 In WJCT's Voices of the River series, we take a journey down the St. John's River and hear from people who depend on the river for their living or whose lives are changed because they live close to it. In this first installment, we hear from a fourth-generation commercial fisher, Anita Johnson. She lives in the New Berlin area of Jacksonville. This was not a community. This was a family neighborhood. It was always something going on from one end of the road to the other. I mean, we just had, there was life and excitement. And I remember when the boats, they used to come in through the channel, around the channel. It was a lighthouse out on the corner. And when those boats came around that corner, the neighborhood was lined up. The anti-air, here comes the anti-air. Here comes the Christopher. Here comes the Shenandoah. I mean, it was always, it was just to meet the boats, to see what they caught, to see, you know, everybody would come out to the patio to see what we caught. You know, it was excitement just to see how many fish you had, you know, what kind of fish. Can I get a mess for them? You know, it was always something. Every family just about had a trawler, but everybody had a boat. So there was always traffic in the river. But you're not allowed in the river now because of the shipping industry. They will run over you. When they took away the fishing industry and people had to go as well for employment, the community died. The gill netters were the ones that fed the populace. They caught the fish that are known as fin fish. These were the inexpensive fish that black consumers used on a regular basis. They were part of the main diet in the black community because they were the least expensive. So there have been people that had to cut seafood out of their diets because of the price. Yeah, everybody's old now because we don't, we don't get out like we used to when it was plentiful and available. We don't, we don't get out and share. Now if you go buy fish and you paying $7, $8 a pound, the neighbors not gonna know, okay? When they were, when they were inexpensive or free, everybody could eat. But I am, but we are paying $15 almost for a dozen of crabs. Don't get some. And the children used to get out on my mama's fish or a piece of chicken on a string and just put them up. Well, all people used to say you have salt in your blood. Right. It's the salt man. It's the salt. It's an efficient being out there in the universe. It's addictive. I mean, it was, it's hard work, but it's the most fun you could have. I love to being out in the middle of the river away from all humans looking up at the sky, communicating with God and hearing the water lap up against the side of the boat. There's nothing more tranquil, more peaceful or more natural. Than being out in that water with God and peace. That was retired Fisher Anita Johnson in an interview recorded at her Jacksonville home. This segment was produced by WJCT's Mary McIntyre from an interview recorded by the Florida Department of State. Our next voices of the river segment takes us about nine miles up the river to Panama Park just north of downtown Jacksonville. Here we'll meet Bruce Nipper and Robin Emmett, who goes by the name Dude. Nipper runs a market called Trout River Fish Company. 730 left the dock basically. Pulled the first trap about 10 minutes after that. I love morning. It's peaceful. It is peaceful. Calm days. It's a mirror. Everything above you, you see, it's picture perfect. And I'll fill in what he forgot to tell you. You don't have the general public messing with you. That's what he means by peace. You don't have the general public and people. Some days you know the river's got a lot of activity. Other days you're there alone. It's peace and quiet. Only know what you have. You got old seagulls squawking every now and then. That's the only quiet time you get. You're surrounded by people the rest of the week. And the rest of the day, we see a bunch of faces in here every day. So that time alone is nice. I miss the time that we had just dragging, seeing what you had. And miss the time out there just being on that water. It's so much quieter and so much less hassle dealing with just on the back of a shrimp boat. Then it is dealing with the general public and fellow employees and everything else. You know, the general public can be a real pain. They can be really picky. And some of them can be great. We have some days when it's just phenomenally how great all the customers are. But I miss being out on that river. And if it was a continuous guaranteed living, I'd rather be on that river starting tomorrow than be inside this building. It comes in addiction. It truly does. It's definitely fine. It's a good good life. I'm 50 now and I can't remember not being on a boat. I can't remember not being on a boat. From this tall I was on a boat. The old timers have gone. And even the generation behind them have almost gone. We're slowly starting to see that we're fixing to be the old timer in 10 more years. The guy Pete Smith told some of the funniest. One of the stories is about getting hit with a lightning bolt. What a dude. Hit with a lightning bolt in the chest. And one of the stories, a tornado picked him up and set him down in a some lady's swimming pool over there off a narrow road. The lightning bolt hit him and almost knocked him down. He was a friend to everybody. He was a friend to everybody. He was a great fisherman. He was a great craver. He was great with the gill nets back in those days. And like I say, he was always going to stretch a fishing line. There was a story about getting hit in the back with a pelican or something one time. He could come up with some stories, but he would never say anything bad about a fellow man. Never. He'd never hear him say a bad word about anybody. That was Trout River Fish Company owner Bruce Nipper and Robin Dude Emmett at the fish market near downtown Jacksonville. This segment was produced by WJCT's Mary McIntyre from an interview recorded by the Florida Department of State. Next, we travel to Polatka in Putnam County. Craig McClain works for the St. John's River Water Management District, and in his spare time, he works on getting trails built to connect more visitors to the river. He talked to former Florida folklorist Blaine Wade. Where's the role of trails in helping revitalize the river, the use of the river too, or change the use of the river even? We do agree to access helping folks maybe see it and appreciate it a little more. Not everybody has the same type of access with a motor boat or a yacht, so these trails and even the trails that sometimes we don't think of as trails, but would be like scenic highways. There's some work going on right now on the St. John's River from the mouth to the headwaters related to ecotourism. Some of that is simply integrated maps showing people how they navigate downstream, where they can stay, where they can camp, where the hotels are, where the restaurants are. Two of the points I've heard a lot about the river, I was talking to a guy up in Jacksonville who grew up on the river and now he has a fish market, seafood market up there. He has some of the big changes he's seen about the river's access, that when he grew up he could just get to the river. And then Belleville has talked to me about how when people use the river as a primary means of transportation there's a different relationship but with the advent of railroads and interstates it became something you drove over. Exactly. So there's that issue of what you just touched on access and then people sort of take it for granted. I think that's definitely true because at one point in time rivers were and with railroads were our navigational channels in the state of Florida and you could take a riverboat up the St. John's River, up the Aquahaw River, up into Lake County. Right. And then we're bringing citrus all the way back down that system. Well, you know at this point you can navigate that system but it doesn't carry commerce nor does it carry commercial paying passengers like it wants to do with riverboats. So you think by building trails and doing some of the things that are happening down here it brings people closer to the river? I think it would bring people closer to the river and give them more interaction. And with some of the what I call intermodal aspects like the train station and the riverboat that the city is getting ready to launch that will give people more interaction with the river because it's different ways they can get on to the river. There's a social and cultural aspects of trails that bring people out. People can be socially involved. They can meet one another. It's a little bit slower paced environment. We got enjoying the trail, riding on it, exercising or using it to get to work or to the store. It's an opportunity folks have to engage with one another sort of slow down a little bit in the lifestyle and take a moment and say hello and see how everybody's doing. So there's definitely a social and a cultural aspect that I really like. That was Craig McClain talking near the banks of the St. John's River in Polatka. This segment was produced by WJCT's Mary McIntyre from an interview recorded by the Florida Department of State. And finally our journey up the St. John's River takes us half an hour south to Crescent City. There Edith Salazar and her mother Margarita are getting ready for the celebration of the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Salazars are from Mexico and on this day Margarita is cutting out paper decorations using a method called papel picado. It's about the story. The song is about her story. But usually the serenade talks about how do they find her how much we love her, how much she means to us. It's what your family, your mom, your grandma, your great-grandma teach you. They can give you nothing else. That's the only thing that they give you, your traditions. That's why it's so important to keep your traditions with you. Why people visit our house because they like our tradition of the day. She feels so happy and so glad that they go and see our tradition because she says for some of them they don't see us, they see us different and she likes them to go because she feels like whoever goes they think that we're not different from the other people. We're the same even though we're from a different country or different color or different culture. When we used to live in Mexico and now that we're living here we carry the same traditions and we haven't changed nothing so she's like it's just mostly the same. She's really happy about it because even though we're in a different country we can continue doing our traditions and celebrating our traditions. When they go and visit she doesn't know they just go just to see what is going on or they really go to see what we do. Some of the people in the community ask her to do that papel picado for different occasions. She's just doing it for fun because she likes to do it. She understands that some people don't know how to do it and some people charge to do decorations for different occasions and she does it because she doesn't want to get hurt. If you don't know she would really like to help you out and teach you how to do it and do it for you but she doesn't like to charge or nothing like that. She just likes doing it because she likes to do it. That was Edith and Margarita Salazar at their home in Crescent City. This segment was produced by WJCT's Mary McIntyre from an interview recorded by the Florida Department of State.