EPISODE 5 EPISODE 5Keeping the kids entertained so the adults could relax was always the primary objective during our yearly summer visits to the family beach cottage. Maz, Tray, Jacq, Francis, and I would have been perfectly happy lounging in our folding chairs every day on the beach. But the kids would only put up with so much swimming in the ocean, building sand castles, and parental relaxation. We had to be creative to find alternative activities for them and more lounging time for us.
One summer, after expensive and slightly sketchy go-kart tracks had been patronized, bug-infested mini-golf courses played, and scorching sand dunes climbed, someone suggested the last resort: crabbing. The kids loved the suspense and adventure of reeling in and scooping up dangerous crustaceans. The adults were less enthusiastic, because we knew the truth about crabbing. It’s inconvenient, hot, dirty, smelly, and labor-intensive. However, we gave in, perhaps lured by the potential for relaxing in our beach chairs between catches, intervals that might be anywhere from thirty seconds to a full twenty-four-hour-and-fifty-two-minute tidal cycle.
It was a trade-off. To earn those moments of relaxation, first we had to forage for equipment: nets, long strings with sinkers and hooks tied on one end, and bait—the stinkier the better. We also needed secondary supplies: beach chairs, of course; games and books for the inevitable boredom while waiting for a bite; a first-aid kit in case of the wrong kind of bite.
Finally, we needed one cooler for cold beverages and another one for our catch. Experience taught us never to use the beverage cooler to hold the crabs, unless we wanted them marinated in Budweiser. The claws of an angry, cornered crab could pierce a beer can with one snap. Also, the convenience of lugging only one cooler was never worth the risk of severe puncture wounds when reaching in for a cold one.
Finally, we had to haul everything to a suitable dock on the bay. After setting up our chairs and unraveling our crabbing strings, we placed rotting chicken necks or fish heads firmly on each hook. We chucked the baited hooks several feet into the bay, tied the strings to the dock, then plopped into our comfy lawn chairs and opened our first round of cold beverages.
Aaah, crabbing’s not so bad, we thought—briefly.
Francis caught the first crab. He felt a twitch and pulled his string ever so slowly, luring the unsuspecting crab toward the dock. When he finally saw it in the water at the end of his line, he gasped, jumped, and knocked over his beer.
“I got one! Grab the net!” he shouted.
Miraculously, he had not scared away his catch, so Maz grabbed a net to scoop up the crab as it reached the surface, while Francis yelled helpfully, “Get the damned thing, for Pete’s sake!”
Unfortunately when depositing the crab in the cooler, Maz missed, and the crabby fugitive went scrambling around on the dock while the kids hopped up and down emitting bloodcurdling screams.
Francis eventually got his first crab in the cooler. Now, all we had to do was repeat that feat ninety-six more times to yield enough meat to feed our family of eleven, as long as we also served corn on the cob, watermelon, bread, hamburgers, salad, beans, and plenty of desserts.
On another summer day, we were saved all these trials when a rental car pulled up to the corner outside our beach cottage. Three men got out lugging a bushel basket and began having a heated debate in another language. Sensing they were from out of town, I shouted from our deck, “You folks need some help?”
One man spoke a bit of English, and he explained they were Korean businessmen who had just returned from a chartered crabbing trip. He opened the bushel basket, revealing layer upon layer of beautiful, gurgling, blue crabs. He told us they were staying in a hotel, and unless we wanted to take the crabs off their hands, they were headed to the beach to release them.
On one hand, it would have been hilarious to watch the three well-intentioned tourists inadvertently cause utter mayhem by emptying a bushel basket of vicious crabs amongst the sunbathers at the beach. On the other hand, it’s not every day that someone walks up to your deck, where you are sitting comfortably with drink in hand, and offers you sixty-bucks-worth of fresh-caught seafood for free.
Needless to say, we took the crabs off their hands, because that’s the kind of generous Americans we are. Bowing and waving, they thanked us profusely for helping them out, and we shamelessly accepted their misplaced gratitude.
As the rental car pulled away, we—Tray, Jacq, Maz, Francis and I—looked blankly at each other. Our crabbing ventures had never netted a catch this size, and we all wondered just how we would manage crab preparation on a large scale.
“Okay,” Tray finally said, “Let’s get started cooking these things!”
Jacq found a can of Old Bay Seasoning in our spice cabinet and read from the back of the container. “Says here, fill the bottom of the pot with equal parts water and vinegar, bring to a boil, then layer the crabs in the steamer with seasoning. Cover and steam twenty to thirty minutes until the crabs turn red.”
Piece of cake, we thought. As we readied our ingredients, we clinked our beers in mutual admiration of our ingenuity. We knew we were not like all the other beach tourists. We had a beach house and a steamer pot. We cooked our own crabs. We were practically as good as locals.
“Water’s boiling!” Maz yelped, and Tray retrieved the basket of crabs from our deck, where the kids were poking them with sticks and watching them snap. As the rest of us huddled at a safe distance, Tray picked up the angry crabs with tongs and lowered them, one by one, into the deadly steam.
The kids looked on, confused. Like most kids, they loved animals, and they loved food. But they did not often witness the ruthless conversion from one to the other. Poking the crabs with sticks was one thing. Cooking them alive was another.
“It’s not going to hurt, is it?” Lilly asked.
“Oh, no, they think they’re taking a nice bath,” Maz lied.
Just then, a crab leapt from the pot in a desperate fight for survival—or escape from his soothing final bath. As the escapee scrambled sideways toward us, Francis emitted a girlish squeal and knocked me out of the way to get onto a barstool. The kids wailed and dug their nails into each other, while Maz sprang spryly onto the couch. The rest is a little foggy, but two minutes later, our kitchen broom was broken in half, two kids were crying, I had a mysterious scratch on my shoulder, and the escaped crustacean was back in the pot.
Thankfully, the neighbors did not report the commotion to the local police. Despite the brouhaha, the crabs were steamed to perfection. Our mouths watered in anticipation of what would surely be a quintessential summer vacation meal.
We piled the hot crabs in the center of our newspaper-covered table and surrounded the pile with lemon wedges and bowls of melted butter. We trustingly gave each kid a wooden mallet and turned them loose on the steamed crabs. We reminded them how to crack the crabs to get to the meat, not bothering to identify unappetizing parts like gills, intestines, and genitals. Regardless of the arguably revolting nature of crab cracking and picking, the kids were so caught up in the fun of pounding their mallets, they didn’t notice. With each strike, the kids squealed as shell fragments flew and crab juice squirted.
For at least two hours, the eleven of us hammered and cracked, plucked and dipped, until every morsel of crab meat from that gift bushel had been extracted and consumed.
“I am exhausted!” Francis exclaimed once all the crabs were picked and eaten.
“Well, I hope you’re not too tired of picking,” I replied, “because you’ll have to pick a place to order pizza when everyone starts complaining that they’re still hungry.”