Taste A Little Of The Summer

An excursion of the senses, exploring life at the Jersey shore

It’s August. I can’t believe it’s already August. The summer started so slowly, inching forward one lazy day at a time, before speeding through in a sudden rush of sunburned tourists, hungry gulls, and congested grocery aisles. I was actually looking forward to enjoying the summer, something I haven’t always done, waiting for the season to kick into high gear, and here it is, August, the last act of the show. Where did it go?

I find myself enjoying “the now” these days, which is an unfamiliar feeling. I’m neither dreading the future nor longing for the past. I’m actually enjoying most days, though they sure do seem to pass by with frightening speed.

It’s been eight months since I was freed from a life of indentured servitude and allowed to roam the world, my time being no one’s but my own. When I first became underemployed (I was never fully unemployed), each passing week was a reminder that the clock was ticking. After 27 years of service, my former employer had deigned to give me all of three whole months’ severance, adding that they thought this was rather generous of them. What might stingy have looked like, I wondered?

With only three months of income to work with, the turning of the calendar to a new month was downright anxiety-inducing, each Friday a reminder that another week had passed. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. In hindsight, I can’t believe how well it all worked out. There were never any guarantees, of course. Things don’t always work out, no matter how much we want to believe or hope they will. They just don’t.

The good news is, I’ll be enjoying September a lot more this year, and possibly even into October, because I won’t be in such a hurry for the cool weather to begin. October used to be a cool fall month. Remember your mother making you wear a coat over your Halloween costume? October used to take place in the autumn.

I do like scarves and boots and jeans and layers of all sorts, but now that I’m not quite so fat, there is something nice about the lightweight freedom of linen shorts, a tee, and flip flops. I show up to visit my main client wearing shorts and flip-flops all the time. It wouldn’t even occur to me to show up wearing pants or shoes at this point. I’m spending time on docks, around boats, and water. I have the best tan I’ve had since 1986. This is life at the Jersey shore.

I’ve been living at the beach for just shy of thirty years now, but I don’t think I was ever really living here. It was mostly just the place I slept, in between stints of work; a place I visited on the weekends. I might as well have been living in my car, frankly, as that’s where I spent three hours a day, five days a week. I also spent a lot of time in planes, at airports and hotels, in offices and boardrooms. I was on the road, one way or another.

I have still not fully acclimated to the lifestyle here, but give me a break, it’s my first year, and I’m still finding my sea legs. The first three months, I was scrambling and terrified, trying to talk myself into not panicking. I still worry from time to time because, hey, nothing is permanent, but this is interesting to me at the moment.

I’m in it.

The great paradox of summer in New Jersey is that the farm stands don’t really start pumping until the end of the summer. We like to think of them opening in the spring with their great bounty, and continuing on until fall with pumpkins and Mums, which they do, but most of the local produce doesn’t show up until it’s finished growing, which takes all summer to do. There are no June tomatoes, no July corn. Summer is a farce, in this way.

There have been many years when I can remember buying and eating all this corn early in the summer, corn that was shipped in from some Southern state and rarely good. By the time the local stuff was finally available, we’d be sick of corn. Several years back, I made a conscious effort not to bother with corn until it was actually local. It’s served me well.

Sweet corn in New Jersey is one of God’s gifts to humanity, like Champagne and good pizza. Garrison Keillor once said, “Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.” It’s hard to watch people fuck it up, but I see it all the time. I don’t know what people think of when they think of corn on the cob, but if it’s that bright yellow bullshit with the huge kernels, the stuff you find in the Midwest and the frozen food aisle, you’ve never had good corn. That’s closer to feed corn than what I’m talking about.

When I was a kid, the strain of choice was called “Silver Queen,” and farm stands would advertise it by name. Now there are many new varieties that are supposedly even better, but no one has a monopoly anymore. I don’t wish to stray too far afield here, but allow me a moment to offer you a few pointers on best practices should you ever have the pleasure of coming into contact with actual Jersey corn — just so you don’t fuck it up.

First, it’s helpful to know that proper corn, which was picked that day, doesn’t even really need to be cooked. If you were to pluck an ear off a stalk in a nearby field, which I have done at the behest of a local farmer, peel back the husk to reveal the juicy kernels, and take a bite, it would taste better than anything you’ve ever had.

The reason for putting it in hot water is simply to warm it up a bit, not to cook it. The minute the corn is picked, the sugars start turning into starch, so you want to cook and eat your corn as quickly from the time it was picked as humanly possible. This is why you want corn that was picked that day and why you’ve probably never had the good stuff.

To properly prepare sweet corn, bring a pot of heavily salted water to boil, then turn off the heat. Drop the shucked ears of corn into the water, let them sit for six minutes, then take them out and serve. That’s it.

They don’t need butter, and if you salted the water properly, they don’t even need salt. Will salt and butter taste good? Sure, but that’s what we do to food that needs a lot of help, like broccoli or green beans. Good corn does not need your help. It’s phenomenal all on its own. Fresh sweet corn, picked that day, barely heated and eaten with ecclesiastical delight.

“Is this corn hand-shucked?” my late father would moan in ecstasy.

That is the taste of summer.

If spring is the domain of the Peepers, the tiny tree frogs that sing to one another in choruses of love and longing, late summer belongs to the cicada. The day begins with the rooster crowing and the mockingbird answering with his sardonic tone. We have been seeing bats in the yard at dusk, and the fireflies have returned, though not in as great numbers as we once saw. The yard is full of life, both hummingbirds and mosquitoes alike.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and Saturday is for yard work. If I didn’t stop and otherwise dilly-dally, I could do the entire thing in about two hours, but I don’t. The nicer the day, the more I stop; the longer it takes me, and the more I enjoy it. No need to rush. First the edging, then the mowing, then the blowing. When the job is done, you sit down with an iced beverage, gazing out over your vast estate in all its manicured glory, the master of your domain. If you can’t enjoy this part, you might as well move into a condo and call it a day. They don’t call me the Lawn Nazi for nothing.

The entire weekend is forecast to be one for the record books. Low sixties at night and high seventies during the day. Deep blue skies with low humidity. This is what heaven must be like, I often think, when we are treated like this, but then I remember that this is why all those people put up with life in Southern California, traffic and all. I get it. It’s worth mudslides and raging fires in the same way we dodge hurricanes.

In my younger days, I would rise early and get the yard work done before noon, so we could take off for the beach, but I find this overly taxing now. I don’t like having more than one major obligation per day. Saturdays are for housework. Sundays are for play. I’ve tried to do both, and I don’t enjoy it. I get irritable. I don’t like to be rushed or to have a lot of obligations. I prefer a slower pace.

Today I have a lunch engagement at a local marina. The first Friday of every month, my client buys lunch for their entire dock crew and staff. These are what they call “All-Hands Meetings,” meaning it’s mandatory. I am not required to be there, as I am not an employee, but they like to include me, and I like to make an appearance. The point is, this is my big outing for the day; the reason that I’ve showered, dressed, and combed my beard. I’m wearing jewelry and my good flip flops. I’m going out, goddamn it!

It’s a low grey sky, threatening rain but never really delivering. A bit breezy and unseasonably cool. Not the kind of weather you dream about when you buy a boat (or a marina) and want to spend time on the water. Better than baking in the heat, I suppose, and a nice change of pace for the dock crew, but I could live without it.

For decades, my weekday daylight experience involved either staring at a screen or looking at the outside world through a tinted window of some kind. Office, taxi, airplane, hotel, or car. It was like I watched the world go by on a large television screen somewhere. My wife would talk about what a beautiful or dreadful day it had been, and I would think, “Was it?”

These days, I get excited about the prospect of good weather the way other people get all hopped up about an upcoming party, concert, vacation, or illicit sex. I get so hot and bothered that often, the reality can’t possibly live up to the expectation. Still, I have high hopes for this weekend. I might go so far as to extend my little holiday into Monday. After all, according to Uncle Lou at Camp Tamakwa, “When Wakonda gives you weather like this, you gotta jump all over it.”

So, jump on it, I think I shall.

I haven’t had a fresh peach yet this season, but I think I need to change that post haste. I have two primary ways that I most like to enjoy a ripe peach. One is peeled, cut up, and sugared, then spooned over homemade vanilla ice cream. I have this memory of a local church picnic in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, where they were having a Peach + Ice Cream Social. In my memory, it was one of the best things I ever tasted, but I’m pretty sure it was shitty ice cream cups with some peaches tossed on. I probably ate it with one of those flat wooden “spoons.” I do a much better version, but still, it was glorious.

The other is what I call a Peach Caprese Salad, which is sliced peaches, interlaced with slabs of fresh mozzarella, and large leaves of fresh basil. You drizzle extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar, plus a little sea salt and fresh ground pepper, and then you eat that shit like a ravenous beast without a care in the world. If you don’t get some of it on you, you didn’t do it right.

Many moons ago, in a time long ago, with friends who are no longer with us, I made homemade salsa. We had purchased bushels of produce from a local farm and proceeded to spend all day chopping tomatoes, jalapeños, onions, and whatever the hell else goes into salsa. There were piles of cut-up produce, huge pots of boiling water, gallons of vinegar, enough dill to start a pickle factory, a few cases of beer, and an eight-ball of cocaine. Pretty good set-up, if memory serves.

We worked really hard all day long and into the night, chopping and boiling and sweating, and when the dust cleared, I discovered that we had succeeded in making all of six quarts of salsa, which was just a few jars each. It was easily the most expensive salsa I ever consumed, but to be honest with you, it turned out to be pretty damn good. We had a few solid laughs along the way. No one got hurt.

Greg Brown once sang, “Peaches on the shelf, potatoes in the bin. Supper’s ready, everybody come on in. Taste a little of the summer. Taste a little of the summer. You can taste a little of the summer. My grandma’s put it all in jars.”

Goddamn right.

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Farm Food Summer