A quarter-bushel clam hod and two clam hoes.

This “misadventure” takes place in the summer of 1977. We were on a week’s vacation in Rockland, Maine, at my in-laws’ home. My wife’s sister, her husband and their three kids also were there for a couple of days.

I had the tides figured and was going clamming the next evening. I mentioned it to my brother-in-law, David. He said, “Gee, I’ve never been clamming before. Do you suppose you could go today and I could go with you?” I said, “The tide would be an hour earlier, but why not?” He then said, “Do you suppose we could take the boys with us?” The boys were my son, Steve, and my brother-in-law’s son, Kevin, both about 9 years old. I said with great trepidation, “I guess so.”

So around 4 that afternoon, off we went in my Rambler station wagon, the four of us, two clam hods (baskets or clam rollers) and two clam hoes (rakes or forks). The plan was for Dave and the two boys to have the quarter-bushel hod, and I would have the half-bushel one.

We arrived at the area below Spruce Head Village and walked about 100 yards to the clam flats. If you have never been on clam flats, I’ll describe them. The mud is sticky and smelly, and you sink in about 4 inches with every step. I showed the three of them how to find the clams, and we commenced digging.

The boys had boots about 8 inches high. Just about every other step they took, one boot or the other would stick in the mud and come off. Dave and I spent the next half-hour retrieving boots. One of the boys even lost a sock (which we never found). The boys each had fallen in the mud a couple of times. Dave and I decided that if we were going to get any clams, the boys would have to go up into the rocky area and look for “treasures,” which they did.

In a couple of hours, Dave and I had filled the two hods with about a three-quarters bushel of clams. Then, three things happened. It started getting dark, the mosquitos came out, and since we were a day early from my tidal figuring, the tide hadn’t come in far enough to get the boys or the clams washed off.

What a mess. We trudged to the car. I knew that there was a paved area to launch boats about a half-mile up the road, near the Spruce Head Island Bridge. We put the back seat down in the Rambler and loaded the clams, the boys and Dave in the back. I removed my boots and drove up the road.

I headed the car toward the water so we could leave the lights on to see what we were doing. We had the boys take off their boots and pants. We washed the pants, boots, boys, our boots and the clams as well as we could in the cold, salt water. I found a couple of old towels in the car and wrapped the boys in them. We put up the back seat and loaded everything in the car, then drove back to Rockland in the dark.

When we got to the house, three things happened. Due to the shape the boys were in, Dave and I caught h— from our wives. The boys went directly to the bathtub for a long scrubbing, and their clothes went directly into the washing machine.

The next day, things got a lot better. I shucked the largest of the clams and broken clams and made a clam chowder. My father-in-law got some lobsters from a lobster fisherman he knew, and we bought some ears of corn. We then had a feast of clam chowder, steamers, lobsters and corn on the cob.

So in the end, all’s well that ends well.