By the Sea, by the Sea

Like much of the country, we had a few days of melting heat earlier this week. To escape it, a friend and I took off for the day to Rockport, north of Boston ... though even the ocean breezes couldn't compete with the air-conditioned car most of the time.

The cooling blues and greens of these sailboats in the harbor helped chill us out though.


Off Halibut Point we watched a lobster boat pull traps out of the water. "How picturesque," we cooed, observing the heroic fishermen. "Wait, is that guy naked??" said my friend.



We stopped to admire a little crab in a tidepool (or possibly a pool of stagnating rain water - get out, Crabby, get out!), until the biting flies forced us to move along.


The promenade of Bearskin Neck is lined with little maritime art galleries, women's summerwear boutiques, and fudge fudge fudge. Also airbrushed t-shirts featuring Bart Simpson in various lewd poses.


Of course the main purpose of the trip was a visit to Rockport's celebrated Lobster Pool restaurant.


As we waited in line for our lobster rolls and fried clams (and, ultimately, two sodas apiece - it was a two-soda day), the teenager ahead of us turned to ask if we knew what a lobster roll was, exactly. Oh, kid, you are going to be sorry you asked us that. We could barely suppress our glee in describing our favorite bite of high-low Americana seafood goodness.

"Different places have different ways of doing it ..." my friend began, which should have warned him off immediately. "Here they tend to use very little mayonnaise ..."

I felt the need to interject, "It's pieces of lobster ... on a hot dog bun! It's just lobster salad, on a bun!" Get it? Get it? my chortling tone was meant to imply. Expensive, special-occasion lobster on a cheap hot dog roll! And it's the best combination ever! Isn't it awesome?

Another kind of teenager would have tuned out at "very little mayonnaise," but this one nodded appreciatively, trying to take in the nuances -- he truly wanted to understand the lobster roll.

And apparently we adequately reassured him that he should go ahead and get his roll, even if the finer points of our reply were inevitably -- at least until he could gather a bit more personal lobster roll experience -- for the present lost on him.

I meant to look over later to see whether he was enjoying it, but by that time I had a lobster roll of my own, and was lost to everything but savoring each morsel, scant touch of mayonnaise and all.