Okay… You caught me!!!  Yes, this a memory of my one and only experience harvesting oysters.  It was my first summer/fall in the coastal region of South Carolina.  In the mid-1970s, the tourist season ended the middle of September and some of the local business owners would rent beach houses in Garden City on the marsh side for the month of October (at ridiculously low prices).  They would invite the employees and their families a couple Saturdays during the month and have cookouts.  It was great! You could fish off the dock, go boating, or walk to the ocean side for sunbathing and swimming.

Way back then, I was a 95 pound little bit of nothing and when we arrived, it was almost dead low tide, so no boating or fishing… Well, somebody had the big idea to send all the teenagers and under 21 crowd out into the marsh to harvest oysters.  Gave us all burlap sacks, (that stunk!) old tennis shoes, and gloves, (the oyster shells are razor sharp) and sent us on our merry way.  I had NEVER been oystering (But how hard could it be? There they were – stinking out of the mud!) and no one bothered to enlighten me to the pluff mud issues.  Yes, Pluff Mud – Google it.  It’s local to the SC coastal area and probably contains the most wonderful undiscovered healing properties known to mankind!

Well, I was like Victoria in my novel, skimming along the surface, barely getting my ankles dirty, while everyone else was sinking almost to mid-calf with every step!!!  I must have laughed a little too long and loudly, because I soon found myself up to my knees in mud…and let me tell you, it’s like being caught in soft watery cement.  If you sink in that far, (or are helped down into the goo) it is impossible to extract yourself!  It was all good, dirty, stinky fun and after a few minutes and a lot of laughing by everyone involved, they helped me out.  But the old tennis shoes I had been given to wear were too large and the marsh probably still has the one shoe that slipped off to this day! And to tell the truth, the cold rinse with the hose and a hard lump of soap afterwards was the worst part…

But there’s one great thing about memories – They all get better with time!!!