A Single Southern Guy in America

March 18, 2003

Saturday Part II—The Crawfish Boil

My buddy from college, EK, had invited to me to a crawfish boil/ birthday party for one of his law school friends, O. With his promise of plenty of attractive single girls in attendance, I accepted. About 6 p.m., I left BB’s and headed to the west end area of Little Rock to eat crawfish and meet young ladies. Plus with the blogdoms declaration of “International Eat An Animal For PETA Day,” I can think of no better way than to eat a small animal that only minutes before was tossed lived into boiling spicy water. I arrive and trudge up the 45-degree angle of a hill leading to the front door and ease in to the party. Singles are very few, but I remember that like most singles, a party does not really begin till 9 or later. I bide my time visiting with several of the folks there who, again, I haven’t seen in years and are now mostly lawyers.

At some point a funny thought occurs to me—why in the world would I want to marry a lawyer? Talk about throwing yourself to the lions if a divorce were ever to happen. In any case, most of the ladies there were married, pregnant, or toting around toddlers and newborns. I determine to get into discussions regarding tort reform (big issue in the state legislature right now), the war on Iraq, and to draw out some free legal advice regarding the benefits of incorporating as a not-for-profit our reunion planning committee. The crawfish finished boiling and I helped myself to four of the biggest mudbugs I could find.

Crawfish and crab legs hold about the same appeal to me. Eating either taste well enough for me, but it so much work for just a little piece of meat. Which is why I had loaded up on catfish during my late lunch. No need to go hungry because I got tired of cracking open crawfish.

For those of you outside the south and in, there is a further tradition of eating crawfish that many Southerners do not partake in—'sucking the head.' You see, when you cook crawfish, you first add copious amounts of spices (the more Cajun, the better) to boiling water. You then take several pounds of live crawfish and dump them into the boiling water and spices.

After a while, the mud bugs are cooked, and more often than not, they are presented to the revelers in cardboard flats much like what you might carry a case of cokes or beers in. The first step of eating a crawfish is to break the tail from the head area and then extract the meat from the tail. Easy enough. The second step/tradition in eating crawfish comes next.

For some reason, when you boil crawfish, the bilk of the seasonings in each mud bug, somehow concentrate in the head section of the creature. Thus, the next step in eating a crawfish—‘sucking the head.’ Let me be clear here, I have not, do not, and will not suck the head. Beyond the sexual overtones of the phrase, the idea of sucking what little gray matter a crawfish possesses into my mouth just does not appeal to me.

Southerners are divided on this issue—to suck the head or to not suck the head. However, I have noticed that the closer one gets to Louisiana the more likely you are to find head suckers. I am from, and was in, Little Rock; I sucked no heads.

Saturday part III: Toughman 2 and a Cougar Too next

Posted by Adam H at March 18, 2003 10:25 AM ~ Link Cosmos | Trackbacks (0)

Comments

Hi Mr. Single. I have the same problem, being 25 and never married or children. Everyone that I know is married or on their way. A majority of them have children or are expecting. Good luck finding a "normal" girl who does not fall in any of those catagories.
As for the crawfish, I stumbled onto your website while looking for places to eat crawfish in Little Rock-I live in Hot Springs. I grew up in Houston and I miss going to good crawfish boils. If you know of any good places I would love to know about them. And for the record, I do suck the heads. I was taught from the very best of the "old school" cajuns. Have a nice day!

Posted by: Heather at May 13, 2004 01:34 PM