Bill Kenny: What's a 'Norwich crab?' Twice-told tale says a lot about the city
Wading through the comments on social media about a projected Board of Education budget north of $100 million, the ongoing rehabilitation of long-dead properties on Main Street, and (the flavor of the month, at least this month), a(nother) traffic study to reinvent downtown, all of which provoked various shades of anger, indignation and outrage. All I can do is shake my head.
I'm resurrecting a story I first presented well over a decade ago. It is not my creation but was shared with me back in the early '90s. It still stings.
Dave and Dan were standing on the dock near Howard Brown Park, crabbing. They'd known one another for years and had watched as their city, so bustling in their youth, quietly disappeared, one business, one restaurant, and one block at a time, leaving nothing behind for anyone. For them, crabbing was more than relaxation; it was a diversion to take their minds off their city's troubles.
Except Dave had other troubles as well. As quickly as he caught crabs and turned around to drop them into his 20-gallon catch bucket, one or more of the crabs already in the bucket would make a break for it. Dave spent as much time chasing fugitive crabs skittering down the dock and back into the river as he did in fishing for them.
Dan took his crabbing at a different pace. He worked with a small hoop net and bait cage, catching one crab at a time, and when he did he'd examine it from every angle. Sometimes, Dan would then drop his catch into the child's sand pail he used as his catch bucket. Other times, Dan would throw the crab back into the river and resume crabbing.
Meanwhile, Dave was struggling to keep any of the crabs he'd caught. Dan had some advice.
"You're doing it wrong," he said. Dave snorted and pointed out, "We're both doing the same thing I don't understand! I've caught a lot more crabs than you have but I'm not able to keep them because they never give up trying to escape and eventually get away!"
"Yeah," said Dan, "It's what you're catching."
Dave shouted at Dan, "How can there be a problem with what I'm catching? I'm catching crabs, you're catching crabs. We're both catching crabs!"
"True," Dan agreed, "but you're catching all kinds of crabs. I'm only catching Norwich crabs." Dave paused and asked, "What do you mean, you're catching 'Norwich crabs'? How could that possibly make a difference?" Dave demanded to know.
"It's the most critical difference," said Dan. "With Norwich crabs, when you have one and put him in the catch bucket, if he tries to get out, all the other Norwich crabs hang on to him very tightly and keep him from ever succeeding."
When I was first told this story, I thought it was funny. It never occurred to me it was also true.
If we, and by "we" I mean you and me, whoever and wherever we are, don't learn to let go of the resentment and anger from the past and choose instead to reach for rewards, despite the risks, at our next opportunity, whether it’s economic development, infrastructure improvements or anything else that goes with living in this city, this story goes from very funny to very sad to being our very last story, the one that becomes our epitaph. Trust me.
Bill Kenny, of Norwich, writes a weekly column about Norwich issues. His blog, Tilting at Windmills, can be accessed at https://tiltingatwindmills-dweeb.blogspot.com/.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Bill Kenny: Seeing anger over Norwich school budget, traffic study
