Oyster rules Cape Cod village

All roads lead to water.

Which means, here on the outer curl of Cape Cod, 70 miles or so into the Atlantic Ocean, where tall marsh greens in autumn turn the color of butterscotch, all roads lead to oysters.

Bumper stickers remind you of the oyster fishermen driving alongside you on Hwy. 6. Oysters are painted on the sides of residential homes. Oysters dominate every menu and suck at your heels on the beach.

Heading north along the long neck of the Cape, you have two options at Wellfleet. Turn right and you hit bluffs, set high against the ocean; here, 100 years ago, Guglielmo Marconi built one of the first radio stations, Theodore Roosevelt sent the first trans-Atlantic radio message (to King Edward VII), and one of the first distress signals from the Titanic was intercepted.

Wellfleet's oysters, though, are the village's legacy, the name a standard chalkboard scribble in upscale restaurants across the globe. So turn left and drive toward the harbor.

There are several ways to eat oysters in Wellfleet. The first is at one of the many restaurants shucking them morning and night. The second is the just-concluded Wellfleet Oyster Festival, a bivalve overload that reminds you why the pilgrims who landed here 400 years ago referred to this place as "Billingsgate," after London's great seafood market.

Breaking the local law

The moment the tide pulls out, a field of shells is unveiled, standing at attention and clumped together. They're like grapes at the supermarket. We clomped out into the shallow water of Indian Neck Beach, the old shells of past harvests crunching beneath our feet. We pocketed a few and headed for the B&B, then -- and here is the wrong way to eat an oyster -- cracked them open with a wrench we found. We looked like cavemen beating back a reptile.

We had nothing better and were too ashamed of our theft, petty as it was, to ask the owners of Aunt Sukie's Bed & Breakfast for a blunt, rounded clam knife.

Then we set about eating them at various local stops.

The trouble with eating oysters in the cradle of oysters, however, is you lose perspective. Merely spectacular clams no longer impress, so here's what I suggest: Hit the Wicked Oyster early, and plead, as we did, for shucked oysters before noon, when the catch smells of the Atlantic.

Our waitress hesitated.

These clams were sweet, meaty, so unlike the gummy taste people associate with even great oysters that, tired as this sounds, I felt as though I'd never had an oyster before. "Please," she said, "don't tell anyone. We don't like to do this so early." We nodded, agreed, we'd never tell anyone. Though to keep it a secret would be a crime.