On Lobster

     While it's true that my Mother's love of lobster was legendary, I'd like to point out that my Dad was no slacker when it came to lobster either, and this blog starts with some of his adventures.....

     I strongly suspect that my Mom introduced my Dad to lobster.  He was from an Upstate NY hamlet and worked on a farm, that did not plant lobsters, and she was from the East Coast and had relatives that were in the business, so it's likely that she taught Dad about lobsters.  She loved them so much that my Dad became somewhat of an expert over the years on cooking them and carting them back to NY.  A good husband will do

The lobster that was as big as Danny

that, you know, try and learn about the things that your wife loves, it's good for the soul and your marriage and my Dad jumped in feet first.  Every trip that we took as kids to Boston to visit Mom's urban relatives always included a side trip up to rural Maine for a quick visit to that side of the family and of course for a lobster fix.  It started small with us staying in tents or campers on my cousin's property and having some lobster with them, but it grew after that, with pre-arranged orders and traveling back with them, the lobsters, not the relatives.  They made some money (the relatives, not the lobsters) and we got wholesale pricing on lobster, so it was a win-win.  The first time I remember doing a lobster run, we were actually camping in Vermont.

     We had found a small family run campground near Crystal Lake State Park and were settled in there for the week.  A few days into the vacation my Dad arranged an overnight trip up and back to Maine to get some lobster.  You would have thought that providing lobster for his family of 12 would have been enough, but you probably didn't know my Dad then, as he tested the limits of "the more the merrier" on countless occasions.  He walked around the campground for the better part of a day, introducing himself to complete strangers and taking orders for their lobsters, as if they were kin.  If they were uncomfortable cooking them, he offered to show them how, and at least in one case, cooked the lobsters for some folks.  He hadn't planned on buying so many, so he cleaned out a large rectangular box that we kept pots and pans in, and used that to transport the 60 or so lobsters back from Maine.  On later trips, he lined it with a hard foam and made it more watertight. The evening that he returned, the sounds of crackling campfires

Lobster fisherman

and the smell of boiling and steaming fresh lobsters abounded in that small campground, thanks to my Dad.  There was a large contingent of Canadians at this particular campground that were seasonal campers and they jumped in with the others and tried their hands at cooking live lobsters.  I've often wondered if the lobster run at that campground became an annual tradition with those folks, and I wouldn't be surprised if it did, my Dad could do that sort of thing, and that was just the first time I remember traveling with them.  We used that blue camping box numerous times over the years after that, gradually stretching the limits of how many it could hold, and when we got over a 100, we had to adapt.  That's when we built the lobster trailer.

     A lobster trailer, you say?  Well, kind of.  Dad had modified an existing camping trailer to hold 12 people and we had stenciled it "The Dirty Dozen".  It had 3 pull out bunks and 3 lowers, so that we could sleep a dozen people in it.  We used it for many a family camping trip, but coincidentally when the need for that number of

My niece Adriana showing Molly a lobster while camping

people decreased, our need to transport more lobsters grew (and the trailer bunks had seen their share of wear and tear) inevitably the points collided and my Dad hollowed out the trailer, lined it with foam and started to haul lobsters in it.  I don't remember the early trips, but I remember Dad talking to his Knights of Columbus buddies and taking orders, and I'm blatantly making it up that they announced it in church one Sunday, but it must have been close to the truth, because how else could we have sold 800 lobsters on a sunny Sunday morning?  That's right 8 hundred lobsters.  If memory holds true, we sold them out of our driveway one Sunday morning at $3.50 a lb, so a $5.00 bill would get you a nice lobster.  It was around 1981.  We sold out in a few short hours.  Like I said before, Dad could do that sort of thing, but he did pass on some of his mad lobster skills.

    I actually had the opportunity to go out on the lobster boat with my cousins once.  The only instruction was to not touch the smokestack that came up the middle of the boat, as it was red hot.  I made it out and almost all the way back into the harbor through pitching seas without touching it, that was, until I got bored on the last

stretch and actually leaned against it with the tender underside of my arm.  The scar healed and it was a lesson that I didn't have to learn twice, and it did nothing to temper my lobster enthusiasm.  I did my share of lobster cooking at camp outs and at home but the most memorable lobster story I have came after a successful night at poker.  I had a good (some say lucky) night at poker and the next day I was looking for a way to splurge with my winnings.  I'm a firm believer in frivolously spending found money, so I soon was standing at the lobster tank at Wegmans.  I like a 2lb or better for myself and that's what I had asked for, but they had mostly small lobsters, that is, except for "Ol George", or at least that's what the fish guy said to me.  When I inquired what an "Ol George" was, he directed me to look into the back of the tank and hunkered down in the corner of the tank was an 8lb lobster with claws that looked like Popeye's arms.  It cost me all of my winnings but soon "Ol George" was headed home to have dinner with the Yargers.  Buying only one deprived my kids of the lobster races that we normally had, but I'll never forget the look on the kids faces, well the picture that follows, helps.  When we stretched it out, it was as tall as my son Dan and he was probably 4 or so at the time.  We had to borrow a large pot from the fire company and even then one of the giant claws stuck out of the pot until "Ol George" softened enough to tuck it in.  You would think that a lobster that old would have


Is it any wonder that Molly became a vegetarian?

been tough, but you would be wrong.  It was delicious.  I'll finish this lobster blog now, and before anyone else says it, I'll freely admit that my lobster exploits pale in comparison to those of my Father, buy hey, there's still time and plenty of lobster left to trap.