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1 compact disks : 10.7 megabytes (11,259,488 bytes; size on disk 11,259,904 bytes)
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Tom Gavin, Jr. (1910-1977) was born in Wakulla County and married Allie Maude Hill in 1929, with whom he had eight children. Gavin served as a boat driver and tour guide for Wakulla Springs for 30 years, one of a long line of Gavin family members to work at the Springs - including another locally famous tour guide, cousin Don "Big D" Gavin, and many other cousins, aunts, uncles, and predecessors back to the early 1900s. He is credited with creating the story of "Henry the Pole-Vaulting Fish," a tale and song invented to accompany the sighting of particularly friendly fish along his tour.
Wakulla Springs became a state park in October 1986, but glass-bottom boat tours have been conducted on the waterways since 1875. Long before achieving state park designation, Wakulla Springs brought in visitors who wished not only to see the wildlife, river fauna, and underwater mastodon bones, but also to be entertained by the folktales and unscripted tours provided by the local boat guides. The original recording, which is no longer extant, was made on a Sony 5" reel-to-reel mono recorder.
Summary:
This collection comprises a sound recording of Wakulla Springs boat driver Tom Gavin conducting a glass bottom boat tour on December 26, 1969, recorded by graduate student Jim Stoutamire for a linguistics course at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The recording is 15 minutes, 38 seconds and covers the entire tour.
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For more recordings and interviews of Wakulla Springs tour guides, see Collection N2011-4, a recording of Lou Smith's glass-bottom boat tour, and Series S1576, particularly T81, Audio Records of Florida Folk Festival performances and other folk events.
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