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DS: So, I'd like to begin by asking you the simplest question, when were you born? FE: 5/22/59 DS: And where was that? FE: That would be up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at St. Joseph Hospital. DS: When did you first come to Bowers Beach? FE: When I first came to Bowers Beach it was in the mid 70s, right after the Bicentennial. DS: Why did you come to Bowers Beach? FE: Well, actually, I came to Delaware down in the Mispillion area, that's Slaughter Beach. My dad used to come down and fish for trout, sea trout on the weekends and whatnot and eventually him and a couple of other buddies got a place down there. The rented a little cottage. And when I had my summer vacation, I used to stay at the cottage down there when they went back to go to work. I'd just stay down there and I used there boats and stuff to go fishing and I'm make a little hustle that way and that, well, that's not how I got here, but what lead up to be that was we did so well night fishing that I had my first boat built called the Thumper and after I had it built I came up here to sell fish to French's Dock and JP's Warf and so it ended up to be that instead of having to run from here to there, I just brought the boat up to here. And that's how I came to Bowers Beach. DS: In the 70s? FE: Yup, it would be 1977. DS: How long were you in Delaware before you were in Bowers Beach? In other words, how long were you down in Mispillion? FE: Oh, probably like two years. Oh no, since I was 16, 15, or 16. Oh probably about 2 or 3 years before that. About 2 years before that. DS: And where does your father live now? DS: So you've basically been a waterman all of your life more or less? FE: Yeah, over half of my life. DS: Why did you choose to become a waterman? What is it about being a waterman? FE: Well, there's something about being self-employed and being out there in the elements and everything. It seemed healthy and had a certain appeal to it. You know, it's basically why and plus where I was born in Summit, Pennsylvania, it was a small town and I was kind of getting the small town blues. You know, it was getting bigger and getting a little crowded and Delaware had this other nice life to offer so as soon as I got out of high school up there, I was working on being down here. DS: Tell me what it was like when you first got here? What was Bowers Beach like when you first moved your boat up in 1977? FE: It was pretty desolate. There wasn't much going on here at all. The oyster industry had petered out prior to that and all that was left was just the old oyster shucking houses and a couple of burnt down, half burnt down buildings, you know by the docks over there. The docks were all rickety and needing repairs and all you could see along the banks were like schooner wrecks on top of schooner wrecks, just all put over there to disappear you know, through time. You could tell something really big went on here but there wasn't not even, you couldn't even hear it in the wind. You know, it was already gone. It was just like tumbleweed blowing around Bowers Beach when I got here. DS: By 1977, the watermen in Bowers Beach were not doing well then. FE: No. The only thing that was going on was the hook and line thing was pretty big. DS: You mean the party boats? FE: The party boats. That was the only thing. In the summertime. But there was not a trace of them in the wintertime. You know…for a few months in the summer. From about April or May well, the whole Memorial. Day to Labor Day thing. DS: What were the oyster shacks that were still in operation? FE: There was one over there close to where, right beside where I dock at now. That vacant lot there beside American Hands and the old Tradewinds Dock. That used to be Coleman Morrison's dock which used to be Dutch Morrison dock, his dad. And they've always had like a little operation going on there. They had a couple of shuckers you know, who stayed in the little migrant houses and they shucked oysters and they had their little processing. When I go here, I remember that that place wasn't burnt down when I got here. It was still just barely an operation, I mean it was just barely kicking. It already had the nail driven in it, but it still wasn't dead yet. DS: I guess the oyster shucking shack that was out at the end of Flack Avenue, that wasn't in operation? FE: No, that one had gone. DS: That was in 62. Okay, so what was the town like? You've told us a little bit about the river, what was the town, or it's the creek isn't it. I mean, it's not a river as far as the watermen are concerned it's the creek. FE: Yeah. I can tell you something really foolish I did when I first got here. It was in the wintertime. It was the first year that we dredged. We rigged up the Thumper to go dredging. We rigged her up for $90. Jimmy Dare went and worked at the carrot plant down at King Cole's and for $90 we bought shackles and chains and cable clamps and this and that that we needed to rig up the boat to go dredging and I had bought a winder from Frenchie and we found a dredge up there in the marsh, we dug it out and put some life back in it and that was the first year we dredged. So we were in the creek that winter and it was too much ice to go out in the bay, I remember I went up to the end of the street and there was this there was like this iceberg that was stuck in there in the water and it had a piece of rope that was frozen into it and that was the only thing that was holding it on there was this piece of rope. So back then back in those days I used to drink a little, I had a bottle of wine, and I remember I had a five gallon bucket, I had a gaff, and I had a bottle of wine. So I jumped on this iceberg and I chipped off that little piece of rope that was holding it, and I was laughing at Jimmy Dare and said I'm going to head up to Frederica a while, so I chipped that off and I'm kind of rowing, poling with iceberg and my pole and I go on up the way there and the tide was carrying me up around the bend you know and I guess I was going to Frederica through the marsh, I don't know. And uh, here when I got up around the bend, there was this ice jam up there. Dumb, dumb, dumb man because the tide is running about 2 mile an hour so pretty hard and here's this ice jam and so Jimmy Dare, he's like going along side the bank there, seeing what I'm going to encounter next and he sees oh man, heading into a big ice jam. He didn't know whether to go and get the Thumper boat and try to fire it up and run down there quick, which I would already be involved in the ice jam up you know. So, he didn't go up that way, he just went along and followed me to see if he could help me get ashore somehow and we could see the collision getting eminent to hit this iceberg and the water was boiling all around it and if I got sucked underneath there, man, I'd have gone. And, he tells me, ride the back of the iceberg so that when it hits it, it will slide up on top of the ice jam. Well, it sounded good right, but it didn't work like that. Well, I got on the back side, but when I hit, it stopped it right away, it didn't have enough momentum to ride up on top of it and then the tide caught the bottom end here and just sucked that thing went up like this and it just slid right down. So I just kind of crawled up to the edge of it and jumped for the ice and kind of like was laying flat on top of this slush ice and everything and ice was like boiling underneath of us and sucking away all the time. It was creepy man. I'll tell you when I think of it. It wasn't any time to be scared at the time though. So I kind of did the walrus kind of move on the slushy ice you know, kind of like not break through it but kind of like try to move on top of it and I had a snowmobile suit on so it was kind of keeping me warm and kind of like keeping me afloat sort of almost, you know and then there was one little place of, like if this was ice and this was ice, then here's a place of open water right in between the two gaps there and we were right across from my old dock up there in the marsh and had a couple of pilings up there and there was a piece of rope that we used for the spring lines to tie the boat up with and it was just long enough, Jimmy shucked on his way out there and untied it and it was just long enough when he threw it to me I could reach it but it wasn't enough rope that he could you know, land and get a good pull on me, you know, so he had to balance himself on a two by four, like 16 feet on a two by four that was all icy and everything else and pull me across that bare space of water so I could get back over here. Well, as soon as he started pulling, of course, he slipped and fell, so he's in the water and now I'm in the water too because he just pulled me just enough to get me off the ice and he fell in so now I'm in the water and he's in the water and we're both connected by a piece of rope, hanging onto it like this, and he's like hurrying up trying to get up on the bank and he's getting up there in the mud and everything and he finally gets up to shore and runs and starts pulling me and gets me across there. That was one cool walk through the marsh I want to tell you. Back over to this woodstove I had back in there. Oh man, I was cold for days after that, I remember, whew cold…for days. DS: What was the Thumper like? You've had more than one Thumper? FE: That's the one and only one there. Yeah. We used her for a lot of things. DS: What kind of…describe her. FE: She was supposed to be a big battoe(sp?) There was a fellow down there in Frederica that I wanted to build…let's see in was in 76, I had a joint venture with another fellow we built a 24 foot battoe which is just a flat bottom boat, top planked just like this and then when it would swell up, you know it would just swell up tight like a drum on the bottom and so I had 28 foot chimes, which would be the board that is right on the water line, the chime board. I had these yellow pine chimes, 28 foot, so I took them over to this boat builder and I said to him I want you to build me up a 28 foot battoe. He says oh…son, he says, I'm too old to build the kind of boat you want to build. 28 that was a little too big to build a battoe, I mean, the boat would be so big that if you wanted to cross the waves, you could see the planks ripple. You know, and he said, the boat you want to build son, he says, you want to see Captain Merl Booker(sp?). That's who you want to build your boat. I had no idea. Take them chimes there and go on down the road there and turn at Thompsonville and go back and he told me how to get there. So I went back there and he said, yeah, I can build you a boat that you need there for, uh, I can build it for $100 a foot. He said that will pretty much include the materials, the fasteners and his labor and he would have it done for me by spring in time to go crabbing in the springtime. So, he overtook the project of the boat and then we did whatever we could help him with you know, like with the cabin, we did that and anything that needed fabricated like the shoe and the rudder, and this and that, we had that stuff all made up and worked on getting the engine for it and everything. And he had the boat built. We built 200 crab pots that same winter. That was the winter of 77. DS: You built them yourself? FE: Yes. We built 200 crab pots and I was going to school yet. I was in 12th grade in Pennsylvania going to school. DS: So you were how old? FE: At that time, I was like 18 or something like that…Yeah, 18 and so I'd come down on the weekends and see how the boat project was going and help put fasteners in her and put planks on her and this and that and on the week I'd go to school and in the nighttime we'd build crab pots. We were quite busy back then and that was the winter that they had the big freeze, 76, 77 was the big freeze winter and the bay froze over right solid, right straight across. DS: 35 miles? FE: 22 at the widest point. Yup, she froze over solid. Thick too. I mean feet and feet thick. It was nasty. And it froze so hard that it killed all the crabs. They had like a great year before that and the next year there was none. None but a couple of bushel and that was it. You know, it kind of went through her…and that was the year that I started. The year that it was bad. So I started right from the very, very bottom. I set all my pots and there was nothing in them but spider crabs and konks. You couldn't even sell none of them back then. DS: So what's it like? What do you do when you are out there crabbing? What's the day like? FE: Well, it's just a boat area and it has an outboard engine on the back. No, nothing fancy. It probably doesn't even have a compass. If it did it would be rolling around in the boat. The boat always has water in it. That's just the nature of it. And you don't have any pumps or anything. You have a shovel. The shovel is your pump. DS: You shovel the water out. FE: You shovel the water out. And that worked real, real well. But you know the funny thing about that, that boat was primitive and everything, but it kept the product very, very nice. DS: Yeah, you would think, it was cool. FE: It was like a live well. The boat was actually a live well. We didn't really realize it at the time, and we went and switched to boats that didn't have that you know, water in the bilge, and the quality of our fish got worse until we had to add more ice and stuff you know, but that kept them alive and everything and like I say, so you'd go out and pull your 200 crab pots or 150 pots back then and you'd pull them all by hand, you know, of course, so you wouldn't have any…well, most guys never carried a watch. Most guys never carried a compass. Most guys didn't even have any rain gear or boots or gloves. I remember when I first got here, I remember the old timers, they laughed at me cause this fool's wearing gloves, ah, only sissies wear gloves. Them guys didn't even wear gloves. DS: Because you grew up with… FE: Yeah, and the fish poking you and the crabs poking you and those guys were tough back then. I remember like kind of felt like you did. I wanted to record history because I knew I was in a very dear and genuine situation, but there was half a dozen 90 year old guys when I first got here. DS: Do you remember them? FE: Yeah. DS: Name them please. FE: There was uh, Joe Zanks, there was Captain Nelson Vandelum, there was Daddy Bob Peterson. There was Patty Cake Booker, Captain Earl Booker. And, um, then there was a couple of other ones. Two of the old captains, on the hook and line boats there. Delmy Faulker and Erving Wright, I don't have names for them anymore. But I can remember their boats and stuff though. Anyway those old guys are still kicking around and I wanted to have a reunion for them up at Donovans. I was trying to get a reunion together to get them all together to have one last little thing. And it almost happened, and it didn't quite happen and after that they all started to die. And they missed it. And the only ones that really got together to connect was Joe Zanks and Daddy Bob Peterson and when Joe Zanks came up here to visit Daddy Bob, they had there little reunion, and I would have loved to have heard that. I'll bet it was great. When he left, his wife ran and pulled out in front of a tractor trailer at the end of the road and killed Joe Zanks deader than a doornail. Isn't that something? So here I kind of like contributed to them guys having an old reunion and it ends up contributing towards his fate. DS: Whew…that is weird, that's weird. So when she was pulling away from the reunion, she pulled into a tractor trailer. FE: Yeah, on his side. She lived, he died. DS: So you were an 18, 19 year old out on this battoe, crabbing. Did you have to make your own living at the time or was that your choice? FE: Oh no, that was my sole living there. I was still in school and then when I got out of school that was all I wanted to do was water work. You know, and um the crabbing, I couldn't make any money crabbing, no matter how hard I tried and I didn't have zinks on the pots, cause I didn't know that lesson yet, so all my brand new pots… DS: Sinks? You mean sinks? FE: Zink…zinc… DS: Zinc…tell me about that? FE: The element zinc. Oh that retards against bimetal conductor and electrolysis which takes place in salt water in the warm months of the year and if you put a steel pot with steel mesh on it, the salt, the electrolysis will eat the wire right off the pot. And um, that what happened to my first 200 pots I made. The salt ate the wire right off the frame and everything. DS: But if you put a pinch of zinc on it, it stops that. FE: Yeah, well what it would do it would go and eat the softest mineral element there instead of the other stuff. It would eat that first then when it eats that first, then when it eats that, then it will go and eat the other stuff. So I didn't know that, so I lost all I lost all of them pots in about 2 years and so what I did, the only thing that was really going on here, the only people who were able to make any kind of living at all would be the fishermen. So, the gill netters was the ones that survived. And there wasn't any laws pertaining to gill netting back at that time. DS: What's gill netting? FE: Using your anchor net or drift net, either monofilament or nylon mesh to gill a fish in it. So it really doesn't bag it in there, the fish actually gets literally gets gilled in there. So it's a… DS: So, it gets stuck through the mesh and can't get back because of the gills. FE: Yeah, each mesh size is very selective to the size of the fish that it will catch. Like a 3 ¼ inch mesh will catch a pound or so of fish and the bigger one will catch a little bigger and a smaller mesh smaller. So that's what we used back then. And I remember there was still oyster stakes out here, out front where we were fishing. The old leased oyster beds, that you would lease them from the state, the stakes were still out front here. As a matter of fact, in those days they used to have stakes that marked the cut. They didn't have buoys they just have stakes like very 50 yards. They'd have a stake. DS: And that's for a particular person or a particular part of the oyster reef to… FE: Mark your corners…Mark your corners of your property. It would be like a cluster of them. Where they'd put…you'd look out there you'd see like little trees out there everywhere stuck here and there. And of course, that ice storm or 76, 77 took most of that out and then all you had was all this busted up sticks below the water line. DS: Well, there's not much in the way of oysters now. That's coming back I understand. FE: Yeah, well they're doing it a whole different way though. In the old days, you used to go up to the natural beds and then get seed oysters or little oysters and big oysters and all that and separate them from the shell and fill the boat, the schooner right up with that seed spat and all that and run them down to your grounds down this side of the cut below Mahon, and plant them on your ground. Then in like two years, three years, something like that, you go back and harvest them. But then that go to be so nonproductive because the MSX was killing them. The dermo was killing them. They oyster drills was killing them. The conks were creeping up on them we found out and then the salinity was getting higher in the bay from all the digging the sipping channel out, making it a little deeper, so we're letting more salt come in and that changed the salinity of the water, which let the salt water diseases come up farther and so you couldn't invest that many years and paying the guys and the crew and every thing to do it and then have like 60% loss. The figures just weren't there. So every single body that had a schooner that did oystering lost their ass, and lost it hard too. DS: What did, what would you earn crabbing, starting out? Do you remember what you earned? How did you even figure your salary? You worked only in the summer I assume. FE: Yeah. Old Patty Cake, he told me, he said for every $100 you make, tuck $20 away for winter. Winter is going to be long and hard. Of course I never really did it that way, but he told me and great wisdom in that. But it never really worked out that way because your expenses just absorbed up everything, you know, when you're only making a little. Oh, we earned just a little bit of money. We lived on such a little bit of money it was pitiful. I mean… DS: I mean, could you…roughly… FE: I remember we had rent…It was $100 a month that we rented before we got to here and man…a couple… DS: Is we Jean and yourself? FE: No, I had another woman back then. She had my child. Maryann was who I was with and Heather was my child. When I brought her home, I was in a little yellow jeep and had little willies over them jeep and it didn't have a windshield and it didn't have breaks and it didn't have first gear. So it had second and third gear and it started. I remember when the nurse came out with my little darling baby and she said, you're not taking this baby home in that are you? And I said oh yeah, bring her on, kids don't mind that kind of stuff. People do but kids don't. Yeah, I remember that and that was because you know, times were tough. Whatever little bit we had was for rent, food and you know, there wasn't much foolishness to go around cause there wasn't none left. DS: What was the town like? What kind of neighborhood was this when you first came. FE: Well, there was a lot of kids that were my age so it was kind of fun because to me it was like a youth group you know. I'd come to Bowers Beach and there were plenty of kids my age all over the place. Bruce Shockley and Michael Wilson and Donny Claggett and Jimmy Dare ended up showing up here and Lenny Fields and the Shockleys and just the Figs(sp?) and Odems. They all had kids that were my age at the time you know. And they all fooled with the water. Most of them had a little waterwork here, mates for somebody or something. So it was kind of really fun to be here you know. And you were always glad to see your buddies. We'd all help each other. If somebody's boat would sink, you know we'd help this guy get their boat ready or whatever. Pretty much help everybody out because there wasn't anybody else. We realized that we were it. We were the only thing happening. And then the more that we inquired about fishing and all, like you know we were wondering. There was not any fishing at all. There was some law on the books about you couldn't keep food fish out of a net or something that was wrote in like 1909. So actually the kind of fishing we were doing was actually illegal and that was the only law that was ever written and it was something pertaining to something else you know. So we went up there and kind of inquired about it and I think we really opened up Pandora's Box cause the more we inquired, it made them look silly. They kept saying well go over and look at the state library and maybe you'll find the answer there. DS: Fish and Wildlife didn't have any guidelines? FE: Not at the time. DS: That was in 1977 or thereabouts? My goodness. FE: Yeah. It was the 70s up to the 80s there was not a thing on the books pertaining to laws. The only thing there was they had some crab law, you had to have 150 pots. No more than that, a person. And they even lifted that and made it up to 200 and they had a blue law where you couldn't crab on Sundays and they lifted that because the guys up in the north part of the state had their regular job and they wanted to crab on the weekends so they did away with the blue law. But if you asked any crabber down below here, we would always just assume take off Sunday. Even though it's not the Sabbath, even though they think it is, they would all be in favor of taking off Sunday. That way you could kind of have a life, you know. DS: Sure. I don't see how watermen have a life anyway. You have some time now because your boat is down but nearly you're working out in the water all the time. I mean, that makes it very difficult to maintain relationships. FE: Yeah, it is. Yup…that right. That's what good about the Sabbath though cause it gives you time to kind of mend that little gap there you know. But most people don't know that secret. DS: Well, when did you meet Jean? FE: I met Jean, I was…my first woman there went away…and I was kind of like single again so I went up to New Hampshire in the summertime and I met Jean up in New Hampshire. DS: The summer of? FE: 84 or 5 probably. And um, I invited her to come on down and check out the commercial fishing. You know, she seemed to be, she always wanted to work on a commercial fishing boat and I said well we've got an operation down here. So I invited her to come down and it was around November I think she called up and she said that she was going to take me up on that offer. So she came down like around December, like the 21st or something of 85 somewhere around there and we had all kinds of things going. We were dredging out the cut. I was working out for this guy we were dredging out the channel. He'd lost a lot of his crew guys…they went back to New Jersey and he was shorthanded so I helped him run those boats and stuff and you know, I knew the area well and then I ended up running that rig down to Lewes to dredge out that channel down there and so Jean kind of popped in on that video and helped me drag a thousand feet of pipe down there and all the equipment I had to take down there. DS: This was a dredge? FE: Yes. DS: How big a boat was that? FE: It's a big heavy thing. You know, it's a square barge kind of, with a big engine in it and all and so she came down here and just enjoyed the life we had going on here so she went right home and packed her stuff up and come on down here and she was living with me for quite a while. Then we ended up getting married. DS: When did you get married. FE: Well, we got married about 8 years ago and we were probably together for about 7 or 8 years. We've been together for about 16 years. And um, that's were I became a vegetarian. Knowingly become a vegetarian. I didn't really know I was a vegetarian before that. Although I ate meat, I preferred vegetables. Then when I met her I kind of got more focused about my diet so, that kind of brought me more in line with my spiritual growth and… DS: She's been a definite influence in your life. FE: Yeah. I prayed for her. She said she picked me but I prayed for her. You know, a good woman would come. Cause I remember what Patty Cake used to say, the guy that built my boat. He said he had three women in his life. He said the first one tried to ruin him. Took him for all his money you know. And the second one died of double pneumonia. And the third one he said loved him to death. So I kind of have a scenario like that. I guess. My first woman had my child and my second woman instructed me in a way to grow correctly. DS: Well, all right. We are coming to the end of this tape so I am kind of watching this spool, but I think we have a few more minutes here. So do you see your, I've forgotten here…your son or daughter? FE: Son…or daughter…daughter. Heather. Yeah. DS: Where does Heather live? FE: She lives in Annapolis, Maryland right now. She has a job down there. DS: Do you have contact with her. FE: I see her a couple times a year. Not too often. She's a fisherman's daughter though. I mean when she was real little and her mom had to go down the store and work, I would take her on out crabbing with me. You know, put her on top of the engine box and put a couple of life jackets all around her for like a little cradle and she'd go on out in the bay with me while I tended the gear. She'd sit right on the engine box. This little thing I was babysitting and work on the water too. DS: Well that's a new technique. I don't think too many fishermen did that. You must have been unusual in that regard. FE: Yup. DS: What store did your wife work in? Your first woman? FE: She worked where Double Bowers Inn is right now. It used to be a little country store. DS: Yeah. What was that called? FE: Uh…just Bowers Store. I don't know what it was called. DS: What kind of store? A general store? FE: Yeah. DS: A general country store. FE: A general store. And they had a little arcade in there. You know one room in the back they had a couple of pinball machines and stuff like that. Sis Boland owned it. And Greenie who used to live on this street, he used to work there. DS: Okay, well let's… End Tape 1, Side 1 Begin Tape 1, Side 2 DS: Oh, this is on loan from the Delaware Heritage Foundation. So it's not mine. It's a very nice recording device. FE: I need a recorder so I can record some of these songs. DS: Right. Well, I'm going to have to hear that song in a little bit. Okay. So, what's some stories from the early days. You had a good one about the ice float. Do you have any others that come to mind? FE: Oh yeah, I've got another good one. One time, I was on that Thumper boat. It was the same winter. The first winter we that we rigged her up. And like I say, we didn't have anything. Even though on that Thumper boat all we had was a compass and a depth finder. DS: Well that was a battou right? FE: That was what was supposed to be a battou. But it came out to be a small, little big boat. DS: I see, okay. FE: Which was capable of handling a pretty good sea and she could pull a dredge and everything. A battou couldn't really pull a dredge, not right. And this boat could pull one dredge. DS: So it got modified in the making then? FE: Yeah. The boat builder knew it was going to be…he knew what it was going to have to do. I didn't know what it was going to have to do. So when we built this boat, he had the vision. I didn't have the vision and all I did was kind of like uh, filled in the shoe and the rest kind of went into place. You know, filled in the missing spaces. So we used the boat for pulling nets. We used the boat for dredging. We used it for everything. I mean we used it for everything, anchor net and we had the spools on it. Anyway back to the story. Well it was wintertime and it was getting dark because the days are short in the wintertime in December and we were in a snowstorm. It was Jimmy Dare and I after all day dredging and in the blinding snowstorm we got a little disoriented and we didn't quite head the right course back to Bowers Beach. So we saw lights at some town in the snowstorm and we were real, real close to the beach there. So, we didn't know what town it was. We only had x amount of fuel. It was already dark you know. And all we had back then was a CB. We didn't even have VHF radio. We just had a CB and so we said we got to find out what town this is here. We knew it wasn't Bowers but we didn't know if it was Big Stone or it could have been Kit's Hammock. It was a big difference so if we made a wrong decision, we were screwed. So, the deal was it was high tide and I had to put the bow of the boat, in the dark, in a snowstorm up on Big Stone Beach, which ended up to be Big Stone Beach and Jimmy Dare went on up and ran up on the beach and knocked on a guy's door and asked what town is this? And the guy told him Big Stone and he says thank you and he runs back out into the water, in the night, in the snowstorm hops on the boat, pushes the bow back out into the sea then we head back to Bowers. I thought that was kind of neat little story there. And another neat story…that was kind of a neat year. We got into this dredging thing kind of backwards. We used all of our money to rig up the boat and we didn't even have enough money to buy a license to dredge with. The license was $50 bucks so we had to go out and catch a couple of bushels of crabs, sell them so we could go get a license. DS: A license to catch crabs to sell… FE: Yeah. To catch crabs to sell…I know, it was kind of a backward thing. So we went out there and the marine police of course got wind of this that we're out there and we don't have a license. So… DS: I wonder how they got wind of it. FE: I don't know. Word gets out in a small town, I'm sure. So, we were coming in and I think we had about 5 bushels of crabs. It was going to be enough to get fuel. We didn't even have enough money for fuel back then or nothing. I mean, we brought what fuel in like a gerry can and that's how much, you know…It wasn't the fuel in the tank that counted, it was the fuel in that little red can that would get us home. That was always our saying. It's not the fuel it the tank that counts it's the fuel in the red can that gets you home. You run out of fuel in the tank, then you gotta, it's time to start heading home, you know. So, oh yeah, so we're coming in and we get by the day marker there and Mary Ann tells me on the CB, she said, this is all she said, she said, get rid of him. That's what she's telling me. And I already knew something about that wasn't right so I said Jimmy, she just told me to get rid of them. And she didn't want to say too much on the radio in case they have a radio. I think she meant get rid of the crabs. He said I think so too. We said man, we can't throw them over cause we worked all day long just to get this 5 bushel. We need these five bushel. I'm trying to think how can we pull this off. I said hey, I know, why don't we take the 5 bushel, we'll tie them off to the day marker. Put a little dob (?) on them and come out the next day and get them when the heat blows over. So, that's what we did. We tied them off and we just threw them out on an anchor out by the day marker, on a little dob. And we put 5 bushel. We came in and first there was this lady cop there who was named Nellie. We called her "Nut Me Nellie'. And she had these big black boots that went up to her knees there and it was low tide and she was saying, you boys got any crabs on there, you know. Oh no mam, we're just out trying the gear today. We don't have any crabs yet. And she said well, you know you're allowed to have 2 bushels per person you know. I said oh, well that doesn't confront me I says cause we don't have any crabs. And she says well, can I come down and look. And I says well, it's pretty steep there you know, you might fall with them boots on. She said oh, that's all right, I can handle it. I'll come down and look anyway. And it was really awkward because it was kind of like the ladder was sort of overhanging and her boots really were silly for the thing. And so it ended up that she couldn't come down without being in a compromising situation or end up in the piles, you know. Not to say we told you so. So she gets what was to be her boy or husband, it was…oh yeah, what was his name there? Oh…anyway I can't remember. I should know his name cause of the story. It will come by. Hennessey, John Hennessey was his name. He was a character. He's still in the force there now. I guess he's pretty much up there as far as you can go as far as Marine Police. Back then he wasn't though. He was a green horn back then and he was earning some stripes. He was going to come down there and give us a hard time. He made it down the ladder. He was going to show us some authority. He said, all right, where are they at? I know you boys have got some crabs on here. I said we don't have any crabs. We were out testing the dredge today to make sure everything was going to hold up. He's out there. He's looking at the teeth and he can see the teeth are all shined up on the dredge, you know. And he can see the gears and winder and they was all nice and shiny you know from working and everything. He's looking. He's opening up the hatches, he's looking down in the bilge, you know. But now he's starting to get a little hot under the collar because his little sting operation isn't quite going as planned you know. And he says, all right. I know something's up. He says, if I find one crab claw on this boat, I'm going to own this boat. That's what he said. That's pretty stern words for something so silly like that. He looked all around them gears and he looked all around the skuppers(?) and he looked around there. And Jimmy had it all nice and cleaned up. He could not find one little creepy crab leg or no crab claw or nothing. He let us go on that deal. But he had it in for us though, after that. He caused us a lot of grief. Because he was always checking on us, you know. If you get some…well like life. If you have credibility, they're not going to fool with you. Cause they know that guy's credible. I'll worry about somebody else less credible. So I kind of had to earn my credibility. DS: So this was in, again, about 1977, 78 or there abouts? FE: Yeah, that would be uh, 1979. That was 79 then. Cause we did the crabbing. We lost our ass. We did the fishing and we weren't making any money and then wintertime came around in 1979. That was the same y ear I bought this house. My grandfather helped me get this house and that was the same winter we dredged up, rigged up the dredge and then…That was setting us up, you know because we could make it all the way around the year. All the way around the sun we could go dredging. We could go fishing. We could go crab potting and this kind of cycle, around and around. Then we got fined tuned and added caulking(sp?) and everything. So we could make it all year long now. ] DS: How long have you and Jimmy Dare been working together? How long did you work together? FE: Well, we worked quite a while together there, probably about like 5 years in the beginning. And then we kind of split up a little bit you know. DS: Friends going their separate ways? FE: Yeah. He ended up working for Billy Folks you know and that was a good little opportunity there to work for a mate for a share. Back then it was different. Back then you worked for a third of the net. Not a third of the gross, but after expenses you'd get a third. But a third from nothing is nothing. You know, so a third is a good chunk. But a third from nothing is nothing. So, a third of $100 is $30 bucks and that's not too much. So now, we don't really pay by share like that anymore. We pay just like a flat rate. DS: An hourly rate or just no just a flat rate for the day? FE: No, a flat rate for the day's work you know. And, that seems to work out better. That way, the crew, at least if you're having a bad day, they're guaranteed they are going to make some money. Which is the bottom line. They need to make money. But if you do good, then you know, then they're kind of helping you help the cause. Because if the boat's doing good, then you know you've got job security. If the boat's not doing good, then there job looks iffy. So, you can't pay a third any more because there is just so many expenses, you know. That money has to go for those expenses and man there is a lot of them. DS: What do you get for somebody on the crew on a boat these days, typically? FE: Well, like I like to at least guarantee them $100 bucks. DS: A day? FE: Yeah. That's pretty fair you know. And sometimes it's even better than that if we're really, really doing good and the market's good. We've got good product you know and I can even do a little better than that. But $100 bucks is what I try to guarantee them. DS: When I went out with you, you said you were having a good time and you gave them a bonus because it was really good work dredging. So, you've come a long way since the Thumper. And the Thumper is the boat that is now with Winnie Hall? FE: Out to Winnie's. DS: You are going to be a part of the Maritime Museum. FE: Yeah, the one on the left and the Fragmitus is the one on the right. DS: And that's Fragmitus, and not Fragmities right? FE: Actually, It's spelled Fragmities but the way the boat was originally named was Fragmitus, spelled just exactly phonically as it is and it was spelled with an "f". Roland spelled it with a "F"ragmitus. That's how he spelled it. But the word really is Phragmites. And he picked that name because Phragmites is hard to get rid of. And that's why he picked that cause it's hard to kill. DS: So this is a stubborn boat? FE: Well, yeah. A boat is only as stubborn as it's captain. And it's kind of ironic I guess that he didn't live very long because he was so overweight and his health practices weren't that of which would add to longevity. So, he died at like 42 years old. DS: Oh my God. FE: Yeah he did. He died real young and unfortunately, the boat didn't live on much longer after that. I used the heck out of that boat. I mean I had it increased to fuel capacity and doubled the batteries and just put a hydraulic system on and got it to where it was mechanically a pretty good running thing and you know the boat was being used to its maximum capacity for the size of it you know. But when it sank it got hit by ice and it just crushed it in on it's side. She just sank immediately. DS: What happened to the Thumper? Did it sink at all? _______________________? FE: Yeah, that sunk too. That one I rode down. Oh my. I have a long list of boats. Thumper, we were down in Indian River and we went down early in the morning before it got light out and the nets were just full of fish and we had bad weather coming and we knew it. We didn't want to leave the nets out in the ocean cause they would just fill up with fish and the next time we'd come down they'd be rotten. Nasty…broke loose, rolled up, all crabs in them and star fish and sharks and everything. So our mission was that day to go down, pull up those anchor nets and the anchors and everything and just bring it all in and we'll sit it out and then set up after the storm. So that was pretty cool of an idea. And we did it and there was a lot of fish. We were getting a lot of fish. There were a lot of fish in the nets. There was a lot of fish. As a matter of fact, there were so many fish in the nets that we couldn't pull against the sea in that size boat. So what we had to do was we just, I just backed her up in reverse and we boated the nets. Just one big quivering pile of live stuff just sitting there shaking like this and the pile go to be about 4 feet tall. It was like a couple of feet over the gunnels in the back. It was a big pile. And the reason why we had to go up into the Indian River Bay because the marina down there was discriminating against commercial fishermen. So they were going to say, we're not going to let commercial fishermen park here so that way they won't come here, you know. So I ended up, I found a place way up in the bay that I could at least park at some resort I could park my boat. But to get out of there on low tide I had to deal with the sand monster. There was this big sand bar and every now and then his big curl would come up and so every day I had to jump over this hump. Just a little short hump and once you get over it you know, you'd be through it. Well, jumping over that hump had cracked my rudder gland you know back there. It had a little crack in it. So that when there was a lot of weight in the boat and we're putting it below the water line, water would come up in there like little gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. Well, with all these nets and everything on the deck, because they wouldn't let me use my spool. They outlawed the spool because the spool would keep the net off the deck and it would be all a controlled manner, so now the deck had to have all this net on top of it so I couldn't do periodic inspections and maintenance underneath the hatch because I had to comply with the law. And, so I didn't know I had this cracked lant. So we went out in the rough sea and all and we got the nets. Got all that. We're coming back in and it's a long way fighting that tide up Indian River. The boat could only do like about 6 or 7 knots and the current was like 4 knots. So we were only making like 2 miles an hour, you know coming in this thing so an hour took us all the way to get up Indian River under that bridge and up around the bend there and when we got up in the bay and I slowed her down, the back end of the boat…you know she was kind of like riding like this…well the back end of the boat had all this water and when I slowed it down, all the water came up front and then she was like drawing a lot of water then you know because she was sitting in the shallow up there. So we didn't realize that we were sinking at that time yet. So we was letting the net go back out and as it was going back out, we were picking the fish out of it. I was like setting it out in the back bay, picking the fish out of it and then we were just kind of doing it in a manner so that when we pulled the net back in, it would look a hell of a lot better than it was right now because it had so many fish, it was just a mess. We had to make it look a little better before we set it. But as we were doing it, we were taking a little bit of time…So as we were sitting there, and the boat was kind of leaning on this side because the anchors were on that side and Donny says hey Thump man, the water's coming in my boots. I was like ah man Donny, why didn't you tell me before that. You know, then I looked over there and I see water was rolling all down the side. Awe man and she was sinking quick. I was like oh man, we've got to lighten the load and we've got to clog these skuppers up. We've got to lighten the load. So I just started like flooring it and the boat was hitting the bottom and hitting the bottom and the fish and net is going out the back of the boat. It's quite a sight to see the fish are hitting the deck and boom, boom, boom…flying…and blood and guts flying everywhere. And that net went out and we threw another anchor and threw another net and that was going out and we were sitting and she was doing the death lay…She was laying over on her keel and the motor kept pushing, kept pushing, kept pushing and finally we were getting up about, we were like about 50 yards from the bank of the marsh and the water was just getting ready to come right over the gunnels completely and I wanted to shut it off before it killed the motor. So it wouldn't compress the water, and usually when I would let go of the throttle and drop it back, it would kill the motor anyway. Well, that time it didn't. She kept sitting there lobbing…"Bllll…Blllll…Blllll" So I had one chance to lunge up there and grab this kill switch. I had like a rope on it so I could pull it without lifting the hatch and I had my hand on that rope and as I was pulling it, she shut off and I didn't know if I had killed it or if it killed itself and here it ended up killing itself. I didn't get it in time because net was all around the feet and stuff and I couldn't, I was fumbling trying to get to the thing.and then she went (sinking noise), she was right down. Ended up making it about 50 feet from the marsh bank in about 4 feet of water. So we had a little bit of an oil spill cause fuel was in a 55 gallon drum in the cabin latched to the mast because I had a leaky fuel tank so I wasn't using them no more. And when she sunk, that water came in and it flipped up my 55 gallon drum full of fuel and dumped all this fuel in that. It was all on us. We had that sunken sailor cologne all over us. I wasn't calling the Coast Guard as long as there was a fuel spill like that because there was going to be a $10,000 fine for that deal. So I said, I ain't calling them. I'll sit here sunk, you know. And, so we took a couple of cooler lids and panned all that out and it just blew away and then I called the Coast Guard up. But before I called the Coast Guard though, while we were trying…it was almost low tide and we were trying to get on top of the situation. We figured out that if we clogged the skuppers up… DS: What's the skuppers? FE: They are like little self bailing, you know, so the deck is above the water and it's like four little skupper holes just big enough that a crab couldn't craw through it. DS: Oh, right, right right. FE: We'd shove rags and stuff in there, we'd have at least the integrity of the whole side of the boat. You know, we could get 5 gallon buckets and start bailing it out and we could probably get ahead of it. So we clogged the skuppers up and the boat was leaning because she had all these anchors on one side. We didn't get it all off in time. So we took the coolers that we had and we dumped the fish out of them cause they were no longer any good to us any more and we put that on the gunnell of the boat and started filling them up with water so we could get her to right herself and be kind of like this. Well, the first time we did it, we put all the water on there and she started coming over to the other side but we didn't run over to the other side to counterbalance it in time. So she just rolled over like this. So we had to start all over again. Empty the coolers out, put them up on the other side of the boat, fill them up. But then this time when the boat started coming back like this, we had to quick run to the other side and then start bailing our ass off. But don't you know it was dead low water and the tide was getting ready to start to come back in and then so by the time all this was happening, we were losing time and when I seen the tide was coming in, I knew were done then. We were done. That's when I called the Coast Guard and then they start to come and their boat dies. So they had to go back and by the time they came, they ordered me to throw the anchor. I was like Buddy, why throw the anchor, we're not going no where. We're sunk. We're in the bottom, you know. He orders me to throw the anchor. Okay, I throw the anchor out and he runs over it. He doesn't even come on the leeward side of me, he comes at the windward side of me. I'm like questioning these guys judgment all ready. I mean, like they don't have the practical experience, you know. They are doing everything through some guy, the commander, the commandant or whatever in Central is running it at some room that can't even see inside these walls you know. He's running it from there. But anyway. DS: Well, okay that was the sinking of the Thumper and when did that
take place? DS: When did you become a Seventh Day Adventist? FE: Uh, I became an Adventist, actually, I'd been following along with the Adventists for probably about 15 years. Jean maybe a little bit longer. I've only been baptized with them though for about a year and a half. But I've been a Sabbath keeper for on and off in some capacity for about 15 years. DS: After this interruption, we will have an original song. Thumper's rendition of the song from 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. FE: Okay, here we go…Singing…(can't make out many of the words…guitar playing is drowning out the words) That's it. DS: That was great Thumper, thank you. FE: It was kind of fun. DS: Seventh Day Adventism means a lot to you doesn't it? And you've been with it about 15 years but baptized only about 2 years? FE: Yeah it does. Yeah, about 2 years. DS: What does it say to you? FE: Well, the Adventists religion is a religion that claims to have the spirit of prophecy and it also claims to proclaim the third angels message which is spoken about in Revelations 14. Which is basically that the people come out of Babylon for she has fallen and the people that have the mark of the beast that, to not worship the mark of the beast any more to come and worship the Lord as it was originally intended and plus the spirit of prophecy comes with that and it also has a health message too. So the Adventist people are concerned with healing people and proper diet so it keeps them from getting sick and like I said they have the spirit of prophecy too which in Revelations says if the people who keep the testimony of Jesus Christ will have the gift of prophecy is what it says in there. And, the more I studied with the Adventist people, the more I've know it to become true. So, uh… DS: It speaks to you deeply. FE: Yes. DS: Well, okay. You don't, there are not Adventists Church, so where do you go to church? FE: I have one in Harrington that I go to that I feel real comfortable with down there and there are none right around here but Harrington is not too far and that group of people that I learn with and we study together so I learn things that hold me over through the week. DS: You've never been a part of the Sexton Methodist Church in town? FE: I used to go there until I figured out the Sabbath thing. DS: When was that roughly? FE: Well, like I said, I've been observing the Sabbath in some capacity or another over the last 15 years. But since my love with the Lord got greater, I'm a very, very devout Sabbath keeper. I want to learn to try to keep it proper. In it's proper context. DS: And the Sabbath of course is Saturday, not Sunday. FE: It's Saturday, not Sunday. Yeah, that's the part where the people are a little confused about and that's the part where the third angel's message kind of comes in. They want everybody to obey the commandments and God had originally ordained. DS: I was interviewing Jimmy Dare last Sunday and he had just finished preaching the sermon at Sexton Methodist Church… Tape 1, Side 2 Finished.
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