happy as a clam

Every once in awhile I see the Kneeland shellfish of Rowley truck drive by. It's a family run business that has been around for decades.
My cousin and I used to work for them shucking clams in the summer when we were kids. It was gross hard work but it paid for our voracious comic book addiction. The clamming business in Essex county is a major source of income and a way of life for natives in the region. Locals and tourists will line up all the way down the street to have a plate of those famous Ipswich clams at the Clam box.
I have to laugh out loud knowing that one of the 'favorite nude models" at the Newburyport art association's life drawing classes is a long time well known clam digger. He will even pose as if he is digging for clams.
If the clam beds are closed down due to the red tide or some other environmental pollutants it causes havoc within the shellfish community economically.
Yes, my cousin and I were, indeed, a cog in the machinations of the summer clamming community.
We shucked the clams.
Shucking is where you take a knife and open up the clam. You cut the slice skin off as well as the "head" (it is really a foot) and squeeze the bellies out. The bellies are a dark lump of sand. Some people like to eat them but we were instructed to remove them. It would take forever to fill a paint can full of now shucked clams because the clams were mostly made of salt water. Our hands would be raw and blistered from the salt water and sand. I think we made $2.00 a bucket. Being kids alone in this room doing pretty monotonous work we found ways to entertain ourselves.
The clam skins were black and sticky. We would chuck them against the wall so see if they would stick. We then positioned them in such a way spelling out our names (or anything else we thought was funny). The clam heads were pretty gross looking things. They would recoil when you touched them. They kind of looked like little black wrinkly penises. We would make a mountain of them or simply chuck them at each other. We would die of embarrassment when Mr Kneeland would came in to check on us in the midst of a clam head fight or to see our artwork on the wall made with the clam skins. I don't think he really cared so long as the buckets were filled with clam bodies within a reasonable amount of time.
When I was about 14 years old I was 'treated" to a Japanese restaurant with my friend Gina to celebrate (I think) some sort of victory in karate class. Most restaurants have a distinct alluring smell to them. Italian restaurants have a sweet basil aroma from the pasta sauces. Mexican restaurants have a spicy sharp scent from their chili cooking.
This Japanese restaurant smelled of damp towels left in the washing machine.
It was not appealing but I thought I would be open minded in trying something new.
Everything presented looked wet and slimy unlike a plate of snots. I figured I would be safe ordering something called"cellophane noodles".
When I looked down at my plate I thought I was going to puke.
On the plate was this wiggling mass of see-through noodles with ridges on them.
Oh my God...
It was a plate of clam spines.
I mean, that is what it looked like.
Seriously, clams have spines and they look exactly like cellophane noodles.
I still can not eat cellophane noodles even today.
So where did the expression "happy as a clam' come from anyways?