Skipping School - Part 1 Shipping School and Oystering - Part 1

My first times on an oyster boat,
I skipped school to come along.
Momma didn’t like it
Daddy teaching me to tong


Daddy was a simple man;
He never finished school
But I wanted to be like him
And learn to use his tools


Oystering isn’t easy;
There are no books to read.
You’ve got to learn the water
And where the oysters breed.


And even if you’re certain
Where to drop the tongs,
To lift the oysters in the boat
You’ve got to be real strong.


All day long we’d oyster.
Twenty bushels, sometimes more.
My body always aching
When we headed back to shore.


Working by my daddy’s side
I began to understand
All the choices that you make
To become an oysterman.
My father never realized
What changed in me those days,
How skipping school and oystering
Led me a different way.


--Fred Brannock
  March 21, 1996

This is a poem my late husband wrote when he was 57, two years after he retired from his job. I only found it recently among his writings and started thinking about how important it was to his decisions in life to have had this one day experience in playing hooky and to do what most people did for a living in the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It allowed him to not consider oystering in his career plans.

Fred and his little brother, Ron, with their dad on the Chesapeake Bay oystering.

Submitted by
Jo Ann Brannock, PhD