Essays

• Route 50 on a Summer Friday The road to the ocean beaches crosses the Bay Bridge and then runs more than a hundred miles of farm country. On a July Friday it can take the better part of a day.
• Behind the Screen Door A crab house on the Eastern Shore is usually a plain room with brown paper on the tables. What happens there on a summer evening is about as close as the peninsula gets to a shared ritual.
• Two Lanes at Dusk The back roads of the lower Shore run between ditches and fields with no shoulder at all. In the hour after sunset they belong to the deer.
• Ferries and Drawbridges On a peninsula cut by rivers and creeks, some of the roads still stop at the water and wait.
• Sharing Route 13 The main road down the spine of the peninsula is also a farm road, a truck route and a commuter road. At harvest, all three happen at once.
• The Off-Season In February the beach towns empty out. What is left is the shape of the place.