The magnitude of this pandemic really sank in with me when I learned that the demand for canned tuna fish has soared in America during the global crisis.
Tuna producers around the world say sales of cans and pouches of tuna went up by 100 percent in the first months of the coronavirus.
Big retail groceries put limits on the number of cans of tuna customers could buy as shoppers tried to stock up on food.
That sudden surge in tuna fish sales was disturbing for some of us who lived in an era when consumption of canned tuna was extensive and just a way of life. We had been encouraged by the declining popularity of the food in recent years.
From the 1950s when I was growing up until the late 1980s, tuna was the most consumed seafood in the nation. More than 85 percent of households in the country had containers of tuna in the pantry.
But canned tuna sales had plummeted steadily for nearly three decades before the pandemic. Per capita consumption in the United States dropped by 30 percent from 2000 to 2015.
Before it fell out of favor, tuna had been marketed for years as a healthy ingredient for sandwiches, salads and casseroles. Lord knows my mother contributed to the tuna fish craze in her day.
Neighborhood gatherings of ladies’ groups were common back then. There were frequent prayer meetings, Tupperware parties and home permanent days at our house, and tuna was a main attraction.
My mother would mix canned tuna with boiled eggs, celery, mayonnaise, onions and other stuff, put a glob of it on lettuce and call it tuna salad.
That was for fancy meetings. If some of the ladies were just getting together to give each other home permanents, she usually served tuna fish sandwiches on white bread with the crust cut off.
She concocted some tuna casseroles a couple of times with mushroom soup in them, crushed potato chips on top and things like that, but my dad refused to eat them.
His main complaint was that they made the whole house smell bad. I agreed with that and never could decide if the tuna fish or the home permanents smelled worse.
I dreaded the days my mother made tuna fish, because I knew she would put a tuna fish sandwich in my school lunch if there was any left over.
My third grade teacher Miss Bearden asked me to tell my mother not to send tuna sandwiches, because they smelled up the whole classroom before lunch.
I delivered that message, but my mother thought I had just made it up because I didn’t want any more tuna fish sandwiches in my lunch bag. I told my dad, and he thought I was kidding.
Miss Bearden finally called my mother to complain about the smell of the tuna sandwiches. The teacher didn’t help me learn the multiplication table that year, but she did save me from tuna fish. This absolutely true story emphasizes how bad tuna fish really tastes. A tennis coach friend of mine was dating a girl from Russia who came to America to play college tennis. They fell in love, and he wanted to ask her to marry him.
He is old-fashioned and felt he should get her dad’s permission before proposing. He flew alone to Russia to meet him. The coach didn’t speak Russian and was concerned about ordering food on the long trip. So he took a few cans of tuna.
The girl’s dad granted his approval for the engagement, and the coach headed home. At the Moscow airport, he saw some cans of food with a picture of fish on them in the gift shop and picked up several for the trip.
When his girlfriend and future wife was helping him unpack, she asked why he had cans of cat food from Russia in his backpack. He had eaten a couple of them on the plane.
The coach said he really didn’t notice much difference in the tuna and the cat food. I wish my mother was still around to hear that story.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES