A quahog is an edible hard shell clam found on the east coast of North America from Canada to Florida. But in Rhode Island (and a few nearby places like Cape Cod) those mollusks are called quahogs. When I arrived in Rhode Island I encountered them for the first time. Yes, I had eaten this frozen item called “clams” but they were nothing more than a clam strip. The first time I ordered fried clams in Providence I was shocked to find that they came with their bellies still attached to the muscle and were deep fried to a golden perfection. Maine is famous for lobster, but nothing beats Rhode Island when it comes to quahogs and deep fried whole belly clams.
Photo from “Honest Cooking” by Lisa Lotts
I lived in Rhode Island from January 1970 until June 1973 when I moved to Maine. I have no pictures from those three years. I do have fond memories of Providence Plantations in particular and the State of Rhode Island in general. I was saddened to learn that the official name of the state had been changed, although I understand the politics behind the decision. https://motifri.com/plantations-history/ I lived in both Providence and Warren (a small town on the way to Bristol where I taught high school English in the public school.) I thus came to know two very different Rhode Islands, urban and suburban. Before I get to Warren, Bristol, and Newport on the Mount Hope Neck and Aquidneck Island, I will spend a moment in Providence Plantation.
I first came to Providence in January 1970 as a graduate student at Brown University. I lived in an architectural nightmare known as the Graduate Center. https://www.brown.edu/cis/sta/dev/providence_architecture/locations/college_hill/graduate_center/ It was a strange building, but nevertheless it was useful to get the feel of the campus and to be at heart of the graduate experience. In April of that year, just a few weeks prior to Kent State, Judy Collins performed on the campus green. The Brown University campus, minus the Graduate Center, is a delightful place to visit and I highly recommend a walking tour of the campus on any visit to Rhode Island.
My next semester at Brown and my first days as a Bristol teacher found me living off-campus in a third floor attic apartment in an old mansard mansion on Providence’s Eastside on the edge of the Fox Point neighborhood. Today Fox Point is a trendy Providence residential area. In the early 70’s it was a Portuguese neighborhood with rundown apartment buildings and a plethora of sweet bread bakeries. Things have apparently changed. https://www.goprovidence.com/neighborhoods/fox-point-wickenden/ My friends and I were not trendy urbanites, but we were children of the 60’s. Jerry, a fellow graduate student at Brown, lived in a grungy apartment in the Fox Point area although he would briefly visit our apartment from time to time between rentals. During my year on Williams Street in Providence three of us lived in what was basically a one bedroom attic apartment at the top of a narrow staircase. The cat constantly escaped through the window and loved to lounge on the ledge formed by the mansard roof. https://legacyusa.com/blog/mansard-roof/ The picture in this article gives you a pretty good idea of my apartment house, except mine was in poor repair and subdivided into one zillion apartments.
My roommates were Pat, a teacher in the Providence schools, and Maureen, an American studies graduate student at Brown, possibly the smartest person I ever knew. Pat had just returned from Ireland were she lived and studied for a year. She brought her bicycle with her and she and the bicycle lived and slept in a narrow area partitioned off the living room by a half wall. Maureen had a the tiny bedroom which housed a narrow single bed and I slept on a mattress on the floor in the corridor between the living room and kitchen. Jerry came and went, occupying whatever bed happened to be available because someone had gone hither or yon. However the primary reason there were 4 of us in this rather cramped space was that every night after school we had to play bridge and listen to music, Judy Collins, Laura Nyro, James Taylor, and Helen Reddy among others. It was 1970-71. The bridge dummy would work on cooking dinner (I remember a lot of spaghetti), correcting papers, and preparing lesson plans.
Warren and Bristol were a whole different experience. I lived there from June 1971 until June 1973 while teaching high school English in Bristol, Rhode Island. My apartment in Warren was once again an attic room, but this time I lived alone with my little West Highland White Terrier named Kipper. Every afternoon after school Kipper and I would go to Colt State Park in Bristol to walk by the bay. It is a lovely place to visit. https://riparks.ri.gov/parks/colt-state-park The park is named after Samuel Colt of firearms fame, but it is truly a hidden gem. I had a lot of adventures with my fellow teachers from Bristol including school break trips to Virginia and Bermuda, but our favorite trip was always to nearby Newport to visit the dive bars on Thames Street. Those were the days before the Navy pulled out of Newport and Doris Duke undertook her revival of Thames Street and the Newport waterfront. What you see now is very different from what existed in 1972.
I like to travel to Rhode Island although it has been more than a dozen years since I last visited. I stayed at a swank resort on Goat Island for a work conference. The whole Rhode Island experience had changed — no more attic apartments for me. I have fond memories of the Williams Street bridge games and the Warren, Rhode Island apartment which reminded me of Rhoda’s place on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. If you ever want to travel back to 1972 there is no better trip than to watch a rerun of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Minneapolis could easily be 1972 Rhode Island without the quahogs.
Memories - A Second Chance at Happiness 