NOTES ON FESTIVAL KING AND QUEEN

Here are some rough notes from a brief conversation held on Wednesday, November 8, sitting outside on plastic chairs along US 319 in Sopchoppy in front of the old Nichols Seafood House.  Present were:

Ms. Irene Nichols
Mr. Marvin Thomas
Ivanhoe Carroll
Jo Barksdale
Don Lesh

Jo Barksdale took a number of photographs during the very informal conversation.

Ms. Irene Nichols

Irene Nichols was born and raised right here in Wakulla County and has spent her entire life in the fishing business.  Her maiden name was Taylor.  She has helped run the Nichols Seafood House, with her husband Alex, who originally owned the business, all her life.  She has done it all…mullet fishing from boats as well as at the several seineyards in the area, oystering, crabbing, you name it.

Her husband Alex unfortunately died in 2000.  They have one son, Bob Nichols, who operates the seafood business today and continues the family tradition of mullet fishing.

Ms. Nichols for years used to do all of her own nets, but in recent years, she explained, they have had them done by others.  She added that “tying in” a mullet net is a really tough job…other people probably don’t understand how much hard work goes into it. It will be good to have a demonstration of mullet net tying at the Festival so that others can understand what a painstaking and demanding job it is.

Ms. Nichols now walks with some difficulty, using a walker, but she is full of life as well as many good stories about the old days of mullet fishing in Wakulla County, which has long been a way of life and has provided a good livelihood for many families in this area.

Mr. Marvin Thomas

Mr. Thomas traces his heritage in Florida to a great-great-grandfather who secured a Spanish land grant in 1839 to the entire area comprising what is now Pinellas County.  The story goes that, even then, his great-great-grandfather was engaged in mullet fishing off the coast of what is now St. Petersburg.  The product was salted and shipped to Cuba.  One day his ancestor jumped over the side of the fishing boat, swam to shore near Caladesi Island, and never left Florida.

Mr. Thomas was born and first lived in Tarpon Springs, and has fished all his life, living successively in Port St. Joe, Eastpoint, and—since 1997—in Panacea.  He notes with some amusement that his family has always been enterprising: his great-great-grandmother sold their original property for the grand sum of $500…and then, five years later, sold it again to a different party for the same price!

Marvin Thomas has been not only a fisherman but a boat-builder all his life, and—at age 79--he is still building boats (many of which he has given away).  He recently completed a new 30-foot hand-built skiff, which he will try to bring to Woolley Park for display at the Mullet Festival on November 18. 

His four years of service in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War were more than challenging.  He was part of a military team that was sent into Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the Marshall Islands, immediately following the first atomic bomb explosions, and he suffered from radiation exposure as a result.

Mr. Thomas commented that he has been a mullet fisherman all his life and vowed he will continue to fish as long as he’s able to do so. In his family, he added, mullet was never deep-fried…it was cleaned, soaked to remove some of the salt, and lightly pan-fried in oil (originally in lard) without any breading.

The best-tasting mullet, he advised, are those with fat bellies full of roe…and, if possible, with eyes that are clear and green, proving that they have come from offshore and have spent little time close to the coast where runoff from rivers and streams can make the water muddy.

    Summarized by Don Lesh

This information originally published on December 16, 2006.

Written by :

mkwestmark