Clam Shucker

I became a clam shucker in the mid 1980s. Sofron Brothers Clam Company sat on the outskirts of downtown Ipswich. A looming, whitewash factory that had been in business for over 40 years, the structure had the odor of a beached whale that had been sitting in the sun for a couple of days. They employed around 100 workers, about 20 whom were shuckers. My Dad got me in (there was a waiting time of at least a year) through his childhood friend, Stanley Hetnar. The reason folks wanted to get up on the bench had to do with the pay. It was piece-work, and you could make 20.00 to 30.00 dollars and hour depending on your shucking-speed. Stanley was the foreman of the joint, an imposing figure who ran the floor with an iron fist. Depending on his mood, he would entertain us with his golden singing voice, or yell at everyone and throw punches at the steel beams that held the place up You could actually feel the building shake when he did this. The shucking bench was inhabited with a motley crew of locals, many who had been working there for a decade or more. The shift would start at 4:00 or 5:00am and last until the final clam was out of it's shell.

We shucked sea clams dredged from the oceans of Cape Cod and New Jersey. The Cape's were called "footballs" due to their size. If you had a truck coming in from Cape Cod, you could make over 100 dollars for as little as 4 hours of labor. You could be in by 5:00am, out , in a few hours, and have a beer and a pool stick in your hands by ten o'clock in the morning. Such was the shuckers life.

I used to work alongside my good friend from Ipswich Kevin Jean, a charming, funny , talented guy. Kevin and I would take turns singing songs while we did our thing, and he was by far the fastest shucker on the bench. When he wanted to pump himself up for speed, he would sing "Tangled up in blue" by Bob Dylan, picking up the pace on each verse until it was blur of poetry and flying seafood. Like Stanley, Kevin could sing like a motherfucker and had a endless well of material lodged in his memory bank. He was also a hell of a pool player. Kevin also had a reputation with the women of Ipswich for being the most well-endowed bachelor in town. The guy had class, but he wasn't above whipping his shlong out in the back dressing room of Sofrons when he was in a particularly good mood. Maybe he was a distant relative of Iggy Pop. When he did this, the women who worked there would get pretty excited. I've gotta admit, it was a sight to see.

Stan Hetnar was a interesting individual as well. He wore the same outfit every day of his life that I saw him, and drove around in a beat up Ford truck with a cassette of himself singing and strumming the guitar, constantly playing in the deck. The guy had an incredible voice, right up there with Elvis and Roy Orbison. Every once and a while he would invite me to his house for a jam session and a beer. He had a Gretch Country Gentleman guitar from 1958, covered in an ancient layer of dust, and sporting strings that hadn't been changed in 20 years. He could mimic all the greats from the fifties, with a particular fondness for the man in black, Johnny Cash. I even pushed him into doing his one and only live performance in 1988, at the Middle East restaurant in Cambridge, MA., Where he was very well recieved. It's the only time I ever saw him nervous.

I was employed by Sofron's on and off for over eight years. When I started Touring with the Moving Targets and/or Bullet LaVolta, they would give me all the time off that I needed, which was very nice of them. Around 1994 the owner, Peter Sofron, who actually lived on the second floor of the business, died of a massive heart attack after an all-night cocaine binge. He was a sweet guy, and it was a terrible loss. The place was taken over by his son (himself a wonderful guy), but the business slowly went downhill, closing up shop around 1998. During my infrequent visits to my hometown afterwards, I would always drive by the darkened building for a whiff of the old days.