My late father, Joe Kelly, told a story about today, Holy Saturday. As a boy growing up on Poultney Street in what was then a distinctly non-Federal Hill — the neighborhood was just South Baltimore. An ace at Latin and Greek, he was a dutiful altar server, or acolyte, at Holy Cross Catholic Church on West Street, not far from the Cross Street Market.
It fell to him to assist the priests at the rather involved and lengthy services on this day (the service was all in Latin). In those days, the 1930s, the rituals were held on Saturday morning, and when completed, he raced to ring the high steeple bells proclaiming the end of Lent. His home parish was German (as was his mother) and just up the street, on Riverside Avenue, was St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, the Irish church.
He recalled there was a friendly rivalry between the altar servers as to who pulled the ropes on the tower bells first.
Then, he split the church and ran home (I’m guessing) to get a slice of one of the absolutely delicious homemade chocolate Easter eggs his mother (we called her Mame or Mamie) made. (In my time, I had two grandmothers, each of whom made the chocolate vanilla buttercream eggs; each used a very similar recipe, but they managed to taste different. My father’s mother liked to flavor hers with maraschino cherries. My mother’s mother, confectioner Lily Rose, had a heavy hand with the vanilla bottle.)
Pecan nougat eggs were not homemade but arrived from the Maron Candy Works on Lexington Street.
The ringing of the big bronze steeple bells across the rooftops of South Baltimore proclaimed the end of Lent and the impending arrival of Easter Sunday.
In my life, it also ended the late winter/early spring misery season when the customs of eating so much fish subsided, a bit.
To this day, I will not go near fish (rock and shad are absolutely nonnegotiable) or crab. An old friend got me to try an oyster this winter. I survived — but oysters and other Baltimore delicacies are wasted on me. I learned to survive nicely on cans of Campbell’s cream of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. For some reason, I eat tuna salad, but not too much.
Abstaining from meat in Baltimore or the greater Chesapeake region seemed to be a distinct non-hardship if you were not afraid to master the art of home preparation.
My father seemed to have friends wherever he went, and one of his oldest ties was with Johnny Nichols, who ran the largest seafood stall at the Cross Street Market. It was strategically located at the South Charles Street end of the market to get the fishy scent as far away as possible from other sellers.
You could set a clock on the ringing of another bell — our family doorbell at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon. No one would be present, but two grocery bags would be sitting in the vestibule. Johnny Nichols’ runner, a Mr. DiBlasi, left a staggering assortment of the fruits of the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean.
Arriving were white paper canisters of shucked oysters, crabmeat (in those days, crab was rather plain and called either “regular” or “special” and was not so fancy with “jumbo lumps.” It was also guaranteed to be handpicked from the lower Eastern Shore.
The bag held un-steamed shrimp — a lot of it — and fresh, cleaned fish, which we called hake.
It all went to the refrigerator except if the haul included a bushel of unshelled oysters. They went to the cold pantry with the admonition to shuck them yourself — as many as you wanted.
At an hour when Baltimore was just awakening on Friday morning, my grandmother Lily Rose was up to the task that faced her. She steamed the shrimp in vinegar, whose airborne scent found its way throughout the house. The oysters were padded in cracker crumbs and awaited frying, often accompanied by an exciting stovetop fire Friday evening.
The smell of frying fish was powerful, but nothing to compare with grilled tripe, another positively weird dish that was occasionally in the food repertoire, but not on Fridays.
She also used vintage cast iron skillets for the fish, considered a delicacy by my grandfather, Ed Monaghan. My mother, who bore the name Stewart because it was her mother’s maiden name, liked the shrimp but often said that shrimp was practically tasteless and only as good as the cocktail sauce. We made our own, drenched with freshly grated horseradish. Crabcakes were served on Saltine crackers.
The door to the dinner table was always open to friends who popped in for what became a well-known seafood smorgasbord. The feast was considered among the best of the week. On one occasion, we had so many discarded shrimp shells that my mother dug a hole in the garden and buried them to hold down the smell.
I complained about the seafood but was never tempted. I was fascinated by the good cheer and banter that accompanied this day of so-called abstinence and fasting in the seafood-rich city of Baltimore, where I learned that every law has its exception. Fasting meant feasting and was completely legal.
Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jacques.kelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.