Tales of a Seaside Inn continues below from Part Five in August.
... Martin Johnson Heade.
Herb told me, "I've never had a fucking clue what 'Nam' was about. Then or to today. None of us did. It never made any sense, not for a second. We were all on board this ship, but none of us were ever on board with Washington's wet dream. Just mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed on shit."
"Look. It was what? A civil war. Other people's business, not ours. Politicians stuck our noses in it. And, surprise! We got shit all over our faces for thanks. Just the way Iraq and Afghanistan are playing out now. History teaches us nothing because we never listen up and learn, so it happens all over again."
Wow. I guess he had some real anger stored up. I didn't get all he said, but parts I did, mostly agreed with, and just filed it all away. Why? I don't know. Maybe to tell you now. Call me Ishmael.
Whatever he felt about that war and thought about war itself - which we'll hear more about down the road, having gotten an earful for now, he did his duty. Without enthusiasm, true - except in the galley. No doubt none of the armed forces has ever eaten so well. Although in his wake maybe they have. He patiently trained everyone from his sous-chefs down to dishwashers - then promoted them. Rebelling against the rigidity and hierarchy the ship and navy sailed under, he didn't boss, rule-book or micro-manage his crew but stressed the creativity, fun and camaraderie possible in cooking and kitchens. Just as Justine had trained him. "It's your ship - and it's your galley," he'd say over and again.
He'd joined the navy to see the world, as the recruiting pitch went, but mostly he'd seen the inside of a tin can and fired, often unseen, to help save Vietnam from Vietnamese. But whenever one of his ships touched shore for longer than a turn of the tide, there he was ashore, often with his entire galley crew, eating out, learning the local cuisine while watching and chatting up the chefs. Getting a taste of the world. And he liked it.
His time up, he didn't reenlist, disgusted, restless and ready to move on. Plus he wanted a bigger taste of the world. He studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, then staged (tried out for a slot) at restaurants in France, Spain and Italy.
Missing the States, but still fascinated by French food, he cooked at Commander's Palace in New Orleans creating all the masterpieces of Creole, Cajun and Southern cuisine; distinctions with real differences, as he patiently schooled me.
His visits home were partly work, cooking those delicious dishes from the Crescent City for the inn's guests - gumbos, etoufees, jambalayas - adapted with local foods: lobster gumbo, crab etouffee, shrimp jambalaya. When Herb was in town during the summers the dining room and the outdoor deck were always packed, with lines waiting out on the lawn.
But he got in plenty of fishing, with most of the catch appearing in the kitchen. Justine adored his stuff and was now the attentive apprentice. Me, I probably gained ten pounds whenever he was around.
One summer he had a few weeks break during the dead season at four star Le Bernardin in New York, where he'd moved after Commander's. They specialize in seafood, of course, so Herb was totally in his element and finally swimming with the biggest of fish. He was living 'The Life' in 'The CIty' and enjoying, probably way too much cocaine-wise, every minute of it while shooting up as a star chef profiled by Bon Appetit and Martha Stewart.
One day during that visit Justine took him aside as he was heading out fishing and said, "Herb, look, I'm thinking about hanging up my hat here. My hearts not in it any more, my bones are tired and my game's gone. Could you take over the kitchen?" Clearly it wasn't a question of could but would.
"To leave New York for what," he thought? "Small seaside inn? Tiny tidewater town? Away from the action? Models, actresses, hot musician chicks? Outstanding blow and blow jobs? A place really on no one's radar?" Lost in time. Lost to his childhood. "To have his own place? Well ... hmm."
"I'll think it over," was all he said.
The inn could always hire another chef. And frankly, easily find someone better than Justine. He loved our mother and she had given him, among other gifts, his career. She was a solid country cook, as mentioned earlier, with a mastery of the Yankee classics but out of her depth beyond that limited range, having had no professional training. Facts are facts. Rightly or wrongly, people expected more these days.
Then he went out fishing and didn't give 'it' another damn thought. Fishing did that to him. On the sea he was lost in another world utterly alien to life on land. Life ashore, its cares, worries and demands, disappeared the second his feet hit the dock. Just anticipating it he would disappear into a trance. I learned long ago never to tell Herb anything when he was headed for his Whaler, it strictly went in one ear and straight out the other.
Back in New York a few months later, while captaining the fish station one Friday evening, Harris called and dropped the sad news that Justine had just died. "And, it was, well, um, while making a Manhattan clam chowder," his voice sputtered and trailed off. Herb nearly dropped the phone into the pot of fish stock that he'd stopped to skim.
"Our mother? Manhattan? Dead? With tomatoes? In Rowley? Oh shit!" He shook his head in disbelief, it was certainly a shock. But he took it like a man, soldiering on through his shift, silently mourning both the loss of Justine and her apparently fatal last minute apostasy.
He blamed himself and shouldered a burden of guilt, for he had let slip that this was the way clams were (mis) treated in Manhattan, even at somewhere as savvy as Le Bernardin. "What possessed me?" And moreover, "why didn't I take mom's wish to retire seriously?"
Now, New York is the undisputed capital of lots of things - advertising, finance, art, publishing, fashion - indeed of capitalism itself. But the clam? No. And modest Rowley, Massachusetts is the capital of one thing only - clams.
Manhattan has no right to couple its name with the clam, much less claim its spurious spawn as chowder. Are there clams in New Amsterdam? Well give thanks to Rowley.
Melville gasses on endlessly about the mighty whale, who declared bankruptcy and went out of business over a century ago, without a word for the humble clam, who hung in there and grew its bottom line year to year.
Humor me here about that clam, with whom the word chowder is inextricably linked in the hungry human imagination. Clam = chowder. Could Newton himself have devised a simpler equation? It's like apple = gravity, or apple = pie, Rowley's other famous harvest by the way.
New Yorkers aren't entirely to blame - or rather New Englanders aren't entirely blameless. The sludgy slops quaintly called 'chowda', whether clam, fish or corn, that are fed to tourists, clueless natives and win cook-offs, from pricey chains like Legal Seafoods down to pier-side clam shacks are almost as bad as the New York version and some are worse. Nothing but bowls of cream with Bac-Os and shredded rubber bands.
Justine, of course, wasn't a Yankee. But still, she'd spent most of her life here, so it's puzzling. It's possible that one can never be a Yankee without being born in New England. Maybe one can't become, one simply is - or not. Or perhaps it's a genetic predisposition, another Y chromosome, say, with its own weird, hardwired encoding.
Thinking of other parts of the country, could one ever claim to be a Southerner, a New Yorker or a Texan without being born and bred in those particular parts? "Hell no!" the good ol' boy, b-boy and cowboy all agree.
Anyway, after Herb hung up the phone and returned to the line at Le Bernardin, he recalled the request from Justine, pushed from his mind until now by the fascinations and furious pace of Manhattan, to take over the Saltmarsh kitchen. He focused his thoughts as plates of fish flew by for his approval, hung up his apron at the end of the night and caught the first Acela north to Boston. For the fishing.
So on this evening, as the wind ceased keening and the fog rolled in sneaking its hungry sea scents through the time-porous house, Herb rolled up with seafood.
"Herb, good to see you sir," Fred said. Beneath the blue uniform his belly growled in welcome as he extended his hand. Everyone knows that food's at hand when Herb's on hand and no one ever leaves unfulfilled.
A chorus of "Hey!", "Hello." and "Howzit goin'?" broke out.
As you can see my brother always amps the party factor. My job as host of this hostel, but no one touches Herb for hospitality. A party professional. Not even that, just - 'it ain't nothin' but a party' when he's around.
"Fred man, good seein ya'. Shirley, long time. Hey Kare (as he calls Karen). Folks, Crystal. Crystal, folks, friends from town."
He gets these girls with the nuttiest names. Crystal, Shadow, China, Meadow, Dory, Mynah and a myriad more players no one recalls rotate in and out of this ever changing cast. Mostly without getting mad or even somehow. As I said, no one ever leaves hungry, or maybe they've simply had their fill.
"Guys, Dave snagged some righteous shrimp today. We gotta grill these big suckas like pronto-mente." No one disagreed. Memory and metaphysics can cool their heels when facing down fresh shrimp.
The Clam, as shellfish inspector, gave his unofficial seal of approval, "Two real ... er, a buncha' real beauties there," he observed as he inspected the bounty of Shadow's barely contained cleavage brimming around the collander of pale pink crustaceans.
I never know what my brother's going to do. No one does. I suspect he himself doesn't most of the time, he lives in the moment for the moment. He's an improviser with serious enough chops to usually pull off whatever swims into his head, which often has to do with whatever's freshest. This keeps our guests fascinated and on edge. The inn's menu changes daily and has one offering, take it or leave it.
There is a kid's menu, however, usually a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, hot dog and a Congo bar with vanilla ice cream. All proven bullet-proof to kid criticism, this lineup will keep any child happy as a clam, which by the way, many of them declare to be 'totally gross'. I won't even tell you what they say about the octopus, jellyfish, squid, brains, liver and kidneys their parents tuck into sometimes.
We have a small separate kids' table off in a corner to accommodate the truly 'grossed out' grousers and leave their parents in peace. Some preempt problems of any sort by simply sending them there when walking in and enjoy a pretend 'date night' while the kids do whatever it is kids do with their iPads. Which involves lots of laughter anyway and leaves their screens ... well, talk about totally gross.
Herb got this idea while traveling through Europe. There would be these little family restaurants along the roadside in Spain and Italy or Greece, seldom with signs out front. You'd walk in, eyes blinking in the cool darkness, the owners greeted and seated you like a long lost friend, brought drinks with tapas, antipasto or meze, and pulled up chairs for an interval of pleasant chat joining one in a sangria, limoncello or ouzo.
"Ah, our cousin Giovanni, a poet of the pots, he has a choice little spot, how you say, 'boite'? In the East Village, which is New York, no? Go, go, you must go - you're neighbors." This to his then girlfriend from Pacific Palisades. Nunzio seemed to have already adopted the New Yorker's view of America. The rest of which lay somewhere out there in a vaguely compressed geography just over the Hudson, a first line of defense against New Jersey, where the corn and sagebrush started.
Then the hosts returned to the kitchen and the meal of the day was served course by course over time at a leisurely pace. No menu, no prices, no orders taken, no substitutions, no explanations proffered unless asked for. In which case a poetic description waxing over the perfection of this or that dish was in order.
That along with its provenance through thoroughly convoluted family lines, some quite contentious. A rundown of the farms, markets and fishermen who had provided the kitchen's bounty. Then a recipe, "Quite simplified of course, I know how busy you Americans are, all men and women with affairs. This can be made in only one day." And finally how the mood of the cook might have affected the outcome, "On this, of all days, when you blessed us with your visit." A heart of stone could not have helped but been charmed by these passionate recitals nor anyone absorbed the flood of loving detail lavished on each dish.
Those little 'mom and pops', as Americans might call them dismissively, were by far and away the best places for serious food. They did one thing and one thing only superbly well every day god's sun shone. That was that and that was enough. Focus was one of the secrets to their success and the deep satisfaction they derived from their family artistry.
"There are clam shacks and pizza joints up and down the coast. You can even go vegetarian in Newburyport; vegan in Ipswich; salt, sugar and fat-free in Essex; gluten-free in Gloucester; low-calorie and cholesterol in Rockport - and totally taste free in Salem," Herb would point out with barely disguised disgust.
He's kind of brash and arrogant - an occupational hazard of chefs, pilots, doctors, ships' captains and all those who wield the power of life and death over other beings. But we're the only real restaurant in town, so it works. Moreover, no one's ever bored, most importantly him. He's always restless and moving on, in the kitchen, out on the water and between the sheets.
Herb chose the largest 'spider' from a set hanging by the chimney, one with a ribbed bottom used especially for making 'spider cakes'. Neither have to do with spiders, although he swept a few out, along with their webs and remains of their victims, from their dark lair into the fire where they sputtered vengefully for a second then vaporized. A spider is a heavy black cast iron pan supported on spidery legs. Spider cakes are made in spiders and aren't cakes at all but what the rest of the country simply calls biscuits. Nothing's simple in New England.
He raked coals from beneath the logs into a low heap off to one side of the hearth and set the spider on top to warm. Patience will take it from here, since I can't stand the heat and stay out of the kitchen. Which jibes nicely with my plan for preserving family peace - separation of powers and plenty of personal space.
"We've become fans of this fireplace style of cooking, which is similar to the campfire cooking you may have enjoyed as a kid - franks, s'mores, pan-fried trout. It all started when Tiny Jr. and Tiny Sr., our plumbers, discovered a cache of antique cookware in the forgotten root cellar below the kitchen while running new pipes during the renovation after Herb returned."
"Several hundred years of kitchenware - pots and pans, kettles, crockery, apple peelers and meat grinders, other patented devices of unknown utility - and a nested set of spiders - were dragged up into daylight again for the first time in decades. These bygone implements, some sand-scoured from thick rimes of rust and patiently re-seasoned, hang from the ceiling and walls of the taproom enjoying a useful unexpected afterlife. Would that we should all be so lucky."
"When the inn was built in the mid-1600's, a huge, and hugely inefficient, brick fireplace was at the heart of every New England home, what with the harsh winters so unlike damply mild England. All of family life happened around the hearth, including the daily cooking all done over open flames or coals, until baking ovens were later added beside the fireplaces."
"And the Saturday bath every week, whether you wanted it or not, to smell sweet for the Lord and his people on the Sabbath," Shirley added. "Just the way it was when I was growing up in our old saltbox on Starfish Lane."
Tales of a Seaside Inn continues with Part Seven, beginning October 1.
