At this clam shack, generations of women make the trains — and the Fry-o-later — run on time

That’s a lot of fried clams. That’s a mountain range of french fries.

That’s the salty taste of summertime on the Atlantic seacoast.

That’s the home of Ceal’s Clam Stand, where a loudspeaker makes the familiar announcement that has brought smiles to and watered the mouths of generations of sunscreened customers who know a good deal when they see — and taste — one.

“Number 30!” the crackling, disembodied voice announces.

And then a customer stirs, smiles, and carries away cartons of fried food and vanilla frappes.

“The quality of the food here compared with other upper-class restaurants does not compare,” Terri Senecal of Pepperell told me the other day when she enjoyed her lunch with two very content cheeseburger-eating grandsons.

“My helping here was more than enough to feed me and I didn’t even have french fries with it. I got a medium box of fried clams, which they told me I couldn’t eat. But I ate them.”

There’s been a lot of that going on since Cecelia Littlefield founded the business here on Ocean Boulevard, also known as Route 1A, in 1948.

Littlefield passed the business on to her daughter, Florence, who one day will pass it on to her daughter Debbie Henderson Bembury and granddaughter Alison Tirone, the latest keepers of the deep-fried flame.

From behind the counter, a rotating cast of 13 employees take orders, run the deep fryer, make sure the milkshake machine purrs to perfection, and then slide seafood to grateful customers.

Customers like Betty Devlin, 74, of Haverhill, who’s been coming here since she was a kid.

“I can remember standing there at that counter with my father, ordering french fries,’’ she told me the other day. “We rented a cottage across the street and that the was big highlight: getting french fries at Ceal’s.

“It really hasn’t changed at all. It looks exactly the same.’’

Words like that bring a smile to the face Florence Henderson, 84, who graduated from Newburyport High School in 1955, married a military man, and came home each summer to help her mother.

“My father was in the Coast Guard and my mother worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company,” Henderson told me when I visited her at the clam stand on a recent sunny day.

“She was a bookkeeper. I have a letter that they sent to her saying that she was one of the best bookkeepers that they had ever had because they could understand all of her paperwork.”

That’s a keepsake testifying to good, hard work. Treasured traits for anyone who wants to make a living in a seasonal business. It’s hard work. And it’s a short season. Summertime is their time to shine.

And that’s why Florence was all business the other day when another customer walked up to her window and asked: “Can I have a medium clam box, and a lobster tail?”

The next guy in line wanted a scallop plate, a plain hamburger, and a Coke.

Orders were placed, taken, and filled in a symphonic sequence of gastronomical efficiency.

Henderson, born in 1937, remembers how it all started.

“It really was a success,” she said during an early-afternoon break. “Actually, there were no homes here. I have pictures. All sand dunes. There was nobody around. My mother used to stay open until late at night so she could make a living.

“Sometimes we’d be here until 1 or 2 in the morning, waiting on customers. And then when people over here started building homes, they used to come visit my mother, and she would cook the french fries and cut the lobster meat.

“And they would help her because they were her friends.”

Florence has made a lot of friends along the way. The other day she was wearing a rust-colored, short-sleeve shirt emblazoned with words that are her legacy: “Ceal’s since 1948.’’

And she recalled the days when she was a kid and her job was to fill little paper cups with ketchup. If she adjusts her field of vision, she can see where her grandparents’ home once stood.

She is used to the daily rhythms of summertime life where tide charts are as critical as clocks.

“It’s a long day,” she said. “Not as long as it used to be. We come in early. I’m really late today. In the old days, I used to be here by at least 10 o’clock because I have to do the mixes. I make the breading and all that stuff.

“Like nothing’s ready now. If we got busy, I’d have to go inside because we don’t do anything ahead of time.”

And that’s still true.

She’s here cutting fish. Scallops. Shrimp. All of it fresh.

“I’m at the point where I can actually tell you how much stuff we should order,” she said. “We order it the night before for the next morning for them to bring. We order our clams every morning. The man we used to have for clams years ago, he went out of business.

“In the old days, they used to bring our clams and put them on the front counter, and pass them through the windows. That was in the old days when they’d go and dig them out here in the clam flats.”

The world outside has changed. But here at Ceal’s, there is a legacy that stands the test of time.

“I think the world has changed, but most of our customers are very polite,” Florence said. “Once in a while, we’ll get someone who will order a small clam and they’ll come up and they don’t even know what a clam looks like.

“And they’ll say: ‘These are not clams.’ But then they realize they are clams. There are people who don’t know what a clam looks like because they’re used to getting clam strips. And we have clams with bellies on them. They are good. They’re delicious.”

I can attest to that. Delicious.

She should know. It’s been her life’s work. And legacy.

Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.