Word: easton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Here and there in the country this time of year, the waterfowl season is raised to the level of celebration. One such wingding, if you will, is held in the Maryland town of Easton, on the Delmarva Peninsula, and it probably reflects appreciation for the birds as well...
Catalog freaks would recognize Easton as an L.L. Bean kind of town. On second thought, that may be a little narrow. It is a Bean-Gokeys-Orvis-Eddie Bauer-Lands' End kind of town; it spreads its trade around. Topsiders, penny loafers, khaki pants, monogrammed sweaters, oxford-cloth shirts, lamb suede jackets and the ever present tweed, to say nothing of argyle socks, contribute heavily to the Easton uniform. Easton was preppie when preppie wasn't cool. Ducks embellish its mailboxes; there are ducks on its welcome mats. It is a place of fine old houses hugging tidy...
Fourteen years ago, Easton put on its first annual waterfowl festival. Today the town of 8,000 or so entertains roughly 35,000 celebrators during the three-day event. (The people who attend tend to dress like the people of Easton. A first-time visitor this year was struck by the thought that if a poor man could manage to obtain a chamois-shirt concession, all his envy of Croesus would cease.) The affair nets as much as $200,000, a sum the town divides among waterfowl-conservation groups. Some of the paintings for sale fetch as much...
...carver labors under a marketing burden the painter does not have. According to Scott Beatty, a big, strapping accountant in Easton and president of this year's festival, "Anywhere you have a wall in your house, you have a place for flat art. But you have to think hard about where you're going to put a bird...
...church a few blocks away from Beatty's jury-rigged attic office in Easton's Tidewater Inn, some of the nation's finest decoy makers were explaining their techniques to a rapt audience. "Think egg, think oval, think round, think pleasant," said Tan Brunet, a championship carver from Galliano, La. "A bird has no corners." As he talked, a neighbor, Jimmie Vizier, another prizewinning carver, addressed a block of tupelo. Shavings flew. Brunet chalked a map of the United States on a blackboard, understandably skewing the southern dip of Louisiana so that it was more prominent than...