Shell collecting and an introduction to the
island
Many people who lived on the island were shell
collectors. We were fortunate to have many shells
wash up after a storm ... I suppose they still do. My
mom would head for the beach after a blow. Of
course there were common shells, but you would
look for one that was bigger, prettier and better
formed than one you had. There were some shells
that were scarcer and didn’t wash up very often, and
my mom found one. That made her day ... her month
... her year. It was a Juno’s Volute. We called them
Junonias. It was a fi ne specimen and we heard for
years how Dad had walked right past it.
My brother Jim and I came down on the train
from Tampa before moving here. My dad had found
employment as a barber working for Fugate’s. We
all moved to Boca Grande after my dad had found
housing. Jim and I came alone on this trip. Okay, it’s not
great poetry and it’s not even what I thought at the
time. What I thought was probably more like, “I sure
hope we move down here.”
In the summer of ‘44
I made a trip down to Boca Grande
In the summer of 44
It seemed to me, maybe déjà vous
That I had made that trip before.
And through that vision of days gone past
I knew that I was home at last
In the summer of ’44
In the summer of ‘44, you say
(A time that now seems so far away)
”Things were different then, it’s changed.”
Ah no, my friend, it is only you
Who see with a different eye.
And Boca Grande is still the same
The same as it was, when I fi rst arrived
In the summer of ‘44.
But that’s not true, I know down deep
Things will change, they will not keep.
And the many things you remember so well, only in
your memory dwell
Things change you say, they’re not as they were,
Of course that’s true, how could it be
That they have not changed like you and me
But we keep the memories near our heart
Of the summer of ‘44.
Shrimping at South Dock
I recently read something about shrimping at South
Dock. Was that ever great.
We, the Lanes, arrived at Boca Grande before WWll
ended. I remember my dad saying, “No one has to go
hungry here.“ Shrimp, fi sh (about 20 different kinds),
crabs, oysters, clams, even the little cocina clams. All
you had to have was a little money for grits and corn
meal, fat back and lard. Collards grew like weeds, And
there was palmetto cabbage. Whoooeee.Y’all know all
this. Like preachin’ to the choir.
“The shrimp are running.”
If someone came by the house and shouted that,
we were out of the house in a fl ash. In the truck with
our dip net and off to South Dock. In the 1940s and
early 50s the railroad would let residents plug in to
the electric along the Phosphate Dock. We had a drop
cord with a 200-watt light that we dropped down
near the water in order to see the shrimp. What a
great time and place that was.
With an outgoing tide and a bit of wind the shrimp
would be torn from the grass fl ats and come fl oating
down on the tide. Easy dipping. We only had one net
and my mother, Bessie Lane, commanded that. She
didn’t miss a shrimp within eight feet of the light. Most
nights we’d go home with several pounds of shrimp,
up to 25 or 30 pounds. We thought shrimp was for
poor folks.
The most shrimp I remember, though, was on a slack
tide and no wind at all. The water was a slick calm
and the surface was covered with shrimp. My mother
would just fi gure eight the net two or three times and
have a pound or pound-and-a-half. We just stopped
after a while because there was nothing we could do
with that much shrimp. We didn’t have a freezer so no
way to keep them.
These were big – 16-20 wild caught, super fresh,
Charlotte Harbor Shrimp. They don’t get any better
than that.
Along with the shrimp there was snook to catch. I
seem to remember that Tommy bought Snook for 12
or 13 cents a pound, which was pretty good money
at that time. Whenever I think of snook fi shing I think
of Mr. Angelo Bell. He could catch snook when they
weren’t biting.
Sometime after I joined the Marine Corps, in 1952,
the railroad closed the dock. All of the locals obeyed
the “no smoking/no open fl ame” rules, but over
nighters started coming down on the train, would fi sh
all night then go back the next day. They’d bring their
84 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE January/February 2020