Down By the River

While an employee of the Northwest Florida Water Management District, Faith Eidse of Tallahassee conducted interviews with people who had lived their entire lives in the Apalachicola River and Bay basin. She compiled their timeless and valuable stories in a book, Voices of the Apalachicola, published by University Press of Florida in 2006. A sampler follows. — Steve Bornhoft

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Kathleen Hayes, who arrived in Apalachicola in 1930, managed the Gibson Inn with her husband, Pat, for many years. Here, she recounts a story from the Prohibition Era that was told to her by him.  

They had a dining room in the hotel, and for $4 a night, you could get a room and three meals. … We had quite colorful bellboys, and the most colorful was Shug Jones. He was quite a character. During Prohibition, Shug would go get the patrons moonshine. One night, he got some for a man, and the man said, “Shug, this is the worst stuff I ever drank in my life. You can have it.” Shug drank a whole glass down, and he smacked his lips and said, “Mister, that was just right. If it had been any better, you wouldn’t have given it to me and if it had been any worse, I couldn’t have drunk it.

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For 24 years, Woody Miley served as the director of the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve, an organization engaged in research, resources management and environmental education. Here, he recalls leading a group from FSU on a hike at Forbes Island.

I was talkin’ about the connection between floods and the productivity of the bay, and every time I’d pause, the group would start talkin’ about water moccasins. There was a tree limb just a couple of inches above the water, and it had a 4-foot brown water snake on it. I grabbed it right in the middle, and she turned around and started bitin’ me. It gets pretty exciting because I’m a free bleeder, and blood is drippin’ in the water. I said, “You think this is one of them ol’ moccasins?” I threw it down in the water, and she went under. It took 30 minutes to put that class back together ’cause they scattered all over the island.

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Longtime Franklin County commissioner Jimmy Mosconis is the owner of Bay City Lodge and the product of a family that for generations fished for finfish and later shellfish. In the time before radar and marine radios, it was a treacherous way to make a living.

There was a storm comin’ up in the Gulf, and my Uncle Nick (and his crew) were catchin’ fish, and these guys from Panama City were catchin’ fish and neither boat would leave. The storm caught both boats out there, and my granddaddy was mad when Uncle Nick got in because he thought they had all drowned. They didn’t have radios back then; there was no communication. Their barometer was their weather station. When it dropped, they went in. Uncle Nick was a good weatherman and that was because of all his years bein’ out there with nothin’ but a compass and a barometer, and watchin’ the weather and knowin’ the time of year, and knowin’ how to figure out the weather when the wind blew a certain way for a couple of days.