It happened like this:
Before I was born, Babbington was a stable little community, dependent on—and redolent of—the clamming industry, with some small appeal for tourists. No one living in Babbington then would have predicted that within five years a period of rapid growth would begin that would last throughout my childhood. The effects of this growth were broad and deep, both on Babbington and on me.
Most of the reasons for Babbington’s phenomenal growth were not unique to Babbington: the population of the entire United States, indeed of the entire world, was growing rapidly in the postwar years, which these years were, and large numbers of people, especially young fertile couples, were choosing to live in places more or less like Babbington. However, the most important single reason was unique to Babbington, and that reason was Stretch Mitgang.
Mitgang, a sociologist with psychohistorical interests, moved to Babbington just a year or so before I was born. Passing himself off as a psychosocial historiographer, Mitgang undertook a two-year study of the sexual practices of Babbingtonians. His charm and good looks made it easy for him to ingratiate himself with Babbingtonians of all stripes, so he was able to gather reams of data, thousands of anecdotes, tens of thousands of tall tales, and quite a few firsthand experiences. When he had gathered the material he needed, Mitgang disappeared. A couple of years later, he published the results of his research under the title Seafood and Sex: a Study of Life in a Coastal Town.
In his book, Mitgang included the data, history, and logical cement that readers expected, but he also laced the book with anecdotes about Babbington and Babbingtonians that were, for their time, quite frank (and probably exaggerated), and he also included photographs that were, for their time, frank to an extreme (and probably staged). Seafood and Sex has been out of print for years, but if you take the trouble to track down a copy, you will understand why it quickly became a best-seller and why the book itself became a primary reason for Babbington’s rapid growth.
Mitgang waxed Whitmanesque in his enthusiasm for the general good health of the citizens, the “unflagging vigor that they bring to the day’s labor and the night’s delight.” This he attributed to the generally salubrious effects of bracing salt air. He went on to praise the “mesmerizing seductiveness of its women, at once shy and bold, endearingly naive and shockingly inventive, teasing and complaisant.” These qualities he attributed to the aphrodisiac effects of moonlight on the bay. In describing the men, Mitgang returned again and again to their “sturdy thighs, priapic grandeur, and remarkable endurance,” which he attributed to the habit of hard work and to the eating of clams. That did it. As soon as the book was published, outsiders began flocking to Babbington, and the population began an accelerating rise.
The newcomers moved into a town that was already sharply divided culturally. Clamming had always been important to the town, but after the War of 1812, for reasons too complex for me to explain here, chicken farming and processing became an important secondary industry. In the early years of this century, there occurred a series of riots during which clamdiggers attempted to drive chicken farmers out of Babbington. Most historians refer to the period during which these riots occurred as the Chicken Purge; however, the clamdiggers attacked the chicken farmers with, among other weapons, the tongs that they used for harvesting clams from the bay, and because of this unorthodox use of the clam tongs, this unpleasant period is sometimes referred to as—and I apologize for this—the Tong Wars.
Call it what you will, it was an ugly time in Babbington’s history, one that just about everyone would rather forget. But it had such a powerful effect on the culture of Babbington that it can’t be—and, I think, must not be—forgotten. At the time, the clammies claimed that runoff from the chicken farms was fouling the bay, and there was probably some truth to the claim, but it was not the real reason for the animosity that they felt toward the chicken farmers. I think we can find the real reason if we read between the lines of a passage in Our Town and Its People, a social studies text that all fifth-grade Babbingtonians were required to study, a text commissioned by the Daughters of the Tong Wars. Of the chicken farmers that textbook said, in part:
Chicken farming is easy work, suitable for people who cannot do much else. As a group, chicken farmers are a happy-go-lucky lot. Like the birds they raise, they pass most of their lives eating, sleeping, and copulating. They live in blissful ignorance of time and tide.
I infer from this passage that the clammies were simply envious of the chicken farmers. The chicken-farming culture seemed to offer a life that was easier, happier, and more exciting. Their own lives were hard, sometimes miserable, and often dull. But most of all, the chicken-based culture must have seemed sexy.
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You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.
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