Dances With Clams...

For many people, a bathing suit is just something you're almost wearing in front of strangers on a beach. For people who live near salt water, it's alot more than that.

My grandfather, Ervin Flynn, was a bay clammer in Sayville, New York. From early childhood I learned from my family that all bathing suits have a second purpose in life, to hold clams....

I come from a family of big Irish peasants. I can still see my family, waist deep in water treading clams. My Aunt Carol's bathing suit could hold 2 pecks (1/2 buschel) of clams in addition to Aunt Carol. My Aunt Olive could hold 2 pecks of clams, 2 bottles of beer and a churchkey, small bottle of tobasco and a clamming knife. She always loved lunch on the water..... My Uncle Walter (by marriage) was a lifeguard, he liked to wear a red speedo...useless in my family. Speedos have a four clam limit, 2 in front, 2 in back (think of that visual). My grandfather had the big boxer style swim trunks - with pockets. He always wore a tee shirt in the water and tucked it into the trunks. He could put a peck of clams in the Tee shirt, another in the trunks and fit "conks" (snails) into the pockets.

Now that I live on Shelter Island, I am proud to pass this old world knowledge onto my children. My mother, step-father, me, my two perfect children and sometimes a few of my brothers go treading clams in our favorite spot whenever possible.

We wait till the tide is low to go out to the clams. We pick a spot, about waist deep and begin the Clam Dance. You wiggle your feet a few inches into the slimey mud and feel with your toes for clams. Experienced toes can tell a stone (smooth) from clam (ridged). Articulate toes can grip the clam and pass it up to your hand for deposit in your bathing suit. The first few clams pass virtually undetected to your crotch. Since you're in waist deep water, the bouyancy of the salt water keeps the crotch from sagging and the clams from escaping. For men, things can feel a little crowded, for women, well, just don't lose a clam. You tread, talk and tread, for a few hours. Two to three hours of clam dancing should give you a 2 peck yield, roughly clams to the bustline.

Then we wait for any cars to pass that can see us exit the water. The hardest thing about treading clams is getting out of the water with all these clams in your bathing suit. The additional twenty pounds of mollusks shifting and banging together in your suit makes you ambulate very slowly to shore. Each step out of the water, draws the suit down lower and lower. As soon as you're in knee-deep water you reach down to hold in clams that are starting to fall out of your crotch. For people driving by who are from, say, Montana, this can be a frightening site. Islanders only slow down enough to memorize the location of the clambed.

Islanders can tell from your bathing suits if there are any clams left for them. A one bathing suit haul means, there's plenty of clams left. Two bathing suits, enough clams left for one dinner for two of steamed clams, three bathing suit haul means there's enough left for dinner for one, lastly the dreaded four or more bathing suit haul - forget it, these people cleared the bed of all the legal sized clams.

Finally, you make it to land. You tie the sleeves of all available shirts closed, up-end the shirt to act as a sack and start reaching down into your suit for the clams. When you can't reach them from the top, go up from the bottom. Its best to tread clams with family as you will undoubtably expose some personal parts of your body in the de-clamming process. Only family should see the parts of you that you've never seen.

My brother Brian once caught a flounder accidently while dropping a clam in his trunks. Picture a 6'3", 260lbs man emerging from the water. Trunks weighed down with clams and a three pound live one flopping around in the front of his trunks. He was steppin' lively! Our Shinnecock ancestors would have given him the same name we did that day. He was, Dances With Clams......