A naturalist, sailor, storyteller, and sportsman, Jimbo espouses a mix of Eastern philosophy, Southern chivalry, and bayou wisdom. He believes firmly in the restorative and healing properties of water. Not just for the body, but for the mind and the soul. He only wears sandals. "Free the feet, free the soul." Most of all, he reveres nature and the magical ecosystem of Mobile Bay and the Tensaw River Delta in lower Alabama.
When teenage Jimbo Meador went to work on the Mobile, Alabama docks, his mentor was an old Swedish sailor who had arrived on the Gulf Coast aboard a wind-powered commercial vessel. The Swede passed along a sailor's knowledge from a bygone era, when self-sufficiency and resourcefulness were survival tools. Today Jimbo calls his native Alabama home, where he serves as a living bridge to a different era.
Of course, you don't have to take our word on any of this. Take US 98 / Battleship Parkway between Mobile and Spanish Fort across Mobile Bay. Pull into the parking lot for the Blue Gill restaurant, bear right towards the small boat ramp, and park next to the small shipping container that doubles as an office. There you'll find Jimbo, ready to show you an almost undiscovered world. All you have to do is let him know you're coming.
I've made a living on the water my entire life. Even as a child I made money in the water. I had a trap line and I trapped furs and sold furs. And then in the summers, I fished with an old guy that made cast nets. And he'd come scratch on the screen every morning before daylight to wake me up and we'd go off in an old cross-plank cypress rowing skiff to fish for the day.
Being in the water, being submerged, I call it marinating. I just said I gotta marinade every day. And it does something to you, to your body and your soul I believe just to get in the water or to be near it. I think I’d be in sad shape if I couldn't be near the water.
Yeah there were two in that nest there they are. The juveniles are out of the nest. Yeah they grow up. Some of us grow up. Some of us don't. I don't want to be one of the ones that does.