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Real Florida

Old-school boat man

As other Florida boat yards are swallowed up by waterfront development, Jimmie Alderman continues to fend off developers, running his business just like his dad did and, he hopes, just like his offspring will.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published June 28, 2005

	[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]
	Snead Island Boat Works owner Jimmie Alderman, 81, has a computer but records transactions in a ledger. "Nothing wrong with a ledger," he says. "A ledger never stops working in a thunderstorm."

PALMETTO - Jimmie Alderman is an old-fashioned guy. He has a computer but he prefers a pencil and paper. He has a new car, but he would rather drive a 1931 Ford. His favorite boat lacks an engine. He built the sailboat himself using plans from 1911.

Jimmie, who is 81, hates to part with old things. The yellowing photograph behind his desk shows an ancient shack built in 1907. Sentimental, he refused to scrap the shack. In 2005, the shack is a storage shed for a bunch of old boating gear he will never throw away. One day he hopes to donate the shed to a maritime museum.

Snead Island Boat Works, Jimmie's Manatee County business, belongs in a museum, too. Nearly a century old, it looms over the Manatee River like a haunted house.

"There aren't too many of us left," he says. He is talking about old-fashioned boat yards. An old-fashioned boat yard is a place where boats are repaired. Sometimes a boat yard sells boats, and sometimes a boat yard stores boats, but for the most part a boat yard is like an old-fashioned garage where elbow-grease labor is performed.

Men with fiberglass under their nails scrape hulls, straighten propeller shafts and refit masts. Old-fashioned boat yard employees wear steel-toed boots, smoke unfiltered cigarettes and express themselves with satisfied grunts. The stray dogs and cats that show up periodically never go hungry.

Once, every coastal county in Florida had two, three, five or 10 boat yards like the one on Snead Island. But every year, another one, or another two, or another five, disappears. Florida has gotten too modern, and too expensive, for the old-fashioned boat yard to exist on the highest priced real estate remaining: the waterfront.

In the Tampa Bay area, two of the great old ones, Clearwater Bay Marine Ways and Ross Yacht Service, are now history. New owners plan condominiums. Boat yards in St. Petersburg and in Hillsborough County have met similar fates.

"It's the cost of waterfront property that has driven it," says Courtney Ross, who opened his Clearwater yard in 1965. "It's not that I'm against progress, but I feel bad that these old places are closing and nobody seems to notice."

People sometimes ask Ross where they should take their fine yachts or luxury fishing boats for repair now that he has closed. There are still places nearby but he inevitably directs them south.

"Snead Island Boat Works is still open," he says. "They'll never close."

A mariner who does business with Snead Island Boat Works has to go into the office. There, a clerk records the transaction into an old-fashioned ledger. Jimmie Alderman has computers at his place, but he doesn't entirely trust them.

"Nothing wrong with a ledger," he says. "A ledger never stops working in a thunderstorm."

Among the first mariners to use the Manatee River shoreline were Tocobaga Indians. Then came the Spaniards. In 1843, Edward Snead claimed the 740-acre island near the river mouth as his own. In 1907, Ed Pillsbury started the boat yard. In 1935, the Pillsburys sold it to Edward Bishop, who sold it to Jim Alderman, who handed it off to his son Jimmie. Jimmie still comes to the boat yard every day, though his son Gary, 54, manages it now.

Captain Jim Alderman - that's what everybody called Jimmie's daddy - died in 1990 when he was 92. He loved wood boats. He loved wood, period. Before he ran the boat yard he was in the lumber business. He had a lumber yard in Tarpon Springs, where today's Alderman Road bears his name.

The sawmill burned down in 1925. Alderman moved south to the Manatee River for a job on a boat and at the boat yard. Captain Jim's boy, Jimmie, remembers helping build a boat at age 5. Jimmie still has the boat and other old boats too. They are scattered about Snead Island Boat Works and look seaworthy.

Jimmie started working at his dad's boat yard officially when he was in high school. "At a boat yard, you start at the bottom," he says. That meant scraping barnacles. He's got scars to prove it.

Boats were always built from wood. They needed scraping and painting and repair. "It's different now," Jimmie says. "Work isn't as hard because of modern equipment."

The 4-acre yard smells of fiberglass and creosote, though a south wind carries the fragrance of the river. Outside Jimmie's window, mullet jump. Occasionally a fishing guide anchors off his dock and casts for snook.

Jimmie grew up eating mullet and snook and grits. Nobody who lived along the water had to go hungry during the Depression.

"I built my first sailboat out of a rowboat when I was 14," he tells people now. "I sailed it up and down the river though sometimes I went into the bay and camped on one of those islands. I'd bring sardines, crackers and a jug of water and was in heaven."

In June, he'd wade for scallops.

"You don't see them now, but back then there were thousands. I'd bring a bucket back to the boat yard and clean them. Have you ever cleaned scallops? Well, then you know it takes a lot of time. The sun would go down and you'd be eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand flies while you cleaned those scallops."

Jimmie served in the Army during World War II. He was transported to Europe on the Queen Mary. In the North Atlantic, the ship pitched like an enraged bull and many soldiers became deathly ill. He had sea legs and never threw up. He liked standing on the ship's fantail and looking back at the wake.

"I always thought they needed to flat haul the Queen Mary out of the water and adjust her props," the old boat man says now. "She really vibrated." He took a bullet in Germany, and sometimes the hip still hurts, but he doesn't like complaining. For the most part he walks around fine.

He likes to walk from his office to the huge tin shed next door. Inside the shed are some of the oldest boats. The Little Islander, a wood beauty, lies in state near the Skip Jack. The Skip Jack belongs to him. He had it built last year using cypress and juniper and a blueprint from 1911. The Skip Jack is a commercial fishing vessel of the sort once used on the Manatee River. It was propelled by sail and pole. Sometimes he sails it out on the river. Next fall he intends to display it at a maritime museum in Maryland.

"I like old things," he says.

Sometimes he and Maribel, his wife of 62 years, drive to the boat yard in their 1931 Model A. He always has been partial to 1931 Model A's. He bought his first in 1941 for $50 and took Maribel out on a date. He wishes he could still find a 10-cent milkshake.

"Well, everything changes," he tells people.

Jimmie Alderman does not know what is going to become of the old boat yards in Florida. "Maybe they'll go inland," he says hopefully. "When we got started, waterfront was affordable, but now the only affordable land in Florida is in the middle of the state. Maybe people will have to trailer their boats to those places."

If he has anything to do with it, Snead Island Boat Works will remain at Snead Island smack on the bank of the Manatee River. Every once in a while a developer comes sniffing around the boat yard and tosses impressive numbers Jimmie's way. Jimmie listens, but so far he has always tendered the same reply.

"Not interested."

His son, Gary, who manages the place now, has the same philosophy. Gary has two daughters. One is a senior at Clemson. The other is in the insurance business. Jimmie dreams that one of his granddaughters will take over the boat yard one day.

At 5:30 p.m., five days a week, the boat yard closes, and Jimmie and Maribel leave. Sometimes they drive into town for groceries before going home. They drive out of the yard past the mango trees and the poinciana trees and head east.

Sitting in their 1931 Ford, at an intersection graced by a Walgreens, a CVS Pharmacy and a Checkers, they wait for the light to change.

-- Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 or klink@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 28, 2005, 07:09:03]