A Bold Man

Trish is in Sacramento visiting her brother and attending an art show with BFF Holly, who lives in Portland.  So, I'm batching it for a few days.  I don't consider that a hardship at all, don't mind taking care of the dogs and fixing my own dinners.  I'm oh so appreciative of Trish's fine cooking, but her absence means I can indulge in foods that she doesn't much like - oyster stew, for instance.  I made it last night.  Yum!  Oyster stew was one of my dad's favorites, and a welcome change from our meat-dominated diet on the farm.  So, I grew up with it, liked it from the get-go.

The title of this post has an oyster connection, as you may know.  Here it is: He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.  Jonathon Swift c. 1700.  Even oyster lovers must admit that they look repugnant. The oysters, not the lovers.  A close friend is fond of saying that they look like small internal organs. Can't argue with that, never heard anyone declare them a thing of great - albeit understated - beauty.

My personal boldness level is limited.  Stewed, smoked and pan-fried, I'm all over it.  On the half shell, not so much.  I did try the half shell once, but only after a lengthy session of boldness bolstering.  It was in Madrid, the summer of 1983, while on one of the long Egyptian holiday breaks (I lived and worked in Alexandria, Egypt at the time).  Another single guy and I flew from Cairo via Athens to Madrid, spent a couple nights there, then rented a car and toured the Spanish riviera.

Madrid has numerous bars, called cuevas (caves), situated 2-3 flights of stairs below street level.  The cuevas are often visited by colorfully-costumed troubadour types who wander in, gather in a corner and play their instruments.  We visited a cueva and had one hell of a good time, shared our table with a hot Swedish tour guide who spoke both Spanish and English, and her bus driver, who spoke neither.  We'd buy the musicians a pitcher of sangria, then they'd buy one for us - and back and forth it went for several hours.

We staggered out of the cueva at 2 AM feeling no pain, ascended the stairs, and right there on the street was a guy selling oysters on the half shell.  My friend made a beeline for the oyster cart, bought a couple and snarfed 'em down.  I hesitated but finally succumbed and tried one myself.

Now, doesn't that look yummy?

An eye - less the eyeball - from some cadaver, 

and a large slimy loogie of unknown origin.

An oyster on the half shell looks like an enormous hocked-up loogie.  Feels like one in your mouth, too.  And it's cold so you know it can't be your loogie.  Uh-uh.  Somebody else hocked it up and spat it into that oyster shell.  It's best not to think about it.  Just tip the darn thing out of its shell, directly into your mouth and let it slither on down.  No chewing!  Chewing is verboten.  If a half-shell lover friend sees you chewing, you are beneath respect and will likely be un-friended.  Chagrin!  Horrors!

Once was enough.  Never again will I indulge - regardless of bottled boldness boosters.

So, who was that first bold man?  Or woman?  And, when did this great act of boldness occur?  We'll never know because the event took place long before recorded history.  The best guesstimate as to when is based on a 2007 discovery in a South African cave: anthropologists found evidence of shellfish consumption that dated back some 164,000 years.