By mid-December, the diehard watermen on Tilghman Island cut the roof off an old Simca and ran a chainbag dredge back and forth across the shallow bottom through long slots they cut in the ice with chainsaws. Their veiled warning to outsiders was: "Best not let them catch ya scrapin' on the tonger's grounds!" On the Western Shore, locals were caught taking a derelict car out on the ice hundreds of yards offshore; their idea was to get a lottery going taking bets on when the ice would thaw thin enough that it sank. Never a dull moment on the tidewater!
I vividly remember going down to St. Michaels to see the first-ever North American Iceboat racing championships held that far south. We watched them from a large Zodiac-type airboat in the middle of the Miles River. There were hundreds of people there, way offshore, some on snowmobiles, some on ATVs, some on foot. You could have easily driven an SUV or a pickup out there the ice was so thick, but the Coast Guard would not allow it and wisely patrolled the area heavily. Thanks to them there were no mishaps or emergencies on the ice that weekend. The Bay had only frozen over completely once in recorded history up until then, during WW1 in the winter of 1917.
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