Eating Oysters in Virginia Beach (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Laurent came in and sat down in one of the chairs in our hotel, so Florence could sit in his lap and hug him. The Navy had taken the edge off skinny dink Laurent’s impatience as well as his waistline.
I
was a mommy now and just ate some sundaes and did not care too much, if I
gained weight.
“I’m
starved” Laurent said.
“What
about you, Florence?” Laurent asked as he stood up and threw a squealing
Florence up in the air.
“Me,
too. Me, too!” she yelled.
Laurent
went to change clothes in the bedroom.
He exchanged his blue dungarees work outfit with his name stenciled on
the pocket for a Lacoste shirt and khaki pants.
(Lacoste sponsors the French Open Clay tennis tournament. Tennis as a sport was created in France.)
When
he came out, he folded the dungarees in the way that he learned how to in boot
camp, so that it looked like they were ready to go into a package for sale. (We play acted Free France all the time.)
No
one would suspect from our clothes how tight our budget really was.
We
set out in our six-year-old, blue Chevy Nova and drove down Shore Avenue
through Norfolk and into Virginia Beach.
The
fine grain, white sand that blankets Virginia Beach draws tourists from the
Northeastern seaboard, who cannot make it down to Miami (Florida). It is also close to Washington, D.C.
We
could not see the sand at night. We were
the only tourists in off-season April prowling the streets. We opened our windows and let the salty air
blow through the car. The restaurants
stayed open in the off-season, which gave us hope to find a seafood place for
dinner.
After
awhile an oyster bar glimmered through the rain. I felt I was seeing a mirage,
because the weather was so bad. We had
not eaten oysters, since our return to the United States.
“Do
you think the oysters are fresh,” Laurent asked, meaning “raw” when he said “fresh.”
“They
usually are at a bar,” I said. Laurent
turned abruptly into the restaurant’s parking lot. I hoped they would have a decent children’s
menu for Florence.
Wooden
benches and tables inside invited us to relax our weary bones. Laurent and I ordered a dozen raw oysters
each. We ordered glasses of the house
Chardonnay from California and awaited our dainty yet pricey supper. Florence ordered fish sticks.
Our
oysters appeared on gnarled, wide shells.
These were not the uniform-sized oysters that are raised in Brittany and
Arcachon (Bordeaux), France. I tried
Tabasco sauce on some of the oysters I ordered and liked the way that tasted.
We
enjoyed our meal, but both of us said we would seek out crab for our American
food epiphanies in the future in the South and maybe lobster in the North. (I love the Southern chain called Joe’s Crab
Shack with its steam pots of crab and sausage.
They make red snapper with chile pepper and cream sauce, too.)
The
food and wine made us sleep peacefully.
We woke up at 5 a.m. the next day to take our showers and eat
breakfast. Laurent had to be at work by
7 a.m.
We
took I-64 and drove back down I-264 to the tunnel. 6:30 a.m. is rush hour in
Norfolk as everyone tries to make the 7 a.m. roll calls.
Lots
of cars cut us off as people jockeyed for position. I wondered how I was ever going to manage
freeways when I was still afraid to merge with Suffolk Confederate “bastards.” (I think I am still the only woman, who has
driven on these freeways in Norfolk still.)
This
time I located landmarks (the Wu-Tang Klan Rap Star posters in the
shipyard.) The streets around the
shipyard had garbage strewn in them and lots of worn out cars with what my
family’s Japanese exchange student called “accidentry” when viewing jalopies in
Detroit.
By
Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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