| Summary: | (6:37) Mr. Lacher talks about mussel shells and the pearl industry, the popularity of mussel diving in the area, the dangers of mussel diving, and commercial fishing. This interview was conducted as part of a joint project of the Music Preservation Society and the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. This project focus was oral history interviews with area residents who had lived or worked on the Tennessee River.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Tony Lacher
November 19, 2007
Waterloo, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 3 of 5
Rhonda Haygood: Did you find many of the, of what the pearl type things in yours?
Patti Hannah: Pearl
Tony Lacher: Yeah, they called them fresh water slugs or something I believe is what they called them. I had a few in a jar but I don’t even know what I did with them.
PH: Oh, no.
TL: I had a few in a jar but I don’t even know. Them may still be here somewhere, but I couldn’t tell you where they are. But I didn’t find any real pretty ones. They make jewelry out of them. But I don’t know if that place is still over here at Cherokee. They did make some jewelry over there.
PH: Oh, really, huh.
TL: Yeah
PH: I didn’t know that.
TL: There was one, one shell place over toward Barton over there. You could see them over there in the yard going down seventy- two highway at one time.
PH: Huh
TL: But I don’t know if they ever hauled the shells all off or not, after they quit buying.
PH: Yeah
TL: And in fact, you could buy some of that jewelry over there, that was made out of those slugs at one time.
PH: Hum
TL: But it just kind of, I think it all kind of played out or something.
PH: Yeah. TL: But there was a place over there.
RH: They would buy the shells
TL: Uh huh
RH: from the divers here
TL: Uh huh
RH: And then
TL: Yeah
PH: Do the jewelry
RH: Actually do it from the shells?
TL: Yeah
RH: Or just from the slugs?
TL: No, they bought the shell and all.
RH: Oh, did they?
TL: Uh huh, yeah, bought shell and all.
RH: Okay.
TL: Yeah, they shipped them out from over there, my understanding was. Now, I really never did know. But my understanding was that they shipped them out.
RH: Okay. Hum.
TL: It was a pretty good size business around here for a while.
PH: Yeah
TL: You’d go in down there and it’d be probably, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty, twenty- five boats down there, you know, selling at one time.
PH: Hum. How many people from this area?
TL: Oh, me. About all these boys on these creeks here.
PH: Really [ laughter]
TL: Yeah. Yeah. PH: Just something you all grew up knowing about and doing or?
TL: Well, I knew they musseled all time.
PH: Yeah.
TL: Yeah. But I actually didn’t do any of it until about 1990.
PH: Yeah, yeah
TL: Yeah, I bought that boat down there in 1990. I had a little small one. It wasn’t big enough to get out there when the water was rough. So I went and bought me a bigger boat.
PH: Yeah.
TL: But they’s two, two or three over on Bumpass that did it. Me and Wayne and Shannon on this one, a bunch up at Wright’s, a bunch of them out here on the highway, they just come out of all these hills and hollows and went to doing it after they found out about it. Sure did.
PH: What was the most dangerous part of it, did you think?
TL: Well, probably some of the boys didn’t use air, oil- less compressor there for a while when they first started. And, you know, I think they breathed some fumes and stuff like that but- And some people did drown from it. Now, I did get tangled up in a net one time. But I didn’t panic and I took my knife out. Had my knife, you know, on my leg and I took my knife out and cut myself out of the net.
PH: Yeah.
TL: But most of the time you can tell where they got their nets anyway and you won’t get in them.
PH: Yeah.
TL: But I did get in one, one time. That nylon, you can’t see it under water, hardly, if it’s very murky, you know, cloudy. You can’t see it.
PH: Right
TL: But that was the only one I actually got tangled up in.
PH: Tangled up in.
TL: I bumped them a few times and just backed out.
PH: Yeah
RH: Do they, I’ve heard them speak of those nets, are those things that they are using? Are they some that people have put down there and they have just left them, abandoned them? TL: Well the ones that I run into was commercial fisherman were fishing them. Then. Gill nets, you know a certain size nets, holes in them, was legal.
RH: Uh huh.
TL: That was the ones I ran into. But, I don’t know, there’s probably some out there because a lot of time when it comes a flood, you know, and all the debris comes down the river, you know, and the leaves catch in nets. I heard of a lot of them that they’d lose their nets because the current would stop the net up and the force of the water would just take them away, you know. Most of the time when they do like that they collapse anyway and go to the bottom, you know.
RH: Oh
PH: Okay.
TL: It will collapse the net, you know or turn it up and down the river, you know, or something like that. But most time, they find them.
RH: Do they?
TL: Uh huh, they’ve got such heavy weights on them.
RH: Oh.
TL: But they would just, I never did find any where commercial fisherman had just left them, you know. Because they would run them pretty regular, you know. Cause if they just left them out there, fish would just get in them and just die, you know. And they wouldn’t be of any benefit to anyone. They always took their nets up
RH: They did? Good.
TL: All of them that I knew, you know. That’s what Wayne’s daddy, he commercial fished for years. Me and Wayne had to go help him with his fishing, get our chores done before we could [ laughter] before we could go fishing. [ laughter]
PH: Go fishing.
RH: So you actually helped him with his commercial fishing?
TL: Yeah. We had to run up the lines and stuff like that. In fact me and Wayne used to commercial fish.
PH: Okay.
TL: We used to fish trot lines and stuff.
RH: How did you enjoy that? TL: It’s work [ laughter]
RH: Hard work.
TL: Yeah, you run your lines up and put them in those jumper boxes, a hundred hooks to a line. Then you go catch your bait. Come back and bait your lines and then put them out that evening. Next morning about daylight you go take them up and start all over again. One person, about eight hundred hooks, about all you can fish. If you catching any fish and have to fool with them, too, see. That was a big thing down here at one time.
PH: Yeah, right.
TL: They had a, where the boat ramp is down there now, that bank over on the far side used to just be lined with commercial fishing boats over there.
PH: Hum
TL: Had little rollers made on little platforms. Had these old washing machine rollers on them and ah, boats was made out of plywood, flat bottom. And they come in and they’d just run them up on them little old platforms and leave them down there all night.
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