ATTRACTIONS
very different than the tourist store of the ’80s but worlds
away from the original shop that George and Jean Williams
opened in 1953 in front of their ranch that sold cows, horses,
rabbits, abalone and conch shell night lamps.
The shop and its connecting Rick’s Diner is owned by their
daughter, Christine Williams, and her partner, Dennis Grabhorn,
who has updated it with higher-end coral and exotic
shells, T-shirts and sundry gift-shop items.
George had owned a truck stop restaurant in Ormond
Beach and Jean was just coming out of the Navy as a military
clerk when they first met and fell in love in the late 1940s. A
friend of George’s, Robert Meade, owned a shell shop in Vero
Beach on the site where Royal Ballroom now stands. When
George said he wanted out of the restaurant business, Meade
suggested opening his own shell shop — way down at the
other end of St. Lucie County separated by McKee Jungle
Gardens, P.P. Cobb’s Trading Store in Fort Pierce and miles
of nothing.
“My father just picked the parcel of land and built the business,”
Christine said. “It was just a business to him, he didn’t
have any personal thing about shells but my mother was the
shell shop.”
At first, the shop was nothing more than a tiny room in the
front of their two-story home sandwiched between garages
filled with farm equipment and shells they brought from Fort
Myers and piles of abalone from California.
They considered themselves busy if they had three customers
in one day. Jean had a bell installed at the store so people
could ring it when they came in as she worked in the back
making nightlight lamps from conch and abalone shells,
which George put together with plaster and Christine used >>
SHERRY SANTINO
When the store first opened, kitschy shell lamps that were made and sold
at the bazaar were popular with tourists.
CHRISTINA TASCON
Marty Bard and Mary Baum, who always go to breakfast at Rick’s Diner next door, often stop by the bazaar afterward to find shells to decorate their homes.
Port St. Lucie Magazine 45