Oh, how I missed real meat department.
We have one in the next town over. Twice a week, the trucks pull in from Chicago and unload the whole animals right into the back door. The public can watch right through the huge plate glass window on the store side and see the butchers cutting down the whole sides of the animals. When I lived in that town, I was only two doors away from that store.
Then when I was a kid, the fishing fleet used to tie up right here in East Boston down in Central Square. There is a Shaw's supermarket there now. Come every Friday, all the housewives, my mother included would be down there by eight in the morning and you could buy Haddock and Cod right off the boat. At the other end of that piece of land was the coal company. After everyone had their fish, they would head over there and pick up all the loose coal for their wood burning kitchen stoves. I loved Friday's. I knew we would be having fish that night.
Then when I was married to my second husband, we lived right on the Gulf in Texas. When a shrimper came into port, each crewman was allowed to bring home a large bread bag of shrimp from the very last catch. About ten pounds.
A couple of years ago, a glut of lobster hit this area. On the road to Winthrop, the lobster boats would tie up along Saratoga Street. They were giving the lobsters away. The lobster men stopped going out at the end of August. There simply was no market for them.
When my second husband was fishing out of Boston, the crew considered lobster trash and would sell it to the large lobster clearing house at the end of the fishing pier. Every so often my husband would bring me home a few of them. No charge. I think between the Haddock, Cod, Lobsters and Shrimp, they can keep the shrimp.
And then as a child, right after a Nor'easter, all the neighborhood kids would run down to the beach and collect all the lobsters that washed up on the shore. And there usually were plenty of clams and quahogs to be had. We knew what we would be having for supper that night.
