Uncle George’s Lobsters
Our family lived around a rocky cove.
Every weekend during the summer George and his buddies would go poaching lobsters.
Poaching lobsters is different from stealing lobsters.
Poaching means you are catching lobsters without a license.
Stealing lobsters is when you take the lobster from the other guys’ traps.
The other guy is allowed to kill you for that.
Because both activities are accomplished in a small boat in the dark of night there are grey areas.
Once the lobsters were landed it was all the same.
George and his buddies built a big fire on the shore and got a big pot over the flames, filled it with seawater and when the water got to a raging boil, they would plop the lobsters into the pot and cook them for about 18 minutes. Sometimes there were big fights over 18 or 19 but the simple matter was that they boiled the bejeezuz out of those lobsters.
Uncle George was a lobster physiologist.
George maintained that if you took some rum and rubbed it into the back of the lobster’s head that it soothed the lobsters, so they did not mind the boiling water and they did not get tough.
It went like this.
A little rum on the lobster, a little rum in the water and then a little more rum for the lobster, and a little rum for Uncle George, rum for his buddies, more rum for George… and on.
All George’s buddies swore that the rum trick worked.
No one ever asked the lobsters.
None of his buddies ever got into the pot.
So it is hard to say for sure.
After all that rum everyone agreed that Uncle George’s lobsters were the best.