Since I mentioned Uncle Winthrop yesterday, I thought I'd tell you an Uncle David story. Uncle David was another one of my grandmother's brothers . . . my other "most favorite person in the world!
Uncle David lived in the coolest house . . . on the Savannah River! He designed and built it himself. The details he added were amazing . . . down to hand turned spindles on the staircase. I'm telling you, that family was full of artists!!
I'm pretty sure he was my grandmother's favorite brother because we visited his house more often than anywhere else.
Of course, living on the river meant he had a dock. I'll never forget the first time we went to see him . . . he asked if we wanted to go crabbing. Now I'd been around the water all of my life, but I'd never caught crabs before! The only experience I had with crabs were the Fiddler Crabs that lived in the mud at Grandmothers . . . you know, the ones we thought were hooligans?!
I got excited!
The first course of action was for Uncle David to pull raw chicken parts from the freezer . . . chicken was cheap back then . . . not many people ate a lot of chicken.
Well, I say that, but we always had fried chicken on Sunday . . . am pretty sure everyone in the South ate fried chicken on Sunday!
Irrelevant . . .
I sometimes got to help chop the chicken into pieces too!
After preparing the chicken, we'd head to the dock where he kept his crab traps . . . drop a few pieces of chicken into each metal cage . . . then lower them into the river . . .
. . . and wait!
We didn't have to wait long because it seems those crabs are always crazy hungry, and they love dead things. I think they love dead things because their eyesight sucks and they walk really slowly . . . sideways!
You didn't even have to pull the traps up quickly. They can't escape because it's not easy to get back out of one . . . besides, the chicken distracts them!
He pulled the first one up, and it had at least a half dozen crabs . . . a beautiful shade of blue . . . snapping their claws at each other . . . like sabres . . . trying to pick the chicken pieces up to eat!
Would you believe he tossed ALL of them back into the water?!?!?!?
"Too small!" he said.
An hour or so later, after pulling the traps up more than a dozen times, we had enough crabs (that he'd tossed in a giant bucket) to make a meal. Those suckers were desperately trying to escape . . . climbing on top of each other . . . slashing at the sides . . . to no avail.
Back at the house, Uncle David filled a giant pot with water and added some Old Bay seasoning (that's the only kind to use) . . . filling the air with a sharp, pungent odor . . . something I'd only smelled in restaurants! He tossed the crabs in one by one . . .
. . . I was fascinated . . .
. . . I think my sister passed out!
Those beautiful blue crabs turned a bright red color after a few minutes in that hot water.
Yep, we feasted on crab that afternoon (my grandmother turned her nose up . . . she refused to eat anything that didn't come from a grocery store) . . . at least Uncle David and I ate them. He showed me how to crack the claws . . . break open the legs to get that sweet meat out . . . explained that you couldn't eat the lungs of a hardshell crab but there was good meat within the body of the crab too.
Your Auntie M did eventually develop a taste for crab . . . almost an obsession for it!
"If you are too busy to enjoy quality time with your family, then you need to re-evaluate your priorities." ~ Dave Willis
No comments:
Post a Comment