people come in,” she says. We loop under the bridge and park where Judy’s Spirit, a 40-foot double rig clammer, is coming in. Charles Stanley Mason and his son, Charles Jr., are back from having done engine work on their boat. Mason, who sits on the pier next to his boat, has been clamming out of the Small Boat Harbor for 22 years, “and we’re getting the best we’ve ever got for ’em.”
What’s so great about clamming? I ask the elder Charles. He shrugs. “I like to do what I like to do. You know what I mean?” It isn’t easy, not in this era of tight regulations, but that observation gets only another shrug. “Nothing’s like it used to be.”
Charles Jr., a thin beard tracing the ridge of his jaw, enthusiastically shows me the clam rigs, each powered by a four-speed V-6 tractor-trailer motor. “It’s the hardest job I ever had,” he says, explaining how fast the clam