Mouths watering for lobster, we came to Maine. “Got any lobster?” we asked the man at the pound. He said one thing he sure had was lobster. He picked two lobsters from a tank and held them out. They seemed much too small to make a meal for two people who had their mouths set for a real lobster dinner.
“We’d like something bigger.” He returned to the tank, brought out two bigger lobsters and said, “These’ll run about two pounds apiece. Don’t often get ’em that big anymore these days.”
The man obviously didn’t know the appetite he was dealing with. One had to speak to him tartly. “Perhaps I have not made myself sufficiently clear. We are not looking for canapé spread. We are looking for lobster.”
He gave us a hooded glance. “Two-pounders ain’t enough?” he inquired. “How about a nice three-pounder?”
“Lobster, man! We want lobster, not bird food.”
He smiled. “Well,” he said, “I might just be able to give you what you’re looking for.”
It was our turn to smile. He called to a young man. “Bring out Old Sam,” he said. The young man looked at us, then looked at his employer, then shrugged. After a considerable wait, he returned from a back room with a reasonably large lobster.
“This is Old Sam,” said the lobsterman. “He’ll run about seven pounds.”
We were still not sure. “Do you think he’ll make a full meal?”
The lobsterman looked us both squarely in the eyes. Not a muscle twitched in his face. “There’s a lot of good eatin’ on that lobster,” he said.
We took it. Old Sam was put in a paper bag and driven home. We put on a pot of water. As it started to boil, Old Sam began to shake the paper bag, indicating an unhappiness with the proceedings. We ripped the bag and he came out thrashing. At the pound he had not looked like much, but on the kitchen table he had claws the size of Muhammad Ali’s fists. We recoiled.
“Pick him up and drop him in the pot,” each of us said instantly to the other. But Old Sam was touchy. As the cook’s hand reached toward his carapace, he countered with a left hook and crossed with his right, nearly amputating an index finger. The two of us glared uneasily at him and he glared right back, and then it became apparent that even after we captured him there was going to be trouble, since the boiling pot was not big enough to contain half of him.
We decided to try it anyhow. We couldn’t just let him push us around and take over the house. While one of us distracted him in the front, the other sneaked up behind him, grabbed his tail, swung him through the air and dropped him into the pot.
Boiling water splashed over stove and floor. Old Sam’s tail rested momentarily in the steam, but his claws hung over the edge and he stared at us with an expression of absolute disenchantment, before hoisting himself over the side of the ineffectual pot and diving to the safety of the floor.
One of us screamed as he moved in for the attack, and two local men who happened to be passing on the beach ran up to investigate. They immediately grasped the situation.
“It’s those people that bought Old Sam this afternoon,” one of them said.
“Might have known it,” said the other. He produced fishing line, threw a lasso around the lobster, trussed him tightly and rolled him on his back.
“If you’re of a mind to boil Old Sam,” his companion suggested, “better get rid of that saucepan and fire up a washtub.”
They graciously assisted in this operation, and when the tub was at a rolling boil and the lobster had been safely immersed, one of them asked, “What are you going to do with Old Sam when he’s boiled?”
“Eat him, of course.”
“Mind if we bring a few folks over to watch?”
We certainly did mind. Hospitality has its limits. They shrugged and left, full of winks and sly grins.
That was seven days ago, and Old Sam is still with us. After the first night’s meal, there was lunch of cold lobster claw. The second night, it was lobster salad from the carapace meat. The next day, cold lobster tail with mayonnaise. Then lobster roll. Then lobster stew. Then sliced lobster.
Periodically, grinning children stick their heads in the window and ask, “Getting near the end of Old Sam yet?” In town, solicitous Maine folks ask us if it looks like Old Sam will last us another week. It does. There’s a lot of good eatin’ on that lobster, a seven-pound lobster being the marine equivalent to a 2,000-pound beef. Which gives rise to an idea. Maybe tonight, after everybody else has gone to bed, we’ll sneak off to the highway and get a hamburger.