slightly tough local clam.
Once each summer, Howard and friends—mostly artists, local
fishermen, writers and drunks—would throw a party called the John J.
Gaspie Memorial Clambake, in honor of a departed fisherman friend. It
was a major social event for P-town's year-round residents, and for those
of us who worked the season in the restaurant business. Howard and
friends would dig pits in the beach and drop shiny new trash cans into
the holes, then fill them with quahogs, lobsters, codfish, vegetables,
potatoes and corn, allowing them to simmer over glowing coals buried
deep in the sand while everyone drank themselves silly.
To us at the Dreadnaught, Howard was a juju man, an oracle who spoke
in tongues. We might not have understood Howard, but we understood
his books, and while it was hard to reconcile his public behavior with the
wry, musical, and lovingly informative tone of his writings, we knew
enough to respect the man for what he knew and for what he could do.
We saw someone who loved food, not just the life of the cook. Howard
showed us how to cook for ourselves, for the pure pleasure of eating, not
just for the tourist hordes.
Howard showed us that there was hope for us as cooks. That food could
be a calling. That the stuff itself was something we could actually be
proud of, a reason to live. And that stuck with some of us from those
early frontier days. He influenced a lot of my friends. I read a Molly
O'Neill column in the New York Times Magazine recently, in which she
was describing the delights of Portuguese-influenced Cape Cod food like
white beans, kale and chorizo, and I knew she'd eaten the old man's food,
and probably read his books too. Without his name being mentioned,
Howard's reach had extended across the decades to my Sunday paper—
and I was glad of it.
There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on
the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window