Fish House Delights
By Bland Simpson
Our Coast Magazine
When I was a boy, my mother often sent me on my bicycle to the small, busy fish house on Water Street in Elizabeth City, just across from the Pasquotank River wharf where boats that had been fishing down on Albemarle Sound tied up. I don’t recall now whether I was showing up in Thomas Crank’s shop for flounder or drum or trout – at the age of eight, it was all simply fish to me and it was all good. My mother would have already called in her order, so my job was just to pedal a mile and a half from home and pick it up.
Back then, I did not know any more about Mister Crank than what I saw when I walked through the door: an active older man behind cases of ice and fish, hawking and selling and wrapping them at a rapid clip, with jovial banter to match. Playing on a then-current radio jingle, every time his door swung open he said brightly: “What’ll you have?” Before the customer could name his fish, Mister Crank laughed and quickly shouted out, “Pabst Blue Ribbon!”
I knew I liked his fish-house spirit, and only much later learned how many years he had been in it, and at it. He was carrying on a family tradition of long standing: Thomas Crank and his father had been “Dealers in Fish, Oysters, Terrapin, etc” since 1896. A 1915 commercial circular wrote of them: “These gentlemen are unusually careful in the purchase of their products and handle strictly pure, wholesome and fresh fish, oysters, terrapin, etc. in season. All orders promptly filled and delivered, and at most favorable prices. These gentlemen are natives of Dare County.”
