The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

[Thad Van Gilder]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

So if one were to take a day trip up to long island. where are the best old school marinas to stalk?

-Thad

[Jim Ledger]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

So if one were to take a day trip up to long island. where are the best old school marinas to stalk?

-Thad

There's not much left around here, Thad, and what's left is rapidly being replaced by condos and storage racks. Here's the inside of the barn at South Bay Boat Works on Patchogue River. For a hundred years they hauled boats up to eighty tons on thier marine railway. Last year the tracks were removed and rack storage put in. One day soon this barn will just be gone a troublesome memory removed, a blemish on the sod'n'CCA landscape erased.

Meanwhile, uptown the installation of fake gas lamps and cute old-timey street signs will continue unabated.

[Southbay]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

This photo is dated January 1977, in Amityville. A college buddy and I (I'm the one on the left) bought this open-decked clam boat and built a cabin on it. College was Dowling College in Oakdale, LI. We used the boat to make a little extra money. I do remember the bay freezing over. I (and many others) went out on the ice, many with cars, and worked through the ice. I didn't have a chainsaw, but used a hand saw to cut through the ice, then used a rake (instead of tongs) to work in a circualr area through the hole.

[Jim Ledger]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Here's a picture you might like, Roger, the top of Patchogue River, back in the fifties judging by the car in the foreground. You can see a couple of tong boats tied up and what must be diggers cars, the three that look like bootleggers cars. No doubt they have no backseats to make loading the clams easier.

This scene changed little until the late Seventies, when the building on the left was turned into the bar Bonners Ferry. Now its a restaurant where you can sit on the deck with your plate of half-shells and gaze appreciatively on a half-acre of tarmac and Bayliners with Jimmy Buffett providing the soundtrack.

[Jim Ledger]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

This boat belonged to a friend of mine.. This picture was taken after he sold the boat. Unfortunately, the new owner could see no reason to keep the bowsprit so long so he lopped two feet of the end, ruining the whole boat.

The boat is a type locally known as either a "Maryland boat", or a "Virginia boat", because that's where it was built. The boat shows typical Chesapeake workboat construction, hard chined, cross-planked vee bottom, yellow pine, galvanized fastened. However, it was purpose-built for this bay, as the Chesapeake tong boats have a forward cabin, narrow side decks and a large open cockpit with an engine box.

[Harbormaster]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Here's another old photo of a boat that I'm sure is long gone by now, taken in 1980, an old sloop named Prowler.

[purri]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

I'm reminded of the puchline of an old joke: "lookit whatcha durn yo ma clayumdiggrr".

[Breakaway]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Whatta great thread. Thanks for sharing.

and about no flare to the sides and a workboard a bit ahead of amidships

Yup, the vertical topsides makes it easier to work right up against the side of the boat.

Kevin

[Breakaway]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Meanwhile, uptown the installation of fake gas lamps and cute old-timey street signs will continue unabated.

One day a few years ago, I was eating lunch on my truck, parked in front of a deli on the main road. My freind, Timmy Hermus, a digger, pulled up with his boat on a trailer. Stacked in the the boat was his "sled", bushels of clams, the culling board, rakes, etc. Every car that passed while we chatted slowed down and eyeballed us. Finally Timmy said: " Dincha know? I'm local color now."

Kevin

[Jim Ledger]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

One day a few years ago, I was eating lunch on my truck, parked in front of a deli on the main road. My freind, Timmy Hermus, a digger, pulled up with his boat on a trailer. Stacked in the the boat was his "sled", bushels of clams, the culling board, rakes, etc. Every car that passed while we chatted slowed down and eyeballed us. Finally Timmy said: " Dincha know? I'm local color now."

Kevin

Tracey remembers Timmy Hermus.

People like a little local color, but not too much. If you've had a pound net running off the beach for decades new folks will move in and want you out of there. A gang of shouting men on the beach catching stripers with a haul seine and surf dory, driving a flatbed with a (unmentionable)winch mounted on the back will soon find themselves looking for alternative employment once their activities are viewed through plate glass.

I saw my old friend John Donahue last week. He told me the story (umpteenth time) of the time he and Mickey Ritchie realized that some new fishing regulations had a loophole. The rules attempted to list every kind of method by which fish couldn't be taken, stern trawl, otter trawl, beam trawl..."THEY FORGOT TO SAY PAIR TRAWL"..and off they went, scraping bushels of fluke off the bottom, dragging a trawl between two tong boats. Needless to say that the officers who arrested them failed to appreciate the nuance, the subtle differences in the equipment.

[Larry P.]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Great thread guys, Jim remember the ECO's painting orange lines on the ice back in the 70's to mark the legal areas? I remember a friend of mine in the summer of 80 or 81 betting his mud rake stuck swam down and realized it was caught on the bumper of a VW that went through the ice.

The south shore of Long Island was a great place to grow up. I had my first garvey before my first car.

14 years old making 50 - 100 $ a day cash, we were in hog heaven.

15' garvey, 35hp 1953 gale outboard, two tomato sandwiches for lunch. Selling the clams at the town dock in patchogue, or at Vigilotta's in east mroiches.

I really miss those days.

[Jim Ledger]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Great thread guys, Jim remember the ECO's painting orange lines on the ice back in the 70's to mark the legal areas?

Yes I do, Larry. It takes a special kind of guy to be a clam cop. My buddy Steve once tied garbage bags on his legs and broke through the ice in Harts Cove to try to rake up a bag, over the line, at night. He, his wife and baby were eating pancakes because we hadn't been able to work for a few weeks. A few days later the ice broke up enough that we could get the boat out of Patchogue River. A cop pulls us over by the ferry dock and wouldn't let us go out because our licenses had expired two weeks before. Bastard still had some orange paint on his hands.

I remember a friend of mine in the summer of 80 or 81 betting his mud rake stuck swam down and realized it was caught on the bumper of a VW that went through the ice.

I swear it wasn't mine, we pulled it out, honest!

I really miss those days.

I know. WTF happened?


The working end of my epoxy-coated "dude" tongs. Shore are purty, ain't they?

[Paul Pless]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Great thread guys

yeah this is a treat

[Jim Ledger]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Down west, around Babylon, where Roger lives, the South Bay is broken up into a lot of small areas with lots of islands and channels. The preferred tong boat is a low, flat-sheered decked-over inboard garvey like the examples shown in the beginning of this thread. Further east the bay deepens and widens out to about four miles and can get choppy. The best kind of boat there would be a longer, deeper, pointy-bowed boat with a high bow and bowsprit, like the Maryland boat.

Out on the East End of Long Island the bays again are small and shallow. In addition, there is not enough area to support dedicated tonging boats. Tonging is often done out of trailerable skiffs which can be used for many other kinds of work. Here are a couple of pictures scanned out of the book "Mens Lives", by Peter Mathiessen. An excellent book if you can find a copy.

[holzbt]

Re: The Life of a Clam Digger (1972, Long Island)

Here's another old photo of a boat that I'm sure is long gone by now, taken in 1980, an old sloop named Prowler.

Where was this photo taken? It looks like Islip. There used to be three similar boats, Prowler, Howler, and Growler around when I was a bit younger.