THERE WERE NINE at my reading of episode ten of Dead Air, “Kap’n Klam’s Salad Sandwich,” since the tinkers made it off the roof safely and stayed to hear what I had to say, and Suki joined the group, too.
ALL OF THE CONFERENCES that Porky White and I held at his clam bar had the same theme: how to fill the place with happy diners, eating clams with gusto and spending with abandon. In the effort to make that dream come true, Porky changed the name from Captain White’s to Kap’n Klam; he and I snapped candid photographs of people who seemed to be smiling as they ate and tacked them up on a Wall of Happy Diners; and he continually tried to invent recipes that would bring clams the wide acceptance that hamburgers enjoyed. The worst of these, I think, was the clam salad sandwich.
“This,” he said, putting a plate in front of me, “is going to bring people in. It’s going to make this place famous.”
“Wow,” I said. I lifted an edge of the bread and saw clams and mayonnaise — quite a lot of mayonnaise.
“Looks great, I know,” he said, “but the proof of the pudding is in the eating — take a bite.”
I took a bite. I chewed.
“Well?” he asked.
I swallowed. “It’s — um — chewy,” I said.
“Hmm. Is it too chewy?”
“Well — ”
“You think I should cook the clams?”
“Maybe,” I said, still chewing.
“What about the flavor?”
I took another bite. I chewed. I swallowed. “It’s — um — got lots of mayonnaise,” I said.
“And a little minced celery! That’s the beauty of it, I think. It’s simple. Elegant. It’s going to be a huge success.”
“Could be,” I said. “Could be.”
Four people walked into the clam bar, and Porky called out to them, “Good afternoon, folks! Take a pew, any pew. It’s your lucky day! I’ve got something special I want you to try, on the house!”
He slid the plate away from me, cut the remains of the clam salad sandwich into bite-size pieces, and brought it over to the booth where the people had seated themselves. “My own invention!” he said. He set the plate in the middle of the table. We all looked at it in silence for a moment. Then Porky announced, “The clam salad sandwich!” The four people looked at one another. “Just sample that,” said Porky, “and I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.”
He hustled me back to the counter, where he got the camera for the Wall of Happy Diners, my camera, on loan to the establishment for an unspecified period.
“Take this,” he said, “and when I ask them how they like the sandwich, snap their pictures.”
“Okay,” I said.
We walked back to the booth. The remains of the clam salad sandwich lay on the plate in the center of the table. Some pieces were gone, some were half-eaten, some were intact. “So, folks,” asked Porky, “what do you think?”
I was ready with the camera.
They looked at Porky, and they looked at one another, and then one of them, a man slouching into a corner of the booth, said, “You know, I think I’ll have one of these clam salad sandwiches.” He pointed at it.
“Yes, sir!” said Porky. He pulled his order pad out of his back pocket. “One clam salad sandwich.”
“With lettuce and tomato.”
“Lettuce and tomato.”
“And some sliced onion.”
“Sliced onion.”
“Oh, and — ”
“Yes?”
“Hold the clams.”
Together, the group burst out laughing.
“See?” Porky said to me. “They love it! Get that picture.”
I snapped it.
“Rush that right down to Himmelfarb’s,” said Porky. He stuck his hand in his pocket and handed me the money he found there. “And get the rush service. I want that picture on the Wall of Happy Diners as soon as possible.”
Today, of course, a new Kap’n Klam restaurant opens somewhere in the world every fifteen minutes, and you’ll find a Wall of Happy Diners in every one. Most of the photographs are taken locally, but every wall has some classic photographs from the early days of the chain, including the one that I took of the four people laughing over the original clam salad sandwich, and on the menu board in every Kap’n Klam restaurant from Kankakee to Karachi you will find these listings:
[to be continued]
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