We have a slightly different newsletter for you this week. This is Josh in for Leah, and I personally wanted to share with you a story about my grandmother Betty Schoenberger who passed last week.

 

I was lucky and fortunate to grow up within traveling distance of Grandmom and Granddad. They moved to Pensacola, FL when I was five years old, only about three hours from the outskirts of New Orleans where I lived. When they arrived in their Buick and later Ford, the very sight of their car was magical. It meant a drive across the Mississippi river, over the bayous of Mississippi and Alabama, and through the tunnel of Mobile right after passing the USS Alabama battleship.

 

From a very young age, Grandmom was the one who taught me how to both eat and love raw oysters. When we went to visit--and they always drove to pick us up--we would stop off at an oyster restaurant in Mobile, Alabama. It was right on the waterfront. Pelicans were something I took for granted, even as a very young kid from Metairie, Louisiana. How they landed and perched to the piers of that one little seafood interstate restaurant is something I'll never forget.

 

I'm happy to say James is also a connoisseur of raw oysters.

 

Grandmom, you would be proud.