TJ and I needed a quick recharge, so for fun, we booked ourselves in an unusual bed and breakfast in the heart of waterfront Annapolis, the Maryland state capital. Home of the United States Naval Academy and some of the best seafood you’ll get anywhere. Planted in the seat of the Capitol Building’s shadow, we took a chance on an hour-away getaway at a hotel planted overtop a local institution delicatessen and crab cake emporium, Chick & Ruth’s.

Crammed into the tourist and Midshipman artery of Annapolis at 165 Main Street, Chick & Ruth’s is an experience, whether you’re a local or an out-of-towner. As lifer Marylanders, TJ and I somehow missed this place in our travels and what a fun drop into yesteryear we had in this joint that’s been in operation since 1965 and painstakingly preserved through six decades. Bars, taverns and restaurants come and go in Annapolis, but Chick & Ruth’s perseveres and as home to the area’s most “legendary” crab cake, they live up to it.

I ended up getting Chick & Ruth’s crab cake after having one elsewhere, just to see if they deserve the claim and after seeing the place mobbed nearly the entire weekend. I’ve had my share of crab cakes around Maryland, and in Annapolis, yes indeed, Chick & Ruth’s owns it. It was so damn good I saved half to bring home.

We’d enjoyed ourselves having an outdoor lunch at Market Place and a scaled back dinner at the famous Middleton Tavern, long reported to be haunted. I found no ghosts, per se, but a picture of us at our table in the Middleton Tavern shows a beam casting down upon us. Make your own judgment. Ghost, the Divine or chance sun casting. We were being blessed, I know it, even as I grossed my wife out doing an oyster shooter which I hadn’t done since my thirties.

We’d tramped all around old town streets and the second day enjoying dinner with TJ’s daughter and her new significant other on the waterfront at Choptank where I had some insane coconut mussels. Yet getting back to Chick & Ruth’s, you never realize what’s possible when you combine something out of the ordinary. This wasn’t your typical B&B inside someone’s restored Victorian or Civil War era home with a home cooked breakfast in company with other couples and families around a centralized table. This was a modernized two-floor hotel with compact rooms. Showering was a hoot, but cred point given to the massage soaker.

Our breakfast was from a selection off Chick & Ruth’s Delly morning menu. We split a large fruit cup and French Toast, and it was terrific stuff but the coffee, dear God, was I in heaven, going so far as to ask our server which blend they used. I had four cups. TJ matched me in as many hot teas. Royal Cup Coffee, check! On the ordering list.

Now, as you can see in these pictures, Chick & Ruth’s unabashedly leaves their 1960s day glo color scheme of yellows and oranges with scores of framed pictures around the entire place showing off visiting celebrities, regional politicians and sports legends. Also of belly busters who dared take on Chick & Ruth’s “Colossal” milkshake and burgers. I’ll let you dig into that and see where your constitution lies. You’ll find old-time spinner stools at the counter with knee-level hangar hooks. The booths are snug, and you will get to know your neighbor, but what’s really cool is the eye level mounted condiment racks you just don’t see anymore. Not even your oldest school Waffle House has such groovy, wayback charm.

It wasn’t just the food and the friendly service that rocks at Chick & Ruth’s (and it’s mighty impressive to see the staff barreling through thinned quarters all around the restaurant like a sweat-oiled machine), it was the sense of pride you couldn’t help but soak up. Pride in the staff, but pride in the people around you. Mostly locals, who outnumbered the tourists. People who’ve lived in Annapolis all their lives, newbie Midshipmen who flooded the place Saturday night on the hunt for those renowned crab cakes. People who recently moved to the area, such as the young army guy sitting in tight quarters next to us, who was having a Daddy-Daughter morning with a sweet little girl. We kicked up a conversation about parenthood I’m not likely to ever forget.

If you’re going to get down into why we really loved Chick & Ruth’s and why we lollygagged for more than an hour pounding hot drinks and enjoying the atmosphere, it’s the restaurant’s daily tradition around 9:30 a.m. of reciting the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

Everything stops, everyone rises and pivots to the ceiling draped American flag, hands planted over hearts and everyone unashamed, even in these turbulent days of our country, to do what most of us haven’t done since our school days. TJ is prior Navy herself, and it had been so long since either of us had the forum to recite it. We did so proudly, for our own moral compass in the America we believe in, pledging our allegiance to a republic, not a regime. Recollecting what is right as a patriot without subscribing to deconstructive fundamentalism.

It was a place where politics were checked to the curb, despite the looming shadow of the Maryland governmental citadel. Where civilians and middies shared space, the latter young men and women offering their services to their country regardless of race and sex. I spied this generation with a smile, knowing my son will soon be army-bound for a country that could use a reminder this land is founded on the principle of liberty and justice for ALL.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.