cracked crab

It's crab season, time for a crab feed!

The thing is, nobody around here likes crab, except me and it's boring to eat crab by myself. No fights over the claws, no clash of shells being tossed like firewood into the big bowl. No homemade mayo like my grandmother made. No grabbing the extra lemon slice quick before it's gone. No green salad with slabs of avocado, ripe sliced tomatoes and delish dressing. No fresh and toasted garlic bread with chopped garlic bits sprinkled around on the dripping butter.

And no beach.

That's where famous crab eating took place and sometimes a Duxsbury Reef clam feed after a damp cold morning after hacking with hoes at the gravelly tide pools, but I think that's a different season. And no Tarantinos where the tomato cioppino was thick with fish and shrimp. And no crab eating Aunts and Uncles and cousins filling the beach house.

On the way home from riding, I stop at the smoking deli and I buy me a cracked crab and T pork ribs. I'm starving! Always starving after a rodeo workout, and T's sick so he's not cooking dinner, thus the deli.

Some people carefully pick out the crab meat with a crab fork. Some people fork bits out at a time. They pile all the meat carefully on the plate. They spoon a bit of the mayonnaise onto their plate and dip carefully. They eat the salad first...then the french bread...then the crab.

But manners can fail for other people. They begin the meal by ripping the claws apart and getting to it. They yank at the crab, bust up the legs and body, stab at the meat and suck it all out. Juice drips everywhere. (have napkins ready!) These people slop on the mayo/lemon/mustard and chomp up the bite, jabbing that fork into the shells for more. They dump their forkful into the whole dish of mayo, then mix everything altogether even the salad, (T's having fits, but then he's not the one eating crab!) even degenerating to eating with fingers, wiping puddles up with the bread, eating like a Goth or a Visigoth.

The crab feed is finished. Time to sag on the couch. Hopefully one of the neat eaters will clean up the mess. If not, it'll wait 'til morning.

The Barbarians are exhausted and full and fat and can't move right now.