Culture

Losing Julia

Joseph Souza

This is a Julia Child story.

Actually, this is a story about how boy meets Julia Child, and then loses her.

Every so often in our lives we come across a celebrity or VIP, and in these brief, fleeting moments we are struck with the inextricable urge to bask in the reflective glow of their fame. Maybe this urge reflects our primeval need for affirmation, attention, like the ancient Greeks and their pecking order of gods. Demeter the barley mother, sitting on Mount Olympus next to Julia, the butter mother.

This was the position I found in myself in twenty odd years ago. I was in my early twenties. It was the eighties and I was a college student at a nearby university. A commuter from the burbs, I had a part-time job at a lobster pound on Boston's gritty Fish Pier, and it was the most difficult work I'd ever done. The streets surrounding the docks were dangerous and sometimes seedy. The Portuguese fishmongers toiling across the street were maniacal sociopaths capable of any number of violent crimes. Strange and eccentric characters abounded, most notably criminals and small-time hoods. And this was smack dab in the Whitey Bulger era, when he ran his rackets from inside Triple O's, located a short distance away.

To say the job was physically demanding was an understatement. Each morning at around five, I would purchase my coffee on Morrissey Boulevard, pull on my rubber boots and tattered orange gloves, and ready myself for some hard labor. Waiting for us at the dock would be an eighteen-wheeler from Nova Scotia loaded front-to-back with the most beautiful Canadian lobsters one could imagine. Packed tightly in wooden crates, each crate weighed well over one hundred and thirty pounds and it took two of us to swing them off. We would then sort each lobster by hand into the tanks, which were stepped and stacked vertically by weight. The shells were as hard as diamonds, their colors composed of azure blues and seaweed greens, and the occasional, rare albino. They ranged in weight from chix-one-pounders-to sea monsters weighing in at over thirty pounds and with claws the size of tennis rackets. And they were all pissed-off at the universe!

My first week on the job was horrific. I could barely move, my body so sore from all the heavy lifting. The sharp quills of the lobsters would frequently pierce the rubber gloves and then tear the tender flesh under our fingernails, often times infecting them. My arms and legs throbbed - and I'd been a well-conditioned wrestler. Every fiber in my body cried out in pain. That first week I very nearly walked out - except I was broke and too proud to simply walk away from a good paying job.

Worse than the pain was the smell. This perfume d'lobster never left one's body. If one thinks fish smells bad than they've never experienced a rotten lobster. It is possibly the most wretched odor on this earth. And I'm not talking about lobsters served at a clambake, or when vacationing in Maine and they arrive on the table stuffed with buttered breadcrumbs and crabmeat. No, these were post-mortem bottom crawlers that stank to the high heavens, and were heaved back into the fetid Boston Harbor as fast as we could toss them.

The pound itself was a dark, dank cave overflowing with tanks. The tanks were essentially lobster ghettos stacked three high. Aquamarine in color, they were patched and re-patched, and then piled against the corroding, moss-covered cinder block walls. The lighting inside the shop was bare to non-existent. Each lobster within these tanks was either a Hatfield or a McCoy, and fighting a nasty turf war with its approximate neighbor. They were not fussy eaters; in fact they had a nasty propensity to cannibalize the weaker members of their species, not realizing that they were all destined to end up on a plate alongside drawn butter and coleslaw, or else stuffed into a butter-toasted roll slathered with Hellmans.

Throughout the day we would walk around with elongated gaff hooks in order to scoop out the dead before they were cannibalized. Shrinkage, we were warned by our glum Sicilian boss, was the pound's worst enemy. And I had always thought our enemies were the giant, waterlogged pier rats that on occasion laid siege when we least expected it. Contrary to what many believe, a dead lobster is edible as long as it is freshly dead, and that determination is made based on smell alone. If it didn't reek too horribly we chucked the corpses en masse into the boiler. After they were cooked, the lobsters were then picked clean by our elderly Italian lady in the back, Maggie, whose job it was to extract the meat as quickly as possible.

I'd been gaffing the dead into wooden fruit baskets when Julia walked in. I didn't actually see her at first. It was that telltale voice that gave her away. My ears pricked up immediately upon hearing it. I walked over to where the voice emanated. There, standing athwart the garage door, gaping slack-jawed down into the deep green holding tank, the one holding the thirty-pound sea serpents, was Julia Child.

I was at a loss for words. This iconic woman was in my grubby, blue collar midst. Could it be more surreal?

The voice deserves mention only because of its iconic status. In the annals of great voices, hers surely ranks near the top. I can still remember it to this day. Parodies of it abounded, but none did it justice. The real thing was far more impressive than its many incarnations and imitators. It was richer, more sonorous, and deeply affecting. There was little to suggest humor or comedy. There was a gravitas to her timbre that emanated deep from inside her earthy chest.

She stood staring into the tank, eyes alive with the culinary possibilities of a turkey-sized crustacean. The room was filled with the never-ending sound of water being pumped into the holding tanks, a perpetual Niagara Falls rushing into our captive ears. And yet above the crashing din of falling water was the most reverberant English voice I'd ever heard. Honestly, at the time I thought she was British, when actually she was born in California.

They say fact is stranger than fiction. The same could be said for coincidence. Just a few nights earlier I had sat down to watch one of her cooking shows. There was no Food Channel back then, broadcasting to hungry idiots like me twenty-four-seven. There was Julia and a few others, and that was the sum of televised food pedagogy.

Watching cooking shows was somewhat of a secret pleasure of mine at the time. And Julia's was my favorite: butter, cream, oil, and beef. Yum!

I'd settled into my chair after showering off the terrible stink that clung to my body; I could never totally get rid of it (even to this day the odor comes back to me in brief, terrifying flashes). A sandwich and a beer rested on the arm of my chair as I prepared to watch Julia make a French Onion soup or Beef Bourguignon. But tonight she announced she was making something different - Lobster Souffle. In that singsong voice of hers she began to work her way through the recipe, describing in elaborate detail the array of ingredients needed to make such a dish. By the end of the show she had prepared a perfectly made souffle, and it had not collapsed thanks to the delicate manner in which she'd handled it, though she predicted it would. She plated it and then brought back the disused shells from which the succulent meat had been culled. Fat, rich chunks of lobster filled out the puffed-up crust. The head of the shell was placed in front, followed by the claws to the side and the hollow tail coming up the rear. The aesthetics of the dish were amazing; I only wished I could have taken a bite. I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to write the recipe down (I rarely did and always kicked myself after). There were no archived websites back then and the chances of me stumbling upon that same episode were highly unlikely, as PBS was spotty on scheduling. I wasn't about to buy her book. Guys working in South Boston didn't peruse Julia Childs' cookbooks on their days off. Besides, I was in college and busy reading mostly textbooks. And when I wasn't reading textbooks I was reading novels and girls - if the smell didn't rule me out first.

The voice called out to me. I stood there frozen as Julia stared down at all those lobsters elbowing for space. I didn't want to bother her, but I was star-struck by the sight of this larger-than-life icon. Working retail sometimes had its benefits.

Little did I know back then that most celebrity encounters are anti-climactic in nature. The celeb is usually smaller and less charming, or lacking the necessary charisma that the medium of TV foists upon us. And I've seen a few celebrities in my day, having escorted athletes, rock musicians and supermodels into the old Boston Garden. Only the wrestler, Andre the Giant, ever made a similar impression on me, and that was mostly on account of his Goliath-like physique.

She held onto her purse and was pointing a meaty finger at the lobsters crawling around at the bottom of the tank. Building up the courage, I approached with trepidation. The English, I had assumed (assuming wrongly of course, for she was an American), were all haughty and cold. Besides, I smelled like shit and looked worse for the wear.

"Hi there, Julia!" I announced, going for the familiar. I was wearing my yellow rubber apron and my boots squeaked and sloshed when I walked.

"Oh, hello," she sang out, quite happy to see me. "These are absolutely the largest lobsters I have ever seen in my life."

"Over thirty pounds."

"Oh my!" Hand to cheek.

"Want to see one?"

Without waiting for a reply, I reached into the tank and pulled out an angry, sea-spraying monster, claws churning madly like a Russian grappler. Thankfully, those claws were banded or else they would have crushed my wrist and forearm as if they were grapes. I showed it to her up close and she whooped with delight, clapping her hands together. It came to my notice that she was an impressive physical specimen as well. Just over six feet, she had a large head that was made even bigger by her dense bone structure and thick, curly hair. The body was strong and earthy, though she seemed to have a slight hunch. There was a geniality in her manner that I associated with a zest for life

"I'd like to take a few of them home with us, young man," she said after I returned the lobster into the tank like one of those sea turtles being released back into the ocean. "But not quite that big. That one would feed the French Legion. I'd need a vat to boil it in."

I went and got her a couple of two pounders, weighed them on the scale, and then placed them tail down - and flipping madly - into the ubiquitous blue and white seafood bag. I handed them over to her, took her money, and then mustered up the courage to speak.

"I watched your cooking show the other night. It was awesome," I mumbled. "You made an amazing lobster souffle and by the time I realized it I'd forgotten to write down the recipe."

"Oh, that's terrible. Don't you hate when that happens," she replied. "Do you have a pen handy?"

I fetched one. Was she going to recite the entire thing now? My boss wouldn't be happy to see me shirking my duties in order to jot down a recipe for lobster souffle.

"Okay," she said, snatching the pen out of my hand. She began to scrawl on a piece of paper she had produced from her purse. "Now give me your name and number and I'll shoot you off a copy."

I told her. Then we exchanged goodbyes. I didn't really expected Julia Child to send me anything. A busy person like her? She was Julia Childs and I was a lowly college student who reeked to the high heavens. I watched her amble away in that familiar gate of hers, walking beneath the massive garage door and out onto Atlantic Ave. It would be the last time I would ever see her in person.

The surprise came a few days later in the mail. I ripped open the envelope like a child. There it was, a note from Julia and the recipe written down in her handwriting, along with a picture of the lobster souffle she'd made.

The ending to this is relatively depressing, at least from my point of view. The great chef died just a few years ago, but her passing resonated deeply with me at the time. The memory of that brief encounter suddenly came flooding back, and it returned me to a time in life that was far simpler. But the saddest aspect of this brief encounter is: I never got to make her lobster souffle. Worse, I lost the note that she had written and the photo of the dish as well. Had I known how much it would have meant later in life I never would have been so careless. Ahhh, but such are the vagaries of youth.

Despite the passage of time and the proliferation of food shows and celebrity chefs infiltrating the airwaves with their hip cuisine, my brief encounter with Julia remains a happy culinary moment. Recently, there's been much made about her. A movie and a book. In the movie a young woman, aptly name Julia, cooks her way through all of Julia Child's recipes in the course of a year. Meryl Streep plays Julia, and though she's good, no one could compare to the original. That brief encounter has stayed with me, and sometimes I reflect upon it whenever she's mentioned, or her voice is imitated. That she was kind to me those many years ago places her squarely alongside the gods cavorting on Mount Olympus.

Julia, the lobster mother!