FLORIDA’S FORGOTTON COAST: LIFE ON THE APALACHICOLA BAY
WORKING THE BAY
Melaine Cooper Covell
James Hicks
Monette Hicks
Monica Lemieux
Carl McCaplan
James & Betty McNeill
Charles & Rex Pennycuff
A. L. Quick
Henry Tindell

TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Wes Birdsong
Corky Richards
Bobby Shiver
Charles Thompson
Genaro “Jiggs” Zingarelli

PROCESSING THE CATCH
Terry Dean
Grady Leavins
Lynn Martina
Fred Millender
Janice Richards
Anthony Taranto
Tommy Ward

THE SWEET SIDE
Donald Smiley
George Watkins

VINTAGE APALACH
Seafood & Honey

WHERE TO EAT
Apalach Eateries

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Interviews & photographs by Amy Evans

This project sponsored by the St. Joe Company.

A. L. “Unk” Quick has been an oysterman all of his life. Originally from Wewahitchka, Florida, his family moved to Eastpoint in 1949. Unk was just nine years old. He quit school at the age of sixteen. He started oystering the very next day. In 1964 he proposed to his wife, Gloria. She started shucking oysters right after they got married. They have worked together ever since. He catches, she shucks. And some days they’ll go out on the bay together. He catches, she culls. In the off-season they pick up odd jobs and do yard work. Whatever they’re doing, they make a good team. And they know the area inside and out. Unk can speak volumes about the bay and the bounty it holds. But he fears that soon there will be no more oysters. He believes that the bay is being overfished and folks aren’t taking care of it like they should. Years past retirement, Unk and Gloria don’t intend to quit working any time soon. The bay is all they know.

Listen to this 4-minute audio clip of A. L. Quick describing what it is like to be out oystering on the Apalachicola Bay.
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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Subject: A. L. Quick, oysterman
Date: January 12, 2006
Location: Dock at Steamer’s Raw Bar – Apalachicola, FL
Interviewer: Amy Evans

Amy Evans:  All right, this is Amy Evans on Thursday, January 12th 2006 and I'm in Apalachicola, Florida on this boat ramp here next to Steamers Restaurant with an oysterman by the name of A.L. Quick. We met over here the other day, and you stay over in Eastpoint. Is A.L. Quick—is A.L. what you go by, or what is your given name?...Do the A and the L stand for anything?

A. L. Quick:  I forget. Not that I know of. [Laughs] A lot of people call me Al.

Could I ask you to state your name and your birth date for the recording here?

A.L. Quick, February 27th, 1940.

Were you born in Eastpoint?

I was born in Wewahitchka [Florida].

When did you move down to Eastpoint?

Oh God, that's so long ago, I forgot—can't remember the date. Well, I'll put it like this, I've been here ever since I was nine years old [1949], and I'm sixty-five now.

What did your family move down here for?

Well, mostly to work. They hadn't never worked the seafood 'til they come down here.  We—we worked in the crab house, shrimp houses, stuff like that.

So [there was] just more opportunity here on the bay back then?

Well, there was actually more jobs here back then, see. Yeah, you know, we—we moved down here and my baby sister, she went to the first school in Carrabelle [Florida]. [Laughs]…I didn't—I didn't finish school; I ain't go no education—can't read and write. But so far I've made it. [Laughs]

So you went straight to work then as soon as you could get out there on the water?

Well I—I started oystering when I was seventeen years old. I've been doing it all my life just about. I quit school when I was sixteen and started working the next day after I quit school. [Laughs]

Did you quit school so you could go to work?

Well, yeah, mostly.

But before—before you went oystering, you were working in the crab houses and whatnot?

Yeah, yeah…I was sixteen when I quit school and I—I started working the next day after I quit school…I didn't work when I was going to school. But I had asthma all my life, and the doctor kept me out of school for two years, so I didn't get to go to school. So I figured what the heck, if I ain't going to learn nothing, I might as well quit, you know. So that's what I done. I quit and started working.

——-

So when you started oystering did you have your own boat or were you going out with somebody else or—?

Well yeah, I had my own boat. And I—my brother-in-law, him and I went oystering together. We was working at a place down here called Eddie Amison’s place at that time and we worked for about six months together and then we—he started working with somebody else. I finally worked by myself for a while, and then my dad worked with me and then he—he got where he couldn't work, so then I had it all by myself again. And then after—after I got married and—and my son came along—well, I got two sons—and when they got big enough to work then we—me and my oldest son worked together for about three or four years. He decided he wanted to get married, so he married and moved to Tennessee, so that left me by myself again.

So when you say you were working out at this Eddie Amison’s Place was that—does that mean you were selling your oysters to them?

Yeah, yeah, I was catching.

And so can you explain to me how that works when an oysterman takes his catch to a certain seafood house? What that relationship is like or how it starts or—?

Well, what dealers do, they—like if I catch like I'm doing now, if I catch, my wife [Gloria Quick] shucks [at Lynn’s Quality Oysters in Eastpoint, Florida] They pay us twenty-eight dollars a gallon like that. If I don't—if I just catch bags, they don't pay but twelve dollars, so I make—I make more money letting her shuck for me, see.

And she shucks at a seafood house?

Yeah. [Lynn’s Quality Oysters in Eastpoint, FL]

And then how do you decide which—which house you're going to work with?

Well, I guess, you can work with any of them as far as that—you know. I have worked—I have worked for several different people during my lifetime. I worked—well, the first man I ever oystered for was Eddie Amison’s, and then I went to—when my brother-in-law quit—then I went back to Eastpoint and I—I worked for a fellow named Frank Segree; I worked for him for several years and then I—he finally got sick and—or he couldn't run the business no more, and then I finally got out of that part of it and went to work for Joe Barber. He run a crab business. I got a job working in what they call a raw house, you know—[a] crab house cooking crabs and having them picked and all that stuff. I toted garbage and waited on tables—the tables where the ladies picked the crabs out. What I done, I took them out of the cooler and carried them there and put them in—they had in little baskets. I took the little baskets in there and set them on the table and they—they picked the meat out of it. That was the part I done—helped cook them; I had to help cook a lot of the crabs. Most of it was brought in. Or they'd bring them in raw right out of the water, you know, and then—then we'd have to put them in a big steamer and steam cook them, you know. And then we'd take them out of that and put them on what we call a cooling table that was a big old wire looking table upside the wall. We'd dump the crabs on that 'til they'd cool, and we'd clean them. We'd back—pull the claws off of them and back them [take the backs off] and put them in little baskets. And then put them in the cooler. And then the next day we'd carry them in there and let the women pick them—pick the meat out of them.

Now is that something you do in addition to oystering, depending on the season or the weather?

Well in—back then, they mostly run the crab houses in the summertime, and then they'd run oyster houses in the wintertime. You know, we'd change seasons up. But now for several years they've—they've run a crab house year-round, you know, and quit—you know, a lot of people quit oystering. They started crabbing and they—they got where they just run them year-round. Both of them, the oyster houses and the crab business at the same time.

——-

Are there a lot of oystermen who do go out like days like today [the bay was covered with a thick fog]?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, them guys there got GPSes on their boats. That's a little thing that's—what you do is it's like a calculator and you punch in whatever place you want to go out yonder and it—it instead of it being a thing that goes around like a compass, it's—puts a straight arrow out there like a road you follow and if you get off of it there's a little arrow that comes out on the side of it that points whichever direction you've got to go to get you back on the road again. It's like—like a highway you know.

Do most oystermen use that or is that something just—kind of a few invest in?

Well most of them use—use them.

But you said, Mr. Quick, that you drove all the way out here this morning and—and looked at the weather and you didn't want to go out in it.

Yeah, I drove down here. There wasn't nobody—no trucks or nothing down here when I got here before daylight. I was—I was trying to see that island over there and I couldn't see nothing. [Laughs] I said I ain't going out there in that…Now if the tide is high, you know, where I can go out that end down yonder, I—I can look at the beach, you know the beach line and go to an oyster bar, but if I got to cross the bay I'm lost. [Laughs] I—I can't navigate with a compass. I could if I wasn't argued with, you know—the compass is right because it ain't going to point with one direction but I get to arguing with that thing and I get lost out here. I can't maneuver with them.

——-

Tell me about all your years out here. You have fifty years on the water oystering, right?

Well, fishing and shrimping and stuff like that altogether, you know.

Tell me about oystering and being on the boat, and tell me what that's like.

Like being on the boat? Well to me it's fun. I mean I get pleasure out of it you know. It's hard work and all but to me it's—well you—the one thing about oystering or crabbing or shrimping either one, if you own your own rig, you know to do it with you're your own boss. Like if I was to come down here and the sun is shining, a pretty day and I—I've decided I don't want to go out there and turn around and come back to the house that's my business. I can do that because there ain't nobody out here that can tell me what I can do and what I can't do. That's one—one good thing about oystering or fishing or whatever you're doing like that—crabbing or whatever. If you want to do it you can go do it; if you don't well you ain't got to. I mean you don't make no money but it—you know if—if you want to go out there and turn around and come back home that's your business. I have been out there when it would be a pretty day or sunshiney day—I have went to the oyster bar and throwed my anchor overboard and decided that I wanted to go home. I pull my anchor up and go to the house. I tell my wife, “All right honey, you ready to go? [She’ll say,] Where are we going? [And I’d say,] Going fishing. [Laughs] It's, you know—you’re mostly your own boss. That's what I like about it.

Make your own choices?

Yeah, right.

Well tell me a day when you're out oystering what it's like. If you're out by yourself and you're tonging and kind of a schedule, if you keep one, of how many you tong and then when you cull and how long you sit and do that.

Well now, it's just—like in a situation like that it's just according, you know, how—how thick of oysters you're in. Now I can tong that cull board up on my boat there—if I'm in thick oysters, I can round that cull board up in about fifteen minutes—just stack—just every oyster I can stack on it. But if I'm in scattered oysters, sometimes it takes thirty minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes an hour-and-a-half to get a cull board full of oysters. Well then I got to sit down and cull them out, you know. Our law says a three-inch oyster [is a legal oyster]—well, these boys don't catch three-inch oysters…I try to stay in the law, anyway. Now if I don't, my wife is going to get a ball bat [Laughs] and work me over the head now, because she don't like shucking little oysters. I try to catch them you know, three inches. That's the law and that's the reason I don't catch as many oysters as a lot of these other guys do. They go out there and whatever they throw on the cull board if it's a live oyster—if it ain't that [holds fingers about an inch-and-a-half apart] big around they throw it in the bag. But in—in the long run, over the period of years I've seen our bay go downhill ninety-percent. What I mean by that [is,] when I first started oystering, you could take St. Vincent Bar—it's a bar that's right straight across that way [points across the bay] toward the island over yonder. And I've seen—I've seen a man and his two sons go over there and catch eighty and ninety wheelbarrows—I'm talking about wheelbarrows just stacked—all they can stack on them—eighty and ninety wheelbarrows a day. You can't do that now because there ain't no oysters there like that.

Why do you think that is?

They go out there and haul them off.

They just over-fish?

This young—this young bunch is oystering them. They go out there and throw in everything that's coming to them. But back then, they didn't do that, see. They—they caught a legal oyster, and if they didn't, they got a two hundred dollar fine. Well back then, two hundred dollars was a lot of money. I mean now—nowadays it ain't because there's some of these guys—I mean that boat right there [pointing to a boat docked along the shore], he unloaded a while ago. He—he'll probably have close to three hundred dollars worth of oysters. I've seen some of these guys go out there and catch enough oysters to make two or three thousand dollars a week. Well, my son—I got a—my young son in Eastpoint, I've seen him go down there to Indian Pass and him and his wife, if he didn't catch two hundred bags—I mean two hundred dollars worth a day, he wouldn't even go out there. He'd catch anywhere—I've seen him get a payroll of five hundred dollars a day, they'd make. Of course, I ain't never made that kind of money. The most I've ever made is nine hundred dollars in one week. But they can make that in a day.

So what are you trying to say with why you haven't gotten that many oysters? Because you take out the small ones? And the small ones that they're bringing in are adding to their catch?

In other words, it's just like you and I are planting your garden and, you know, a pea patch growing up. And then you run out there and plugging all the peas off the vines and not leaving nothing, see—taking their seed. That's what they do with them.

I see. So you're saying that since people are bringing in the small oysters, they're not leaving anything in the oyster beds to grow a new crop in that part of the bay?

Right, they're stripping the bars. Well, I've noticed it down through the period of years, you know, as I've been oystering, that the bars I used to go to and catch five wheelbarrows a day by myself, it takes me all day now to go out there and on that same bar—it takes me all day. And then I go out there and catch five bags on count of that, see. It's just like taking—taking—going out there and planting a seed and then going back and pulling it out of the ground before it ever comes up.

Do you think there are things that are happening alongside of them being over-harvested that are hurting the bay?

Yeah…Well now they used—this last storm we had [2005’s Hurricane Dennis], we didn't get the full impact of the hurricane, you know itself but we got the—what they call the outskirts of it. And it done a lot of damage in Eastpoint and also some damage here because it destroyed mostly all these docks and a lot of the oyster houses and things in Eastpoint it destroyed. But the—sometime you know the—the hurricanes have something to do with it, too because they—they'll either uncover the oysters or they'll cover them with sand and kill them. I've seen that happen, too, you know. And the DNR has always got their nose stuck in something they ain't got no concern about, but it ain't now way you can do nothing about that, because the state backs them up whatever they want to do, you know. But I feel like in my heart, you know, if they can get away—just get out of Franklin County and leave our oyster bars alone, then God Almighty will take care of them. That's the way I feel about it. Any time man sticks his nose in something that nature has got anything to do with they're going to mess it up anyhow. [Laughs]

Can you tell me a little bit of the geography of the bay and what the different bars are and where they are?

Well, there ain't too many. As far as the names of the bars, I can't tell you too much about that because I don't know that much about them, you know. But I do know where they—now we got some bars down this side of the bay on this—the mainland side that's called Shell Lumps, but now that's bars that the state planted, see. They carried a barge-load of shells there and blow them off the—the barge with water—with a water force. And what it does, they take the shell like that—the dry shell and anything that spat [or juvenile oyster] catches on when them oysters are spawning, it grows a little oyster on it. They'll grow on pilings. I don't know whether you've seen them on these pilings or not, but some of these pilings up and down this beach, you know, has probably got little spats on them where they grow—started—a little oyster started out—sometime it will be that big. [Makes gesture to illustrate something about the size of his hand.] You won't even think it's an oyster 'til you really look at it close, you know. And then the state—like I say, the state plants several bars down the bay, and then they go out there—they got places like Eastpoint Channel. See, that's supposed to be what they call polluted water, in other words. Well a certain time of the year they let the men go out there and tong those oysters up and put them in—in a big old plastic looking culler or whatever you call them. I call them like a box, you know, and they haul them out to the main part of the barge and dump them out in water they claim that's clean water. And, of course, [Laughs] I ain't never seen polluted water—saltwater, no way. But that's what they claim. But they take the oysters up, you know, and re-transplant them. And that helps some. But what good is it going to do for you to go out there and plant a bar with big oysters, and then them boys go out there and the first two or three months they haul off everything and don't leave nothing but shells.

Oysters about as big as your hand you're talking about they get?

Yeah, well the next time—if you're here when I go out again I'll show you some like I catch…I guarantee you won't find no more on these—on these boats down here like that. [Laughs] Of course, I have to see on count of my wife shucks them, and she shucks on one of them shucking machines. Have you seen one of them?

Yes, sir.

And she uses one of them, and she's left-handed of all things. I call her an odd-ball but [Laughs] I can't say too much about that because both of my sons is left-handed, too, see. And but she shucks with that machine and, if you get too small of an oyster in it, if you don't—if you ain't real careful how you stick it in that thing, it will snatch it in there and break—well, she's had her finger broke and all on count of them. I used to shuck with one of them, when I was shucking. I shucked with one of them machines, and I've had my thumb knocked numb, you know, where I'd stick it in there too far, and it would knock my thumb out. But now, some of them ladies got their fingers completely cut off by them, you know. Like they have somebody—certain people that sharpen the teeth on them and they—they—after they get them sharpened, sometimes them ladies will stick an oyster in there a little too far ,and it will grab their finger. There's a couple ladies over there that I know right now that—that's got their fingers clean off by them. They're very dangerous.

So are you saying you catch the bigger oysters so that they're easier for your wife to open?

Yeah.

Really?

Well, if she's got less, you know, well I don't know how you'd put it. I reckon you'd have to say if she's got a bigger oyster, then she don't have to stick her hand in that machine so far, see, to crack it.

But that then affects what you bring in. Couldn't you bring in more if you weren't concerned about getting just the big ones?

Well, yeah, if I done it like the rest of them I'd—I'd probably catch a boatload, too. And half of them don't cull the mussels off of them; they bring them in with mussels on them burred up and everything else. What I mean by burred up is like if two or three oysters is clustered together[,] they don't knock them apart. They just throw them in the bag like that.

And you take your time out when you're out there and you really cull them and clean them up?

Yeah. I try to. Well, I don't single every one of them up, you know. Because you take two oysters that will be in your hand, and if you hit one trying to knock it apart, see, you bust one of them. So I'd just rather leave it—leave the two of them together or three of them together. I have caught them three together like that, and I'd leave them together, but I'd knock the mussels off of them where she can see what's she's doing.

Where does your wife shuck—what house?

She shucks at Lynn's Quality [Oysters in Eastpoint].

So has your wife shucked most of the whole time? Is that what she's done for a living?

Yeah, she—she shucked. Well, me and her has been married forty-two years, and I think she started trying to learn how to shuck before our first son was born. He's forty years old—will be pretty soon. And she's been shucking ever since, you know.

So when you're out there on the water and you're tonging and then you sit and cull, is there one thing you like doing over the other, or you just like it all?

Well, if I had my choice about it, I'd rather cull than to have to tong, you know, because that tonging is hard on you. It gives—it gives your arm—my arms, I've got arthritis in my shoulders and all, I've done it so long—so many years, I've about wore my arms out doing it. [Laughs] And I can't hardly do it no more, you know. Of course, when I was a young man it didn't bother me. I mean, I'd go out there and work from sun-up to sundown. I've been on the bars when—way before it would get daylight and have a cull board of oysters tonged up, and when it got light enough, I could see how to cull, I'd start culling. And worked 'til it got dark or I couldn't see how to cull them, you know. But I can't do it no more. [Laughs]

I bet it's kept you in good shape, though. All that hard physical labor.

Oh, yeah. Well according to what the doctor said, you know, the exercise that it give you—I know it don't—you know it don't exercise your whole body but your shoulders and all working all the time they say that reflects your heart, you know; it keeps your heart going good. And yeah, so that's the reason I'm in as good as health as I am. [Laughs]

Well, when you pull up pull up a bunch of oysters with your tongs to bring up onto the boat, about how much does that loaded set of tongs weigh, do you think?

Oh, God. Well I use [tongs with a] sixteen [toothed] head. Some of these guys use eighteen. If you feel them tongs slapped full the weight of the tongs and the—the oysters together, I imagine they weigh close to a half a bag, so that would be about thirty pounds, I imagine. I've had them filled so full I couldn't even hardly pick them up. [Laughs]

——-

[Are] those calluses on your hands from tonging?

[Laughs] Well, there's the blisters I wore yesterday. Yeah, my hands is rough.

Because it's not convenient to wear gloves while you're out there because you can't handle the—?

Well, I can't feel the bottom with them, you know. A lot of—there's a lot of people that use them, but if you use gloves—now for my own self, you know, I can't feel the oysters hardly. It takes the feeling out of my hands.

That cold wet weather doesn't take the feeling out of your hands?

Well I've had my tongs and they'll ice up and pull them up out of the water because I still will be with my naked hands.

Do you wear gloves when you cull?

Oh, yeah. If you don't, you'll cut your hands off because—yeah, I use a glove on my left hand. I don't use nothing on this [my right hand]. But I got a cull iron that's got a rubber handle like a handlebar grip thing on it that keeps, you know, the cull iron from messing my hands up…I made it myself. I use a file. I don't use a cull iron like some of these guys. That's why I found a twelve-inch file. If you cut that end off that you put the handle on—if you cut that off and round it and then cut the rough grooves off of the file and make you a kind of a smooth handle and then sharpen the file out on the end that you're hitting the oysters with, if you sharpen it like a knife blade when you're culling them mussels, it slings that stuff away from you. It don't sling it all up in your face like a flat iron does. I've had them mussels go in my eyes and them things will set you on fire when they do—make your eyes swell up and run water, get your blurry where you can't hardly see nothing. That happened to me sometimes, I'm telling you. [Laughs]

——-

You think you'll stay oystering as long as you can?

As long as I'm able to, I probably will. This arthritis keeps bothering me; I'll have to get out of it, looks like, and get me a job on the hill. I don't want to; I like to oyster. I've done it so much for so long it's like home to me, you know. [Laughs] But I might have to get out of it.

Do you have an idea of what the future of the oystering business is for the bay?

I don't think it's going to last much longer. All these people wanting to build these condominiums and stuff like that on the beach and all, it eventually will just close the whole bay up, I feel like…I would hate to see the bay just completely close up, you know, because there's so many people that depends on making a living, you know. I mean I have seen as high as 1,500 boats out on Cat Point at one time oystering. You could walk from one deck to the other, and you're about all the way across the bay, you know. It would be so many boats out there but they—the peoples quit oystering and got different jobs and things like that. Well, there just about ain't no oysters here anymore. And these that is here they—like we saw down there while ago, they just don't care. They just hog up the bay and carry it off. [Laughs] You know. So yeah, I would hate to see it just completely close up, you know. But I know it will happen one day. I figure it will last about another two years and that will wind it up—if it will even last that long.

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.