Shutterbug Shutdown

On a boring Saturday morning I decided to take a hike on the outskirts of my home town, Berlin, Maryland. My adventure began on one of the many cornfields in the area.

A thriving chicken-raising industry long ago had dominated this area, but now only abandoned grow out houses dotted the landscape. This seemed like the ideal place to search for historical treasures that might help me discover a forgotten link to the past that could highlight the new book knocking around in my brain for some time.

Possibly risking a confrontation with some gun-toting local keeping an eye open for someone trespassing on land they considered off limits, I tramped across the field to the well-worn door of one of the abandoned buildings.

Just as I came close, my boot struck a hard object half buried in the soil. I lifted my discovery up and dusted off what looked like one of those cheap disposable cameras so many families used in the 1980s and 1990s to capture family picnics or days at the beach.

Finding this artifact in the middle of a cornfield probably miles from a family outing aroused my curiosity. I decided to search for a place to get the photos developed.

Not such an easy task since the heyday of disposable camera popularity had come and gone about 35 years before. Of course, Walmart had a small photo department, but I had no idea whether they could handle this out-of-service relic. Photo departments in present-day discount stores dealt mainly in converting pictures taken with cell phones.

Then it struck me, my friend Don had worked for the last 40 years as a professional photographer. He also had a reputation as one of the top historians about everything photographic on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore.

I texted him and then he called me back. He said he’d take a look at the device, although he didn’t hold up much hope of resurrecting the contents. Probably the cheap piece of equipment had laid buried beneath the soil and assaulted by all kinds of weather for almost four decades.

I excitedly drove the 31 miles to my friend’s Salisbury studio to see what he could peel back from the layers the climate and wear had heaped on the ancient photographic device. Don took a quick look and said, “this one looks like a tough one. There doesn’t seem to be much left. But we’ll give ‘er a try. Call me back in an hour.”

It took me a half hour to get home, but, just as I opened the door to my condo, my phone chimed.

“Took way less time than I expected,” my photo ace buddy yelled excitedly. “You better get back here in a hurry. Might have to turn these pictures over to the authorities.”

Don didn’t want to go into specifics on the phone, but his tone indicated I had stumbled upon something very disturbing.

I drove back as quickly as I could, not wishing to get pulled over for speeding and forced to talk about my strange discovery until I had a chance to examine what little remained of the item’s contents in person.

My friend opened the door with a shocked look on his face and quickly scanned the area around his studio before leading me over to his workbench and revealing what he had found.

“Don’t know if you recall,” Don said excitedly, “back in 1989 the OC Clucker, one of the top restaurants on the shore, went out of business suddenly and without explanation.”

“There were rumors of some poisoned chicken and an attempt to cover up the source of it, as I remember, “ I said.

“The police and health authorities never came to a conclusion, because they said a small kitchen fire destroyed the evidence,” Don said.

He added, “The scuttlebutt around the Shore pointed to a New Jersey mob boss as a silent partner in the restaurant. He supposedly saved money when buying supplies for OC Clucker and got his poultry from a farm in Berlin that had continued operating secretly after Worcester County health authorities closed it down. It took some time to discover the off-the-books farm because one of the cronies of the mob boss worked for the county and never reported it. Then, one night, a sous chef at the restaurant took a closer look at some of the chicken he prepared that night which a customer sent back because he said it tasted funny. The sous chef found a small amount of poison hidden in the chicken. Luckily. Noone became sick or died. When the restaurant employees threatened to report this to the authorities the mob boss came rushing in and started a fight with them. The fight knocked a pot off a stove, causing the fire. After evacuating the restaurant none of the owners could find the sous chef.”

Don went on to explain that supposedly no one could confirm the rumors or point to the source of the altered chicken.

“A few years after the incident,” he continued, “a writer for The Surfside Reporter, a local newspaper, interviewed employees for a chicken farmer in Berlin after the farmer laid them off before closing down his operation, supposedly due to an areawide slump in sales. They supposedly had secretly taken photographs when they started working at the farm showing their former boss and a well-healed mobster trying to hide the contaminated chicken. They also said the pair kept the operation afloat so he could supply his other business, OC Clucker, with poultry.

According to Don, the duo had recently resurfaced in nearby Wicomico County, Maryland and rumors began to fly that they had bought an abandoned chicken farm there and might be up to their old tricks.

My friend said after the former employees of the Worcester farm tipped off the Wicomico authorities, law enforcement had begun a new search for the evidence. They had contacted the owners of a number of local photography shops to track down proof of the Worcester County scam.

“The pictures I developed seem to show the farmer altering the feed to poison his chicken meat and the mobster’s gang members paying him off to keep the operation quiet. We need to handle this with kid gloves.” he added. “We need to get these pictures to the Wicomico County sheriff before the gangster tracks us down or has a chance to poison restaurant patrons in this area.”

Luckily, another friend of mine had worked for a number of years as an undercover deputy for that sheriff and had planted an informant in the mobster’s gang.

About a week later the mobster showed up without warning at Don’s studio and said, "I'll give you the OC Clucker treatment if you don't destroy the photos and all copies while my gang and I keep our eyes and our guns trained on you."

Tipped off by the informant, the sheriff and his deputies had hidden in an unused back room of the studio. They had handcuffs on the gang and on their way to the county jail soon after the mobsters broke into the studio.