WEBVTT
NOTE Placeholder transcript for the Phase 2B prototype. Real recording
     ships after the interview. Text drawn from a composite of oral
     histories at the Highlands Historical Society.

00:00.000 --> 00:04.500
The bay taught the boys before the school did. You went out in the

00:04.500 --> 00:09.500
boats with your father when you were small enough to sit on the

00:09.500 --> 00:14.000
gunwale and not fall off. You learned the tide, you learned the

00:14.000 --> 00:19.000
mud. You learned where the beds were and how deep to rake.

00:19.000 --> 00:23.500
The Navesink Indians knew this bay a thousand years before us.

00:23.500 --> 00:28.000
The oyster middens are still along the shore if you know where to

00:28.000 --> 00:33.000
look. That's not folklore. My uncle used to walk us out to one on

00:33.000 --> 00:37.500
a Sunday. He'd pick up a shell and hold it up to the light and

00:37.500 --> 00:42.500
say, this is older than the borough. This is older than the

00:42.500 --> 00:47.000
country. He wasn't wrong. In the good years we ran four boats.

00:47.000 --> 00:51.500
Then the sixties came, and the Parkway, and the day-trippers went

00:51.500 --> 00:56.000
past us to Belmar. We kept clamming until my knees gave out. My

00:56.000 --> 00:60.000
grandson is a lawyer now. He never learned to rake.