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.

Bobby Shiver was born at 13 Mile in 1939. His father oystered and his mother shucked for Miller’s Fish & Oyster Company. As a child, Bobby remembers building toy boats out of scrap metal and wood. In the 1960s he began to build boats as a hobby. But there was just something in him that wanted to build. For years, creating boats was an avocation. Working the bay and building houses was Bobby’s vocation. But when he got older, he began learning more about the trade from local boat builders. With a seventh-grade education, Bobby mastered the craft and made hundreds of boats. He never worked from a design. As he puts it, he sees a picture in his mind and he builds it. His boats are used by oystermen and fishermen all along the Gulf Coast. In 1977 he built a fifty-seven foot shrimp boat called the Mayme Ellyn. Bobby is no longer making boats, but the Mayme Ellyn still hauls plenty of shrimp.

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Bobby Shiver talking about how he got interested in boat building and who he learned from over the years.
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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: Bobby Shiver, boat builder
Date: March 23, 2006
Location: Mr. Shiver’s home – Eastpoint, FL
Interviewer: Amy Evans

Amy Evans:  This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance on Thursday, March 23rd 2006 and it's about four thirty in the afternoon. I'm in Eastpoint, Florida, with Mr. Bobby Shiver. And Mr. Shiver, would you say your name and also, if you don't mind, your birth date for the record?

Bobby Shiver:  Well, I'm Bobby Shiver and I'm—I was born July 29th, 1939.

Were you born here in Eastpoint?

No, I was born in the western end of Franklin County at Thirteen Mile.

Oh, you were born out at Thirteen Mile? With the Ward family?

Yeah, Buddy Ward owns that place now. Dewey Miller owned it then.

And Dewey Miller is the father to Martha Pearl [Ward, wife of Buddy Ward] is that right?

Right. Martha Pearl is one of—and one of them is named Fannie Pearl. They was pretty girls then. [Laughs] I remember them as they grew up.

So your daddy worked out there at Thirteen Mile then?

Right. Dewey Miller was the one that got my dad started here.

What was your father's name?

Jimmy Lee [Shiver]. And I'm Bobby Lee [Shiver].

So what was it like when your father started working out there?

Well, according to what he told me, it was way back in thirty-one—1931 when he came from out of Georgia and come down there. So right in the Depression, you know. He just got started. So this was the best place to be at that time—the seafood—because it was hard everywhere else. But personally, I don't never remember living at Thirteen Mile. We moved to Eleven Mile [which is two miles closer to Apalachicola], and I remember living there. He brought me over here [to Eastpoint, on the other side of Apalachicola] when I was two years old.

Was your father married when he came down here from Georgia or did he marry when—?

Not to begin with, no. He come with his mom and his daddy. They came out of Georgia. He came and the uncles came, and they went back and got the family when they seen they could do better there with the seafood—oystering and fishing. So they went back and got the whole family. Of course, back in them days, they took the family—wherever one went, they all went. So they came in [nineteen] thirty-one and done gill net fishing—the seine fishing with Dewey Miller. [A seine net is a large fishing net that hangs in the water and has weights along the bottom edge.] But they said Dewey Miller was a friend to our family.

I understand back in the day they had about sixty or some-odd families living out there at Thirteen Mile.

Right. There were little houses. But my mama and daddy told me that the house that I was born in was—it didn't have any floor in it—just a dirt floor, you know. [The house] was made with some kind of felt around it. Most of the houses was just little huts. We were—I guess, they were about like migrant workers or something the way they did. But along the way they began to change the housing, though. Dewey Miller built us a new house along about—I guess I was eight or nine years old at Eleven Mile. And it didn't look no different than the rest, but it was new. [Laughs] But they had floors in them.

So was that the arrangement for the people who were affiliated with the oyster house or the seafood house? That the house provided the housing for the families?

Right. They—whoever owned the seafood house furnished houses for them people, and they lived in their little houses and worked for them. What we did when we moved to Eleven Mile, my dad bought some property over here on the beach. He bought a piece of property and paid two hundred dollars for it when I was about two or three years old. And I can remember it real well. He built a little wooden house on the eastern end of Eastpoint, and we lived there for a good while.

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Did y’all go to school as children?

We went to Apalachicola School then. We didn't like it, but we did. It was a whole—it was different from the Carrabelle school [in Carrabelle, Florida]. The people were different, and they treated us different. Of course we was from Eleven Mile, and that wasn't too—that place was probably about the lowest—one of the low places in this county. Whoever was the poorest lived there. And we didn't like it because they did treat us different. We was poor and didn't know it. We didn't even know what poor was. We didn't know what anything else was; we just made it.

Poor but rich in other things.

We was rich in family because we was close, and we had a good mama and daddy, who worked hard and kept—you know, they provided for us. It wasn't the best in the world, but it was the best they could do.

What's your mother's name?

Eloise. She shucked oysters.  [Daddy] would catch them, and she would get us off to school. She would go to work, and she would come back, and she'd fix a supper for us. And my daddy would come back in and unload the oysters until we got big enough to go with him. And we wasn't in school, we was on that boat with him. Every one of us learned to do it. He taught every one of us to do it, but he never taught me to like it. I didn't like the seafood world. There was something in me that wanted to build something, and I started building little things from the time I was big enough to do it. And I was the only one out of the bunch. The rest of them loved the seafood. But I loved building, and I'd just take some nails and hammer, and that's how the building got into me, [making] little old toy boats and things.

Did you start doing that as a youngster?

Yeah, I'd make it out of a piece of tin and I'd bend it around and then fix it up and put tar and stuff—stop it from leaking and get in it and run it up—float up and down the bay. But I was fascinated with the boat building. I hated that oystering. I didn't like that.
[When I was a kid,] I’d get on the beach, and I'd find a piece of old tin off of one of them houses. And I'd get a piece of board for the bow, and I'd fold it up and throw it around and put a piece in the middle. I'd fold that old tin up to where—and put the old tar and stuff I could find somewhere, and I'd fix and nail it together and stop it from leaking. And I watched the Jones boys, and they build the—the Boatwright boys, they built boats. And anybody that would build a boat, I'd watch as a kid. And I loved the bay. I loved all the—I loved to be around the oyster houses, but I hated the work in the bay. And about—I guess it got on over in about the [nineteen] sixties, I started building the boats just as a hobby for people to work on oystering and fishing. And I'd just do it. And I’d get some lumber, and I'd bring it up here in the yard, and I would just get out here in the yard under a tree and cut out the boards and the—and the sides and then build them a little twenty-three-foot boat or something and put decks on it. And they'd paint it up, and they'd go with it. And I just enjoyed doing that. And then I did that for a long time, still trying to work in the bay. And I was a carpenter. I got to where I liked to build houses. I got jobs doing it in the summertime when there's no oystering. I would go and find—it was a contractor that lived up in Sumatra [Florida] up—you know where that is?

Yes, sir.

His name was Bob Bass, and I worked with him. And he taught me a lot about building and about how to—how the trusses and things—square up houses. And I was just a laborer, but I got tired of that too—toting boards. I wanted to be something besides a toter. I wanted to do something and let somebody tote something to me. And I began to—and he told me, he said, “I'll teach you, then.” And there was another builder that was here on boats that was Charles Raffield. You may have heard of him over this—along the way. That was one of the brothers of them people. He lived right down here, and he was building boats, and I watched him.
But the main one that really taught me and I liked his boat—his way and his style—was Mr. Joe Lolley…He was an old man, and he was building the boats. And that's before I got married. And then I would hang around his place, and I'd watch him and he was trying—he wanted me to come there as a young boy, and he wanted to teach me, but I wouldn't stay put long enough for that. I mean, I wanted to look, but I didn't want to get tied down as a young teenage boy. But I liked his style of boat. They called them Lolley boats, and I’m telling you, they were beautiful boats. You may have seen some around that sits way up in the bow. I’ve built hundreds of them since then—all the way from Brownsville up to the South Carolina. [I had a boat] in every state, when I got into it. And he helped me. Well, the first one I built is in the south, and Charles Raffield helped me. And I built it right out here in the yard. [I] just got under the trees and got a steel saw, a hammer, and a square—that’s all I had. No power saw. But he helped me build—that was twenty-eight-foot. That was my boat. I kept it for years, and I was shrimping on it and oystering on it until [nineteen] seventy-one, and my whole life changed. [Snaps fingers] It totally turned around.

What happened?

I got saved. And my wife was already saved. And I'm going to tell you the whole truth now. You can edit any part of it you want to. But you're talking about God putting something in my life that I wanted so bad. I had Charles Raffield and Bud Seymour—you've heard of him? He's dead now, but he built a beautiful boat—and Mr. Joe Lolley was the three of my mentors. I'm talking about I loved—they were boat builders. I didn't fool with just peon people that build one here and there. I wanted to watch them and ask questions.

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How did [people] hear about [your boats], just word of mouth?

Word of mouth. I've never advertised or nothing. I got half of the money for the boat when I started and when the product was finished, they come and got it, and they paid me for the rest. It was just that simple—a simple operation.

How did the price of your boats change over the years?

It changed drastically over the years. [In] the middle [nineteen] seventies—it stayed about the same for about two or three years. Just a few dollars on the plywood and the nails and the glue and the stuff that I had and—and the timbers I framed them with. But then when the gas prices in the [nineteen] seventies, when Jimmy Carter, you know, when he was the President it—everything was like it is now—just shot up real high. Well when gas prices rise everything raised, most—especially building materials and sometimes it would jump twenty-five dollars for a sheet of plywood—marine plywood that was three or a half inch or whatever size—whatever I used. I would figure about—the price that I last did and when I'd go to get it, it would be a hundred dollars more. And it was raising so fast. But I would have absorbed whatever it was because once I told that man that price, I don't care if I lost on it, I was going to build that boat for that price. And I've done that. Because I had—my word had to be my bond, and if that didn't get it through, then—if that failed, then I was out. So that's the way I did it until I could get the prices and call—once I got a telephone that I could call them people to find out what the prices of material was, and then I could kind of level it off. But to start with we didn't have that.

Was it relatively easy to get your hands on materials when you started?

Never had a bit of problem. Never had, because I found some places up in Blountstown that's called—let's see—I can't remember the name of the place. I can't remember much no more. It's hard for me—I can think about it, and then I can forget it. But it was a place in Blountstown. Lattie Williams [?] was the manager of the place and—and he kept me supplied. He told me, he said, “You buy it from me, and you'll never have none like it.” And I could go there and just pick through it and get what I wanted. Or then it got eventually—he got—again, I could call him, and they began to bring it to me.
I had a place in Jacksonville called Jacksonville Fish and Supply. And I found this man had come through here, and he come by to see me, and I told him the same thing. And he said, “I'll supply everything you need from nail to glue to paint, whatever you need.” And so I got set up that way, and I'd just call them and tell them what I needed, and they'd bring it to me.
It changed over the years, but [my] shop never changed looks. Along the ways of doing things, it stayed the same. I never got fancy with nothing. I just stayed—and it still is—that ain't the shop —that's the third shop. One burnt down; two blew down with tornadoes. But that one has stood so far.
Over the thirty-five years, no, I've never had no problem with getting materials. And I always used a Double-A marine [grade] plywood for them. I wouldn't use anything else. I wouldn't substitute no lumber. I made sure that I kept the very best because you could get in trouble trying to get cheaper, trying to do it with a cheaper grade of lumber. You'd get in trouble. And then you was the one that was going to have to—no matter how much you told them it didn't work out right—you was going to have to take the blame for it. So if it went wrong when I did it my way, then I'd take it. I didn't mind it at all. But the boat building was my life for the last thirty-five years, plus the homes that I built for people along the way.

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Did you ever draw out plans before you made a boat, or was it all just kind of by feel and—?

Don't have any plans. I got the plans from the person that wanted the boat, and once they transferred their thoughts in my head, that was it. It wasn't never drawed out. When I built a house I'd just draw a little—a little floor plan and draw it out like that, and the people would tell me what it was, and they'd say, “I want this, and I want that.” And I'd just draw a little piece of—I could draw it on something big as [a piece of notebook paper] and still do it.

So what kind of things would people come in and request that their boats be?

Well, they basically liked the boat [I used as a standard design], but they'd have a different width, different height, different motor—different motor that maybe they'd have a [dog] house on the back or a [dog] house on the front [the dog house is part of an oyster boat that is used to protect the owner from the sun and weather when they’re out on the bay]. And whatever they wanted to change on that boat. Basically, the boat would be the same, they would just change the width of the boat, how much the bottom would be—the V-bottom, you know. Hardly ever I build a flat-bottom anymore after I started that. It was always a V-bottom. And it had—they would want it a little deeper, a little narrower, little less V-bottom in it, wider decks, narrow decks, no decks—just combing [which is like a deck, but small enough to just be an edging].

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So how long would it take you to build one of those boats?

It would take me two weeks.

Is that all?

Two weeks to build one of those boats with the cabin and all on it and get it out. That was the difference in me and Mr. Lolley because he was a perfectionist, and I wanted to get to be strong and durable. He wanted it to be classy—I mean, look good. It didn't look like a workboat. I knew these workboats and I could—he'd take him a long time and use handplanes. I'd use electric planes. I changed the whole thing. And I told him, I said, “How do you get this looking so?” He said, “You'll change it; you'll change in time. You'll slow down, and you'll use hand planes, and you'll begin to use sandpaper around certain areas. Because that way, you'll make it look nicer.” And he stayed with his way of doing, and he kept building boats just like he never—I never slowed him down. Because people was wanting that boat because he was good at it, and he was—right until he got real old, and he couldn't do it anymore. Well I thought I'd never get too old or nothing, but I got there, too. You see, we all get there, and we get there faster than what you can think. Time passes fast when you're doing things you like, and you love it, and you just keep at it and directly you—you forget about time, and you just keep going and directly you—you wear out, and you can't walk no more, and you can't hardly get—you can't keep going like you did and directly you just stop. He said, “I can't do it no more.” It's like building these houses. I'd loved it better than anything. And building a boat.

Do you miss it?

I miss it bad. I miss that, and I miss this bay out here, too—these oystermen. My old brother was up here just the other day, and he's still a salty. He is a rugged looking fellow…He's still oystering the same way. He loves it. He loves it like I love to build. And he goes out there, and he does just like that old man taught him. If it's rough, you don't know it 'til you go out there. A lot of people says it's too rough to go. My daddy says [that] you don't know 'til you get there.

What did [your father] think about you building boats?

He loved it. I built him three. I built him a shrimp boat and put a motor in that thing and fixed that thing with a new diesel engine. He used that thing for years and then he sold it. [Then] he said, “I want another one.” [But] he didn't think I was much, you know, when I was going to get off that water. Because he didn't think you could make it [not working on the water]. But once he seen me build a house and he seen me build a boat and he seen I was making it, it turned then. He'd sit and watch me. I could call him, and he'd come help me do anything. Sometimes you have to just go and do to prove. The proof, I guess, is in the pudding ain't it?

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May I ask you how much that first boat you built—how much it sold for?

I got one hundred eighty-five dollars, material and all for that first one. That's what the man—I didn't know how much it was. He [handed me] two hundred dollars. And I said, “I'll build it for whatever Mr. Lolley does.” He built it for materials plus labor, whatever it is, and we matched it. I said, “What did he tell you?” He said, “He said you would do it for one eighty-five.” If he could do it--he wasn't—but he wasn't going to do it. He just totally refused it. I know now why he totally refused it because it was just a—it was—God has handled that. He stopped him to put him where I was at, and then he started something going out to where it's at. I'm a firm believer there's an ordained thing to be done; there's a divine purpose in things, and when it's set, nothing can turn it, if you're willing to walk with it. And that was one hundred and eighty-five dollars, and when I got through, I don't even remember if I made anything off of it. I don't remember. I really don't. But all I know at the time [is] that [when] I got through with that one, there was another person wanting one. And by the time I got through that one, there was another person wanting one. I seen it was going to be—and it just kept on. I said, “Well I don't know how long this will last, and I'm thinking to put me a shed up here where I can be out of the weather and get me some tools.” And then we did and then my old Pa—well, the building right here, see—well what he said [it] wouldn't work, [so] he began to help me put up things. [Laughs] Oh, yeah. I'll tell you, he was all right. Once he seen that I knew what I was doing.

At the end of your boat-building career, how much was the boat selling for?

That same boat that I built was about one hundred eighty-five dollars? I think that I got twenty-five hundred dollars for that boat. The last one [I made], which was a little boat. It was not one of those twenty-five-foot ones. I was getting around twenty-five hundred dollars for a twenty—I got a hundred dollars for the foot is what it really amounted to when the material and the labor was—really amounted to about a hundred dollars a foot. And if it was twenty-five-foot, I would usually get about twenty-five hundred dollars for materials and labor.

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Well tell me how you, then, with a seventh grade education, approached boat building because there's so much math and—?

Well that's simple…That's the simplest parting the world is the—if I don't—I can't explain it to you. All I know that I can look at something and near about tell you how big it is—how many square feet it is—and I just figured it up in my head. When I get up there like that boat, and then I just figure—I take my tape and a square [Laughs] and it's just so—I can't explain it to you. It's really—I can't tell you how it is, but it's so simple. It's such a picture that you get in your head when somebody is talking to you about a project—about a boat, or about a different thing until directly—your mind—my mind gets it in there until I can know it exactly.
I built a boat—fifty, fifty-two-foot, seventeen-foot wide, and it was probably eight-foot deep. And I’ve got a scale [drawing] of that thing in there that I drawed one night. I took the thing, and I didn’t know if I could do it or not but I—then I got afraid and was going to back out, but the man piled the lumber out there before I could get to him. And that night I got up. One night I couldn’t sleep, and I just got me a bit old piece of paper and a yardstick, and I drew that boat out. I drew it out, and I began to see it, and I got a picture in my mind of it. So I can go over there right now—[it’s] called the Mayme Ellyn. [The owner] put that boat overboard in [nineteen] seventy-seven…Yep, built that fifty-seven-foot boat, and [it’s] got a big GM diesel. It’s a double-rig shrimp boat. And then I built this house. Well, I was young. I was strong, but I was—didn’t realize how—how much I was hurting myself physically because when you’re young and strong, and I always had been, you don’t think—you don’t realize how your body—you need to take care of that and it’s getting—just taking care of you but—but I didn’t.

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So all these different styles of boats you made, were they based on the one style of boat you and just modified them?

One plan. I had one plan. it was either twenty-foot—it would be fifteen-foot or it was thirty-foot. The same plan. It would just go wide and go lower or go higher, whatever.

And then the customer would paint it themselves?

Yeah. It was a custom built boat…I'd give [them] naked wood, and they would paint it. They wouldn't want me to paint it because you ain't—I couldn't paint nothing. That's another thing I hated, to paint. And I didn't paint, and I'd tell them quick, “I don't paint. And I don't even want you to paint it here. You paint it somewhere where I'm not at. And don't fiberglass.”
Now I did let some fiberglass. My brother lives in Texas, and he's got a big forty-some foot shrimp boat, and it's the lowest steel hull. He works out there in Texas [in] Galveston Bay. He oysters with dredges, which you work with tongs here. They let you dredge them when you shrimp. But he was here for a while, and he fiberglassed some of these boats. These people that's wanting these boats and they're wanting fiberglass. And I told him [that] if he would come way out there on that [street] corner, he could fiberglass them, but not in my shop because I hate that stuff—nasty. It gets on you, and you can't get it off. But he fiberglassed them boats, and there's some of them still going today—big old motors on them.

Soo on average, how long do you think your boats last? That one shrimp boat you're talking about is thirty years—?

That shrimp boat is—I built—he put that boat overboard in [nineteen] seventy-seven, I believe. And now, he takes care of it. It's according to the person, how well he maintains that boat. If they just use it and get another one—a lot of people do that like automobiles. They just use it until it ain't [good] no more, and they just dump it—trash it. But a lot of people do that, but there's some—they'll last right on and on. As long as you maintain that wood boat, keep it clean inside, keep the bottom paint on it like it should be, keep—I say I use Coppertox. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but it's a wood preserver…In fact, my grandson just used some of that in that boat out there today. You take the floor out and clean it out and you fix it, seal it with that stuff about twice a year, and it will last forever.

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So how does it make you feel that your handy work is spread all over the [Gulf] coast?

It makes me feel good, you know. It makes you feel good that people will come back to you. That's the good thing—that you've got—you've done something and they could use it, and if they needed something again, they'd come back. It's a mixture of things. You can build a good product, but if you don't stand behind what you've got and do according to your word, then you won't get to build no more for that person. It's just like buying a car. If they don't service that car like they say, then you'll say, “Oh, I'm not going back there. I'll find me another dealer someplace better than that.” There ain't much of that no more in this world.

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Did you have any kind of signature on your boats like a way you would sign them with a design of nails or a—?

Well, yeah. I used stainless steel nails, ring shank—I'll show you some…And I used—when I started out I used bronze nails like Mr. Lolley, and that's all he ever used. He never changed from bronze. I did. I changed.

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Well, what do you miss most about boat building?

What I miss most? I know that it's an important thing to keep it going, and I know that the people are going to use boats as long as this world stands. What's changing with the boat is, now it's changing from commercial to pleasure. From commercial being in town—it's a tourist town [now]. And boats—they like to look at boats. And just like you asked the question, if I wanted to, I could go down on that beach and take a tour [group], and all I'd have to do is stand there with a mic—a speaker in my hands and haul people up and down—in between Coon Barge and all over the East Hole and over there at Goose Island and over yonder at Nick’s Hole [?], all up and down. They’d be knowing all about the place. See, I know every place there is. I know what the name of that—Shell Point, Goose Island, Goose Island Slew, down yonder at Marsh Island, East Pass, the old hotel that Pop Hamm had built over here—they built over there on [St. George] island back here—and the Pierces that own that—that St. Vincent—and then the Wilson’s that used to own—used to own St. George Island. See, I started the building on that island when the ferry boat was going over there. The boat building is the oldest—one of the oldest trades there is. And people are fascinated with boats—different boats, every class. And I love boats. And I love boats, and I love to look at them. I don't care who built them. And I don't care if it's fiberglass or if it's steel or if it's metal, aluminum, or wood, I love boats. I love to see them. They're beautiful things. Just a house and a boat is one of the prettiest things that I know. When I drive down this road or go to that beach down on that bay, and I see that thing sitting there afloat, [or] I go by the house, and I see somebody living in that house with the doors open or the lights on in that thing, it gives me—I feel good.

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Well do you have any other thoughts about boat building that I haven't asked you?

Other than that it's just been good to me. I mean it was a blessing to have—and to have a job right here in your yard, where when you walk right in that door at lunchtime and—and it's a blessing to put them out there and see people working with them…When they was out there and crabbing and things and catching those roe mullet back when they'd let them do it. I don't know if they do now or not—all in Louisiana, but it's just—just gives you a sense of pride that you was a part of that part of history and that time and to be—it's something that's dying. It really is. I hate to see it, but I guess there will always be wood boats and people that will do it and people that will want them, but I guess the fiberglass and the metal has about took over that because they look more fancy and all but—.

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Well, what do you miss most about boat building?

What I miss most? I know that it's an important thing to keep it going, and I know that the people are going to use boats as long as this world stands. What's changing with the boat is, now it's changing from commercial to pleasure. From commercial being in town—it's a tourist town [now]. And boats—they like to look at boats. And just like you asked the question, if I wanted to, I could go down on that beach and take a tour [group], and all I'd have to do is stand there with a mic—a speaker in my hands and haul people up and down—in between Coon Barge and all over the East Hole and over there at Goose Island and over yonder at Nick’s Hole [?], all up and down. They’d be knowing all about the place. See, I know every place there is. I know what the name of that—Shell Point, Goose Island, Goose Island Slew, down yonder at Marsh Island, East Pass, the old hotel that Pop Hamm had built over here—they built over there on [St. George] island back here—and the Pierces that own that—that St. Vincent—and then the Wilson’s that used to own—used to own St. George Island. See, I started the building on that island when the ferry boat was going over there. The boat building is the oldest—one of the oldest trades there is. And people are fascinated with boats—different boats, every class. And I love boats. And I love boats, and I love to look at them. I don't care who built them. And I don't care if it's fiberglass or if it's steel or if it's metal, aluminum, or wood, I love boats. I love to see them. They're beautiful things. Just a house and a boat is one of the prettiest things that I know. When I drive down this road or go to that beach down on that bay, and I see that thing sitting there afloat, [or] I go by the house, and I see somebody living in that house with the doors open or the lights on in that thing, it gives me—I feel good.

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