Tony's Sanitary

Yesterday in yoga a woman was wearing a Tony's Sanitary t-shirt.

Tony's Sanitary is a fish market and restaurant in Morehead City, North Carolina.

When I was a kid I went to a summer camp on the coast of North Carolina. Every session we would take a three-day deep sea fishing cruise to Morehead City.

Every year the highlight of the trip would be fried shrimp and hush puppies at Tony's followed by a trip to the gift shop, where we would buy rope bracelets and cigarette gum.

Those who visit Tony's do not forget it. It's just one of those places. My brother, who attended the brother camp to mine, and I have reminisced about the hush puppies well into adulthood.

"Remember the baskets they came in?"

"The red plastic ones? How could you forget?"

I hadn't thought about Tony's for years but then, just a few weeks ago, I was having fried seafood with a friend and I started talking about it.

And then yesterday there I was in my hip little yoga studio in the East Village of Manhattan and there was a young woman with a Tony's t-shirt on.

When we went to the wall to do headstands she came next to me.

"Did you-" I started to whisper, but then was interrupted when the teacher came over to put her into place.

I felt it would be inappropriate to bother her mid-headstand but then when class ended I lost her in the motion of putting mats and blocks away.

She disappeared into the anonymity of a late New York afternoon.

But the memory of that shirt remains.