'Back In The Day'

 

'Back In The Day', the Chesapeake Bay - all up and down it - was White people and Black people.  Whether at the northern end, around where Harford and Cecil clamp together like the two arms of a nutcracker; or all the way south, to where the Bay starts to flush into the Atlantic Ocean,  the colors of the Bay's people were opposites on a spectrum.

There were sprinkles here and there of other nationalities (mostly seasonal workers - in the seafood, poultry, and the canning industries), but until rather recently, say around the 1980's, a Latin or Asian face on the Bay was still a strange sight indeed.  Eastern shore natives, like lots of 'country' people, tended to be clannish; more, 'who your people, what's your family's name', than Marylanders living on the Bay's western, more urban,  shore.  That's a broad statement but no less a true one. 

 The introduction of 'strange-faces in little towns like Vienna, Snow Hill, Pocomoke, Denton, was sure to spark talk at the Friday morning coffee meet-ups, in small town meeting places like 'Miss Causter's Good Cookin', in Princess Anne.  

Who were they?  Where'd they come from?  How'd they get here to our little town?  

The neatness of black and white, got mixed with brown and yellow:  the result, a beautiful pastel of colors, sounds and ways of doing things.  In some places such, cultural ripples have proved wrenching; but on the shore, not a peep - save a few knuckleheads afraid of almost any change.  

Back in the day, one beer company enjoyed lots of success with the clever advertising slogan,  'The Chesapeake Bay, Land of Pleasant Living'.  Few taglines have ever worked better.  The Bay proved a pleasant place, for millions, both long time residents and newer ones too. 

In a slightly different perspective, God expresses HIS will in many mysterious (to us) ways.  There are many Bible examples where HE decided to move some of his peoples from one place to another.  Some of these human migrations have witnessed unpleasant episodes, man at his worse - not, though, along the Chesapeake Bay. 

Question:  When was the last time you had everything to give and nothing  to hide?  When was the last time you were 'new'?  The Bible will cleanse you.  As if an immigrant in a new land; you, me, all of us, can be new again.  Like a newcomer to the Bay. Like you and I were, back in the day.

Bring your Bible.