Just Angling For Christmas Eve 1998
by Donald Millus
Santa Claus Goes Fishing and Clamming
Everyone knows the traditional Christmas extras: Blitzen and Vixen, the nameless elves that think of insidious ways to torture fathers with "some assembly required toys" that are one screw short, and fairly recent wannabes like Rudolph and the little drummer boy. Less well known is the story of the littlest clam. It is a truly stomach warming tale.
It seems that Santa decided to go on his annual just-before-Christmas fishing trip to relax before the arduous tour around the United States and Canada bringing gifts to little boys and girls whose parents haven't maxed out their credit cards. Actually, as Santa has grown even older, his task has been lightened by computer games which take up far less sleigh room than bicycles and trampolines.
For his trip this year Santa decided to go trout fishing in Murrells Inlet. He chose the dark of the moon, because the winter trout sometimes start hitting on that day, or certainly within a few days of the increasing sliver of the new moon. He borrowed a boat from a Conway angler who hoped that the condition of some of his old spinning rods might inspire Santa to talk to some of his elves in the rod building business about some new ultralight one-piece spinning rods for the local angler.
The trout weren't hitting, but Santa did hook into a feisty bluefish at the jetties that would make a good supper, grilled with Pepperidge Farm stuffing and a half-pound of shrimp from Ocean Fish Market. For lunch Santa indulged himself in some cold kielbasa on hot dog rolls and a brew. (You wonder where Santa got that jolly gut of his, eh?)
Here's where the story of the littlest clam comes in. Santa decided to rake some hard shelled clams for steamed clams and clams casino. It's hard work, but the temperature was in the fifties, good weather to dig in, and this was a great way to work off lunch.
Now the littlest clam had a lot of big brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents living in his neighborhood in a shellbank with an ocean view. It was a great place to live that had somehow survived the developers who wanted to build beach houses there for people who preferred artichoke consommé to clam chowder.
Chaucer was the littlest clam's name because his parents had about fifty thousand other children and the name list had grown thin by the time he floated along. It wasn't easy being the littlest clam in a community where some of his relatives were the size of small coconuts. One of them, in fact, had gone on to a career in wrestling and eventually became the governor of Minnesota. But they all made fun of little Chaucer because of his size.
"You're small enough to stick into the slot of a telephone" quipped one of his especially cruel stepsisters. (His father had found a new mate after his mother had been picked up by a diver probing the bottom of a muddy creek. If truth be told, she hadn't been especially faithful to Chaucer's father, a pompous clam named Henry.)
Anyway, Santa started to rake for clams as the tide fell out and he found the littlest clam and six dozen of his relatives. But Santa, always attentive to the law, was very careful. After he had tenderly washed all the clams ranging from Chaucer to some real chowderheads, salivating all the time at the thought of what a tasty pre-Christmas feast he was going to enjoy, Santa looked closely at the littlest clam.
"Little clam, you're just not big enough. With that he flipped the littlest clam back into the clear flowing incoming tide. The littlest clam settled wobbling to the bottom. His bigger relatives, however, went to the bottom of Patricia Millus's steamer or to Dr. Joey Sanders clams casino laboratory.
So on this Christmas Eve, remember that being big and rich isn't the only thing that can make you happy. Just ask the littlest clam who's snuggled down in his mud and sand bed in Murrells Inlet, alive and happy as . . . .well, you finish the story.