SALISBURY — Ray Zukowski towered over everyone and loomed through the smoke as he hollered, “Get those lobsters over here!”
The imposing, white-haired Zukowski, of Gill, Mass., was supervising the cooking of the food at the Jane Lloyd Fund annual clambake at Satre Hill on Saturday, July 25.
Zukowski looked like one of Captain Ahab’s harpooners, especially when using a long-handled rake (originally used for clearing canals) to work with the white-hot stones that are at the heart of the clambake procedure.
The stones are enclosed by big wooden beams, which are set on fire. When they burn down to the right point, Zukowski and company pull them off and everybody handy pitches in with, first, corn husks, then seaweed, and then potatoes, clams and lobsters.
Two 10-pound lobsters, raffle prizes, were in their own burlap bags.
When the pile of food was complete, the crew dragged a series of heavy tarps over the entire thing.
And then everybody waited.
Eliot Osborn and a group of musicians kept everyone entertained with music. There was a beanbag tossing game, ice cream, various beverages and a raw bar to keep body and soul together until the tarps came off.
The Jane Lloyd Fund was started in memory of a young woman from Salisbury who died of breast cancer. Her siblings and friends started the fund, at the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, to offer financial assistance to cancer patients to help pay for daily living expenses.
