life sometimes seem to be full of coincidences? Or maybe it isn’t as random and frivolous as that; perhaps there are little unseen connections running along the underside of the fabric of life, which, when they pop up on our side, appear to us as coincidences. Kurt Vonnegut drew our attention to such things when he described the karass, an invented word he used to refer to those curious networks of people who appear to have no official connection yet whose destinies seem to be intertwined. I suspect there are such things. We recognize members of our karass only after they touch our lives, repeatedly. It is surprising, because otherwise no connections are apparent. We just keep bumping into them unexpectedly, in different places and at different times.
Many years ago, while visiting San Diego, my brother took me sailing with a couple who were friends of his. I liked them both, and we enjoyed a pleasant afternoon sailing through the kelp forests off Point Loma. I was often overseas in those days, however, so the chances of ever running into them again seemed pretty remote. Yet, years later when I was married and living in Arlington, my brother mentioned that those same friends had moved east. They were living just 35 minutes away, so we got together for dinner. Again, a good time was had, but we lived miles apart and had our own jobs and lives.
Then, many more years later, after we had retired to the Eastern Shore, guess who we discovered was living up in Centreville? Yep. That we were somehow linked now seemed undeniable, so we just accepted it. It was to their home we went for shelter that night in 2003 when the remnants of Hurricane Isabel blew through here. Nowadays the wives go kayaking together. Curiously, that was where my wife was when the phone call came with the news we’d long been awaiting – the birth of a healthy grandson in Portland, Oregon. I was bursting with the news, but there had been no way to contact her. When she finally walked in that afternoon, I just blurted it out. Then I realized someone had come in with her. Yes, my friend from San Diego, now my wife’s kayak buddy, was the first person on the Eastern Shore to know we were grandparents.
Oh yes, I’m pretty sure that we’re all members of the same karass.
I’ve long suspected that the redoubtable Alice Bradshaw was another member of my karass. That possibility got another little boost quite recently, but to understand that, you need to know where Alice’s husband proposed to her.
When I first saw Alice, she was talking with some women beside her car, parked here at road’s end. Pointing here and there, sometimes at our house, she seemed to know what she was talking about, for her companions were listening intently. Curious, I strolled over and introduced myself. She smiled and explained that her husband, Bob Bradshaw, had grown up in our home. They had met near here, courted, married a few years later, lived a few doors up the street, raised a family of four, and then moved to Annapolis.
She recalled her years in Tilghman with great fondness and said she had begun writing a book about it all, having promised her late husband that she would do so. I said I would very much like to read that book and encouraged her to finish it. To my surprise, she arrived at our bookstore a few years later with a backseat full of books entitled A Promise of Love. They were wonderful, and we’ve carried them ever since.
Alice kept turning up. Each October, she and her daughter would drive over for Tilghman Day to sell her book, bundled up behind a card table set up for her at the church. She telephoned me from time to time, once to ask my help in getting one of her children’s stories published – which I did, in this fine magazine.
Chatting with Alice was always fun and informative. She told me about her husband’s family, one of several who came up from Hollands Island because it was washing away, and settled on Tilghman Island. She mentioned some of his brothers and sisters, whom I tried to imagine running through our home as kids. In addition to Bob, there were Lloyd, Josephine, Myrtle, and others.
Although somewhat older than I – she passed away this summer at 107 – Alice never seemed old to me. I kidded with her now and again, and sometimes I was pretty sure she was pulling my leg, too. I even recorded a few of our conversations, simply because there was so much information there about our village in years past. I have kept those notes, of course, along with copies of the photos she was kind enough to share with me.
One of her stories I like best was how Bob proposed to her. He was a waterman, a pound-netter, and one day he invited Alice out for a little boat ride. He took her out to the Sharp’s Island Light, which in those days was standing upright and had a Keeper in residence. They climbed the ladder to the deck, where Alice was welcomed aboard and given a guided tour of the lighthouse – which, as usual, she found most interesting. Later, leaning on the rail looking at the Bay and nearby islands, Bob asked her to marry him. As Alice told it, Bob said she’d better say yes or she could swim home. The twinkle in her eye when she told me that made me suspect she might have said yes anyway.
Just the other day, a local man came into our bookstore to pass some time, followed a few minutes later by a second man. One thing led to another and soon we were exchanging stories about the past. It was hot as blazes outside, and that led to a recollection of the winter of 1977-78, the last time the Bay froze over. They told how they had gone out on the ice with a car, towing a skiff and a piece of plywood. They put the skiff into a patch of open water, dragged an oyster scrape across the bottom and hauled up a mess of oysters. These were dumped onto the ice, piled onto the plywood, and pulled ashore by the car. One day it was so cold the outboard motor froze – while it was running.
That was the winter the ice locked tight around the base of Sharp’s Island Light. The incoming tide shoved the ice sheet up the Bay, pushing with terrible force against the structure until it was leaning 15 degrees to the north. People thought she was a goner, but when the tide receded, she still stood, tilted, and has remained so for the past 34 years. All this reminded me of how Bob proposed to Miss Alice out there on the Light, and I retold the story.
These wintry recollections brought to mind another icy event off the shore of Bay Hundred, but the details had become vague, so I read up on them again the next day.
Back in the 1920s, several families were still living and farming out on Poplar Island. They took a beating from the weather out there, and the hurricane that came up the Bay in 1933, known simply as the August Storm, did considerable damage. There was more to come.
The following February, the cold came down hard and stayed for weeks. As my colleague Jim Dawson has noted succinctly, “1934, Feb. record cold month in many areas.”
The supply boat that ran between Valiant’s Store on Poplar and Lowe’s Wharf on the mainland could not make it across.
After being cut off for more than ten days, at the first sign of a thaw, three young men out on Poplar decided to make a run for supplies. Despite much floating ice, A.C. Taylor, Jr., Carroll Newcomb and another boy, whose name is not recorded, made it successfully to Lowe’s Wharf at Sherwood. It took most of the day to traverse those two and a half miles and they arrived cold and tired. They stocked up for the return trip the next morning and got some sleep.
But that night the cold returned and by dawn most of the open water had iced over, so they waited a day, then another. After four days, A.C. became impatient and increasingly worried about his family out there on Poplar Island. Against all advice, the seventeen-year-old decided to walk out. Even Carroll could not change his mind.
Many people came to watch this brave but foolhardy attempt to cross the treacherous ice. After an hour of slow going, A.C. became nearly invisible in the dazzling white and people left the wharf. His friend Carroll, however, was following his progress closely through a pair of powerful marine binoculars – and that proved vital.
Carroll watched A.C. make it to within several hundred yards of poplar, but then he stopped. Time passed but A.C. was not getting closer to shore; he appeared to be stuck. Without help, Carroll knew A.C. would freeze to death. He called for help and there was a quick response.
Linwood Lambdin and Frank Fields started across the ice with a flat bottom skiff. They reached a point about two hundred yards away and talked freely with the stranded youth. He was sitting on a piece of ice about four feet square, with thin ice all around; between him and the shore there was open water. Apparently the ice had shifted with the tide and A.C. was now cut off, unable to go forward or backward. Though within shouting distance, the would-be rescuers could not break through, but they were watermen who had experienced many hardships on the water, and the pitiful pleadings from the young man were heart-rending. They broke through the ice at least twenty times and tried to crawl out to him. They couldn’t reach him, and he was marooned with no chance of going in any direction. Despite his appeals and cries for help, they could do nothing but return to Sherwood.
The throng gathered at Lowe’s Wharf was eager to hear of the boy’s condition, and every suggestion was discussed. Finally it was believed that Ira Harrison’s ten-foot scow at Tilghman’s Island might be able to reach the boy. Alfred Stinchcomb and Jimmy Jackson volunteered to make the attempt. After a long struggle, they too got very close to him, but the ice was too thick to break and they could not reach him. Upon returning to shore, they said they feared no one could possibly reach the boy no matter how they went.
Now already out on the ice for more than half a day, A.C. was running out of time. Archie Sinclair of Sherwood and Warrne “Pitt” Lowery of Tilghman then volunteered to make one more try using Harrison’s scow. Profiting by the experience of the other attempts, they succeeded in breaking the ice close to the boy and eventually reached him with the scow. Great care was taken not to capsize the little floe as they lifted the now nearly lifeless boy aboard.
Through the glasses, those on shore could see that the boy had been reached and preparations were quickly made for his comfort as soon as he landed. Mr. Harrison built a fire in the office of the Sherwood Packing Company; blankets were soon brought and a comfortable bed prepared. When A.C. reached shore, his life had almost flickered out, but he was tucked in bed and his limbs rubbed, while a car was brought to carry him to the hospital. The examining doctors feared that both the boys’ legs would have to be amputated, but the next morning, the legs showed signs of life and amputation was not necessary.
His parents were very grateful to his rescuers. There was talk in the community of some kind of award for Sinclair and Lowery, though I’m not sure if that materialized.
I found nothing more about A.C. Taylor, Jr. or his family in my records, but I also did a search for Carroll Newcomb. Now, “my records” may sound impressive, but it’s all just a jumble of documents and images stored on my computer. Still, I put in his name – and got a hit. To my surprise and delight, it was a photo that came up.
Yes, there he is, some years after the icy adventure. Carroll stands on the deck of a workboat next to a pier with his arm around a woman, both wearing nice smiles. The caption says the woman is his wife, whose name is ... oh, my ... Myrtle Bradshaw Newcomb. Myrtle was one of Bob’s sisters, remember? Alice again! Myrtle was her sister-in-law. That establishes a link between young A.C. Taylor, to Carroll, to Myrtle, to Bob, to Alice.
Now, this is why I’m sure we’re linked. That pier they’re tied up to? It’s the one at her parents’ home. Yes. Our pier.