Longing for Old Florida . . . Crab Jubilee
Crab Jubilee – Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m 50. Fifty is the new 40 you 
know (But, of course, in my case it’s the new 30). Since I’m being honest about my age I have no problem telling you some of the things I remember about the Old Florida. That’s the Florida that came WAY before the internet . . . heck that’s the Florida that came WAY before Cable television and the 8–Track (if you don’t remember 8–tracks, they came WAY before CDs).
When I was a kid we would finish our dinner, load the Igloo cooler with snacks and head to Santa Rosa Island (Pensacola Beach). We would pull the battery out of the car – no kidding – plunk it in a galvanize d tub sitting in an inner tube and connect it to lights we floated on the water. My grandfather would tie the inner tube to his belt loop with a rope and pull the entire contraption behind him as we walked through the Santa Rosa Sound (Intracoastal Waterway). What in God’s name were we doing you ask? CRABBING – this is the way you caught your fill of Blue Crab in those days and as a kid, it was more fun that Halloween and the Interstate Fair all wrapped into one.
Now, this is a thing most people have never witnessed, but I count myself among the lucky few (relatively speaking) who have been on the beach at the height of a Jubilee. The biologists will tell you a Jubilee occurs when there is too little oxygen in the water and the crab make their way to the shore. I will tell you that a Jubilee is a CRAZY TEAMING MASS of Blue Crab making their way to shore by the hundreds of thousands come hell or high water.
I have only seen one Jubilee in my adult life (a small one at that), so I suspect we have done something to alter our environment in such a way as to eliminate this amazing phenomenon. But I cherish the memory of being a child, dozing off in the back seat of a Ford Fairlane, surrounded by buckets of Blue Crab, bubbling their last breaths as we trundled down the highway toward a backyard overflowing with aunts, uncles and cousins all gathered around a bonfire prepared just for one of our southern crab boil get-togethers.
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