Let us now praise good clam rakes

This is prime clamming season. Water is cold and I can hit the spots that get closed by the Barnstable Department of Natural Resources on May 1 when the bird poop will make the clams a bit of an intestinal crap shoot. Call it the Townie’s Perogative, but he who gets on the water early, gets the clams. I try to pick the inshore flats clean before the tourists raze them in the warmer weather.

Last spring I took stock of my tired, rusty clamming equipment and decided to borrow my step-father’s stainless rake. What a revelation! Nice rake, cut through the mud nicely. So I went in search of a similar one, ran a Google search on Cape Cod Clam Rakes and found R.A. Ribb in Harwich. I called Ribb and they had an 11-tooth, stainless rec rake with a 6` ash handle. Off I went, down Route 6 to exit 11, banged a left and took the second right. At the end of the cul de sac was a quaint old Cape house with a weathered sign that read “Ribb.”

The crew at Ribb

In the shed behind the house was a machine shop filled with huge metal working machinery. Inside the door was my rake. A quick credit card transaction for $87 later, and I was going home with a sweet implement of clam death.

Clams Beware

This is a fine tool. I blast the tines with some WD-40 to keep them from rusting off. It made my old clam basket look positively ghetto, so off I went to Sandwich Ship Supply for a new one, a couple nice shucking knives and the annual copy of Eldridge’s Tide Tables.

Chatfield Reminiscences updated

Five more pages transcribed.

HST Quote of the Day

This popped up on my Treo last week while I was waiting for a plane and idling away the time with Google mobile.

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” –
Hunter S. Thompson

Fired From a Cannon

I wish I could write a sentence like that.

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