I TRIED NOT TO BE GLOOMY during dinner, and I think I succeeded, but by reading time I was exhausted. I felt old, finished. Everything had come to nothing, that was the feeling. There was just nothing. I had nothing, and there was nothing to look forward to. Whatever I had had, or done, or been had slipped away. I had nothing. I was nothing. I began the eighth episode of Dead Air, “Kap’n Klam, the Home of Happy Diners, the House of Hopes and Dreams,” without much enthusiasm.
THE FIRST INVESTMENT I ever made was in Captain White’s Clam Bar, the original of the Kap’n Klam chain of bivalve-based fast-food restaurants that now blanket the globe. (It was, alas, too small an investment to allow me to give my wife, Albertine, the gift she desires more than any luxury: freedom from the hand-wringing anxiety she feels when the bills come in.) That first clam bar had four booths, four tables, and a counter with six stools. There was little to distinguish it from any other clam bar except its proprietor, Porky White. At that time, I was pushing thirteen and Porky was pushing thirty, and the clam bar was not exactly a success, but Porky was tireless in his efforts to make it so.
“Maybe it’s the name,” he said to me one day, out of the blue, when he was bent over a cup of coffee and we were the only people in the place.
“The name?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said morosely. “Maybe we’d get more people if we changed the name.”
“You could call it a café,” I said. “Captain White’s Clam Café.”
“It’s the ‘Captain White’s’ part I was thinking about,” he said. “It’s not right.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you know, in the morning, I get a coffee-and-buttered-roll crowd here — ”
“A crowd?”
“A small crowd. A few guys. And being located where I am here, near the docks, a lot of those guys are baymen, clammies.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Well, to them, a captain is the skipper of a clam boat, not the skipper of a clam bar.”
“But you’re the captain of this enterprise, so you’re entitled to the title.”
“You and I may know that,” he said, “but they do not agree. It’s not that they say anything to me about it, but there’s something in their looks, and something about the way they stop talking when I come by to pour the coffee, and besides, it’s too dull. Captain White’s. Blah. You know, it’s just So-and-So’s Clam Bar. We’ve got to have a name that stands out, a name like nobody else’s. Something distinctive.”
“There’s probably no other clam bar called So-and-So’s.”
“Be serious. This is important.”
“Okay.”
“The Home of Happy Diners.”
“Wishful thinking,” I said. “You might as well call it The House of Hopes and Dreams.”
The clam bar was called The Home of Happy Diners for a week. It did not fill with happy diners. Porky tried The House of Hopes and Dreams. Our hopes and dreams were not fulfilled. He tried Porky’s Clam Café, The Golden Clam, The Happy Clam, The Clam Shack, The Half Shell, Distinctive Clams, Porky’s Folly, and So-and-So’s. None of the name changes attracted a crowd, but they kept Porky busy repainting the sign above the door.
Finally, one afternoon, he said to me, “I have got it. I have really got it. I know the name, the right name.”
“You do?”
“Yep. It’s been in my mind for weeks, but I wasn’t sure about it. I had to try those other names first, see how they would work.”
“So this was all part of a plan?”
“Sure. Like a field test.”
“You didn’t let me in on it.”
“Yeah, well, I am the captain of this enterprise, you know.”
“Sure, okay. What’s the name?”
“Kap’n Klam’s Klam Kar.”
“Hm,” I said. “Who’s Captain Clam?”
“Kap’n Klam. You’ve got to slur it like that. That’s the way the clammies say it. And look. Look at this.” He wrote the name on a napkin. “See? Those K’s? Distinctive.”
“Okay, but — ”
“But?”
“Who’s Kap’n Klam?”
“Nobody. That’s the beauty of it. He’s not a fake because he’s not real.”
“Makes sense, but — why ‘Kar’?”
“We’re going to rework the outside of the place to make it look like a railroad dining car — and then inside we’ll — ”
“That would be kind of expensive,” I said, speaking as an investor in the enterprise.
“I knew you’d say that,” he said. “Okay, how about Kap’n Klam’s Klams? No kar.”
“Why don’t you just call it Kap’n Klam?” I said. “You don’t need to say ‘klam’ twice, because what else would Kap’n Klam sell?” There it was. We looked at each other and burst out laughing, because we knew that Kap’n Klam would sell clams, really sell clams.
Today, thanks to massive advertising, Kap’n Klam is a household word, but it’s not the name that Porky and I use. He calls the outfit The Home of Happy Diners, and I call it The House of Hopes and Dreams.
“MAYBE you should change the name of the hotel,” Lou suggested. “Might attract a buyer.”
“How about ‘Heartbreak Hotel’?” I suggested.
“Ooops,” said Lou. He busied himself with polishing a glass.
“Time for bed,” said Albertine, and she led me upstairs.
[to be continued]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
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