Vox

TILLIE: Convention dictates that I thank you for your letter although your letter was a bore. People don't know how to write letters. Not anymore. You don't have to be a writer to write a respectable letter, but you do have to practice.

The only item in your letter that caused me to applaud was the ending. The rest, as empty as the sky, read like something that was written by somebody to nobody in particular. I did gather, between hack saluation and equally hack close, that you want information on the clam. Specifically, the clam and chowder.

I was, negatives to the contrary, astounded. You are, as many well-heeled hedonists know, an accomplished hooker, an artist. Superb in bed, your interest in the heat of the stove was a sur- prise. I blush. And apologize. Art is long, life is short, and success is very far off. But even a hooker eats. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that says a hooker should not be as accomplished in the culinary as she is in the corporal.

If you want to make chowder, splendid. I will need an afternoon of your time. Being familiar with your prejudices, please don't hesitate to take off your clothes. On the eastern side of Edgartown, chowder making is always done in the nude.

Grab an umbrella, my duck, and naked we will skip into the Freudian rain and down to the Boston waterfront. Down to the sea with its laboring, oily waves. Down to the gloomy purple and a place called Stavis Shellfish. A wholesale clam outlet. A twostory indented structure sitting by a rotting pier. Inside: a small office with black phones being answered by undersized intemperates, surrounded by crushed ice and clams. Ah, yes, the quahog. Pause a while'and dwell on the quahog, Giant of the Eastern Chowder Establishment.

It seems, Tillie, as we stand here at Stavis Shellfish, naked and pot-beilied like little heathen gods, that the Clam People are indifferent to our wants. Impress on the man with the bent ears that you need 20 pounds - four to five dozen quahogs. Big, tough quahogs, hard and salty. Closed tight as a drum Beautifully symmetrical. Defiant.

On the way home, buy a box of Uneeda Biscuits. And make sure you have butter. Not oleo. Butter. You'll also need a big pot, food chopper, bowls, onions, potatoes, salt pork, knife, vegetable brush, quahog music, Band-aids, horny little boys to clean up the mess, and a couple of jugs of wine. A Gallo chablis will do.

Tillie, I have a question for your mother. If the population of Massachusetts is 5,660,000, how many of the 5,660,000 do you suppose were conceived in the kitchen? How many got their start in the midst of a bouillabaisse? Between bastes of a saddle of lamb? Whilst peaking egg whites for a salmon souffle? How many? Think about it while you peel ten potatoes. At what point in the industrial revolution did the kitchen lose out to the bedroom? Or has it? Ten medium-sized potatoes. Peeled and placed in a pot with water to parboil for about 15 minutes and then, as we so succinctly say in cooking circles, to be "set aside."

Set yourself aside, too, Tillie. Have a slug of wine. Have a couple of slugs. Do push-ups. You're about to scrub 48 quahogs. You do this with your vegetable brush. In the sink. Where the Potato peels are. You scrub the Q's under running water, and then put the Q's into a big pot. Line the bottom of the big pot with scrubbed Q's. Add about lA inch of water, cover the big pot, turn the heat on high, and let the Q's steam. They should steam for two or maybe three minutes. You want your Q's to steam just long enough to barely open those shells and no longer.

As soon as the quahog opens, use a slotted spoon, take the Q out of the liquid, and ease it into a bowl to cool. You'll need several bowls placed at strategic spots about the kitchen: on counters, cabinets, bread box, refrigerator. You'll probably run out of bowls. See the nice World War II vet next door for some of his bowls. Give him a glass of wine. Have him study you in the nude. Ask to wear his European Theater of Operations ribbon.

You have reached, then, a point of no return. Tell World War II to blow his nose and set up the food chopper. Play it safe, Tillie. Don't lean over a food chopper without wearing your numeral sweater. Now, crank a half-pound of rindless salt pork.

Next: take one of your onions, cut it in half, and run through the chopper to clean out the salt pork. Empty the precious liquid in the big steamer pot (used to steam the Q's) into a bowl and set the bowl aside with the other bowls that are set aside. Dump the chopped-up salt pork into the empty steamer pot (now your chowder pot) and cook at medium low heat until the salt pork liquifies. It won't take long.

Next: run all the onions through the food chopper and drop into the cooked salt pork. Let the onions simmer at a low heat for about five minutes or until they're soft and soggy and smell good for miles around. You don't want them to brown, so stir occasionally. Next: grab an open bottle of wine, rest it on your sagging lower lip and see if you can sock about seven seconds' worth while World War II offers to show you his North Africa Theater of Operations. Next: shove 91/2 potatoes through indiscriminate food chopper and add potatoes to the chowder pot. The potato will be in lumps which you'll break up with a spoon.

Pick up a Big Q. A by-now cool Q. Take a cool paring knife. Take a cool bowl. Hold the cool Q over the cool bowl.

Insert cool paring knife into crack between bivalves of cool, juicy quahog and slide the knife down and cut through the muscle at the base of the shell, separating the two halves. The Q juice will splash into the bowl. With a knife scrape every bit of quahog, muscle and all, out of the shell. You are going to open and scrape 48 quahogs. You're going to be sure and collect the vital 48 quahog juices. And then, into the old food chopper the drooling quahogs slide. Crank away.

The chopped quahogs, which you sensibly collected in a bowl, and every drop of Q juice go into the chowder pan. You used 9½ potatoes. Run the other 1/2 potato through the chopper. It will clean out a lot of good stuff. Good stuff joins other good stuff in chowder pot. Stir. Let stew for half an hour (or longer). If too thick, add the liquid used to steam the Q's. But don't let it get too thin. If you want to add milk, add only to chowder you are going to serve. Serve with a big glob of butter and Uneeda Biscuit.

That's it, Till. After a most unusual afternoon on your feet, the kitchen is a symphony of dirty spoons, dirty floor, dirty counters, dirty food chopper, dirty hooker, dirty bowls, dirty walls, 96 dirty shells, dirty sink, dirty World War II, dirty numeral sweater, and a big pot smelling like the sea itself.

Chowder. You have made chowder. Open the doors. Open the windows. Shout it from the rooftops. Shout it in the streets. "Tillie, Queen of the Quahogs!" And prepare to perform, Till, as the hale and the hearty laugh their way down the well-worn path to you, your apparatus, your chowder.

The pressures of the day militate against the likelihood of your writing. Good. Read first the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Passos. Stay away from Hemingway's letters. He spent too much time on the telephone. And after you have examined Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, and as much of the world as you can handle, get back to me.

Howard Wilson '41 pursues the quahog from a base in Boston.