THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503020060
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ONLEY LENGTH: Long : 173 lines
RUN YOUR FINGER down U.S. Route 13 on a road map of Virginia's Eastern Shore and you'll come to Onley, which looks a lot like Lonely, and if you hang around for a few dark February days you'll find that the connection is not lost on those who live here - especially if they're young and single.
Love is a break-even proposition in the best of times and places, but the odds shift against anybody who looks for it in a small town.
If long talks with bright, single people in the villages along the Shore's main highway could be distilled to a common thought, it might be: ``I love it here, but if I don't find a warm body to love it with, I'm gonna have to get out.''
It's not just the Eastern Shore, where unspeakable beauty and unbearable desolation are woven into a lifestyle that can be difficult to love, but even more difficult to leave. It's the same in any rural region, whether Isle of Wight or the mountain towns of Nelson County: You're fishing in a very small pond. And no matter how great your bait, sometimes there's just nothing biting.
Dana Floyd flopped into a chair in the lounge at The Trawler restaurant around 10 the other night, trying to catch a second wind after a day of teaching ballet and an evening rehearsal of ``Evita,'' the musical running at the local dinner theater.
``My God, look what I've been reduced to,'' she sighed. She shook her hair, lifted her chin, rolled her eyes and let a sardonic little ``Why me, Lord?'' grin crawl across a face that should never spend a Saturday night alone, unless it wanted to.
Soon there was a foursome at the table, a pinochle game with no cards, and the deal stayed with whoever could tell the most piteous story about life alone on the Shore. Dana's stories were difficult to trump.
``When was my last date? You mean my last real, pick-me-up-at-my-door date?''
There was a pause, Dana riffling through a mental calendar. She riffled way, way back.
``August. Last August. It was the Herb Bateman debate.''
The Herb Bateman debate drew only a few chuckles this time because it had been on the table a minute ago, when Dana was talking about how strange a night out on the Shore can be. Dana works summers at Cherrystone Campground. She went home that August night, prepped for her big date, and wound up right back where she'd started: Cherrystone Campground.
``He took me to the place where I work,'' she'd said. ``To a Herb Bateman debate.'' Bateman was in an easy run for his umpteenth term in Congress. For a professional dancer like Dana, tuned to the tempo of New York and Philadelphia, it made for a long evening.
``I don't even drink, and the big attractions were Herb Bateman and, like, four truckloads of beer.''
The people at the table joked about lowered expectations, a willingness to settle for somebody with ``all their teeth and most of their hair'' - or vice-versa.
They flipped back and forth between tales of desperation and fervent proclamations of love for the Shore. Ties to good people. Plenty to keep you busy, if you work hard at it. How a small town offers the chance to make a real difference in people's lives.
And the stark beauty of the place. Sunsets that tear at your heart. A pace of life that, unlike the city, makes allowances for individual rhythms.
They like it here, they say. They just don't like living it alone.
It's just as grim for guys. Mark Freeze, an administrator at the local community college, said he'd had some luck answering personal ads ``across the Bay,'' which is how the Shore folks refer to Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
``Oh, no way, I couldn't do that,'' said Dana.
``No, really,'' Mark said. ``I met some very nice people that way. Had some good times.''
``I just couldn't,'' Dana countered, her head doing slow east-west shake. ``No, I couldn't. I'd join a convent first.''
Dana has lived on the Shore five years. Mark Freeze grew up here, left for a while, but he's back, staying close to his two kids, who live nearby with his ex-wife. Sitting between them was Kal Hunsaker, who rolled in from Phoenix three months ago for a job at the hospital.
Mark was defending the charms of his native land - including its cuisine, which the newbies say is too heavy on the deep-fryer. But he admitted that small-town style can weigh on a single's social life. The wrong pickup truck spotted in the wrong driveway as dawn breaks on a Sunday morning, and the gossip wire lights up.
``The bridge club will know in a minute,'' Mark said, chuckling, ``and everybody else will know in five. And if you date somebody twice, you might as well be married to them.
``I even get it from my grandmother: `Oh, I heard you went out with so-and-so.' ''
Pure mathematics also complicates the picture: There are only so many bright, charming, take-'em-home-to-mom single folks around. ``It's getting hard,'' Dana said, ``to find somebody that everybody hasn't dated.
``You're always popular when you first move here. People will come to your door, they'll invite you to their homes. It's like, `Oh, new game, fresh meat.' '' Somebody new shows up, she said, and the word spreads like butter on a hot hushpuppy.
Kal, the new guy, said that hadn't happened to him, and he'd been there three months.
Dana snickered, tossed her right arm over the back of his chair and brought him up to speed: ``Uh-uh, Kal . . . I've already told some of my friends about you.''
Word was out on him. He was being shopped around, his looks, his job, his car, how he dresses, how he behaves, it was all out there on the wire. From Exmore to Melfa to Onancock to Nassawadox, word was out about the new guy in town.
And poor Kal never had a clue.
Down the road in Exmore, earlier in the day, Sara McCaleb had told a similar story about her return to the Shore after years in New Orleans and Philadelphia. ``When I came back,'' she said ``these people showed up out of the blue, like bloodhounds or something. I don't know how they'd heard I was here. I'd been gone seven years.
``I mean, my date from the junior prom called . . . I hadn't even talked to him since then.''
With a thriving business of her own and a bit of a modeling portfolio, Sara McCaleb has a good bit to offer. ``In the city, I was a social butterfly, I knew everybody. But here, it's hard to meet people. It's down to this little group of people who are not married and hang out together.'' After a while, she said, ``you get to the point where you feel these people are more like your brothers and sisters.''
Exaggerating just a bit, she said, ``There aren't but five young, single guys on the whole Eastern Shore. And I can name them. Let's see, there's John, Ed, Richard, Frank . . . uh, c'mon now, there's got to be another to make five.''
The list eventually got beyond five, but not by much. ``We're going to reach a critical mass soon,'' she said, ``where every single woman has gone out with every single guy.''
The hottest strategy is to hop the pond by ``importing'' dates, she said. ``Let's see, there's John, he has a girl across the Bay. Ed, he has a girl from New York. John, he imported a girl from Williamsburg. Frank - oh, that's right, Frank's hooked up with Sandy. There's Pooh, he imports girls from all over.''
Still legend among women up and down the Shore is the friend who took a ferry to Tangier Island one day a few years ago, met a guy on the boat, married him, and is living happily - so far - ever after.
Sara isn't counting on the same lightning striking twice: ``Like my sister said, `There's about as much chance of that happening again as there is of aliens landing in my back yard.' ''
In most of these conversations somebody eventually says, ``You really ought to talk to Karen.''
Karen Stairs, an award-winning reporter for the Eastern Shore News, knows everything that moves and everybody who makes it move, from the Bay Bridge-Tunnel north to the Maryland line. She has a lot of friends, but says she has struck out finding that one friendship that will stick.
``I am,'' she declared wistfully, ``the most dateless person on the Eastern Shore. I am truly pitiful.'' Actually, she's anything but. Her life just leaves her feeling that way sometimes.
It's not for lack of trying. ``I've dated all the ones that are decent, all the professional guys. It's sort of a joke around here. I've been dumped by all of them . . . I guess 'cause they think I'm weird.
``Eastern Shore boys,'' she explained, ``are their own kind. They're not used to a woman who has a brain, a car, a job and no kids. Men haven't caught up with that yet.''
She's tried a lot of tactics, including widening her radar from Salisbury, Md., south to Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The most creative ploy of all backfired in some amusing ways last summer: She signed on as weekend harbor mistress for Onancock, guiding boaters to the proper slips and helping them find fuel and supplies and such.
``I thought it would be a great way to meet cute guys with yachts. What I met was a lot of 80-year-old guys with yachts, and I wound up shepherding them and their wives to the grocery store. I got one real date all summer.''
``I have tons of friends,'' she said, ``and I'm always busy - mostly with work. I work like 80 hours a week. But I'm miserable half the time.''
So what's ahead? With spring coming, she hasn't ruled out another stint as harbor mistress. ``It's a great way to work on my tan,'' she said. ``And who knows? Maybe something will happen.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/Staff color photos
``My last date?'' says dancer Dana Floyd, who lives in Onley on the
Eastern Shore. ``August....It was the Herb Bateman debate.''
Floyd performs in ``Evita'' at a local dinner theater. But for young
singles like her, the dating dance is difficult.
by CNB