Vol. 38 - A Nice Big Bowl of Linguini and Clams

On heritage, dinner, and a beloved basketball coach

One of my favorite meals is linguini with white clam sauce out of a can.

It was one of the very few things growing up that my mother didn’t make from scratch. I don’t know why, especially since I grew up in a bay town that was so robust with some of the best clam digging on Earth, its nickname is “Clamtown, USA;” a place where you could buy a few dozen freshly-dug clams out of the back of some guy’s truck down by the water for pocket change. And especially since I grew up in the home of an Italian-American mother who cooked every meal nearly every night, making almost everything herself.

But for some reason, my mother would only make linguini with canned clam sauce. And to this day, it’s one of the staples of my own household.

We’ll usually make it on Sunday evenings, at the end of the marathon that is having to keep two babies occupied for nearly sixty daycareless weekend hours. And we always have it out of a big tin bowl I inherited from my mother after she died. But before we scoop the linguini from the big bowl into our own smaller bowls, we always raise our glasses and say a little prayer to Coach Mass. If you know anything about Rollie Massimino, you know why. If not, take a second and find out.

But let’s rewind for a second.

I’m not a pious person. Neither is is my wife. Despite being raised in the Catholic church until I was about eight or nine years old, and despite having a degree from a very Catholic university, I am by no means religious.

What I am is a proud Italian-American, one who, like so many others in my community, feels a kinship to other Italian-Americans, even (and often especially) ones we’ve never met.

When I was a kid, Louis Prima, whose grumbling and grizzled voice was a constant soundtrack in the homes of my family, was known as “Uncle Louie.” Whenever Frankie Valli would come on the radio, my mother would remind me he was from Newark, just a few neighborhoods over from where I was born. Frankie’s voice would then lead her down a wormhole, reminiscing about my birth and how she chose the doctor who delivered me because he had “a nice Italian name.” We were constantly reminded of Frank Sinatra’s connection to Hoboken, the oeuvres of DeNiro and Pacino, and the civic import of Fiorello LaGuardia.

Even beyond the famous ones, I feel a connection to the people of my community if for no other reason than they understand what it means to be an Italian-American (yes, even the guidos). They know exactly what my Sunday dinners looked and sounded like when we were younger; they know that our Thanksgiving tables boasted more lasagna, more baked ziti, more stuffed shelves, and more Chianti than it ever did stuffing and turkey and cranberry sauce; they know the way their ears perk up when they hear my last name, just as mine did when I heard theirs; they know the taste of those always-kind-of-stale Jordan almonds, and the feel of hot summer skin sticking to a plastic couch cover. They know the wrath of a hot-blooded parent but also the boundless love of that same person. And if they’re anything like my family, which, likely they are, they can’t help but smile anytime Uncle Louie comes on the stereo.

And just like all of those people, Coach Mass is a part of my big, extended, ceaseless Italian-American family. Coach Mass understood that a great big bowl of linguini and clams was so much more than some pasta with some sauce. Coach Mass understood what that dish meant to all of us, because it probably meant something very similar to him; something like family.

But as we sit down before the great big bowl of linguini and clams on those weekend nights and raise a glass to Coach Mass, it’s never more apparent to me how much my kids aren’t Italian-American.

Sure, a few of their great-grandparents were full-blooded Italians, children of immigrants, the first American-born children in their families. And their grandparents were raised in the stereotypical New York/New Jersey Italian-American style. And their father was just one small part of a big, loud, hungry Italian-American family. But my kids are as much Russian-Jew as they are Italian-American, as much Mayflower Brits as they are Venutolos or Mantovanis.

They’ll never understand what a real Sunday dinner looked and sounded like back in the day or what it felt like to sit on those hard pews every Sunday or how their grandmother’s hands looked after a morning spent making her own pasta.

But as long as we have this great big bowl of linguini and clams and as long as I tell them stories of my mother and her sisters and those big, loud Sunday dinners and as long as they know Uncle Louie, they’ll know those people are their people, somehow, someway. They’ll know that those people understood what this great big bowl of linguine and clams means, even if they have no idea who Rollie Massimino ever was.