Samuel Proctor Oral History Program

Transcription

1 Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz Office Manager: Tamarra Jenkins 241 Pugh Hall Technology Coordinator: Deborah Hendrix PO Box Gainesville, FL Fax The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) was founded by Dr. Samuel Proctor at the University of Florida in Its original projects were collections centered around Florida history with the purpose of preserving eyewitness accounts of economic, social, political, religious and intellectual life in Florida and the South. In the 50+ years since its inception, SPOHP has collected over 7,500 interviews in its archives. Transcribed interviews are available through SPOHP for use by research scholars, students, journalists, and other interested groups. Material is frequently used for theses, dissertations, articles, books, documentaries, museum displays, and a variety of other public uses. As standard oral history practice dictates, SPOHP recommends that researchers refer to both the transcript and audio of an interview when conducting their work. A selection of interviews are available online here through the UF Digital Collections and the UF Smathers Library system. Oral history interview transcripts available on the UF Digital Collections may be in draft or final format. SPOHP transcribers create interview transcripts by listening to the original oral history interview recording and typing a verbatim document of it. The transcript is written with careful attention to reflect original grammar and word choice of each interviewee; subjective or editorial changes are not made to their speech. The draft transcript can also later undergo a later final edit to ensure accuracy in spelling and format. Interviewees can also provide their own spelling corrections. SPOHP transcribers refer to the Merriam- Webster s dictionary, Chicago Manual of Style, and program-specific transcribing style guide, accessible at SPOHP s website. For more information about SPOHP, visit or call the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program office at February 2018 The Foundation for The Gator Nation An Equal Opportunity Institution

2 TMP-137 Interviewee: Walter Rogers and F. Ray Rogers, Jr. Interviewer: Susan Atkinson and Allison Mitchell Date of Interview: October 2, 2016 A: This is Susan Atkinson and Allison Mitchell interviewing Walter Rogers and F. Ray Rogers, Jr. And today is October 2, M: So, we're just gonna start off with some questions about yourselves. So, if you could tell us when you were born and where you were born? Go ahead, Dad. I was born in 1926 in Sunnybank, Virginia. Eventually, I moved to Hacks Neck on Hacks Neck. I was third in a family of eight. Five girls, three boys. My father was a carpenter and we lived on a small farm in Hacks Neck. We didn't have any toilet rooms or anything. It was dirt roads, stuff like that. Daddy had an old Model T Ford with a rumble seat in the back. We used to all climb in that. Then, finally, I went in the service in let's see, [19]43. Huh? 1943? Yeah. I was sixteen years old. Soon afterwards, I became seventeen and my mom and dad had to sign for me to go in the service. I remember [inaudible 2:05] taking my boot camp in Baltimore, Maryland. And I got through that, after three months of that, then they put me on a coast guard cutter, used to be a patrol, submarine patrol. We were stationed down in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We did most of our convoy duty from Cuba over to halfway, because the boat was so small, she was only a hundred and

3 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 2 twenty-five feet, and we could only carry fuel and water enough to last us about five days. We'd help the convoy halfway over and then we would have to come back to refuel and pick up another convoy and do the same thing. So, I stayed on that until [inaudible 3:18] Pacific and we were on our way to the Pacific when they surrendered. Then, we came back to the States and [inaudible 3:37] and we just did rescue work for that until 1946, got out of the service. And then, I went to school in Baltimore for three years no, two years. In the daytime I worked at [inaudible 4:04] construction and went to school at night from seven to eleven. And then, after I got through school I came home and went my father was a carpenter, and I went with him for a while and then I got a job on the menhaden boats. It was the year that all of the crews went on a strike for more money or for something, I don't know what. And then, they hired all- White crew. And I went on this boat with Captain Norris Haynie in Greenport, Long Island and we fished up there every year. I kept fishing, I fished with him four or five years, and then I became mate on the boat. And then, eventually I made a captain on one of the boats. I was stationed up in Long Island, Greenport, Long Island. A: I'm sorry to interrupt. What company was this and what year? It was J. Howard Smith that I worked for. It's called Smith they owned most of the plants up here. They had one in... we called it the Down East, in Montauk Point. We used to go in Boston Bay and fish, and Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard and all of those places.

4 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 3 They owned factories in Reedville and North Carolina, Delaware, and New Jersey. So, this was a big company. Just a big company. But the majority of the people that worked for these companies were from Virginia. I mean, it was like the center of fishing, and they would leave and go to these different ports for four or five months and then come back. It sounds like he never really lived in New York, he just fished there, and then would come back to Reedville in the wintertime. In the wintertime. And when I became captain, I stayed on doing that for three years, and then they closed their plants up in Long Island and New Jersey. And I came home then and I went fish trapping, what you call fish trapping, what Walter does now. So, I went into that business. So, I did that until... when was it now? Till Yeah, I guess it was [19]82. Got your whole life story there. A: So, you became captain within two years of working? Within two years. A: That's amazing. And you stayed captain for how many years? Well, I stayed until... I don't know when. Not that long because the fishing had kinda gotten down and they closed these factories. So, a lot of people lost their jobs. So, he came back he lived here.

5 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 4 So, I did that, and then I went fishing, pound net fishing. I had about finally bought a boat. [Inaudible 7:55] I stayed into that for, I don't know, five or six years, I guess. It was probably like fifteen, from the late [19]60s till [19]81 or [198]2. And then, I got a job for the fish plant as a net supervisor made all the nets for the boats. I think we had at one time I was there, I had thirty men under me. We did a lot of repair work and a lot of new work in the wintertime. A: Is this the cotton nets or the nylon nets? Nylon nets. Yeah, these people didn't have the salt and all that kind of stuff. I did that for twenty-some years, twenty-two years. And then, I came home. Retired, finally. [Laughter] He was probably close to eighty when he retired. A: Wow. So, I'm just helping the boys now. He helps, yeah. A: Great. And what about your, Mr. Walter? I was born in [19]64, 1964, right across the creek. You can see our house from here. I went to college, Randolph-Macon, and graduated with an economics degree. I graduated on I think it was a Saturday and Sunday I packed my car, and my mom and dad sent me through school, and said, "Well, what are you gonna do?' I said, "Well, I'm gonna fishing." I

6 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 5 thought they were gonna strangle me. So, I packed my car up and drove to Louisiana. My brother had a fishing spot for me on a boat, on a menhaden boat out there, that I was used to, working around here. And I did that for three years, three summers in Louisiana. Well, before that, my dad was pound netting, I used to help him, go out pound net fishing. I think it was fourteen, I got my own boat and had my own pound net and had a guy who was helping me. A: I'm sorry. You're saying pound net? Pound net. It's a type of fishing... maybe if you go through the museum. It's very complicated. We set out a series of poles with net hanging on them, and fish just swim along, it's like a maze. It's pretty big, it's maybe twelve hundred feet long. So, these fish swim in there and we have a series of funnels and big pens where they'll go in and they'll go into an increasingly smaller and smaller area until they... they can find a way out but it takes them a couple days. So, they're swimming in there. We go out every morning and tend those nets. A very old, ancient way of fishing. I mean, it's been going on for centuries. I mean, I think they re mentioned in the Magna Carta, fishing weirs or fishing pound nets. So, anyway... and it's still going on today. But my great-grandfather did, my mom's grandfather, and my grandfather, and my dad now. So, I'm the fourth generation of doing the same style of fishing. Very little has changed, it's very labor intensive. The only thing is, as we were talking about, the only real change is the nets are not cotton anymore, maybe use some

7 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 6 hydraulics. But basically, if you went out in the 1930s and you go out with me, it's almost the same. Just a smaller scale. So, anyway, I did that when I was in middle school and high school. I helped my dad, had kind of my own business, and then went to school, and that's when I say he was about to strangle me. Because I already fished and I was like, Oh, he's gonna get a degree! I had a job when I was a senior in college at a local business, like a part-time job, and I hated it. So, anyway, I went down there to fish and came back after three years and took my dad's old boat. He had since gotten out of the business. It was kind of dilapidated, fixed it up, and started pound net fishing again. That was [19]89, so however many years that is, twenty-seven years I've been doing the same thing. A: Wow. Okay. So, we pound net fish some in this time of year and we oyster in the winter, and we do some crabbing. They ask what you do and you say, Waterman. I don't know if you've heard that term down in Mathews. "What are you, work are you a plumber or do you work make pipes?" "No, I'm a fisherman." But a waterman is somebody who does all of that. Most of the guys don't do just one, crab or gill net or oyster. They all do... follow the seasons, and oyster in the winter, fish in the summer, crab in the spring. So, all different types of fishing. A: Interesting. So, we were talking outside a little bit. What are the biggest changes that have occurred since you've been fishing, since you were on the water?

8 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 7 Well, I used to go with my grandfather, we did it by hand then. I mean, you pulled the net in by hand and you had to salt the nets and stuff like that. But that's where I got it from, I guess, starting. Well, gradually it advanced, year after year there'd be improvements made, different nets and stuff like that. Then, that s when I went and got this job as a net supervisor for Omega. I did that for twenty-two years, I think. Anyways, I retired from that. But that was... we really rigged a lot of net because they had four plants down in the Gulf, Abbeville and all down there, everywhere. I worked at this one in Louisiana. But, after I retired from that, I just hung around and helped the boys with their nets and stuff like that. A: That's great. Yourself? Improvements... well, again, I think Dad is trying to say, I think, the nets were different. They were made out of cotton and now they're nylon, which are very strong. They last years. Before they would maybe get a year or two out of the nets and they would rot and you had to be really careful with them and how you stored them. Now, these nets, very easy to maintain. So, yeah, that's the biggest part. And hydraulics. When my grandfather did what I was doing, he had nine, ten, twelve men working. I had one guy basically doing the same thing because of the hydraulics. You still have to pull the net by hand. I mean, that's a lot of manual work. Pull the net, bail the fish, and driving the poles, and doing all that. It s the hydraulics that are lifting and pulling that other men had to do. We needed five or six men to grab this pole. Now you hook it up to a hydraulic winch, lift it up, and

9 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 8 you can set these poles in place to be able to fish our nets every year. We have to replace these poles. They're like probably three or four hundred pounds and they're forty feet long that we have to stick them in the bottom to form our pound nets. So, we have to do that every spring. So, it's still very labor-intensive. And we also use an antifouling paint, which most people put on their boats to keep barnacles and whatnot on. We put that on our nets to keep all the nets clean. The clean nets catch fish, if they get real dirty. So, we put this treatment on the nets to keep barnacles, seaweed, any growth. Before they didn't. They just pulled them out and they got dirty, they would take them up and that was it. I would say the largest thing, to me, has been the regulations. I mean, we've had a ton of state, federal regulations that have changed the way we fish, it's changed what we can catch. It's put closures on certain species that we still catch but we can't keep. And some are quotas. We have quotas on striped bass. There's probably four species that we catch but we can't keep. We can't even harvest them, we can't even have them in possession. If we have one fish out of a hundred thousand of that species, it's a violation. Now, they're lenient on it if it's one fish. But, technically, we're, almost every day of fishing, under some type of violation of these regulations. Which probably eventually will end up... I wouldn't say stopping the commercial fishery, but it's a lot of pressure from regulations. I'd say that's the biggest thing facing any commercial even the big scale or the small scale. It's state and federal regulations.

10 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 9 M: I have a question. You said your family has been watermen for generations. Other than regulations, are there any other hindrances you feel like have been on the industry, as far as you can remember? Well, one thing, to me, I would say when Dad was fishing, those boats had twenty or thirty men on them. People were looking for jobs, learn a job, worked hard. Very hard work. And now these boats have only maybe eight or ten men well, I guess they have more than that. They probably have twelve on a boat. For what I'm doing, it's hard to find anybody to do the work. I mean, you get up every morning at four o'clock. It's very hard work, labor. Sweating, hot, jellyfish stinging you. You come in, unload your gear, unload your fish. Especially in larger boats, they leave on Sunday and sometimes don't get back to Wednesday or Thursday. So, you're missing your family. It's a lot of hard work. You really have to... well, any job, you have to love what you're doing. To me, it's hard to find people to do the work anymore. It's very rewarding when you do it, but somebody would probably prefer a job with an air conditioner or watching somebody else. So, a lot of people, to me, don't work outside like they used to, or want to. The pool of people to try and get is just not there anymore. There were guys... people were worried about their job in the [19]40s and [19]50s and [19]60s. They would sleep on the boats just so nobody would come and take their job. Now, sometimes they can't even leave the dock if they can't find enough men to go out. Do you remember anything, Dad? Any change since the [19]40s or [19]50s in fishing?

11 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 10 No, as a whole, I don't think so. The cotton nets are the biggest thing. A: Could you tell us a little bit about the process of the cotton nets? The process? A: The upkeep of them. Oh, you'd have to repair them. I mean, they're made of nylon now. The nylons are much stronger than cotton. You really don't have to do that much to them. You could probably use two nets a year. So, what about the cotton nets? Yeah, the cotton nets. What'd you have to do to them? Well, the cotton nets, you had to salt them to keep them from going through heat. The cold and heat. [Inaudible 20:06] You had to put salt on them to stop the growth of whatever is on them, the cotton nets. So, it's a big difference. And they would rot real easily. Yeah. A: How often did you have to do the salting? I mean, we had to do it every night. Yeah. A: So, after a long, grueling day of fishing? Yep. A: [Laughter] so, that's a big improvement, huh? And now, when these guys fish, after a long day they pull the boats up and they go... when he fished they didn't have showers. They had a barrel of

12 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 11 drinking water. They didn't have any air conditioning. Twenty men in a boat that's a hundred and some feet, or thirty men. Now, these boats have air conditioning and some have satellite TV. When they finish, they can go down, take a shower, sit in the air conditioning, and watch TV. All of these boats have cooks on them, they'll cook them a meal, and sleep the rest of the day. Are you okay? Yeah. Okay. M: And you mentioned having to be away for several days. How does that affect your family, as far as like you being gone? Sometimes... the way it used to be, you d be on the radio with your family [inaudible 21:38]. But I don't know. It has gotten down to where it kinda all works out. You know you gotta be on a boat for five days a week, be away from home. But now, a lot of them, you can come home every night. A lot of the times, when they were fishing away from their home, it was like in Delaware or somewhere, some of those guys would go up and stay six months. Sometimes their family could come up, if they could afford it, and stay. But a lot of times they would just come home every other weekend, just spend a day or two and get right back. When they were fishing back then, they would pretty much stay on a boat all week. Most of the time, I guess, it was always the mother that would raise the children and the dad would do the work. I mean, it was just the way it was back in the [19]40s,

13 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 12 [19]50s and even into the [19]60s. Now, even with some of these bigger boats, a lot of wives work. So, the husband, they're home a lot more. They come home every night a lot of times. So, it's a lot different. It was a lot different work. A: So, would you say that injuries onboard, were they pretty detrimental to your... Not very often. A: No? No, not very often. A: Okay, good. It was more, I would say, people falling overboard or stuff like that. It wasn't as dangerous like The Deadliest Catch. [Laughter] A: Okay, yeah. Actually... you okay? Yeah, I'm just going to the bathroom. Okay. A: Okay. Here, we'll... [Break in recording] A: So, during the war, how would you say... I'm assuming most of them men went to war? Did it impact the fishing industry at all? Well... did it in impact the fishing? A: The fishing industry here.

14 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 13 Oh, yeah. I mean, you had to... a lot of the people were involved doing that kind of work, and they just... a lot of people got deferred, a lot of the men got deferred, took on these big boats so they could use the fish scrap and stuff and oil for the government, who would buy it. The price was good. The women, the younger women, they went in the service too, but most times they worked [inaudible 24:30] in the office, places like that. But most of it was, what we did was just all men working on them, man the guns and the navigation. The equipment then was kind of obsolete from what we got now, especially I mean, the boats are faster, and have better artillery. I think she's talking about the fishing boats. Could they fish anywhere they wanted to? During the war, could boats go where they wanted to? Oh, yeah, some places down when they first started up in [inaudible 25:17] New York During the war, Dad. During the war. We had to be in port by sundown, and we couldn't leave until sunup. Which is when we couldn't go in the ocean at night because [inaudible 25:34] you re liable to be torpedoed or something like that. A: Did that ever happen? Yeah, it happened down the river off of Chincoteague. A German sub. It was a fish boat with a [Inaudible 25:50] tugboat tugging supplies up north. It sank that tugboat and some of the men, they got killed. A: Where was this again, I'm sorry?

15 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 14 In Chincoteague. Chincoteague, Virginia. It's on the Eastern Shore. It's right offshore here. And the military actually commandeered some of the fishing boats and rerigged them as, like, patrol boats. A: The bigger ones? Repainted them. Yeah. Mounted guns on them and stuff. And then, after the war, a lot of them, they got back. Some of them they didn't, some of them sank trying to come back. Most of them went over to in Europe. But they did commandeer a lot of these fishing boats. But I think what Dad was saying, they didn't want to stop the fishing industry because they still needed... you know, it's just like you don't want to pull your farmers away and put them in the war if they can't supply the food or whatever. So, that was part of why... the deferments were to keep these guys fishing so they could still produce goods for the country and for the war effort or whatever. A: Right. But coming back at sunrise and sunset, that probably hindered the amount that you can catch and everything? Oh yeah, it did, but you had to abide by the law. You had coast guard boats and things, and they had all these inlets where the boats would come in and dock [inaudible 27:19] at night. They didn't let them go out through the channel till after it got sunup. It was dangerous.

16 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 15 A: I have one more question. And you said when you were in the army, or in the navy Coast Guard. A: Coast Guard, I'm sorry. What did you do exactly? What kind of ship were you on? FR It was a torpedo boat, it was sort of like a torpedo boat. It had depth charges and had guns on it, of course. I was what they call a cockswain, I was sort of the deckhand, stuff like that. How long was your boat? She was only a hundred and twenty-five feet. A: Yeah, so it was small. And how many men did you have on there? Sixty-one. A: That's intense. Did you get showers on there? Saltwater showers. Either that or just go down stinking on there [inaudible 28:27], I guess. The food was... we had a couple of cooks on there were from Hawaii, was a cook. He was a good cook. We didn t get very few times we got fresh vegetables. Most times it was in cans, like milk was in aluminum cans, in big five-gallon cans. I mean, plenty of potatoes and stuff like that. If you wanted to eat soup and stuff like that. But very little meat. You had enough meat when you came to port, you had enough meat to last you a month. And eggs. That's kind of the stuff that will keep

17 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 16 pretty good, you know. But it wasn't too bad. We didn't [inaudible 29:28]. As long as you got a bellyful. I guess, happy. That s what you had to do, I guess, to keep them happy. A: What did you eat? Or what do you eat, or has it changed, your diet? Did you get sick of the food? Or are you eating fish? Back then I don't eat all that. I did when we were growing up. Dad, he was a fisherman, so yeah, he had four kids. It seemed like we had fish all the time. I don't eat fish that often. I guess if I was a chicken farmer I wouldn't eat chickens. But we do eat it. I really have this thing about tilapia and all these other fish [inaudible 30:21] I only eat fresh fish. I don't like going into a seafood market and buying fish that's probably been there for... the fish I catch are like flounders, striped bass that are sold in these seafood markets. Just knowing what I do, we'll go out and catch a fish in the morning and we'll bring them and weigh them and box them and ice them and ship them to a wholesaler. And they sit in his place for a couple days. Then, he re-boxes and ices and he ships it to another guy, it sits in there a couple days. And then they take it to the supermarket. It's still okay, but I just know it s... I can get one that morning, clean it, and have it for supper as opposed to going to a market and knowing that's seven days old. Once you're used to eating something right out of the bay fresh compared to something like that. It's still fresh, it's okay. I don t want to ruin my business, hope everybody buys it. But I just know sometimes it's not from the bay to the table, it's not always the next day.

18 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 17 M: This may be an obvious question, but considering fishing is a big deal around here, I guess you could say that's one of the prime types of food everyone eats around here? [Inaudible 31:39] or would you say maybe no? It's changed a lot. I know when I was little and my dad was fishing, pound net fishing, he would come right to the end of Reedville. There's a dock that there were probably twenty pound netters that would come in every day with their fish, and there would be forty, fifty people down there lined up to buy fish right off the boat, and it would come in there. And a lot of people, that's what they ate. They had fish probably two or three times a week and they wanted fish and needed fish. I mean, there wasn't a supermarket in this area anywhere. There were grocery stores but not what you would call a supermarket, just go and get whatever you want. So, there were people lined up there. Now, you come in and there's two or three people there. Like I was saying, they want tilapia or salmon or something fileted. A lot of the fish we catch are like pan-sized fish, and they don't want to clean it, they don't want any bones in it. So, to me, that's changed a lot, especially the local people that we sell to. There's some people I sold to my dad was selling fish to forty years ago. They're the same they're much older but they want their fresh fish off the boat. They still don t want to go to the supermarket or Walmart and buy a bag of frozen tilapia or something. Yeah, a lot of people, when the crabbing season starts, everybody wants their fresh crab and steamed crab. So, a

19 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 18 lot of people are going to eat the crabs. Oysters, that's just starting tomorrow, so people will want oysters now. When the fishing season starts... when we're first putting our nets out, everybody spent all winter without fresh fish. And we come in and people are really after local people are after those fish. M: Also, you said you had different seasons. Does the dynamic of your boat change with each season, or is it just like you catch it? It does. The boat I have is like forty feet long, and it was built right here in Reedville in It was originally my dad's boat. It was not built for my dad but he bought it in the [19]60s. So, it's been in our family for fifty years. So, yeah, there's different things you have to do to your boat to catch an oyster as opposed to a fish or a pound net. But it's a general purpose boat, you can do all those things out of that one boat. A: Can you all tell us a little bit about the tomato cannery? What is that? I don't know anything about it, that was before my time. I remember the old docks and they were huge. It was crazy. But my dad grew up with those. There used to be one right down the street here. Do you remember have [Laughter] you been down the street? Down Main Street? A: Oh, yes. We have.

20 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 19 That's only about a mile long. But about halfway down there used to be a restaurant there called... It's Tommy's. It's Tommy's Restaurant there now. A: Tommy's. Yeah. It's a little restaurant. That used to be a country store, too. Behind that on the water was a tomato factory, and they used to haul the tomatoes down in there by truck cube them down here and [inaudible 35:01] put them out and go back and get another load. Of course, I was really born on the farm, too. And used to have people come in and you could pick from five cents a bushel, that's what you got for picking a bushel of tomatoes. You definitely got five cents a bushel. That shows you how tight it was in those days to make a living. Used a lot of horse-drawn equipment, no tractors. A: What year around is this? That was... I was nine, ten, eleven, twelve years old. So, in the [19]30s and [19]40s. A: In the [19]30s. Wow. Was that a big industry here? Oh, yeah. Yep... they canned a lot of tomatoes. They also at the very end of Reedville... well, that was still there. They canned a lot of fish, herring and herring roe. And these canneries would do tomatoes one time a year and they would do fish another time. At the

21 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 20 very end, it was a herring packing company where they would pack the herring. It later turned into a cat food, cat and dog food. So, the fish that the pound netters would bring in that were not edible, these were like the menhaden, the bait fish that are not... humans don't eat them. But they would grind them up and put some additives in it, put it in a can, cook it, and they would sell it as... it was called Huff and Puff Cat Food. So, it was a big cannery down there in that. And I remember as a kid it was still running, but they had all this overhead, conveyors of these millions of cans rolling along going down to this thing, the label machines and people in there working. It was a lot going on, especially down at Reedville. There was a drugstore there, there were two. There was a grocery store, a car dealership. There used to be a bowling alley. Yeah. There was a lot of stuff. This place was happening. But it's gone now. There's nothing... there's one fish dock down at the end and the one main fish factory. But there were, at one time, like ten or twelve of those fish factories, now there's only one left. A: Is it the Omega factory? Yeah. A: Okay. But it was two big... [Inaudible 37:39] And they would can tomatoes and vegetables. And there was one across the creek. There were two or three down here. I've always heard them talk

22 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 21 about the water, it was just awful. I mean, everything just went in the creek back then, all the [Inaudible 37:59] and stuff. Even when I was a kid, we would never think about swimming in certain times of the year when the factories were going. [Laughter] It's actually pretty clean right now. It was just the way things were back then. A: And it's organic matter, I'm assuming. Yeah, I mean, it's really not as bad as it sounds. There wasn't chemicals like a chemical plant. It was wash from the tomatoes, wash from the fish, all the processes. But still, the water was pretty bad. Yep, it really was. A long time ago. [Laughter] M: You said these factories, how many people do you think were working? What? M: About how many people do you think were working at these factories? And how large were they? Oh, people would go to peel the tomatoes, at that time [inaudible 38:49] sometimes thirty, forty people working in one plant. [Inaudible 39:00] peel them and then they would weigh them, and you'd get paid by the weight. So, they'd peel them by hand? Yeah, they'd peel them by hand. Yeah. They'd bring them down by the truckloads. All that was done by, like I was saying earlier... and we used to bring, in the herring fishery, they used to get their roes right out, the eggs. So,

23 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 22 you'd bring a boatload of herring in and unload them, and they would have... I don t know how many herring carvers would they have in some of those places. Fifty, sixty, seventy people, and they would dump them pretty much on the dock. And they would get on their knees and they'd pick each individual fish and cut that, take the herring out, and discard the fish to make cat food or whatever out of it. But they wanted that herring was valuable. The only way to do it is by hand. A: The roe? Yeah, the herring roe. So, you're talking tens of thousands of fish in one boat that they... and each person would have to cut it trying to pull the roe and they got to where they could do it so fast you couldn't even see how they do it. All manual labor, by hand. Each individual fish has to be taken up and cut. And there were forty women, men, mostly African American. They would sit up there, they had one guy that would keep the knives sharp. And the cackling and laughing. Some of them were probably singing gospel songs. You know, it was just something back then was man, that's a nasty smell and all but looking back, I'd love to have a video of what was really going on. I can imagine the gossip going between all those people, hours of beating down sunshine and cutting all these fish. A: And when was this, about? I don't really remember it so it was before the [19]60s when they were doing it. [Inaudible 40:58] when I was a kid.

24 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 23 A: The herring? Yeah. They probably stopped in the late [19]50s well, probably [19]60s. But I know we have a video of my grandfather fishing, and the reason I can tell you that is there's a video from 1941 of them physically out there cutting. There's just masses of fish, and they're on their knees up to fish to here, just cutting as hard as they could go. And there s not just one but there was four or five herring companies. Four or five different companies that did that. I mean, it was work. I mean, a lot of work. God, everybody looking for a job then, it's different from nowadays. People on welfare or something like that. And it was a herring run. It was in only the spring, this fish would come in and it would last how long would the herring run last? A month, maybe two months? A month and a half. Maybe six weeks. So, you had all these people that'd have to catch all these fish during this when they were coming and spawning they would catch them and offload them. So, six weeks of work, they'd do it every day. So, probably five, six days of week they would go out and do all that. So, you had the fishermen who were catching them as hard as they could go. You had to unload them, there wasn't any process and automated computers or anything, it was all done by hand. They saved everything. They saved the

25 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 24 scales off the fish to make jewelry with. So, the herring would shed their scales. Yeah, we had one of them down here. Had scale houses they would go. Everybody called them scalers. They started picking off their scales, it looked like silver. We didn't do nothing with the scales. They'd run them through a process and it gets all of that sugar-colored [inaudible 42:44] stuff. It looks like mother of pearl, like phosphorous. And they'd make jewelry with it. Yeah. And they still do that on the west coast. A: Like, they press it into something? Actually, they put it through there's a centrifuge, Dad? Something like that. Spin that stuff, whatever it is that has that shininess, opaqueness or whatever, and they make jewelry out of it. I don t know if the museum has any of that or not. The scales are very valuable, and to think you'd throw them away. Now, they would do all that to save every scale. All parts of that fish were used. A: That's great. So, you have two sons? Two sons. A: Yeah. And they're both in the fishing industry? Wow. Both fishing.

26 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 25 A: And do you have any sons? He has two daughters. A: Oh, okay. And both of them are captains, his two son-in-laws are captains on the [Laughter] menhaden boats. He has ten grandchildren and four of them are in the fishing industry. Four of them are girls. When my sister used to work, she helped on the pound net boats with my grandfather. I've got two children, my son doesn't have any... like I was saying, he doesn t want to get up early. But he comes there and helps me sell fish and sort fish. I've got some... customers will come down and want five flounder, and he'll take care of them and takes all their money and stuff. A: So, you have four children? Yeah. Two boys and two girls. A: Okay. And what are their names? We know Mr. Walter, but everyone else. Well, there's Beth and Lou, my two girls. And Walter and Frederick are the two boys. A: Okay. And everyone's fishing? He's a junior. He's F. Ray Rogers, Jr. and my oldest brother is F. Ray Rogers the Third. He's the one that's got the big boat. He's got this big boat.

27 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 26 He was there today when you came up. And he named it for my dad. It's being named after me. A: That's very special. Well... it's an honor, anyway. A: Yeah, of course. I've got two uncles that were fishermen, retired fishermen... I mean, I don't know how many people are in our family. It's not just me, it's most guys that are fishing here, there's probably not too many that are firstgeneration fishermen. All of them had a connection to the even from the lowliest crab potter to the captain of the biggest boat. There's some family member. Like, I'm trying to even think of any that don't have some connection, generational-wise, to fishing. A: So, it's a pretty tight community. You know everyone. Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you something else. You've probably heard this since you came to Reedville. Reedville, at one time, was the richest per person in the United States. A: Really? Do you know what time around that was? Well... it might be now. [Laughter] I think it was like the [19]30s. It's definitely not now. [Laughter] It was probably the [19]30s when, number one, it was probably close to the

28 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 27 Depression. I think they would tell you most people that grew up around here that they didn't feel the Depression as much because people worked and they fished and they were producing goods. So, you were able to eat. You know, it wasn't like the city where you go through a soup line and couldn t find a job. I mean, there was always a job for somebody. And the fish were very valuable. And these menhaden are very valuable. Even valuable today. You'd be amazed at how much... the amount of fish they catch, what it supports. I mean, there's a company they have two hundred and thirty-some employees. They have a central office in Houston and there's probably another fifty or sixty employees that don't even step foot on a boat that are drawing they're the corporate office, so there are large salaries that are all from this menhaden. A: Thanks to you all. And these captains that were there. I mean, they were very wealthy. There were twelve plants here. So, every owner of that plant was very wealthy. Most of the captains were very wealthy. So, that's how they get the per capita. There were probably only seven or eight hundred people here but they all did very well. A: Do you have memories of the Depression? Oh, yes. I mean, I guess if you want to count the stuff like concrete [inaudible 47:28] roads. Down where I lived... I guess you came through Burgess. Down where I lived it was no horse access [inaudible 47:41] road. All the roads were dirt. I mean, miles and miles of nothing. When a

29 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 28 car or truck go down the road, you'd see this big mountain of dust following him down the road. When did you get electricity in your house? We didn t have any electricity, and no outhouse. We had a horse [inaudible 48:03] and we raised hogs, turkeys, and cattle. Pretty much self-sufficient. I mean, and they canned and traded with other people. They took care of each other. Yeah. Everybody looked out. If you were hungry all you had to do is let this person know it, you didn't have anything to eat. But, at that time, things were bad. I mean, really. I mean, you wouldn't think so now just thinking about it. I mean, it was just horses and cattle and they worked the crops with horses and cattle. I mean, mules. You did it yourself, most of it. And if you went to the store to get like I know, we had this big jug, a gallon of jug, with a handle on it, and you could go to the store, just a general store, and go in there and get a gallon of molasses kind of thing that you'd crank. That's right. And you'd crank and fill your jug up with molasses. And a lot of times, every farm had chickens and ducks and stuff, and you would carry enough eggs to the store to pay for the molasses. A: And how would that gallon last? Well, there was eight of us, eight kids. So, it didn't last long. [Laughter] We had molasses every morning, with hotcakes.

30 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 29 A: And there was a local school that everyone went to? Oh, yeah. The bus picked us up right at our gate. A: Oh, you had a bus. Okay. Yeah, yeah. A bus that picked us up in the county. And the school, the closest was Heathsville, that was what? Nine miles. And the one in Burgess, Fairfields. There were a lot of schools back then. I mean, especially in the country. Like, there's a Reedville school. There was one in... four or five miles up the road there was a high school there, there was a high school in Heathsville. There were probably eight or ten in this county. Well, now, they're all consolidated into one. The county has one high school, one middle school, and one elementary school. They had probably ten or twelve of each one. A lot of it was transportation. My mom, she grew up in Fairport, which is as the crow flies about a mile away. But, to get there, you had to come all the way around this creek. So, sometimes she would row across in a skiff or four or five of them would hop in a boat and row across top and walk up the street to the school. So, there were different high schools. Now, there's one high school. I bet there were at least seven or eight high schools, if not more. Between the Colored and the White. Yeah, it was all segregated. Segregated. They had their own Colored school, and the Whites had their school. There was one right here in Reedville, a Colored school.

31 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 30 If you have a chance, there's one right up the road, not even a mile. It's a Julius Rosenwald School. Do you know who Julius Rosenwald is? Anyway, this school, the family donated it, and it's one of I don t even know, it may be the only one in the country that's... there's a lot of Julius Rosenwald Schools, but this one's a two-story school, it's very unusual. And the guy that had it was a farmer and he stored his hay in there, after it was closed. He stored his hay in there and that preserved that school and the floor, kept it dry. So, it's very unusual to find one in that condition. A: Preserved. So, they've got a big push to try to restore it. It's amazing, that whole story of Julius Rosenwald. It's amazing. A: Wow. Was there tension during the integration of schools in the county? Before, when it was segregated, it probably... I mean, I'm not too sure why they didn't get along better when it was desegregated. My sister went to the public school and there was a lot of... I don't know if it word s tension. It was just people unsure of what was going on. I mean, it was never something they weren't used to, good or bad. So, my mom and dad sent me and my brother and sister to a private school, and my sister stayed in the public school. And it was just so much fear of not knowing, you know it had been that way for so long, and it was all ado about nothing in the end. But initially, when it first started, and that was in the [19]70s. So, we still had segregated schools until... I don t know when that was, [19]71?

32 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 31 I think it was pretty close. Yeah. So, it's amazing that just forty years ago, we had a Black school and a White school. A Black elementary school. Kids we grew up with, I played basketball up here, went to different schools. And their parents worked for our... I mean, Dad had a couple Black guys that worked on it, it was just like a brother to him. But his children still went to a different school than I did. It didn't make a difference to me whether they... I mean, it didn't even cross my mind whether they were White or Black. I mean, that's how we got along. We still we don t have any segregation, no problem with people. I mean, worst of all you probably have [inaudible 54:26] when you get to the part where the White and the Colored, I can't tell the difference. I can't say that the Colored are more disruptive than the White or not. I mean, it's not difference. Can t find a difference, and I think that's one reason in this little town, this little area, get along so well. I mean, we help each other a lot of times. A: Are there lots of African American captains, like boat captains? There's some. That's a very good question, because most of the crews were African American and the mates, pilots, and captains were generally White. But even in the [19]50s, those guys not based on their skin color they were talented fishermen. So, it probably was a lot harder for them, and still is. There's only seven boats left of all these hundreds of fishing boats, over

33 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 32 the course of however many years, that's left. Seven boats are fishing, that's it, out of hundreds of these menhaden boats. And I think they're all White captains, I think. But in other areas down in the Gulf of Mexico, where they still fish, there's a bigger there's probably ten or twelve that are. It is, it's very interesting. A: So, you're saying seven out of how many? In the [19]60s, how many boats were there, would you say? You mean menhaden boats? A: Correct. Up and down the coast. There were probably ten or twelve. I mean, there's three or four in New Jersey, there was a plant, two in Delaware. There were a couple in North Carolina. There's one in Fernandina, Florida. One in [Inaudible 56:32] Harbor. One in Beaufort, North Carolina, there was one in Southport. Is it Fernandina, Florida? Fernandina, Florida had one. You know where Fernandina is, I know? You don t? That's on the east coast, below Jacksonville or above Jacksonville. Anyway, probably a couple hundred boats, I'm sure. All total. A: Would you say that the fishing industry has definitely consolidated a lot then? Yeah. A: Yeah, it seems like it.

34 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 33 Again, we're going back to regulations. There's so much regulation, commercially, against recreation. Recreation, what they see is big boats going in there and, Catching all our fish. Those guys catch a lot of fish. A lot. But the mass that they're catching from, they're catching like maybe less than one percent of the total population of menhaden. But it's economics of it's gotten so expensive. Like I was saying, when you go out on this tour and you see these boats and how many people have employees, and how many fish they got, those fish are valuable. Man, just the cost of doing business is off the charts. I mean, with insurance, regulation, EPA, processing, transportation, fuel, and shipment. I don't know they even stay in business now. But it's more economics than it is lack of fish. M: I'm just gonna ask you about the regulations. I know you mentioned one about a certain type of fish. Are there any other ones that you think are just really detrimental? Any what? M: Regulations. I know you say type of fish was one of them. No. I mean, they've got their thumb on fish stocks is what they're looking at. And they're very concerned about levels. Just recently, we were talking about the herring in this area built a lot of these homes, they had herring runs. And they put a moratorium on herring, we can't even keep a herring now. Even if we catch one we have to throw it back. And shad is another fish they won't allow us to catch. Striped bass is we have a quota, an

35 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 34 individual quota that I can catch. We may catch tens of thousands of striped bass and we can only keep... I think the quota is still a thousand pounds. We may catch a hundred thousand but we'll have to throw them all in. But it's mainly fisheries regulation. There's some EPA, especially for the large menhaden. I mean, I'm just a sole proprietor. The big companies got all kinds of discharge issues and EPA and environmental stuff and pollutants, whatever those they put in the atmosphere. I mean, they've got all kinds of regulations on top of them. A: Have you noticed any ecological differences from when you first started fishing to now? Oh, yes. [Laughter] A: What are some of those? There's not a [inaudible 59:45] lot of difference. Well, for one thing, the way the equipment they have to work with now is... I mean, it's so good. It used to be... a lot of the net equipment, I mean, you was just wondering how they did hardly anything. I mean, like the nets, you had to take care of them. And now they well, like I used to be, I used to have... the men that I worked for, at one time I had thirty-something men working under me, rigging new nets. But they're nylon, the rope and the twine [1:00:40]. Now, the net will probably last you a couple years. A: What about in the wildlife, have you noticed change in the wildlife? Is there more or less fish, or more or less of a certain kind of fish?

36 TMP-137; Rogers and Rogers; Page 35 At times. At times the menhaden... I mean, most of the time in the spring, when the fish are migrating up the coast, the more you have. And then, this year... I don't know about this year. What do you think about this year, son? Well, I think there's been more fish each year. The federal government very closely monitors it. They have a quota on those fish as well. And they're saying the stocks are fine. Three years ago, they said they were terrible. Their science is so screwy, they're still trying to figure out I mean, how do you count fourteen big fish that are swimming around in the ocean? I mean, there's surveys and there are guesses and there are estimates and there are quotas and quotients and all of these numbers, and they crunch them and, "Okay, stock's good." So, in two or three years, "That's terrible, we've got to reduce your catch." A: You never know. The big difference to me is and I don t know if it has anything to do with the fishing but I never saw a pelican before in my life until about... I remember when I saw it, it was probably eighteen or twenty years ago. I said, "What in the hell is that?" [Laughter] It was a pelican. We have pelicans all over the place now. Tons of them. Never saw a pelican. There are certain fish that we catch that we never used to catch. Shrimp, we never caught shrimp up here. Now, we're catching great big shrimp, I mean by the thousands up here. Pompano. Pompano. Have you heard of that?