Next to clamcakes, my favorite thing about Rhode Island is May Breakfast.  It's hard to make non-Ocean Staters understand what a big deal May Breakfast is here.  One of my first jobs out of college, and before I went to law school, was working as a paralegal for a law firm in downtown Providence.  I will never forget the lavish May Breakfast the firm treated us to at the rooftop ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel.  Walking over to the hotel that morning, it seemed like everyone else was headed to breakfast too.  When May 1 falls during the week, don't try to call a business in Rhode Island.  We're all out eating, and when we do get back to the office, we'll find a carnation or other flowers at our desk, courtesy of the boss.  It's the original 99% holiday.  We'll call you back in the afternoon, once we've digested, if we feel up to it.    

Yes, May Breakfast is an institution here, and the greatest May Breakfast of all is at the place where this tradition started, the Oak Lawn Community Baptist Church in Cranston.  We all have dreams.  Some are immense and out of our power to attain, like buying the winning three hundred million dollar Powerball ticket when we go to the market to buy some rainbow sherbet.  Others are more modest and, with tenacity and patience, we might just attain them.

Let me tell you about a dream of mine that finally came true on Tuesday, May 1, 2012.  In the spring of 1984, when I was a slightly homesick freshman in college, I read an article in the New York Times by Betsy Wade about the tradition of May Breakfasts in Rhode Island.  It was thrilling to see my home state written about in the Times.  Ms. Wade wrote at length about the May Breakfast at Oak Lawn, where they served clamcakes alongside the scrambled eggs, ham and apple pie.  Then she mentioned that the buyer of Ticket No. 1 had arrived at 5 a.m., and that over a thousand tickets had been sold that day.  I made a promise to myself that morning that someday I would not only go to that clamcake-serving May Breakfast, I would be the first person in line and get Ticket No. 1.  

I have been to that May Breakfast, just like I promised myself, but I have never managed to obtain the golden first ticket.  After reading this, you probably won't be surprised to learn that when I wrote Clamcake Summer, a book about my quest for the perfect clamcake, I opened it with a description of the May Breakfast at Oak Lawn Baptist Church.  I had been speaking recently with the organizer of the May Breakfast about doing a book signing at the breakfast this year as a way to help raise more funds for the church.  In the course of making those plans, I revealed to the organizer my dream of someday getting Ticket No. 1.  

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment.  Then she said, "David, I'm putting Ticket No. 1 in an envelope for you right now".   She made my dream come true simply because I asked.  I don't know what makes me happier, finally getting that ticket, or that someone could be so kind.  

So if you were at the May Breakfast at Oak Lawn on May 1, you saw a man with a ridiculously happy smile signing books.  It was my first book signing, and I had Ticket No. 1.   Already it was a day beyond belief, but then they let me make a batch of clamcakes myself!  

To my new friends and, hopefully, future readers at Goodreads, if you are curious about clamcakes and that small but big-hearted state Rhode Island, please read Clamcake Summer.   And if you have a simple dream, someday just ask someone if she or he will make help you make it come true.  The human spirit is the real gold at the end of the sherbet rainbow.