The Mullet Culture

The book Old Folks bought in Apalach about mullet was called Mulletheads, by Michael Swindle. The Legends, Lore, Magic, and Mania Surrounding the Humble But Celebrated Mullet.

By analogy with the Grateful Dead's Deadheads, or Jimmy Buffett's Parrotheads.

Dread Clampitt don't call their fans Dreadheads. They call them Clampettes.

In a blurb on the back cover of Mulletheads, Willie Morris says Swindle's book captures "the mullet culture" of "Western Florida and Alabama" "beautifully."

The phrase "mullet culture" struck a chord with Old Folks.

Owen and Balder sing about it, their relatives made a living at it, until the Net Ban outlawed their way of life, and Old Folks and Brenda moved back to Brenda's old home place to partake of it. To eat mullet fried, smoked, baked, broiled, or made into a smoked fish dip with cream cheese and mayonnaise.

Old Folks and Brenda had studied the mullet culture, as archeologists.

The first field season Old Folks was on a dig he ate fried mullet five nights a week, and he and Brenda had fried mullet, cheese grits, and a tossed salad with blue cheese dressing for their wedding banquet at The Oaks, in Panacea.

The Newgrass Revival used to play at the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival every year. Up by Basin Bayou.

Boggy Bayou, Basin Bayou, Indian Pass, and Money Bayou were pottery types.

Old Folks had written a series of books called The Celebrated Jumping Mullet of Bay County, Florida: A Quartet.

Those books were about the mullet culture.

Old Folks didn't hold with the Flora-Bama mullet toss. He thought it was a bunch of drunk fraternity boys wasting fish and giving mullet a bad name, as something to be thrown away, or wasted.

But he tended to be too serious about things.

And if he ever went on his book tour, for Bukowski Never Did This, he'd probably try to place a few copies at the Flora-Bama Lounge.

Ken Stabler, who named it, said the Redneck Riviera only ran from the Flora-Bama Lounge to Panama City Beach, but to Old Folks, it ran on Highway 98 as far east as Nut-All Rise, where you turned off and drove down through the swamp on marl roads to the boat ramp on the Aucilla River where Williams Fish Camp used to be. With the light-plane landing strip behind the fish camp, 8TA32. Across the river from 8JE57.

Come in, blimp.

When they first saw a Navy blimp they went out and destroyed their moonshine still.