Afterthought

It occurs to me that there’s a story that could have been included in the book mentioned in last post.

Twenty-odd years ago, I went to an authentic Maryland crab-boil in a run-down little place outside of Frederick, Maryland. It was wonderful. I have been telling The Wife about it for as long as we’ve been together—it’s become a kind of running joke (she seems to think that I repeat myself) in our family (she seems to think that I repeat myself). Well, we finally got to stay in Frederick at dinner-time. There were some old-timers working in the motel, so I asked about the restaurant (Jug Bridge)—and discovered that it was still open.

Within minutes, we were headed down the road. Thomas Wolfe says that you can’t go home again—but Proust tells us that that’s about the only place you can go. Sometimes, you just gotta’ take a chance.

When we pulled into the parking lot—now professionally paved—it was immediately clear that much had changed.

The place had a sign that lit up.

There were some decks stuck onto it.

It was more than twice the size it used to be.

It had been painted.

These were not good omens.

The motel folk had told me that the first George Bush, when he was president, used to come out for the crabs at Jug Bridge. I was more than a little worried by all this gentrification. But, having already faced the perils of family restaurants on this trip, we felt that we could probably handle even this—’though I was a little reluctant to sully the memories of my previous meal with a new adulterated version.

We were seated in a room off to one side—which had been the entire original restaurant. Linoleum, empty fish tank, bad art, many layers of enamel over whatever cardboard-like material that they had used to use to make walls. I found this strangely reassuring.

The waitress asked if we were having crabs. Oh, yes—and she removed the silverware, spread out a sheet of brown kraft paper to cover the table top, and plopped down two wooden mallets. At the sound of those little hammers on paper-covered formica I began to salivate like Pavlov’s pooch.

We ordered the big ones (there was an all-you-can-eat option, but the waitress warned us that only small crabs were available there). Do you remember the scene in The Loved One where Joyboy’s mother is using the remote to surf through all the food commercials on TV? She stops—all five hundred pounds of quivering flesh, an incarnate archetype of ecstatic appetite and libidinous anticipation—at a crab commercial. “Oooooooh,” she squeals, “they’re using the BIG ones!”

Beer appeared. A basket of fries materialized before us, along with the sweetest corn-fritters you’ll ever taste. Finally, a large tupperware tub was hoisted to the table. Under the lid, a dozen large Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, covered with a paste of Old Bay, salt and cayenne. A paper grocery bag was placed at our feet for the shells. Nothing had changed at all. God bless Amurricah, indeed.

An hour or so later, grinning and covered with fragments of former crustaceans, we sauntered into the soft southern night, thinking—for the first time in my life—that maybe George Herbert Walker Bush wasn’t all bad, after all.

The next morning, still smelling of Old Bay, we drove up to the battlefield at Gettysburg. But that’s another story, for another day.

Now that I’m telling the crab story, it occurs to me that the original visit to Jug Bridge took place back in the days when I kept a journal. Going back to that day’s entry, I discover that I never even mentioned it. Everything I wrote back then was eminently forgettable—and the things I do remember so vividly were not considered significant enough to write down at the time.

There’s a message here somewhere, but I doubt that I will learn anything from it.

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