Crabbing with Dad

The following story is sent in by Diane Hutchinson. She is a painter that has been visiting the local area since her childhood. Diane has created evocative paintings of the shore that visitors to Seaside Heights can readily identify with. The picture included here is but one of many paintings of hers that you can see, and purchase prints of, at her website. You can also follow stories about her painting and other adventures at Diane's blog.

My memories of Seaside Heights and Seaside Park are so tightly woven with those of my Dad’s that I can’t seem to separate them. My times spent on the beach and boardwalk were infused with a deeper sense of enjoyment and respect because of the love that both my parents had for the area. My Mom grew up in Paterson and my Dad was born and raised in Little Falls, NJ. My Dad’s parents naturally vacationed in Seaside as did most of his neighbors and friends from North Jersey.

As a child, my time was mainly spent enjoying the beach and boardwalk rather than crabbing. The art of crabbing actually came much later for me. It was after I had developed a taste for hot and spicy crabs and overcame my fear of the pinching little beasts. In 1990, my husband and I bought a cottage right on the Seaside Park/Heights border. My parents would come down for a few days in the summer to celebrate their anniversary. Dad would walk down to the public pier on Barnegat Bay and crab for hours. Mom preferred the less-wilderness aspect of the shore and busied herself on the boardwalk or reading a good book. She would greet my Dad at the door with the pot of water boiling and the Old-Bay at the ready. As he would plop the crabs into the boiling water, she would count them and place a call to me at home in Pennsylvania. The reason I couldn’t wait to hear the crab report was because those crabs would become my breakfast, lunch and supper upon my arrival the next day. You see, after spending a couple of days alone to enjoy the romantic side of the anniversary, my parents were ready for my daughter and myself to descend upon their quiet time and start eating crabs.

After I got there, my Dad would take me along on his crabbing excursions to his lucky spot on the pier. He would take a folding chair and his pipe, his trusty knife, our old styrofoam cooler, the empty crab pail, two or three drop lines, bug spray, sunscreen, tongs, and our long-handled net with the measurement marks on it (to make sure our catch was of legal length). Sometimes he would let me carry something. As soon as we got to the pier, I would go into the bait shop and purchase the bunker (fish used as crab bait) which was frozen solid. We managed to get three separate pieces of bait from each bunker, the head, the body and the tail. We both liked the head section best, but Dad always gave me first pick. He showed me how to chop a hole in the frozen fish to insert the end of the lure and make sure the long string was secured around the post of the pier, just in case you dropped the string from your finger. Many people, including myself sometimes, use crab traps instead of drop lines. But, you see, Dad explained how the drop line required so much more skill and is more fun because you can feel the crab tugging and nibbling on the bunker. And then when you slowly pull the line out of the water you can actually see the little varmint clutching onto the line. If you’re lucky, you can carefully grab your net and scoop the crab onto the pier and into the bucket.

As soon as the lines were dropped into the bay, the real reason for our being there would begin. As Dad lit his pipe and sat back in his chair he would look out over the bay and recall times he had spent as a boy, a teen and as a grown man. Each experience unique but yet the same. He loved the bay.

I walk the path to the bay alone now. This will be my fifth summer without Dad. I fill our styrofoam cooler with our crabbing supplies, my camera and paints and head to the lucky spot. It’s a melancholy journey to the edge of the bay. But as I sit in Dad’s folding chair, I know I will never be truly alone.

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