A few years ago, back before Shea, Steph and my Grandkids all moved to Marathon, Pam and I had them over for hard crabs. Caitie and Brady joined us along with Steph’s Mom Marion and Aunt Sheila. My in-laws Sol and Stella also joined everyone at the table but did not do any crab picking electing to munch on the White hots and burgers that I had grilled up for them.
The next day when it was back to Sol, Stella, Pam and me having dinner, Stella commented on how interesting it was to observe how everyone went about cleaning and picking their crabs. Stella noted “Each person had their own technique and each was a little different,”
It is funny that she pointed that out because I had never really thought about how something simple like picking crabs could vary from person to person. I had always concluded, you break ’em open, you pick ’em and you eat ’em. What’s there to vary about doing that?
Well. thanks to Stella for pointing this out to me, I have since conducted some crab picking surveys in Buzzy’s Country Store as to how people pick their crabs. Turns out that Stella was indeed correct in her observation in that it seems everyone has their own unique method and personal technique for pursuing the delicate art of picking crabs.
Which brings me to this article from a magazine insert that Buzzy had stashed among his saved documents. (Note that I previously cited this publication when I did a Buzzyblog post on Moll Dyer (click here.)
Of course, music-wise, the term “picking” doesn’t have anything to do with hard crabs. I guess that if pressed to do so, you could use a crab claw as a pick.