Northport Memories of Yesteryear: 'Number, Please?'

Sam Vasallo was a colorful guy who had owned the place we knew as Sam’s Clam Shack, but not because it had a sign on it and not because it was listed in the Fulton Fish Market Guide to Better Dining.

Neither of these applied to Sam’s little stake in the world. Oh, no. It was simply a well known tumble-down shack at the foot of Main St. next to the clammer’s dock where he bought and sold clams and purportedly held his card games in the back room. Sam was a ruddy, stereotypical New England fisherman-type guy with coarse hands who smelled of fish and money. He kept that big wad in his pocket and when we kids came in to sell him clams, he whipped out more big-billed money than we had ever seen! Surely the clam business couldn’t have been that good.  

Now the Northport Chief of Police, old Percy Ervin and his crew regularly pulled “surprise” visits to put the “pinch” on old Sam. It was public record. All you had to do was pick up the Northport Journal on nearly any Thursday and you would likely read about old Sam Vasallo. The Northport Journal, then an actual Northport paper was headquartered in a small frame structure about the size of a single car garage, next door to Chief Percy Ervin’s Calaboose. I can imagine that the Editor, Marion Brett, just had to wait and look out the window to see who Percy's newest guests were. You might say it was cutting-edge drive through reporting!

Sam never stayed too long and it seems he had a policy never to overstay his welcome. I surmise that some of those greenbacks he carried with him in his pocket spoke volumes. Soon enough, Sam was back at the Clam Shack and life returned to normal. It was a cycle that Sam seemed to accept as a status quo.  

The Softer Side of Sam

It must have been the summer of 1956 because I don’t think I had yet entered junior high school. On a Saturday afternoon, I took my box of 45 RPM vinyls to my buddy’s house to spin some tunes on his German-made Grundig Majestic HiFi which had a fabulous sound, with booming bass response.

Walking back home down Bayview Avenue, I spotted a friend who was down on the waterfront with his boat so I set the box of records on top of a garbage can (what was I thinking?) and joined him for a half-hour or so. When I returned they had been taken and I was mortified! Oh, my God, they are gone for good! I’ll never see them again! My mother took a cooler approach and suggested we take an ad out in the Northport Journal under “lost & found.” We did and who should call us but Sam the Clam Man. His daughter, Beatrice whom I went to school with had picked them up off the top of the garbage can. After reading the ad, Sam made her return them. Since then, I’ve moved across the continent twice and those old vinyls are still with me, having survived the test of time and movement with brilliance; and 55 years later they still play. 

Before my mother passed away, she told me that she couldn’t explain it, but that her books were sacred to her. I then realized that my vinyl records, many of which are originals from "Georges Books and Records" on Main Street in Northport, are sacred to me. They are tangible reminders of a point in time in Northport, NY when everybody knew your name, especially old George. For all of Sam's cat and mouse antics with Northport’s finest, I wonder if anyone ever considered his dedication to "the right thing" for his family, his daughter, his community, and sense of conscience. 

Sam put a big footprint on my heart that day he called, so long ago, now buried in the archives of historic Northport; an act of kindness that started with an operators simple words "number please?"