the fox lock: privy information
According to my family, the Bay Fisheries building out on the wharf in the old pictures was destroyed by a hurricane in 1936. A day or so after, old friend Bill Lee and his brother(s) - - Bill, who died recently in his late nineties, was eleven years old at the Time - - Bill came down to the site and they dove up articles they found and could lift from the Bay bottom. Among them, tin sheeting and, memorably in my family's stories, my grandfather's adding machine.
Thoroughly modern for the day, it was an old fashioned crank-type adding machine with a roll of paper.
My grandfather opened the machine, washed it out with fresh water, let it dry, and continued using it for the rest of his life - -> I watched Pop use it in his office all my years as a boy.
By then, Bay Fisheries was gone and Pop was managing the E E Saunders & Company fish house that was where the Shrimp Boat property is today;
which Pop did all my growing up years. It was a fascinating place, high on stilts with plenty of room for walking underneath, and all those years with two fishing smacks tied up permanently at the dock.
As I've recalled here before, one of the boats was the Tommy; and neither Walt nor I can remember the name of the other one. We were supposed to stay off the old boats, but we roamed them at will, at every chance; and we played under the fish house - -
although it was our responsibility, once Walt was old enough to come to work with me, to stay at our father's fish house across 12th Street (where Uncle Ernie's parking lot is today), serve customers in the retail fish market, answer the phone. On Saturday mornings we washed our father's company's large trucks - - I was paid a dollar a truck and Walt a quarter for scrubbing each truck's tires and rims. This was late 1940s into the early 1950s.
The point of my reminiscence though is that every Time the fish market was free of customers, and the trucks and tires were washed, we ran across the dirt road that was 12th Street to what all our years we called "Pop's fish house," to play, or to visit with Pop, who was always glad to see us. We would get so involved in our play that we would hear our father calling us to come wait on a customer, and we'd run back across the street, guilty again. Pop's fish house was irresistible, and it was constant with us, though I don't remember our father ever being angry. Maybe exasperated, but I don't recall anger, Walt's memory may be different.
I loved and love my brother, was so happy when he moved to Pensacola from Louisiana some years ago, and I intended to drive over and visit him often, very often. Life and age has caught up, though, and we no longer make that drive. Now and then, Walt and Judy drive over here, and we have lunch at Hunt's Oyster Bar..
Several pictures of Pop's Fish House in this blogpost, including one that's after 1950 when Lo Smith came to town, bought the property, and built the original Shrimp Boat restaurant that was such a huge success.
The painting above is a watercolor that Linda's mother Lucy Peters painted for my parents, and that hung over the mantle in our living room for long years, and this morning is hanging on the wall of the entryway hall here in 7H. EG, our father's oldest sister our aunt Evalyn (yes, that's the spelling), liked the painting so much that she persuaded Mrs Peters to paint an identical one for her. Before EG died, she gave her copy to me, and I gave it to Walt so each of us would have one.
Something that Paint (our children's name for Linda's mother, the artist) left out of the painting but that was there anyway is the outhouse, which I've blogged about here in years past. A small, separate structure, the outhouse was at this end of the fish house wharf, over the water. It was a "double" - - that is to say, there were two privies, with a dividing wall and each with its individual door. One side was for public use, the other side was for Pop exclusively, and he had a padlock on it. That outhouse does show in the old photo at the top. It doesn't matter if you don't spot it, Walt will know where to look.
Sometime during our years as boys there, Pop found out that Walt and I were using that outhouse instead of the restroom in our fish market. He told us that he did not want us using the public side, but to use his side, which he kept clean and neat, including no newspapers, and he showed us that the padlock was "faux" in that there was no key: it was unlocked simply by pulling down on it and snapped open, and locked again by pushing up on it and it snapped "locked." To maintain the secret to which Pop, Walt and I alone were privy, we were to be discrete and not let anyone see us doing this.
For the sake of polite decency and modesty, I'll not go into the delights of a privy sitting over the water, open to the cool breezes on a hot summer day.
Walt will remember though.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
That's a 1949 or 1950 Chevrolet Styleline Deluxe two door sedan parked on Beck Avenue in front of the old Shrimp Boat restaurant. So, noting that Lo Smith's original Shrimp Boat was 1950 or later gives an "earliest" date timeframe for that photo.
Using this sort of event dating is also helpful to scholars in establishing dates of Bible writings, something I always tried to share with folks in my Sunday school classes when we came across such a case. One example is Jesus' prescient "Little Apocalypse" in Mark's gospel, where the Jerusalem Temple is to be torn down: the outside historic fact of the 70 AD destruction of the Temple helps date the writing of the Gospel according to Mark to around 70 AD at the earliest, when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans and the Temple destroyed.
And sometimes there are tidbits that are asynchronous with the story that can help with dating the composition. A brass or bronze snake in the primitive wilderness with Moses, for instance.
Anyway, there you go.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
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Today, John Lennon. What comes most to mind? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude