The Tivela restaurants still have some shell middens around them. However,
Fish & Game now restricts the gathering of clams since about 1980, as so many
were cleaned out. Pismo Beach still has a gigantic concrete statue of a
Tivela stultorum in all its glory along one of the main streets and an annual
clam festival. Come up and visit us, Ron, and I can show you a few middens on
the dunes.
This reminds me of the story of observing an elderly couple whose mobile home
was parked outside the Shell Shop (a great place to get type collection
specimens of harder to find varieties) in Morro Bay with Nebraska plates one
warm California winter day.
I heard the husband loudly berating the establishment for cheating him by
selling only one valve of a Haliotis (abalones are univalves, for you Plains
archaeologists).