There’s No Place Like Home: Foote Girls Drift the Chesapeake Bay

View of waterfowl and church on Tangier Island

Every place you go has a special kind of talk. When the Foote family arrived from Wyoming to Superior, Nebraska in 1991, they encountered a different kind of lingo than they were used to. They weren’t always “fixin’ to go” somewhere “fer to get” something, but they would “prolly” agree with you that they’re hungry for “dinner,” even if it turns out to be served at lunch time…

Such regional peccadillos have always fascinated the Footes’ daughter, Shayna. Having graduated from Superior High School in 1994, she went to Hastings College for a bit and studied diction of foreign languages. Later enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, she picked up Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California and later went on to study the Georgian language.

The Foote girls - Shayna and her mother, Sandy - have always loved things a bit exotic. For Sandy’s most recent trip to see her daughter, they decided to go on a linguistic and nautical adventure. Living in Annapolis, Maryland, Shayna has made it a point to explore the islands in the Chesapeake Bay. With erosion pummeling them, she wants to see every inch of them before they’re gone.

Dennis and Sandy Foote enjoy their first Smith Island
cake during a spring visit in 2016

Shayna’s first trek was to Smith Island, where she got to try Smith Island cake. The delectable dessert is made up of not quite a dozen layers of cake and frosting. Having tried a few, Shayna’s favorite flavor was chocolate, but the lemon wasn’t too bad either. She also enjoyed seeing all of the various water birds and wildlife on the island. Shayna also liked walking around the various villages on the island, each with a large Methodist church. (There was also rumor of a pirate heritage, but the islanders don’t like to speak about that much.)

Smith Island, Maryland is not the only island in the Bay with a religious heritage. Tangier, Virginia is a neighboring island that also houses a large Methodist population. Both fishing villages, Smith and Tangier date back over 200 years. Crabbing, fishing, and even farming have been a historic way of life. Additionally, the speech of the inhabitants of both islands possesses many unique features not heard anywhere else.

The unique speak of the Chesapeake Bay islands fascinated the Foote girls. Along with photos, they were snapping up books at the local gift shop. One special feature of the islands is called “backward talk,” very similar to sarcasm. Using backward talk, the islanders express exactly the opposite of what they mean. One common example would be that if they referred to someone as “ugly,” really it would be a compliment, that they were “purty.”

L-R: Sandra Foote, James "Ooker" Eskridge, and Shayna Foote

The voices of Smith Islanders and Tangier watermen have been heard on national and international media outlets. Some of it is due to the uniqueness of their culture and tongue, and some of it is due to the ecological challenges faced due to being in the Chesapeake Bay. Tangier’s mayor, James “Ooker” Eskridge has even been on the news for his town’s patriotism and conservative leanings. President Trump heard of their support and even called the mayor pledging assistance for the island in its fight against environmental woes.

One could argue that both islands are fading away due to erosion or potential sinking. Ooker even faced off with former Vice President Al Gore in a debate in a televised town hall on climate change in 2017. Regardless of the cause of the islands’ shrinking, residents of both islands are concerned about their future and the fate of their way of life. They are not leaving without a fight, and are seeking funding for sea walls to protect their homes, their industry, and their heritage.

During the Footes’ visit to Tangier, they got to meet Ooker and take a tour of the island in his boat. He took them to Uppards, a place where the inhabitants had settled on “high ground.” Now underwater, Uppards is a place to go looking for bottles, broken china, and little treasures on the shore. Some cemeteries had been there. There are remnants of the headstones; some of the bodies had to be relocated. You can also find pieces of brick - the foundations of the homes no longer standing, but slowly washing away with time.

Four Brothers Crabhouse where the Footes
loved their ice cream and snacks

The Footes had a great stay on the island. Sandy was happy to go tooling around in her golf cart. (Shayna insisted that her mother drive!) The town had two different sections and several bridges, so Sandy got to go all over the place and attempt to park it while staying out of the way of traffic. That’s something not easy to do, seeing’s how the center of the town seems to be the local ice cream shop, which proudly boasts a flag promoting President Trump for the 2020 election.

Talking to Ooker, it seems that about 85% of the town supported President Trump in the 2016 election. You can also remember that the town is rooted in conservative values. For the Foote girls, it was quite a fascinating journey, to meet the people, see the place that is so beloved by the inhabitants there as well as the tourists, and to experience a sense of community almost unseen anywhere else. As it was, their golf cart could be seen parked at the ice cream shop at least once a day, every day.

One of Shayna’s favorite sites in Tangier, was the cemeteries. She is a big fan of the “cities of the dead” (vertically stacked graves above ground) in New Orleans where her brother lives. As it is, the cemeteries in Tangier are not exactly tall in so much as they are close by. For, many of the houses in Tangier have family members buried in the yard. As there is not a lot of space, things are kept close, to include by churches, the medical center (Shayna joked, “in one door and out the other!”), and on (or in!) the front lawn.

Grave plots on a residential lawn in Tangier

Ever the linguist, Shayna can’t put down the books on Tangier Island. She’s currently reading “Tangier Island: Place, People and Talk” by David L. Shores. She is hooked on YouTube videos of Ooker and the watermen of Tangier. As noted, she wants to see, experience, and listen to the cultures of Smith and Tangier…before they are gone. Next spring she hopes to take a trip to Assateague Island, to check out the wild horses that have been running there for about as long as the other Bay islands have been settled. 

Being away from her family has been a challenge for Shayna. She finds that she’s been in Maryland for almost 20 years now. She went for the work and stayed for a way of life, which means living on the water. From her beach cottage in Oyster Harbor in Annapolis, she sees the Bay Bridge every morning while walking her dog on the shore. It’s a spectacular view, along with sounds of the fog horns, and the cries of the gulls. It tells her that she is home in a language she can understand.