QUENTIN ROUX / Staff

Moderator Craig Woodward, an ardent historian himself, introduces the panel.

QUENTIN ROUX / Staff

One of the crowd favorites, Nellie Hamilton Whitehurst, enjoys a humorous interlude in the proceedings.

QUENTIN ROUX / Staff

The crowd enjoys the moment as well at Mackle Park.

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They talked about entertaining visitors from “Miama,” about repelling hordes of mosquitoes by burning clam shells in smudge pots, and about being allowed to drive on Marco’s beaches with carefree abandon.

They also spoke about being able to pick swamp cabbage “without going to jail,” sending shark skins to New York and painting screens with kerosene to ward off the dreaded “no-seeums.”

These were some of the reminiscences of a group of “old timers” invited by the Marco Island Historical Society to share some of their memories at a cheerful and informative panel discussion hosted Oct. 7 at Mackle Park.

All of them, Henry Lowe, Lois Howard Hughes, Carson Bomar, Marilyn Rimes Sims, Lucille Doxsee Thompson, Curtis Wyman Bostick and Nellie Hamilton Whitehurst, have rich pre-1960s ties with the island, and were only too happy to talk about the hardships as well as the fun they had during those times.

Lowe, for example, came from a bee-keeping family, and remembered that in a good year the farm could yield 1,600 pounds of honey.

He remembered, too, being excited about his family acquiring running water in their house for the first time.

Seeing water disappearing down the toilet was more than a novelty, he recalled.

“On the first night, us four boys flushed the toilet so many times that we overflowed the septic tank,” he told a highly amused audience.

Lowe also spoke about turtle meat being quite a delicacy at that time, the same going for rogue bears, which used to plunder the apiaries.

“We had no refrigeration, so we’d share the meat with neighbors if we couldn’t finish it,” Lowe said.

Bomar had the capacity crowd buzzing when he revealed that 100 acres of prime Marco land bought by his grandfather (b. 1880) was sold in 1930 for the princely sum of $13,000.

Rimes Sims talked about the island’s children all having to board one bus to attend school in the Caxambas area, singling out one incident when the bus ran out of control on a wet day.

“So what did you do?” asked moderator and historian Craig Woodward.

“Well, we all got out and started walking ... home,” Rimes Sims said to the further amusement of the audience.

Other old timers on the panel talked about the early charter fishing days, the iconic Doxsee Clam Factory that operated in the area the Snook Inn now occupies, and also the great community spirit that characterized these virtual pioneers.

Crews made the nostalgic observation about cars being allowed to drive on the beach, while Lowe remembered just about all the youngsters on the island piling into a big pick-up truck and being taken to watch 16mm movies at an old Caxambas church building.

“The place had folding seats that the termites had half gone through, and if you looked up you could see the stars ... because the roof had holes in it,” said Bomar, adding to Lowe’s observation.

Nellie Hamilton Whitehurst, dressed in what appeared to be her Sunday best, spoke about an alternative mosquito repellent: burning rags in coconut shells.

Society President Darcie Guerin said afterwards that the event will be repeated next year because it turned out to be so well received.

“What a treat to witness living history and hear the great antidotes from the real folks of Marco,” she said, praising Woodward for doing an outstanding moderating job.