Charles LeRoy Lewis - Special Collections - University of Baltimore

LEWISt099 II1:1:78
all little kids, it's true - 12, 13, 14 years old, but you
respected the girls and they respected you. Or you might
squirt a little seed at somebody, something like that, and
we had a way of having fun, but we . . . I've heard people
say about how they washed everybody's face and all this and
that, but f never seen any of
that. But that was the story - it was the same way today.
Today we buy crabs . . . in those days you went down and
got crabs; I mean in latex years when I got so I didn't have
time to crab, I used to go down the maxket there and f always
bought 60 - that's 5 dozen to a bushel. And they were nice
size erabs. And you always got a couple extra and they m ight
have some dead ones in there. Then you'd steam them and
crowd come around and you sit down and eat crabs.
You'd have a little beer w ith it, but f mean, it wasn't no
booze party or anything; you come in and drink because a sweet
drink don't go good with crabs. Of course, I can eat crabs
with anything most anybody else, but it tastes better with a
glass of beer. ~ut, they were things you figured out.
Now we used to go down to Fort Smallwood when the old. . .
and we used to take a big iron pot with us and vinegar and
mustard and everything and our bathing suits and we would
buy old meat and would make a trout line, make it 50 feet
long and pole and hang a bushel basket on it. And a crab
got on it and we'd swim around and we'd pull on the line and
we'd get him in the bushel basket and the first thing you
know, we'd get nothing you could get out and put them in a