Fantastic Metropolis

Based on this success, Henry Davids wrote to his mother-in-law in November 1949 that “It’s official-they can’t keep our product on the shelf! We’ll be rich in under a year.” (30) Unfortunately, due to certain limitations of the mayfly squid, success was even then slipping away from the Davids brothers.

First, the squid did not do well in captivity, even though the pens were immersed in the lake. The Davids’ domesticated squid stock suffered a 60% mortality rate in the initial nine months, which not only cut into the amount of product-many of the carcasses rotted before they could be retrieved from the bottom of the maze-like squid mills^[24]-but also reduced the breeding stock. The Davids brothers made up the difference early on by jigging large numbers of wild squid, but the temporary boost in meat quantity did nothing to help the decimated breeding stock.

Second, mayfly squid do not taste as good as other types of squid. In the interests of research, I have eaten over 20 different species of squid. Although edible, the mayfly squid is at the rubbery end of the spectrum, and tasteless. The Davids had reduced the rubbery quality by immersion in salt and dealt with the taste issue by adding cheap watered-down soy sauce. Even so, the novelty had worn off and, by the end of 1950, David Bros. Canned Freshwater Squid, the “Distinctly Florida Treat,” no longer leapt off the shelves and into consumers’ shopping carts. (31) ^[25]

To compound the brothers’ problems, Publix failed to renew its contract at the beginning of 1951. By July of 1951, desperate for revenue, the Davids set up a tour of the mills-the first time anyone had attempted to use the mayfly squid to attract tourists. However, records show that the Davids brothers only sold 500 tickets between July 1951 and July 1953.

By January of 1953, the squid mills served merely as holding tanks for wild squid. The cannery worked at one-twelfth capacity and all but 9 of the original 35 employees had been laid off.

The Davids took out a loan in August of 1953 to buy large quantities of squid directly from the West Coast and Japan, only to find most of the meat in rotted condition upon its arrival. The brothers hung on for the rest of the year, but in early 1954 Henry Davids left the business, signing over his half of the company to his brother. Jeremy continued on for 18 months, despite mounting debts, but in 1956 sold the business to a local developer and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to work as a clerk in his father-in-law’s bank. (Henry met much the same end, working as an actuary in Chicago, Illinois, for several decades.)

The Fate of the Squid Mills

Arthur T. Lynch’s abandoned squid mills survived for another 20 years. As late as 1975, birders walking along the shore of Lake Okeechobee could inspect the pontoons and rusted wire cages. In 1976, tropical storm Ada dislodged the squid mills from the shore and for more than a decade they floated around the lake, a source of irritation for fishermen and other locals. Finally, in 1988, county officials had the squid mills removed from the lake as a public nuisance. By this time, the mayfly squid had spread throughout the state and Lake Okeechobee no longer served as one of its primary breeding grounds. (32)

The Festival of the Freshwater Squid^[26]

Early Risers

Every second weekend in May, the mayor and other municipal officials of Sebring, Florida, rise well before dawn to kick off the annual Festival of the Freshwater Squid. On the steps of the Old Town Hall, the mayor addresses a crowd that has, in recent years, risen to more than 20,000 (5,000 of the 15,000 local residents and 15,000 tourists). (33) The hotels have been booked for months and the town has been preparing for the influx of Festival-goers on-and-off since the end of the last festival. Swarms of sterile mosquitoes released as an experiment by the University of South Florida fill the cool pre-dawn air, but people don’t seem to mind-they’re excited about observing another of the state’s exotic species, the mayfly squid.