Dwelling Place

Grabbing my two little people by two little hands and walking quickly, we entered our coastal city’s fish market, our faces smacked with fresh Gulf smells and a salty dampness as the glass doors closed behind us. Joe Patti’s Seafood Market claims to be Pensacola’s second most visited tourist destination, just behind the first place white sand beaches that make us famous. Boisterous, systematic, and efficient, the whole place buzzes with activity any time of day, 7 days a week, and teems with glassy-eyed fish on ice, tubs filled to the brim with fresh-caught bay shrimp, and a staff that eighty-plus-year-old Mr. Frank Patti, a local celebrity, runs like the crew of a ship. Like a king perched on his throne, the second-generation owner bellows out service ticket numbers from the radio handset clutched in his right hand. “Be my shadows,” I repeated my usual instruction as the children and I worked through the crowd to obtain our ticket. I was several numbers down, and an old hand a...