Last night I went to a local dining place that's built on the end of a gas station. On Friday and Sat. nights the owners, Buzz and Sadie, have a seafood buffet. Unfortunately for them, they opened the place just a few weeks before the oil spill in the Gulf, so it started out well, but fresh seafood became scarce. Now Buzz and Sadie are looking morose.

When I got there last night Buzz said they were expecting a local famous person and an entourage of 60 people to come eat there. The famous person is Ruthie Bolton, a basketball player who now plays for a team in Japan. Someone from the newspaper was going to come and take photos. This entire weekend, the town is going celebrate a hometown girl who made good.

So I ate slowly, killing time, waiting for the arrival of Ruthie and her entourage. I was eating boiled shrimp, plump juicy shrimp perfectly cooked in a spicy Cajun shrimp boil. I had to pass up most of the buffet, because even to look at it made my arteries harden on the spot. Here's what was there: Fried okra, fried catfish, fried oysters, fried hushpuppies, fried onion rings, fried clam balls, fried crab cakes (mostly bread) fried frog legs, french fries, etc.There were only about three items on the buffet that were un-fried.

So as I was peeling and eating a plate of shrimp I got one that had a definite petrochemical taste. Then after a few minutes, another one with that same unmistakeable taste. Buzz walked by and I asked if these were Gulf shrimp, and he said yes. Oh Oh. I had tried a couple of the oysters and they had an off taste too. The shrimpers and oystermen on the Coast are anxious to get back in business and go back to work and I think inspectors are rushing things by letting them harvest seafood. An inspection of oyster beds revealed a few days ago that it was "disappointing" to find dead oysters in the reefs. Well Doh!

So I paid up and went straight home and drank a large glass of milk to try to cover the petrochemicals up. And I never did get to see Ruthie Bolton.