Oysters in summer? Why not?

“R” you allowed to eat oysters this month?

Of course not. July does not have an “r” in it. And I have learned that the only morsel of knowledge any of us retained in life is that we should not eat oysters in a month without an “r” in it.

But now we may have to reprogram our brains. This would tinker with our inner calendar, alphabet and shrinking list of certainties. And since my brain has already turned to pluff mud, this is just one more piece of flotsam turning my life into tabby ruins.

South Carolina is considering changing state law to allow harvesting certain oysters in the summer months.

These are not the wild-grown clusters we slurp like starving dogs around wooden tables on the nippy nights of January.

The proposed change would apply to the “farm-harvested” selects that are part of a growing mariculture industry in South Carolina. They are raised in cages in our natural waters, and experts say there’s no need to shut harvesting down in the summer if it is done right.

On Hilton Head, Andrew Carmines got his Shell Ring Oyster Co. going a couple of years ago.

On Lady’s Island, retired Marine Frank Roberts has people falling in love with his perfect Single Lady oysters.

State Reps. Shannon Erickson of Beaufort and Bill Bowers of Hampton are helping this law along. A hearing was held last week in Beaufort.

Erickson explains it in infinite detail on Facebook. I am a fan of Erickson and would not put words in her mouth, but it seems to me that this subject involves not only the oyster’s job of filtering our waters but also the oyster’s sex life. Hold that thought.

I’m not sure if this came up at the public hearing, but there may be a big advantage to summer oysters not yet put under the microscope of science.

Many years ago, The Island Packet was a tabloid newspaper with the top third of the front page taken up with a drawing of a little boat belching more smoke than Chicago, and in tilted, italic type leaning into the sea breeze was a random quotation pulled from the annals of time immemorial.

And in those days, we had a columnist who had come to the Lowcountry from the brighter lights of a former life as a radio and television comedian and game show host. Garry Moore once wrote about these “bits of posey,” which are still on the front page but down at the bottom, where on Thursday one Fran Lebowitz mused in tiny print: “Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.”

In his column, Garry Moore threw this one out as an example: “ ‘Life is a tilted samovar’ — Leo Tolstoy.”

“Frankly that one did nothing for my spirits one way or the other, but I figured if it was good enough for Tolstoy, it was certainly good enough for me. Consequently I spent the rest of that day casually quoting it to friends. Judging by their empty stares, it meant nothing to them, either, except that possibly I’d gone back to drinking.”

And then Garry Moore left us with a front-page quotation of his own, which I herewith enter into the record for those egging on the summer oyster:

“September is a month that ends in R,

And so are the months that follow it.

So if you have been holding an oyster

in your mouth all summer,

It’s okay now to swallow it.”

This story was originally published July 28, 2016 at 3:38 PM with the headline "Oysters in summer? Why not?."