Anthony D. Fredericks - The Secret Life of Clams: The Mysteries and Magic of Our Favorite Shellfish

Selected Works by Anthony D. Fredericks

Adult Nonfiction

Walking with Dinosaurs

Horseshoe Crab: Biography of a Survivor

How Long Things Live

Ace Your Teacher Interview

Historical Trails of Eastern Pennsylvania

More Science Adventures with Childrens Literature

Desert Dinosaurs

Nonfiction Readers Theatre

Lancaster and Lancaster County

Childrens Books

Mountain Night, Mountain Day

Under One Rock

The Tsunami Quilt

Desert Night, Desert Day

A is for Anaconda

Cannibal Animals

Around One Log

I Am the Desert

P is for Prairie Dog

In One Tidepool

Tsunami Man

Copyright 2014 by Anthony D. Fredericks

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo credit Thinkstock

Print ISBN: 9781629146973

Ebook ISBN: 9781632201188

Printed in China

To the memory of Jerry Ohl

A heck of a brother-in-law,

A hell of a friend!

Contents

Introduction

I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line.

Elvis Presley

I N 1965, A MUSICAL ROMANTIC COMEDY, STARRING Elvis Presley, was released in movie theaters all across America. Girl Happy was typical of many beach-party films produced in the sixtiesa simple plot, lots of campus hijinks, wild parties, and a loud soundtrack. The story, such as it was, revolved around a group of college students going to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for their annual spring break. Boy woos girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl again takes up the majority of this predictable ninety-six-minute movie.

But, as was the case in all of Elviss movies, it wasnt the plot that got moviegoers into the theaters, it was his singing. This was Elviss eighteenth movie and it, too, was packed with lots of rock-and-roll songs, including Startin Tonight, Puppet on a String, and the shake-em-up dance Do The Clam.

Do The Clam invited beachcombers to grab whomever was nearest to them and (with the appropriate background of bongo music) to really get the beach a-rocking. Dancers were encouraged to do some turning, some teasing, some hugging and some squeezingthe combination of which constituted the necessary and basic moves of this new dance sensation.

I doubt whether the songs lyrics ever endeared edible bivalves to the throngs of teenagers who flocked to see this film. Nevertheless, this song is one of the few musical numbers to highlight clamsalbeit with a less than memorable melody.

I initially grew up in Los Angeles. Then, a family move forty miles south to Newport Beach meant that a significant portion of my southern California childhood was spent body-surfing long cresting waves near the Newport Pier, slipping and sliding over the tidepools at Little Corona, water skiing behind super-charged motorboats in Back Bay, and laughing through endless summer volleyball games on the white sands of Beacon Bay. I also had the insufferable habit of collecting all manner of flotsam and jetsam that invariably washed up on the beach after a summer storm. However, I was particularly fascinated with sea creaturesincluding the sea anemones and sea stars hidden in the deep recesses of tidepools, the weird invertebrates I had to scrape off the underside of my tiny sailboat, or the remains of a strange fish washed up with the tide. I was also impressed with the occasional shark or two sighted off the Balboa Peninsula as well as the enormous albacore my parents would haul home after their various fishing ventures near Catalina Island.

FAST FACT: Santa Catalina Island has been inhabited for at least 8,000 years. In the 1930s1950s the Chicago Cubs baseball team held spring training on the island.

Newport Pier.

But it was clams I loved the most. On occasional summer days my parents would send my two sisters and me out with buckets and shovels to dig along the beach fronting our house. We were on the prowl for clams in any size, any shape. And we found them... in droves. We invented games: who could find the most, who could find the biggest, or who would fill their bucket first. Then, it was a mad dash back to the houseour shouts and screams echoing down the bayeventually dumping our caches into the kitchen sink.

Our mother would place a large pot of water on the stove and bring it to a rolling boil. Nearby was a deep pan with two or three sticks of butter slowly melting away into a warm pool of delicious delight. Silverware would be set, large handfuls of napkins would be deposited in the middle of the table, and soon the feast would begin. Our plates crowded with clams, our chins dripping with long rivulets of melted butter, and our laughter punctuating the summer air would make for joyous memories I have kept for more than a half century.

Clams, it seemed, brought out all the good things in life. It was a time for grown-ups and kids to share the stories of our summer and the familial camaraderie that is so much a part of slower days. Occasionally, we would eschew the beachfront clams and travel to one of our favorite seafood eateries. Wed pile into my fathers Buick and head over to the Balboa peninsula and The Crab Cookera venerable Orange County institution thats been serving seafood delicacies since 1951. Hot platters piled with clams, large crocks of melted butter (with bulky slices of lemon), and a cloth napkin hanging under ones chin made for an unforgettable meal. Occasionally we would tinker with sand dab fillets or planks of halibut, but we always came back to the clamsas appetizers or the main coursethose savory, juicy, and oh so succulent clams. There were never enough!

For my wife, the memories were no less sweet. Growing up in northern New Jersey, she and her family would make regular pilgrimages to The Clam Broth House, the iconic seafood restaurant thats been dishing out clams in Hoboken, New Jersey, since 1899. (Jackie Gleason was a regular patron.) There, they would cram themselves into cramped booths, tuck enormous napkins into their shirts, and devour cascading platters of steamers. Conversation was muted, but the culinary satisfaction never was! Like The Crab Cooker, The Clam Broth House has become a gastronomic staple of many childhoods and many family memories over the generations.