“I trapped every bit of this creek,” he says, referring to Monroe Bay, which was glistening behind him on this late summer morning.
His focus was on muskrats, otters, raccoons and, once in a while, foxes. He sold the skins to a man from Lottsburg, Virginia, who’d come up every two weeks. “He’d get me out of school—I was in eighth grade then—and I’d sell him whatever I had. I made good money at it.”
Though he did well in school, was in the National Honor Society and even tutored a little, and played junior varsity basketball, “I shied away from anything that cut into my trapping time. I loved the outdoors. I’d be out of the house early in the morning, and Mama didn’t see me again till sundown.”
There were far fewer homes along the creek back then. Kids didn’t spend all their time on computers as they do now. “From December till the end of March I’d spend every waking minute tending to my traps. I had to check them whenever the tide was down, then stay up half the night to skin whatever I’d caught.”
Blue heron along the coast of Chesapeake Bay
He and Nealy Little, who still works on the nearby waters, partnered a lot back then. “We caught a lot of fur and had a lot of fun doing it.”
Then came the trip back to Deal Island with his father that changed Mike’s life. Whenever his dad had vacation time, they’d go back to Deal Island to fish. They usually ate in a small local lunchroom.
One summer after he’d graduated from high school—one of only twenty-five students to graduate from the school that year—he saw the girl of his dreams, the daughter of the owner. “I fell in love with her right away,” he recalls.
Muskrat in the wild
But she was only sixteen, and her daddy was “kind of a hard man.” He wasn’t one bit happy about his daughter marrying that young.
“When she turned eighteen, I gave her an engagement ring,” he recalls.
They married and settled in Colonial Beach, where they raised two children. His son has cerebral palsy. His daughter has married and has two boys of her own.
When Stine thinks back to his school days at the beach and is asked about any favorite teachers, he smiles at once. “Oh, yes. My fifth-grade teacher, Ernestine Daniels. I loved her as much as I did my own mama. I used to tell my parents, if anything ever happens to you, have her take me in.”
It wasn’t that she was easy on the kids or the least bit liberal when it came to discipline, but she was kind. “Every day after lunch, she read us a book, fantastic stories. Everybody would listen, slack-jawed. She really cared about her children.”
As he recalls his childhood, he can remember times when his family didn’t have a lot. “My daddy ruled the roost. He insisted on hot bread for every meal. We had biscuits in the morning and at lunch and hot rolls for dinner. He instructed my mother what to cook. He never owned a car. He walked or rode a bike.” But as tough as times might be from time to time, “there wasn’t anybody who ate better than we did. My friends would do just about anything to be invited to stay for supper.”
He says that though his wife worked in her mother’s lunchroom where they met, he wound up doing a lot of the cooking in his family.
Mike Stine greeting his kids after work
Though church has always been important to him, and he grew up as a Baptist, Stine says in recent years that has changed. He has served as a chaplain at the nursing home in town and took in meals once a month for the residents until he could no longer afford to do it. While he had to stop bringing in meals, he continues to serve as chaplain and conducts Sunday School and Bible study there.
Over time he became disillusioned with denominational religion. “People nowadays want to be entertained. They don’t want to talk about sin,” he says. “I find there’s too much world in the church and not enough church in the world.”
That, he says, has changed the role of the churches in Colonial Beach. He attends a small church several miles out of town near Stratford Hall.
Thanks to his own work at Dahlgren, he’s had the opportunity to travel all over the United States and even outside of it. Even with Colonial Beach’s flaws, he declares, “I’ve never seen anyplace I’d rather live than this. I love this place. I have a lot of friends. I’ve had a lot of fun.”
When anyone looks back at their life, what more could they ask for?
Low tide at the creek, 1940s/1950s
CREATING A SMALL-TOWN ATMOSPHERE: THE POTOMAC RIVER FESTIVAL AND MORE
While big cities have every kind of event imaginable, there’s something special about the events in a small town. In Colonial Beach, just as in my fictional small towns, they bring neighbors together to work on the planning. Think of Nell O’Brien and the Chesapeake Shores fall festival or that town’s Fourth of July fireworks.
In Colonial Beach, local festivities provide an opportunity for people to get together over barbecue and hot dogs on the town green in much the same way they used to on the boardwalk back in its heyday.
Colonial Beach has lots of these events throughout the summer, but none is more iconic than the Potomac River Festival, held every June for more than sixty-five years now. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, in its early days it was organized by Frances Karn and her brother, Jimmy, with an assist from Delbert Conner. These three, as noted by Diana Pearson, epitomized the philosophy of giving back to the community.
There is a little something
