A little bit northeast of Panama city Florida:
"Summer is not a time for people who are uptight about food."
My grandmother said this as we were gathered around the long table in the backyard of my grandparents' Lynn Haven Florida home.
On the table between us were several grilled, whole Spanish mackerel, a tray of raw scallops and my grandmother's egg heavy potato salad with a ton of dill in it.
Big tumblers filled with ice tea, sweetened with mint sugar helped wash down all the goodness and there wasn't much silverware on the table.
We tore pieces of the mackerel off of the rib cages of the fish, ate them with our hands, maybe dipped in a little butter or with a squirt of lime and down the hatch.
The crispy skin of the fish had an almost chip like quality to it and the spices that grand-da used were warm and made the tongue and the nose both feel awake and alive.
My grandmother's comment had come on the heels of a complaint from a relative who was dining with us. She had wondered why the fish wasn't already cut into serving sized portions and served like they did at the restaurants and why we had to pull it apart and eat it with our fingers.
My grand-da, quick to exasperate, had only commented that nature had given us the perfect eating implements right there on the ends of our arms, but that had failed to impress her one iota.
I, on the other hand, was in my happy place. Food from the sea, swimming less than six hours earlier, cooked by a person that loved me and devoured with the rest of my core family sitting closeby.
Mile 44.4 ~ Skyline Drive, Shenandoah Parkway Crescent Rock Overlook
Mom, dad and I are seated on large stones in the shade eating lunch. My sandwich and my mothers consist of Genoa salami, farmer's cheese and a sweet brown mustard on Roman Meal wheat bread. Dad is eating braunschweiger, yellow mustard and sliced white onion on the same bread. There is an open bag of Wise Barbeque chips between us and tin cups of lemonade balanced wherever we can find a spot.
Small leaves fall around us and onto our sandwiches and into our drinks. We scarcely register them, just scoop them out and keep eating.
A family in a travel van pulls up near us and out pile five kids. Each of them gets a different meal in a labeled container and once they have their food they all climb back into the van and sit with the windows closed while they eat.
The mother looks over at us with barely repressed disgust and offhandedly says to my mother, "Aren't you worried about bugs?"
Me, as an impetuous nine year old, pipes up and says, "They don't eat much."
She sniffs in horror, grabs her own bit of Tupperware and goes to join her brood.
Once their windows are closed my dad casts his one good eye in their direction and says, "Imagine how miserable that poor woman is. Every kid wanting something different and on a picnic no less. Give them Spam and a spoon and if they don't like it, a day of being hungry will not kill any of them."
A very worn picnic table on the side of the road, somewhere in Mississippi.
It's going to be raining in an hour, but for now, I have time. On the table is a to-go box full of sinfully good barbequed chicken legs and thighs. A plastic deli cup of three bean salad. An absurdly large styrofoam cup of sweet tea. Several little packets containing hand wipes.
Oh, and a crow.
He had been waiting for me when I arrived.
I had bought the chicken a couple of miles down the road at a place called Rona's and the smell of it alone as it sat in the car was enough to nearly make me wreck, or to drown from drooling.
I had pulled the old Plymouth off of the road into the small park like setting and unloaded my bounty onto the table and as I was getting settled, this enormous but rather haggard looking crow had strutted across the parking lot as only a corvid can and flapped up onto the other end of the table and sat patiently, waiting.
"Evening Vincent…"
I have no idea how I knew his name was Vincent, but it was, I'm sure of it.
"Interested in a bit of a snacker?" I asked as I was opening things for my feast.
"Cawr… Caw." Which according to the crow to dumb thumb monkey dictionary means, "Absolutely dumb thumb monkey."
So I pulled the first piece of chicken from the box, tore a chunk off of it with my fingers and shoved it into my face, much to Vincent's dismay.
"Hey, look. When you buy, you can eat first."
I tossed him a piece of it, though having tasted it, I was now not sure if sharing it was a good idea. It was bloody delicious. But mama taught me to share.
He was surprisingly polite in how he accepted and ate the morsel. Nodding and bobbing as though expressing gratitude before gobbling it up.
Eight pieces of chicken (I know, I know, but I was young and had the metabolism of a fiend), and the best part of the bean salad was shared between the two of us and at the end of it, both of us looked for all the world like we needed a bath and a nap.
Well, to be honest, Vincent looked pretty damned clean, while I on the other hand resembled one of the little gluttonous bastards in Willy Wonka.
He had gotten brave enough to take several of the pieces I had offered him out of my fingers and I figured that this was how he made his living. Mooching from roving bards that passed by his rather rustic old dominion for a nosh.
I was happy to pay that toll.
2023 Lance Cheuvront
No comments:
Post a Comment