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The World Was Our Oyster-Releasing Dennis

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Oyster festival shuckers are almost as good as the oysters. Oysters were a recurring theme throughout the life Dennis and I shared. We stood hip-to-hip by the kitchen sink and competed to see who could open the most, the fastest, and the cleanest. We drilled holes in shells and hung them from our Christmas tree, we made an annual getaway to the Pemaquid Oyster Festival in Damariscotta, and we had a respectable shell midden growing taller and wider in the backyard. Some of the oysters in that midden are bigger than my foot, and came from Glidden Point. Our favorite oysters were of course the ones we were eating, but the memory of Glidden Points seemed to have an extra sweet, briny flavor to it. With a shell up to eight inches long, these are among the only oysters grown wild and still harvested by hand. We ate oysters throughout the year at other places, but our annual trip to Pemaquid and Damariscotta for a local oyster festival was our idea of oyster heaven. Damariscotta is an Abenaki...
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  Releasing Dennis: The Raspberry Patch “Raspberries! Pick your own, and please put your money in the box.” Our roadside sign was perhaps not quite so grammatical. Dennis had no problem using “UR” for “your,” and if I was making the sign I spent far too long contemplating what font to use. Somehow every year we put up a new sign and were open for business.  The raspberry patch, which was at the south end of the vegetable garden, grew over the years. The patch was one of Dennis’ passions. I wish I knew if it existed before him, or if it was his own idea to turn a bush or two into what it is today, but I can’t ask him now.  Raspberries can flourish on their own, but in Dennis’ world they needed tender care. As the summer heat increased I might say “The peas are dry,” and then go down to hear the rhythmic swishing of water from the sprinkler system cooling off the raspberries, not the peas. I once got a call from an Airbnb guest staying at his mom’s house asking if we c...
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