KFC & Jumbo Shrimp
Perhaps becoming the most widely used oxymoron in the language of today along with notable competitors like “deafening silence”or “cruel kindness,” the idea of shrimp being jumbo or even extra large can cause jumbled brain waves (or maybe Jumbo brain waves).
Whatever the size, shrimp has remained a popular seafood delicacy for a number of years.
From 1977 until the 90s, our yearly sojourn to the Rehoboth Beach area would always include several evenings at one of the restaurants offering all-you-can-eat shrimp. The usual family harmony would fall apart if the restaurant was only seafood. The vocal vote was always two for any kind of seafood, one for shrimp only, one for fish or crab cakes only, and one for double arches.
If the waiter or waitress didn’t throw down their order pad and walk out before our order was completed, we usually got everyone fed before returning to the campground.
In our current household numbering two, Bert loves all seafood, and I’m the fish and crab cake guy. I recently bought a two-pound bag of extra large raw shrimp – supposedly at half price – for $18.
Leaning on my incredible calculating skills, I determined the full cost price would have been $18 per pound, or $36.
That’s pretty expensive, considering that I could at one time get jumbo shrimp for less than a buck a pound, and at times free.
Ridiculous as that sounds, it’s absolutely true. Shrimp was not the delicacy in my youth that it is today; or if it was, there was not much demand for it in a small river town.
Fifty-cents would buy a couple of huge pieces of shrimp at Vance’s grocery. That quickly converted to several hours worth of catfish bait, pulling catch and release channel cats out of the “then” dirty Yough river. Sometimes shrimp that had not been sold for a period of time would be given for free.
One episode I remember happened with me and my brother Ken, shortly after he returned from World War II. We picked up some shrimp and planned a night fishing trip to the mouth of Smilie’s Run, on the west side of Dawson.
We fished for a couple of hours when Ken’s rod suddenly nearly flew into the river. He grabbed the rod and began cranking something he said felt like the river bottom. After cranking for what seemed like hours, the “catch” came into view in the dim light from our lantern.
The bait robber was not, as we hoped, a giant Muskie, but instead a huge snapping turtle. I would judge it to be about the size of a garbage can lid. As soon as it got into shallow water and got its feet on the river bottom it snapped my brother’s line like raw spaghetti and was gone.
Preferences and parameters are certainly altered as we wander through our window of history. On an episode of “The Food that Built America” series, I learned that Col. Sanders was not really a military colonel, and he experimented with his recipes on chicken because it was the only meat product he could afford. He could waste products in his trials that he could not afford otherwise.
Today, the Youghiogheny River is clean and becoming cleaner, Col.
Harland Sanders’ recipe for herbs and spices remains a secret, and hardly anyone spends $18 for a pound of fish bait, even if it’s jumbo.
Roy Hess Sr. is a retired teacher and businessman from Dawson.