Oysters? I still struggle with them. As a nurse I suctioned stuff out of patient lungs which bore way too much resemblance to the tubs of oysters sold in the seafood department. No thanks. A date once bought a tub of those oysters here in Seaside. We sat out on the beach to eat them. I tried. Really, I did. But I was so focused on not dry-heaving that I totally missed the aphrodisiac effect. Since then I have braved oyster shooters with salsa, grilled oysters and can claim to love the ponzu oyster shooters at Sushi Okalani. This is progress!
Clams? They were things in a shell that surely had to be as snotty as oysters. If hidden in chowder they were okay; otherwise I avoided them. I remember a hospice patient who expressed a last-meal desire for fresh fried razor clams. I totally did not get it.
This past March I was at my favorite seafood shop, Bell Bouy in Seaside, eyeballing my usual crab. I noticed razor clams still in the shell AND I could see they were moving. They were still alive! I was immediately intrigued and confessed to the woman behind the counter I had never worked with live clams - but wanted to. She told me the easiest thing was to YouTube clam cleaning videos. I bought 3 clams and went home optimistically. Indeed, there were a number of videos and I cleaned my clams successfully. Okay, I did squeal and drop that first clam in the sink when it squirmed as I snipped off the siphon tip. I thought, mistakenly, it had died with the boiling water dunk. But I picked him back up, finished the job and then went HERE to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for recipes. Triumph! Fried clams with a squeeze of lemon. I was hooked.
I spent a couple months buying clams and cooking them. I got live in the shell when I could; cleaned when I couldn't. I ate them fried; in clam pasta sauce; in chowder - and fell in love with them. And then I started thinking about catching my own clams. The tide schedule and my beach schedule were out of sync until this weekend (cue the angel choir and divine sunburst breaking through the clouds) which turned out to be the Holy Grail weekend of clamming on the Oregon Coast. I remember these conditions last year quite vividly: I woke up, looked out my bedroom window and saw what seemed to be all of Seaside out on the beach. I sleepily wondered if there had been a disaster. A tsunami maybe . . . but of course people would not have been HANGING OUT ON THE BEACH for a tsunami. Why were they out there?! It's probably safe to say there were thousands, all pursuing, as I learned, the razor clam. The same clam my hospice patient had longed for on his death bed. This year I get it. People love their clams. People want clams for their last meal. I now loved clams. And I was gonna catch some.
I purchased a clamming license at Fred Meyer and a clam gun at Costco. I read a few books on clamming. I had a plastic Safeway bag to stash what was sure to be a bountiful harvest and a mop handle to bang on the sand. (this, in spite of the fact I had no idea why people banged sticks and shovels on the sand when clamming.) I sorta knew what to do . . . sorta had some gear but was thoroughly intimidated by all those people out there who actually knew what they were doing.
Thursday morning the conditions were perfect. I self-consciously walked out to the beach, pretty sure I looked as ridiculous as I felt. I shouldn't have worried. Within 5 minutes I ran into 'Clammie Annie' - the clamming zealot mother of my friend Michelle, owner of Seaside Coffee House. In no time she introduced me to her friends who took me under their very accomplished wings and taught me the basics of clamming. My first day out, with a little help from my friends, I dug a full limit of 15 clams.
That night I fried 4 of them for dinner.
I don't know when anything tasted better. I was eating clams I caught with my own hands and sipping a lovely pinot gris while looking at the ocean they had been in that morning. There is some sort of poetic perfectness there. For the clams, maybe not so much. I did thank them.
That first day I was a tourist clammer, graciously tolerated by the locals. I had Bog boots and a decent clam gun, but the Safeway bag totally pegged me as a newbie . . . as did the wimpy mop handle with no leash, forcing me to juggle it with each dig so it didn't wash away. I took mental notes as my clam guru, Walt, gave me gentle suggestions. Let me introduce Walt by saying he has a sweet, black lab-mix dog. When you ask his name, as mostly women do, he replies, "His name is CM - Chick Magnet. He caught you, didn't he?!" The dog's real name is Gizmo and he digs clams. No shit. And he bites the tip off the siphon. Honestly. I saw him do it. All jokes aside, Walt has been clamming forever and was very generous in sharing his knowledge. I needed to lose the Safeway bag and get a square Costco milk jug, cut just so, to store my freshly caught clams. I needed to attach that milk jug and my leashed tamper of choice (turned out to be a Louisville Slugger baseball bat) to a belt. Preferably a belt that came with a pair of fishing waders. Waders weren't required, but would make everything easier, drier and warmer. Gardening gloves were recommended and I needed to lose the jewelry. This was no time to look cute. Walt told me of one women who tangled an earring in her clam net when she was up to her shoulder in the sand reaching for a clam. I was NOT going to be that woman.
This morning I strolled out to the freshly exposed clam bed and found Walt and Gizmo. "Well, look at you!' he said with a big smile. I was earring-less and ring-less; had my waders, belt, milk jug, baseball bat and my clam gun. I think I passed. Especially when he learned that my waders were half price because I got a Youth XL instead of a Men's Small. Score one for the newbie!!!
We spent a little time together and then went our separate ways. I didn't want him to have to babysit me again. I struggled, as did everyone, today. The conditions just weren't the same. 3 hours later I had 13 clams - 2 short of the limit. But I found them all by myself and one of them was a sexy 5.5 inches long. I measured. (I'm reminded here of Walt's terrible joke about why women can't be carpenters. It's because they've been told all their lives that this {indicating a measurement of about 3 inches with his fingers} is 6 inches. Oh, Walt . . .)
This afternoon I cleaned 28 clams. I thanked each one before I dunked it in boiling water to pop it's shell open.
I know when the next clam-worthy negative tide will occur and have it marked on my calendar. I know the thrill of seeing a clam 'show'; the feel of a clam gun hitting a shell and what it feels like to be up to my shoulder in the sand with a clam at my finger tips and a wave coming in. I know what it feels like to lose that clam - and what it feels like to just barely snag it, feel it trying to dig down and manage to pull it out while the water is swirling around me. I own waders with neoprene booties. I am a clammer. Not a great one, but a clammer all the same. I suspect someday I'll request fresh fried razor clams for dinner one last time before I die - and I will move heaven and earth to honor the request if I ever hear of another dying man who wants clams for dinner. Why the passion? Are the clams we catch technically any different from the ones we buy? Nahh. But the experience! My guess is that dying man was longing for the coast, the smell of salt air and the sound of the waves; a return to his youth; the thrill of the hunt, camaraderie with clamming buddies, bringing abundance home to his family . . . and, certainly, delicious dinners. Perhaps he was longing for a place and time that held goodness for him in this life before moving on to the next. I get it now. It's part of this place I love so much. I love every new experience here. My soul has found its home - and its people. Even when alone, I am never lonely. Today I am content. Happy as a clam, one might say. No one ever mentions the qualifier of that phrase. I never heard it until yesterday. It really goes like this: "Happy as a clam at high water." Today the water is high.
