PERDIDO WHAT? PERDIDO KEY?

Oh.... Well, I remember when...

By Baker Holman

Continued (3)

One ambitious, resourceful young man in Milton, FL, to the best of my memory from reading newspaper accounts, began investigating homestead laws and regulations. He decided that the area which is now part of the National Seashore could legally be acquired through homesteading. Regulations required a dwelling. This he accomplished by having a small house trailer dragged down the peninsula to about half way between Johnson Beach and Fort McRee. How on earth this was done through all that sand, I never knew. Farm animals must have been required because he put up a fence and got a few chickens. A garden was necessary, so he planted a few vegetables. (How did vegetables grow in sand?) I also never knew how he watered the plants and chickens, since he had no electricity for a well. There was no water utility, not even a road down the peninsula. After a couple of years of legal hassles he was ousted. Again, this episode comes only from my memory which could be incorrect, but if it happened as described, you gotta give him credit he did think BIG!

In earlier years there were so many creatures in the Gulf that skittish people wouldn't get in the water. Sting rays (called stingarees" by fishermen) were commonplace. We shuffled our feet to avoid stepping on one, because the coating on a sting ray's barb is poisonous.

Dolphins cruised up and down the coast almost constantly. There were crab jubilees phenomenal occurrences of crustaceans or fishin the Gulf and bays, such as the flounder jubilees that still occur at times in Mobile Bay. I can remember looking out and seeing in clear Gulf water literally hundreds and hundreds of blue crabs, close together, motionless on the sand bottom.

Occasionally electric rays were found, buried in the sand. If stepped on, these rays gave a jolt powerful enough to straighten out the hair on a wire haired terrier. All kinds of skates (the ray family) were plentiful. Large rays, about three feet from tip to tip between the pectoral fins, were called "devil fish" by fishermen. The common name for a skate's egg case, still to be found on our beaches, is a "devil's purse". Manta rays could be seen in Pensacola Bay Pass, inhaling their lunch or dinner as the incoming tide brought in fish.

Once we watched an unusual ballet at the beach. At least ten rays, each about two feet wide, with black tops and white undersides, rode the surf in team precision right up to the beach, flipped up and over as graceful as ballet dancers, and winged back to the sand bar to repeat this performance.

On one beautiful summer day we were in a small boat motoring along slowly in Big Lagoon when several dolphins just beneath the surface, headed straight for our boat. They just went down a little deeper and then under the boat. One dolphin was snow white, a true albino. What a thrill to see this rare porpoise so close! Some years later national news gave an account of an albino dolphin, called "Snowball," off the coast of South Carolina, pursued by boats to be netted and turned over to a marine aquarium. I never heard whether Snowball was captured.

In the twenties and thirties Perdido Bay, named "lost" bay by the Spanish, was teeming with live creatures. Crabs were every where. Dolphins appeared frequently, feeding on the abundant fish. The bay was famous for its tasty mullet, but redfish and speckled trout, and even freshwater green trout (bass) from Perdido River were common.