Searching for connection by digging into the sand

There are so many of us, us would be Californians.  We seem like natives, and in the technical sense, are natives, born somewhere in the Southland -LA, San Diego and the like, the Central Valley, the Sierra Foothills,  San Francisco or Humboldt, but our energy is decidedly East Coast, the cadence in our tone just a little faster than most.  Our holidays with Dad, one of the few left to give voice to our family history,  promises lore of our parents and their would be famous cross country trek, more than half the family already hatched in places like Massachusetts or New York, two young kids and two crying babies packed into the backseat of a '56 Rambler, a few family heirlooms tightly crammed into a small trailer connected by a tenuous hitch, rigged brakelights flapping in the breeze as they sped west, or likely fled west to a land of promise, a land of sunsets over the vast Pacific, jugs of rose wine, avocados and artichokes.

My sister was born in 1961 in downtown San Diego, her crib, reported by my father, sat under a window in their dilapidated small home, the sill so riddled with termites, the bugs and their offspring peppered her crib as she napped in the afternoon sun.  The washing machine  sat on a small cement pad outside the backdoor and had a continual leek dribbling down to a peach tree that produced so much fruit they didn't know what to do with it all. When I came along a few years later, we had moved a few miles north, to an area now known as "North County."   I was born in La Jolla, which sounds fancy but in fact was simply the closest hospital to our small beach town of Encinitas.  And fancy we were not.   As construction began on the 5 Freeway to relieve commuters from the small two lane Pacific Coast Highway, my father stumbled upon a cinder block garage for sale.  He bought it outright, and he and my oldest brother, then about 14, deconstructed it block by block, taking load after load in the trunk of the Rambler to our home on the other side of the new highway to reconstruct in the yard, as a garage is a garage.   The last time I visited, my father pulled out the trowel my brother used to scrape off the old mortar, and laughed heartily of these stories of our young family scrimping and saving.  Me, well I was just a baby, and do recall when the canyon behind our house started on fire.  Thankfully we had the wall, also built with cinder blocks, as well as my brother, as photos show, standing with the hose making sure the fire didn't make it to the house.

We quickly outgrew our 3 bedroom house, small kids get bigger, and my father was now working in insurance sales and things were looking up.  Our family had been "out west" now for 7 or so years.  We moved to a two story home on 39th Street in Normal Heights, an area of San Diego proper, upper middle class, wide streets and lots of colorful families.  The Suns, a family of contemporaries to my oldest sister and brother, had a sun decal on the inside of the lid of their bathroom toilet. The people next door had a "built-in" pool which we'd try to spy through the fence boards. The doctor for the San Diego Chargers lived right up the street.  We had definitely moved up.  My three sisters and I shared a large room, which in those days were called "dormitories"  4 beds, each with our own corner.  My father did most household repair himself, one task included painting the entire house inside and out.  I burst into tears as I saw him on the tall ladder outside our bedroom window painting the eaves, not because I was afraid for his life, but because he was using my favorite dress as a rag, the one with purple flowers and a tuille pinafore. 

We had 6 children two parents and the intermittent boarder, my great Uncle Chan, who visited us for several months each winter.  He was from Boston, as was my mother, and on Sundays we would escape from  "Chan" to go to church, and then if we were lucky, a Sunday drive to somewhere in the country.   Sunday was the day that Uncle Chan was forced to shower.  Whether he needed it or not, he had to bathe once a week. And according to everyone in my family, by God, he needed it!  

I looked forward to those Sunday drives, with a good vantage point from the hump of the backseat, squeezed between and on the laps of 3 other children.  Promise hovered in my future, hope that our cries of hunger from the back seat would result in a stop at one of the diners speckled along our remote route.  The anticipation of this excited me to no end: Paper placemats, hard vinyl booths, endless baskets of bread and culinary delights like french fries and onions rings, delicacies my Mother didn't bother with at home.  I loved the waitresses'  blue dresses, white aprons and matching clip-on hats.  Their personal pads of paper promising to record our every whim.  Of the Sambo's and Denny's we would occasionally pass,  My parents always opted for Howard Johnson's, fondly known as "HoJo's", as it had an East Coast familiarity.  Not to mention, my father was under the illusion (which continues to this day) that chains are "cleaner and have standards."

It became was obvious from early on how the ordering would go.  My father's eyes would light up as he glanced toward my mother, "they have fried clams!"  Our server would arrive and the question would come "Do your clams have the bellies?"  Predictably, she'd give a puzzled look, and he would repeat "do they have the bellies?" 
As the server ambled over to the counter to have some back and forth about "bellies" with the line cook in the light of the heat lamps, my father would remind us of his childhood digging for clams by watching for their airhole in the receding tidal waters,  eating them raw right out of the sand. we'd crinkle our noses as she walked back over, a resolute "no" expression on her face.  This happened so often that I finally said, "dad, they're never gonna have the bellies."   I had no idea what the hell a "clam with a belly" was, but was positive that clams with bellies would never make it to Howard Johnson's on the West coast of America.

Many years later,  Sunday drives with the family  a fond memory.  My obsession with restaurants and eating out had fully developed and by this point was providing me with a solid living. In one of my first interviews for a management position in a well known group of restaurants near San Francisco, I perused the menu as the owner stepped out to take a phone call. Aside from spotting a typo that, in fact,  landed me the job, I scanned the menu for familiar items, and spotted  "Maine Lobster, flown in daily and then further down, to my complete surprise,  "Whole Belly Ipswich Clams, with Fries and Tarter Sauce."  I couldn't believe my eyes!  I took the job and could barely contain my excitement when calling my father and sharing news of the new position, and more importantly, that they had whole belly clams that I couldn't wait to try, which I did, on my very first day.  

It's an understatement to say that on my first bite I instantly understood  my father's quest for all of those years. Maybe it was his lore, or perhaps  another "my genes are just east coast,"  but those clams, their delectable crunch giving way to a juicy burst of ocean goodness, they are simply fricken' delicious.