On Thursday afternoon, around 5 p.m., I stopped at Benny Hudson Seafood, on Squire Pope Road. I went inside and the woman told me they were about to close, but she'd be happy to get me anything I wanted. It was really a little after 5 p.m., so that was nice of her to be willing to help even though I'm sure she was ready to go home. I wanted to talk to the owners, but she said they weren't available right then. After I asked her about it, she let me know that they do indeed sell shrimp to the Hudson's Seafood restaurant that's just down the road. You'd think that's a no-brainer but you'd be surprised by the number of restaurants that are right next to a shrimp dock that do NOT serve local shrimp! Of course, to have variety on their menu they have a lot of seafood from other places. And even if they buy local shrimp, it's no guarantee that all of the dishes on the menu will contain local shrimp. If it's popcorn shrimp, for example, it is not local. So anyway, authenticity points to Hudson's Seafood for buying some of their offerings from Benny Hudson Seafood.
The fish market may be small, but it sure is cute. The fact that they have to post a sign that says "customer parking" is a good omen: it means that the guys who run the shrimp boats aren't supposed to park their pickup trucks there. And that means that the guys who shrimp actually exist -- this isn't some kind of crazy Disney fish market that sells imported souvenirs -- and imported shrimp.
I walked down to the docks to see what was going on. There were three guys finishing with their unloading. I think they had been on the Dianie. If not, they were on the boat alongside it. The shrimp boat formerly known as Rip Tide. It's bad luck to change a boats name. I wonder what happened with the person who tried to paint over Rip Tide? Maybe they weren't around long enough to finish the job.
The guys were taking home a nice mess of whiting with them. 
It turns out the captain was Rudy Simmons -- and he had shrimped with my Dad and my Uncle Harold on the Maria Fernanda! What a pleasure it was meeting him. I told my Dad about it later. He said, "The last time I saw him he was shrimping down off of Campeche." That's in Mexico. And you know that had to be a very, very long time ago, because nowadays you'd be hard pressed to find a South Carolina shrimper in Mexico.
