Chapter Twelve: Oyster Gambling
At the age of ten, my family and I spent the day in Carver, Massachusetts attending the town's Home Coming Days celebration. Highlights of the day's festivities included an old-fashioned New England Clambake and an all-day auction.
As a kid, I found the whole affair to be loud, mysterious, and rather exciting. Carver was a glorious carnival, better even than a visit to the Marshfield Fair but without the crappy rides, phony games of skill, and carnival barkers.
To escape the heat of the mid-day August sun, my family selected one of the old picnic tables in the cool shade of the grove's towering pine trees. Red, white, and blue bunting, flags, and banners adorned every tree giving the clearing a bright and patriotic appearance. With our home base established, I was free to roam about and explore.
A crowd gathered around an ancient, weather-beaten canvas circus tent, and I set about to investigate. An elderly white-haired man stood at the center of attention like a preacher. Instead of salvation, he offered trinkets and other things for sale. I had never been to an auction, and the process fascinated me. When the auctioneer introduced items, folks would shout out a number or raise their hands to single a bid.
The bidding wars between rival customers often sent the price of an item soaring as each person tried to outbid the other. Sometimes the competition between opposing bidders remained good-humored and friendly, and at other times, bidding approached the frenzy of an all-out blood sport.
After about 15 minutes, I figured I had learned the basic rules of the game. Racing back to the clearing, I begged my mother for some so I could attend the auction as a paying customer. Joyce refused and told me, "The bank is closed."
More charitable, my grandmother dug through her purse and handed me a 1947 Walking Liberty Half dollar silver coin. "Be smart about how you spend your money."
Walking like a rich man, I returned to the circus tent and waited my turn. After several minutes, a bright red Radio Flyer wagon went on the auction block, other than a few spots of rust the cart appeared to be almost brand new. I offered a quarter and got outbid by a dime. I went all in for a half dollar, and the bidding continued until a man with three kids grabbed the wagon for a buck-seventy-five.
I chimed in on several other items and lost out when other players outbid me. After a while, I realized only by going after something no one else wanted would I win a bid.
Tables filled with goods waiting to be sold occupied the space to the right of the auctioneer. I strolled over and took a quick inventory of upcoming objects. Most of what I found I wouldn't have wanted if it was being given away for free. I spotted an old cranberry crate filled with random and assorted articles. Buried beneath the miscellaneous items, I spotted a Hopalong Cassidy Pocket Knife. I went back and waited for my turn.
Eventually, my junk took a turn on the block. The auctioneer asked for an opening bid of 50 cents. Silence.
"Do I hear 45 cents?" Crickets.
"Who will bid a quarter?"
"Twenty-five cents," I yelped.
"We have a quarter - who will bid fifty cents?" Again silence.
"Going once for twenty-five cents, going twice, sold to the young man for a quarter dollar," the auctioneer called out as he banged down his gavel.
I handed a lady cashier my silver coin and got back a quarter and a box of bric-a-brac.
Returning to the shade of the grove, I spread out the contents of my purchase on a vacant picnic table. I was now the proud owner of one jack-knife, a shoe brush, a dozen wooden spoons, two carpenter's hammers, a chalk line, one unopened package of #2 yellow pencils, a coffee can which was filled with assorted nuts and bolts, one antique Springline stapler, a few dozen random nails, and a dozen dish towels wrapped up in a green ribbon.
Dumping out the coffee can with the mixed nuts and bolts, I sorted and threaded together 100 matched sets and divided them between two small paper bags liberated from a candy concession stand. Pouring the loose nails in another paper bag, I assembled my stash of goods back into the box and ventured out to play traveling salesman. Luck was on my side, and I sold my inventory of junk in less than 20 minutes.
In college, my father once worked as a door-to-door salesman, and he often talked about the "art of selling" and the trade secrets of salesmen. According to my dad, perceived value is the secret of selling. The instant a customer saw the value of an item exceed the asking price was the moment a sale occurred. It was the job of the salesman to establish a need for the product in the customer's mind along with a value higher than the asking price.
The two bags of matched nuts and bolts sold quickly for 25c each after I pointed out each matched nut and bolt represented a true bargain at only a halfpenny or a quarter-cent per item.
I sold the box of pencils to a middle-aged teacher for a dime because I reminded her of her grandson. The hammers and the accompanying bag of nails went for fifty cents a pop when I reminded two housewives of how handy a hammer could be for quick repairs and picture hanging.
The set of dishtowels went for thirty-five cents and the stapler sold for a dime after I threw in the shoe brush, chalk line, and the wooden box everything had come in at no additional charge.
With a bit of brash luck, I had turned a twenty-five cent investment into almost a $2 profit plus a free jackknife.
My love affair with capitalism was short-lived. The folks running the auction told me to either leave or stop selling. I stopped and set off to explore. Behind the circus tent, I found the kitchen for the clambake, a clearing filled with clouds of smoke and steam.
Traditional New England Clambakes are amazing affairs. The first thing the cooks do is dig a shallow pit and fill it with alternating layers of hardwood and rocks. After assembling the rock and wood sandwich, the entire thing is set ablaze.
After an hour or so, the rocks are glowing red-hot, and the wood has burned down to ash and embers. Next, teams of men shovel hundreds of pounds of rockweed over the bed of coals to smother the fire. Amid clouds of billowing steam, bushels of corn, clams, and lobsters are set on the seaweed platform to cook. Finally, yet another layer of rockweed capped by a blanket of wet canvas traps the heat in place.
I watched transfixed as dozens of men moved like phantoms behind curtains of white mist. It could have been a scene out of Dante's Inferno.
After steaming and cooking under the canvas for two hours, dinner was ready. The rich aroma of wood smoke and seaweed blended with the succulent taste of clams, corn on the cob, and lobsters to produce a symphony of flavors. All though they looked like cockroaches built to government specifications, I loved the flavor of lobster. The courage of the first prehistoric ancestor to eat one for supper was impressive.
After we finished dinner, I showed my grandmother the money I had earned. Joyce's eyes lit up at the sight of the money in my hand, "Double-or-nothingI I bet can't eat a raw oyster from the oyster bar without throwing up. "
Against my grandmother's advice, I took the gamble. Bracing myself I paused, dumped the poor slimy critter into my mouth, jerked back my head and swallowed the oyster. Instantly my stomach is at war with my throat. I choked and gagged as I fought down the queasy feeling rising from my midsection. Victory! I had done it. Sure, it was a close run race, but I beat back the urge to hurl. My $2 was now $4, a king's ransom by the standards of the day.
Joyce glared at me and walked over to the raw bar and returned with two oysters on the half shell. "Okay, double or nothing one more time, four will get you eight if you can do it again without throwing up."
The thought of $8 in folding green overcame my better judgment. Again, I ignored my grandmother's advice, and I took the bet. As I swallowed, my mother waved another oyster under my nose and said, "It sure looks like a pile of donkey snot" she slurped it into her mouth and swallowed it whole.
The slimy image and her description along with the juicy wet sound of slurping did the trick. I bent over and emptied the contents of my stomach onto the ground between two picnic tables. My body was drenched in sweat and tears streamed down my face while I dropped to my knees and puked out the contents of my gut. Every time I thought I had finished upchucking, another wave of nausea rose to take the place of the last spasm and the process repeated and continued although I had emptied everything inside me onto the ground.
When the last of the dry heaves passed, my mother was standing over me and laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. Joyce snatched the money from my hand and headed off to the bar to buy another drink.
Once burned, twice shy. Never play someone else’s game with your hard earned money.