When I was a child I would on occasion accompany my father to his shop in downtown Baltimore. He paid me the princely sum of $.06 and hour to clean until the salesman unionized on my behalf and negotiated a raise to $.25 an hour. My father would take me to Lexington Market where for lunch where I would spend my hard earned money on fresh oysters with cocktail sauce.

I have moved away from my childhood home, and yet this is a tradition that lives fresh in my memory. In Washington State you can get Olympia Oysters which are smaller than many of the jumbo oysters farmed today but are native o the Puget Sound. They remind me of the ones from the Chesapeake Bay I enjoyed with my father when I was a boy.

---