Guilt drove me to write this story.
A few weekends ago, after shopping at the Farmers’ Market, I succumbed to the lure of fresh fish from the boys selling by the Short Stop on Main Street. The fish was fine, but what stuck in my craw was the fact that I’d taken away business from our own local fishery — Tom Robinson’s Seafood on Roberson Street.
So I paid Tom a visit and learned (again) that he’s the kind of businessman who cares about the town that supplies him with customers. He grows persimmon trees on a farm in Chatham County, but he pays attention to local politics in Carrboro and isn’t happy about the vertical expansion that seems inevitable.
Robinson can often be blunt. “They’re trying to turn Carrboro into the hell hole they moved here from,†he said.
He sees the evening and weekend traffic as it backs up and almost gridlocks downtown. It happens on school mornings as well — and that’s before increasing the population to fill four five-story dwellings likely to soon be approved for development.
“We need a new transportation paradigm,†Robinson said. “How are we going to stop driving?â€
The wistful expression often found on his rugged face returns as he begins to talk about the loss of our train system, among many other topics upon which he is well versed.
Robinson was born in Wilmington, where he lived through many a hurricane — “my first memory is of Hurricane Hazel†— until earning more than enough money for his undergraduate education by cutting grass. He came to Chapel Hill like his grandfather (who graduated in 1917 and became a principal in schools along coastal North Carolina), and in 1975 received a bachelor’s of science degree with honors.
But jobs were scarce. As the war in Vietnam finally concluded, the United States began easing out of its deepest recession since World War II.
“It was very similar to now, with a petroleum-based depression,†Robinson said. So he went to Norway.
“I went to the University of Oslo and learned Norwegian. It’s a great place to go to school — there’s no tuition.â€
Returning home to Wilmington, he found work building supertankers, audited classes at UNC-Wilmington and saved his money. After building a refrigerator truck (which he still has), he hit the road, selling fish fresh from the Carolina waters. Each time he’d find himself selling fish in Chapel Hill, he realized that it was where he sold the most. In 1977, he bought Perseverance Produce, a store started by four students on Rosemary at Church behind Colonel Chutneys (now Pantana Bob’s). He made fish the main draw while working halfway through a master’s degree in environmental science before giving up everything but the fish. He was in that location for five years before moving into the concrete block building across the street from where the Farmers’ Market was then held, where he continues to sell fish three days a week.
When I confessed to Robinson about the fish I’d bought “off the road,†he informed me that they might not have accurate scales and that besides not being regulated like he is (by the FDA, the NC Department of Agriculture, the NC Division of Marine Fisheries and the Office of Shellfish Sanitation) they also do not pay taxes of any kind.
Nor could they have the kind of loyal customers who visit Robinson every week.
Charlie Wiss has been buying fish there since moving to Carrboro in 1993. “I came in by myself but now I’m married and have kids,†Wiss said.
“I’ve seen people’s kids go away to college who were babies when their parents started coming,†said Robinson, 57.
Alex Anderson moved here from Scotland via Jamaica with a 20-year stop in Florida. He said, “I’ve been coming here quite a few years.†He finds Robinson engaging. “I usually do the listening.
“I don’t even look at fish anywhere else,†Anderson said.

