Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [113]
The Chesapeake Wood Duck Inn is an 1890 former boarding house from the steamboat era. Once there was even a bordello here, but today it’s an elegant Victorian bed & breakfast furnished with antiques, heirlooms and art by local artist Maureen Brannon. The inn has six guest rooms and a cottage. Children 14 and older are welcome. (Gibsontown Road at Dogwood Harbor, 800-956-2070, www.woodduckinn.com, $$$)
Norma’s Guest House is actually two fully furnished guesthouses, each with a deck overlooking Dogwood Harbor. (tel. 410-886-2395, www.tilghman.com/normas, $$)
Sinclair House was built in the 1920s as a fishing camp. The innkeepers, Monica from Peru, and Jake, who served in West Africa with UNICEF, have interesting sea-faring stories to tell. (5718 Black Walnut Point Road, tel. 410-886-2147 or 888-859-2147, www.tilghmanisland.com/sinclair, $$)
Information
For information about Tilghman Island businesses, including lodging, shopping, fishing and marinas, see www.tilghmanisland.com.
Talbot County Office of Tourism, 11 N. Washington Street, tel. 410-770-8000, www.tourtalbot.org.
PRONUNCIATION: Say “TILL-man.” The ‘gh’ is silent.
Event
The Tilghman Island Seafood Festival is in late June at Kronsberg Park with live music, parade, crab races, crab-picking contest and arts and crafts.
Tilghman Island Day in October is a rare opportunity to see waterman in their element, through workboat races, a boat-docking contest, exhibits, music, and, of course, plenty of seafood, including oysters served every which way.
Easton
Around Town
A commemorative jar in the window of Hill’s Pharmacy in Easton bears the inscription “In recognition of dispensing one million prescriptions. Eli Lilly & Co. July 3, 1986.” We peered, eyes and hands pressed up to the glass, at this and other objects – old apothecary jars, pillboxes and medical instruments – bemoaning how we couldn’t get inside and sit at the old-fashioned soda fountain others had told us about (it was past closing time.) At that moment, a man came along and, with a set of keys, started opening the door. We didn’t have to ask twice, and he gladly let us inside to see the soda fountain. It, along with family-owned pharmacy, has been a local institution for more nearly 75 years.
The man was Mark Lappen, husband of Pamela Hill Lappen, who, along with her sister, are the third-generation pharmacists in the business their grandfather opened in 1928.
In an adjoining back room lit by a large skylight, stands a long marble counter lined with stools where generations have had an ice cream soda or a sandwich. It’s Maryland marble along the top, Italian marble on the front, for a total of 14 very heavy pieces of stone. Lappen should know – he moved it himself 20 years ago, piece-by-piece from the front of the pharmacy to this larger room, which can accommodate more patrons with café tables and chairs. Out front, holes in an aisle where the stools used to be are still visible.
Another spot Lappen eagerly points to is where Bing Crosby stood and sang the first stanza of “White Christmas” to Pamela Lappen in the late 1970s. She had asked for his autograph on her copy of his famous Christmas record album, but he did her one better with a live rendition. He was staying nearby, at the renowned Tidewater Inn, just a half-block away.
These are the kinds of memories a family collects over 75 years in business. They now have three other, much newer, pharmacies, but this remains the family’s pride and joy. They’ve sold sundries to many notable Tidewater Inn guests over the years, including Tom Selleck and Adam West (”Batman”).
The rich and famous, as well as everyday sportsmen, have found the small town on the Eastern Shore a most genteel host for sport fishing and waterfowl hunting. In the last 25 years, the Waterfowl Festival has grown to bring upwards of 20,000 people to the town each November.