Sam Matteson

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man,
seeking goodly pearls.” Matthew 13:45

I always feel a little hypocritical when I eat fried oysters.  I rarely eat other shellfish or crustaceans—mollusks, shrimp or crayfish.  You see, I don’t eat bait.  I prefer to eat what you catch with those kinds of things: real fish—snapper and flounder, or even catfish.  Every time I see the shrimp pink of sea bugs, I remember the over ripe smell of the gray Jurassic-scaled thoraxes that I pierced with a hook.

And I don’t eat crab, either, if I can help it.  I have too often seen crabs at the bay shore devouring a carcass: pick, pick, pick.  They are the vultures of the sea.  And I remember the “Jubilee” of Mobile Bay when thousands of crabs would crawl out of the shallows to invade the wetlands.  Fiddler crabs, in particular, in a Night-of-the-Living-Dead exodus would swarm across Terrell Road, making walking impossible and driving disgusting and tire threatening.  So, I don’t eat most shellfish.  But I really enjoy a dozen or so fried oysters.

Colored Photographs

Why I lack culinary integrity is, probably, because of the pictures that I carry with me.  All the Kodaks that I have seen of the 1950’s, the ones in albums with black paper corners half fallen out, are in black and white—fading apparitions of gray silver iodide, really—yellow around the serrated edges.  However, my memories of those days are different; when I close my eyes I see colored pictures, but not written in the primary chromatic alphabet of RGB—simple red and green and blue.  Instead, I see all the tints of a full box of Crayolas: crimson and fuchsia and carmine, jade and aqua and emerald, or azure and lapis and lavender.

That’s how I remember and see those days: with subtle colors, rich smells, and vivid tastes.  I often wish that I could dream with the palette of my memories; then I could be there again.  There are special things, though, that sometimes really do allow me to slip back sweetly to my childhood, as when I sample again fried oysters.  Something about the unique Gulf Coast shellfish specialty is for me peculiarly evocative.

“R”-months 

I admit it doesn’t make much sense; who would rationally eat a gelatinous indiscriminant blob that is mostly a liver and that is sustained by ingesting every microscopic thing that floats by on the tides of Mobile Bay or of Mississippi Sound?  Who sensibly would eat an organism that is linguistically circumscribed?  One that you should eat—if you want to avoid illness— only when they have been harvested with oversized tongs from the shallow bottom shoals of the Bay in months containing an “r”—at least in English?  Growing up, I often wondered if it were okay for a Chinaman to eat an oyster in, say, the month of May, since none of his months have r’s in them to begin with?  I must have asked such an impertinent question, and I must have been told not to worry, that a Chinaman would eat anything.  So, I confess it plainly: I am definitely a shellfish hypocrite; I say one thing but do another.

Actually, I probably owe this gastronomic peccadillo to Mother and Dad, Audrey and her accomplice, Lew.  It’s not that I inherited a recessive oyster-loving gene from either of them. And they did not force-feed me anything on the half shell, either.  Instead, my peculiar appetite wells up from a picture I only half remember but that contains the Taylor House, a Sunday afternoon, and our venerable automobile.

The Taylor House

I recall riding in the backseat of the gray ’41 Ford coupe that our family owned for over fifteen years (it was not new when it entered our service, either) days and nights, coming and going, up and down with Michigan Avenue and Church Street and the “Loop” with the tires and the road singing a comforting duet: “Thumpity bump!” and “Bumpity thump!”

I am hearing again the cramped up tar squeezing from the cracks in the cement playing the tire drums in a calypso rhythm.  I hear, too, my father’s loud, deep Yankee voice like the boom of surf blowing back in the wind from the driver’s seat; it is filling the back seat of the car with the sound of strength.  Mother is whispering to us like breezes in the Southern pines, her head turned to watch over us; she is spilling “Aah love y’all” over our childhood from lips of carmine, scented with Evening in Paris Eau de Cologne.  I am sheltered, slumped in the backseat with my sister.  My brother chortles up front in Mother’s lap.

“Why don’t we…uh…go to tha Taylor House…uh…for dinner today?” my father unexpectedly blurts after “big church” at Dauphin Way, one April afternoon.

“Ken we affo’d it?  Aah could just fry up thah poke chops Aah got in the Fridgeda-ah,” Mother replies.  Then she pauses….“But they all ken wait until tomorrah nahght, if y’all want.”

“Well, yeah….It’ll be okay.  I got some overtime comin’ ‘n ya need a break sometime ‘n the kids like it swell there.”  And Mother nods.

So Dad turns the car left onto Fulton Road, heading for the small cinder block building that sits back twenty feet from the GM&O railroad right of way.  It is the one, I know, with a rose-shingled roof that is marked by an elaborate neon sign and it fascinates me.  “T-a-y-l-o-r H-o-u-s-e” it spells out in scarlet fluorescent and sinuous characters, letter-by-letter, then blinks twice and begins again.

The rhythm of four wheels bobbing down Fulton slows and we turn sharply; then a gentle bump, and another, accompanied by a distinctive sound of crunching scrap roofing shingle.  I know this sound well. The parking lot is covered over with a flattened tangle of strips of recycled roofing like a plate of foot-long multicolored and granulated asphaltum noodles.

A Big Boy

I am six and a half—a big boy.  I do not want to wait for anybody to open my door, but I must.  I watch through the oval rear window the neon dance above, but I am oblivious to the full significance of the threading shapes that glow in the heavens. The lights, I know, invite me “Come inside, Sammy; y’all’ll eet good in he-ah.”  I know that this is the special sign announcing that we have arrived at the “Tayluh Hows.”

That these tubes are symbols of crystallized speech writ with torch-bent glass and glowing electrified plasma of neon gas is a cipher that is lost on me.  They are merely a beautiful, colorful mystery.  I am a big boy, but I am also only six…and a half.  I cannot yet read words but I drink it in nevertheless with wide-looking eyes.

Soon my Father is out and tips forward the front seat that has barred my escape.  I pause to glance through the windshield and see him limp around the front of the ornamented hood, displaying surprising speed and grace despite his shortened right leg and malformed foot, forever gimpy from his private war with childhood polio.  I close my door with two hands, leaning hard.  It slams shut.

When he arrives on the passenger side, he pulls hard on the chrome door handle to open it for the “ladies,” and takes Dale from Mother as he holds the door back with his elbow.   Then our flock of five galliard the way toward the door that beckons to us from under a striped awning.  We leave a discernible track of overturned scraps as we chirp and flap across the yard.

Her Flock

Audrey biddy-herds her flock of chicks, like a broody pullet with outstretched, sheltering wings, simultaneously clutching Cindy’s hand and clucking periodically with a reciprocating head to Lew, who totes a squirming two-year-old on his shoulders like a sack of feed.  At six and a half, I am sure that none need hold my hand.  Our covey scratches forward, too slowly for me.

Three yards from the screened door I fly away, and fling it open.  I stand holding the door ajar with my backside pressed hard against the fly screen and the decorative bent-aluminum scroll; over my head the sign reads to adults “Open/Come In.” To me it whispers, “This is it!”  The inner eight-pane glass door is blocked open with a brick and somewhere in the dark interior an oscillating fan stirs the air to waft to my nostrils the oily and sweet aromas of cornbread hushpuppies and French fries, peanut oil and other good things to eat.

“Ahn’t y’all thah little gent’lmin?” Mother chirps.  I look up at her as her pink-gloved hand pats her fair-haired boy on the head. I smile and mentally photograph the pink faux pearls around her neck and the matching black and pink straw hat; its black net pulled back over the crown for the morning.  With her other hand she propels Cindy forward into the darkness of the dining room, a hand on her shoulder.  Cindy blinks; and, as she lifts her own gloved hand to rub her eyes, it catches on the crinoline of her petty coat.

“Honey, be modest!”

“Yes, Momma,” she mumbles as the five-year-old lady brushes down her rumpled dress.

“Ooo-ah! Thank ya, Sammy,” Dad crows as he sways by with my toddler brother, whom he swings to his hip.

Audrey looks back over her shoulder disapprovingly. “Lew, pleeze!  Yo’ so loud.”

“Yes, dear,” he replies in a hushed and more dignified tone.  The sun glints from the chain securing his propeller-shaped tie clip that reads something in blocky indecipherable letters.  I know it is a prized badge of an aircraft maintenance school now tethering his tie, dapper wide and silky floral.

“Someday, I’ll wear a suit and tie, too, on Sundays,” I think but do not say.

“Cindy Lou, Sweethaaht,” Mother directs, “Y’all sit ovah they-ah by yo’ fathah….Now don’t-cha’ pout. Ya’he-ah?”   With a crimson fingernail of an outstretched index finger she guides my sister to her assigned seat on the worn plastic of the booth opposite, as she clutches the empty pink glove in her other still-gloved palm.  Slowly, as if she were dragged by an invisible leash, Cindy glides into her place in the corner next to the beadboard wall.

“Ah wan’ fried chickin, Momma!”

“Of course, Dahlin’….   Sammy Gene, you sit raht theh-ah aside me….  Lew, De-ah, will y’all take cayah of the chayah for Baby Dale?”  So we sit, parent and child, child and parent, on opposite sides, mirrored like the checkered tiles of the floor.  As usual, my sister and I perch next to the parent whose patience we have each least exhausted that day, and three-year-old Baby Dale, like an infant king apparent, the Dauphin, on his throne in a high chair at the end, already leans forward to reach for proffered oyster crackers.

I look at the black and white linoleum tiles, the cracked red vinyl bench cover, the white cotton stuffing protruding here and there.  Cindy and I scribble on the paper placemats with crayons that appear magically from Mother’s “pocketbook.”

Aah wan’ fried oysters

“Aah wan’ fried oysters,” I say.  My parents only nod but Cindy looks up, makes a face and spits out “Ugh! Sammy, how ken ya eet those thangs?”

“It’s ah-raught if he likes ‘em, ‘long as he cleans his plate,” Mother replies.

A large black waitress in starched apron and cap arrives, and smiles with glistening teeth.  I have seen her before.  She listens as Mother and Dad place their orders.  She scribbles on a green pad. Then she smiles again and speaks to me, “Le’ me g’ess.  ’Bet y’all be wantin’ fried oystahs, Honey.  Am Aah raught?”  I nod.

“’N ketchup,” I add.

She returns in a few minutes, not long after I have completed a seascape complete with a three-masted galleon; her arms are loaded with plates of food, a juggling spectacle worthy of the Bailey Circus.

At a subtle cue from our mother, we bow our heads and fold our hands against the table edge.  Cindy opens one eye to peek and sees me looking at her.   Before she can blurt her accusation, “Sammy’s not prayin’ raught! He’s lookin’ ‘round,” I quickly close my eyes tight and Dad begins:

“Our gracious Heavenly Father, we comta  Thee t’day
to thank Thee for all that Thou hast bestowed upon us:
this good food before us, our home ‘n thah strength t’doo Thy work.
Forgive us our trespasses ‘n sins, ‘n bless this we are about
ta partake for thah nourishment of our body….
’N bless each ‘n every one of Thy children around this table.
In the name of Jesus, Thy precious Son, we pray.  Amen.”

Dad rocks to his side to retrieve a handkerchief from his rear pocket to wipe the tears from his eyes.  I look down; “He always cries when he prays,” I whisper under my breath to no one.

But Mother leans forward, reaches across the table and pats his arm and whispers to him, “Thank ya, Lew.” And then we eat.

I feel a warmth that flows over the Formica table and spills into me.  I am not a stranger in this circle even if I seem a little strange and show an inexplicable fondness for illogical shellfish of exotic origin.  I need not understand nor explain myself to anyone nor make excuse even to myself.    It is enough to be warm and fed and welcome at the table.

Blessed Ketchup 

It was there at the Taylor House that I learned the eternal joys of the genus ostrea.  It was in that circle that I ascribed meaning to their taste.  It was there that they became forever tinted in my memory.  But there was more to it than a culinary preference for shellfish.

I liked the oysters, for sure; but I think I loved the ketchup even more—the way it ran down between the golden morsels onto the triangles of toast carefully arranged to sop up the surplus peanut oil.  The way it tasted tart and sweet and purest red.  A wonderful invention, ketchup.  It was more, yet.

As I dined, I dreamed of finding a pearl of great price hidden there among the crispness and ketchup, worthy of all I had. A pearl that I could sell and spend on me and share with my family.  After I had spent all of the money, I would still be known as the boy who found the wonderful pearl.  I looked for a long time—then and afterward.

I did at last find a pearl among the oysters.  Like much in life, though, it was not what I expected.  It was rough.  It was brown.  It was mean.  I nearly broke a tooth on it, too.  I could not sell it to anybody.  Ultimately, I lost it when it slipped though a hole in my pocket.  I was at first crestfallen, but later I changed my mind about it all: maybe I did come away with a treasure, in the end, one that I could not lose.

Of Pearls and Hypocrisy

Perhaps I found something else of even greater value, an under-appraised asset hidden there among the oyster fries.  Indeed, I did find something early that, these days, I unexpectedly run upon again and again, every time I taste the dark bay-shoal flavor of oysters.  Whenever “now-a-days” I taste the oyster and close my eyes, I see again the warm colors of the faces of my mother, my father, my sister, and my brother, their smiling eyes—their unfeigned but tacit acceptance shining through—and I feel the vibration of the road drumming comfortingly beneath me. I smell the bay breeze coming onshore, as I fit neatly into the pentagonal assembly.

Soundlessly, inchoately, blessedly they all hold up fingers of benediction to me like iconic saints in a Byzantine mosaic that speak “grace and peace to you.”  I am home.  This is what I remember.

Yes, to me, my shellfish hypocrisy notwithstanding, fried oysters taste very special, indeed, very much like the taste of…family—my family, of the Alabama gulf coast and of Mobile Bay.