Eastport

WHEN THE throaty-voiced lady calls and asks, "Sweetie, can you do something for me?" what's a Neighborly Correspondent to do? The voice was that of Peg Wallace, Queen Mum of the Barge House Museum, and she wants the word out that because today is May Day, it's time for the Eastport May Basket Competition. There will be two categories, residential and commercial, subdivided into Most Beautiful and Most Eastport. Residential will include a category for age 12 and younger. There will be 20 judges who will start their work at 11 a.m. "Judges will be required to wear some kind of a wonderful flowered hat," she said.

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, I was privileged to be among the band of loonies who staged a mock revolution and formed the fictitious Maritime Republic of Eastport (MRE).Our goal was to raise a big enough ruckus to make people wonder what the fun was all about so they would come and keep the local businesses going while the bridge connecting the Eastport peninsula to Annapolis proper was closed for repairs.Nobody could have anticipated the incredible response that weekend and the rest of the year. Most of the Eastport restaurants did better during the three weeks the bridge was closed than they had done the year before.

A fire sparked by old electrical wires destroyed an Eastport tavern Saturday morning, leaving behind a boarded-up shell of what used to be a popular place to play pool and throw darts.Built before Eastport became part of Annapolis in the 1950s, the bar was once owned by Warren B. Duckett Jr., a former county state's attorney and now a Circuit Court judge, who gave the establishment its current name, The Wharf."I hope the person who owns it re-establishes it," Duckett said yesterday. "It holds a lot of rustic community history."

The Annapolis City Council unanimously approved a plan to preserve historic Eastport Monday night.The zoning plan, proposed by Alderman Ellen O. Moyer, D-Ward 8, is designed to save the 100-year-old working class, maritime community bounded by Sixth Street and Horn Point, located just across Spa Creek from downtown Annapolis."

AN ARTIST NORMALLY does his thing in a chilly garret, alone with his muse and a blank canvas. Cindy Fletcher Holden did her most recent work on a busy public street in Annapolis in front of a parade of sidewalk superintendents, critics and kibitzers.Her canvas was a cinder-block wall at Fourth Street and Chesapeake Avenue, 1,530 square feet on the side of a furniture warehouse."Cindy's Mural," as it's being called, depicts about 30 boats that were designed, built or made prominent in Eastport.

IN EASTPORT, WE KNOW spring is here when the bittersweet aroma of burning socks fills the air. Sailors gather around a fire to burn their winter socks. This year, the quirky ceremony takes place at the Eastport Yacht Club on First Street at 4 p.m. Sunday. The public is invited. Bring your own socks.Flavor mixes with funHow do you combine an exercise regimen with civic duty? Follow Doug Lamborne as he hikes around town, passing out fliers announcing the third annual Chili Tasting Contest he's organizing for the Community Associations of Annapolis (CAA)

Eastportt International Inc. of Upper Marlboro, which identifies itself as the world's leading undersea search and recovery company, said yesterday that it had reached a preliminary agreement to be acquired by a Houston-based competitor.The Texas company, Oceaneering International Inc., agreed to acquire Eastport in a stock transaction valued at about $12.5 million, said George Haubenreich, vice president and general counsel for Oceaneering.Officials at both companies hailed the proposed transaction yesterday as "a positive development" for the Baltimore-Washington business community.

A husband and wife who had both been shot in the head drove themselves to a fire station in Eastport seeking help last night, and were flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, county fire officials reported. The 37-year-old man and his wife, thought to be about the same age, were conscious - one of them driving a truck - when they arrived at Eastport Volunteer Fire Department in the 900 block of Bay Ridge Ave. about 8:30 p.m., a fire department spokesman said. The couple told paramedics they had been shot a few blocks away.

Over at the Barge House Museum in Eastport, blocks away from the food, games and music, Shirley Peacock tried to remember names of classmates from Sunday school 51 years ago."I can remember everyone except this one and this one," she said, staring hard at the black-and-white photograph of kids spilling out of a doorway in the historic Annapolis neighborhood.That's the way it used to be in Eastport -- a community built on a peninsula between Back Creek and Spa Creek that once was a hub of activity for watermen and tradesmen.

The Eastport where Jean Herndon grew up was a close-knit community, a place where generations of black and white families lived side-by-side and earned their pay by shucking oysters and pulling crab pots from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.But within the past two decades, this traditionally blue-collar community has become chic to many white, upper-class professionals searching for prime waterfront property near boating and sailing facilities. With a robust economy in place and interest rates at an all-time low, the demand for property in Eastport has soared in the past two years, real estate agents say.People want to move to Eastport so much that Realtors have been trying all sorts of tactics to find sellers.