As remembered by Sheila Michaels
February 4, 2016
I will never forget our adventures crabbing with Holly & Houston CORE.
Houston CORE took the workshop group out to a jetty in Galveston. We had bait galore. I still remember the oil rigs out in the water, with the flares on top. Surreal & very impressive. I can still see them. They provided our light. We had wash tubs for the crabs we were to catch.
I was out at the end of the jetty when a monster came out of the water & seemed to be headed for me. It's claws were as big as human arms & blue white. I threw the bait & line to that granddaddy of all crabs & headed back towards the cars. Damn the rocks. Everyone was sore at me for not holding on & pulling him in. Anyway, I was relieved of my duties & minded the beer & soda.
We partied a little & still got a couple of tubs of crabs. Then we went back to the motel. We had meetings all the next morning. That's where we were when the motel management came looking for us. The crabs had escaped. They'd made their way into the grass & went for a swim. The other guests had fled the pool with the crabs invasion. This was summer in Houston: the guests had to have the pool. So we had to stop our workshops & comb the grass to find the hiding crabs. A couple of the guys dove to the bottom of the pool & pulled all the crabs out of the water.
So we realized we couldn't put off having our crab boil. We had to go into town & get the Zatarain's seasoning & other supplies. We kept the crab tubs indoors, I think in the bathtub. After the afternoon session, we took the tubs into the kitchen & lit fires under the tubs & had a huge crab boil. Almost how we'd planned it, but not quite.
I'd had my ears pierced in a doctor's office, but it had gotten infected. We went into town & Holly had a jeweler put gold ear studs in the infected holes. That cleared up the infection. I think everyone else got studs, too.
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