Bozo Atwell, 1962
The one story of that era that Rusty does recall hearing from his father was of the arrest of Bozo Atwell, who worked in various jobs around the marina, and got caught up in a scuffle over oyster dredging. He was aboard one of Landon Curley’s boats at the time and allegedly led patrolmen on a merry chase, then threatened them with a rifle. After he was arrested, officials demanded that boat as payment to get Atwell out of jail. Curley had already sold the boat, but he bought it back and made the exchange.
“I think that says a lot about the kind of man my dad was. He was loyal to his friends,” Rusty says.
Growing up with such an example to follow and in such an environment was incredibly special, Rusty says. His sisters, Linda Gouldman and Candy Coates, concur, though to hear the women tell it, Rusty got a bit of preferential treatment, being not only the baby of the family, but the only son.
“We worked the gas pump in the marina, we learned to shuck oysters just to help Daddy,” Linda recalls. “We didn’t get paid. Rusty did.”
After working together for fifty years, the teasing among the three siblings, as they recall growing up around oystermen and the packing plant, speaks to their devotion to the family and their enjoyment of that period of the Curley Packing Plant.
Not a one of them had any desire to leave the familiar lifestyle.
Candy worked in Richmond for three years, and Linda worked at Dahlgren for eight years while her husband, Russell Gouldman, worked for the family business. Rusty, the youngest, worked at the packing plant when he wasn’t in school and then full-time after graduating.
All three graduated from Colonial Beach High School, as did their children.
Both Rusty and his brother-in-law, Russell, worked for the family business for fifty years, while Candy and Linda worked there for forty years. Linda’s son, Brian Gouldman, became the newest family member to join the business, working there in summers during high school and now full-time since 2010.
“Our dad loved his family and the business, and he always wanted Curley Packing Company to remain family operated,” Linda says.
Vacations were rare, but one time Rusty went to Florida for a week, leaving Russell in charge of the oyster plant. But Russell fell ill with a nasty flu, and the sisters pitched in doing tasks they admit tested their skills just so their brother wouldn’t have to turn right around and come back home. “That’s what you do in a family business,” Linda adds.
Docked boats at Monroe Bay Marina
Docked boats at Monroe Bay Marina
Monroe Bay Campgrounds
L. L. Curley Sr. Memorial
If they each have a great understanding of what it takes to work together, they also have a deep appreciation for life in a small town. “It’s a comfort knowing so many people,” Linda says of living in Colonial Beach her whole life.
“If you’re walking down the street, you can barely get a block or two before someone will come along and offer you a ride,” Rusty adds.
People would also tell on them if they were caught misbehaving, Linda says, then adds with a pointed look toward her brother, “But Candy and I were never in trouble.”
“I tried to give him some of my wisdom,” Candy said, also glancing in Rusty’s direction.
Rusty takes the teasing in stride, then can’t help mentioning that his mother, at least, was strict with him. “I was in my thirties, divorced and living across the street, and she’d wait up for me, then call to tell me I’d been out too late. ‘Your father’s trying to sleep and he can’t,’ she’d complain. Well, if Daddy couldn’t sleep, it was because she was poking him to tell him I wasn’t home yet,” he recalls, laughing.
When they speak of their father, it’s always with deep pride and respect. There’s a small stone memorial to L. L. Curley with an American flag flying in the courtyard of what used to be the bustling packing plant. Where oyster boats once lined up, there are now marina boat slips. Times change.
At one time that packing plant had tractor trailers waiting to haul away a cargo of oysters graded as standard, select and count. They were shipped out in specially designed tins labeled with the Pearl of Perfection logo of the Curley Packing Plant. Nowadays, with the plant closed since the 2002-2003 oyster season, those old tins, even those not in the best condition, thanks to time and the rust from salty water, are considered collectibles.
“I paid $350 for the last one I bought,” Linda says.
“I think I paid $250,” Rusty adds. But recently he heard that while a gallon of oysters could be had for twenty-five dollars, one of those old gallon tins sold for a whopping $1,800.
Mural outside Curley’s Oyster House
Curley’s Oyster House
Though the oyster supply had been diminishing, they kept the packing plant going for as long as they could in their father’s memory. For the last four or five years they remained in business, they had trouble even getting enough oysters to fill their orders during the prime oyster-selling season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In addition, they couldn’t find shuckers. They had one employee for a time who simply wasn’t as skilled as the rest and made a mess of the shucking process, dealing with the oysters as clams. They couldn’t bring themselves to fire this worker, though..
Regulations were changing, too. Rules pertaining to the way oysters had to be handled, the temperature requirements in the plant—the shuckers wanted the room to be seventy-two degrees, the health department required the oysters to be kept at thirty-five degrees—and the destruction of so many oyster beds after Hurricane Isabel. All of it convinced them it was time to close the plant. It was a reluctant family decision.
The Curley siblings
