I tasted lobster well before I read the short story; a science fiction tale of a boy from Earth on another world befriended by an adolescent native of the planet, a planet that features giant dragonflies which are a part of the diet of the locals. The boy from Earth considers the idea of eating these giant insects repulsive.
“I’ve seen pictures of the lobsters they eat on your planet. Disgusting.” is the alien’s reply.
Lobster was a special treat of my childhood. Our family did not have a lot of money back then; for those special times my folks and I stopped at a roadside building, wooden, flimsy, and faded that backed up to a small tidal inlet near Gloucester, Massachusetts. A homemade sign declared “Lobster in the Ruff.” At a window in the front my dad ordered the lobsters which were boiled and then served through the same window on paper plates. We carried them around to the back overlooking the quiet water and sat at a worn wooden picnic table to carefully enjoy our extravagance. There were always flies buzzing around, attracted by the piles of lobster shells that filled and overflowed a large old fifty-five-gallon metal drum that served as a trash container. I shared lobster, each parent giving me some of theirs, a claw or some of the tail. I doubt we could have easily afforded a third lobster for me.
I liked it from the first and over time came to appreciate it all the more. The special and delicate flavor of lobster demands that it be prepared in one of only a few ways; boiled or steamed, baked or broiled even better. Best of all is the true clambake, buried in the sand. All other ways, such as lobster savannah, lobster thermidor, lobster ravioli, the truly offensive lobster mac and cheese are an insult to the lobster. Additions such as cheese, various herbs or spices, or attempts to make lobster some sort of haute cuisine are simply wrong. A lobster roll teeters on the cusp of acceptability when there is no alternative. Lobster is meant to be eaten as lobster, usually with melted butter, enjoyed for what it is.
My dad was a pharmacist with his own tiny store which qualified us to attend a full day summer outing for retail pharmacists and their families. Featured were the activities typical of the mid-1950s; burlap bag races, three legged races, an egg toss, and, of course, the no hands blueberry pie eating contest for kids. But the highlight of the day was the clambake, which progressed while the games were being played, when finally the bake master and his assistants uncovered the hole and pulled out mesh bags, each containing clams, an ear of corn and a lobster. Everybody sat at long picnic tables, each adult with his own bag. Kids got simpler food such as hamburgers but my folks readily shared their lobster with me.
When our family had progressed enough financially, once or twice a year my folks and I went to a local restaurant and ordered baked stuffed lobsters. The bread crumb stuffing took on lobster flavors as it cooked within the body cavity, a lovely accompaniment to the dinner, a sort of appetizer for the lobster meat itself which was carefully removed from the shell, dipped into the butter, eaten, savored, lobster ecstasy.
My dad taught me how to eat lobster, how to get every bit of lobster meat from the hard shell. He was a thorough and efficient lobster eater. My folks’ appreciation of lobster was in some way an anomaly. They faithfully followed – in their home – the dietary law of their religion which forbade such as shell fish. Outside of the home, however, they ate the forbidden food with delighted enthusiasm. It was my dad who had introduced my mom to lobster and she became as enthusiastic a lobstervore as he. How he came to first eat the prohibited crustacean I do not know.
Growing up and continuing to live in New England made it all simple. Lobster was a part of the food culture. A food for a special occasion or an indulgence. When speaking of lobster people understood.
In our late twenties my wife and I left New England to live elsewhere for the first time despite a warning from my wife’s dad. He had been born and lived his entire life in a Boston suburb and considered the highway which encircled Boston as a sort of virtual moat beyond which one might encounter the strange, the unusual, even the forbidden. Philadelphia, he advised, was just north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
I did not appreciate his wise counsel at first. Within a few months of our arrival we went out for dinner. Baked lobster was on the menu; I ordered it with excitement and anticipation.
My lobster arrived. A lobster tail on a plate with surrounding parsley and a lemon wedge. Where was the rest of the lobster? What do I do with just a tail?
Part of the joy of eating a lobster is the ritual. While the order in which the various parts of the lobster are eaten vary from eater to eater, the result at the end should be the same; a lobster whose edible parts have been thoroughly and completely consumed, enjoyed, almost worshiped.
Where were the legs which I routinely break off, one by one, sucking out the delicate meat? The flippers at the end of the tail which I twist off and from which I then carefully remove the small bit of lobster? The claws were absent which meant that not only was I deprived of the claw meat itself but also the best part, the knuckle meat, the most flavorful and the most difficult to extract completely. And finally the lobster body, the meat that is to be found in such places as the attachment of the legs, taking care to separate lobster meat from gill. The result should be a pile of lobster shells, sitting on the plate, a trophy of lobster eating triumph.
All absent. Lobster missing, ritual denied, trophy unawarded.
I had been served a rock lobster tail. There was no more to this sorry creature than its tail? I could then see that the shell of the tail looked slightly different than a real lobster’s and found the flavor of the meat, while palatable, clearly inferior to the real thing.
My father-in-law had been right. We were too close to strange parts of the country or, more correctly, too far from home. I resolved to never again eat lobster in Philadelphia – or anywhere outside of New England.
Some months later I was spending a Friday night miles from our Philadelphia apartment, on duty at an affiliated hospital. It was quiet, I would have rather been home with my sweetie, I was missing New England, and missing an important connection – lobster.
I called our apartment and told my sweetie I could no longer endure it, I simply had to have a lobster. I proposed a quick trip when I got back to her on Saturday morning – a trip to New England and lobster. Should it get busy that night and I be unable to sleep she could do the driving. After a brief description of my plan she immediately agreed.
I called my best friend who lived in Gloucester. Gloucester, where my lobster experience had begun. Where my folks had introduced me to this special food, where my dad had taught me the correct way to eat it. Gloucester. Lobster.
“David. Gretchen and I want to drive up tomorrow and have lobster for dinner. Okay?”
“Great. I’ll get them. See you whenever you get here.”
Saturday morning, sleepy after a busier night than I had hoped, I drove the hour or so back to our apartment. A quick shower and change of clothes and we were off. We arrived in very late afternoon, warmly welcomed. A delightful evening, lobsters steamed in his large lobster pot, lobster eaten completely per the unwritten rules and enjoyed per the gift of life.
The next morning we three shared a simple breakfast, congratulated each other on having successfully managed to fulfill a lobster craving, and we two were heading back to Philadelphia, the proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line having been overcome, at least so far as lobster was concerned, at least for a while.
Several years later on a beautiful summer day I dig a hole on a quiet Cape Cod beach, line the hole with rocks gathered from along the shore and build a fast and hot fire of dried pine and seasoned oak – wood I brought from home – in the fire pit. When the fire has burned down and the rocks are very hot I place a piece of chicken wire over the coals and rapidly throw in seaweed gathered at water’s edge, then clams and lobsters atop and cover it all with a large heavy canvas that I have soaked in the ocean water. Then I shovel a thick layer of sand over the canvas. And walk away.
An hour or so later I shovel off the sand and pull back the canvas carefully so no sand falls onto the shellfish. Steam billows from the pit as I pull out lobsters and clams and then our small group enjoys the results of our clambake.
The group includes my mom and dad who, as always, are diligent and joyful in their lobster eating. It is a wonderful time and I think that, as I sit and enjoy the food, the day, and the company that the circle is being closed, my folks who many years earlier fed me lobster as a young boy, who took me to the druggist clambakes, are now being fed the same by their adult son.
But the circle is not closed. Not yet, not quite.
Our two sons become lobster lovers. They eat them correctly, as I taught them, as my dad taught me.
Sixty years or so after lobster in the ruff Gretchen and I are on a Maine island served by a ferry that leaves Portland’s harbor. We are there for the wedding of a friend of our younger son who is to be Best Man.
Our older son is also there with his wonderful wife and perfect children; they have rented a cottage on the island. We are invited to stay with them and the evening before the wedding he steams lobsters, large lobsters, which we enjoy sitting about the cottage’s table. I savor mine – it is a particularly tasty lobster – and am as always thorough in my eating tactics. When I am finished, sated, I sit back in my chair and ponder it all.
Now the circle is truly closed, completed.
Originally appeared in The Flagler Review.
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