Punkin Haddaway started working on the waters of Broad and Harris creeks in Talbot County when he was nine years old.
Crabs and oysters. Staples. They are to watermen what corn and soybeans are to farmers.
“I crabbed on one side of Harris Creek, my father crabbed the other side.
“We lived in Wittman; no electricity, no running water, no heat other than a small kerosene heater. But we got along just fine.”
Now, at 79 years old and making 80, Punkin is still Punkin and still working the water.
So, how does a man come by the name Punkin?
“Well,” he says, “when I was born, my mother started telling people I was her little pumpkin. The name stuck, and that’s who I’ve been ever since.”
In everyday conversation, the m and p have been dropped and replaced with an n. Kind of like how the pronunciation of Leadenham Creek has, over the centuries, contracted itself to Lednum. Three syllables down to two. Simplify.
Not so in written form on navigation charts and maps, but Lednum appears to have eventually become the formal written name of many Talbot families associated with Leadenham Creek.
When Punkin went to first grade at Tilghman Island Elementary School, the teacher was getting to know the names of her new students on opening day.
When she came to Punkin, she asked, “And what is your name, young man?”
“Punkin,” he answered.
“What’s your real name?” she asked.
“Punkin,” he said. “That’s my name.”
The teacher had to call Punkin’s mother to find out his birth name. George.
But as far as he knew, he was just plain Punkin.
His life’s journey has included stints in the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Marine Corps.
Due to a dynamite misfire that exploded underneath him during a live-fire exercise decades ago at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Punkin doesn’t hear well.
“My helmet went 30 feet in the air, and I did a backflip, landed on my feet, and kept on running with blood spurting out both of my ears. I was caught up in the exercise with my loaded rifle. They had to catch me and take the gun away from me before the ambulance came and hauled me away. They weren’t sure what I was going to do with that gun.”
The damage was permanent. As with too many unfortunate veterans’ stories, Punkin said he had to wait several decades before he was finally granted a disability pension for his hearing loss. No back pay other than one year.
These days, Punkin continues to harvest oysters in the winter and crabs in the summer. He says his 36-foot deadrise workboat planes at 2,000 rpm with its Cummins 220 diesel engine.
“I can crab all day on five gallons of diesel with that Cummins. It’s not as fast as that 450 Olds I had in her before. That monkey would really fly with that engine!”
Punkin crabs three days a week with his 4,800-foot trotline. On his off days, he spends four hours baiting his line with razor clams.
“I keep my baits closer than most. I don’t want those crabs crawling over my line on the bottom without smelling a bait.”
Unlike many trotliners, Punkin hasn’t adopted a Carolina-style dipping apparatus. He prefers to hand-dip with a traditional net.
“Right now, there’s an unbelievable number of small crabs out there. I’m seeing crabs on every bait.”
With the late-July full moon recently in full sway, Punkin has been catching lots of doublers — male crabs riding with female peelers. Thirty-six peelers one day, 20 the next.
The peelers will eventually shed and become highly prized soft shells sought by crab aficionados. Peelers fetch a good price from processors who shed them out and, in turn, sell them to seafood retailers.
Punkin has done plenty of crab shedding in the past but these days sticks with trotlining. Running shedding operations can be lucrative when the peelers are running, but the shallow shedding tanks filled with flowing seawater have to be worked every six hours, around the clock, so newly shed soft crabs can be fished out before they begin to harden.
Not an easy life, but a good one, according to Punkin.
That’s crabbing. That’s July turning to August and what portends to be bountiful autumn harvesting on the Chesapeake and its waters.
And that’s Punkin Haddaway.
Just plain Punkin.
