Interviewer(s): E. Bernier. Morgan City, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

P.T. is Dub Noble's brother-in-law. He owns Bailey's Basin Seafood in Morgan City. It was brought to my attention that P.T. had been interviewed for the previous project, mainly about his business and the regulations that were affecting small business owners in the area during the 1980's. I had Tom McGuire look at the previous interview to pick out topics I needed to discuss further. My interview focuses exclusively on his time in the oil industry and the impetus behind his move to owning his own business. We met in his at the bait shop where three young to middle-aged men, one of them being his son, were sorting large crates of crabs. We went upstairs to his office for the interview. His shop is located on Front Street in Morgan City. He appeared willing to talk with me, but it was apparent that he was extremely busy as well as the phone rang several times during the interview. Prior to the interview I had not known that he spent 15 years overseas in Malaysia and Singapore. He talks some about what it was like and the differences between working overseas and working here. We then move into a discussion about what prompted his decision to quit the oil field and start his own business.

P.T. Bailey was born in Morgan City in 1927. He worked as a shrimp trawler for 20 years, joined the Navy and then shrimped again after getting out of the service. His neighbor got him a job at Tidewater in 1966, and he started out as a deckhand. He quickly became captain after a couple of weeks on the job. After five or six years, the company moved him to Venice to be a Port Engineer. After four years, he became Marine Super for Offshore Logistics. He stayed with Logistics as a Manager until 1983, when Logistics sold all of its boats and got out of all aspects of the oil business except for helicopters. P.T. decided to go into the seafood business with his son.