Guy Couchman is just as much a part of the land as the sandy soil and shoreline are a part of him. He was born at Beebe Medical Center, grew up near Dewey Beach, and has no intention of leaving anytime soon.
While Couchman owns a home in Virginia, and loves to travel to Canada, Texas and other locales that he calls wild and untouched, the Cape Region will always be home to him.
He works indoors at his tile business, but Couchman’s love is the outdoors. From fishing to hunting to just relaxing in nature, Couchman finds himself outside when at all possible.
“There’s serenity there,” he said. That’s why he travels to the bays of Delmarva, hunts in Manitoba, and loses himself in woods with a rifle or a bow or on the water with a pole. It’s a family tradition that Couchman has passed down the years. His daughter loves to fish and hunt, and she is a local game warden. And even his granddaughter, Madison, loves to play outside. “She’ll be a natural hunter one day. You can’t teach that,” he said.
“I planted carrots for her to pick a take to the horses,” he said. Couchman has a huge garden at his Milton farm, along with horses, ducks, turkeys and a gaggle of animals. Each night Madison and Couchman walk to the stables and give the horses a treat, but the real treat is for Couchman. He is so in love with his granddaughter, and with the idea of keeping family around, and keeping with simple traditions.
Couchman’s grandfather started visiting the Cape Region to rockfish in the 1940s. Eventually he bought a house near Dewey Beach. Couchman’s dad moved back to the Cape Region in the 1950s and opened a tile business on Second Street in Lewes.
One of eight siblings, Couchman grew up just north of Dewey. “We were never lonely, but I know it was tough for my parents,” he said.
Having a big family taught Couchman a work ethic. As a boy he cleaned out horse stalls for a local breeder who also had practice racetracks. He picked tomatoes for large growers and clammed the bays for extra money.
He can still tell anyone about the freshest seafood and how to prepare it. During soft-shell crab season, Couchman is in heaven, but he’ll tell you to eat it out of the water, not at a restaurant. “You’ve got to kill it right there and eat it,” he said. If a crab is three days old, then it’s trash, he said. “It’s like eating corn on the cob a week after you pick it,” Couchman said. That Delmarva delicacy is best straight from the field.
From the beginning, Couchman wanted to work outside. When he graduated from Cape Henlopen High School he said, his dad made him buy a piece of land, but Couchman was more comfortable on the ocean. He worked as a waterman harvesting lobster and clams for several years.
Couchman eventually jumped ship and gave up the life of a waterman to take over the family business. He had young children and wanted to spend more time with them, and then his dad got ill. “I was never home. I was gone for days at a time,” he said.
“Dad always wanted me to take over the business, so I fulfilled his commitments and I realized this was the smartest thing I could do,” Couchman said. Working indoors didn’t keep him away from the Atlantic. Couchman surfed for about 20 years. “I was a big-time surfer,” he said. Like his hunting hobby that takes him all over North America, surfing took Couchman from ocean to ocean to catch waves. Eventually, he gave that up too because he said he had too much on his plate. He turned to work.
He’s been in the flooring business ever since, and now his son works with him. “When I get old – or older – I’ll work for my son,” Couchman said.
Business has always been good for Couchman, but it’s changed a lot over the years. “We used to have to travel a lot to get business,” he said. Couchman used to drive to Dover and other surrounding cities to install tile in commercial areas. But with the growth of the community, Couchman doesn’t have to drive anywhere. There are now large homes that need tiling and flooring. Those homes have helped Couchman’s business prosper, but he also admits that they have killed a part of the land.
“We may have tinkered with nature too much,” he said. Maybe it’s nostalgia, Couchman admitted, but he said it seems like the bays were cleaner and the air smelled a little sweeter 20 years back.
He remembers simpler times when Route 1 wasn’t so crowded and the area closed for the winter. “I miss my little town,” he said.
While sometimes he leaves to explore places still left untouched and wild, he always comes back home, to his family, his business, and his traditions.
“I never left nature, and it never left me,” he said.
