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.

Born in 1942, Charles Thompson spent thirty-plus years as a shrimper. In the 1980s he began making his own nets. Soon, though, Charles could see that the shrimp business was changing. In 1998 he sold off his last shrimp boat. Not wanting to sit idle, he began making nets and repairing nets for the shrimpers in the area. At that time, other net shops in Franklin County were closing. A local net maker by the name of James Copeland passed his skills and his patterns on to Charles. Soon Charles had a new demand for his handiwork. Today Thompson’s Net Shop is one of the last of its kind. Some shrimpers make and repair their own nets, and some might order theirs from a manufacturer. But the shrimp nets that Charles and his friend James Beckton make are different. They are each custom made and hand-finished for their friends and neighbors who still work the bay.

Listen to this 4-minute audio clip of Charles Thompson talking about how he got into the net-making business, and how he learned to make a net.
[Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

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: Charles Thompson, Thompson’s Net Shop
Date: January 11, 2006
Location: Thompson’s Net Shop – Apalachicola, FL
Interviewer: Amy Evans

Amy Evans:  This is Amy Evans on Wednesday January 11, 2006. I'm in Apalachicola, Florida, with Mr. Charles Thompson at his home and net shop here. He's a net maker. Mr. Thompson, would you mind saying your name and your birthday for the record please?

Charles Thompson:  My name is Charles Thompson, and I was born May 8th 1942.

So tell me how you got into the net making business.

Well, I started shrimping probably in the late [nineteen] sixties. I bought my first boat in 1972. I've owned three large boats in my time for over about a thirty-year period. And back in 1998 we decided to—well, let me say that I started making my own nets, probably in the late [nineteen] eighties there somewhere, and I had my little shop, and then I wanted to kind of semi-retire. And I could see what was happening to the shrimp business, so I sold my last boat in 1998, and I started just doing a little net repair and making a few nets for the guys around [Apalachicola]. And it seemed like the Golden's [Golden’s Net Shop] over in Eastpoint was kind of fading out, and so they wanted me to expand a little. So we have, and it's—and they finally went out, and it turned out to, you know, to work us pretty hard. We don't do it full-time. [I] semi-retired a few years ago and—and the guy that works with me, James Beckton, he's in about the same shape I am, just kind of semi-retired. Some weeks we have a full week. Others we don't. And sometimes we have to take a week or so off, you know, and that sort of thing. But it's been good. We started in 1998, and now we're the only net shop around, and we make a good many of the nets. I won't say we make all of them because a lot of the guys make their own nets. They maybe buy the webbing from me or something and make their own nets. But we do make quite a few.

How did you learn to make a net?

Just on the job training, so to speak. And a guy—a good friend of mine that was in the net shop business here years ago back, when I bought my first boat, back when I started shrimping, a fellow by the name of James Copeland had a big net shop downtown, and we got to be real good friends. And he made all my nets at that time and the people that I worked for when I first started it, and he made all of their nets. He was about the only one around at the time here, but he was a real big net shop. But anyway, he give me a lot of the patterns and helped me out a lot. And then here lately, with the bay shrimping all—all my shrimping was big boat Gulf [of Mexico] work. And then when I started this, a lot of the [Apalachicola] bay shrimpers—we had to make smaller nets, and we put all of our heads together, and I'd listen to them [about] what would work and take my experience and put it together and we—we'd come up with something that seems to be doing a real good job. And we pretty much just stayed with the same pattern. We build all size nets from twelve-foot, ten-foot try-nets on up to fifty, sixty-foot nets for big boats, you know. And everything in between. Whatever size they want, we have a formula. James Copeland give me that formula that he had for many, many years, and I can take it with that formula and a calculator and figure out the size net I want and—and it works out real good. And the boys wanted me to kindly expand and put a few net supplies in so we do. We sell a little rope, twine, shackles, supplies for the boats—whatever they need. And if they need cable, we don't stock the cable. We're just a little backyard you can see—a little backyard business and—and we don't stock a lot of—of product because we don't have room, for one thing. And we didn't want to get in that big because, like I say I, am kind of semi-retired. But we do, if they need some cable or shrimp doors, I have a set of shrimp doors sitting around there now that I ordered for a guy. But we can order most anything the guys need or want. It might take us a couple days to get it but—but that's kind of the way it's happened.

What is a shrimp door?

Well call them doors, and where that came from I have no idea. But it's what spreads the nets. It's two of them. They're made out of aluminum and wood, and they've got a big iron plate on the bottom of it that drags on the bottom, and the cable comes off of the boat—off of the winch on the boat—hooks to those doors, we call them, and that's what spreads the nets.

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Do you make cast nets also?

We do not. Now, I'm acquainted with a guy up in White City that I can get cast nets from. He makes them. And I have sold one or two but mostly shrimp nets—just the shrimp nets and such.

Why is that? Are they different enough to make that you don't want to fool with them or—?

Yeah. Most of the cast nets are made out of the mono-filament, the plastic webbing, and I just never did get into that, you know. And I wasn't a mullet fisherman, and I never did get into the cast net, so we just kind of stuck with the shrimp nets. And that gives me all I want to do and can do.

Can you describe the process of making a net and what materials you use and what it entails?

We buy the material on bales. They make it with a machine. It's a nylon material and this is—what we're looking at here is a plastic, so to speak, webbing that we're making some out of now. But we buy that webbing already put together on bales, and then, like I said take the patterns that we have, or either we come up with a pattern and then we just—we cut net out, and the tapers on the side, top and bottom, and then we just sew it together. It's just a process.

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Now what all information goes on the pattern?

That's all patterns for different—I try to for—if I make a net for an individual, I try to put—make the net and put their name on it where I can come back, you know. If they come back two years from now and want another net just like that then I got their pattern, see. Well see this is the top. This is how I'd cut the top out and that's the—the tapers and the—you know—and the way I'd cut the top out. This is the weighing panel and the same way with the bottom. This is the bottom and then those two pieces will go together. It'll sew together right down these seams. This piece will be on the bottom and this piece will be on the top, and it'll be a seam right down—sew them together.

On the sides, okay.

On both sides. That's a two-seam net. Now we make four-seam nets, a lot of four-seam. Four-seams, which has a winged panel. See, this is a little bit different. This is what they call a bib-net; it's got the bib for the white shrimp. But it's what they call a four-seam net, and it's still got the top and the bottom, but this winged panel sits in it, you know. This we’ll sew to this winged panel, and then the bottom, we’ll sew in it. It gets up higher in the water, you know—so basically the idea for that.

Are there patterns that you've developed in the years of working and do the customers that you've been working for are they—?

Yes. Yes, and then like I said earlier, James Copeland helped me get started years and years ago and that—and I'm sure he had help to get started. It's just something that's passed down, you know, and I'd do the same thing for anybody. I'll show you that formula that I have here. He give me that formula years and years ago, and you can take the calculator and put all this in there and come up with—what you're going to hang and that sort of thing. You've got to know that and all, but you can take the calculator and take that formula and make—figure out any size net you want. But he give me that, and I got another copy of it in the house, filed and put in the safe. I don't want to lose that you know. And—but it's been a lot of help.

Are there any patterns or anything that you've just committed to memory—you've made so many times?

Yeah, a lot of it we can do by memory. That's true about that but just—especially, if you're building the same net over and over again, you know, you can do that. But we do try to refer to the patterns and make sure because it's a lot of work in putting one of them together, so you don't want—you want the least amount of mistakes.

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And this [plastic needle-shaped] tool you have in your hand, would you call it?

This is what we call a sewing needle, yeah, that we sew them together [with]. We are fixing what we call the salvage around that line there, and that's what hangs it on the line. We have several different size needles according to what size webbing we're sewing. But this, like I say, I was fixing to put the salvage around the line—around the top of the net, and then we hang it on combination cable. I have some over in the warehouse over there, but it's kind of—it's got steel cable in it, and we hang some on rope on a Poly-Dac rope. But a lot of the bigger boats prefer the combination cable. It's a little tougher, you know, and don't break as easy and don't stretch. So it's just a little process. It's kindly interesting, but it's just all in a day's work. [Laughs]

How long does it take you to put a net together?

According to what size it is— these are twenty-fives [twenty-five foot net] here that we're making, and we're making four of them for a guy. By myself if I—if that's all I do, I can probably make one of those nets easily in a day. But [James Beckton] and I work together, and most of the time he puts them together in there, and I'll hang them on the line. I'm just helping him. I'm getting the salvage put on this last one, and then I'll start hanging here in a little while. We've just got a little process that we go through, but he and I together can probably make two or so a day, maybe. Possibly three, if we work hard. Of course, now the bigger the net gets, the longer it takes, you know. There's a lot more webbing and that sort of thing. One of the bigger nets like, for instance, like one of the fifty-foot nets, I would say it would take probably about two days to put one of those together for us. Now there's a lot of people that's a lot faster than I am, you know, and probably could do it quicker, but that's about the way it takes us, you know.

What is the cost of some of these nets?

This particular net here, just the net, this is not including the TED [Turtle Excluder Device] and the bag that has to be put on them now, but just the net is around three hundred and twenty-five dollars. And then the TED put in webbing will run about two twenty-five [dollars], and then the bag is about ninety-five [dollars].

And this is like a twenty-five-foot net, you said?

This is like a twenty-five, yeah. One of the fifty—just to average size—but around a fifty-foot net would run probably around eight [hundred and] fifty [dollars]. And then the TED probably—it's a bigger TED and put in webbing, it's probably around—close to three hundred [dollars], and then the bag is about two [hundred and] fifty [dollars]. So add that up. You're getting a lot of money and a lot of the boats—well, just about all of the boats [in] this day in time, the big boats I'm speaking about, pull four [nets] at the time. So if you get like probably fifteen hundred dollars per net, by the time you get the TED and the bag and chafing gear and all and—and you got two on each side, see you got three thousand dollars on each side of the boat [in] just nets, besides the cable they have to have. It's a lot of expense to it. I was in it a long time, and it's changed real fast. I'm glad I got out of it when I did because with the regulations, it's so many regulations now and they're—some of them good. I'm not, you know, downing that, but these turtle excluders, these TED was—it liked to put us all out. It was very detrimental to us.

[A TED] is the turtle shoot [built into] in the nets. And do you build that in or is that something different?

No. Yeah, we have to put it in. It's metal. I got some in some nets laying down over there, and I got some in the warehouse over there that's not in webbing. I could show you one of those, if you'd like. But it's a metal device that goes in the net, and it goes in the net on an angle, and it's a big hole in the bottom with a flap over it, and the turtle comes down and hits it and goes out. In fact, I've even got two—what they call turtle nets laying over there. They're big nets—those big piles of webbing there—those are turtle nets for a guy in Panama City [Florida]…[TEDs are] a lot of expense. We've spent billions and billions of dollars trying to save the turtle.

Well you were a shrimper before you got out of the business. Were you coming across a lot of turtles?

Very few. Very few. The shrimpers, in my opinion, was not the problem. They might have been a little bit of it, but I would say the amount of turtles that I've caught I probably could count on two hands. It might have been the location where I was working, you know. I don't know. But [I] killed very few. I would say less than five in my career in the thirty years that I shrimped. But you know, they said the shrimpers were a lot to do with it. I think a lot of it was the development and stuff on the beaches. And that's my opinion, you know, but—but anyway they're here, and I think they're here to stay. So we had to adapt to them, and the guys [who are shrimping] have [adapted].

When you got out of the business, was it something you say that you saw where shrimping was going. Was it the regulations or what was going on in the bay?

That, and it had gotten to where I had a big boat—the last one I had was an eighty-foot steel boat, and it had to go where the shrimp were, and I had been off of the boat and had—I had—like I say, I had three at one time. But I had guys operating the boats for me—Captains, you know—and it got to where it was hard to get good men that would take care of your equipment. Because the good men that was interested in it had their own boats and had worked up and got their own boat. And it got to the point where I didn't want to get back on the boat and fight it like I had for thirty years. I was getting to where I wanted to be home and been away an awful lot of my life, and my wife raised our children. And so—and like I say, it got to where it was—it got down to where you—you was making wages anyway, and so I just decided to sell out and semi-retire and—and just do this as a kindly supplement. We do have a mini-warehouse business over there that supplements [our income] too, and it's been real good for us. So that was the biggest reason I got out of it. I just didn't want to stay on the boat and fight it like I had for so many years and stay home for a while. And so it's worked out real good for us and we—we're glad we did that—not sorry of it.

Were you born here in Apalachicola?

I was actually born in Port St. Joe about twenty-five miles west of here. But I've been in Apalachicola all my life. I think my daddy worked at the St. Joe Paper Company over there at the time, I believe, and I was actually born over there. But my grand-daddy had a seafood business down on the beach, and my dad and my mom stayed over here [in Apalachicola] most of the time. And then eventually we just moved over about a year after I was born, and I've been here ever since.

Can you talk a little bit about growing up in this area and what it was like?

It's been great. Of course, we had problems just like everybody else, but the young people—I'm glad I'm not a teenager or I don't have teenagers [Laughs] in this day and time with all they're confronted with but it was good. It was real good. Like I say, my family has been in the seafood business for years and years, ever since I can remember. My grand-daddy before my dad and my dad at one time had—he had crab houses and oyster houses. He never did get into shrimp that much, but he had three oyster houses at one time where they—the catchers would go out and catch oysters and they processed them, you know and—and so—and also a crab house. He had a crab house at one time when I was coming up as a boy.

Are any of your [three sons] in the area working [in the industry]?

No. Along about the time the seafood—that was one reason I had the multiple boats. When the boys come up and was getting out of school I thought I had to have something for them to do, and so we kind of stuck our neck out and got other boats. But along about the time the TED [came around] and then they were getting married and things like that and didn't want to shrimp and didn't want to stay gone and so they—they got jobs…So I'm proud of all my boys, I sure am.

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What do you see as the future of this area and the industry?

I'm afraid with the tourism—that's not bad—but I can see the seafood industry going out. One thing in my opinion—now this is strictly an opinion—but I believe a lot of it is to do with imports. A lot of it is to do with environmental, you know, and we're all environmentalists to a point, you know, but with the regulations and—and first, one thing and the other. But with the shrimping most especially…the imports is killing the guys. And then this high cost of fuel. In the last year, the past two years, but more so in the last year, fuel has doubled and tripled. When I sold my boats in 1998, I was paying anywhere from between sixty and seventy cents a gallon for my fuel that I was burning. And I talked to a guy yesterday and they pay them two [dollars and] ten [cents] a gallon for it now. And see, those boats—my boat, the last one I had, burned about eighteen gallons an hour, and some of them burn more than that. See, so you're talking about—when you're talking about two dollars a gallon for fuel, you're talking about it costing thirty-six dollars an hour just operate that engine. You know so—and then when the price of shrimp is beat down with the imports, they can't get paid the price that the shrimp are worth. They're catching shrimp cheaper today than I caught them twenty years ago. I got more money for my shrimp twenty years ago than they're getting today for them—the catchers I'm talking about. I don't know what the people that eats them in the restaurants are still paying for them for sure. But that's the way I see it, you know.

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Well what do you think about—when we were talking about Corky [Richards] up the road, who makes the oyster tongs, and you're making these nets, and y’all seem to be the last two in the area who are still doing that kind of thing, making those tools. What's going to happen when y’all completely retire?

Good question. And the guys have told me they—because I've threatened [Laughs]—putting it down, but they don't want me to because of that, and there's nobody else around to do it. But I guess somebody will. If it lasts that long, you know. But like I say, in the last four or five years I can see where it's went down hill quite a bit, so I don't know. Maybe I'll last as long as it does, I hope, you know. I don't want to just completely quit. I enjoy what I do, you know. Like I say, we just do it part-time and sometimes we have a full week. Sometimes we don't but that's okay and—but if we have something to do, we try to do it and, every once in a while we'll just take off.

If you weren't making nets, is there some way that shrimpers could order them from somewhere else? Is there a manufacturer?

Yeah, there is another net shop. I know there's one in Jacksonville there and—and there's net shops out in Alabama—Gulf Shores—there's one in Gulf Shores. I'm the only one in this area. Now, it would cost them you know more money and that sort of thing to get them made and shipped and first one thing and the other, but it is nice to have a—somebody locally and—and supplies is another big thing for them. Like I said, the doors and the cable and if they—and paint. I got a little bit of paint in there but I order for them whatever they need in the way of marine [equipment]. There is hardware stores here, but in the way of marine equipment, you know—

With all the hand work that you do on the nets, though, is it something that—this can't be manufactured, really.

Yeah, it has—well, as far as I know. Yeah, it has to be done by hand, I would think. That particular part. But now all the webbing, like I say, it's made with a machine on a bale, you know, put on bales.

Do you know what the guys were using and where they got them when it was not this synthetic material—the old-timers?

Really, I don't. Back when I was a boy I can remember but it had—still had to be made with a machine, I suppose. A lot of it's imported now. Like this webbing here, it come from Taiwan. We get some webbing made in China. We get webbing made in Mexico…and they do make some here in the United States, but not a lot, I don't think. But back when I was a boy when I first started shrimping, a lot of the guys—small boats would make them with what they called poggie [poh-gee] webbing from the poggie fishing, you know, out there. They would use their nets until they couldn't use them anymore, and then they'd take the webbing and make them a net out of it.

What about the colors of webbing around here? Does that signify anything?

This—like this is a poly-webbing. We don't have to dip that. We run the white webbing—you can see a little bit of it scattered over the white—that don't have a dip in it, and that's a nylon, and we make the net hanging on the line, and then we put it in that tank. It's comes in those drums. It's a vinyl dip—they just call it net dip, but it's a type of vinyl. It's green—turns it green. You see the nets on the pole over there? Those nets were originally white, and we run them through that [dip]. It's a protective coating that we put on the webbing after we put them together, and it just seals everything together.

Has that always been part of the process?

Years ago, back when my daddy was doing it, and James in here, he said they used coal tar. They used tar and melted it—made it hot and dipped their nets in it. You know, this came out—I'm going to say this [net dip product] has been out probably around twenty-five years or so. It might even be longer than that. But it works out real good.

And that pulley system that you have hanging in there is that something that kind of agitates it while it's in there?

No, we don't agitate it. We just shove it down in and let it soak, you know, so to speak, and then pick it up and let it all drain—everything, it will drain—drain back in the tank, and then we just jack them up on those poles over there and let it dry.

How long does it take to dry?

Usually [in] twelve hours [it will be dry] to [the] touch. But it'll cure and get stiff and harder within probably twenty-four to forty-eight hours or so. It needs—it really needs to dry a couple days, you know, before they use it. A lot of times, if they're in a hurry, they don't wait that long, but it does a better job, you know. But like I say, it just makes the webbing stiff, makes it produce better, and then it protects the webbing—puts a protective coating on it and it protects the webbing, you know. It don't tear as easy and that sort of thing. And then if they do tear them up, we do net repair, too. Some of those nets over there—you see a pile over there, some of them we've got to repair and some of them we've already repaired. If they get on a rock or a wreck or something and tear one up, they bring it to us and we—sometimes we have to set new webbing in or—or just sew it back together and—and a lot of times we'll re-hang them. After about a year, we'll re-hang them on the line with new twine and then do the same process again, re-dip them and it makes them tough again.

How long will someone use a net counting repairs and the re-dipping and—?

Some of them use them longer than they should because of money, really, you know. But generally, when I had my boats and the guy that I worked with before, we usually got a new set of nets pretty much every year. But it's—it's according to how much you drag them, what kind of treatment like—if you catch a lot of—working a bad bottom a lot and catch a lot of rocks and wrecks and tear them up a lot, you know, it depends. It depends on how you treat them and how much you drag them, so to speak, in the water. Some people that don't work year-round, their nets will last longer than the other guy, you know, of course.

What about the floater parts? I'm sure there's a name for those. Do you include those too?

Yes, in fact, these are some small ones, but we put them on the line. These are some of the things we slide on the rope, you know, and that's what we call floats. And then the bottom line is what we call the chain line. They'll put chain on them—loops of chain to hold the bottom line down, and these will float the top line up, and then the doors are pulling them through the water. And then, of course, we have mud rollers that a lot of people put them on [a football-shaped plastic device]. If they work out to the west and work in the mud, they put these on the—the bottom line along with the chain and this will roll on the bottom and it will keep it from—the net bogging in the mud. You know, a lot of people out west use those, you know because it's mud.

And so the mud rollers, they would request that, and it's not something automatic?

Yes, that's not automatic. And a lot of the guys in this area back to the east and down toward Key West and all of it, a lot of them don't pull the rollers because it's a hard bottom, you know, and they don't need them.

Can you explain to me this board you have nailed to this tent over here with it nailed on top? [A length of wood, about a foot high and eight feet long, is situated against one wall of the outdoor tent, where Mr. Thompson works. It’s about waist-height and has a series of nails along the top edge.]

That is—you can see the net hanging on it? We just have those nails in it, and that's where we hang our webbing for the repairs and sewing the nets. [James] has got one inside the building there that—it's—makes it just about right to, you know. I would go over there and show you but you couldn't hear me. We just use that to hang the webbing onto to do our thing.

You can show me and we can just kind of narrate. I'd like to see you do that.

All right. Well, like I said earlier, this is—what I'm doing now is putting—just fixing to start to put—see how that—this webbing here we cut it, you see, and it's got that knot there. And this is going to be hung on the line, so what we try to do is double that and secure that knot, so to speak.

Okay, is there a name of that kind of stitching that you're doing?

No, I don't suppose. I just call it sewing, but like—there is—this is what we call the salvage. Now when I hang that on the lines, see, I'll go through that with a piece of twine and pick up three of those notches, and it will be hung to a rope that will be up here, you know.

I have an appreciation for color, [Laughs] so this may be a silly question, but the green netting and then the blue string that you're—the nylon string that you're sewing with is that significant at all or—?

No, no, really this is what we call a sapphire twine, and normally I would probably use a poly-twine on that, but I don't have any. But this is a new type twine and webbing that has come in from India. It's a lot tougher webbing. It—with the [Iraq] War and everything it got to where we couldn't get what they called the Spectra webbing that was used in a lot of the material that makes that webbing in the armor. The guys—the vests and all, so they—they got to wear. They took that off the market where we couldn't get this Spectra webbing, and it's been hard to get. So they come up with this Sapphire. It's a tough webbing; it's better than this plastic. It's more expensive and better than the nylon. But like I say, it's more expensive, but it's not as expensive as the Spectra webbing that we were getting. That was quite expensive really. But normally this is a type of plastic, but we just—and the reason why I'm using that rather than nylon is because I'm not—I won't dip this webbing, and so I'm using this type of twine. Now a nylon net, I would sew it with nylon twine, which is white, un-dipped twine. We put it together and then just dip it all at one time, you know, and that kind of ties them all together.

And so if it's green, you know it's been dipped? You know it's covered?

Yeah, generally because all the webbing—generally the webbing is—is white, the nylon webbing is white, but—but now the sapphire webbing over here, this is—see this is—see you don't have to dip that either and it's a braided—it's a real strong webbing. But it's—it's only been on the market a couple years. And—but it's working out real good; it's tough.

Is the green easy to see in the water or is [it] easy to see your catch in the water?

Not necessarily, no. A lot of the guys that—one thing they use the Poly for is because of the—coming back to the net shop so often, like I say, you don't have to dip it, and they can do their own work on the boat a lot of times and—and don't have to come back and forth to the net shop. The same way with this. And—and it's light—it's a light lighter. It sheds jelly. They catch—a lot of time they'll catch jellies—those jelly balls and stuff that and the grass—the grass shakes out of it a lot easier and things like that. But so different folks have different strokes or different strokes for different folks. It's just what people get used to and what they want to pull, you know.

And then the bags that you sell them with are those made out of the nylon, too?

Nylon—we can get it out of this Poly also. You can make Poly bags and—and that don't have to be dipped either but we make—the majority of the bags that we make for the—especially the bigger guys use nylon bags, you know and it's a lot heavier—heavier mash. I thought I'd have some of it laying here. This is just a scrap pile; we save all our scrap stuff because you never know what you're going to need.

So can you make bags out of this and other things?

No, this is just scrap. Little pieces that we've cut off.

Will you use them in repairs?

Yes, some of it we do use and that's the biggest reason we keep it. I need to go through it and thin it out but that's probably five years of [Laughs] just scrap stuff—saving it and just—if you get rid of it, then you'll need it, so we just hang onto a certain amount of it.

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How long have [you had your home and your net shop] right here?

We bought this place in 1978 and moved out here. We lived over on the highway right close to where the IGA [Supermarket] is right now. We lived right in that area for many years, and my wife's family lived over there in that area also. And we got the chance to buy this in 1978 and we did.

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Well is there anything that I haven't asked you about the net business that I might need to know or wouldn't know to ask that you can share?

I can't think of anything. Like I say it's just a—it's just a way to make a living. And the guys that's catching the shrimp have to have nets and we're—we just do a service, and they bring the business to me, so I make a little money off of that. And they take the nets and make a living with them, and so it's just a process of helping on another, I suppose, you know. And we just—like I said, just a small operation. We got it started here right in the backyard years ago making my own nets and then just kind of expanded it build nets for other—other people. And I don't know how long we'll be here. We'll just wait and see I guess, you know. We don't have any immediate plan to—to get out unless the place was to sell. If it was to sell, then we would be gone, you know. We'd get out of it.

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