CAPTAIN HARRISON MAYCROFT
(THE ESCARGOT STORY)
CAPTAIN HARRISON MAYCROFT
Sea Level, N.C., July 27, 1998
....I had a steward who claimed he was a gourmet cook...so, he's gonna fix escargots
for appetizers for din-ner on Sunday... Mother Rachel, that's what we called the
steward, he was gay, but....well, he's dead now...anyway, Mother Rachel goes down
and buys these live escargots, brings them back and puts them in a big dish pan or something,
puts them on the counter in the galley, next to the refrigerator, puts a towel over
them, and they're all alive...and this cook we had from Boston was a Cape Verdean
Portuguese, I guess had never seen escargots....he comes back, thinks they're some kind
of shellfish, so he puts them in the refrigerator...those damn escar-gots all come
out in the refrigerator, looking for a place to get warm, see ....they all come out
of their shells, they're all over the refrigerator ....well, the second cook comes back
all hung over in the morning, he's also a Cape Verdean Portuguese and he opens up
that refrigerator, lets out a scream, he's running down the catwalk, we never saw
him again ...it took three days to scrape all the escargots out of the refrigerator...