My Two Loves
Recently I traveled to Durham for one sole purpose, college tours. I’ve come to that time in my life where everyone is asking “So where do you think you’ll apply?” This is a question I truly dread. Despite my anxiety kicking in about growing up and making big girl decisions, I fell in love with two things in North Carolina, Duke and crab legs from a local seafood spot.
Tucked away on a busy little street, Sho Nuff’ Seafood became one of my driving forces to work hard so that I can get into Duke and beg my parents to send me money for a plate of crab legs once a month. Sure, Duke is absolutely wonderful. The architecture is beautiful, the people are kind, and of course with its “Harvard of the South” reputation, it would give me a strong foundation to start whatever career I wanted. Yet when I sat outside in the chairs at the bright red tables and put the first piece of meat in my mouth, everything changed. It no longer became, “It’d be cool if I got into Duke” but “I absolutely must get into Duke”.
The spot is humble. There’s limited parking, limited seating, and on the day we went, it was blazing outside. My family and I were greeted warmly by the cashier and then the cook who emerged from the kitchen to tell the cashier “Treat them well, they went all around the world trying to find a parking spot”. As he walked away laughing, I smiled to myself because I knew that everything would be good. I mean it had to be. He wore shorts, a blue t-shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat. His phone was in a holster on his hip and he looked the least bit interested in the growing list of orders that were for pickup. You may ask, “Why wasn’t he interested Claire?”. Well dear reader, because he knew exactly what he was doing. Once we placed our orders we waited around 10 minutes outside in the hot sun. Finally, the cashier emerged with a tray full of crab legs, shrimp, and fried fish (for my dad).
First impressions are everything and I immediately noticed the butter and herbs dripping down the sides of the legs. We quickly took pictures and then, we ate. I broke open the shell and dipped the hot meat into the glistening butter and herb mixture at the bottom of the tray. The crab legs themselves were absolutely drenched. It was messy, delicious, chaos. We ate in a trance barely saying anything to each other and when we were finished we all said “That was amazing”. As I sat in the car on the way back to our next destination. I began plotting how I was going to get into Duke to fulfill my dreams of having these crab legs every month.
