For Ralph Friedgen's birthday this summer, his two brothers-in-law and cousin paid for a deep-sea fishing trip. It was canceled because of the weather, but they decided to go out anyway.

One brother-in-law drove the boat onto an oyster bed. Ralph was in the back of the boat. The tide was going down quickly. Ralph realized that if they were going to get off the oyster bed, he had to jump off the boat -- something he's not likely to do again.

"If we don't get this boat off within the next 10 minutes, we're going to be here 'til the next tide comes in," he recalled. "That's like six hours later."

They finally pushed it off, but in the process, Friedgen got stuck about waist-deep in something akin to quicksand.

"Now my cousin is trying to pull me up," he said. "If you could've seen this sight.

"I got up, but I lost both my shoes. It just sucked the shoes right off me. So now I'm standing on the oyster bed with no shoes. I fell a couple of times and my knees, now I'm bleeding. There's blood all everywhere. So he's telling me swim.

"Well there's about that much water left now," he said, holding his hands about a foot apart. "I wasn't going to swim on my stomach. That could've been real hazardous. So I dove on my back. And now the current's got me. The current is taking me out.

"He says, 'Grab him, or we're going to lose him.'

"He grabs my hand. Now they've got a ladder for me to get on this boat that's about this big," he said, this time holding his hands about six inches apart.

"So I try to get up. I can't get up. So I said gimme a rope. I get my leg over the thing, I pull myself up, grab hold.

"So now I'm cut all over the place. They said, 'Well, we gotta get you in. These things are going to get infected.' I said, 'We came to fish, let's fish.'" 

Ralph is still limping from a cut on the bottom of his heel.

"I'm anxious to get back to work," he said. "It's much safer."