The sign upon the cafe wall read, "OYSTERS: Fifty Cents!" "How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewilderance. "I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain?" "Oh sure," her cowboy date replied. "We're really quite urbane."
"I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?" "No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford crossy...and usually they're pink. But I have been told myself, what you say could be true And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!"
She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone. I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a stone!" The cowboy winced, imagining a calf with her beneath. "Me, I use a pocket knife and yank 'em with my teeth."
"Oh my," she said, "You animal! How crude and unrefined! Your masculine assertiveness sends shivers up my spine! But I prefer a butcher knife too dull to really cut. I wedge it in on either side and crack it like a nut."
"I pry them out. If they resist, sometimes I use the pliers. Or even Grandpa's pruning shears if that's what it requires." The hair stood on the cowboy's neck. his stomach did a whirl. He'd never heard such grisly talk, specially from a girl!
"I like them fresh," the sweetheart said and laid her menu down. Then ordered oysters for them both when the waiter came around. The cowboy smiled gamely; though her words stuck in his craw, But he finally fainted dead away when she said "I'll have mine raw!"
Copyright Marc R. Kauffman 2008 - 2011. All rights reserved.