Me and the oysters
Luke, I am finished with Luke for this go-round, having read the rest of TGBC daily readings through next week’s finale, Luke finishes on Holy Saturday, and selected pictures and written comments for each day and wrapped it. I enjoyed both the reading and my totally off the wall commenting, but frankly, that intense that it interfered, encroached, interrupted, not quite to say violated, well okay violated, my privacy and the peace of my retirement time here in 7H. I shouldn’t say that, but don't should on me, it’s my blog I’ll say whatever. Who lives to 82 knowing 83 is on this year’s calendar and not several decades away may understand, and if not, tough strawberries. Blueberries.
Blueberries to finish supper of eight baked oysters Tuesday evening. Monday I had a bit of a let down, so as soon as Linda left for her hair appointment Tuesday morning I left and went up the street to BG’s for oysters, which are consoling. Bought a couple mullet, nearly as fresh as I had hoped, two mackerel. The young man scraped too hard “scaling” the first mackerel so besides replacing it also gave me the one he had scraped too hard; you don’t scale Spanish mackerel, you just scrape them, their scales are microscopic fine and just make a bit of gunk on the knife. Anyway I brought home three small Spanish, two mullet; a pound of royal reds, my favorite shrimp that taste have the texture of lobster and taste like lobster; two pints of oysters (always check the sell-by date yourself, which I neglected to do yesterday, and take it serious, one of these was perfect, one too close and tasting it, so cooked thoroughly).
How do I like my oysters. Along with my brother, whom I taught by bad example to be my colleague in crime, I love them fried, but prefer my oysters raw, cold and briny. Half-shell is best, but second is (was, I’ve remembered this here at least twice over the past seven years that I’ve been writing my daily muse blog that 2018 Lent encroached upon) working in my father’s fish house from the end of WW2 in the mid-1940s, I did lots of things, developed a workaholism that I regret to this day, but also acquired a sense of responsibility. Our father was a perfectionist with us, with our work, a "fast learner," only one time did I have to go back and mow the front yard all over again, in the day before power mowers, that was a push reel mower. I cleaned fish. Worked with the trucks, one 1937 Chevrolet, one 1948 Chevrolet, one 1937 GMC, one 1947 Dodge and several later Dodges. Oh, and the Pontiac. A 1936 coupe with the back cut out to fashion a pickup truck.
Washed trucks every Saturday when they returned from their weekly routes up into Alabama and Georgia. Drove trucks to StAndrew’s ice plant for ice. Shoveled ice in the ice room after we got our own ice machine. The ice machine was quite efficient, and one of my jobs as a teen was, after church every Sunday we drove over to the fish house and I slipped on my rubber knee-height boots, after knocking enormous spiders out of each one, I never knew why the hell huge spiders had to live in my boots. If the workers hadn’t done so, I washed down the processing plant after they left, because fish processing attracts flies and flies attract spiders. I loaded and unloaded fish boxes to go on the trucks, stacked empty fish boxes on the white sand dunes in the side yard that today is the parking lot of Uncle Ernie’s. Especially when I was a preteen, but into early teens, every time I got a chance, between retail customers I went across the street to Pop’s fish house and played under the dock and also played on the old fishing smacks that were there, one was the “Tommy” neither Walt nor I have been able to remember the name of the other one; we were forbidden to play on the boats, but what the hell, we were boys. Chased fiddler crabs that swarmed by the millions on the beach across from our fish house where Shrimp Boat is now. But mainly, or sort of mainly, I worked in the retail fish market, from the time I was nine years old and WW2 was ending, until just before I turned eighteen and went away to college. With a wash down powder product mixed with water, we proudly kept our fish market clean, spotless, completely odorless, whereas Windham’s fish market, which now is Captain’s Table restaurant, smelled loudly and wildly of fish, as indeed does BuddyG’s unless you get there first thing in the morning, as I did Tuesday, while they’re scrubbing down.
But this was a tale of larceny and oysters, a thrice-told tale. Opening all brand new in 1945, our fish market was before air conditioning and before electrically refrigerated seafood showcases. So they had always to be kept iced down well, fish covered with ice, and the tin gallon of oysters buried halfway down in the ice. When someone wanted oysters, we opened the tin lid on the bucket and dipped out a half pint, or a pint, or a quart, into a cylindrical cardboard carton. When we couldn’t get Apalachicola oysters, which was rare, we had Chesapeake Bay oysters, so we always had oysters. Mind again, they came in gallons, tin buckets with a tin lid; not packed in the pint cans of nowadays. Many were the days and hours when nobody was in the fish market but me, and later, me and Walt. Many were the times I/we slid open the showcase door, opened the oyster tin, reached a hand into the bucket, and had an oyster or two. And nearly always there were two oyster buckets in the ice. One of standard (small) oysters, one of selects (large oysters). I never ate so many that the tide went down in the bucket. This was excellent training for decades later when the ladies of the church had several gallon buckets of oysters in the Benedict Hall refrigerators in preparation for the scalloped oyster casserole they used to sell at Seafood Festival, I filched many oysters before the ladies came to cook. Anyway, we had a cash drawer, no cash register such as I worked with as cashier in the cafeteria line my years at UnivFlorida. At nine I learned to make change without ever one error in nine years of working in the fish market. What else in my realm of responsibility - - starting 1949 when I was fourteen, driving one of the huge trucks, usually one of the Dodge trucks but I always preferred the Chevrolet, from our place of business in StAndrews to Commercial Bank at Harrison and EBeachDrive, parking the truck across the street, and, in high rubber boots and reeking of fish, going in the side door of the bank with the week’s receipts from our truck drivers’ sales. It was usually twelve to fifteen hundred dollars, a profitable week’s business nearly seventy years ago. I was trusted, and I learned responsibility. But the story was about the oysters to which I helped myself.
This morning’s story is still about oysters. After an Apalachicola friend nearly died (straight-lined three times in the ER that night) from mixing raw oysters with an alcoholic liver, I gave up eating them raw. But I’m told that an oyster chased down with a shot of single-malt scotch makes everything no-worries. We all have our sins, yours are different from mine, you confess to me and get absolution, my sins are none of your business. At Christmas, arriving Christmas morning, Jeremy, Tass and the girls brought me a chest iced down with two or three dozen oysters farmed at a place over near Panacea, the other side of Carrabelle. I opened and ate them half-shell, raw. Briny, cold and delicious. With beautiful shells, a dozen or so I saved. Last night’s supper was eight oysters baked in those saved shells.
As for this blog, writing from my own mind after seven weeks of Luke. Writing. I am no writer. But there are writers. Last night I read about Arthur Miller - Writer. Born 1915 he died in 2005. Arthur Miller was married to his first wife 16 years, and to his third wife nearly 40 years. In between, he was married to Marilyn Monroe for five years. When I read “Death of a Salesman” and his other stuff, I don’t think of Arthur Miller. Marilyn Monroe died at age 36 just as I was starting fall semester at the UnivMichigan. I was 26. Something crashed in the world with news of Marilyn Monroe's death that August 1962 morning. If you don’t understand, I guess you had to be there.
No writer, I don’t know what I do, have done, do. Not wanting to speak in public basically kept me out of theological seminary from the time I was ten years old until I started seminary at Gettysburg Lutheran the evening of my 45th birthday. I’m not especially good at what ordination requires of one. What then. Maybe being a naval officer. There was a time when I was good at that and appreciated myself. Maybe a good daddy or papa, not for me to decide. Maybe I loved/love them too much. Watching me with my children more than thirty years ago, a parishioner told Linda, “Tom loves too much.” Maybe so. Yes, I reckon, loved, loves too much to do the rest of life really well.
What am I doing this morning. Sorting out מַתִּתְיָהוּ Matthew’s name, MatitYahu a gift of God to his parents indeed to the world; but Levi to his business colleagues, Levi the tax collector who runs a tax booth because at college his practice set wouldn’t balance and he never got his CPA. So except at home where his mama calls him Matthew, his friends call him Levi because of what he does? like some call me Padre, not because it’s my name but because it’s what I do? IDK
About the blog: I’ve missed the musing and now said too much. Well, don’t read it, I’m certainly not going to.
Life resumes and goes on. The Pontiac is a story for another time.
DThos+
Blueberries to finish supper of eight baked oysters Tuesday evening. Monday I had a bit of a let down, so as soon as Linda left for her hair appointment Tuesday morning I left and went up the street to BG’s for oysters, which are consoling. Bought a couple mullet, nearly as fresh as I had hoped, two mackerel. The young man scraped too hard “scaling” the first mackerel so besides replacing it also gave me the one he had scraped too hard; you don’t scale Spanish mackerel, you just scrape them, their scales are microscopic fine and just make a bit of gunk on the knife. Anyway I brought home three small Spanish, two mullet; a pound of royal reds, my favorite shrimp that taste have the texture of lobster and taste like lobster; two pints of oysters (always check the sell-by date yourself, which I neglected to do yesterday, and take it serious, one of these was perfect, one too close and tasting it, so cooked thoroughly). How do I like my oysters. Along with my brother, whom I taught by bad example to be my colleague in crime, I love them fried, but prefer my oysters raw, cold and briny. Half-shell is best, but second is (was, I’ve remembered this here at least twice over the past seven years that I’ve been writing my daily muse blog that 2018 Lent encroached upon) working in my father’s fish house from the end of WW2 in the mid-1940s, I did lots of things, developed a workaholism that I regret to this day, but also acquired a sense of responsibility. Our father was a perfectionist with us, with our work, a "fast learner," only one time did I have to go back and mow the front yard all over again, in the day before power mowers, that was a push reel mower. I cleaned fish. Worked with the trucks, one 1937 Chevrolet, one 1948 Chevrolet, one 1937 GMC, one 1947 Dodge and several later Dodges. Oh, and the Pontiac. A 1936 coupe with the back cut out to fashion a pickup truck.
Washed trucks every Saturday when they returned from their weekly routes up into Alabama and Georgia. Drove trucks to StAndrew’s ice plant for ice. Shoveled ice in the ice room after we got our own ice machine. The ice machine was quite efficient, and one of my jobs as a teen was, after church every Sunday we drove over to the fish house and I slipped on my rubber knee-height boots, after knocking enormous spiders out of each one, I never knew why the hell huge spiders had to live in my boots. If the workers hadn’t done so, I washed down the processing plant after they left, because fish processing attracts flies and flies attract spiders. I loaded and unloaded fish boxes to go on the trucks, stacked empty fish boxes on the white sand dunes in the side yard that today is the parking lot of Uncle Ernie’s. Especially when I was a preteen, but into early teens, every time I got a chance, between retail customers I went across the street to Pop’s fish house and played under the dock and also played on the old fishing smacks that were there, one was the “Tommy” neither Walt nor I have been able to remember the name of the other one; we were forbidden to play on the boats, but what the hell, we were boys. Chased fiddler crabs that swarmed by the millions on the beach across from our fish house where Shrimp Boat is now. But mainly, or sort of mainly, I worked in the retail fish market, from the time I was nine years old and WW2 was ending, until just before I turned eighteen and went away to college. With a wash down powder product mixed with water, we proudly kept our fish market clean, spotless, completely odorless, whereas Windham’s fish market, which now is Captain’s Table restaurant, smelled loudly and wildly of fish, as indeed does BuddyG’s unless you get there first thing in the morning, as I did Tuesday, while they’re scrubbing down.
But this was a tale of larceny and oysters, a thrice-told tale. Opening all brand new in 1945, our fish market was before air conditioning and before electrically refrigerated seafood showcases. So they had always to be kept iced down well, fish covered with ice, and the tin gallon of oysters buried halfway down in the ice. When someone wanted oysters, we opened the tin lid on the bucket and dipped out a half pint, or a pint, or a quart, into a cylindrical cardboard carton. When we couldn’t get Apalachicola oysters, which was rare, we had Chesapeake Bay oysters, so we always had oysters. Mind again, they came in gallons, tin buckets with a tin lid; not packed in the pint cans of nowadays. Many were the days and hours when nobody was in the fish market but me, and later, me and Walt. Many were the times I/we slid open the showcase door, opened the oyster tin, reached a hand into the bucket, and had an oyster or two. And nearly always there were two oyster buckets in the ice. One of standard (small) oysters, one of selects (large oysters). I never ate so many that the tide went down in the bucket. This was excellent training for decades later when the ladies of the church had several gallon buckets of oysters in the Benedict Hall refrigerators in preparation for the scalloped oyster casserole they used to sell at Seafood Festival, I filched many oysters before the ladies came to cook. Anyway, we had a cash drawer, no cash register such as I worked with as cashier in the cafeteria line my years at UnivFlorida. At nine I learned to make change without ever one error in nine years of working in the fish market. What else in my realm of responsibility - - starting 1949 when I was fourteen, driving one of the huge trucks, usually one of the Dodge trucks but I always preferred the Chevrolet, from our place of business in StAndrews to Commercial Bank at Harrison and EBeachDrive, parking the truck across the street, and, in high rubber boots and reeking of fish, going in the side door of the bank with the week’s receipts from our truck drivers’ sales. It was usually twelve to fifteen hundred dollars, a profitable week’s business nearly seventy years ago. I was trusted, and I learned responsibility. But the story was about the oysters to which I helped myself.
This morning’s story is still about oysters. After an Apalachicola friend nearly died (straight-lined three times in the ER that night) from mixing raw oysters with an alcoholic liver, I gave up eating them raw. But I’m told that an oyster chased down with a shot of single-malt scotch makes everything no-worries. We all have our sins, yours are different from mine, you confess to me and get absolution, my sins are none of your business. At Christmas, arriving Christmas morning, Jeremy, Tass and the girls brought me a chest iced down with two or three dozen oysters farmed at a place over near Panacea, the other side of Carrabelle. I opened and ate them half-shell, raw. Briny, cold and delicious. With beautiful shells, a dozen or so I saved. Last night’s supper was eight oysters baked in those saved shells.
As for this blog, writing from my own mind after seven weeks of Luke. Writing. I am no writer. But there are writers. Last night I read about Arthur Miller - Writer. Born 1915 he died in 2005. Arthur Miller was married to his first wife 16 years, and to his third wife nearly 40 years. In between, he was married to Marilyn Monroe for five years. When I read “Death of a Salesman” and his other stuff, I don’t think of Arthur Miller. Marilyn Monroe died at age 36 just as I was starting fall semester at the UnivMichigan. I was 26. Something crashed in the world with news of Marilyn Monroe's death that August 1962 morning. If you don’t understand, I guess you had to be there.
No writer, I don’t know what I do, have done, do. Not wanting to speak in public basically kept me out of theological seminary from the time I was ten years old until I started seminary at Gettysburg Lutheran the evening of my 45th birthday. I’m not especially good at what ordination requires of one. What then. Maybe being a naval officer. There was a time when I was good at that and appreciated myself. Maybe a good daddy or papa, not for me to decide. Maybe I loved/love them too much. Watching me with my children more than thirty years ago, a parishioner told Linda, “Tom loves too much.” Maybe so. Yes, I reckon, loved, loves too much to do the rest of life really well.
What am I doing this morning. Sorting out מַתִּתְיָהוּ Matthew’s name, MatitYahu a gift of God to his parents indeed to the world; but Levi to his business colleagues, Levi the tax collector who runs a tax booth because at college his practice set wouldn’t balance and he never got his CPA. So except at home where his mama calls him Matthew, his friends call him Levi because of what he does? like some call me Padre, not because it’s my name but because it’s what I do? IDK
About the blog: I’ve missed the musing and now said too much. Well, don’t read it, I’m certainly not going to.
Life resumes and goes on. The Pontiac is a story for another time.
DThos+