Uncle Joe, the Bulldozer, and the Shark

About a hundred years ago, when the historic village of Old Marco was young, the Doxsee Clam Factory was a thriving interest and a booming business on Marco Island. During the decade of the roaring twenties, the hard-working folks at “The Clam Factory” were very busy harvesting, cooking, and canning the mollusks and making clam bullion. The Atlantic Coast Railway was equally busy building a railroad trestle across the Marco River. A flat-bottom ferryboat with a sometimes runaway diesel engine was another dangerous endeavor hectic with floating passengers, automobiles, and on occasion, heavy equipment across the strong tidal track of the river between Marco and Capri.

When wayfaring boaters, sailors, or rum-running smugglers from Cuba found their way into the strong moon-driven current on the river, where the railroad engineers were having a whale of a time driving pilings and building a railroad bridge, everyone began calling the big backwater bay east of “The Inn” and the smoking clam factory smokestacks Factory Bay. 

The fact that Marco in the 1920s was busy was an understatement, and because of the industrious nature of almost everything else in the world, Marco Island at that time was operating under the name of Collier City.

Because the railroad barges were busy with trestle building and the sometimes out-of-control ferryboat on the inland side of the river, and “The Inn,” was busy with the winter tourists on the gulf side of the stream, the folks in the middle at the clam factory were pretty much left to do whatever might come to mind.

Because the demand for clams in the northern cities was huge, the clamming crew on Factory Bay was always stuffing buttonwood into the big boilers and working under the massive tin roof and smokestacks as the coastal breeze blew the smoke away.

Harvesting and cooking clams was big business, but as with any thriving business, stubborn obstacles and commercial by-products often got in the way of a streamlined enterprise. For every boatload of clams that the harvesting crew would bring into the docks, the cooks, the tin canners, and the clam bullion bottle boys were overwhelmed and crowded with the ever-growing and building piles of discarded clamshells. When the piles of clamshells began to rise alongside the Marco River like the pyramids on the Nile, the flat-bottom ferry with the landing near the railroad trestle boys got underway. This was the day when Uncle Joe and his bulldozer came floating across the river and landed on the clamshells that were falling into the water.

After a week of Uncle Joe chomping on his cigar and his bulldozer belching the same color of smoke that came out of the clam factory smokestacks, the Collier City pyramids of shells were so flat anyone with a car or truck could drive out on the new peninsula that was rising above the highest tide on the river.

While he was waiting for more clamshells to doze, Uncle Joe decided he would shut down the dozer and go fishing on his new point of manmade land that was reaching out into the deep water.

At first, Uncle Joe caught redfish and soap-fish and all the sea trout anyone could eat, and after a time, he became fascinated with a much bigger predator that was snapping the larger fish - and even the tarpon - in half before he could reel them up to his bulldozer where he sat while fishing.

With a full spring tide and a dark of the moon on the rise, Uncle Joe set a sizeable homemade hook with a chain for a leader. On the hook, he rigged a large haunch of a wild boar and then bulldozed the hook and the bait over the packed shells until the carcass dropped in the water and went out with the tide.

When the bobber of a float began to jump in the current, and the wire that was the fishing line began to sing under the strain of a cable ready to brake, Uncle Joe chomped down on his cigar and quickly tied the screaming line that was the wire to the back of his bulldozer. When the hook was obviously set, and the wire was zipping across the river like a sea serpent underwater, the late March sun finally set and glowing lanterns from the clam factory began to gather around Uncle Joe and his bulldozer.

The clam crew never let the boilers go out, but everyone sat and sipped rumrunner rum from Cuba beside the glow of the lanterns until the big shark’s strength gave out, and Uncle Joe hauled him ashore and on top of the clamshells as the first day of April became an orange streak above the pilings of the railroad trestle.

In the early morning light, it was easy to see the big shark was a hammerhead and clearly a monster. After a week of tourists gathering to see the monster, the bulldozer, Uncle Joe and his cigar, the boss at Factory Bay ordered the big Hammerhead buried under a fresh harvest of clamshells.

After a hundred years, Factory Bay remains, but the clam factory is gone. The Snook Inn rests above the point in the Marco River once known as “The Snook Hole.” 

When the old trailer park next to the Snook Inn recently came down among the bulldozers from the latest modern age, the remains of a giant fifty-foot hammerhead shark were recently uncovered.

The huge triangle teeth found in the remains beneath the old trailer park and the clamshells from a hundred years ago are not on display because most of Uncle Joe, the Bulldozer and the Shark is entirely a work of fiction and meant as a tribute to a hundred years of Marco Island - and the age-old tradition of April fool’s Day!