While tidying up Tidings, and ourselves, we’re startled by a husband and wife scuba diver team (whose metier is scrubbing the bottoms of boats in the harbor). I thought they were manatees. Doug tells a story about a scuba diver who repaired his centerboard pennant. He was befriended by manatees. So friendly, in fact, Doug had to distract them while the diver worked or they would muzzle their way into everything he was doing.
Recomposed and presentable, we walk across the tracks to the historic commercial district of Fernandina Beach, the heirloom brooch pinned to the bodice of Amelia Island.
The oldest bar in Florida was astutely built within easy stumbling distance of the harbor, conveniently located on the first block. When built in the late 1800s, it was billed as “The Captain’s Club” to be a bit more upscale than the sort of place you’d go to get in a fight.
It was intended to be the first place where a thirsty sailor, just off the boat, could walk in and get a drink. The bar is still open, so that’s exactly what we do.
Opened in 1903, the Palace Saloon served well-heeled swells like the Rockefllers and Carnegies, who motored over from Cumberland Island in magnificent Gilded Age 100+ foot steam yachts, festooned with crystal and silver and linen and servants.
Well, actually we abstain from that drink for now. This old saloon by the water is where we meet Peggy, the official Folklorist Emeritus for the state of Florida. A friend of ours has extended family on Amelia Island. When he saw our float plan he told us to contact them when we got close. Peggy and Doug adopt us immediately, offer to take us to dinner and to their house after to do laundry. Splendid!
Dinner reservations are an hour off, so we take a walking tour of the town with Peggy as our guide. It’s a nice town with a casual vibe. People live and work here. Amelia is far enough from Disneyworld that it hasn’t been tarted up into a theme park. Compared to St. Augustine, it feels a lot less like a tourist carnival.
And let me tell you, if you want to hear some great stories, spend an evening with a folklorist. Peggy’s entire career was collecting and preserving the kinds of stories that don’t make it into books.
We heard, for example, that the modern US shrimping industry was started here on Amelia Island over 100 years ago. That most of the nets used across the country were made by one family, by hand, for 14 generations. And they are still in business. Because of baseball?
Peggy’s husband, also named Doug (Leatherbury), is holding our table, so we head back. We have a great seafood dinner on the water at The Salty Pelican.
Over dinner we get more details about the shrimp nets. The Burbank family started out making cast nets thrown from rowboats, which is how shrimp were caught up until 1915. Local fishermen figured they could do better by hauling a bigger net behind bigger boats. The Burbanks designed and made nets that would do this, weaving and tying them by hand with local skilled craftsmen, and the whole industry took off. At one time there were 200 trawlers working out of Fernandina Beach. Burbank nets were so well made they were used wherever shrimp were caught, from Texas to Virginia and beyond.
Decades later, farm raised shrimp flooded the market from overseas, making wild caught local shrimp unprofitable, eventually putting all but a few local shrimpers out of business. The Burbanks saw this coming. One of the sons in the family was a minor league baseball player, and one day he realized their nets could be used to protect crowds behind home plate, but be invisible to the TV cameras. So their customer base expanded to Major League Baseball, and from there to nets for football field goals, soccer, etc.. The same family is still making both types of nets today, shrimp and sports.
After dinner we head to their house to do laundry. While our shirts and towels tumble dry, we spend a couple of hours hearing more great stories. In her youth, Peggy played in a band with Pete Seeger, and was a long time family friend. Even sailed on his sloop, The Clearwater, up on the Hudson River.
Eventually she was able to save decades of family films made during his lifetime, and preserved them in the National Archives in a cave in the mountains near Culpeper, Virginia. Which is funny, because I actually know someone on staff there in that cave.
When she was still in school and finishing her thesis, she and Doug moved to a remote fishing village in Newfoundland. The idea was to research and record the work songs of the Grand Banks fishermen there. They were welcomed by the small community, and a captain offered to take Peggy out on one of their fishing trips for cod.
When she arrived at the dock, an earnest college girl from the big city, they gave her a full set of black oilskins, complete with Gorton’s Fisherman Sou’Wester hat. She looked up at the clear sky, confused, “Why do I need this? Are they making fun of me?”, but dutifully donned it anyway. (She’s petite, so I have to chuckle at the image – it must have swallowed her whole.)
Out on the cold Atlantic, the purse boats made a set. These are large open boats that pay out the net in a big loop. Then the crews haul in the net by hand from both ends. They sing to keep time while they work and pull in unison. “This is great!” she thought.
As the belly of the net approached, full of wriggling fish, closer and closer, Peggy finally realized why she was fitted out in full rain gear. With a few more tugs, the fish began spilling into the boat where she and the crew stood. And they kept coming until she was neck deep in squirming cod.
And she loved it.
Many years later, long after they left Newfoundland, she got a phone call from the village mayor. One of the old residents had died, and the village decided she and Doug should have his house. They’ve gone back every year in summers, fixing up the place, which has a spray-in-your-face view of the Atlantic from a bump of bare rock. Doug was a superintendent with the National Park Service, so knew all about basic construction and repairs, which apparently has come in very handy. They say it’s an ongoing project to make it livable, ongoing for decades, and it takes days just to get there, but they look forward to it every year.
As we prepare to leave, I tell Peggy I once worked in a photo lab for an older man who was a folklorist in Appalachia when he was fresh out of the army. His job, through a government WPA grant, was to wander the hills and hollers of the mountains with a tape recorder, capturing folk tales and folkways of the generation that lived through The Great Depression. In particular the families losing their homesteads to the new National Parks: Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah. After closing, he would stop by and tell me all these fantastic tales. She asked his name, which I still remember: Darcy. “Oh I know Darcy!” The small world of folklorists is rather well connected.
Back at the docks, it’s getting late. We decide it’s finally time to stop for a nightcap and get that drink at the Palace Saloon. The bar is not crowded. There’s someone with a guitar singing a bit too loudly for the space. It’s lively, but no longer serving Rockefellers and Carnegies. Now and then a group of well-heeled tourists wander in, take a quick look around and scurry out. Most of the patrons are locals, with a couple of yacht crews mingling in their matching livery. But it suits us just fine. The hand painted murals over the table add a sort of gothic “Picture of Dorian Gray” ambiance that appeals to me, like something straight out of Faulkner. I bet on a Saturday night in the dead of winter it gets pretty exotic.
According to the bartender, the original owner bought up a whole warehouse of liquor just before Prohibition kicked in. That savvy investment made this bar the last place in the state to sell alcohol before it was outlawed. People from several states lined up around the block to stock up. That warehouse full of outlawed liquor? It didn’t go to waste, not poured out into the harbor. Speakeasies and private clubs kept the party going in this little town throughout Prohibition.
The spigot was finally opened on alcohol to dull the pain of the deepest part the Depression, and to raise much needed revenue by taxing it. When Roosevelt signed the bill that ended Prohibition, he remarked, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.” And so it was.
We head out into the street and back toward the boat. The pulp mill south of town is lit up like an industrial version of Disney’s Cinderella Castle, or Oz. Both mills, north and south of town, were built in the late 1930s. Like alcohol, they helped ease the Depression here, and are still going strong, just like the Palace Saloon.
A bit of video of our walk through town: