Grandma Sage was a minister’s daughter. And not just any minister, either. Her father, the Reverend Edward Newcomb was the quintessential late nineteenth century clergyman: protégé of the reactionary Dwight L. Moody
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Even in his eighties, Great Grandfather Newcomb would wear a black three piece suit and a black bow tie on a summer weekday. His voice boomed as if he were still standing at the lectern of the cavernous Keene, New Hampshire Congregational Church where he preached for so many years during the first part of the twentieth century. There was certainly no card playing or dancing in his parsonage.
So it was a constant surprise to me when Grandma Sage displayed her droll wit, her love of a pun, or her ability to say something funny and light hearted at the most unusual moments, and never crack a smile...except maybe for a little twinkle in her eye. She could also turn on a dime and be as stern and severe as her upbringing might indicate. But that side of her diminished as she grew older, and her fun loving side expanded.
Grandpa Sage, on the other hand, was more overtly easy going. That is unless he was losing at pinochle, hitting a nail sideways during a carpentry project, or dripping hot solder on his expansive and naked belly while doing plumbing repairs in the cellar at Gladimere, the Sage's summer cottage.
My spring and summer weekends were often spent with them at the beach. Friday afternoons we would drive down to the little shore town of Niantic. We almost always had supper either at the Niantic Grill or at Johnny's Restaurant. That's how I developed my taste for swordfish. Grandpa and I would have that, although sometimes he would order steak. “Leave the moo in it”, he would call out to the waitress. Grandma Sage would have any lobster dish where the meat was already picked out. After supper we'd head over to Gladimere, turn on the water, air the place out, and get ready for bed.
Saturdays, after going to town for the newspaper and having one of Grandma's poached egg on toast breakfasts, there were always exciting projects going on in the neighborhood. Grandpa Sage was the resident supervisor of every job being undertaken in a three block radius. We were intimately involved in the making of Bill Wilson's stone wall (well, they were both Masons...from the same lodge, no less), the addition to Freddie Norgren's log cabin, and Uncle Ed's flag stone walk way.
If there was no project that required our expertise, I would go off with some of the other kids exploring the big jetty or just swimming at the beach.
Once or twice each summer, though, Grandpa Sage and I would go hunting for blue crabs. We always came back with at least a bushel basket full that Grandma Sage would prepare for our lunch. I never watched how this was done, because we would deposit the crabs in the kitchen and go out in the backyard and reward ourselves with a beer or two (birch beer for me, and Miller High Life for Grandpa).
We elevated crabbing from an exact science to a high art. This one particular morning after our poached eggs on toast, we headed into town for a bag of fish heads at Hillyer's Fish Market. The bigger and smellier they were, the better the crabs seemed to like them. Back at the cottage, we collected the rest of our gear. Along with the bait, we brought two scoop nets on long poles, a couple of empty bushel baskets for our catch, a ball of heavy cotton twine and a couple of solid twigs or sticks and a hammer.
The Pattangansett River was the best place for catching blue crabs. After parking the car off the road, we took our gear down to the flats alongside the river. We timed our arrival to coincide with the outgoing tide. That way we had several hours of good crabbing before the shore became flooded again. Finding the right spot was a ritual to which we religiously adhered. It had to be a flat area within a few feet of the water's edge with a clump of grass nearby for our gear, and facing north and slightly west so that the glare of the morning sun wouldn't destroy our ability to see our prey.
That morning we were lucky. No one else was there and we found a particularly promising spot. We placed our gear down, and Grandpa banged the stakes into the mud flats about a yard back from the edge of the river, and relit his cigar.
To this day when I smell a cigar it reminds me of him. Even though I don't smoke and I can't stand the stench, the smell of cigar smoke fills me with fond and loving memories of him and those weekends at the beach.
He loved his cigars and he loved crabbing, too. Looking back, I think now that puffing on a cigar was his way of masking the smell of those big ripe fish heads.
Attaching the bait to the string was the only part I hated, but I put up with it because otherwise there would be no crabbing and no crab meat salad for lunch.
First we each cut off about thirty feet of string. Next we each took a fish head out of the by now leaky bait bag and threaded one end of the string through the mouth and out where the rest of the fish would have been. Then we tied a knot in the string that wouldn't come undone. Grandpa Sage knew exactly the right way to tie the string, although as he got older, he became a member of the “if you can't tie a knot, tie a lot” school of marlinspike seamanship. Finally we tied the other end of our string onto our stake in the ground so that the whole rig wouldn't accidentally get tossed into the water.
Now the real art of crabbing came into play.
We each took hold of our string in our right hand about three feet aft of the fish head, and gently took a few underhanded swings. When it felt right, you let the fish head fly out over the edge of the creek out into the stream about ten feet or so. Then haul in on the line to make it just taught enough so that the fat cotton string would float on the surface. From then on, crabbing consisted of waiting patiently for an unsuspecting crab to take the bait.
“Ya got one!”, he cried as my string ever so gradually began to rise off the surface of the water. That was the telltale sign that a crab had taken hold of the fish head and was dragging it to a safe place. The idea was to slowly and evenly pull in the line hand over hand, with the scoop net under one arm. As I pulled the crab closer to shore he came into view.
“Ooh mmmyyy gaawd, Butch, will ya look at that!”
Grandpa Sage was the only person who ever called me “Butch". It was his nickname for me. We both had the same first name, Preston. I understand now that it would have felt funny to call out you own name.
“That's the biggest blue crab I've ever seen”, Grandpa exclaimed. “Be careful, now.”
The rest was up to me. The great thing about doing stuff with Grandpa was he let me do things myself. And I knew what to do.
As I pulled the crab toward shore, it was important to maintain a steady pressure so that the crab wouldn't feel any sudden jerky motions. As I did so, I gradually worked the scoop net out from under my left arm so I could hold it with my left hand. Then I carefully put the net in the water and kept pulling the crab toward shore with my other hand until it was over the open mouth of the net. With a great swooping motion I lifted the scoop net up to meet the crab and brought my catch to shore, holding it over the empty bushel basket.
What a monster! This blue crab must have been at least eight inches from spike to spike. I lifted the fish head with the crab tenaciously clinging to it out of the net and held it over the basket, shaking it loose from the bait until it fell in.
Getting a crab that big on my first try with Grandpa right there was maybe the best feeling in the World as I knew it then.
“That's the cat's meow. Great job, Butch! Uh oh, uh oh. I got one, too!” His string started to move up and away from its floating position on the surface of the creek.
Here was my chance to see the master at work. Chomping down on his Rosedale Panetella he went into action, deftly and smoothly performing all the steps to successful crabbing in one seamless motion.
Just as he was about to scoop his crab up into the net and out of the water, the smoke from his cigar managed to waft up into his eyes blurring his vision so badly that he had to squint through his gold rimmed glasses to see anything at all. Even so, he got the crab into the net and out of the water.
As he arched fish head, crab and net over the edge of the creek toward the basket I heard this blood curdling rapid fire scream,”OOH, OOH, OOH, @&$%#@!*,AHHHHRGHJEEEEZZUSS!”
A gigantic red cigar ash had fallen off the Rosedale and onto his naked, hairy and watermelon sized belly. I was astonished and ashen myself. I thought he not only had suffered life threatening burns, but that our crabbing outing was coming to a premature end.
But no, my deepest fears were unfounded.
Here's where his years of cigar smoking and blue crabbing came together. Even while almost losing his footing in the mud from holding his head sideways and still squinting from the cigar smoke in his eyes, he managed to brush the hot ash off his singed stomach with one hand and get the crab in the basket with the other.
It only took Grandpa a few seconds to regain his footing, his sight and his composure all at the same time. He took his cigar ceremoniously out of his mouth and flicked the now non-existent ash into the water, and said with a flourish, “well Butch, Grandma better get ready, ‘cause it looks like lunch is on its way!”
We swung our fish heads out into the water again, and the crabs kept rolling in. What a haul! What a day!
It was two hours later, but it seemed like only a few minutes, when we looked over and saw that both baskets were almost full and decided to call it quits. “Let's leave some for the next time, eh?” he said with a puff on his cigar and a twinkle in his eye. “We've got plenty to keep Grandma busy.”
We made two trips back to the car. The first was with our precious cargo of blue crabs. Each basket was covered with a couple of layers of wet burlap and put in the trunk. Then we went back and got all of our gear, pulled up our stakes and left the place neat and tidy, as if we hadn't even been there.
It was only a short ride back to Gladimere. We brought the two baskets of crabs into the kitchen and placed them on the linoleum counter. Grandma Sage said, “you fellas got quite a haul this time. There's only three of us for lunch, you know. I guess we’ll give some to Florence and Ed (our neighbors) and have plenty for tomorrow, too.”
“What are you ‘gonna do with ‘em now, Grandma?”
“Cook ‘em up and make crab meat salad.”
That’s it? That's all there was to it? I knew she was leaving out a lot of stuff so I asked, “well, what do you mean?”
“Just like I said, I cook ‘em up and then make the salad.” She was a woman of few words, but she made them count.
I knew I wasn't going to get any more information unless I asked for it directly. “How do you cook them?”
“That’s easy. Just dump ‘em into the pot of boiling water.”
“How do you know when they&Mac226;re done?”
“When they stop scratching inside.”
I know now that that was probably when the twinkle in here eye started to appear.
Yuuch!
They&Mac226;re murdered in cold blood! Boiled to death! And then we&Mac226;re going to eat them!
That was a fate worse than any I&Mac226;d come across even in all of the Edgar Allan Poe stories I&Mac226;d read.
Some years later I learned what a messy job it was to make crab meat salad from scratch. She was right about the cooking time: they are done just after they stop scratching in the pot. Left any longer and the meat gets tough. After cooking the crabs, you had to get the meat out of each one, and there wasn&Mac226;t much. Dental picks, nut crackers and tiny pickle forks were the preferred tools. Then the meat was drained of any leftover cooking water, diced up and mixed with onion, celery, mayonnaise, maybe some green pepper and a little salt and pepper to taste. These were basically the same ingredients one used to make tuna fish salad or chicken salad. She just used crab meat instead.
My imagination started to go wild when Grandpa saved the day, saying, “come on, Butch, lets go out on the porch.” He grabbed a fresh cigar and we left Grandma to her murderous work while we went out to the garage. I had a birch beer and Grandpa had a Miller High Life, rewarding ourselves for a job well done.
Our refreshments were selected and opened, and just as we were settling into our respective chaise lounges with a congratulatory nod to each other, we heard “CRAAASH...WHUNG...DONGIDY-ZANG....BOY-OY-OY-OY-OY-ING. PREEEESSTUUUUHN...OH NO...PREEESSTUUUUHN!”
Grandpa jumped out of his chaise lounge, spilling Miller High Life on his pants leg, on his left hand and all over his freshly lit Rosedale. As he stood he shouted, “OOH, OOH, OOH, @&$%#@!*, AHHHHRGHJEEEEZZUSS! WHAT WAS THAT!?” he made a bee line for the cottage, and I followed him with my birch beer firmly in hand.
We ran up the back porch steps, in the back door and down the hall into the kitchen.
There was Grandma Sage, the prim and proper minister's daughter, standing with her legs wide apart, a wooden spoon high overhead in one hand and holding up her Marlowe's Department Store house dress in the other. Her gray and white frizzy hair was sticking straight up and her eyes were as big as half dollars ready to bulge out of her head.
“WATCH OUT, WATCHOUT...PPREEESTUUUUHNN...JEEEZZUUS DON'TSTEPON 'EMWATCHOUTTHEYBITE....OOHHMMMYYYGAAAWWWD IDON'TKNOWHOWITHAPPENED...PPREEEESTUUUUUHHNN”
There was one bushel basket of crabs on the counter, but another bushel basket was upside down on the floor, empty. Giant blue crabs were all over the kitchen floor with their claws up in fighting position, crawling sideways trying to find their way back to their natural habitat.
“OOH, OOH, OOH, @&$%#@!*,AHHHHRGHJEEEEZZUSS!”
As usual, Grandpa succinctly summed up the situation and formulated a plan of action. “Go out and get a net, Butch. We&Mac226;ll keep ‘em from getting into the dining area and living room. Here Priscilla, take the broom. I&Mac226;ll use the mop.”
I put my birch beer down on top of the clothes washer and ran back out the way we came in. I got a net from the garage, and ran back into the house.
As I rounded the corner into the kitchen Grandma shouted, “PREEESTUUUUHN, THERE THEY GO! WE'LL NEVER GET ‘EM OUT AND THEY&Mac226;LL JUST DIE IN THERE!”
As I appeared in the kitchen and looked around, they seemed to have disappeared. There wasn't a blue crab in sight,
“TAKE IT EASY, TAKE IT EASY”, Grandpa said. He leaned on the mop handle, took a puff of his cigar and said, “Butch, take a peek under the furniture in the front bedroom, will ‘ya”?
We all went into the bedroom and I knelt down by the bed to have a look around. There were crabs under everything! They had found their way into various nooks and crannies and were huddled together under bureaus, beds and chairs pincer-side-out with their claws at the ready.
“They're under there, all right, way in the back. We'll never get ‘em out.”
“We'll get ’em, we'll get ‘em”, said Grandpa. “Don't you worry. C'mon, let's check the other rooms.”
I continued my preliminary crab scouting and, sure enough, another bunch had gotten under everything in the other bedroom, and the rest had gotten as far as the bathrooms where they had sought refuge behind sinks and toilet bowls. Worse than that, they all looked ready for a fight.
Last year I had found out the hard way that blue crabs can be safely picked only from the back, between your forefinger and thumb. That's the only place their claws can't reach. The hard part is to get in the right position so you can get at the crab from the back and not get pinched in the process.
“Come on,” said Grandpa. “Let's do this methodically. Close the bathroom and back bedroom doors and we’ll get ’em out of the front bedroom first.”
So off we went.
“OK, Butch, let’s start with the bed first. You scoop ’em out with the net and we’ll get ‘em into the basket.”
I bent over with the net and scooped it under toward the crabs. There wasn’t enough clearance for me to get the net that far back and see what I was doing at the same time. I got down on my hands and knees with the net and saw seven or eight crabs huddled together back against the far wall. I tried to break the group apart and get the net over just one, but it didn’t work.
“I can't get at ’em”, I said. “They’re huddled back there clinging to each other.”
“Here. Let me have a look”, Grandpa said as he knelt down on the floor next to me.
“I can't see a damned thing”, he said. “You'd better move over.”
As I retreated a step or two, he slowly lowered his two hundred fifty pound plus body and splayed himself out belly-to-wood on the floor, with his cigar still in his mouth and the mop in both hands.
“OK, Butch, here's what we'll do. I'll hook one with the edge of the mop and slide it out so you can get the net over it.”
“OH LOOORD HAVE MERCY”, exclaimed Grandma, rolling her eyes in total disbelief.
He slid the mop into position, and on his first try he got not one, but three crabs out from under the bed. They are territorial and cannibalistic and were in the middle of a deadly tug of war, seemingly oblivious to Grandpa Sage's mop.
I saw my chance and swooped the net down over all three crabs. One saw what was coming so he let go and scurried back to the rest of the pack under the bed.
My net ended up catching two crabs and Grandpa's left foot.
‘OOH MY GAWD I'M GONNA GET BIT. GET ‘EM OFF ME, BUTCH BEFORE I LOSE A TOE!”
“Aaw, those crabs aren’t that big”, said Grandma.
“Yah, and it&Mac226;s not your toe, either.”
After a little fidgeting, Grandpa got his foot out from under the net.
While still on his belly, he took a puff of his cigar and said, “Butch, leave the net with me and go get the empty bushel basket in the kitchen.”
When I got back with the basket, I took over the net, while Grandma kept the crabs from working their way out with her broom. I slowly turned the net over with the open side facing up as she kept pushing the entwined crabs back into the net. Once we had them over the basket, I turned the net upside down again and shook the crabs out of the net and into the basket.
I looked down at Grandpa on the floor, waiting for him to swipe out the next batch of crabs with his mop.
“We'd better trade places, Butch. It's a lot easier for you to get down under this bed than it is for me.”
I took the mop, Grandpa manned the net, and Grandma kept her broom.
Once I got down on my hands and knees again with the mop, I repeated Grandpa's earlier maneuver and managed to get just one crab out from under the bed.
“JEEEEZZZUUUUUS, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF HIM, WILL YA?” Grandpa said as he swooped the net down over the crab.
Lucky for me he missed my foot.
We continued the mop, net and broom method and managed to get all the crabs out from under the bed. The system was working so well that we used it to get all the rest of the crabs out from under the furniture in both bedrooms and the back bathrooms.
“WHEW! What a job!” exclaimed Grandpa. “Butch, you'd better check under everything to make sure we got ‘em all.” I took the net and rechecked under all the furniture and even looked in the closets.
“See anymore?” asked Grandma. “That's the last thing I need is to miss one somehow and leave it behind!”
“Nope. I don't see any.”
“Great job, Butch! Well, I guess we got ’em all, then. Boy, I never thought we'd end up having to catch the same crabs twice in one day! Jeeeezuus!”
By now, Grandma had the re-caught crabs up on the counter next to the other basket and was getting a large pot of water ready to boil.
“I guess you fellas had better get back to work out in the garage. I've got a few things to do here so we can have lunch.”
“Come on, Butch. Get the net and let's go.”
I grabbed my by now warm bottle of birch beer and the net and followed him back out to the garage.
Earlier, his Miller High Life had spilled and the bottle now lay just about empty on the cement floor of the porch. The dregs were being drunk by a small swarm of yellow jackets. I swatted them away with the net and took the bottle and my half empty soda to the trash while Grandpa went and got us fresh cold ones from the ice box in the garage. It wasn’t really an ice box, but that's what we all called it.
Back in 1949 when Grandma and Grandpa first acquired the lot and a half at the beach, enough trees were cut down to make room for a one car garage. That was built first, and we lived in it on weekends while we were building the cottage. Actually, the outhouse was built first (a two holer), then the garage and then the cottage. Even though we cooked on an old 220 volt electric range in the garage, we kept our food cold in a double compartment ice box. I remember that for a year or so, our first stop in town on a late Friday afternoon was always the coal and ice company. After the cottage was ready, we kept the ice box as a spare until we somehow got hold of an old but still running Hotpoint electric refrigerator. By then habit ruled, and the Hotpoint was still called ‘the ice box in the garage'.
We opened our drinks and went back out on the porch.
“WHEW!” Grandpa said as he eased himself down into the chaise lounge with his beer in one hand and his cigar in the other.
“Great job, Butch!” A few cigar puffs here...then some smoke rings. “We'd be in there yet if you hadn’t been around to help. Whew!” Now a swig or two of beer.
“BUUUURRRPPP!” As always, he belched with grand bravura, while simultaneously sweeping his cigar in a great arc from the armrest of the chaise all the way to his mouth for another puff.
“AAAHHH!” he exclaimed with a big wide grin. “What a morning! Those crabs'll taste pretty good, eh Butch? You betcha!”
On a Sunday night back home a few weeks later’ Grandma and Grandpa were at our house for dinner. Just as we were sitting down to eat’ there was a knock on the door.
“It's open” said my mother’ Betty.
“ Come in’ you're out”’ chimed in Grandma Sage.
The door opened and in walked the last two people we ever expected to see; Aunt Pippy and Uncle Beevo. She was my mother's sister’ and they were on their way back to Worthington’ Massachusetts from a week at Gladimere.
“Well’ look what the cat dragged in”’ said Grandma.
“Hey Pip’ how was the beach?” asked Grandpa.
“Just thought we'd stop in for a quick ‘hello’ kiss my ass goodbye". Oh’ wow! I haven't had home made corned beef hash in months! Grab a chair’ Beevo.”
My father rolled his eyes toward the ceiling’ while Uncle Beevo took off his jacket’ put out his Pall Mall cigarette and sat down. They were’ out of necessity’ men of few words with wives of many.
“Well”’ said Aunt Pippy’ “the water was freezing cold’ and there was lots of seaweed on the beach. There must have been a storm out at sea. Uncle Ed and Aunt Florence were down next door for a few days’ and when we first walked into the cottage it stunk to high heaven; like someone had died two weeks ago and the body was still in there.”
“Hey Betty’ pass me the ketchup’ will ’ya?”
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