A Conversation With Paul Dinet: The oldest oyster shucker in New Orleans.

Phil LaMancusa

Four or five times a week since 1984, eight hours a shift, Paul Lionell Dinet shucks oysters at Felix’s Restaurant and Oyster bar. Mr. Dinet had a birthday last November 12^th; he is now eighty-four years young, “made eighty-four and workin’ here since eighty-four” he quips with a grin.

I spoke with him at the beginning of his shift; me with a pad and pen and him surrounded by oysters being shucked for service. Hundreds and hundreds of oysters; “you see” he explains, “when you have the lunch, you can’t be shucking for the whole dining room, you have to be able to get them oysters out fast to the table. We shuck them, fresh as close to opening as possible; people don’t wanna wait for them.” We then settled down across a dining room table from eachother, him with owl eye glasses and an elfin smile; me not knowing where to start. He gets up to get a glass of water, “just finished my breakfast” he says with a mild hicurp.

I had read in late November of 2017 where Ian McNulty did a wonderful and insightful story about “Mr. Paul” in The New Orleans Advocate; his life and times and where and how he came to be New Orleans oldest oyster shucker.  ianmcnulty@theadvocate.com Adding to that would only be redundant and not to mention plagiaristic; so, sorry readers, you’re gonna have to look that article up for yourself for some background on Mr. Paul, believe me, not only is that piece informative, but a damn good piece of reporting.

What Mr. Dinet and I talked about was more along the order of oyster shucking and how times have changed over the years since he began his employment.

We talked about oyster knives “we usta make our own knives, my Daddy made his own outa an old file and a broom handle,” I related about how I had purchased my first knife at the French Market for ‘four bits’ that sounded a lot like his daddy’s. He nodded sagely when I told him that when an oyster saw that knife it practically opened itself up for me. “Eight years old my Daddy showed me how to open oysters with a hammer”. Nowadays Mr. Paul uses the ‘stiletto’ while I am partial to the ‘bird’s beak’ style of oyster knife. We both agree that in opening an oyster, a person has to find what we call ‘the seat’ and once you’re in there, the oyster is yours; it’s a little spot right by the hinge and to be properly opened, you have to start at the right spot.  It’s a fact, we agreed, that the colder an oyster is, the easier it opens. “We keeps ‘em icey cold here”. 

When asked how a person becomes an oyster shucker, he told me: “well, anybody can be an oyster shucker, you just have to come in an get the job; I’ve trained many a shucker, some have it, some don’t. I like workin’ here, I get to meet a lot of different people. My father was Houma (Indian) and my mother came from Paris France, I speak good French”, and then he said something to me in French that I just did not understand. I had laid down my pen and pad after the first five minutes and we kinda just got to talking.

Felix’s has been at that location for over seventy years and we spoke about the changes that we had seen just over the last fifty years in the French Quarter in general and on Bourbon Street in particular (yes, I am that long in the tooth). How there “didn’t used to be so many young folks out there” and “the music was different, too”.

“ I like working days, though, I’m not a night person, I like to come in and get the job done and then go on home; I got a son an a grandson living with me. My house went under water from Katrina and we had to stay away until it got rebuilt; Road Home did the rebuilding and did a fine job.”

“No, I don’t eat oysters, well, maybe I’ll have one once in a while, doctor’s orders, I gotta cut back on salt, bad for my heart. I cook at home, beans and greens and stuff, nothing fancy.”

We spoke together about his work history and how he lost his fingers in a die press but kept on working until he retired; how he was stationed in Germany during the Korean War and how much of the countryside he saw; “it’s pretty pretty over there, I never did see any action though, just support work, y’see”.

Paul Lionell Dinet is not a boastful man, not a man to make a show; however when you get to know, even for a short spell, a person that has such a colorful life, however much low key it may be kept, it’s natural for me to want to know their secret of success. With all the uproar in the world, Mr. Dinet doesn’t follow much politics he says: “it’s all bull****”

Well, I want to know, “how did you manage to age to where you are and what advice would you give a young man coming up?”

“Just stay away from trouble” he says “that’s all you have to do, just stay away from trouble”. From his mouth to God’s ears.