birthday dinner &c

 

This morning we have our six-monthly visit to the skin doctor clinic, which, I don't know about Linda, will leave at least me with various zapped spots on my head and arms itching and turning red, and maybe some smell of burned flesh, nomesane? 

The doctor is always curious about the birthmark on my face, but my mother told me it was the first thing she noticed about me after I was born, so counting time in the womb, I've had it about eighty-eight years and it's never changed. The doctor might love to cut it out, but neither I nor my medical insurance company would like that, so it ain't no way.

Coffee in my Xmas mug this morning: Lucky Goat that came with the mug. We thought it was whole beans as the bag says, but when I opened the bag to grind, it turned out it was grounds after all, had, as intended, been ground when purchased. Nice cuppa.

Neither my +Time blog nor this morning's blogpost are food columns, but here goes anyway, and as I finish and look back to edit and for typos, it's actually more a trip down Memory Lane. 

Last Friday the Thirteenth was Kristen's birthday and she already had plans, so we rescheduled to yesterday, Monday, MLK Day (a Navy friend reported to me that in Alabama it's celebrated as Robert E Lee Day, which I - - even as a KA with a portrait of General Lee over the mantel in our fraternity house grand room (KA was also was J Edgar Hoover's fraternity) - - at university seventy years ago, I find patently offensive in this day and age, but there will always be saved and as sure for heaven as if they were already there Christian racist bigots of the first order), and let Kris select where here in St Andrews we would go for her birthday dinner. She chose Uncle Ernie's. Good one!

Before Hurricane Michael destroyed the building, Uncle Ernie's was the relocated old home of Cap'n Ernie Morris, who as I shakily recall from my childhood in the 1940s, was a prominent and highly respected commercial fisherman here in St Andrews. I look out at Uncle Ernie's from my window here in 7H. See the pic above, their historical marker, the old Morris home had been relocated to the Bay waterfront at the end of 12th Street where 12th meets Bayview Avenue, and made a really quaint restaurant, always good food. 

In the mid-to-late 1940s, the early days after World War Two, Cap'n Ernie's daughter Gaynell worked in my father's retail fish market along with me. I don't recall our exact ages, but I was like nine and ten and eleven and twelve, and she was early twenties (I did confirm names, dates, relationships, and ages by googling and reading obits this morning). She and I were doing the exact same job, but by my father's custom for employing family members, I was paid $2 a week and she was paid $12 a week (at first I put an exclamation point there, but it looked like a sarcastic whine, which was not intended, so I changed it to period full-stop). Living with our father, as Walt and I knew but Gina was the one with the Mouth, you didn't complain about anything, still I did ask about the pay difference once and it was pointed out to me that as well as being paid $2 a week, I was being housed, fed, and clothed. So, fair enough, nicht wahr?! At some point before I turned twelve, I was raised to $6 a week and opened a checking account at Commercial Bank, and she was raised to $24 a week. Then on my twelfth birthday I started learning to drive (different blogpost) and was raised to $7 a week and told that from now on I was financially responsible for buying all my own clothes.

Well, not shirts, mama made my shirts right through my college years. In fact, one Time between classes at UFlorida, as I walked across the Plaza of the Americas, a boy stopped me and asked where he could buy a shirt like the one I was wearing. He was disappointed when I told him he couldn't buy one anywhere because my mother had made it for me. It was short sleeve, with a print of tiny antique cars, a treasure now long gone.

But in 1947, $7 was neither child's play nor pauper's pay, for example, I bought my shoes from the traveling shoe salesman who came by our fish market several times a year always introducing himself, "My name's Pelham, and I sell those good Knapp shoes," for $2.40 a pair - - brown leather, tie shoes, rubber or leather sole, I don't recall. Mr Pelham had a catalog for you to thumb through and select your shoe and size.

In later years I always thought of him when, driving north to Birmingham, we passed the highway sign for Pelham, Alabama.

Where was I? Oh yes, birthday dinner.

We made it a celebration, and it was most excellent. Water to drink, we started with the crispy ahi tuna and the basket of warm bread with a bowl of herbed olive oil. The house salad is the best salad I've ever had in a restaurant: greens with sliced ripe olives, a cherry tomato or two, olive oil, and specks of fresh grated parmesan; and it was so generous that I got a go-box and had half of it for supper last night. Linda had grouper imperial and a go-box for half; Kris had the most tender ribeye steak I've ever seen, and a go-box for half. I had fried soft-shell crab, and we each had an add-on lobster tail. In her go-box, Kristen took a bite of the lobster tail home for Pacey and later texted that he ate it then searched frantically for more. Although I broke my rule of always having oysters, our birthday celebration dinner at Uncle Ernie's was perfect and memorable, a happy Time.

RSF&PTL

T fer Tom, P fer Papa