As we all get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving next week, I reflect on one of my best – and certainly the oddest – Thanksgivings ever.
It happened in Key West years ago, but I will never forget it.
A gang of us working for Treasure Salvors lived together in two big, attached houses on Newton Street. We spent at least half our time out at sea. And we loved it.
We may have had a great job, but there was by no means great pay involved. In fact, there was very little – and sometimes no – pay involved. Treasure Salvors founder Mel Fisher would often “pay” us with pieces of eight – small silver coins from the 1700s. They were nice to stash in an underwear drawer, but they wouldn’t buy you a can of Bustelo Cuban coffee and a couple loaves of Cuban bread at Fausto’s Market.
But we made do as best we could.
Many of us had small boats – Boston Whalers, one of the best small boats available. Very dependable.
When Thanksgiving rolled around, we realized that, if we wanted to eat, we’d have to catch our dinner ourselves. So, we loaded onto two Whalers and headed into the Gulf. Our destination was a spot we called “The Supermarket.”
There were always lots and lots of fish and Florida lobster hanging around the Supermarket. They were ours for the artful taking.
All the guys had spearguns. I never had a speargun, and that was surely a good thing. I am not “mechanical,” so heaven knows what mishap might have occurred should I have tried to fire one.
My job was to swim the fish and lobsters back to the boat, toss them in, then turn around and do it again.
The Supermarket was very good to us that Thanksgiving morning. The guys managed to snag about 60 of the small, tasty Florida lobsters. Since there were 19 of us who’d be hungry for dinner, that was not an inordinate amount. The lobsters crawled and clawed around in the bed of the boat while we made our way back to the island.
Once back at the house, each of us scrambled around finding “the fixings” we could contribute to the dinner. I happened to have a few sticks of butter in the fridge, so that was very welcome. What’s lobster without melted butter?
I don’t have any idea what they were doing there, or how they got there, but I discovered several turnips in the vegetable bin of the fridge. Since no one had any potatoes, turnips would have to do. I fixed them as if they were mashed potatoes, and found they were darned good. Better than nothing, that’s for sure!
I can’t remember what the rest of us came up with to contribute to the feast. But, a feast it surely was. The guys dealt with harvesting the lobster tails and boiling them up. We had a very long table in the dining room. It would easily fit the19 of us. We even had enough plates and silverware!
Oh, it was such a fabulous feast. And, it hadn’t cost us a thing. That was good, since we had virtually nothing to spend anyway.
But, 60 lobster tails, with melted butter, some mashed turnips, and other “found” foodstuffs scraped together into one great, memorable meal. And we were very thankful to have it.
Working together to create a delicious meal out of what we could find and procure – we sure had to love it!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you don’t have to catch your own dinner, but if you do, consider yourselves lucky!
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