a spy's last meal

The girls are on a college road trip so it was just Jack the dog and me home for dinner tonight. I made steamed little neck clams from Cherrystone Aqua Farms over on the eastern shore, a handful of wild caught North Carolina shrimp, an artichoke and dipping sauce made with drawn butter and a couple of mashed up anchovy filets to make it a little tangy (an idea I stole from Bertha's Mussels in the Fells Point area of Baltimore).

Whenever I have clams I think of the last dinner for retired spy chief William Colby. From the New York Times.....

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ROCK POINT, Md., May 2— Jack Yates, the proprietor of Captain John's Crab House on Neale Sound, says hardly anybody knew the gray-haired gentleman in the house at the end of Hill Road used to be a spy -- the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, no less.

Now the disappearance of William E. Colby in the murky waters at the confluence of the Potomac and Wicomico Rivers has people talking of little else, says Mr. Yates, Mr. Colby's neighbor and one of the last people to see him alive on Saturday, April 27. He sold him what may have been his last meal, a mess of clams.

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At his weekend home on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay they found a bowl of clam shells and an open bottle of white wine. Now I would like to live forever but all the research tells me that's not going to happen. So when I go I would be very happy if it was something along the lines of Mr. Colby. Steamed clams, a nice bottle of wine and a paddle down a creek towards the Bay. Sounds pretty good to me (but just the same I would like to hold off for a decade or two or three).

Weather looks great tomorrow. Weatherunderground shows winds 5 to 7 mph, Windfinder thinks it will be over 10 mph. I tossed the polypropylene tether into Spartina this evening. I usually don't use it on day sails. But last week when I sailed down the Pasquotank to Albermarle Sound I had kind of wished I had it on board.

steve