Wharf culture: Fish tales

It is a good thing I live inland because wharf cul­ture doesn’t appeal to me — squawk­ing gulls, smells of the sea mean fish and I don’t like fish. That doesn’t mean I man­aged to avoid fish, espe­cially lobster.

The ear­li­est lob­ster story wasn’t even mine; it was my brother’s. For his 16th birth­day he requested a din­ner at the Jai Lai, extinct now but then the high­light of din­ing. He ordered a live lob­ster from a tank by the kitchen. As was cus­tom­ary, the waiter tied a large white bib on him and when the steam­ing crus­tacean arrived out­fit­ted with bowls of but­ter, he turned ashen and left the table. “Too soon alive,” he said.

Since I had dis­sected craw­fish in zool­ogy class, there was no way I would ever order a big­ger ver­sion and I had already a dis­taste for fish. But I am civ­i­lized and know how to behave at par­ties with friends so when a fel­low teacher at Dublin High School asked my hus­band and me to their friend’s home for din­ner, I accepted.

The friends were Barb and Jim True­man, the yet-to-be cre­ator of Red Roof Inns and spon­sor of Bobby Rahal, the Indie dri­ver. Barb served Lob­ster Ther­mi­dor. We were all young then, mostly poor but with aspi­ra­tions which meant act­ing a class or two above our sta­tions. My hus­band knew I didn’t like shell fish even fancy French dressed ones and said so. How help­ful was that! I could have whit­tled around the edges, offered up an allergy excuse, any­thing, but not the truth. There it was though. She doesn’t like what you so care­fully pre­pared. He ate mine.

Another lob­ster event hap­pened nat­u­rally in Maine on vaca­tion where my hus­band wanted to eat the state’s plate du jour. We stopped at an unat­trac­tive shel­ter with a dozen pic­nic tables and a tank full of “fresh” lob­sters. While my hus­band picked at his, I watched an old weath­ered, tooth­less woman attack hers. She had the whole tail in her hands gum­ming it like we do corn-on-the cob, green gland ooze drip­ping down a crease in her chin.

She saw me star­ring at her and said, “Makes you glad you are alive.”

One last lob­ster tale which made me wish I were dead. Again it was a din­ner party with lob­ster as the main dish. This time my hus­band didn’t say any­thing. I ate around the edges while he fin­ished it off. That evening back in our apart­ment, I emp­tied the trash for some rea­son. He helped hold the sod­dened paper bag and with­out warn­ing threw up that din­ner into the bag which broke, but not before cov­er­ing my hand and arm in vomit. I really don’t like lob­ster, espe­cially twice over!

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Oct 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.