Ripped, Shucked, and Scattered

he man sure had a palate covered o'er / With brass or steel, that on the rocky shore / First broke the oozy oyster's pearly coat / And risk'd the living morsel down his throat, " wrote John Gay (1685–1732), one of many poets since antiquity who became fascinated with the subject. More recently, Irish bard Seamus Heaney after enjoying fresh oysters with some friends, was so moved that he wrote a poem, " Laying down a perfect memory / In the cool of thatch and crockery, " and affirming the general idea that those of us who have never swallowed an oyster may not have lived life to the fullest. " Our shells clacked on the plates. / My tongue was a filling estuary, / My palate hung with starlight: / As I tasted the salty Pleiades / Orion dipped his foot into the water. " As if the experience were not enough, Heaney offered a little history, " Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow, " he wrote, " the Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome. " The proper way of moving oysters from place to place has not changed much. Nor has the process of growing , harvesting, shucking, or eating oysters changed. " Alive and violated, / They lay on their bed of ice: / Bivalves: the split bulb / And philandering sigh of ocean / Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered. " Their silky texture and taste of the sea alone would have made oysters a popular food, not to mention their rich nutritional value and simple abundance. In the New World, Native Americans appreciated them, as did the invading Spaniards, even if only for the pearls. In the 1800s, consumption of the eastern oyster outpaced beef as a source of protein in some regions. In Louisiana, various ethnic groups settled in local parishes and contributed to the oyster industry. In the mid-1840s, fishermen started to gather seed oysters, plant them in favorable spots, and allow them to grow to market size in estuaries near the Mississippi River and in coastal areas farther west, creating one of the most successful oyster cultivation industries in the country. The modern harvesting processes came about in the early 1900s. As for readying oysters for market, despite attempts to mechanize the process, commercial oyster shucking remains the method of choice. Though experienced shuck-ers can …