Work came early to Abden Simmons. By eight, he was pretending to be ten, the lower age limit for clamming so he could dig and sell a child’s allotted half bushel. By ten, he was still clamming, in addition to mowing, painting, and putting away firewood for Clevey Paige. By fourteen, he kept clamming -- in addition to haying and tending the squash fields for Bob Hilton. In high school, he’d go clamming, then load and unload trucks for Gordon Libby. He was so good at clamming that he did it full-time after graduation. As a clammer, he’s versatile. He’s a picker and a hoer, depending on the terrain. He clams all over, too, with clamming licenses for Waldoboro, the St. George River, Friendship, and other towns in Maine. But Abden Simmons is a lot more than clamming. Back in the ‘90s, he and his wife April opened a wholesale clam business. For a couple of years, they ran it out of a box truck. Then they built a small building, and a few years ago they’ve expanded into the facility they have now, next to their home. The same building houses his bait business as well, which he’s had for almost as long. If that’s not enough, Abden sits on Waldoboro’s Select Board, a role he’s served since 2014. He is the Chair of the Shellfish Commission. And since this summer, he is our district’s elected representative in the Maine Legislature, a position he held back in 2016-2018 also.
Every season has a purpose. I used to lobster in the fall through February, March. Go elver fishing from March to May. Start clamming by then, and then in the fall, start trapping bait (for ice fishing) for my winter business. But four years back, I slipped on the ice and broke my leg, so I don’t work on the back of a lobster boat in the middle of winter anymore. I primarily do bait fishing now and go clamming when I want to. I’m outside every single day. I love to commercial fish.
I’ve done it all. Dove for urchins, dove for scallops, and wormed – though I sucked at those – and oystered, quahogged, and done mussels. Anything to make money, because at certain times, everything is worth a lot more.
But I used to be a complainer because I felt that across the state they were trying to keep people out of clamming and decision-making. And so people would look at me and say, “Well, if you don’t like it, why don’t you go do something about it?”
I’ve only got a high school education. I didn’t go to college. I learn from people. I listen to them. First year or two that I got on the Select Board, that’s all I did. I listened to what people had to say. And it seemed to work.
Around 2008 there were some bills (in the state legislature) that come in telling us how to do our job as a clam harvester. Those bills drove me nuts. So, I went up to Augusta. I was the only one from Waldoboro. I listened and learned. I went to meetings held by the state’s Marine Resources Committee and to public hearings about commercial fishing.
I started learning how the process worked. I did that for eight years because I was fascinated by it. It was mind-boggling how people on the other side of the horseshoe was deciding things about my livelihood, and they’d never done any of it.
When I got into the Maine House in 2016, I learned that if you know what you’re talking about in a particular field, people will listen to you. I was the only commercial fisherman on the Marine Resources Committee, so people listened.
The Department and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission been trying to cut people out of every fishery that I’d ever been involved with. Take elvering. It was a a closed fishery. Now there’s a lottery so new people can get back in. We’ve been able to sustain a number of people in various fisheries now. I don’t need credit. I just want to get things done.
Everyone thinks you’re there to make money. But if you have to work for a living, it’s not easy. For the first months of the session, it’s a couple of days a week. But as you get towards the end of closing the session, you’re up there five days, sometimes six days a week because all the bills are coming through, and you got to make decisions on them. In 2017, when we was working to get bills through before the end of session, the guys down here were making $600, $700, $800 a day. I was making $94 a day up there. Those two years in the Legislature cost me about $30,000 in income that I lost. Financially, it crippled me. I had bills to take care of, and I wasn’t making the money to cover them. It set me back pretty hard, took me two or three years to recover. Being in the Legislature is not a money-maker.
Growing up in Waldoboro, we didn’t have a lot of money. My father came back from Vietnam with a lot of issues, especially with everyone hating the guys that come back. That took a toll on him, so he did a lot of drinking. We had to make do with what we had. If I needed or wanted something, I had to make it. When I wanted a sandbox, I found leftover lumber to make it. I did all that stuff by myself, alone.
Before I was old enough to get a clam license, my parents would drop me off near the river in Damariscotta and I would walk into the woods by myself to the flats. And about four hours later, my grandmother would pick me up, take me to sell my clams and bring me home. It was tough.
Everyone seems to think I got everything handed to me. But I’ve worked my ass off for everything single thing I have. I always said, “If I ever have a family, I’m not going to have my kids growing up the way I did, scrapping and making do with what I had.” And I’ve done that. I’m proud the way my son has turned out, too. Life has its up and downs, and you make do with what you can.
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