CRUISING WITH THE GENERAL
The muddy brown creek marked the Florida–Georgia state line.
The green, stygian forest of a national park crowded the north bank and on the Florida side, Hermanson’s Boatyard scrabbled a living on a clear strip surrounded by swamp grass and mangroves.
We had been there for a few months, doing a major refit on our steel cutter Elkouba – and I mean major refit. A large portion of her decks had been removed and a deckhouse fitted, I had sandblasted and spray-painted her hull and virtually rebuilt the interior.
We’d got to know the locals and had become almost local ourselves. Among the boatyard workers there was Charlie, a nuggety good ol’ boy who habitually wore camouflage gear. He worked a trapline catching raccoons in the national park across the creek. Most of the carcasses were sold to Afro-Americans in Fernandina Beach township who called him “the coon man.”….until the morning he was escorted to work by heavily-armed Georgia park rangers and taken away by the local police.
