If you are driving behind Popeye’s in Daphne on a Wednesday around midday and hear a whistle, follow the sound: it may lead you to one of the Eastern Shore’s most colorful seafood traditions. Russell Harbison — “Just call me Russell,” he insists — sets up the back of his truck every Wednesday between noon and 2 p.m., coolers loaded with fresh Gulf seafood and stories to spare.
Harbison is a certified fishmonger, a Bayou La Batre native, and a salesman in the old-fashioned mold. He sells shrimp, oysters, crabmeat and flash-frozen red snapper straight from the truck bed — cash only, no texting, but he’ll answer the phone if you need to place an order — and every purchase comes with the stories for free.
200 years in the fish business
His credentials, by his own telling, run about two centuries deep. “My family has been in the fish business for 200 years,” he says. “They were all so rough, if they couldn’t find anybody to fight with, they fought each other.” The joke lands the way all his stories do, and Russell never meets a stranger. He has sold seafood out of the back of his truck across the Eastern Shore, Mobile, Pascagoula and Gulfport and beyond — from dealership lots to jailhouse doors to barbershops. He and his barbers up and down the coast have a standing arrangement, he says: “I bring them fresh shrimp and they keep me looking sharp.”
The trademark, literally, is a silver sailor’s whistle worn around his neck — large enough to nearly fill his hand. Its purpose has never been officially explained. Maybe he’s calling for customers. Maybe he’s just letting folks know where he is. Either way, regulars know the routine.
What’s in the coolers
The lineup depends on the week, but the staples are consistent: several varieties of de-headed shrimp sold in five-pound bags, crabmeat by the container, oysters, and red snapper that is flash-frozen for keeping. Everything is iced down, and Russell is particular about guiding customers to the right product. “You want jumbo white lump or claw meat?” he asks — and he explains the difference before letting you choose. Claw meat, for instance, is the choice for gumbo, where flavor matters more than presentation.
He totals orders in his head, reads his customers like a pro, and reads the calendar better. “After the holidays, I’ll be really busy,” he told one customer during the Christmas season. “Everybody’s gonna be sick of turkey!”
Fresh from the boats
What draws the line that forms behind his tailgate is the same thing that draws customers to working waterfronts across the Gulf Coast: freshness you can taste. Bayou La Batre, Harbison’s hometown, has been one of Alabama’s great seafood landing ports for generations, and its working-waterfront heritage shows up in what he sells. The shrimp is iced down and de-headed. The crabmeat travels cold. The snapper is flash-frozen at peak freshness, which makes it a reliable buy for holiday weekends when a freezer is part of the plan.
Customers who have cooked with his seafood know the difference between boat-fresh product and the supermarket case — and word of mouth is why his Wednesday window fills up. The opportunity to catch him is somewhat slim with his tight hours, which is precisely the point: small-batch, direct-from-the-water selling, on a schedule the regulars have learned to plan around.
A Gulf Coast institution
Mobile roadside seafood sellers like Russell Harbison occupy a long tradition in coastal Alabama — the fishmonger who knows every customer, works the same corner every week, and turns a transaction into a story swap. In an era of apps and card readers, his operation is defiantly analog: a truck bed, coolers, a calculator between his ears and a whistle around his neck.
For shoppers, the practical details are simple. Find him behind Popeye’s in Daphne on Wednesdays from noon to 2 p.m. Bring cash. Know what you want, because a line forms quickly. And if you have the time, ask about the family — 200 years in the fish business produces a lot of stories, and on Russell’s tailgate, they are always free.