Paul Revere’s Ghost
Full Member
When I was a kid on summer vacation a lot of us had summer jobs. Paper routs, lawn mowing. Since our house was actually a stones throw from the beach, I found the fastest way to make money was dig clams. Money then was real money. I got paid with a lot of silver coins. I still have pounds of them I never spent. As years passed, it was always a way to make some quick extra cash. Lots of firefighters, public transportation workers and such would hit the beach after their shift if the tide was right and make an extra couple hundred bucks.
This didn’t sit right with many people who bought waterfront homes in affluent towns because they were so quaint, changed their tune when commercial clampers started digging massive tranches in front of their homes. When they’d get aggressive and start making threats we had one thing to say to them. “Call the police!” The town cops would tell them to call environmental who would come down and they knew most of us. But they’d ask to see a commercial license, and then would tell the complainer, they have licenses and you can’t stop them as long as they’re below the high tide line of on a public access.
There was one town where if we harvested at a public beach we had to backfill the holes. I miss those days. Sometimes we’d be leaving the beach with a days pay and watching a single file line of gray suits with briefcases boarding a commuter boat into Boston to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours for the same money we’d already made. Maybe that’s why I love beach hunting. People will always dig holes at the beach.
This didn’t sit right with many people who bought waterfront homes in affluent towns because they were so quaint, changed their tune when commercial clampers started digging massive tranches in front of their homes. When they’d get aggressive and start making threats we had one thing to say to them. “Call the police!” The town cops would tell them to call environmental who would come down and they knew most of us. But they’d ask to see a commercial license, and then would tell the complainer, they have licenses and you can’t stop them as long as they’re below the high tide line of on a public access.
There was one town where if we harvested at a public beach we had to backfill the holes. I miss those days. Sometimes we’d be leaving the beach with a days pay and watching a single file line of gray suits with briefcases boarding a commuter boat into Boston to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours for the same money we’d already made. Maybe that’s why I love beach hunting. People will always dig holes at the beach.
