Pearl Turns To Gold

by Richard Brown
(Bethpage, Tennessee)

I, like Corey of West Palm beach was eating clams mine were roasted, probably Cherry Stone Clams which were my favorite. This was in 1973 in Salisbury Maryland where I was living at the time, an area known for its excellent seafood.

As anyone knows who loves clams, they are rubbery and chewy. Well, this particular night, I had waited all day to bite into these succulent treasures from the sea, and bite into it I did, with great force. My teeth clamped down on something hard, I thought it was a shell piece, I bite so hard that it chipped one of my molars. When I pulled the hard piece from my mouth, I was surprised, it looked kinda like a pearl, not perfectly round and about 7/16" (11.11mm) in diameter but not like the type of pearl I was used to seeing around my wife's neck.

I didn't even know clams made pearls. I took it to a friend of mine who sold jewelry, he said, well, if you hadn't bite it so hard, which had caused a hairline crack across the surface, it might have been worth a couple hundred dollars. Now it just serves to remind me to chew gently when eating clams.

I had even considered having it made into something, crack and all, just as a conversation piece but it has just been sitting in my little box for the last 35 years. I look at it from time to time to remind me that the only value my pearl provided was in the gold cap on one of my molars.