As Via acknowledges, a lot of people think it’s peculiar for two older women to work in the hardscrabble crabbing business. But working the water around Urbanna is pretty much all these resilient women
have ever known. Their father, Avary Payne, was a waterman himself; he started and ran Payne’s Crab House until his death in 1977. Via and Taylor grew up wading the shores of the creek, catching soft shells, also known as peelers, and selling them to their father for a nickel. “It’s how we got our spending money,” says Via, who describes her age as “old enough.” She adds, “If we wanted to go to the movies, we had to sell soft shells.” A movie, in those long-ago days, cost 35 cents. Not long after their Dad’s death, says Via, her sister turned to her and said, “Well, let’s us try [running the business].’ We’re still trying it. We haven’t got there yet, but we have a lot of laughs.”
When the freezers aren’t breaking down, that is. Or the weather isn’t lousy. The crabbing business is up and down in the best of times, and the best of times are gone. “That describes it exactly,” says Taylor—“up and down. Sometimes down more than up.” She says last year was “very bad.” This year’s first run was encouraging until stormy, late-spring weather spooked the crabs. “We had high winds, high tide, cold—and all of that affects them. Today, when we went out, we had less than half the crabs we were catching before the storm. It has turned the crabs back—they weren’t in our pots anymore.” As Taylor notes, without a hint of self-pity, that’s the life of a waterman. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s what we do,” she says. “We still love it.”
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