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Over the weekend I was watching my son playing a video game that had many mountains and that made me remember when I was a teenager living in Puerto Rico.  My grandfather would say vamos a cojer cangrejos/lets catch crabs.  This would be at night, 10:30 or so.  Everyone would run to the car, my aunts, my cousins and my grandmother.  Yep the car would be full!  We would drive close to the beach where there were no lights and the roads were very dark.  My grandfather would drive at 5 mph so we could see the crabs passing by.  We wanted to catch them alive not in pieces! 

Meanwhile, I was in the backseat sitting right next to window scared shitless because all I could see was darkness.  No matter how hard I looked there was nothing, lol.  All I could think was someone coming with a machete, breaking the window and chopping off my head, lol.  All of a sudden my aunt would yell mira uno/look there is one!  I felt like someone dropped a bucket of cold water on me!  Mi abuelo/my grandfather would stop right away, him and my aunt would get off grab an empty sack of potatoes with two flashlights.  Then to run off after the crab!  I was scared but at the same time it was fun! LOL  

The rest of us would stay in the car, yelling agarralo, agarralo/grab it, grab it!  We would do the same thing until we had five or six crabs.  Then off to pass by the panadería/bakery to buy bread right out of the oven.  Get home and while mi abuela would prepare the pan with mantequilla/bread with butter and coffee (how I miss those late nights) for everyone, my grandfather would put the crabs in the yard inside a bucket with water to cook them the next day.  My abuela would do all the cooking and my aunts and me would take care of the crabs after they were cooked.  Mmmm, que rico!  That was a typical Friday night for us in Puerto Rico.  Simple but we enjoyed ourselves, how times have change...♥♥

image credit: raniel1963 The U.S. National Archives

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