Swimming, Rectangular Fish & Shad

I finally was able to get to the pool today to swim while Hal was examining my car. (The garage is next door to the YMCA where I swim.) As it has turned out, my air conditioning is broken and the dealership will need to fix this costly repair.

It was GREAT to get back in the water. During the last couple of weeks, it has been first one thing and then another to keep me from swimming. I like to pray while I swim and I did a lot of that today and also some thinking - about fish!

I had seen a sign in the local seafood shop yesterday that they had shad. I missed the season last year (well, maybe for the last 2 years) and I was so hungry for it. Shad has a lot of memories for me. When we were children, we killed our own beef and so we had steak nearly EVERY night. To this day I consider fish to be the real delicacy. We almost never had fish when I was a child -- well, almost never. We did have fish sticks (rectangular) and we loved them. Then there was the founder that came in a frozen block (again rectangular.) I recall one night as I was cutting the frozen rectangular block into squares to put in the oven and I noticed that it had started to defrost and that these flat pieces of fish came off the frozen block! I did not know what was happening - I saw fish fillets for the very first time when I was a teenager! So we had rectangular frozen fish sticks and rectangular frozen founder.

Once a year, Daddy would take us all down to the Chesapeake Bay to get shad. The season is March and April. I have a special memory of going down to the bay and coming back with a huge wash tub full of shad. We would clean them and cut them up in the back yard and then take them into the kitchen and wash them and freeze them. I loved shad - WHAT A SPECIAL TREAT! - BUT THOSE BONES! There must be more bones in shad than any other fish anywhere! I remember being reduced to eating it with my fingers so I could pick out each bone. I recall stating that if anyone could figure out a way to serve shad with out the bones it would be the most delicious fish ever! Well, in those days, shad was a cheap throw away fish - in those days when you got it with the bones in it! Now you can purchase it in the local seafood shop and all those bones have been removed. Imagine no bones in shad! Imagine how high the price is for a boned shad!

After my swim this morning, all I could think about was that shad sign in the seafood shop so I drove out and got some. In my refrigerator is a lovely piece of boned shad. I am not sure if it will be my dinner tonight or tomorrow. I will enjoy it so much without the bones - but for some reason, the memories of childhood shad with bones and eaten with my fingers is even more special.