A Final Thought: What's a Clambake?
By Mitch Allen
When I first moved to Northeast Ohio, there were many things about autumn in the region that confused me, like the Cleveland Browns’ mascot. What exactly is a “brown?” I would ask.
Oh, wait; there’s more:
Swedish Day: I quickly learned this was actually “Sweetest Day,” which I researched extensively for years. Mimi and I even produced an eight-minute YouTube documentary on the true origins of the holiday. You can google it. (No, it wasn’t concocted by the greeting card industry; it was the candy industry.)
Driveway Markers: Those skinny orange-and-white sticks that line people’s driveways beginning in November. I assumed they were fall decorations. This was before I watched a snowplow miss my driveway and tear up the lawn.
Rock Salt: When my wife first joined me here, she saw a large display of bags of rock salt in a grocery store and remarked, “People must be really nice here. They make a lot of ice cream!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her what the salt was really for.
Washer Fluid: Speaking of salt, mountains of windshield washer fluid appear at gas stations in late fall. I always thought this blue liquid was for cleaning the occasional squashed bug from your windshield. Back in Georgia, a gallon would last the life of your vehicle. Now I know how driving on the Turnpike after a blizzard can deposit a thin layer of road salt, turning your windshield terrifyingly opaque, and a gallon will last barely a week.
Buckeyes: I wrote about this fruit/nut/seed years ago, including how I once mistook a sycamore for a buckeye tree. Mimi’s generous readers ended my confusion by dropping off hundreds of buckeyes at my office. Today, I enjoy collecting them on the Towpath Trail in early September to give to my OSU friends when their team plays Michigan.
Ohio Sweet Corn: Corn that’s yellow and sweet? Strange. The ears my grandparents grew in Alabama were white and tasted like corn, not sugar. Today, I love sweet corn—but only for dessert.
Wearing Shorts with a Sweatshirt: Is it hot or cold? In Northeast Ohio in the fall it is somehow both at the same time, a meteorological phenomenon not even the late Dick Goddard and his Woolly Bear caterpillars could explain.
Fall Color: In Georgia, we had pine trees as far as the eye could see, but they stayed green all year. We didn’t have many hardwoods, except for pin oaks, whose leaves go right from green to brown. I once had a Georgia neighbor with a massive ginkgo tree in her front yard. When its leaves turned bright yellow in the fall and the sunlight struck the tree, strangers would come from miles around to take a gander at it.
Here, gorgeous fall color is everywhere, but growing up I knew fall color only as the obligatory October photo on wall calendars distributed by funeral homes. I guess they had to feature fall leaves. It’s probably not a good idea for a funeral home to choose witches and ghosts to represent October.
In fact, the first time my father came to visit us here, we took him sledding at Virginia Kendall in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. As he stood at the top of the hill, he said, “The only other time I’ve seen anyone sled is on the January page of the Colonial Funeral Home annual calendar.”
I feel ya’, Dad.
Finally, Clambakes: Never heard of ’em. Never been to one. I’ve enjoyed many a Low Country boil in Georgia and crawfish boil in Thibodaux, Louisiana, but never a clambake. I thought they were a New England thing, yet I kept hearing rumors that in October more clams are sold in Northeast Ohio than anywhere else in the nation combined. I don’t know why this would be the case. I’ve walked the shores of Lake Erie many times and never seen a clam.
And why are they called “clambakes” when the clams are not baked? As far as I know, they’re steamed, right? They’re usually served with corn (make that sweet corn), potatoes and, strangely, chicken. When was the last time you ordered seafood and it came with a side of chicken?
I figured out this one, though: There’s not much meat to a clam; they’re like celery sticks in that you burn more calories eating one than there are in the clam. To make up this caloric deficit and prevent your guests from leaving hungry, you must supplement the signature bivalve with something else—and, well, chicken’s cheap.
I’ve lived here 33 years so these things are no longer mysteries to me. But one question remains:
How do you really pronounce “Carnegie?”