More Crab Racing

As I have been scanning in these slides the story becomes clearer. They call the crab races the National Hard Crab Derby. You buy a crab and they put a number on their shell and you name your crab. I was number 99! "Whitney". I don't know how well I did as my dad didn't take any photos of the standings. Oh well.

Back to the races. They then take your crab with your number on it and put them in these troughs with little dividers on it. Then when the race begins they dump the trough and out come the crabs and the first one over the finish line wins. I want to say they win a trophy and money.

By looking at the crowd it is quite a popular sport!! I believe they still do this in Crisfield today. I remember something on TV about it last year.

This is a picture of me with my mom.

My Cuddly

This is a picture of me with my Mutsy. the other day I wrote about favorite snugglies or cuddlies. I felt you all needed to see me with mine. This is my monkey. I do still have him but he is packed away in a box. The picture was taken by my father. He dabbled in portrait photography when I was young and took most of our portraits in the early 1970s. This one was taken in August 1970 which would have put me at 8 months of age. Wasn't I cute? My monkey looks pretty good too. In this picture he still has his ears!

Over then next several weeks I hope to be able to get out our family slides and start scanning them and printing the photos so they can be put in photo albums. It is interesting that in the 1960s and 1970s the fashion was to take slide photography. But it makes it difficult to look at the pictures when they are in slide format. My kids want to see what I looked like as a child their age and I can't show them that many photos because they are all in slides. So I am going to transform them all into photos and in albums.

Does anyone know why slides were taken and not photos?

Things You Cling To

As a child many people have a favored blanket or bear or something that they use for comfort. I had "Dolly" and "Mutsie". Dolly was a doll made from a patterned material which my mother cut out and sewed together. She used panty hose that had run to stuff my dolly. I dragged her around by her leg because it was easy to grip for a little hand. I still have dolly somewhere but I gave her up in my early childhood. I also had a little monkey called "Mutsie". He has survived the ages also but I long ago gave up taking him everywhere too.

My son has many stuffed animals and used to have a favorite blanket, well two. My husband had a talk with him when he turned 7 and Nicholas gave up his blankets. Now that they are out of site he doesn't ask for them but I know if I pulled them out again he would snuggle with them again. My middle daughter has no real favorite animal or blanket. She never really has. Caroline, the youngest, has a bear, called "Bear". She loves him and sleeps with him most every night. She takes him to sleep overs at her grandparents' houses. But even at 5 there are nights she could take him or leave him. Just last night she didn't bother to get him out of her suitcase, after returning home from Gram's house, to sleep with Bear.

My sister on the other hand still has her bear. He was also made by my mother and cut from a patterned material. She sewed him together and he got real stuffing. She carried him everywhere. And I mean everywhere. He would get dirty and my mother would throw him in the washer and dryer and Jennifer would wait right there until he was dry and the buzzer when off on the dryer and she would open the door and take him out. Then she would work hard to make him smell right again. While Jennifer sucked her thumb she would rub his nose and she eventually rubbed a hole in him. After that it was harder to wash. My mother searched everywhere to find another bear just like his. At that time I found out that when I was little I actually went through three Dollys. When one wore out she would replace it with another one. When Jennifer was 7 or 8 years old my mom found a Bear to replace hers at a yard sale. She brought it home and washed it and presented it to Jennifer. She seemed excited at first but when it came down to real snuggling Jennifer preferred the one with the hole in the nose. By now the hole went straight through the bear and you could put your arm through him, which Jenn would do and then swing him around and around her arm. I am not sure what happened to the new Bear, because he just wouldn't take the place of the old one.

Jennifer is now 34 years old and she still has the Bear. He is now shreds of material held together with threads. He no longer has any stuffing left and he resides in her pillowcase. So, yes, I believe she still sleeps with him. In her adult years she has moved along to a stuffed dog with a red ribbon collar but nothing compares to Bear. I think when we were young, I pretended to marry Jennifer and her Bear. I had no idea that the marriage would last this long.