This annual winter fundraiser in Georgetown is one shell of a time

By Bill Newcott
Photograph by Scott Nathan
From the Winter 2023 issue

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Table 3 is waiting for more oysters. A dozen or so men in ball caps and sweatshirts are shuffling anxiously from foot to foot, most of them fidgeting with the handles of the short, rounded knives they clutch in their hands. 

A few puff impatiently on cigars. The thick smoke curls toward the ceiling of the Georgetown Fire Company garage, churning into a growing cloud fed by countless more fat cigars and glowing cigarettes in this enormous, but closed, space.

Some 800 men are crammed into the firehouse, and a lucky hundred or so have spots at the eight 10-foot-long oyster shucking tables: rustic, rectangular wood affairs, slathered with generations of green paint. A shelf rises in the middle of each one, topped with containers of ketchup, vinegar, hot sauce, salt and black pepper. 

Also up there are bags of oyster crackers, which I’d always assumed were named that because they look like little oysters. Not so, it turns out: They happen to be a traditional oyster side dish and frequent ingredient in oyster stew. 


Three Lakes, Many Questions 

By Andrew Sharp
Photograph by Scott Nathan
From the September 2023 issue

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People used to view ponds and streams as convenient spots to dump old tires, refrigerators and the like. By and large, attitudes have changed, but you can still find plenty of trash in these bodies of water, as well as invisible nutrients from our yards and fields that drain into them, spawning noxious algae blooms. 

So who’s in charge of protecting inland bodies of water from trash tossers and surplus grass fertilizer? In some cases, nobody is really sure. 

A slight price dip from 2022 heartens homebuyers, but other robust indicators cheer sellers

By Andrew Sharp
Photograph by Scott Nathan
From the October 2023 issue

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Forty-five minutes after Mark and Cynthia Lotz toured the home on Dirickson Creek, they made their decision: They would put in an offer. The Harford County, Md., couple had been hunting for a second home and previously had their hearts set on one, only to lose out. 

They didn’t want to see that happen again. 

The Dirickson Creek location, not far from Assawoman Wildlife Area, didn’t match all of the goals they set when starting their search, which included being within walking distance to the beach and having a boat slip. “We had a checklist of, like, 10 things we were looking for and realized, we’re not going to get all that,” Mark explains. “We started to compromise [and] whittle away at our checklist.”