Mac lived next door to Jack Rudloe's Gulf Specimen Lab, in Panacea. Jeff Potter thought they were like Doc Ricketts and John Steinbeck, in Cannery Row. Or Doc Ford and Tomlinson the hippie, in Randy Wayne White's mystery series set along Florida's mangrove coast.

Mac and Brew began corresponding, then Mac visited Brew, in Delray Beach, then Brew visited Mac, in Panacea.

Brew had gone through Rudloe's Gulf Specimen Lab, and seen the fiddler crabs. But he'd never met Rudloe.

Brew painted a fiddler crab, from memory. A memory painting. It hung in his bathroom, in Point and Shoot, now.

Once when Brew was out of work, during the Reagan-Bush recession, he drove to Tallahassee, to turn an employment application in. Coming back to Point and Shoot, he took the long route, along the coast, and stopped at The Oaks, at the bridge across Ochlockonee Bay, to eat a fried mullet dinner with cheese grits and tossed salad with a chunky blue cheese dressing.

At the cash register, The Oaks had a copy of Jack Rudloe's The Living Dock at Panacea, with illustrations by Walter Anderson. Watercolors of crabs, birds, mollusks.

Brew bought a copy and was reading it at his booth while he waited for his meal.

A man came over and asked Brew if he wanted him to autograph the book for him.

Brew asked, "Are you Jack Rudloe," and the man said he was.

Brew said, "Yes, please. Inscribe it, `To Brenda Saunders, happy birthday, love, Jack.'"

"Are you Jack Saunders?" Rudloe asked.

They talked about Walter Anderson.

When Joseph Campbell came back from graduate school, in Germany, he hitchhiked around the country, and ended up in Salinas, California, with John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts.

I think Jeff Potter thought of Brew as the Joseph Campbell of the trio. Following his bliss.

When Dread Clampitt had a CD come out, their self-titled debut album, Dread Clampitt, featuring their title song, "Dread Clampitt," Brew wrote a band history, for liner notes, and published it as the pamphlet Root Doctor.

Root Doctor sold 500 copies and paid for itself. An initial printing of 250 copies and a second edition of 250 more.

Brew took the CD Dread Clampitt and the pamphlet Root Doctor to Tattered Pages bookstore, in Crawfordville, and asked the owner to buy some.

He said he sold them as a set. They retailed for $10 for the CD and $5 for the pamphlet, and he gave a 40% discount, with return privileges.

She said, "Gee, we don't sell music."

He should have said he sold the pamphlet for $15 with a free CD enclosed. But I don't think she would have bought them anyway. Her ears were still burning about "You Can Tell a Lot About a Community by a Book's Cover."

The Wakulla News would not have reviewed them, either.

To get one you had to go and hear Dread Clampitt play, and buy a copy from them, between sets.