The Salt Air Remembers

You knew you were home when the smell hit you—that thick, briny mix of crab factory and salt marsh that people from away always wrinkled their noses at. But to us? That was the perfume of summer mornings, of possibility, of here. You'd wake up to it drifting through the screen door, mixing with the distant wail of the shipyard whistle calling the shift change, a sound so regular you could set your watch by it. Your daddy swept ashes there. His daddy before him. The shipyard wasn't just where people worked—it was the heartbeat that kept the whole place alive.

Saturday mornings meant Crum's Bakery at Newmarket, where the line stretched out the door and nobody minded waiting because the smell of fresh doughnuts made time stop. You'd take your white paper bag, grease already seeping through, and sit on the hood of the station wagon licking powdered sugar off your fingers while watching the world wake up on Mercury Blvd. That boulevard was everything—the spine that connected our scattered lives. You could navigate your whole childhood by its landmarks: GEX on the corner, the traffic circle where What A Burger sat like a beacon, the Giant Open Air Market where your mama bought groceries and you begged for candy you knew she wouldn't buy.

The radio was always tuned to WGH—Best Sound in Dixie—and George Crawford's voice in the morning was as essential as coffee. You probably had a Tenna Topper on your antenna, that little piece of foam that said you belonged, you were from here. On Friday nights it was WGH blasting from car radios in parking lots where teenagers gathered, or WNOR FM99 if you were feeling rebellious, Henry Del Toro and Mike Arlo soundtracking your youth.

Football wasn't just a game—it was religion, identity, tribal warfare in the best way. Warwick Farmers versus NNHS, the Turkey Day Game on Thanksgiving that mattered more than the meal that followed. Kecoughtan Warriors. Menchville. Homer L. Ferguson. You wore your school colors like armor, and "You CAN crush a crab!" wasn't just a taunt—it was a battle cry that echoed through Todd Stadium and Darling Stadium on autumn nights when the air finally turned cool and the lights blazed against the dark.

Summer meant Buckroe Beach Amusement Park, back when it still had the roller coaster and the sky slide and you'd spend all day there with two dollars in your pocket and come home sunburned and salt-sticky and perfectly happy. You'd stop at Red's Pier on the way, or maybe Strawberry Banks, crabbing with chicken necks tied to string, the patient work of lowering bait and waiting, scooping up blue claws with a net, your fingers learning to pinch them just right so they couldn't pinch back. The fish you ate didn't come from a grocery store—you caught them yourself, or your uncle did, still silver-slick when they hit the frying pan.

Downtown was alive then. Washington Avenue on new car show day, the whole street transformed. The Lee Theatre and Village Theater where you'd pay fifteen cents on Saturday and stay all day, watching the same movie twice because nobody cared and there was nowhere else you needed to be. High's Ice Cream. Fuller's where you ate dirt cheap. Bill's Barbecue with that sauce you can still taste if you close your eyes.

The drive-ins were our cathedrals of summer—Peninsula Twin, Anchor Drive-In, Rebel. You'd load the car with kids and blankets and contraband snacks, back the station wagon in and drop the tailgate, watching movies under stars interrupted by jets from Langley screaming overhead. Nobody looked up at the jets. That roar was just the sound of home, as ordinary as breathing.

You knew every bridge, every tunnel, every body of water. The James River Bridge when it was still two lanes with a drawbridge that would trap you there, idling, watching boats pass underneath while the summer heat baked through the windshield. Lions Bridge—really Huntington Park—where you'd park and walk and dream. The HRBT when it was just one tube and crossing it felt like an adventure. You learned to pronounce "Norfolk" right, learned the difference between saying you were from the Peninsula versus Southside, learned that to outsiders you were Hampton Roads, but to each other you were a collection of smaller loyalties, neighborhoods and schools and which side of Mercury Blvd you lived on.

The Mariners Museum with its trails before they were official, before the Noland Trail had a name. Colonial Williamsburg where every school field trip went, until you knew it better than your own history. The Coliseum where you graduated, cap and gown in that cavernous space, feeling small and infinite all at once. Coliseum Mall and Newmarket North where you walked laps on Friday nights, pretending not to care who saw you but caring desperately.

You remember Bungles the Clown. Doctor Madblood. Ronald the Ghoul. Local celebrities who existed nowhere else, who belonged only to us and our particular corner of Virginia. The Virginia Squires with Dr. J before the rest of the world claimed him. Peninsula Pilots baseball games on summer nights. Bay Days and the Christmas Parade downtown when downtown still meant something.

The places are gone now, or changed beyond recognition. The amusement park is a memory. The drive-ins are parking lots. The theaters are something else. Businesses closed, buildings demolished, traffic circles paved over. Mercury Mall is gone. GEX is gone. The bakeries and drive-ins and all those small, perfect places where life happened.

But close your eyes. You can still smell it, can't you? Crab factory and salt air and possibility. You can hear the shipyard whistle, feel the rumble of jets overhead, taste the sweetness of an Orange Julius on a hot afternoon. You can feel the wooden planks of Red's Pier under your feet, sun-warmed and solid. You can hear WGH crackling through blown speakers, smell the leather pile in Hampton that made you gag but proved you were close to home.

You knew every back road, every shortcut, every place to park in the woods. You knew which bridge was backed up, which tunnel was clear, how to navigate a geography that made no sense to outsiders but was perfectly logical to you. You knew the rhythm of the tides, the schedule of the ships, the names of streets that honored a past you learned by living there.

It wasn't perfect. It was hot and humid and the traffic was always terrible and I-64 has been under construction since 1978 and probably will be forever. It was small enough to feel trapped sometimes, big enough that you couldn't know everyone but you knew someone who knew everyone. It was military and civilian, shipyard and air base, water and land, past and present all mixed together.

But it was ours.

And if you grew up there, if you learned to drive on those roads and swim in that water and live with that particular alchemy of salt and steel and history—then some part of you never left. You carry it with you. The 757. The 804 before it was 757. Tidewater. The Peninsula. Hampton Roads.

Home.

You can live anywhere now. You probably do. But on humid summer mornings, or when you smell crab boiling, or when you hear a distant siren that sounds just like the shipyard whistle—you're there again. Young again. Whole again.

And the salt air remembers you too.