Screech n’ Lobster – June 4 – Ken

Newfoundland has natural beauty; waterfalls, peat bogs, foreboding seas, and lots of scenic vistas. And, it also has a cultural beauty found in few other places.

Natural Beauty

We have hit a couple of quite warm days such as the day we went to the Western Brook Pond. There have also been days like yesterday and today with lots of rain, temperatures in the low single digits and a strong east wind. While that has not kept us indoors, it has made the trips away from the vehicle shorter as we tried to stay warm and dry yet see the attractions.

Our two hikes were highlights, but there is also beauty in the villages.

Cultural Beauty

Trout Point is typical of any small town you would have imagined as an outport before the highway was built in the 1960s. It is at the west end of the tablelands, so, mostly inaccessible before the highway.

The rise above the beach has weather beaten houses strewn along its arch. The boardwalk linking the houses has been broken by the surf, and lobster and crab traps are piled up between the houses. The road on the other side of the houses is pothole filled and vehicles can only crawl through the community.

Lighthouses are, of course, part of both the landscape and the culture. Parks Canada has preserved at least two of the lighthouses along the coast. The first, at Lobster Cove Head, just north of Rocky Point, was both a lighthouse and a family home. Parks Canada has honored the lighthouse keepers, and tells the story of one family who, between first the father then the son, tended the lighthouse for over 60 years through summers of fires and winters of deep snow falls.

Unfortunately, we were not able to get into the second lighthouse at Port au Choix, but standing on the limestone cliff taking a picture in the bitterly cold wind was enough to make me think about how hearty these pioneers must have been.

Tradition and Ceremony

It is tradition that visitors to the Rock become honorary Newfoundlanders, and there is only one way to do that, by being “screeched in”. Fortunately for us, last Thursday night, the night our friends Greg and Nancy from Ontario joined us, they were hosting a traditional Newfie kitchen party.

In reality, it was a local performer who regularly plays at the pub, who does a kitchen party show. His first 20 minutes were typical of many local bar acts; he played a few songs and told a few jokes and stories.

However, he then passed out tambourines, maracas, and “ugly sticks” (rough hewn shillelaghs) and everyone else got into the act. First, he had all the ladies in the audience (about 10) get up and play the instruments in time to his version of the song “I’se the B’y”. The ladies did a wonderful job playing and dancing a jig to the tune.

Then it was the guys turn. As all guys will, given a chance, we started doing our own thing – banging the ugly sticks on the floor and shaking those tambourines chanting Queen’s “we will, we will, rock you”. That ignited the party.

The Americans in the crowd, a husband and wife from Connecticut, were brought up to sing O’Canada, and everyone got going.

Then, it was time to get “screeched in”. If you don’t know about screeching in, it is the only way come-from-aways can become honorary Newfies. It entails taking the Newfie pledge, downing a shot of Newfoundland Screech rum, and kissing a cod fish.

Unfortunately, Phyllis left her phone at the cabin so I was the only one taking the embarrassing pictures 😉

About half the crowd signed up for the screeching in, so together we swore the pledge, downed the shot and kissed the cod. Ok, it was mostly like that. Unfortunately, since covid you can’t pass around a single cod fish for everyone to kiss, so we each had our own little dried sardine to kiss. Somewhat less dramatic, but just as effective.

By the end of the ceremony the kitchen party was well underway with people mixing and mingling at each other’s table trading stores of where they were from, what they did and how they ended up in Newfoundland.

Lobster Dinner

No time in Newfoundland would be complete without lobster.

We were at the only grocery store in Cow Head, one of the communities along the coast, getting provisions for breakfast when we saw a sign saying “Fresh Lobster $7.25 per pound”. Not having made plans for dinner, and because we had a cabin with a kitchen, we decided lobster would be a good option.

The hitch in the plan was the store had not yet received the lobster from the processing plant. So, with sketchy directions to the dock and in the pouring rain we set off for the plant. There was a guy walking around a nondescript building when we got to what we thought was the plant, so we asked him about getting lobster and, as it would turn out, he was the plant supervisor.

When Phyllis answered his question about if we wanted male or female lobsters with the statement “Males, because if I won’t eat the row, my friends sure won’t” he figured she knew something about lobster and gave us a price that was even better than the one at the store.

Phyllis and Nancy did the talking, arranging and paying. So, when Greg and I entered the plant and announced that we were the husbands, hiding in the car, the group of fisherman, still decked out in their cumbersome wet rain gear laughed at our “shyness”. One older fellow tucked his face into his sou’wester so that we wouldn’t see him laughing at us.

With a big pot and the live lobster, we setup our own lobster boil.

Unfortunately, the cabin wasn’t equipped with the tools necessary for tearing apart a boiled lobster so using a pair of scissors, a sharp knife and a hand sized piece of limestone, we cut and hammered our way through the shells and claws to get at the delicious meat.

Our friend Greg has only ever eaten lobster a couple of times so this was quite a cultural event for him. Phyllis was the only one to have attempted a lobster race across the kitchen floor before, too. We are all getting an education!

Next up is Labrador.