"There was a lady…she passed away long ago. I was just a boy and I could hear her tires coming on down the road and I would sit on her doorstep. She had a cottage on Governor's Run and I would wait down there on the old wooden steps and there was an old beach store down there…we'd call it the cliff store years ago.

She would come down and I would see the car door open and she would always check to see if I was waiting and she would say, "Dougie…have you been a good boy?" and I'd say, "Yes ma'am the best boy I could be." Then she said, "I just got done talking to your mother and she says for me not to buy you no ice cream because ice cream goes down your bibs and then your mother has to turn them inside out to wash them." I was a good boy then. ha, She went down to the beach one time and lead me by the hand after we went to the store and that's how we started it all. She'd buy me a treat & a Stewart sandwich. Boy those were good. So she had me by the hand and she had her stick cane. She tapped on 3 pieces of clay that had fallen. We walked up to it and she takes her cane and tapped on all of them. She said, 'this one…right…here…

Then she asked, "Do you think you're strong enough to turn to turn that over for me?' So I said, 'I'll do my best and try.' When I rolled it over there was a big piece of hag jaw and the prettiest molars you have ever seen in your life and she said, 'Well look at that…that was hiding from us, don't you think Doug?' When she went home and I went back down there to check on another piece of clay. I turned them all over and broke them all up and even sifted through them, but I couldn't find anything. I thought from then on that she could look through things.

I started that stuff when I was seven years old and I can remember all this.
I just had such great memories. Then we got down to the beach and as we were moving along, I noticed there was a shark's tooth moving along the shoreline. Back then, she would tell me it was a lost art and a hobby that not many people would know about. It was too. The deal with me is that I learn more out than in school. My father took me out and he knew my first love is that. My father was a builder. I didn't want to do that and I said no, but he had me climb up and help him punch the nails through the trim and I did exactly what he told me and I brought the trim down to him and then he said, "You see I wanna tell you something…if you do work for me, I want whatever you do for me and others. I want to make it look like it grew up there."
Man, I'm tellin' you he was something else too, my dad.

He loved the Lord and he could quote scripture by scripture and read the old testament and new testament nine times. He was a statistician. He would never go with me to collect the fossils but he would look at me and go, "You know, son, you might wanna go down and check on the shoreline because you much find a trophy down there today." and I got such a big kick out of that and if I found anything, I'd bring it back and he would take his ruler out and he would always measure them for me. That's what he would do.

So, I found something years ago~it was a flipper section with shark bites on it, a crocodile with tiger shark bites in it and it's the only one ever found and I found dung from a saltwater crocodile. It had Tiger shark bites in it. I've had people interview me. One of them was National Geographic, for shark weak and more. I love that I can go to the beach and it's quiet.

Yes, I've been doing this for 37 years. The county officers are very supportive. This county has been supportive. I've been doing this for 37 years and I'm very thankful and I don't take it for granted."