When my gorgeous, Southern belle daughters invited me to eat crawdads with them, I was thrilled. Nothing boosts my ego more than being seen in public with my pulchritudinous progeny. I enjoyed a plate of crustaceans, and bid good evening to the most cherished blessings the Lord bestowed upon me.
While strolling homeward, I thought about the first time I ate crawdads. Jaybird and I were walking down a railroad track toward a nearby stream for an afternoon of relaxing, storytelling, and fishing. I was carrying a can of night crawlers, dug from his compost heap, and he was toting a small black pot, three bricks, a box of salt, and a bag of spices.
“What’s that stuff for?” I asked. Always eager to torment my curiosity, he said only one word: “’dads.”
After baiting up and jamming our poles in the bank, I gathered dewberries along the creek’s edge. My curiosity soared when Jaybird filled the pot with water from the stream and poured in the box of salt. I could stand no more. “Jay, what in the world are you doing?”
He explained that before we could enjoy delicious ’dads, they had to be purged in salty water. Suddenly he shouted, “I’ll swunny — looky yonder. Yo’ cork done gone clean under!” I grabbed the pole and fought a nice catfish to shore.
After stringing the fish, I asked, “Where are the crawdads?” He winked at me, grabbed a stick, and began poking it into small mud mounds along the creek’s edge. Each time, a huge, deep orange crawdad clamped its pincers onto the stick. When he’d caught enough for a meal, he dumped them into the salty water.
Next, he arranged the bricks in a loose circle, filled the area inside them with kindling, and started a fire. While the blaze was building, he filleted my catfish with his razor sharp switchblade. “When we’s done eatin’ dem ’dads, we gwine roast and eat dis cat,” he said.
Once the crawdads were sufficiently purged, he rinsed the pot, refilled it, placed it on the bricks, and poured in the spices. Soon, the water came to a rolling boil. One by one, he dropped the crawdads, still alive and angrily snapping at his hand, into the boiling water. The aroma was heady, and my salivary glands ran wild.
When they were ready to eat, he showed me how to separate the head and push a huge chunk of pinkish white flesh out of the tail. The taste was divine, and we ate our fill.
What a glorious day! We stuffed ourselves with crawdads and catfish, and then stretched out under a willow tree. Dropping off into Lalaland, I vaguely remember Jaybird spinning one of his famous yarns about battling a giant alligator gar.
Southerners are so blessed, especially when spring arrives. Of the many blessings the season brings are opportunities to feast on a gustatory delight my beloved old black mentor introduced me to when I was a boy: ’dads.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
Other books by Jimmy Reed include The Jaybird Tales.
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