Early last Saturday morning, a dozen men gathered in Marion in a fog so thick that they could only be found by following the sound of their laughter.
    They pulled rock weed from the edge of Sippican Harbor. Three of the men were veterans. The rest were volunteers. All of them were on a mission to harvest rock weed for Sunday’s annual clambake at the Benjamin Cushing VFW Post #2425.
    “I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. It became a tradition after so many years. I just turned 60,” Joe Zora Jr. said.
    Zora stood knee deep in water, talking about the importance of supporting veterans and about the number of veterans growing fewer with the passing years.
At the edge of the embankment, Steve Gonsalves crouched, pulling up rock weed as his sons Toby, 9, and Hunter, 8, worked alongside him. Gonsalves said he wanted his sons to grow up with the concept of supporting veterans. 
    “These are the traditions you have to get your kids involved in or the traditions are going to die,” Gonsalves said.
    By the time the sun burned through the fog, the men and boys had filled three boats with rock weed.
    On Sunday morning, the rock weed sat waiting on the grounds of VFW Post #2425 as a fire blazed in a pit, rocks stacked above the fire absorbing the fire’s heat. At the edge of the fire, Demi Barros, a veteran of both the Cuban blockade and the Vietnam War, stood with a pitch fork in his hand. As the fire burned down and the rocks dropped inward toward the pit, Barros caught stray rocks tumbling away from the pit and tossed them back into the heat.
    Barros said the rocks would soon be ready. Then the rock weed would be mounded upon them followed by wet sheets that would be placed over the rock weed to assure the right amount of steam.
    Barros proudly pointed to “the rack,” a huge metal frame, its wheels already resting on metal tracks. He said that somewhere in the 50-year history of the VFW’s clambakes, veterans had designed and welded the frame. Layered with hundreds of pounds of food, pushed by multiple men until it rests just above the hot rocks, the rack serves as both a transportation system and a cooking surface.
    “Years ago, we used to dig the clams for the clambake, but not any more,” Barros said, noting the veteran’s ranks have diminished.
    This year, with 400 tickets sold, the veteran’s purchased 25 bushels of clams at $150 a bushel. Also included on their menu were 420 ears of corn, 125 pounds of white potatoes, 160 pounds of yams, 170 pounds of onions, 48 cans of brown bread, 126 pounds of sausage, and 100 pounds of haddock. Profit from the clambake will used by Post #2425 toward payment of utility bills.
    Across the VFW’s grounds, volunteers set tables, washed clams, husked corn, and readied a beverage bar. Inside the Post’s kitchen, a volunteer kept watch over huge pots filled with butter just beginning to melt.
     “We have some people from out of town who plan their summer vacations around this. They know it’s always the second Sunday in August,” Veteran Rodney Hunt said.
     “Some of the old timers, they come real early to make sure they get the same table every year,” Barros said.
    Bustling about the tables, helping to set them for guests, members of the Post’s Women’s Auxiliary laughed about the year it rained, when everyone had to be served inside. Protected under a portable metal roof, the food was still cooked outside but had to be carried to the Post’s windows and handed through the windows to servers waiting inside. The floors near the windows were awash with water, and the servers were slipping and sliding.
     When the sun is out, as it was for this year’s clambake, Jeanne Davidson said she can’t help but think, “Thank God for small favors.”
     Barros, with his eyes on the fire and his thoughts on the food waiting to be cooked, said his favorite moment of the entire day comes when the food is ready to be served.
    “When I uncover the food, and I grab a sausage and an onion, and I know they are done, I know the people are going to enjoy themselves,” he said.