So I had a relaxing 24 hour period at the beach with my buddy Nick. While we were there I made it a point to check out the Sanitary Fish Market in Morehead. I've heard about this place for years. It seemed like all the popular kids in highschool had a t-shirt form this place, like it was some kind of status symbol telling me that, 'yes, my family can afford to take week long beach trips over the summer, and we eat at fancy seafood restaraunts, all while you have to sit at home or work all summer.'
Well now I've got my own little place at the beach (that I rarely get too because I can never seem to find anyone available to go with). My brother goes out there more than I do, and after a few trips he starts raving about Sanitary...'Dennis, you have to go there, they've got great lunch specials!... I think I'm getting mom a t-shirt, do you thinki she'll like a t-shirt from there?"
Then Nick kept talking about the place too, 'We went there every year when I was kid. I remember that place being so cool. I loved that place.'
So we go. To me, it just looks like every other seafood place at the beach, just like 100 other places I've been to. Its an older place, hardwood floors, old wooden tables and chairs, and the menu looks pretty simple. Even the prices look to be in line with your typical beach seafood place. I ordered the shrimp lunch special. I got a small plate of shrimp, some greenbeans (which were really good), and some steamed brockely (which was not so good). It all just seemed average to me... no big whoop.
But to hear Nick talk about the place, and tell the stories of how he went there with his family as a child... I could tell, that in his eyes, the place was still pretty damn cool. So I think that's what's special about the place; the memories it envokes. I think people go there as children, and associate it with the wonder and awesome happiness that the beach seems to grant children. They grow up holding on the the memory of that feeling and association, so they go back as adults to touch the happiness of childhood, and they take their own kids and pass on the association. It's not about the restaraunt itself; it's about the memories, and using the restaraunt as a conduit to guide those memories and emotions from our pasts to our present.
At least that's how explain most people's fascination with it. I don't know why my brother likes it so much.
Me, I'd rather eat at the farmer's market. It's a lot better and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Later that same day...
16 years ago
4 comments:
With the perspective of age and other such things, I can pull myself out of my memories to see your point I think. It is hard, as you can't separate the person from the memories without losing the person, but I can try. I ask myself "If I had NEVER been to this place before, what would I think?". The answer is pretty much what you think, that it's another coastal seafood place, albeit one that seems to have gotten quite a bit of hype. Nothing special to see here, move along folks.
...But then my attempted detached perspective may be biased by having just read your own such account. I cannot win!
you are forever biased... understanding and accepting your bias is important, but you're correct. You can't escape it, and it will effect you in some way, but its nice of you to try :)
Yeah, the place is average at best, but it's a piece of North Carolinicana. It's like the Mast General Store or the State Fair or the Hatteras Lighthouse or Tweetsie or Grandfather Mountain or Wilbur's BBQ or the Battleship NC or Fort Macon or Sliding Rock or the Parkway or Biltmore. It's a piece of what it means to be a native North Carolinian. This is especially true for those of us who have travelled very little beyond this state's borders, though extensively within them. We never really ate there when I was a kid due to the long lines and high prices we usually ate next door. We did get the shirts, but as I kid I never really understood why. I know now that the reason is simple, and the same as the reason we buy a pickle at the fair and wash it down with a cup of milk before daring ourselves to sample liver pudding. That reason, my friend, is what it means to discover the state you're in (assuming you're in NC).
Well put buddy, but I'm not sure North Carolinicana works...
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