We'd sit at the counter, waiting for her to dump the basket onto a paper plate. She'd lay two pieces of white bread next to our meal and pull a cold Pepsi from the cooler.

Then ...

There they were. Oysters! Delectably fried, with an outer layer - crispy, crunchy, salty, almost nutty - encasing a succulent interior that oozed with the briny taste of the ocean itself.

They were Apalachicolas, brought the short distance from The Bay to Andrews Oyster Bar in Bainbridge. There, in a little barnacle of a cinder- block cafe on Broad Street, through all my youthful winters, Mrs. Nellie Andrews served 'em up, hot or on the half shell, to people like us.

So we'd huddle alternately between the warm fish-fry area and the cooler side of the room, where the glistening, freshly opened bivalves would appear before us, dozens on end, accompanied only by saltines, ketchup and hot sauce (it was a religious certainty that nothing like a cold beer was allowed inside the "bar").

Thus began my unceasing passion for the oyster. Since then, as a traveler in mad pursuit of the pearlescent mollusk, I have ventured erratically from Savannah to Charleston, S.C., from New Orleans to Apalachicola, Fla., from Buckhead to Manhattan. I have succumbed to dangerous flirtations, steamy encounters, tarted-up cheesy things and other pairings that seemed dubious from the start. I've spent big bucks and ended up with nothing but shucks.

But what pleasure and comfort one can discover along such a decadent path.

Certainly there's nothing more kind to a prickly throat than a simple oyster stew. Such a concoction - made with care and administered with tenderness - is, in the language of that inimitable food writer M.F.K. Fisher, as "warm as love and welcomer in winter."

What better way to fuel a bonding ritual than to set out a bushel of oysters and a tub of icy brews? You might roast them in the oven until the shells pop open, then douse them in garlicky butter. Or top them with squirts of lime juice and copious sprinklings of chopped cilantro and green onion and bake them till they bubble.

And can anyone think of a more coolly elegant, more visually arresting picture than a silver tray loaded with iced Blue Points or Malpeques, lying naked and splashed with classic mignonette sauce? Such a composition will turn more heads than a little black number by Calvin Klein.

For many an aficionado, the oyster can do no wrong. "I like 'em raw, I like 'em fried, I like them every way you can probably think of having them," says Joel Knox, president of Atlanta-based wholesaler Inland Seafood. "I never met an oyster I didn't like. I'm sort of like the Will Rogers of oysters."

Others are more pointedly aesthetic. "I like oysters on the half shell that I open myself, and I eat nothing on them," says Charleston cookbook writer John Martin Taylor. "If you have a perfect oyster, it needs nothing - maybe a saltine."

Chris McDonald, chef at the Atlanta Fish Market in Buckhead, which usually has at least six raw selections on the menu, would agree. "Usually people who like them cooked don't really like oysters," he says, confessing that he can be enticed to eat them Rockefeller style or barbecued with apple-smoked bacon.

While the purist will only swallow them alive, some of the New South's best cooks are using the shellfish in recipes that meld a variety of ingredients to form dishes that are almost baroque in style and texture.

At the venerable Elizabeth on 37th in Savannah, for instance, chef Elizabeth Terry takes oysters from nearby Bluffton, S.C., bakes them in pastry with leeks and country ham, then drizzles that with a light rose cream sauce. Or she blends them with Italian sausage and cheese, pops them in a turnover and serves them with apple horseradish sauce and a fruit relish.

On the East Coast and the West, a fact that everyone agrees upon is that oysters taste better - and are safest - at exactly this time of year, when waters are coldest and the mollusks aren't spawning.

So now's the season to praise the oyster, to embrace the oyster, to bask in the romance of the oyster. It's time to cusp it to our lips (or to those of some special other) and drink the natural liquor that's sealed inside it - like a mystery, like a kiss, from the sea.

Raw oysters on the half-shell chill on ice. (Photo by Jean Shifrin.)

The raw and the shucked: Oyster recipes.
The oyster cult holds sway in Apalachicola, Fla.