The Shanty Shoppe Opens in Toddville - Sort Of

There’s no hiding the facts. Toddville, and Dorchester County, is a poverty-stricken area. There is no real industry in Dorchester County, and what jobs are available barely pay above minimum wage.

For those of us living in Toddville, that means driving a minimum of thirty miles to Cambridge, one way, every day to get to a job. With today’s gas prices, half the paycheck goes to getting to and from work. It’s not like we have public transportation down here.

A good portion of the residents down here are either retired or their home is a summer home. Mr. Pritchett, down at Pritchett’s store, said back in the forties and fifties, there were about 800 families living here, all making their living off of the Bay. The Bay isn’t producing like it did in the good ol’ days so many children of the last generation or so have sold or abandoned the family home and moved to where the jobs are. The few watermen who hang in carrying on the family tradition of generations since the first settlers arrived are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. For them, the Bay is all they know.

Driving through the Toddville area will give you ample evidence of the dying community. The marshes are dotted with many abandoned homes, slowly decaying and falling apart. A friend of ours is one of the remaining few watermen left. Some weeks he makes a bountiful catch and times are good. Then the next two or three weeks, it cost him more to take his boat out than what he earned for the day’s catch. He’s forced to hibernate in his home, unable to afford a Saturday night beer down at Carolyn’s Stonehouse.

Another friend of ours, a regular every Saturday night at Carolyn’s, recently threw his hands up in the air and said he had enough. He packed up his things and left. No one knows for sure where he went, but the rumors are he went west, maybe to the Dakotas or something.

As if the Bay dying isn’t hard enough to deal with, there is a problem of the ever-rising water levels in the Bay. On average, the bay rises a foot every century and the rise has little or nothing to do with global warming. The house Keith and I live in was built over a hundred years ago. The original family probably never concerned themselves with flooding. If we didn’t build up the land around us, we’d have the tidewaters at our doorstep on every higher-than-normal tide.

And the rising Bay levels affect the fishing grounds. The fish are constantly moving to new areas where the waters aren’t as deep. What were good fishing grounds last year may not yield so much as a minnow this year. It’s a never-ending game of wits pitted against a dwindling fish population and a changing and dying Bay.

About a month ago, our waterman friend lamented that he wished he knew something other than how to fish so he could make a decent living. His comment got me talking to him about Ebay, the famous online auction site. He and his girlfriend got excited over the idea, except for one problem. He doesn’t have a computer, knows nothing about them, and can’t really afford one anyway.

Keith and I always wanted to open our own little store one day, but we can’t afford the start up costs. Since I am currently out of work, we decided Toddville needed to be propelled into the Digital Age plus Keith and I would get our store, even if it weren’t the traditional brick and mortal one.

The Shanty Shoppe opened for business last month. Currently, it offers items from Keith’s collectible toys collection, but The Shanty Shoppe will expand to include a little of everything for everybody with a special department dedicated to items unique to Toddville and Maryland.

The great thing about The Shanty Shoppe is that all of the residents down here can share in the store, or at least the residents we know. Our waterman friend, for example, comes across a lot of stuff on a daily basis. He’ll bring it to the store (Keith or me) and we’ll list it for bidding at least twice. If it doesn’t sell, we’ll stock it on The Shanty Shoppe’s store shelves for anyone to purchase when they want.

We do have big plans for the store. We’re hoping to get it to at least earn us our beer money for the weekend. Sure, it’s not a big company that can employ a lot of residents and provide them with a decent paycheck and benefits, but it’s a small step towards helping the community survive.

So, enjoy your stay here in the Toddville Tidewaters blog, but before you leave, feel free to click on the link in the right hand column and come on into The Shanty Shoppe. Browse around, and, if you’re inclined to, buy anything you see. No high-pressure sales tactics down here. Take your time and enjoy yourself. Just remember, we could use the beer money next weekend.

© 2007
Mark Darien
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