Butchblog

Wait for no man

Changing Tides

When I stepped outside this morning and smelled the cool air mixed with the mist off the Pacific, I knew that Fall would soon arrive. The feel of it took me back to the Southern Coast of New Jersey, where I worked as a commercial clammer in the middle seventies.

            The first thing I’d do each morning then, was to climb the stairs to an outside deck where I could catch a look at the bay to see if there were any whitecaps visible, a sign that the wind was blowing hard and that working the bottom might be difficult that day. But as September rolled into October, the morning air would become softer, almost sweet, the chill of winter not yet in evidence. It was on those days that I felt filled with a quiet joy, a contentment that is hard to explain. It’s somewhat akin to how I feel now when I pull on my wetsuit and head to the beach. The day of clamming on Barnegat Bay, working alone and working hard, stretched in front of me. I felt connected, without knowing exactly to what or why or even caring about giving it words. It was enough to be, to drink my coffee and walk on down to the boat. I hadn’t discovered meditation back then, but if I had I might have noted that how I felt was the state that all meditators aspire to. But maybe if I had known, it would have ruined the whole thing.          

            The object in clamming was to dig as many clams as possible in any given day. Simple. Two hundred clams to a bag; five full bags made for a good day’s pay. Five cents per clam was the going rate, though sometimes it could inch higher, depending on the market.  Each burlap bag weighed well over a hundred pounds. It felt good to sling the heavy sacks off the deck of the boat onto the dock. By the time I motored back to where I kept my boat moored I was exhausted, but not beaten down. My back might ache, but my head was clear. I was never too tired to take a late evening stroll on the beach with my wife and our baby daughter.

In many ways the life of a bayman had not changed for hundreds of years. Except for the outboard motors, the rhythms were the same. We lived by the tides and the seasons. One long day after the next. It wasn’t what my then-wife had signed up for. She needed friends and a social life, wanted a place where people talked about things other than the next storm or when the bay would ice over. We had college friends in the Pacific Northwest. They told us that housing was cheap, that cool people were moving there. I tried to hold out, couldn’t imagine selling my boat; I had just invested in a replacement motor, a spanking new 50 horsepower Johnson. But eventually I gave in. Seattle would be better for the children and C. was now pregnant with our second. I can’t be selfish is what I thought. I feel trapped, is what I thought. Goddamn it all, is what I thought. I’ll tell you, I miss that boat and that life to this day and think about it more often than seems natural.            

            My brother, who still lives in New Jersey, tells me that maybe only a half-dozen old timers still make a living raking or tonging clams there. What the red tides haven’t decimated, the scores of marauding vacationers have.

            What’re you going to do? Time passes, I’ve become an old man, but still late summer  breezes bring sweet reminders on the winds of what once was: the ability to get up in the morning and go out on the water and earn a living with hard work and an untroubled soul.