Interviewer: Victoria Phaneuf

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I had met Jerry at a book signing a couple of weeks earlier. We'd agreed to meet and do an interview for the project. We had arranged to meet at 9, I was about 15 minutes late because of traffic, but I had called him so he showed up at the same time I was. We met at the shop where his grandson, Jeremy, was working as the manager. I was introduced and we started with a tour of the facility. In the front of the building is a shop selling a variety of marine gear, fasteners, hooks, ropes, cables, etc. I didn't get a very close look at what they were selling. Trawl boards used to be 100% of the business, but now it's more like 40% (or 60, I can't read my handwriting), oil is a good bit and the rest is repairs, cabinets they build on the side, or wire they sell for crab traps. They used to sell cables for shrimpboats, had a horse trailer for it, but they got out of that. The business started in an old horse stall then they added on and then added on a second building, now all those wooden buildings are being used for storage out back and the shop is in a big metal building. I was given a tour of the front building first, the shop floor where they make the trawl boards, wood and aluminum, then out to the back building where it all started. We came back into the front building and I saw the part of the shop where they do work for the shipyards – hatches, the piece that holds the mast, air intake panels. It's only about a quarter of the shop that they're using to build the pieces for the shipyards. Then they took me out back where they did the cabinetry work, a long shop separated from the main one that primarily houses wood and varieties of cabinet doors. They will fabricate anything, at one point they built horse trailers. The family had horses, they used to have more stuff for the yards outside in the drive, a storage area between the new and old shops. They don't have as much now, they're lower now, the yards just picked up a lot of it. Usually there is only one guy working on the trawl boards, now there are 4 because the season starts at the beginning of June. On the yard, aside from the two interviewees, I saw six men. All were in their 30s-50s (most on the upper side of that). They were welding, burning, cutting, doing stuff I didn't understand or couldn't see well. Out of the six one was African American. He was cutting and burning.

I sat with the two men in the front office/kitchen. Periodically throughout the interview one or the other would get up to answer a phone call or a question from someone.