Sunday, October 5, 2014

Local As You Can Get


Mr. Moon did indeed clean up the Cutlass Supreme and we drove down through the swamplands and the woods and the planted pines past roads named things like "Pinhook Drive" (which always makes me think of pin worms and hook worms) and through the town of Wacissa and the town of Newport where we were thinking of stopping at Ouzt's Oyster Bar for our lunch but since it was such a beautiful day every biker in the entire North Florida/South Georgia area was already there, motorcycles lined up like shiny chrome dominoes, old dudes (i.e., our age) with long hair and beards and leather jackets outside listening to a band and drinking beer.
We passed on by and went down to St. Marks where Posey's oyster bar used to be on the banks of the St. Marks River but it's not any more and that is a mournful thing to many of us. Posey's was as down home as you could possibly get. When I first started going there, back in the seventies, they served two things: raw oysters and smoked mullet. You could also get crackers. And beer. And soda. Over the years they expanded the menu somewhat but the oysters and smoked mullet and beer are what people went down there for. The floors were so slanted from age and moisture you felt drunk just walking across them and the toilets in the bathroom were so poorly connected to the floor that you feared you might tip over on them in the middle of a pee. FSU professors and students and politicians and all sorts of regular folks used to go there, Sunday afternoons especially. There was a dock to sit on and it was a fine thing to go to Posey's on a Sunday, sit in the warm sun on a cool day and eat some oysters, some of their delicious smoked mullet served on a brown paper towel.
Praise the Lord and please pass the hot sauce.

Anyway, a few years ago a terrible flood came through. It was the result of a perfect storm of the rains of a hurricane, a full moon, a high tide. St. Marks flooded entirely and Posey's, which was built over the water on stilts, mostly, was, as we might say, ruint.
There was no way to rebuild it. There was no code book in the world which would have allowed it to be built back where it had been and it's gone now. Some of the floor is still there and it's so much smaller than you'd think. None of the bar, the tables, the docks, the little beer garden are there anymore. Just some old tile floor and a new picnic table and a trash can. That's it.
The river's still there, same as ever though.

Another restaurant opened up just about half a block (if there were blocks) from Posey's and it's on the water too and it's about a half a step up in elegance and it's an okay place to eat if you have about four hours to wait for your grouper sandwich. It always takes forever to get served there, no matter what time of day or what day of the week and we walked in today and looked around at about twenty occupied tables, none of which had food on them and we walked out.
We tried this other place newly opened called "Cooter Stew" (I am not making that up) but their menu consisted of about five different kinds of hamburgers, hot dogs, and a grilled tilapia sandwich. Well, fuck me, you don't drive down to the coast to eat any of those as far as I'm concerned so we drove back up the road a tiny bit to a place where we ordered shrimp and oysters but the waitress informed us that the oysters were so tiny all we'd be getting was some fried batter, mostly, so we settled on the shrimp which was...fine.
The sign above was taken there, out front. I sent it to Jessie because whenever I go to Asheville I'm always laughing about how everything is local from the beer to the beef to the art to the knitted baby blankets.
"See?" I said to her. "You can get local products here too."
Glen and I both laughed at the sign. "Wouldn't want to eat any of that damn imported gator, now would we?"

So we had a good time and as we all know, it's the journey and not the destination which matters and we held hands, driving down the backroads, past all the trees and sparking river and everything shone like glory, golden and purple wildflowers covering the roadsides.

Here's what the Cutlass looked like when we stopped on the way.


I love the contrast between it and the tractor which is not our tractor. Our tractor is up in Georgia at the hunting camp.
Isn't it a beautiful car? It's running very well, flat-out on the highway, especially. It roars and it rumbles and it doesn't have cup holders and that's fine. It's parked back in the garage now and Mr. Moon is down the road in his deer blind at a friend's property. The friend lets him hunt there because the deer eat his garden down to the nothing every year and it drives him crazy but let's face it- that's just the way it's going to be, even if Glen does get a deer there every year.
When he left he said, "I'll probably scare the deer off with my snoring."

And so it goes.

I just talked to Billy. He makes me laugh so hard. Best thing he said today: He was discussing how he and Shayla fixed a toilet of theirs today which was a miracle in that Billy is NOT handy, or so he says. And he told Shayla, "Why do you keep thinking I'm handy? Don't you remember when I installed that ceiling fan and we just had to quit using that room? Don't you remember when, at your urging, I replaced a screen door and we had to use the back door from then on out?"

I'm still laughing.

Okay. Last night's shephard's pie remainders are in the oven. When I had six people at the table every night I cooked for twelve. Now that it's only two of us, I am finally cooking for six. This is the way it is and my husband never, ever complains of leftovers at all and insists that they're always better the second night. This one might actually be in that it was a bit mushy last night and perhaps tonight's reheating will decrease the mush factor. We shall see. It will be warm, tasty mush anyway, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's been a good day and tomorrow I get my boys. More adventures to anticipate. A week from now, Jessie and Vergil will be here, probably sleeping in their own house. I'm still not believing that but it does appear to be true. The cardinals have rediscovered the feeder, Maurice is still jingling, and my husband will be home at dark-thirty.
I'm sure Maurice will be happy about that, the little minx.

Me too.

Love...Ms. Moon






10 comments:

  1. Sounds like a wonderful day, Ms. Moon. Enjoy the rest of it and have a great week.

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  2. It does sound like a wonderful day. I wish someone had taken ya'll's picture in that blue Cutlass, riding down the road. I would love to see that.

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  3. You know, I just love your stories; especially the pancake story. Sometimes I can feel the sun on my face when I read your blog.

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  4. You two deserve that happy Sunday road trip. Glad you took full advantage of the sunny day. x0 N2

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  5. that is one fine sparkly blue car. does it have a bench seat? I miss bench seats where you could snuggle up to your sweetie with his arm around your shoulders tooling on down the road. do they even make bench seats anymore? I was going to work out in the yard yesterday before it got too hot but by the time I was ready, it was already too hot cause where I'm working it is in full sun.

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  6. Mr. Shife- It was one fine day for sure.

    Elizabeth- People wave at you when you're riding in that car, makes you feel like you're in a parade or something. I wear lipstick for our rides.

    Allison- Ah. That's so nice. Thank you.

    N2- Our weather right now is just unbeatable.

    Ellen Abbott- No, it doesn't have bench seats. I wish it did.

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  7. Love that car. I like the rumble too. But then I start to feel bad about guzzling all the fossil fuel. And the local signs around here are funny too. No gator but still interesting. Sounds like a beautiful day.

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  8. I love me some warm, tasty mush :)

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  9. Was it the No-Name storm that destroyed Posey's? A lot of waterside places got wiped out by that storm.

    Sounds like a great day! That Cutlass is beautiful!

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  10. Syd- True. But we just take it for local jaunts. So it's not too bad. Mostly it just lives in the garage.

    Stephanie- So comforting!

    Steve Reed- I think it had a name. We didn't really get the winds, just the rain. I wish I could remember the name.

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