And Now They Share the Thrill of the Hunt

I’ve always had a lot in common with Martha Stewart. The love of cooking and the casual lifestyle are just two examples. Two more would be the way we enjoy slipping on a sunflower-print summer dress, and how we both know how to look in the mirror and say, “Enough makeup is enough!”

But now, the bond is almost eerie.

Recently, I took my family to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, a terrific place where you can see lobster fishermen hauling in their pots, gulls skimming the cold Atlantic waters and trousers and vodka bottles flying out of the windows at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport.

During the trip, we headed for the tiny harbor in the town of Wellfleet. I told my kids all about my own childhood there, wading these same tidal flats and digging for clams.

After digging for nearly four hours and hauling back to the car an enormous bucket filled with what commercial clam harvesters would call “three clams,” we headed down the road to my childhood home.

Oddly enough, my parents still live there. (Even more oddly, they let me in.)

And sitting on my mother’s coffee table was the September 1996 issue of the popular magazine Martha Stewart Living. (The cover shot shows Martha’s team of servants chasing her through her lovely, yet understated, country living room with a weed whacker.)

On Page 96 is an article--get this--about clamming in the Cape Cod town of Wellfleet. I am not kidding. (Warning: Yanking a Martha Stewart Living magazine from its “special place” will make the table wobble.)

Here’s the actual lead paragraph from the article: “For thousands of years, mankind has known the joy of digging for clams, then savoring these small repositories of sweet ocean breezes and salty brine.”

Having grown up in that seaside environment, I think the description of clams as “small repositories of sweet ocean breezes and salty brine” is wonderful.

It’s a lot better, for example, than what we always called them: “sea boogers living between two ashtrays.”

More from the magazine: “Beyond the simple pleasure of eating the freshest possible seafood, there is a primal thrill to hunting for clams.”

I had never before heard the phrase “hunting for clams,” and it suddenly occurred to me why my family had experienced such limited success (see “three clams”). And at that moment, I vowed the next time we do this, there will be the following changes: camouflage clothing, a good clam-retrieving dog, clam decoys and a clam blind.

The story goes on to quote a man we had actually met in the harbor parking lot, a man named Paul Somerville--a bearded, sea-weathered gentleman and law enforcement officer who has a uniform patch bearing a clam, an oyster and a scallop. He carries the title of Shellfish Constable.

(I don’t know much about his job. But I’m guessing a guy who deals exclusively with clams, oysters and scallops doesn’t spend a lot of time shouting, “Halt, or I’ll shoot!”)

More from the magazine story: “Somerville showed us how to dig for clams by dragging a long-handled clamming rake over the sand until you strike a hard object. With experience, you can hear the difference between a rock and a clam and Jimmy Hoffa’s eyeglasses.”

OK. Perhaps I added that “Jimmy Hoffa’s eyeglasses” line.

But the author does go on to say, “I found a cluster of holes and turned over a hefty chunk of sand. The mud was pitch black, with the pungent odor of something that had been sealed in a dark place for a long time.”

And I think you know what she found: That’s right--Sen. Jesse Helms.

No, really, she found clams. But a lot of them got away.

We were told this: “Clams burrow with remarkable speed.”

And this, as you know from the relentless publicity build-up over the past few weeks, is the basis for this Saturday’s “Wide World of Sports” special on ABC in which two-time 1996 Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson will race a clam.

Because both are so competitive, I’m guessing the loser will be steamed.