Daddy's Stories

Buzier and Lashley Memory Album

2009-11-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

Reprint of Apalach Times News Article October 1, 1998

2009-10-25T06:30:00.001-07:00

Reprint of Apalach Times News Article October 1, 1998

Buzier family brings Greek tradition to Apalach
The Apalach Times, Thursday, October 1, 1998
By Jimmie J. Nichols
Edited by Deborah Buzier Davis

Buzier family brings Greek tradition to Apalach

Whether he was shrimping, fishing, building boats, serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II, or enjoying a long married life with the former Hazel Lashley, Apalachicola born (native) (actually Cedar Key, Fl) Spero Buzier had a remarkable life.

When Panayiotis (Peter) Barriotis (also spelled Buzubardis) came to America at the turn of the century from the Greek sponge island of Spetsa, the first thing he did was change his name to Peter Buzier. Immigrants from abroad usually went to live near others of their nationality. Perhaps, by asking or knowing someone. Apalachicola was suggested as a port with Greek seamen.

Buzier came to Apalach. After awhile, following in the Greek tradition of earning enough money to go into business for yourself, Buzier acquired a sailboat and carried oysters to Panama City to sell. In the course of this business enterprise, he met, courted, and married Alice Knowles. Being from a Greek sponging background, Buzier and his wife moved to Cedar Key to go into the sponge-catching business. He acquired the “North Star” sponger, and went to acquiring sponges by the hook method.
With this method, men are sent out in small boats from a larger boat. One man manages the smaller boat and the other fishes for sponges. The small boat has a glass bottom and the men can look down into the water 50 feet or more. A long pole with a pronged hook at one end is lowered to where the sponges are. The hook is used to loosen the sponges and bring them to the surface.

Peter and Alice Buzier were blessed with five children: Helen, Costa, Cleo, Spero, and Angelina. Spero was born in Cedar Key on February 11, 1909. The Peter Buzier family returned to Apalachicola to live with the head of the family and Peter Buzier became a shrimper. Along with all the other Greek-American first-generation children, including John and Tasso Vathis; Nick and Jimmy Mosconis; Costa and Jimmy Demo George; Costa Sintikakis; Raymond Frudaker; Manuael, John, and Jimmy James. Costa and Spero Buzier grew up in the shrimping business, learning the trade as well as learning how to build wooden boats. All of the youth had a limited high school education. They taught themselves how to be successful seamen, whether shrimping or snapper fishing.

Along the way, Spero Buzier courted Hazel Clara (Clair) Lashley and they were married on December 2, 1933. Their daughter Deborah Paula is married to David Davis, and they have three boys and one girl.

When World War II got American into the conflict, Captain Spero Buzier was shrimping off the Louisiana Coast. He had two men on board who wanted to sign up with the Navy. At the New Orleans recruiting station the men in the course of being processed kept addressing their boss as “Captain Spero”. The recruiter told Buzier that since he was a captain, he could join up and quickly become eligible for a rating, so Buzier signed up, too. This was in 1941 (actually October, 1940).
After enlisting, Buzier went to boot camp at the New Orleans Navy Yard at Algiers, Louisiana. The U.S. Coast Guard was also located at this site. Starting off with a rating as a first class boat’s mate, Buzier soon became a tugboat captain at the training site. He taught himself to become indispensable. He learned the art of piloting and soon became Chief Boat mate.

Having been on extended land duty, he one day received an order to put in some sea duty. His naval career found him serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters of Operations. After leaving New Orleans, he found himself assigned to the Navy Yard at Norfolk, VA., where he was assigned to be Chief Boat mate on one of the seven destroyers escorting thirty merchant ships to Bizerte, Tunisia in 1943. Often, enemy submarines tried to lure their destroyers astray so that other submarines nearby could close in for the “kill”. Buzier served on the destroyer, “Landing”.

Returning to the U.S., Buzier reported to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where he saw snow falling. Here he learned, through misunderstand, that the Navy used one kind of camouflage for Atlantic operations and another for Pacific operations. He was shipped to the Rhode Island Navy Yard and assigned to a U.S. transport, the “Matthews”. At this station he had two weeks’ vacation, so he called his wife to join him. He was instructed to learn how to operate steam winches for use in loading and unloading cargo, but the Matthews had electric winches which did not require any special instructions. Thus, he got two weeks’ leave, inasmuch as there was nothing special to learn about electric winches.

During the Pacific tour, Buzier was on the Matthews as it carried Navy construction crews to Hawaii by way of the Panama Canal. Then, the Matthews carried amphibian forces on several invasions. When the atomic bomb was dropped over Japan, Buzier was at Okinawa.

Returning to Apalachicola after the war with his wife and son, Peter, Captain Spero Buzier got back into the shrimping industry. In 1946, a storm flushed brown shrimp into the West pass off Apalachicola. There was no demand for brown shrimp locally. Buzier’s shrimp catch once included 400 pounds of brown shrimp. This brown shrimp was shipped to the New York market via Tasso Rosso’s firm. The shrimp contained a letter saying it was edible.

A tragic accident occurred to the Spero Buzier family in March of 1950. Their son, Peter, owned a bicycle (actually it was a motorcycle). He swapped it for a small boat with an engine and went up the river with his friend, Jimmy Silvia. There was an accident and the boat overturned. Peter was an excellent swimmer but his friend wasn’t. Peter handed Silva an empty five-gallon oil drum to hold on to as a life preserver (life preservers were not yet required aboard boats). Peter tied a rope to himself and told Silva he was going to swim under the boat to get the engine released from the boat; this maneuver would right the boat again. Unfortunately, Peter got tangled with his rope under the boat and drowned.

Captain Buzier and his wife left home and went to Aransas Pass, Texas to live. Much earlier, he had purchased his first shrimper; a small boat built by Harry Jenkins, named, “Spark Plug”. He renamed it, “Captain Pete” and brought it to Texas. Needing a larger boat to work in the Gulf of Mexico, he operated the “Texas Pride” for Apalachicola born Vernon Crotts. The local seafood dealer in Aransas Pass helped finance a boat for Buzier to buy named the “Kathleen M”, for the amount of $15,000. Buzier rebuilt and updated this boat.

Later, Buzier also worked on “Ten Grand” owned by Texan Red Sokomon. He shrimped in the Gulf of Mexico waters off Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico. His crew consisted of David Estes and Jaime Vause, both Apalachicolans.

Once, while shrimping of the Mexican coast, bad weather hit. Buzier saw a big swell rolling on the Gulf of Mexico, within a mile from his boat. It turned over a Mexican shrimper. Abandoning his shrimp nets and head boards, Buzier went to the rescue and saved three seamen from drowning. Later, two of the three men waved worked as “wetbacks” for Buzier – illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Spero and Hazel Buzier came back home in late 1959 (actually 1954 or 1955 they returned), purchasing several lots and building a home right behind W.F. Randolph, on 24th Avenue. With the help of Pete Poloronis and Gus Mobast, he laid the keel for the “Clara B” shrimp boat on his own property. He name the boat for his wife. Being a self-made boat carpenter, Buzier successfully completed the “Clara B”, mounted it on a trailer and launched it in the Apalachicola River.
Down the road of life, Buzier sold the “Clara B”. A little while later he built another boat in his backyard, “The Pretty Thing”.

Reprint of Apalach Times News Article June 23, 1977

2009-10-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

Reprint of Apalach Times News Article June 23, 1977
Retired From Retirement, They Build Boats
The Apalach Times, Thursday, 23 June 1977
By Mardi D. Buri – Times Staff

Retired From Retirement, They Build Boats

Two white-haired men each with bright, twinkling blue eyes, stand near two large half-built wooden hulls that fill up a once empty lot.

Spero Buzier and August Mombert have retired from retirement for a while. Each is building a 40-foot shrimp boat in the field beside Buzier’s house.

And the spirit of competition is keen. Buzier, a shrimper, calls attention to the graceful lines of his boat with pride, and points to Mombert’s saying, “I keep telling him it looks like Noah’s Ark”.

“All the rib and knee joints in this boat are glued, nailed, and bolted”, Mombert a builder, says, looking proudly at his boat. “Not on that one though,” he adds with a flick of his hand in the direction of Buzier’s craft.

Buzier used aluminum nails so there will be no rust streaks on his boat. That’s one of the little things he says he’s learned from years of experience with ships.

Mombert prides himself on having used all stainless steel nails. “There are 60 to 70 pounds of them in here”, he said.

“It’s going to be fast,” Buzier said. “It’s built for speed. There’s a built-in trim tab – see how the bottom curves down again instead of going straight on up on an angle? That will keep the back end from going down or ‘burying’. It will sit right on the water and plane. There’ll be an air pocket up in that curve”.

Mombert used a ‘tunnel hull design. “It has more buoyancy”, he said, making it ideal for use in shallow water.

The put-downs are tossed about good-humoredly, but each man works on his own boat.

“He’s building his the way he wants it, and I’m building mine the way I want it”, Buzier said. “If there’s a big heavy beam or something to move, we help each other, and that makes it nice, but each of us is building our own”.

“Everybody’ll tell you how to build a boat”, Buzier said. “Some guy started building a boat once, and everybody that came along made suggestions. Now he tried to do what everybody told him to, and he messed up so bad he had to quit and start over. After he started again, some guy came up with a suggestion, and the man pointed over to the first boat he’d tried, laying over in the corner of the yard. ‘You go do it to that boat’ he told the guy. ‘That’s everybody’s boat. This one here’s mine”.

“I’m a commercial fisherman not a carpenter”, Buzier began, pushing a navy blue yachtsman’s cap back from his tanned face. “I’ve been out there on the Gulf all of my life, out there in all kinds of weather. I knew from that what I want in a boat, and what makes a boat seaworthy”.

“I don’t have blue prints”, he said. “I just step back and look at it. If it don’t look right, I tear it down and change it. It’s called ‘eyeballing ‘it”.

Planning and design, Buzier style, is accomplished by a trip to the wharf. “I go down to the dry-dock and find the prettiest bowsterm I can, then come back here and build one just like it”, Buzier explained.

That’s not Mombert’s method, tough. “She’s 38- feet 9-inches”, he said. “I build from my own prints. I draw them up. I could take this boat all the way to Cuba the way it’s built”.

Buzier said he didn’t know he could build a boat until a 50-footer he owned sank off Indian Pass one night. “I dragged it back to the yard, took everything off, tore it down and rebuilt it. She really looked beautiful”, he said. After that, he built a 30-footer, and then sold it.

Boatbuilding has come with retirement. “I get a kick out of it – it’s close to the icebox”, Buzier said, gesturing towards his house next door with a smile.

“I was born in Tarpon Springs”, he continued. “Dad was Greek. I guess that’s where the boatbuilding comes from. He had a sponger back when they used to hook sponges.

I started shrimping back when you’d get 1,000 pounds a drag in the daytime. It sold for 2 cents a pound for the first 1,000 and 1 ½ cents for every pound above that. You could catch up to 5,000 a day.

The first time I captained a boat I was 16 years old. I’d been going out since I was a kid. I was following an old-timer, and he ditched me around Indian Pass. I went aground, and we stayed there all night.

I’ve fooled around with boats and water all my life”, said Buzier, who has oystered, fished for grouper, and captained a dredge and a tug, as well as shrimping.

These years of experience have taught Buzier a number of things, like putting the bottom of the boat on last so no woodchips and sawdust fall into the bilge. If they do, the pumps clog.

And to taper the guard rails on the deck, so the boat doesn’t hang up on pilings or docks.

Mombert has spent a lot of time around the water, too. “I’ve been an amateur fisherman all my life”, he said. “I’ve always built my own boats, but this is my first venture with anything over 15 foot”.

He was an engineer, carpenter and builder. His construction firm built banks, churches, and schools in Missouri. But now he’s building a boat in Apalachicola.

When asked, “Why Apalach?” he looked incredulous and said, “You haven’t lived here very long”. “I like it”, he elaborated. “For a fisherman you can’t beat it. I don’t like big crowds. It’s nice on the water, and there are no people around here”.

Both men plan to retire from boatbuilding for a while to skipper their boats, and they plan to have them in the water for the fall run.

Mombert doesn’t even intend to hire a crew, “I’m going to run it myself”, he said. “I’ve been with Spero a couple years now, and I’ve learned it. I’m strictly independent as a hog on ice. Sure I’ve enjoyed building it”, he concluded. “It’ll be a great day when I put it in the water”.

Apalach Times News Article February 05, 2009

2009-10-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

A Century of Adventure
Capt. Spero Buzier to turn 100 years old
February 05, 2009 3:28 PM
By Lois Swoboda
On Wednesday, Apalachicola's Spero Buzier, the oldest living commercial fisherman in Franklin County, will celebrate his 100th birthday.

Last week, he and his family were kind enough to share stories of his career on the Gulf with readers of the Times.

Capt. Spero was born Feb. 11, 1909 in Cedar Key to Greek immigrant sponge fisherman Panayiotis (Peter) Buzier and Alice Knowles, of Apalachicola.

"He and my mother separated and I came to Apalachicola for the first time when I was about 6 or 7," he said.

After returning home, his mother met and married Henry Rosalis. When he was about 9, the boy moved with his family to Miami.

"You couldn't drive to Carrabelle in those days. You had to travel by shrimp boat. I remember seeing the boat's engine running," he said. "We slept on the beach and then went to Miami by train."

By the time he was 12, the family had moved again to Jacksonville, where he worked as a paperboy, buying 10 papers for a quarter and selling them for a nickel apiece.

Later the family moved to Biloxi, MS where, Buzier remembered, he got his first long pants.

He remained with his family - older brother, Costa, and three sisters, Helen, Cleo and Angelina - in Mississippi, working as a commercial fisherman. After his stepfather died, he helped take care of his mother and small sisters.

He captained a fishing boat for the first time when he was 16. At age 24, he met Hazel Clara Lashley in Biloxi and married her on Dec. 2, 1933.

The couple moved to Gulfport, when Spero continued to fish. Later they had a son, Peter, and a younger boy Spero, who died of pneumonia when he was only 6 months old.

Fought "The battle of Algiers, New Orleans"

After enlisting in the Navy in 1941, at age 32, Buzier was sent to New Orleans to work in the Navy Yard. Initially, he disagreed with his commanding officer, but in the end, his knowledge of boats saved the day.

"That helped me in the long run too," he said. "When I went into the Navy, it didn't take me long to make chief petty officer."

Because of his vast experience on the water, he entered the service as a first class boat's mate., sending him to work on a tug boat carrying passengers between the Navy Yard and the nearby neighborhood of Algiers.

"The captain was an old service man with hatch marks up to here on his arm. The tug had an old Atlas and Imperial engine and it didn't have a clutch. It would run forwards and backwards but you had to stop it to switch directions. He didn't know how to regulate the speed," said Buzier.

"When we'd come up to a dock, he'd stop and then have to start it again, stall it out or run it into the pier. I had had plenty of experience with those engines on shrimp boats. When I tried to tell him what to do, he got mad and sent me back to the personnel office. I wasn't in the office no time ‘till they wound up coming and asking me could I run that tug. I told them I could as easy as throwing a rabbit in a briar patch," said Buzier. "I spent most of the rest of the war running the tug. Later when people asked where I fought, I told them in the battle of Algiers, New Orleans."

Buzier was one of three captains who piloted the shipyard's two tugs during the war. In addition to ferrying workers, the big boats moved mine skimmers, destroyers and landing ships into and out of dry-dock for repairs.

While he spent most of the war at home, he eventually rotated out and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres. He was chief boatmate on a destroyer escorting 30 merchant ships to Bizerte, Tunisia in 1943. On this deployment he also went to the real Algiers, the Rock of Gibraltar and saw the beautiful, blue Mediterranean Sea teeming with colorful fish.

"There were a bunch of ships that had been sunk in the harbor at Bizerte," he recalled. "We chased a sub one time and dropped a depth charge on it but we never knew if we got her."

On returning to the states he reported to the Philadelphia Navy Yard where he saw snow for the first time.

His next assignment was to the US transport ship Matthews, deployed to the Pacific. He was on the transport when it carried Navy construction crews to Hawaii by way of the Panama Canal. Later the boat carried amphibious forces on several invasions. He was at Okinawa when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Barely escapes death while shrimping

After the war, Capt. Spero returned to Apalachicola with his wife and son. He worked as a shrimper aboard his first shrimp boat, the Spark Plug.

One fateful night, he and a member of his crew barely escaped death when a freak storm struck, when they were traveling along the coast of St. Vincent Island between Indian Pass and West Pass.

`"We passed all the other shrimp boats heading back to shore. They told me about the bad weather, but I wanted to go through Indian Pass so I kept on. By the time we got there, it was so rough we couldn't get through. We had to go back.

"The sea hit the boat so hard it would give you whiplash. A huge wave washed over the deck and took me and another man overboard. The nets were washed overboard too. They were hung up in the doors and I was hung up in the nets. That propeller went by me just as pretty while I was underwater.

"The boat had turned around and was headed toward the beach. There was one man left aboard. He was able to grab the net and drag me in as he passed us. The other fellow was able to survive by filling his slicker up with air to help him float. We was able to pull him in as he floated past. We dropped anchor and went below. We was about half drowned. We used to sleep in the engine room. When another wave hit and washed the slide that covered the hatch overboard, water came in everywhere. We knew we couldn't stay anchored over night.

"They decided to try and run the boat aground. The tide was low, so they knew if they beached the boat it would be possible to get her free at high tide the next day. Then they discovered they couldn't draw in the anchor. Capt. Spero gave one of his crew a butcher knife.

"I told him I was going to start up the engine and to wait ‘till a wave had washed over the boat. When the sea runs over the deck, jump up and cut the anchor line. He did and we beached the boat. We ran it right up into the pine trees. In those days, there was a watchman on the island to protect the deer. We walked down the beach and spent the night with him in front of a big fire. The next day, everybody was thinking we were gone. The Coast Guard sent a big ship to look for us. They anchored offshore and ran up a line to pull the boat free," he said. Buzier took her home and rebuilt her good as new.

Quick with his fists

There were adventures on land too. Buzier had been a prizefighter while in the service, and that experience stood him in good stead on several occasions. He was known to enjoy the occasional brawl.

"One guy hit me and broke my nose, later on, another fella hit me and straightened it out," he said.

Once in a juke joint in Eastpoint near the site of the present-day Apalachicola Bridge, Capt. Spero got into an altercation over a lady from Carrabelle.

"I was dancing with her. I couldn't leave her by herself out on the floor but my wife got mad. She was boiling. She said ‘Why don't you just make a night of it?' I knew it was time to leave so I followed Hazel back to the table, but the other girl's boyfriend came over and said ‘What the hell's going on here?'

"I said ‘Come over here and I'll show you.' I hit him so hard; he hit the floor and slid. Everybody said ‘He's dead.' I said ‘He's all right. Just throw a bucket of water on him.' He had a friend who come running over and I said ‘See your friend? That's how you're gonna be.'

"My wife took her shoe off and she was standing there. Somebody asked her what she was doing and she said she was going to help me. The guy said ‘Lady, don't do that. He's already killed one man.' She fainted dead away. When she came to, I asked her why. She said all she could think of was the electric chair."

On another occasion, his daughter said, the family was in Key West and Capt. Spero took her and her mother out for a lobster dinner. When they came on a man sicking his dog on a smaller one, Buzier, an animal lover, intervened. The man grabbed him by his collar.

"That was his bad mistake," said Buzier. "He should have hit me. I knocked him down and he landed over by his brother. He didn't try to come back but he started explaining that he was trying to stop the dog from peeing on his lobsters. Anyway, we never got our lobster that night."

In 1950 tragedy struck. His 16-year-old son, Peter, ventured up the river with a friend in a small boat. When the boat capsized, the boy drowned attempting to right the boat but managed to save his passenger from drowning.

Pete was an excellent swimmer, but his companion could not swim. Pete gave his friend an empty gas tank to use as a float. Then, while diving to free the engine of his boat, he became entangled in a rope and couldn't surface for air. "That like to killed me," said Buzier. "That's when I left Apalachicola and moved to Texas."

Builds a home, and settles down

He and his wife moved to Aransas Pass and Capt. Spero attempted to start a new life, even changing the name of his boat to the Capt. Pete.

He worked the Gulf Coast from Port Isabel Texas to Key West aboard the Texas Pride and once again, he was involved in a mishap at sea, and once again, emerged a hero.

"We were fishing off Port Isabel. Just as we were picking our net up, I looked out of the wheelhouse window and saw a boat about a half mile from where we were. When the doors come out of the water, I looked out again and it was gone.

"I was working with Jamie Vause. He got on top of the wheelhouse and saw the boat turned upside down in the water. We had shrimp in both nets but when he saw that, I knew we had to let them go. There was a man on top of the hatch and another hanging onto a rope.

"I seen this other guy pop up right then. That was the captain. He had been trapped in the cabin when the boat overturned until the space filled up with water and released the air pressure so he could open the doors. He had two wetbacks on there with him headed to Texas. I had to go take them off and put them ashore in Port Isabel. If we hadn't gone right then, the one on the hatch would have been OK and the one on the rope might have made it but the captain would have drowned. I think he'd gone down three times when we got there. We rolled up a mattress and put him over it and let the water run out of him.

"We lost everything, the shrimp and the nets. The boat belonged to a man named Vern Crotts. He wasn't happy, the nets cost about $500, but he couldn't say nothing because we saved their lives."

Over time, the Buziers were able to open their hearts again and in 1952 they adopted their daughter, Deborah.

In 1959, they moved back to Apalachicola and Capt. Spero built a home and continued his pursuit of the maritime trades. He constructed several shrimp boats in his backyard working not from plans, but from experience and knowledge of boats.

In 1977, at age of 69, he "retired from retirement" to construct his last vessel, working side-by-side with friend August Mombert. Each man built a 40-foot shrimp boat, Mombert working from plans and Buzier from memory.

After his retirement, Buzier developed an interest in golf. While he refuses to wear conventional golfing clothes, he has a distinct talent for the game and spent hours practicing his stroke both on the links and behind his home on 24th Street. His daughter reports he has made several holes-in-one and has brought home a few trophies as well.

Today Capt. Spero retains his independence living in a trailer with his Chihuahua named Boots. Nearby live his daughter and her husband, Dave Davis; his grandson, James Dansereau is a daily visitor. James takes him coffee every morning and fixes his breakfast, then sets down and listens to Capt. Spero's stories. "We sit with him every day and listen," said his daughter. "And every time I listen to him I learn something new."

Daddy's Stories August 2009

2009-08-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

August 1, 2009 – He ate spaghetti and meatballs and pound cake

August 2, 2009 – He had really hot coffee and banana’s and cream instant oatmeal.

August 8, 2009 (Saturday) – This past week was a challenge.

Had to take him to the Doctor on Wednesday, and then to the hospital for blood work and a CT scan. He is obsessed with his bowels again. Was like a wild person. Also, the first sign of pain in the abdomen. He said it hurt with the doctor pressed down on his belly. The doctor said he could feel a lump or something.

While we were sitting in the hospital waiting learned some new tidbit – Granny’s mother was part Indian.

I took off work Wednesday afternoon and Thursday to keep an eye on him. He sleeps a lot more now. We have to keep waking him up.

I gave him pancakes and an over-easy eye for breakfast today. He ate really good. Trailer was really hot – he keeps turning off the air and turning on the heat.

August 9, 2009 – Sunday morning
He put honey in his coffee and on his oatmeal. Swears by it. Said honey and vinegar cures arthritis. This morning he also added salt to the oatmeal. Said he didn’t know why but the oatmeal needed salt. This is odd, since he complains about too much salt on everything. I told him, I believed our body craved things we needed, so he probably needed some salt.

Daddy started out his story this morning saying, “Almost every time the rent came due they had to move”. Back then, rent was about $10 a month. He can still see his Mamma aggravated with the stove pipe, and stomping on it.

I asked him if they had a car. He said no, so I asked him how he moved. He said Sheriff Taylor moved them (this was in Apalachicola). The sheriff had a side-line job and charged $2 to move people. Once when he was about 20 the sheriff moved them, but his Mamma had not paid the sherriff yet. He went into Joe Lewis’ restaurant, next to the picture show down town. The sheriff was sitting in there, and yelled to him, “When was he going to get paid for moving them”. This embarrassed Daddy, and he got mad (Granny was not the only one with a temper) and Daddy told the sheriff that because he was dunning him over $2 for moving in front of everyone, the only way he was going to collect was by skin (those a fight). Daddy said he eventually paid him the $2 but made him wait a long time for it.

Eventually Daddy bought the house they rented, for $1000. The house was located on 5th street. This is the house they lived in when they adopted me. He also bought the house next door, and gave it to the Jehovah's Witness so they could use it as a meeting place (called Kingdom Hall) or the equivalent of a church.

August 13, 2009
As we were watching the Astros and Marlins play baseball, Daddy tells me that they use to anchor the boats at Indian Pass Beach and play ball. The names of the two teams were the Pelicans and Seagulls. The size of the teams depended on how many boats were anchored.

When he was a kid around 12 or 13 he got in a fight and was hit in the nose (right side) and his nose was crooked. Any yeas later he got hit in the nose again (left side) and his nose was hit straight again.

August 14, 2009
Daddy had a Rib Eye, French Fries, and Fresh Tomato Slices for Supper. He had asked for Beef Stew, but it was too late to start it. So I promised I would make it for him tomorrow night. He said he would make it, but I insisted I would. He said I wouldn’t make it right so I told him to tell me how to make it.

Daddy’s Beef Stew

Sauté a large onion, garlic, and celery in olive oil. When it is starting to become transparent add your beef (a large chuck roast cut up in one or two inch cubes) and brown, add one or two cans of diced tomatoes and equal amount of water (one or two cans) and let simmer until tender. Season to taste – Daddy likes just a little salt, black pepper, and a bay leaf. Add potatoes (if small cut in half, if large cut in quarters) and continue cooking until the potatoes are tender. He does not care for carrots, but loves fresh okra added. To keep okra from being slimy you need to fry it a little and put it in with the potatoes. So this can be added if you want to. The quantity of the ingredients depends on what you have on hand and what you like.

He said to add the okra, and I said I did not know if the others (my husband and kids) liked okra and he said give it to them anyway.

August 15, 2009 - Saturday
Woke up to a very stormy day with heavy rain and thunderstorms. Daddy’s mood matched the weather.

He complained the coffee was too weak, and kept adding instant to it (it was the same as I always make). Said it was too cold, so I heated it up in the microwave – he said he did not think I could get his coffee too hot, but I did this time.

He had his oatmeal today with lots and lots of honey – did his normal joke asking me did I know what the oatmeal tasted like? Oatmeal of course. Then he did his other joke, saying it’s tough and he has to chew it. (This is his normal morning humor).
It looks like it is going to rain all day. Tropical Storm Ana in the Atlantic is forming.

I made his beef stew for him, and he said he was not hungry (his normal comment when he does not like something or want it) and would not eat it. Had an individual cup of soup (BTW he never did eat the stew). But the family enjoyed it. It was a good day for stew with the weather.

August 21, 2009
He reminisced about the Great War (WW I) ending and he was selling newspapers on the streets of Jacksonville. After they left Jacksonville this time, they went to Bioloxi. There was a street car that left town and went to the city limits, it turned and went straight for the water. It looked as if it was just going to run into the water, but as it got to the beach it make a turn and went all the way to Gulfport. He didn’t get to be a kid growing up; he had to take care of Mamma (his mother) and Angelina (his baby sister).

We were watching the weather report and Hurricane Bill is out in the Atlantic. I asked him was he ever out in the gulf when a hurricane formed, and how did he know to come in. He said before the radios, citizen bands; a plane would come out and drop a message to all of the boats so they would know to come in.

I had just finished reading a book, “The Runaway” and it was based on a story of a man that set sail from Apalachicola and traveled to the Keys and then to the Bahamas. He used a sexton to navigate. I asked Daddy if he ever used a sexton, and he said no. He used a map that charted the waters, a compass, and the stars to navigate. I explained to him how if you have a GPS now, you can go out shrimping, find a place you like, mark it and when you go out again, just set course and the GPS will take you back to the exact same spot. He thought that was unbelievable and funny.

August 30, 2009
I asked Daddy about when he and Mamma got married. They went to the Mayor’s House here is Apalachicola to get married. It cost $3. He was 24 and Mamma was 14 (although she told him she was 15 – she was off on her age and did not know until years later when she requested her social security card and needed her birth certificate, that she was a year younger than what she thought). They did not need any blood test or proof of age, just witnesses. Elaine James and “Snap” Cooper stood up with them, and were their witnesses. They did not go on a honeymoon or anything. After they got married, he took her home to his Mamma’s house (where he lived) on 5th Street.

He had a reputation with the girls in town, “he was not the marrying kind”. When girls would come around to the house to see him, Mamma ran them off. She told them, he was married now, and her husband and they were not to come around no more.

If Mamma would have lived nine more months they would have celebrated their 70th anniversary.

When Mamma was a little girl their house was just across the street from the Canny Kitchen (Riverside Café). The Greeks would have to go by their front porch to get to the Café. They use to leave coins on the porch for the kids as they walked by.

He talked about his Daddy – he came from one of the Greek Islands, and jumped ship. He made his way to Tarpon Springs (where a lot of Greeks settled). Daddy said that they had a place in Tarpon Springs, where you could pay to go out into the Gulf, and they would send a sponge diver down and he would come up with a fresh sponge and give to you (for a fee of course).

I poured him a glass of pineapple juice to finish his breakfast off, and little bubbles formed around the top of the juice. He said that meant it was “good stuff”. He said that is how you can tell if moonshine is “good stuff” if it has little beads around the top when you pour it. He used to haul moonshine for a man from Jacksonville to Palatka, Florida in 5 gal jugs. He use to pour out a pint for himself (they never missed the pint).

Daddy's Stories July 2009

2009-08-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

July 1, 2009
How did Granny Buzier lose her eye? She was making lye soap when she was around 16 or 17, and potash splashed into her eye, when she was a teenager washing clothes.

Remember the time he took LC (Mamma’s baby brother) to California to see his kids. His wife had left him and took them out to Oakland. While there he visited Aunt Cleo. LC said he would pay all the expenses if Daddy would take him, and Mamma did not mind. He said LC wore out the floor board of his car trying to brake (smile). Daddy always had a heavy foot when he drove.

He remembers another time, he drove to California and took some seafood to Aunt Cleo. The police stopped him, and just gave him a warning to slow down. Mamma said later, she was about to tell the peaceable man (what she called the police) “if you thought he was going fast then, you should have seen him back there earlier”.

Another time while he was traveling, his car broke down. It had rained a lot, and the streets were flooded. Somehow water got up in his carborater and the car would not run. He found a repair place to fix it in some really small town in Texas. When he went to pay, the man would not take his check, so he asked him if there were any JW’s (Jehovah's Witnesses) in town, and the man said yes the woman that owned the furniture store. The sister, made good the check, and co-signed on it. She was a complete stranger, but trusted daddy because he said he was a JW.

We were watching TV, cop show, where someone got stopped and took to jail because he and his wife had stole plates off of someone else’s car and he was driving around when stolen plates and an unregistered vehicle. Daddy said when he was a kid around 17 he stole someone’s car plates. He doesn’t know why he did, because he was working at the Ford plant in Jacksonville then and making good money. He said he made sure the plates came off of a car that looked just like his. He drove the car to Apalach (Apalachicola); he said he never got in trouble for it.

He said he was bad as a kid, stole all kinds of stuff. One time he stole a watermelon.

July 3, 2009
Daddy has a scar on his chin. His mamma said he fell out of his carriage when he was a baby and cut his chin on a conch shell. Talking about conch shells, he still is amazed at how you can listen in the conch shell and hear the ocean.

He said that he always thought I was going to be a singer. He said I sang to myself all of the time. He said instead of crying I would sing. He doesn’t know how mamma did it, but somehow she got me a crib when they first adopted me.

The fig tree that was in their back yard came from an old stump that was dug out of Aunt Mildred’s yard (Mamma’s sister-in-law/ older brother Lee). He was looking out at the fig trees behind his trailer and had been watching the birds eat the figs. Said he really missed his fig tree, so I asked the neighbor if I could pick some for him, and I did.

July 5, 2009
I woke him up from dreaming. He was on a golf course and when he teed off, he hit the ball pretty good. But at the next round, for some reason he could not hit the ball at all. He said it was like a night-mare, all of these people were backing up waiting for their turn to play the hole, and he could not hit the ball. Finally the golf course opened up the other side of the golf course so the people could pass by him and play. He never did hit the ball.

He said one time he remembers when they were eating at a drive-in restaurant. He left the girl a 10 cent tip on the tray; as the girl went to reach for it, so did mamma. Anyway, he said he felt really cheap not leaving the girl a tip.

July 8, 2009
Aunt Cleo worked in Jacksonville at the Telephone Company as an operator (she was 13 or 14) and he sold newspapers. Daddy, his mother, Angelina and Aunt Cleo lived together with Aunt Helen in Jacksonville. Aunt Cleo paid the rent, and Daddy bought groceries. It was in Jacksonville where Aunt Cleo met Adolf Miller (who she married, then divorced and later Aunt Helen married). Adolf’s daddy was a butcher. Adolf would steal cows (the markings were on the heads back then) they use to have free range all over. He would butcher the cows, and then take the meat to his daddy. His daddy would give him money to go buy the cows, but instead of buying he kept the money and just stole them. Adolf’s had two sisters “Tootsie, and the younger one was Edith. Edith married Tommy Patton, she worked for Tommy’s daddy.

Once, when Alice was small, she climbed up on the frigerator and it fell over on her, but did not hurt her. He was around 16 when this happened. Not sure what age Alice was (perhaps 6 or 7).

When they left Apalach they went to Miami, this is where Angelina (his baby sister) got ran over by a car. Granny just wanted some money, and told the guy if he gave her 100 dollars that would be okay. She did not realize or just wanted the money, but they could have gotten a lot more. As a kid, Daddy would run and hitch a ride on the back of a truck, by running after it and jumping on the back fender. Angelina was little, and copied him, but fell off and the car behind the truck ran over her. This is why she was never able to have children, and always limped some.

They traveled from Miami to Jacksonville to Biloxi, Mississippi. It was in Biloxi that Daddy wore his first pair of long pants, and where his mother met Henry Rosalis and married him. Daddy said that was the best thing that ever happened to his mother.

July 11, 2009
Cattle use to roam the highways. Adolf Miller said if fat is snow white the meat will be tender, if it is yellow, the meat will be tough. While in Jacksonville, Henry went to the Ford plant with Daddy to try to get a job, but he did not get one right away. Daddy told the man he was 21 (said he almost choked saying it). The man looked at his hands and because they were well calloused, he told him he was hired. Henry did not get hired then, but later did. Gabe Hartley was already working at the plant and he got Henry on later. This is where Daddy met his sweetheart, Evelyn. Daddy lived with Helen this time, and paid her $5 every other week for room and board. Helen did not work because she had a load of kids.

July 14, 2009
Granny use to have a wood stove, and every time they moved she would take it with her. He can remember her being aggravated trying to hook up the stove pipe. Every time they moved they moved the stove with them. At one time when they first got married, Mamma and Daddy also had a wood stove to cook off of.

Some places where they rented, there was a meter and to cook you had to put a quarter in the meter to cook with the gas stove.

July 17, 2009
Daddy talked about the old Lockwood place. It was a house in town that was haunted. His mamma would say that his papa would be yelling to her to come and get this youngun off the bed from jumping, it was shaking too much. But it was not none of the kids? Daddy remembers once he came out of the house onto the back porch. The kitchen was outside in a separate room off of the porch. When he stepped out onto the porch, to the right of him in the corner was a person standing. Daddy turned around and spoke to him, because at first he thought it was a girl he knew, Madeline, but the person was too tall. When Daddy spoke, the person ran by him and jumped off the porch. It was either a demon or angel, but as it jumped it spread it’s wings and flew off. Daddy said he screamed and ran back into the house. He said the house was known to be haunted. He said he was around 6 – 8 then (very small). Another time, he was headed to the pump in the back yard to get water. While he was primeing the pump and huge bird flew up and it scared him, and he ran into the house screaming.

July 19, 2009
I gave Daddy sauerkraut and ribs for supper. Je said first time he ate sauerkraut was at a café in NYC. Whe he was assigned to the Matthew. It was served with pig feet or ribs (can’t remember which). He said they served it with corn – it was sweet the other sour J. Then we talked about the big convention in NYC in ‘58.

July 22, 2009
When he was 21 he lived in Los Angeles – he went to San Diego and tried to get on a fishing boat. Adolf, Tommy Patton from South Jacksonville, and there were three others from Georgia (Johnny and Marvin and someone else). He said he should have gone into fighting in the ring back then, It was hard to find work. No one could get a job.

He remembers with WWI ended (1919) he was 9 and selling newspapers.
Once he was crying and a man asked him what was wrong. Daddy told the man a boy took his papers without paying him. He needed either a nickle or a paper to start with and would give all of the money to his mother to buy food. The average he would make is around 70-80 cents a day and on a really good day a dollar. He said it was just his mamma and me, cleo and Angelina. They got no help from no body.

Cleo would say, Spero is Mamma’s eye-ball (was in Jacksonville). After they left Jacksonville, he got a shoeshine box and shined shoes in Bioloxi. He remembers his mamma working in a seafood canning place. They got free rent for work. He can remember hearing the work whistle blowing letting workers know it was time to start work. They were hungry many time. Once he stole a guena hen in a coop from someone so they could have a chicken supper.

July 23, 2009
He dreamed last night he was going somewhere on a boat – woke up before he got there??? Woke him up at noon and gave him his breakfast (coffee with honey, blueberry oatmeal with honey, meds w/water, and also a donut with the coffee). He kept wanting to know what was in his oatmeal – I kept telling him blueberries. He thought they were flies. :) He said he was sleepy and he thought he would go back to bed and take a nap.

Woke him up at 2 for the Tampa Rays game. Golf was on right then. For supper made Lazana and garlic bread and gave him a glass of port wine. For dessert he had a fruit cup. He did complain the Lazana was salty, but ate good.

July 24, He ate a donut with his coffee and had a bowl of oatmeal. Just wanted to sleep.

July 25, 2009 – Got a phone call early that Thelma passed away. David took care of Daddy – cooked him bacon and eggs for breakfast. We got roasted chickhen for supper for Daddy and Boots.

July 31, 2009 – Filet Migon Steak with Baked Beans and Sweet Potato Fries with French Bread and juice.

Talked about the time he hauled shrimp to New Orleans. They were illegal shrimp in Florida, too small. At the beach at Indian Pass, LeeLee Pacosti had a big old truck. He broke an axle and had to fix it (it might have been the universal joint), They never did get caught. In New Orleans they didn’t have a limit on the count (gauge) and they sold them from the back of the truck in French Market by the bushel.

He tasted his first and last "joint" in New Orleans. He did not smoke then and did not care for it. He was married then, and had driven to New Orleans to sell the shrimp. It was Madi Graw time. He was too tired to party, they sold their shrimp and went to bed (This was around the 30’s or 40’s).

While we were talking – I watched him feed his Filet Migon to Boots. For every bite boots take you need to take one too. That’s too expensive steak. He said Boots eats that kind too. :)

He had Pineapple fruit cup for dessert and we talked about pineapples. When he was in the service in Honolulu he saw all the pineapple groves – I told him about the story how Pineapples were stolen from either China or Japan and smuggled to Hawaii.

Daddy's Stories in June 2009

2009-08-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

June 14, 2009
When he was a small kid, Angelina was a baby, they lived in Biloxi, Mississippi; he would do whatever to get jobs and bring home money. Whatever he made, he would bring home to his mamma to buy food and pay the bills. He had a shoeshine set, and would setup and do shoe shines there on the beach – there was a fancy white house – where men would sit out on the porch looking out onto the bay. He would get 15 cent a shine, and a tip of a nickel or dime. He would caddy, and sometimes he would go to find the ball, step on it and act like it could not be found. Then he would go back later, dig it up and sell it for a quarter. He use to sell newspapers, he would wait for someone to put the paper down on a bench and leave it; He would retrieve it, fold it all back up neatly and then sell it. There was a time he stole the paper off the porches after the newsboys would leave them. One time he got caught and the newspaper guy was chasing him. He went around a corner, through a cast iron gate, and hid under the front porch steps. They came around the corner, and he could see and hear them. They did not know which way he went, so finally left. He said he stayed under there for a really long time, to make sure they were gone

Talking about his mamma, he said she really had a temper. He was around five or six, and she had purchased a small vanity dresser from a store on time payments. When she got behind in the payments, the store repossessed it. He can remember the two men carrying it out the door, and his mamma took a hammer to the mirror and broke it. Also, around this same time, his mamma had a boyfriend in Biloxi and they broke up. When they broke up his mamma was really upset and hurt. He can remember hearing her say, “I would rather see all my young-ins piled up dead in the front yard, than lose him”. He commented, he never told anyone what she said, but for a little kid, it really hurt. He said that she told him the reason they broke up was because her boyfriend’s mother was a fortune teller. She did not like her, and put a spell on her.

Regarding his family, he said he never remembers ever his papa being in the home; apparently he had left his mamma when Angelina was a baby. Uncle Costa left home when he was 12 to go fishing on a snapper boat. He remembers one time Costa came home for a visit, Costa was around 16, and he can remember his brother carrying a huge Red Snapper home to the family. He was holding it and the tail of the fish was dragging in the sand. Uncle Costa met and married Aunt Ester in Biloxi. Aunt Ester had a sister named Lorretta, and when Uncle Costa and Aunt Ester had their first daughter, they named her after Aunt Ester’s sister; Daddy also talked them into giving her his girlfriends name as the middle name, thus his cousin was named Loretta Evelyn Buzier.

There was a camp in Biloxi owned by the seafood house. They would give you free lodging for work. The workers would shuck oysters, head and peel shrimp. Daddy said the housing was not bad, there was an outdoor toilet.

Aunt Cleo had moved out and was living with Aunt Helen, in Jacksonville. Aunt Cleo got a job with the telephone company there.

When he was 16 his family had moved to Jacksonville, also. He stood in line at the Ford plant where they were hiring. The man was going down the line and choosing this one and that one, he passed by Daddy and after he was a few men down, Daddy called out and said, how about me? The man came back, asked him how old he was, and Daddy said 21. The man looked at his hands and saw all of the callouses, and said okay, go on in – he was hired. The pay was really good back then, starting pay was 62 ½ cents an hour, and after 30 days a raise to 65 cents an hour, that was really good back then, as minimum wage was around 10 – 15 cents an hour.

He cut his inner thigh really bad, picking up a glass water jug to put on the water dispenser, he broke and cut his leg (the artery and muscles) and he was rushed to the hospital (St. Lukes). At work, they said when he could come back and work, he could come back. When he went back there was a note on his time card. He could not read it, so he asked some guy to read it for him. The guy started making fun of him, and Daddy punched him, and started a fight. The guys at work, circled around, and Daddy heard one guy say I betting on the kid. He worked there for a long time, but left to move back to Apalach and go fishing.

His girlfriend Evelyn lived in Jacksonville, when he moved back to Apalach Aunt Ester use to write letters for him. Years later he met up with her and went out on a date. She told him she knew he was not writing the letters, because they just did not sound like him.

June 21, 2009
Granny worked at the camp in Biloxi heading and peeling shrimp. She also worked putting labels on the cans. Daddy worked in the kitchen cooking the shrimp. He remembers being barefooted (did not own or wear shoes until he was 13) and the shrimp hulls in the factory would stick into his feet. The house at the camp was nice, and they had an outdoor toilet they used. He said when they lived in Apalachicola one of the places they stayed, the outhouse was located over the River.

At one of the camps, the guy would pay $1 day for workers, but charge them a $1 a day for housing. They also had a company store, where workers had to purchase their food on account. Now I understand what the words to an old song I heard once, “ one day older, deeper in debt, I owe my soul to the company store”, or something like that.

He also worked on the “Tarpon”, a boat that ran between Carrabelle to Panama City. He worked in the engine room and got paid $60 per month, plus room and board.

His older brother, Costa, worked on a boat, down at Indian Pass – will have to ask him about this later.

His older sister, Helen, was married to a Fruitaker, and her oldest son Raymond was his son, The rest of the children, except the youngest, Alice, were all Gabe Hartley’s children. Aunt Helen was married to Gabe when she had Alice, but Alice was not his daughter. Later, Aunt Helen married Adolph Miller whom she stayed with until his death. Interestingly, Adolph Miller was Aunt Cleo’s husband first.

Daddy said when he was a kid they use to pay a game called “Hounds and Deers”. He said there was a home base, and the object of the game was to get to the home base before getting caught.

June 30, 2009
Granny was a Knowles from Panama City, and her father was a Baptist Preacher. Grandaddy Buzier use to travel to PC to sell oysters from Apalach and that is where he met her. Granny Buzier went to the Holiness church here in Apalach, and when he was around eight years old, he remembers going down the isle of the church and the congregation laying hands on him. He was down on the floor with the congregation on top of him praying. He remembers walking with one of the sisters of the congregation, and she said to him – son you are going to live for a long time.

He explained about the boat while he was in service – they were docking in Pearl Harbor and his superior called for a number 1 rope to be let out as they were docking. He embarrassed him by going over his head to his superior’s superior and said which rope do you want No. 1 or No. 2 and he chose the one that Daddy had suggested. Any way there were 4 ropes 2 aft and 2 stern. No. 2 and 3 pulled the ship in sideways toward the dock. No. 1 and No. 4 were used to keep the boat from moving forward or backward once docked.

He said I was never wrong, when I said something is was right. I jokingly said, if you didn’t know the answer you kept you mouth shut didn’t you? He said that’s right. I knew what I talked about.

When he was a little boy they were in Miami, and he went to school. He overheard the teachers talking about him and they said he was really smart and knew his math really good, and was 4th grade level, but he could not read.