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photo via NOAA
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Taking The Littlenecks
by Robert Alan Felt
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No longer to rise before dawn, to quickstep gray first light and hustle to cast off with buddies, to skim the bay to inlet tide, to bluewater fish beckoning, to long fun-filled day and bags of fillets. This sunny spring afternoon, my seventy-first birthday, I am clamming alone.
Rake in hand just off an islet dense with spartina, the bay water is cool at the hips, steadily outgoing, my pilothouse anchored downwind proud in scintillation, gently swaying in light southwest breeze.
And CLINK to hit the first littleneck, and as if right through the long ash handle comes an image clear and delectable of a plated dozen raw and chilled on the halfshell, dabbed with cocktail sauce, fringed with lemon wedge, the day’s perfect present.
With the first choice clam in the float ring it is then CLUNK to hit a first chowder. For more than a few years there has been no need to even dislodge these old clams from the mud and sand, no need to accumulate bait, nor shuck and mince the tough meat for various recipe; nor, for that matter, to take even one topneck or cherrystone. And feeling apologetic for having disturbed this old man, and feeling a pang of guilt for having taken way more than my fair share of these big spawners over the years, I move on briskly toward a favorite area for littlenecks.
And treading see half hidden in the grass edge a great white heron, a large male, likely the same gamester from last season whose stance, locked up and stoic, is a poor mask for suspicion, and who just might, should luck have it, remain in place again as a big feathered metronome to entertain my zigzag of his neighborhood.
At the start of reliable bottom it is PLINK to hit a thin empty shell, perhaps a scallop or razor clam, victim of winter, predator, or old age, then CLINK CLINK, scoop up and turn, and split-second joy to see the first littleneck double in the basket, which begins the planned short harvest of three dozen, and the unplanned recollection of family scenes rarely recalled.
CLINK, and through the ash appears the old rolling pin hanging in my woodshop more than twenty years, handed down to my mother by my grandmother, the tubed maple slightly pitted and dusty now but absolutely good for another hundred years of family usage. And CLINK to see myself as a boy standing alongside my mother at our kitchen counter as she enjoys a most serious hobby, and see her baker hands expertly guide the pin back and forth while explaining the proper, somewhat magical expansion of dough, and think now that this wood through wood occurrence is astounding, as if the ash and maple trees are still alive, rooted and flourishing and communicating with each other, reborn kindly to help me relive a keepsake past.
And CLUNK to see my older brother at home on his deathbed as my mother tends to him still incredibly strong-willed, hellbent on family help after months of heartbreak turned to acceptance, and see on opposite sides of the bed my brother’s two young sons, my nephews partially informed, and hear their words of hopefulness unaware of lifelong damage to come.
Then CLINK to happily be with my brother on our first fiberglass boat, what had been a neglected fifteen foot runabout, my grandfather’s trade for an old Dodge, heading out in sunshine through the mooring channel, both of us jubilant and proud of our spiffy restoration, and elated with the new two stroke forty horse Evinrude, a second fantastic gift from Grandpa, and see myself on the bow holding on as my brother prudently accelerates, and hear my recurrent exclamation to myself, “Wee hee, I am Flipper the dolphin from TV!”
And CLINK, CLINK, CLINK, a triple, instant overwhelming joy to first see my exchange of vows on my wedding day as the luckiest man alive to have such a devoted beautiful bride, and then see most vividly the nerve wracking magnificent birth of my son noontime on a glorious warm fall day of brilliant sunshine and cobalt sky.
CLACK to discard a cherrystone before CLUNK to see my post college enterprise shuttered, and, after so many years, still feel dashed hopes, and then CLINK after CLINK, CLACK, CLUNK, flashing through my teaching career, mostly the good of it, the earnest students, the bulk of hardworking colleagues, the time off, and some bad, the dreadful politics and the participants overrated and galling.
Having thanked the heron for his repeat performance, and having said goodbye until next time, back in the boat just out of the water and standing over the littlenecks in the catch bucket, the clams today surely appear as a collection of joy, pain, and identity steeped in wistfulness both unavoidable and unsettling, but in considering this bucket laced with sadness also confirm a prized underside of gratitude for a loving family, reasonably good health, two remaining good friends, and work years satisfactory if not stupendous. And then feel relief in thinking the three raw servings will each, undoubtedly, from shucking to slurping to savoring, preclude all personal scenes past and any trace of longing.
Nonetheless, sitting on the gunwhale drip drying in sunshine and breeze with eyes fixed on the distant heron, there is my long thought that no price would be too much to stop the speeded march of time, to go way back in time and be a youngster again, innocent and uninformed, never thinking of my own death or that of loved ones, never balancing on the high wire of family matters, never weary of serious disappointment in people;
again blind to the world’s widespread cruelty,
blind to the greed of big money and power,
blind to the slow inexorable death of Earth;
again unaware of certain failure in success,
and unaware of the clear insanity of luck
either the blessed good or damnable bad,
any price whatsoever for five minutes
more on the sunsplashed runabout,
with my big brother at the wheel,
with the two stroke screaming,
and I the ecstatic bowrider…
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Robert Alan Felt
Spring 2025
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Robert Alan Felt is a retired law enforcement officer, woodworker, and avid saltwater fisherman living on the south shore of Long Island, New York.
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Listen to the 2014 recording of Abdullah Ibrahim performing his composition “Peace” [Sunnyside]
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War. Remembrance. Walls. The High Price of Authoritarianism – by editor/publisher Joe Maita
“The Sound of Becoming,” J.C. Michaels’ winning story in the 70th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
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