Pt. Reyes Station Part Ten

For many years we always went to Pt. Reyes on Father's Day. Barbequed shrimp, steak and chicken next to piles of salad, good wine and usually started off with garlic and butter oysters on the half shell.

The Point Reyes National Seashore was established by President John F. Kennedy on September 13, 1962. It's protection was expanded under the Clinton administration and under the vision of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

As such, it boasts some of Amercia's most pristine waters and therefore it's most healthy oysters and sealife.

A "Johnson's" oyster is almost beyond description.

I have been on junkets up and down the West Coast, from San Diego to Seattle. I have had the oysters of Puget Sound paraded in front of me.

Peh! Their thin drabness is nothing like the smallest plump and full explosion that happens in your mouth as you slurp up the real thing.

There are two culinary things that Pt. Reyes has that do not exist anythere else on the planet. The first is the orgasmic cheese that comes from the creamery in town (the "Red Hawk" oh God!); the other are the oysters that breed in the shallows of Drakes Bay and the estuaries in the area.

When I was ten years old I had my first oyster in Inverness a stone's throw from Vladimir's. It was wretched.

Now I know different.

It is the water. Make no mistake. This is just one more reason we must fight this destructive administration and their social Darwinism. It sounds trite, but we will never again have a real oyster. Worse, we will breath pollution, eliminate the ozone layer leading to mass amounts of cancer and skin lesions, and be forced to watch 72 different versions of Fox programming 24 hours a day.

It will be bleak, ugly and utterly wrong.

Even the oysters in the bay would rather be plucked and lovingly eaten for their beauty than be slowly downsized, poisoned and made extinct.

We all die.

So, go while you can.

Tosco-B, when he was just 7 was sitting at the table at Drakes. His long legs were dangling and he was humming and thinking and smiling.

His Papi had brought him on just another Father's Day to have water gun fights and dance with the surf and eat good food. But he was looking at the big drummed BBQ and the oysters the young man was cooking.

He was deliberating. He saw the garlic being added and butter into some of the sheels, and bbq sauce in others.

His older brother scoffed and made a joke.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I wanna try one."

His face lighted up as he took the first bite. "I like it" he said shyly. Then he ate the rest and wanted another.

Later I took pictures of them running on the beach with abandon. The painting above is of that day.