Center for Louisiana Studies Archival Catalog

Myon: “Oh Mother, you broke, we ain’t got no money? You would like to go back up the lake and fish? Right there at Blue Point. Leaving from Lake Verret. That’s where I was supposed to be headed.” 

Mertile Theriot, the fishboat operator says “I tell you what…” he says… Them boys was young, you see? Myon said, “Look, I’m takin responsibility for all their bills, that’s on me”.

JD: When you say “Them boys were young”, which boys are you talking about?

Agnes: My brothers.

Myon: Monug (Preston), he died…and, and Robert, he lives in Calumet, and …

JD: Are those your brother?

Myon: No, Agnes’s brothers. Several of em. So, I told Mertile that. And he say “What you need?”. Well, I say, “First I need about 30 gallons of gas” and I say “About 20 pound of line, I guess…25 pounds, 1000 hooks. “Well”, he say “if you take charge of them boys” he say “you can have anything you want”.

JD: Was he living with y’all (her brothers)?

Agnes: We (Agnes and Myon) lived with them.

Myon: We lived with them ‘till I got em out of debt.They had a big camp, we had a lil camp, that’s the way it was.The large campboat had belonged to their father, Blaise Sauce, who had recently died at age 46, leaving his wife and their children on this larger houseboat.

JD: A floating houseboat?

Myon: Yeah. So, I told em, I says, “Boys, it’s this a way”, I say, “Y’all gone live with me.  Y’all gone do what I say, now. I’m y’all daddy for a while. What I say gone go.”

JD: How old were they, the oldest one?

Agnes: Oh, Monug must have been about 20…

Myon: Mmm, I don’t think that old.Tootsie about 15. 

JD: And how about you?

Agnes: Monug must have been about 18 when daddy died.

Myon: I guess. I don’t know, I must have been about 45. I guess, around there.  So, they agreed to that.  “What you say, go”. Pull (row) up the lake, there, and in one month…we owed 500 somethin dollars, plenty money in them times…I pulled them boys out of debt. And we saved about $300.  I divide the money and “Y’all go on y’all own now. Y’all take y’all money and your sister”. They had Yank (their sister) with em. 

JD: Who?

Myon: Bootsie’s wife. I say, “Y’all gone make a living for them now, and I’m gone see y’all gone MAKE a living for em”.

JD: How many boys?

Myon: Two…

Agnes: Three, three boys.

Myon: Anh? Well, Neg…Neg was a lil boy…Neg wasn’t old enough yet. And, after that…”That’s…that’s y’all part now” I say, “I’m goin on my own”. I didn’t want to run their life all the time, you see?

(To clarify, there were two young men, Preston [Monug] and Robert [Tootsie], one boy, Cleo [Neg] and one unmarried daughter, Yank [Ophelia], and their mother, Rosalee)

Myon: So, they agreed to that. And them boys done good for theirself. They built a new campboat and sold the old campboat. At least, I’m the one build em the campboat, and Neg helped me build the campboat for em, brand new campboat.

JD: Where did y’all build it?

Myon: Right at Blue Point.

Agnes: That cabin Neg’s got…Neg’s livin in (living at Oxford in the cabin off of that houseboat)?

Myon: Yeah, that cabin Neg’s got, that was the campboat.

JD: Well, there must have been a lot of good land there, a lot of dry land there at that time.

Myon: Oh YEAH. That’s what I tell you, in them times you didn’t have high water like you got there now. They had ridges…all of that was nothin but ridges. Along the lakeshore, all that was out of the water all the time, or most of the time. Oh, you get a high water in the spring of the year, but it wasn’t no more than two or three feet. 

JD: And then it went back?

Myon: And then it went out. And them boys done good for themself, and I went on my own, and…that’s why they look at me today like I be their daddy. I can talk to them boys today like I talk to one of my kids. They listen to me. 

JD: And you pulled everybody out of debt that quick, y’all made over $800…y’all made over $800 that month?

Myon: Oh yeah! And live! Live with that. We had three boats we was runnin.  You see, I had one man, one boy, just a…it was Tootsie…after bait, all the time.  Me and Monug was fishin. Livin at Blue Point [Blaise's Canal] and fishin on this side, at Myette Point. Fish was bitin! Man, them fish was bitin! Mertile would get there with his fishboat and them catfish was there in them fishcars with the tail up [fishcars were full].Yeah he be livin today he could tell you. And he say “I knew you’d do it”.  He had a confidence in me, but I …

JD: You mean you had one man going after bait full time? 

Myon: Full time. That was his job. Me and Monug…me and Monug would…

JD: What kind of bait was he catching?

Myon: Mostly live perch. We fish with cut bait, you see, with cut perch.In that time, that’s what we were using. 

JD: Cut perch. It didn’t matter how big they were, or…?

Myon: No. Just (big enough) to make a cut bait. Just cut it up for bait.

JD: Traps? He was using traps to catch perch?

Myon: No. Well, he had traps, but he’d go over there and fish with a line. Them perch was bitin, they had plenty perch.

AB: If they didn’t bite (the perch), he’d dip em, under the lilies. 

Myon: Sometime…sometimes he come and fish, if he had plenty bait.

JD: How long a day?…now, you say you had 1000 hooks when you left Morgan City…you each took about 500? 

Myon: Oh, we ended up with more than 1000 hooks. We started with that, and as the boat (fishboat) come up and pick up our fish we bought hooks and line and kept fishing (more hooks). At times we didn’t have 1000 hooks (fishing) all at once]. We had plenty of hooks. Sometime 500 hooks was plenty hooks in them times, for us to fish. 

JD: Yeah, to make a lvin for yourself (one man). That was plenty. How long a day do you think y’all were putting in, in those days, like that?

Myon: Jim, we didn’t fish all day long. But every day we’d go…we’d run our line, and we’d come back. Sometime we’d go back in the evening and make another run, come back in. You know how fishermen do.

JD: And y’all get across in a powerboat? 

Myon: Yeah, we had them Lockwoods. Two-horse Lockwoods, six-horse Lockwoods. I used to have two-horse Lockwoods I fished all the time in. I had a six-horse too, a lil bit faster, you know? 

JD: Skiffs? 

Myon: Skiffs, yeah.

JD: What kind of line did you fish in those days?

Myon: Cotton. Cotton line, and in three weeks you had rotten line too, let me tell you! Them stageon, eight, nine days…we didn’t stain our stageons. After nine days you could start breakin em. Cotton.

JD: And y’all hand made your swivels? 

Myon: Yeah. 

JD: You still fished with swivels back then, eh? Well, did your lines look like bent lines like we fish now?

Myon: Yeah.

JD: But you’d drive poles, or you use stob poles? 

Myon: No, we didn’t use stobs in them times. We drove poles all the time.

JD: Just poles. Boy, that’s really something.

Myon: Yeah. And you made that much money, and you weren’t getting but seven or eight cents a pound for your fish?

Agnes: Shee, when we was getting eight cents a pound, we was getting plenty!

Myon: I remember we was getting around ten cents a pound for our fish then, eh?  I don’t remember exactly, but in them times around ten cents. That was a pretty good price.

JD: That was around 1938, somewhere in there?

Myon: Umhm. 

JD: And then when the war broke out, 1940, let’s say, the price of fish must have gone up pretty good, eh? 

Myon: A little bit, Jim, umhm. But they had boats come there and pay as high as 25 cents, some boats out of Houma. You know, make a run when they needed fish like that? That was Joe Spagnol, we used to call him, that’s a Houma boat.  Come in there, them other boat had to come up [in price] with him, you know?  He’d raise the price when he needed fish, you see, that’s why he’d come in. 

JD: And y’all would sell to him.

Myon: Well, we’d sell some. Try to keep him in there to hold the price up.

Fini

Putt: [something about turning the TV off]

JD: Well, yeah, I can, Putt, uh, but it’s not as good as it would be if it was…if it was off. But I don’t want to ask anybody to turn the TV set off. I just wanted to know if Agnes had ever heard herself on tape, that’s all.

Agnes: Yeah. [something about church]. Finish telling Jim about that big stump, that was across the lake at the end of the…at the end of the canal…

JD: What year was that Agnes, do you remember?

Agnes: I don’t remember.

JD: Approximately?

Agnes: [?] was born, in uh, ’38. Born in 38.

Putt: That must have been around ’35, yall was livin over there, uh, Myon?

Myon mmmm, ’35.

PUTT: Because when yall moved over here, that’s when you started working on your camp, eh? On your barge?

Agnes: Yeah. When we worked on that barge, Boyer [sp?] [nickname for their son, Albert Bailey, Jr. – pronounced “boyyay”] was a baby.

JD: Well, let’s kind of start at the…I’d kind of like to get some background information, because I have to know this before I type up the stuff that I’ve got, you know, the notes that I’ve got. First, Myon, what year were you born in? If you don’t mind.

Myon: 1905.

JD: You were born in…born in 1905. And where was that?

Myon: In uh, Simmon’s [Persimmon] Pass. Right directly across from Morgan City. You know where Lake Palourde’s at? Straight across from Morgan City, there.

JD: That was on a houseboat, or was it…?

Myon: On the bank.

JD: And how about you, Agnes? I’d like to know when you were born, but if you don’t want to say so that’s all right with me.

Agnes: That’s alright. 1912.

JD: And where was that?

Agnes Bayou Long. Yeah, you got it on, uh…Bayou Long.

Dot: Yeah, Bayou Long.

JD: And is that on the bank or in a houseboat?

Myon: Stephensville…Bayou Long, but they call it Stephensville. Bayou Long [was the waterway, but the town was called Stephensville]. In that time, it was Bayou Long, that was the bayou where people livin along [it]…But now they done changed the name, it’s Stephensville.

Agnes: That was a big bayou then. But, I was born in a house.

JD: Uh, how come…it seems to me like…there must have been some people livin in houseboats in those times, isn’t that right?

Myon: Yeah. They had people in them. Around Fourmile Bayou [where he was raised] they didn’t have too many people livin in houseboats. But up the country, here, they did have a lot of people livin in houseboats. At that time, we wasn’t livin up here though.

Putt: Well, the Old Man [his father, Lester Couvillier] was livin in houseboats…

Myon All they lives.

Putt: Ever since, uh… [and] I was 14 years old when we moved over the levee [and moved off of houseboats].

JD: Well, uh, Myon, what was…what was…for instance, now, what about your father? You remember your father very well?

Myon: I don’t remember.

JD: Not at all? Now, how about your mother?

Myon: Mother, yeah, I buried her. She was livin in my house the last two years she was livin.

JD Your father died when you were young?

Myon: Yeah, a year and a half old.

JD: Did you ever hear much stories about him? What he did for a livin, when he was alive?

Myon: Fish.

JD: How about your parents, Agnes, what were they…?

Agnes Fished, picked moss, hunt frogs…alligators.

JD Hunt frogs? There was a market for frogs back then?

Myon: Oh yeah. Lot of people hunt frog in them days!

Agnes: You see, in the summer, we had two months, uh, that they couldn’t fish. They had a closed season on fish.

JD: [VERY surprised, but see material from Mike Walker on this whole idea of a closed season] When was that?! When?

Agnes When I was small.

Myon: Aw yeah, you had two months closed season. #.

JD: Two months closed season?

Myon: Three months!

JD: Three months! And what months…what months were those?

Myon: That’s in May, when the fish would spawn. Catfish would spawn.

JD: In May, and what? May, June and July, or what?

Myon: I think so.

Putt: April, May, and June.

Myon: Yeah.

JD: So that’s the same…about the same as closed season on frogs, then?

Myon: About the same.

Putt: Two months…the closed season on frogs.

JD: Yeah, that’s April and May, now, eh?

Agnes Hunt alligators, pick moss…Well, when he couldn’t fish, he’d pick moss. Pick moss, uh, almost all day, then at night he’d go hunt frogs. And he’d kill alligators and hunt frogs at, you know, at the same time.

JD: Well, that’s a long day for a man!

Agnes [had to] do it!

JD: How many hours do you suppose he worked during a day?

Myon: I guess some days he worked 14, 15 hours.

JD: Did he take a day off during the week, or…?

Agnes No, Sundays, that’s all.

JD: But he did take his Sunday off?

Agnes Yeah, when he’d pick moss. When he’d fish, he didn’t.

JD: Well, now, yall both lived on the bank. Uh, so, the fish that…that your parents caught, to make a living, how did they sell their fish?

Agnes: Fishboat would come get em.

Myon: Fishboat.

JD: So, yall both lived on the water [but on the bank]?

Myon: On the water. Had groceries, and fish…he’d buy the fish and you buy you groceries. Just like a store. He’d come once or twice a week to your place…

JD: And did he have liveboxes in his boat, did you put…?

Myon: No, he had ice.

JD: He had ice, himself. But yall had to keep your fish alive?

Myon: In liveboxes.

JD: Yeah, ‘till he got there.

Agnes They had big old…made big old fish cages, uh…[that the fishboats would put the fish in and tow them back alive to the dock]

Myon: On the olden times, before us, yeah. We keep our fish in cages, boat come in there…

Putt: When was that, Mr. Myon, [they] had that fish cage, used to tow it to get your fish…?

Myon: That was years back, that was uh, oh from Morgan City, let me see if I can …uh, Mike Clantile [sp?].

Putt: They used to tow, uh, Jim?, they used to tow a fish…a fish box… [to keep the fish] alive, and tow em back to Morgan City.

JD: Tow the boxes?

Myon: Yeah.

JD: Aw, they had a barge, or what?

Edward: No. made like a skiff.

Putt: Make like a float, like a pontoon.

Myon: Made like a skiff, so they could pull it.

JD: Well, was it kind of like a…kind of like a, a seine barge like they use nowadays? Wide with a bateau front?

Myon: No, it was wide and big, but it was made like a skiff. So you could tow it. Just like pointed skiff, you know? #. You done seen one of them skiffs.

JD: Like a skiff, not like a bateau, all right. [this fish-towing device is pictured in Malcolm Comeaux book on Atchafalaya folk life] Now uh, how much do you

suppose that they got…do yall remember how much they would get for their fish when they’d sell em?

Myon: Oh, they didn’t get no big price, five to eight cents a pound was a big price.

JD: This is like when your daddy was fishing, you talking about?

Myon: You could buy a sack of flour for 40 cents. #. 24 pounds. #.

JD: And uh, how much did they pay for moss? Do you remember, Agnes?

Agnes: Cent and half.

Myon: Cent and a half…sometime when you get three cents it was a good price, big price.

Agnes: Sometime you’d get three cents for it.

JD: A pound, you talking about?

Myon: A pound, dried, had to be black. Black moss.

Agnes: You had to work it. Pick it green, but you had to work it.

JD: So, you would pick it green, huh?

Myon: Oh yeah, most of the time. [to cure it] you pile it up…

Agnes: You pile it up, and then every evening we take some buckets and wet it, and work it, turn it over and…

Myon: After it’s good and wet you’d pile it up and it form a steam in there and kill it. All that stuff would fall, and it was just the inside [that would remain].

Agnes You turn it over, and after it get black you hang it out on the line. It would dry. And then my daddy get there and bail it.

Myon: [smell?] it get a lil bit nasty when you put it out on the line to dry it [laughs].

Putt had a old skiff, high, high sides. Out here, right in this cut out here in this channel? And used to have some great big old eddies, you know? Six foot deep, up to six and eight foot deep. Some worse, you had to watch em, you know? And he used to…they used to not have no boats [with motors] out here. And uh, used to have an old fella livin out there on that island [Goat Island] you

know? So, he’d go out there and run lines, you know, cold, cold, cold…ice sickles.

JD: What island…what island, Hog Island?

Putt: No, right out here! And uh, he used to fish out there in skiffs all the time. He didn’t have no such thing as boats [with motors], you know? And he set off down the bayou in that skiff and sometime he would get in one of them eddies, and he have to push about five minutes to get out of there, you know?

JD: Is that right?!

Putt: Keep turnin, turnin, keep pushin, keep pushin! And boy, look, sometime that old back of that boat, you know, it would catch the back like that…sometime it would catch a lil water, and sometime it won’t….until that skiff cover that…in other words, it would hit it just right [and] it would cover that eddy, and kind of smother that eddy out a lil bit. And boy, he’ll take off! #. They had eddies that big, that current was so bad here. That’s how big them eddies was.

JD: What year you suppose that was, Putt?

Putt Oh, I guess…that had to be around 19…let’s see…1941 or ’42, I guess. Boy look, they had some deep eddies there.

JD: Now, what was this channel like then? Uh, was it…lookin like it does today out there? Or no?

Putt Uh, the lil cut looks the same, but up above there, all that water was open. You had just as much current comin down this lake here [down the west side] as you had in the [main] channel.

JD: You mean by Charenton [comin from]?

Putt Yeah. That’s the reason why…that’s the reason why we had that big eddy, you see? In other words, that cut would come in…

JD: Right at that corner it would meet?

Putt: Right at that corner it would meet, make these eddies here. And boy that Old Man had some problems fishin!

JD: Well, Putt, what was your daddy’s name?

Putt Lester Couvillier.

JD: Lester? And where was he born, do you remember anything about him?

Putt: I don’t remember where he was born, Jim, all I know is he lived on a houseboat just about all his life. Anyhow, ‘till I was 14 years old. Then, he died when I was 24. In other words, he pulled the houseboat over…over the levee there…when I was 14 years old. We lived on a houseboat all that time.

JD: Well, can you remember…go back as far as you can with your memory, do you remember your life as a boy…when you were a boy on a houseboat? What do you remember about when you were a boy on a houseboat, concerning things like…like fishing. That’s the thing I’m most interested in, what was it like to be a fisherman?

Putt: Well, back then we was too small to go out by ourselves, Jim, and uh, the onlyest way we could…in other words…go out, was if somebody [was] with us, you know? Till we got a lil older, about seven, eight years old, then we could go out on our own fishin.

JD: You were fishin on your own [at] seven or eight years old?

Putt Yeah. You take a boat, you know, a pirogue? And uh, Jessie [his brother] was a lil older than I was, you see, but we’d fish around…pretty close to the house, you see? But I remember when there were fishboats used to come pick up the Old Man ’s fish. Sometime he get there at 9:00 o’clock at night. We had a nickel for a jawbreaker, once a week, you see. Get a jawbreaker with him. If that fishboat…if we was in bed…I done seen us in bed, and the Old Man would leave the house, go get some fish up [out of the fish car], and we’d get in a #3 washtub, and uh, make it out in that washtub to that fishboat to get some candy…our nickel’s worth of candy.

JD: What!? You would get in a number…not two of you, one of you?

Putt No, one of us.

JD: You’d get in a #3 washtub and get out to the fishboat…?

Putt Go to the fishboat, and get out, and come back. Get out of bed to do that, now! Sometime eight, nine o’clock at night. And uh, we had our nickel to spend, you know, go get our jawbreaker. Go get jawbreakers.

JD: Now listen, uh, now you know the story seems to be about the same, when you talk to Myon about the fishboat comin and pickin up the fish, and the grocery boat bringing groceries at the same time, I mean it was the same boat. But what I’m interested in is now…how long you suppose those fishboats worked that…this area? How long, how many years do you suppose that those fishboats were workin, pickin up fish from people livin in the…

Putt: I guess, Jim, when the Old Man used to tell us, young boys, about his experience in here [the Basin]…he used to tell us [about a] long time ago… you see, he lived on houseboats all his life, that’s all he ever done was push [push skiff], fishing, you see? That’s all he…he used to push and he was uh, when we was uh…in other words [basically, he never had a way to get to town so all his dealings were with the fishboats for supplies and sales for his fish, moss, etc.]. [For meat to eat] he always used game, you know?

JD: He used what?

Putt Game, I mean, to survive the family, you know? And a lot of time he couldn’t get shells. When he killed…other words, killed some mallards, he used to sell em, you know, by the pair for a few shells, something like that. #. And with a couple shells he would get game, and stuff, [?].

JD: Who did he sell this game to? When he’d kill…?

Putt Well, like Conrad, the one got that big uh, dry dock right down in uh, in Morgan City. They all used to come down, hunt with the Old Man , bring him shells and stuff, and trade. He didn’t, say, sell em [the ducks], he mostly trade.

JD: Oh, I see. So, to your knowledge, though, this fishboat…this fishboat idea, operated for as long as your daddy was alive?

Putt: I guess, Jim, he ain’t had no means of transportation. I mean, all he had was a push skiff. He couldn’t…in other words, they’d buy everything off of it [the fishboat], know what I mean?

Lena Mae Well, Mertile ran his boat till we moved over here.

Putt: Yeah, and Jesse Higgins used to run a fishboat [also], and pick up the fish. We used to go over there sometime [and] if we didn’t have no money, swipe us some candy. [laughs]. As a practical joke, you know, but he knew we was doin it, but we’d get us some candy anyway.

Dot: I remember they picked up the fish until we moved over here, and daddy put that fishbox on top the levee.

JD: I imagine there were still fishboats workin in the swamp,uh, even after that…

Putt: Oh yeah.

JD: But, when did they stop to your knowledge? When did the fishboats stop?

PUTT: Well, when everybody had left from up…from up the lake, and start movin into Morgan City, and different places, you see, where they could start

bringin directly to the docks, you know, and got boats and motors [outboards]. When they done that, they bring they fish directly to the fishdock.

JD: Now try, as best you can, try to put a year on that. When’s the last fishboat you can remember, that used to work that swamp, that you know of? When’s the last fishboat, that you can remember that did that?

Putt I tell you what, Jesse Higgins was the last one I remember. He used to, in other words, come right…just like I told you, you know, ’41, somewhere like that.

JD: So, you think the fishboats quit in 1941?

Putt It wasn’t long after that, because, you know, people started buyin motors, then.

JD: So, you think people really started moving out of the swamp onto the bank, uh…

Dot: About ’42, or ’43.

JD: ’42, or ’43? They started movin onto the bank, people did?

Putt Well, I was 14 years old. Uh, when we moved back here. It must have been…

Lena Mae: Yeah, but we had been back…we had been back here…no, yall moved here first. Yall had the camp on the lil levee over there.

Putt: But I tell you what, when my brother was born, the onlyest transportation we had, old colored man come from Oaklawn, and pick momma up. We was livin here on a houseboat at the end of this canal. Nobody was up here, and we had…Old Man had to bring the houseboat in here to get…to get her off [of] there, you see, to bring her up…by horse, by wagon?...#...picked us up in a wagon and brought us out to Oaklawn, that’s where my brother was born at.

JD: You mean because she was ready to…she was ready to have the baby? That’s why…

Putt: Picked em up, mule and wagon, brought em to the front where they could get a doctor, you see?

JD: Now, in what year, wasn’t it about in 1929, or ’30, that they first built this levee?

Putt 1927 high water, they start build it. Now, I wasn’t alive then, but the Old Man and them told me. 1927 high water, well right after that they start build the levee.

JD: This one here? [points out the front door of the houseboat/house].

Putt Yeah.

JD: Now, they had a lil levee out there before. Out there in the front. Why was that, what was that for, that lil levee out in front [between the lake and the cane fields].

Putt Well, they had cane fields out there.

Dot: That was all cane fields, Jim.

Putt: And they had a old time sugarmill back in, years ago…

JD: I remember, I saw those, uh,

Putt They had them…they used to grow cane out there. That was just a lil protection levee, you see?

JD: In other words, uh, before that, before ’27, apparently that lil levee was enough to keep most of the floodin out? Was that it?

Putt Yeah, the lake was so big…you didn’t have no high water till this tremendous…1927, you see? [the water] It moved up into Franklin from this side here. Course, I wasn’t born, but I just was told.

Dot: Because I can remember Daddy had a big boat, that the name of it was Albert 2. With a cabin? Well, we’d take off that mornin, it would be late evening before we’d get in to the bank. That’s how wide the lake was.

JD: Now, where were you born, Dot?

Dot: Uh, let’s see, momma told me.

Putt: Well, you was born in Morgan City? I was born right there in Charenton.

JD: Now, where were you…where were your parents when you were born? Where were they living when you were born?

Dot Well, they had…just before I was born, they had moved to Morgan City from across the lake [at Blaise's Canal], you see? To wait, for my arrival.

JD: Oh, is that right? So they went to Morgan City for you to be born? That’s the reason they went there?

Dot: Yeah. And after I was born, they moved back. You see?

JD: Did they tow the houseboat down to Morgan City?

Dot: Oh yeah. Towed everything.

JD: So, yall lived right there on the bank, I mean on the houseboats, but it was tied up at Morgan City until you were born?

Dot: Yeah, I was born in The Pit.

JD: Now, what’s the reason why you momma would’ve wanted, you think, to move to Morgan City for you to be born? I mean, not all your brothers and sisters weren’t born in…in hospitals? Were they? Or in town?

Dot: No, most of em was born at home but they always towed…you know, towed to Morgan City. In case they need a doctor.

JD: Oh, they did?

Dot: Yeah.

JD: So, oh, I see, all right…all right…all right. So they towed to Morgan City in case the doctor would be needed. But who delivered the children anyway, if the doctor wasn’t needed?

Dot Midwife.

JD: A midwife…black, white, old, young?

Dot: No, it was a white [woman]. I forgot what momma used to call her, but uh, they’d go get her ahead of time, you know? She’d actually live with em until it was all over with.

JD: Oh, she did? Now, what did she do? Did you watch any of your brothers and sisters being born?

Dot: No.

JD: So, you don’t know, in fact, what the midwife did. I have to get that from Myon and Agnes. I understand Myon was there for the birth of every one of his children, isn’t that right?

Dot: Umhm.

JD: None of this stuff about sending him out to the other room, or something?

Dot: Uhuh! He helped. He was right there. #. He was there for every one of em.

JD: Well, where did yall move back to after you were born?

Dot: Back to Blue Point [Blaise's Canal].

JD: Now, was there anybody livin with yall, you know, other houseboats tied up there at the time?

Dot: Oh yeah. They always had a, at least three or four houseboats with em. You’d never stay by yourself on the canal. You always had three or four there.

JD: For what reason?

Putt Jim, when I was…

Dot: They just, just stick together, you see?

Putt: When I was a baby, the Old Man was livin over there around Willow Cove somewhere. And he kept wantin to move, [but] everyday there was a norwester break out. Every day, you know? In other words, the north wind would pick up and the lake would get too rough. One night he got up, and he was gone come around that night before the north wind picked up. [but we] get out in the middle of the lake, here come a crackin norwester, sunk the camp and everything went down. Other words, I was a lil baby, you know, and they told us that often, you know? How we all got in that pirogue, and we had to go light a old oak tree on fire to dry everybody’s clothes and everything. But, in the middle of the night he was gone come around there to get out of that north wind every day, and when he got in the middle of that lake, a norwester cracked out, and sunk everything he had out there.

JD: Did yall get it back? Did yall raise it?

Putt Yeah. They raised it, but a lot of stuff was ruint, you know, what they had. But…

JD: Putt, how would they raise a houseboat if it…I guess there was about 10 feet of water in the lake then, eh?

Putt: Well, I can imagine…I never did raise one but, what you’d do is try to get it in shallow water. You see, lumber, it floats [is light in the water], as you pull on it with boats you can slide it to where [towards a bank].

JD: Get it higher and higher.

Putt: Yeah. And once you get that…that rail out, out of the water, where the timbers are set, well you can go ahead and bail it out.

JD: You can pump it after that and it floats by itself.

Putt: Yeah. I can remember many a night at 2:00 o’clock, the Old Man lay up in bed there, and the old camp start takin water. And he would get us all out…get in the hurl [hull] of the camp and start pullin water out through them timbers, you know? Bail it out.

JD Takin water for what reason? Waves?

Putt Well, bad timbers and stuff, you know? It gets bad, you know, got to pack it.

JD: Just startin to leak, in other words, eh?

Dot: You get in there, and you bail, and you cork [caulk].

JD: What did you caulk with in those days?

Dot: Cotton, I believe.

Putt: That, oakum, stuff like that.

JD: What was oakum? What was that like?

Putt That’s,well, it’s still used in corkin wooden hulls. It’s some kind of, rope, like, that’s treated with some kind of oil, oakum oil.

JD: It’s black?

Putt It’s, brown. Sort of brown.

JD: And it swells when you pack it in…

Putt That oil they got in it keep it from rottenin, you see?

JD: Yeah, I see. I used some of that stuff. Well, Dott, how many

…you were which one of how many kids?

Dot: Of six. I was the fourth.

JD: The fourth, so there were two more after you. And Tiny [Carol Ann] is the youngest one?

Dot: Tiny was the youngest.

JD: And Putt, how many children…which one were you?

Putt Eight.

JD: You were which one of eight?

Putt Six. No, no, seven.

JD: You were seventh of eight. And Jesse is the oldest.

Putt No, Hoss is the oldest.

JD: Hoss is the oldest. I thought you said Jesse was a lil older than you?

Putt: He’s a lil older than me, and that’s why I say we used to fish together me and him, he was a lil older than me.

JD: So, you were the second to the youngest.

Putt Yeah.

JD: Well, who’s younger than you?

Putt Clifton. [he was] afflicted. He was four and a half years old before he could walk.

JD: Is that right? Well, when you look back on those days now, you know, that you spent like that. What was the difference in the way you lived then and the way you live now? The thing that most sticks in your mind?

Putt: Well, when we got something we appreciated it back then. Today you can get it…things, you know…and sometime you don’t appreciate it. Like, some people get too much, you know what I mean? Back then, when you got a lil candy, or something, it was worth somethin to you.

Dot: Them days, you got one toy for Christmas. And then, maybe not a toy, you might get a bag of oranges. Well, that was a great thing!

Putt: Well, I tell you, all I ever got when I was a kid was one red wagon, that I can remember, for a toy. I got a red wagon and a cap gun. That’s the only two things I believe I ever got.

JD: Can you describe the houseboat that you were born on, that you lived on?

Putt I can show you the pictures, there…

JD: I know, but can you describe it?

Putt Yeah, it was 15 foot wide, and it’s about, let’s see…

JD: Now, that’s the barge, or…?

Putt: No, that’s the inside of the space. Fifteen…about 45 foot long. Three rooms. Ten of us sleep in three rooms.

JD: Now, how did you arrange yourself to sleep?

Putt: Like in the middle room, well, all the boys stayed on beds on the floor. And, you know, you got…like you put a mattress on the floor, spread out on the floor…we had, one big bed in there. The oldest would sleep in the big bed, the other boys sleep on the floor. And in Momma’s room, the girls would stay in there. You know, until they got married.

JD So, you didn’t have a…you didn’t have a place to sleep all day long. At night, when you got ready to go to bed, you’d take your mattress down and put it on the floor where you were wanted to sleep. And was there any effort at all to keep the houseboat warm at night in wintertime? Or did you just have to throw blankets on top of you.

Putt: No, we had a old common wood stove there, you would get it heated up and make some coals and shut the damper on it. Kind of close the damper off a lil…it would keep warm pretty much, you know, at night? And then, early in the morning it’s cold though, boy! You get there and throw that kindling in there, and if you don’t watch it, it’ll blow the stack off!

JD: Why?

Putt The damper you put on it, the hotter it will get. It come up…bounce up off the floor! It ignites, you see, the smokestack goes straight up through the top of the camp, and it got such a…a pull…oxygen pull through that kindling, it go to viberatin. You got to keep the damper down on it. It burn that pipe…it get that pipe cherry red!

JD: That much heat!

Dot: And you had quilts. You got blankets and all today, but then they’d make quilts. You’d have what you call a quiltin bee, where all the women would gather…

JD: All the women in those lil houseboats you talking about?

Dot: Right. They’d all gather and make a quilt a day, maybe.

JD: A quilt a day?! Did yall have quilting frames?

Dot: Yeah.

JD: Well, where did you put a big quilting frame in a lil houseboat?

Dot: You push all the furniture to one side, and you sit right in the middle, and you’d suspend it from the ceiling.

JD: Ohh, you’d drop it from the ceiling. #. You see, that’s a whole….that what you just brought up, now , that’s a whole different story. But for the time being, let me finish with this, uh, the houseboat, now. I’ll ask you later what you can remember from it, too, Dot. But, uh…Putt what was that houseboat made of?

Putt It was made of cypress. The Old Man used to uh, other words, I don’t know where he got the cypress boards from, but a lot of these, uh…he bought em mostly from these rough sawmills, I guess, you know? Other words, they used to have steamboats [that] would pass…

JD: Pass where?

Putt: Right out here in the lake. They’d get timber by the big old booms, you see. They were steamboats…the Albert Hanson, Cap’n…uh, I think it’s the Cap’t Ace. But uh, he used to come down with large tows of timber out of that lake…pass way out back of the island [Goat Island] out there, all that was lake. And go on down with his timber. And when he come back up, we used to live along there in them campboats, and they’d blow their horn. And they’d tie up in the Cut, there, and give us all some biscuits and treats, you know, something to eat. And then they’d blow the horn and we’d get off the boat, and they’d take off and go on up. Comin up light, you see, they’d pass through that Cut, there.

JD: Which cut? That one right here? [between Goat Island and Myette Pt.]

Putt The lil Cut. And they stop along that bank, there, and blow their horn, and we’d all go get us something…

JD: Now yall were livin on houseboats right here, at the time?

Putt Yeah.

JD: Now, at this time, Dot was livin across the lake? At Williams Canal. Isn’t that right Dot?

Dot: Myon’s Canal…[terminology thing] [Blaise's Canal in the rest of this material]

JD: But it was across the lake. Yall were livin across the lake from each other. [Dot and Putt].

Dot: Yeah. They was here [at Myon’s Canal] before we were. #.

Putt: They had a few families livin along here.

JD: In houseboats all of em?

Putt: Yeah.

JD: Now, Putt, you talking about these steamboats. Were these sternwheel paddleboats, or were they sidewheelers, or what?

Putt They was them…back…old time…

JD: In the back?

Putt Yeah.

JD One big, big wheel in the back?

Putt One big wheel.

JD: It had several decks up off the water…high…and two big smokestacks belchin that black smoke all the time.

Putt Yep. Oscar Lange bought one of em for a fish dock.

JD: Is that what Oscar Lange’s building is? An old riverboat?

Putt Old uh, old uh, steamboat. #. Used to haul timber.

JD: Now, is that…at that time, was that the only big traffic there was on the rivers, was those steamboats?

Putt Well, you didn’t see too many tugboats or nothing. Most…mostly steamboats.

JD Ok, when was the last time you can remember steamboats makin any use of that, uh, that water at all? When…?

Putt Well, that’s been many a year ago, I mean. That’s right after I was…I was just old enough to walk and get around and follow the gang, you see? When they used to pass. I was born in ’38, so that wasn’t…

JD: Say ’44, 45?

Putt [?] I believe early ‘40s.

JD: 41, ’42?

Putt Somewhere around there, I wasn’t very old.

JD: And shortly after that, the steamboats quit runnin?

Putt No, we just moved away. You know, we moved to Morgan City.

JD: Well, how long you suppose they kept runnin after that, Putt?

Putt Oh I don’t know. After that…Oscar Lange had that dock built out of that old steamboat we used to eat biscuits off of.

JD: So you don’t know when the steamboats quit runnin?

Putt No, sure don’t.

JD: You got any…you got any possibility on that Dot? You were born in ’38. You were both born in ’38?

Dot: Umhm.

JD: You the same age. You the same age as me, we all 36. [THIS IS HOW THIS TAPE IS DATED TO 1974].

Dot: He was born in July, I was born in December.

JD: You and I only a month apart in our birthdays. I’m November 4, when are you?

Dot I’m December 24.

JD: Go ahead Putt.

Putt I, uh, I didn’t want to say too much.

JD: That business of those steamboats, that’s something I hadn’t even

I hadn’t even thought that those things were still runnin at that time.

Putt Tell you what, we was talking about the lumber to build a camp. I done seen the Old Man and them take a axe and cut a cypress down and, other words, just saw it off on each end. And take a axe and put it [the tree] on a rack and chop, chop until he get him a 4x6 or somethin. With a choppin axe.

JD Now, you say “put it on a rack”. What’s a rack?

Putt: Well, in other words, put it to where he can work…can work on each end. Put each end on somethin where it’ll hold it up, you see, where he can square it off. [to square it off] like you don’t get it up on something, you chop down there until he get one side square and then he’ll roll it and he’ll chop until he get him a 4x4 for a runner, or timber , or [?]. And uh, we used to…we used to go out in the lake and pull up some, uh, a lot of time after them surveys pass, and stuff, they’d drive them stobs down and to get some lumber to build a camp with he’d pull up some of them 2x2s you know, for…for uh, for studs and things to build with.

JD: The survey markers?

Putt The survey markers. Many of those we had to pull up to get lumber to…

Continued on Chapter 04

JD: Peach Coulee, you talking about?

Putt: First bayou on the right hand side when you go up there. They got a canal.

JD: There wasn’t no levees in those days.

Putt: Well, they got some big shell hills where people been digging for money up in there. They supposed to have money buried there.

JD: And what…what did they say about it? What kind of things they had goin on?

Putt: Well, the Old Man told me you couldn’t make coffee, or nothing. You put a coffee pot on the stove? Something would slap it plumb off the stove, you know? You wasn’t watchin, first thing you [?]. You try…Mother try to raise bread, anything, they say they go back they got a fingerprints push the bread down. And she’d be washin clothes or something, she go inside, come back something dump all her clothes overboard. Dump the tub and everything. They say throw shells and stuff on the rooftops. You set your hat down there, it walk off.

JD: And that was just in that one place?

Putt: That was up in Peach Coulee. Today, people still go there with [?], lookin for money. The Old Man told us one night they had a strange woman…momma and them used to sleep in mosquito bars, you see? In other words, a bar over the bed to keep the mosquitoes off when you sleep at night. And a woman, a white…white robe, you know, come there one night, veil and everything, you know…to talk to her on the side [of the bed]. And, uh, the Old Man was deaf. Told the Old Man, when you [he] come back they had some money for him there and for my Aunt Guilbert, lived in uh, she lived in Calumet, you know? Now, they had that money there for em, for em to be together on a certain night when she come back. If they wasn’t together, she wouldn’t come back.

JD: This was your father and his sister?

Putt: No, it’s, I don’t know what kin it is to the Old Man, but…

Dot: They just call her aunt [?].

Putt: It was some kind of relationship…other words, said for em both to be there and she [the “aunt”] wouldn’t come. Ain’t never seen no more of that woman, they ain’t never did see no more of that woman. She never showed, never knew who she was. She just came and she disappeared.

JD: She stood outside the mosquito bar, you see?

Putt: In the house. And, never know where she come from. And the Old Man told me that, now I don’t know, now. And he was pretty…pretty straight. But, maybe that’s just a mirage, you know, I don’t know. But, they claim, all them old people that used to live back then, they tell you about it. Even old man Steve Stevens, out there, they tell you about it.

JD: Stevens, where is he?

Putt: He live over there in Charenton. I think he used to live…the Carlines for sure. The old Carlines, you know? Up on the levee. They know something about that; they can tell you. Mr. Doozie Burns used to be good at telling that. Other words, back in them days, it was…it was…people…got so bad they had to move they camps out of there. They couldn’t live there. They couldn’t keep nothing. They [the “ghosts”] didn’t want nobody there. Well, they got people diggin money, and everything, but as far as livin there, I don’t think they ain’t nobody never went back and lived with houseboats there. Lot of people went there in camps, you know. But I haven’t heard any stories about that, but I tell you what, you can walk them hills and see where people dug for money all over in them hills?

JD: Now, what did you say about…about walkin off the stageplank? And …

Putt: They claim they had a spot there, every time you walk off the stageplank you could hear money rattle. Just like a pile of change, you know? And, when you’d step over that place. So, they drove a shaft down there one time, they say, and sound like they hit a chest. Other words, like it just spilled. And they’d go to digging, you know? They’d dig, that’s how they start digging for money. They could hear the money rattlin. They never could find it. I wish you could talk to some of them old people, I’m just goin by what the Old Man told me.

JD: Yeah, you say the Carlines would know something about that?

Putt: I think they would. Some of them old people around Charenton. Some of them old heads, you know?

JD: Well, I wonder if Willis would know some of those old people over there.

Putt: Willis Broussard, he come down from St. Martinville. He most probly know some of them old people, you know? But, I don’t think he heard some of them stories about what used to happen here.

JD: Yeah, but he would know the old people, I was wondering. Maybe he could tell me who they were.

Dot: I guarantee you Aunt Tee Nug could tell him somethin!

JD: Now she’s one we ought to talk to. How old is she? Is she 90 yet?

Dot: No, she’s 88, I believe.

JD: Now, what’s her history? Was she born and raised in this area?

Putt: Aw, she’s been all over the Bayou, podnah.

Dot: She worked like a man. She raised her kids.

JD: I mean who…who are her kids?

Dot: Arthur Sanders, Annie, Mike Sanders, Pete Sanders…

JD: So, all the Sanders who live here are Aunt Tee Nug’s…Tee Nug’s kids?

Putt: Yeah.

JD: Now, who was her husband? Sanders…but who was he?

Dot: That was Joe Sanders, he died, in ’56, I believe, or ’55.

JD: He was a fisherman?

Putt: Yeah, he used to fish, and he used to spray this canal for water lilies. He got a job, he used to run a barge through here that…killin lilies.

JD: That must have been late though, that wasn’t early in his life? That must have been late in his life.

Putt: He used to fish for a livin, that’s all he used to do. You see, Henry Sanders, he used to be…I don’t know if that was Joe Sanders’ brother or not, Henry Sanders. He used to be one of em that run the fishboats. They had Henry Sanders, and I think he’s still livin, eh?

Dot: Yeah.

Putt: Henry Sanders still livin. That’s the man you want to see about fishboats!

Dot: He’s a tremendous fisherman.

JD: And he lives in Morgan City? Who would know him well?

Dot: Edward [Couvillier] knows him well. Arthur Sanders, they go see him.

JD: Now, Arthur Sanders, you say it might be his uncle?

Putt: Yeah, I think it is his uncle.

JD: So that would be…his father’s brother. That would be Joe Sanders’ brother we talking about. And…and he would be one of the ones who ran the fishboats?

Putt: Yeah. He used to run a…run a…fishboat. They had about three of em at different times, you know…that I can recall. But they used to have Mertile Theriot, they used to have Henry Sanders, Jesse Higgins. And they used to have one run old [?]…Jew [later told it was “Dieu”] Robert!

JD: Jew? Jew Robert? That was his name? He used to have a…

Dot: He’s dead.

Putt: I don’t recall Jew Robert’s dead!

Dot: Yeah, he’s dead.

Putt: Well, he used to run a fishboat.

JD: Well, you would say then, from what you can remember about the life back in those times, that…let’s say you had to pick out, for instance, in life today…if people had to pick out…you told em, “Alright, now, pick out the three…three most important things that you think of right away, when you think about living today. Things that affect your life, the greatest, living today. People would probably say first of all automobiles, cars. Cars, you agree? It’s part of our way of life. We all got a truck or car or something, it’s the way we make our livin, bring our fish, whatever. Electricity, you heat your house, you do your cooking most of the time, you…your refrigerator, your lights, everything is around electricity. Alright, now, back then in those days, you switch that same idea back to the old days we been talking about, you would probably have to say that one of the most important things in your life back then was a fishboat, wasn’t it?

Dot: That’s right.

Putt: Bring all your groceries. That’s the only means you had!

Dot: Bring your groceries…

JD: It made your living for you, ‘cause it bought your fish…

Putt: You sold your fish.

Dot: And it also brought news, you see? News of things happenin other places.

JD: It would bring the news. Now would it…would they…would they stop and visit for a while when the fishboat stopped?

Putt: No, they never leave that fishboat. They’ll stop, and they’ll blow [whistle ?]. Everybody come out and sell they fish, and you go visit them, on the boat, to buy your groceries.

JD: Why? How come they wouldn’t tie up to your houseboat for you to unload your fish?

Putt: Well, he wouldn’t have time for all that…to stop and visit everybody. What he’d do, he come pick up a load of fish and ice em, and take off. Cause he was a busy man, sellin groceries and buying fish at the same time.

JD: Well how…would he just throw a anchor overboard, or something like that?

Putt: Throw a anchor, or tie to a tree.

JD: Like across the canal from the houseboats, right? And everybody’d have to put their fish in their skiffs and, and paddle…row em over to the fishboat, maybe 30 feet, maybe 100 feet, that kind of thing?

Putt: Yeah. He had them old cotton scales hanging up there, you know? And he had a old round thing [like a big scoop hanging from the scales to put the fish in], he swing em over your boat and you’d put your fish in it. He’d swing it back with that cotton scales and dump em in his icebox. [There are pictures of this in Malcolm Comeaux’s book on Atchafalaya folk life]

Dot: And not only that…Momma used to order material to make our clothes. They used to buy feed, you know, for hogs or something…called feed sacks. They were made…they were cotton…it was cotton, but they had all kind of prints, you know? Like lil flowers, checks. Well, they’d buy it like that and they made one of us a dress, out of that feed sack. And she’d order some yellow cotton and make all our underclothes.

JD: All your underclothes were made out of yellow cotton?

Dot: Well, sure, I didn’t have …

JD: Did she make your bras for you too?

Dot: Right. Right.

JD: Boy, I would like to see a bra that was handmade like that. No, but really, there’s no such thing as elastic, was there?

Dot: No, it was all cotton.

JD: So, the thing had to fit! It really had to fit. Son-of-a-gun!

Putt: Old Jesse Higgins, the onlyest man…he had a slot machine on the boat.

JD: A slot machine! Now you don’t mean the same Jesse Higgins that’s right here, right now, sellin…buying fish?

Putt: No, the Old Man.

JD: His father.

Putt: The one that died. He died about a year ago. But he had a slot machine. When he was up there in front [of the boat], my brother, the one that got drownded in 1959, well, he used to get back there and leaned on that slot machine some kind of way it’d pour the nickels out. [laughs]. Right on the boat! He used to rob that slot machine every time he get around [it].

JD: Well, how big were these fishboats, Putt? Put a size on one, and what kind of engine did it have? What kind of cabin did it have? What kind of space? How was it built?

Putt: Jim, it’s built just like, a…a…they had gasoline boats. I was so small, you know, I didn’t know too much about boats. I believe they had gasoline motors.

JD: You mean like a old Ford motor they would pull out of a car and…

Putt: Yeah. Buick or Model…old Model A’s is what they used to use. Old Model A motors. In other words, it’s a flat six, or something like that. You know, them old time. Far as the boat, they had the wooden hurl, and now the most weird boat…

JD: Yeah, but how were they shaped? You say there’s a wooden hull, but were they bateau shaped? Or…?

Putt: No, they was…they was lugger style.

JD: Lugger style? Like a Lafitte skiff?

Putt: Well, they had…they’r round to take the waves, like. They wasn’t no flat bottom boat.

JD: OK, so it was built more or less like a small shrimp boat, you might say?

Putt: Yeah. I think the one had the most…biggest boat, I’m not sure…I couldn’t even give you a size one it, you know? In other words, they had all their groceries stacked up around the motor. They had shelves you know, inside the cab they had all the candies…

JD: They had a nice long cabin on it, and everything? To put their groceries?

Putt: Cabin to put, you know…right in front the cabin they had they iceboxes. And you used to…I can remember where the candy was stacked, right there at the wheelhouse. [laughs] he stacked that close [to himself because of] the kids. By grab, you had to watch em. They would get their nickel’s worth. You know a kid, you know, he seen that candy there he go grab one…try to snitch some of it.

JD: Would you say that those boats were probably 30, 35 feet long?

Putt: Hmmm. Yeah.

JD: And they were built more or less like a small shrimp boat? Like a lugger shrimpboat. Like Joseph’s shrimpboat that he’s got right now? Or like Arthur Sanders, the one he brought right here?

Putt: Yeah. Now, they say they had one weird one. I ain’t never see it, one of the biggest ones. They call it the Monopoly [Monarch] , I believer, the Monople, or something like that. I think, I don’t know if it wasn’t Mertile Theriot, had that one. I don’t know. I don’t remember. But it…the only one I can remember is old Jew Robert, and Jesse Higgins. And sometime them fishboats, I think, would try to run a race to try to get one another’s business.

[CHANGED LOCATION, SITTING DOWN TO EAT AT DOT’S AND PUTT’S HOUSE at Myette Pt.]

Putt: Boy, uh, Momma used to make deep pan biscuits pretty near every morning for breakfast for us. For dinner she made pancakes, for supper…

JD: Now was that the usual bread you ate?

Putt: Biscuits and white bread. [home made]

Dot: Momma made white bread. Every other day she’d made enough for the next day. But she cut em about this wide [one inch], put lard on it. And black pepper.

JD: Black pepper? On it?

Dot: And that was good! Or she’d put syrup on it. But we always had our white bread in the evening, either syrup or lard…

Putt: We used to have some days, Jim when we was living out here…you take a good clear night in the wintertime? My brothers, they’d have to wait till after dark and they’d slip out in the field. They’d steal us some [sugar] cane. We’d stay up sometime ‘till midnight chewing cane.

JD: Why did you have to wait till after dark? There were people guarding that cane?

Putt: Well, it was against the law, you see? In other words, nobody’s supposed to go in the fields. Back then I believe they had the German slaves [German prisoners of war?], you know what I mean? Chopin the cane by hand, and everything. And by grab, they wouldn’t let…let anybody go get their cane. They’d steal us a armload of cane, you see, and come back and sometime we’d set up till midnight.

JD: That was big fancy thing, eh?

Putt: Oh man! You talk about something. We had us a us a cane party! [laughs]

Dot: We used to chew tar.

JD: Where did you get the tar?

Dot: Well, they all had some…always had, see, they always did have some tar. Either for lines, or…

JD: That’s right, you had to tar all that cotton that you used for your lines.

Dot: And we used to chew tar.

JD: Boy, I bet it kept your teeth clean, too, didn’t it?

Dot: It did. I think that’s why I still…my teeth are still good. I told the dentist that, and he agreed with me…my teeth are so strong.

JD: Well, uh, that’s another thing I want to ask you. There’s so many things I would like to know. And so many things that can be used on that tape. Because it’s things like…that people would like to know about, that there ain’t but one place to get it, and that’s right here, with the people who lived it. Now think about teeth, for instance, now, it’s true that a lot of kids living on this levee, in this community, did have bad teeth. Now, was that also true when you used do…in your family when you were growing up on a houseboat? Did they have bad teeth?

Dot: Not necessarily, no. But, Jim, we never did go to a dentist. When we had a tooth needed pullin, Daddy’d pull it.

JD: Are you serious?! Myon pulled teeth?

Putt: He done pulled some of mine. He can tell you about it. He done had some pulled, too.

JD: Myon pulled teeth? Reach up there with a pair of pliers and pull em out?

Dot: Right.

JD: While they were infected, and big and hurtin, and everything?

Dot: Yeah! That’s when they had to come out.

JD: Is that right?! No anesthetic? Just reach up and pull it?!

DOT: Up until the time my brother [Milton] got killed Daddy [did a lot] He was tough. He’d take things in stride. And I guess this…this [the accident] was a little too much. To us he seemed like a boss, you know…we [consulted] him with everything, you see? And not just us, I mean that’s everybody [everybody along the levee, 20 families]. They looked to him like the boss, you know. But that’s the way everybody looked to him, you know?

JD: Myon is just kind of…some men, and Putt…Putt and I can say that about…I’m not a leader, I don’t know if Putt is or not, but some men are simply born in a certain way, that they have good judgment. You want to do something, you ask their advice.

Putt: Jim, I seen the Old Man…you seen these big blue point crabs, over here? [?] …a crab line, a fly line. Go over there and come back next morning loaded down with crabs, high as 30 crates…25 – 30 crates. And get three cents a pound, big crabs! And now, today, you get 30 cents and still you ain’t makin enough money.

Dot: That’s the difference, you see, you could buy your supplies so much cheaper. Now, 30 cents a pound ain’t nothing according to what the uh…what you have to pay for your everyday needs.

Putt: You know I was thinking about the day we moved over the levee, was the day Russell and them was gettin married. We just had pulled our camp off the barge. Russell Daigle?

JD: Yeah.

Putt: Same day, his weddin day, we just finished [taking] that camp off the barge. The day before that. And we was settin there, waiting for [?] truck to pull [?]. That’s how long we stayed on the water…[?].

Dot: That’s when we got in trouble.

JD: When what? When you got in trouble? When Putt moved over this side? No, you [Dot] were on this side before you [Putt] got here.

Dot: I know, that’s when he started noticing [her]. [laughs]

Putt: Know what the Old Man would do us sometimes? Cooking a chicken on Sunday…close the chickens up at night, all go in a coop. Sunday morning, want to eat a chicken, had to get out there and run it down. To catch a chicken you got to run it down.

JD: What kind of cooking? What did you used to make out of it?

Putt: Chicken stew, gumbo. Fried.

JD: You didn’t do roosters too often?

Putt: Well, depend on how many roosters you had. Sometime you use a hen if you ain’t got enough roosters to cook. And uh, Momma’s steady hatchin them eggs out all the time, you know?

When I was goin to school, I had to have eight eggs for breakfast. Evrery morning. Momma would pick up three and four dozen eggs a day. Lot of chickens, nice chickens.

JD: Did you feed em or leave em wild?

Putt: Turn em wild, they always come back in uh, in the chicken house in them nests. They come back. You give em a lil corn, just to keep em around the house, you see?

Dot: You know Jim, it was hard doin that [living like that], but I wish many times I could go back.

JD: Why?

DOT: Cause kids today don’t know the value of nothin. They get too much.

And we were raised, when you did have a nickel, you hold onto the nickel until you had something [important to spend it on]. And today, you give a child a nickel and he’s insulted.

JD: I think we agreed that a nickel then…a nickel then was worth at least 25 cents today. At least. So, if the same thing…you give a child a quarter today, what do they do with it?

Dot: used to take us to the movie show on weekends. We bought our ticket, we bought candy. Come back. But I take mine to the movie today, I got to go buy a bag full, you know? [of candy] and popcorn besides.

Putt: When the Charenton Beach was open. …on Saturdays, sometimes…we’d pass a collection here on the Point [Myette Pt.]. Everybody livin on the Point would put up two dollars. Buy beer and pop and ice it down in a washtub, and we’d get [?] a jukebox, and put it in a fence.

JD: In a fence?

Putt: Yeah, you know, where nobody…you put a nickel in there and you’d press a button, you see? Nobody could tear it up. And they was every Saturday night, we’d go dance. Sometimes four and five [o’clock, come back in the morning]…come there and…In other words after the place closed [the Beach concessions?], we bring out our stuff, you see? We had it all marked, you see?

JD: Who?

Putt: Everybody!

JD: What did Myon and Agnes say about these girls comin back at five o’clock

in the morning?!

Dot: They was with us!

Putt: Even the babies, we bring the babies, and everybody!

JD: You mean yall all…everybody?!

Putt: The whole caboodle. We’d go up there and dance all night.

JD: Well, would Myon and Agnes dance?

Putt: Yeah, one of the best. Everybody’d go together.

JD: Everybody’d go and have a good time at the same time!

Putt: Everbody’d go together.

Dot: Not a bit of trouble.

Putt: Leave there, almost all the lights be out. You know, everybody dance till daylight. Then when we come back, they all come back together.

JD: Every Saturday night?

Putt: I tell you what, very few Saturdays we missed.

Dot: If it was raining too much, then we couldn’t get up there.

Putt: Those times we go around [by Bayou Teche]…go around that way [instead of going directly down the levee].

JD: And then, Sunday, of course, you went to church and rested up?

Dot: Not necessarily, ‘cause it was a good while before we got a church.

JD: But at least you rested up on Sunday, and the men all went back to work Monday morning. Boy, I tell you, that’s a clean way of doing things, like that, you know?

Dot: That’s the way we courted.

Putt: Them old…[when] them old jukeboxs break down, you’d run one of them cars in the middle of the dance floor, open the doors, and catch Grand Ole Opry.

JD: Run one of those cars into the dance hall?!

Putt: Yeah. Right up into the dance hall. You see, it was open. It was a great big old [room, roof ?] on the beach.

Dot: Is it still there?

Putt: They got piles [pilings]. They just got a lil piece… [of it left]

JD: It’s fallen down and collapsed now. What did…my daddy used to go there when he was courtin. This is ’74 [1974 presently], and his memory is like what you talked about. Charenton dances on Saturday night.

Putt: Yeah, drive that old car up in the middle of that floor and turn that…catch a brand new [?] you know? …run out of money, dance by the radio.

Dot: And that was fun! We had a good time. And we’d all dance with each other, you know? Edward…Daddy…Daddy would dance with us young girls.

[talking about dances elsewhere and kids today]

JD: They don’t have anything to do, Dot.

Putt: Well, they sure ruined this, Charenton Beach, by letting that go down.

JD: Well, Putt, I don’t know if they ruined it by letting it go down, or whether it just would never have been the same again. Because when you got television, and you got fast cars, and you got night clubs opening up…

Putt: I guess the drugs is what ate that up, you see, dope?

JD: I’m sorry that Charenton Beach is not there anymore, but I’ll tell you the truth, [?], it served its purpose. It was there for a long time…

Dot: Yeah. Momma would go there when she was…

Putt: They used to have walks [warfs], Jim, way out in the lake. They used to have walks, you know, the Old Man and them used to come dance out there. They could see the lights [at Charenton] blinking on the other side of the lake.

JD: They could see the lights on the other side of the lake?! [from Blaise's Canal].

Putt: They had wharfs way out there for you to tie your big boats. And the Old Man would take that old bateau and come across. We’d all come, dance and go to the beach, and, you could see em good at night. [When it] Get time to go back, come back across the lake.But he couldn’t fish out of that big boat, you know? That was just like a automobile.

JD: It was like, your transportation…that’s what it was. Well, you say “when the weather wasn’t too bad” [to get to Charenton]; didn’t anybody have horse and buggies or anything like that?

Putt: Well, Oaklawn was the only place had some horses. Like when Momma and them had some bad sickness, or something, [they would come out with a wagon from Oaklawn plantation].

Continued on Chapter 06

MYON: Sometime they make mistakes.

AGNES: And they told him that and sho was……..Ike.

JD: How is he now?

MYON: Allright….

AGNES: He’s old, yeah.

MYON: He’s About 86, 87.

[people overspeaking each other, hard to hear what they say]

MYON: I know he’s older than me, that why I say 86.

AGNES: [some child in the house] Hes hands is so dirty!

CAROLYN: But he’s happy. He’s happy.

JD: Well, we were gonna go talk to Ike, but, uh, I’m tryin to put together the dates of your family [ the Bailey family], when they were born as close as I can, and when they died as close as I can and ….. I talked to Myon and Agnes About their grandparents and they remember a good bit about their grandparents but we don’t have dates, like when they died – for instance.

JD: Myon’s grandparents, Myon’s and Agnes’ both. Their grandparents. Now, y’all: are half-sisters to Myon, right?

JD: So you would have different grandparents on your father’s side. On your mother’s they would be the same. We think we have located where they probably are buried. And we think it’s possible it we go back to those old

cemeteries, it possible we could find some ……

JD: Your daddy’s daddy, your grandfather had 5 wives?

MYON: He had a bunch of em, I don’t know.

JD: What was his name?

AGNES: Sead Daigre [sayodd]

JD: SEAD Daigre, that was his name?

JD: But they’re not connected?

MYON: The furthest we went [back in the family] was your daddy.

JD Well, the furthest we went was her mother, the furthest we went was her mother.

LENA MAE: But Isaac’s probably got a lot of that down because what I was gone to tell you the reason why he could….Ms Daigre, which I don’t even know her, lives in Monroe, still livin, she’s an old lady. But she used Isaac as a guinea pig down on the other end and he’s been diggin up records in different…. in Assumption and uh, what’s the other parish that goes Fourmile Bayou Myon?

MYON: St Martin [parish].

JD: Well, you see, that’s why we wanted to go talk to him but Myon and Agnes thought he was so ill that they didn’t think that they didn’t think he would feel good about us goin to talk with him. Y’all: sayin y’all: think he feels good enough that we could go on a Sunday? Y’all: would feel ok about planning a Sunday sometime during the next two or three weeks and I would come and pick y’all: up here, and we could go visit?

MYON: Yeah.

JD: You think that would work out all right? Some time in the next three weeks. Month, somewhere in there.

AGNES: I don’t think Myon would go.

JD: [to Myon] You don’t think you could go? I’d like you to go. I’d sure like you to go.

MYON How far away is it?

JD: Morgan City, it’s not that far.

MYON How long is that a drive?

JD: Forty five, thirty minutes? It’s not that far.

EDWARD: Depends on how fast you drive, at thirty miles an hour it takes an hour [?}

JD: And, what’s y’all:s full names? Your maiden name, your full maiden name.

Alberta: I was Marie Alberta Daigle.

JD: Marie Alberta Daigle. And yours was? Oh, come on! Come on.

JD: So one of you is Marie and one is Maria?

Alberta: No, yes, well, on her Christening papers Maria, but on my Christening paper Marie would be my first name. Marie would be my second name on my Baptism paper. No, not Christening paper, we never had a Christening paper when we was born, we had a Baptism certificate, and on it my name is Alberta Marie Daigle. My first name is Alberta on there.

JD: But you’ve been known as what? What was your nickname all your life?

MYON: Petite.

JD: Petite? That means little. Tiny. [laughs]

MYON: Marie lost her husband on ….[a boat]

JD: What boat?

MYON: What boat Herman got killed Marie?

Myon The Angela Briley [sp?], that boat that blew up …years ago …..

JD: That right? What was he doin on it?

Myon Captain.

JD: He was the captain on it?

Myon Him and his engineer was killed.

JD: Boy, boy, boy. That’s happened to so many people from around here, because they have so much to do with the water. [to someone]….husband was killed seven years ago on a boat explosion in the Gulf. He was the captain on it. Burnt? Hmmhm. Speaking of boats, there’s a iron skiff on the point , an iron skiff on a point just at the head of, uh, just at the head of Cypress Island Pass. Rusty, it’s rusty. [answers someone’s question] Yeah, between the big channel …..right on that point. There’s a big boat there.

EDWARD: On the little island, or what?

JD: No, it’s right on the head of the point, I don’t know how to tell you ….

EDWARD: OK, well, that’s one on that island there, that’s wooden.

JD: No, the one I’m talking About is iron. No, this one is iron. It’s right on the head of the point, just like a piece of drift. Y’all: don’t know anything about that one?? I’m wondering if that’s not the boat those two boys were drowned in up the river. About six months ago. No motor on it. No motor on it. About half the back end is in the water. The front end is pointing straight up the bank, like this. It’s a regular crawfish skiff, About a fifteen foot crawfish skiff. When I go back to New Iberia, I’ll ask EJ [Davis]what kind of boat his boys were in when they drowned, see if that’s theirs.

MYON: Oh yeah, it can’t be that, I don’t believe.

JD: You don’t think, Myon?

MYON: Somebody just parked that boat there, and lefted that there. I guess.

EDWARD: Well that depends, it’s not tied?

JD: It don’t look like it, Myon, it really doesn’t look like that. it’s a skiff. An iron skiff. And it’s not old.

EDWARD: It might be no good …….why it’s there.

MYON: [that’s] What I’m talking about.

JD: Well, they might have just tried to sink it, but, uh, it sure looks like it’s been carried there. It’s not filled up a lot with sand.

MYON: How long you say it would be? Uh, sixteen foot long?

JD: Fifteen feet. Yeah, it’s an outboard skiff. And outboard skiff.

MYON: ….controls in the front?

JD: No controls, got nothing inside, nothing.

MYON: The ones that have the controls in the front, they have that lil petition right next to the front of it [at the bow].

JD: Uhhm.

MYON: Does it have a petition? Like it could have had the control in the front?

JD: I didn’t see that, it looked like just a regular plain front, like they controlled the motor from the back..

MYON: Cause you know that rig that Charles and them drownded in, that was never found. That was a very peculiar thing. No.

JD: That was iron or aluminum?

MYON: Aluminum. It was aluminum. Big motor on it.

JD: Big motor?

MYON: Yeah, but it was front control, motor on the back.

JD: Yeah, this skiff is iron.

MYON: It was pointed, but the front of it kind of reared up. ….front controls on it.

[change in direction of conversation]

JD: Yeah, I was telling Carolyn I sure was glad there wasn’t none of my friends over there at the landing about 30 minutes ago [laughs]. Boy, I sure was sittin on the concrete! There was too much weight in the back of the boat, and when she pulled up the boat she pulled up a lil more fast, a lil faster than you usually pull up. And when it broke [began to move back off of the trailer] it never quit [laughs]. Right off the back and I was right [sitting in the boat] on the concrete. [what happened was this. We came up to the landing at Myette Pt. And I backed the trailer into the water on the wet concrete ramp. I then got back into the boat and Carolyn got in the truck . I ran the boat up onto the trailer, using the motor, and when it was on the trailer, I signaled Carolyn to pull the truck and trailer with the boat on it on up out of the water and out to the parking area. Well, she pulled up much faster than is necessary and the trailer got just clear of the water when the boat began to slide backward. The boat with me in it slid all the way off the trailer onto the concrete parking area and Carolyn never looked back until she was 50 feet up the parking lot. I was just sitting there with my hand still on the motor, in the boat, on the ground, looking stunned. She finally saw me, stopped,

and started to laugh. About ten other people at the landing started to laugh too. And then I guess I saw the humor in it. Several men I didn’t know helped me load the boat back onto the trailer. ]

MYON: In the water?

JD: Uhuh! Out the water! I was ten feet from the water. I was sittin there holding the motor…

CAROLYN: I was laughing so hard I almost fell out of the truck! We decided if anybody wants to know what it means to be left high and dry, we can tell them.

JD: That was it, boy.

EDWARD: Did he fuss at you?

CAROLYN: He was just sitting there like this [mouth open]. [laughs] ….laughing so hard.

EDWARD: I can tell you a funnier one than that. Harlan and [?] Aucoin went dip eels [white eels] in Lake Fausse Point one night and he lost his boat up there in Charenton and he didn’t miss it till he went to back up [the trailer] in his yard in Verdunville.

JD: [laughs] In Verdunville?

EDWARD: He come over here, we took off went looking for it.

JD: It was at the landing?

LENA MAE: No, on the blacktop [road].

EDWARD: They reblacktoppin the road up here, going towards Charenton, this side of Charenton. Somebody was just getting ready to hook on to it with a chain. They was gone to take it off.

LENA MAE: We had all went and dip eel and ….

JD: Well sure! Somethin. She [back to the Carolyn story] was on her way up the landing, she was on her way up the road [laughs]. She looked out the rearview mirror, there was no boat [laughs]. And there I was, sittin on the concrete.

CAROLYN: Still holding the motor, man! [laughs] Just watching me go.

JD: She was scared to death I was goin to find something to yell at her about.

CAROLYN: I knew he was goin to tell me it was my fault. That it was something I did. I was just waiting for him to tell me that.

JD: Well, just remember Myon how generous I am. I didn’t do that. I coulda done it if I wanted to do it, that time, right there.

MYON: Well I’m going to tell y’all: a story.

JD: Ohoh. Ohoh.

MYON: I was fixing my boat. To rig the steerin. I didn’t have steering wheel, I fixed me a stick back there [forward and back instead of side to side]. I wasn’t used to that, no. I had three or four dogs in there and I had Elton - I had about three mens in my boat. And when I got in it I went in one of them pockets back there….right over the point [of land]

JD: The stick went the wrong way, or something, eh?

MYON: Yeah, [pushed the stick the wrong way and turned the opposite of what he expected]. So, pushed it back overboard, went back there. EJ [Daigle] was with us too.

JD: EJ?

MYON: Yeah. So, Boy [Albert Jr.]….and, uh…put them boys out and they start taking their stands. I was gone leave there and go turn the dogs loose at the other [end?]. With that stick…and they had a oilwell right in the middle of the pipeline [canal].

JD: [laughs] a christmas tree [well head], a platform?

MYON: I had hip boots on and a big coat, it was cold! Warren was there too, Warren Hebert. And uh, when I turned like that, I push it like that [the wrong way] with that stick, and overboard I went! The boat went up on the bank, I had a brand new Evinrude on there. It went up on the bank and the motor was going prtprtprtprt. Boy yelled “you all right ?” I yelled at Boy, don’t worry about me, worry about my motor!! [Laughter] I was swimming back to the well. That’s stupid!

JD: Two times in one morning [laughs]

MYON: I uh, I had to go put some warm clothes, it was cold!

JD: Well, did you learn to use the stick after that?

MYON: Hunh, pulled it off!

JD: You pulled it off!

MYON: Ho yeah.

JD: You took it off.

MYON: Put a steering wheel on there. You don’t know how much different that is when you got a stick like that.

JD: Well, you have to get used to a whole different way to think about it.

MYON: A 18 Evinrude, I give that Evinrude to Boy, was brand new. Used to burn gas, that thing! Fast as I put the gas..

JD: That right?

MYON: Man that thing used to burn gas! [I] Never forget that. Brand new, I give it to Boy, I don’t know what he done with it.

JD: You lucky you had some warm, some dry clothes to put on.

MYON: Well, Warren … take me to his camp, he had a camp. He told me where he had some of them pants like Edward got there [jump suit]. I put one of them on, the first…..only one I ever put on my back.

JD: You don’t like, you don’t like those jumpsuits?

MYON: I never did wear em, I always did wear…..

CAROLYN: What?

JD: Jumpsuits like that.

CAROLYN: Oh.

JD: Larry didn’t go out today?

EDWARD: ….didn’t wear em, wouldn’t wear nothing else.

JD: That’s what I believe.

MYON: Yeah, he already come back.

JD: He do any good?

EDWARD: Fair, he done good.

JD: Catfish.

MYON: Larry’s fishin catfish. Jim ain’t fishin nothing, he’s burnin his money, there, now.

JD: I’m about to go to work, I’m goin to work Monday morning. Tomorrow….day after tomorrow morning.

MYON: Shore nuff!

JD: That’s gone be it.

MYON: I bet you shore hate that, eh?

CAROLYN: …..Baton Rouge every day.

JD: Well, in a way I hate it, and in a way it’s not bad, Myon. …..the one job I had there…..That’s right, used to be my beard was dark and my hair was light. Now it’s the other way around.

DOT: I think the last time I seen you, you was sittin in the back……

JD: Yah, probably so. Probly so, probly so.

DOT: You was a hippy.

JD: Yeah. That’s right.

AGNES: [we] Call him the hippy.

JD: Y’all: don’t know how many things I’ve stole around here and I have at my house. Y’all: don’t even know about. [laughs]

MB Well he [JD] come over there with that long beard…..

JD: You gone have to help me remember, Myon, I don’t remember[??] I don’t think.

[confusing mixed conversation, something about first time they saw JD near Goat Island]

JD: Yeah? Me and Mark, Mark Zarn.

EDWARD: …..first time I seen him [JD]

JD: Yeah? What you did? What you thought?

EDWARD: I hate to tell you what I thought!

JD: [laughs loudly]

DOT: But they had another guy with you.

JD: Yeah, Mark.

EDWARD: We call y’all: hippy, though!

JD: Well, we were, by everybody’s definition we were.

AGNES: Tete [Edward Couvillier’s sister, lived in the community] said “you know that, them hippys, you don’t know what he gonna do” I say “That man, he ain’t gonna do nuttin” [laughter]

JD: First time I ever met Willis Broussard, it was in the Channel, I come up side-to-side with him in the Channel and he had picked up his, uh, I don’t know, he had picked up some big piece of wood he had in his boat. He had like, a club. He told me later “I didn’t know WHAT you wanted!” .Yeah, he didn’t know [if I was dangerous].

DOT: Well, you put yourself in their place, though, you know….

JD: I don’t blame anybody….

DOT: You were an outsider. You come in a lil country place like this and first thing people think, or used to think years ago in the older generation, that he did something bad somewheres and he’s hidin out out here.

JD: OHHH. Uhuhuh.

EDWARD: Back in them days, we didn’t see too many hippies, we just heard of em.

CAROLYN: Oh yeah?

JD: You see, I was your first, your first live one.

AGNES: Not the first one, Jim.

JD: Hunh?

AGNES: You know that news man in Baton Rouge, uh, ….his name’s Breaux.

MYON: Jerry Breaux…..

AGNES: Jerry Breaux, and when he first come at the Canal, there, we was livin at the end of the Canal, he had hair like dis [gestures] and beard like dis [gestures]. And they didn’t know where he come from or nuttin.

CAROLYN: Ohhhh.

AGNES: And they was scared. And then we learned, we know his momma and daddy good and everything…..

JD: Well, you see the reason I came to the ….I came that Sunday, I came one Easter Sunday, me and Mark [Zarn] both to church services with y’all:.

MYON: Yeah.

JD: Because [of] Joe Sauce.

MYON: I remember.

JD: Joe found me in the lake one day, and I was tryin to make a livin fishin, and he almost fell out of his boat laughin so hard. His words… he told me… he says “You tryin to make a livin doin this?” [laughter]. And I said “Yeah”. He said “Well, you mind if I tell you what you doin wrong?” And about three hours later he quit talking. [laughter]. But he told me if I wanted to learn what he knew, I was welcome to be a fisherman. He well asked me right up there, right up front, “You not one of them hippies, eh?”. And I didn’t know for sure what he meant by that, but I said….It means something bad, I guess.

MYON: Today, they got a lot of em around here. In them time, they didn’t have many. Now and then you’d see one.

EDWARD: A hippie’s somebody don’t care about nuttin, you know.

JD: They think of em [hippies] with dope a lot, I believe.

AGNES: Right now they not long, but at one time he had let em grow, and he loved to catch em and make a pony tail [his hair] in em.

JD: But now all these boys around here are wearin earrings. And if you had seen hippies in those days wearin earrings, you’d a thought all kind of things about em. [laughs] Now, nobody thinks anything about em [earrings].

JD: When I used to smoke people used to fuss at me all the time “When you gone quit, when you gone quit?” I told em, I said, six months after the last person asks me to quit , I’m mon quit. Six months after the last person asks me, so they all quit askin me to quit. And sure enough, about six months later I quit. Ahhah, you could too, you. [laughs]

EDWARD: Some people need a little help.

JD: Poor Carolyn, she’s still sufferin from it.

CAROLYN: I still dream About it. No, I don’t smoke.

JD: Oh yeah, she used to.

EDWARD: Dope addict, eh?

CAROLYN: I haven’t had a cigarette since June 24.

MYON: Since when?

CAROLYN: June 24.

MYON: And it still bother you?

CAROLYN: I dream about it.

MYON: Come on!

CAROLYN: I do, I dream About it. I used to dream….

MYON: I used to do that too….

CAROLYN: I would wake up…..I would dream that I had been sleeping and I would dream that I would wake up and find a cigarette smoked in my hand…..Oh my god, I had smoked a cigarette and I didn’t even know it! And I would be so glad when I would wake up and it was only a dream. Now my dreams are that , um, find these cigarettes and I think “oh boy, I’m gonna smoke one, just one…”

MYON: Take a long time to get over it, I’m mon tell you that.

JD: And for years after that, after he quit, right? Same thing, me too.

EDWARD: When they [smokers] eat something they got to have a cigarette.

JD: Especially coffee, or orange juice, or something like that. Gohhhhh.

CAROLYN: Coffee, that’s it, that’s the dangerous one …

[several talking at once]

JD: That’s true, that’s true….What Edward?

EDWARD: I quit drink coffee two weeks ago tomorrow.

JD: ….the caffeine? When did you quit smoking Edward?

EDWARD: I never did smoke.

JD Never did?

EDWARD: It ain’t nothing to quit something, you just make up your mind you gone quit.

JD: Ah, that may be how it is for you, but for some people – they have a lot more problem than that.

MYON: Where you goin?

JD: You goin smoke?????[laughs]

AGNES: We had put a sign up on the icebox door, when I was first back from the hospital. We didn’t want smoke in the house. That sign was up there and somebody came the other day and I told em…….I knew she smoked…….

JD: Used to be, years ago, smokers were the ones that kind of set the rules, and it looks like nowadays more and more people are not smoking, and it looks like it’s the non-smokers that are makin the rules now…the other way around. Cause used to be you were the one that was not, you were the one that wasn’t right if you didn’t smoke.

MYON: Don’t bother me.

JD: Doesn’t bother you?

MYON: Uhuh.

JD: But you know they got it now where there’s no smoking in any of the big state buildings any more. The banks too. [several talking for quite a while]

MYON: When we was, uh, Edward used to bring me up there, the Old Lady was in

the hospital. Me and Carol Ann [Hebert] comin back with Edward. Carol Ann get in there, she say, “Get in the middle” she say, “I’m mon smoke a cigarette”. [Ed says to her] “you can’t smoke in that truck”

JD: Edward said that? [to Edward] You told her that?

MYON: ….no, Edward don’t like that. She didn’t smoke. Next day we went to the …..[somebody else is riding with them], she say “PaPa get in the middle, I have to get to the window, I want to smoke”.

MYON: I say you can’t smoke in that truck. She had done lit a cigarette. [laughs]

Continued on Chapter 08

JD: …..that yall know about . And, the main reason I want to do that is there’s a lot of stuff that yall know that nobody knows anymore. Nobody is trying to remember anymore. And one of these days, if I ever get to it, I would like to be able to put all that down in one place.

AGNES: You gone write a book?

JD: Well, it may be. It may be. But I figure I come over here and we talk, and I forget half of what I hear. So, I figured while I’m here, why not just get it on tape, just while we’re talking, and if I can use it, good, if I don’t, well, I don’t, but at least that way I won’t forget it all.

[Sitting at the table, passing food around, eating and talking]

JD: You want some hot sauce, Myon?

MYON: Yeah, I guess so Jim.

JD: White beans, boy that’s nice.

AGNES: Good ole white beans Jim. Myon and his onions, him.

JD: You like raw onions Myon?

MYON: Mmmhm. They go with beans.

AGNES: I’m hungry today.

JD: You hungry today?

AGNES: Yeah. Never used to be hungry.

MYON: ……………..squirrels.

JD: Boy, that’s special. I didn’t expect squirrel!

AGNES: They might have one in there kind of tough.

[more sounds of passing food around and utensils on plates]

JD: So, Frank [Gondolfo] doesn’t hunt squirrels anymore, eh? Or he’s not bringing….

MYON: Yeah, he hunts.

AGNES: He hunts all day, he’s been givin em away.

JD: Where’s he been getting the squirrels?

AGNES: Across the bayou there, Pearly [Frank’s mother] told me.

MYON: He ain’t been bring me none, but that don’t matter though. When he bring me some I give him shells. I buy him some shells.

JD: He hunt with a shotgun?

MYON: Umhm.

JD: Twelve gages?

MYON: I believe he got a 20-gauge that Putt [Couvillier] lend him. He had a 12-gauge pump, sold it to Putt last year. [after that] He didn’t have no gun, I believe Putt let him have his 20 gauge, this year.

JD: Boy, that squirrel is good Agnes!

AGNES: Yeah it’s good. Been cookin it a long time to get it tender.

JD: You got some ice in the freezer?

AGNES: Yeah, umhm.

MYON: Overloaded my plate today.

JD: Who brought you some roses? [vase on the counter top in the kitchen]

MYON: Alberta [one of her daughters] She come there with that during the week, and they was so pretty!

MYON: What?

AGNES: [to Myon] Alberta brought me them roses.

MYON: You don’t like milk?

JD: Uh?

MYON: You don’t like milk.

JD: Uhhah [yes]. Yeah I do, I like ice in it though.

MYON: Yeah? Edward too got to have ice [Edward Couvillier].

JD: Yall don’t want some ice?

MYON: Not me.

AGNES: I like water just as good, me.

JD: Well, I’ll tell you what I would like to do, if yall don’t mind, is, I would really like to hear the story about your family. We could start with one of you, and, if you could start as far back as you can remember, in your family. And I imagine that’s your grandparents, you both remember your grandparents?

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: Did both of you have all four grandparents?

AGNES/MYON: Yeah.

JD: Yall did?

AGNES: Yeah, they was all livin.

JD: Would you mind one of you starting? I don’t care, but just start with the names of your grandparents on both sides and then where they lived, where they came from….

AGNES: On my daddy’s side come from Spain.

JD: Your grandmother came from Spain?

AGNES: Umhm. On my daddy’s side. My grandpaw come from France.

JD: What was your grandmother’s name? Came from Spain.

AGNES: Ophelia.

JD: Her last name?

AGNES: Simoneaux.

JD: Simoneaux from France? But that must have been her married name? [I was mistaken]

AGNES: She was from Spain!

JD: Spain, I’m sorry. But that must have been her married name - Simoneaux is French.

AGNES: Uhuh.

JD: No? No kidding!

AGNES: And he [her grandfather] come from France.

JD: Opelia Simoneaux, and she was from Spain [surprised at the name]. And he was….?

AGNES: He was from France ….Laurent [found out later this is spelled Larnce] Sauce.

JD: Laurent Sauce.

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: And where did they move when they came here?

AGNES: They moved to Lake Verret. They had, they bought a farm.

AGNES: The make they own food. They raised hogs and cattle.

JD: You said this was on your mother’s side?

AGNES: Uhuh.

JD: On your daddy’s side.

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: Did they ever say…did anybody ever say where they got the money from to buy a farm when they got here? I say that because a lot of people who came didn’t have that kind of money.

AGNES: Well, he’s parents was rich. My grandpa’s family, was a rich family. And I guess when they come over here they had enough money.

JD: Did you ever hear em say if he was an only child? Or whether there was a lot of…whether he had brothers and sisters?

AGNES: I think they had one brother, if I can remember right. And that’s all they had. I believe two brothers came.

JD: Was he the oldest?

AGNES: I believe so, I believe he was the oldest.

JD: That could be why he got the money, lot of times everything went to the oldest son.

AGNES: Yeah.

JD: Nothin, I mean nothing went to anybody else [laughs].

AGNES: But they was two, they was two.

JD: Did you know him, was he alive? When you were….?

AGNES: Yeah.

JD: What did he look like Agnes?

AGNES: He was a redhead fella.

JD: Redhead!

AGNES: Fair.

MYON: Tall.

AGNES: Tall guy. Yeah.

MYON: She was short and black [dark complected].

JD: She was Spanish, she was short and black?

AGNES: Real dark. My daddy was dark [Blaise Sauce]

MYON: She used to smoke a pipe.

JD: Who did?

MYON: Her.

JD: Her grandmother?

AGNES: A little bitty pipe. Yeah.

JD: What did they do for tobacco?

AGNES: They had that, uh, Virginia Extry they’d buy.

MYON: ………tobacco over here.

JD: They ever tell you how old they were when they came over here? From Spain and France?

AGNES: No, but they raised all they family back over here. They had 14 kids.

JD: 14 kids!

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: And one of em was your Daddy.

AGNES: Yeah, one of em was Daddy. He was the oldest.

JD: What happened to all the other kids, your uncles and aunts?

AGNES: Some of em died [long ago], they got one left. They got one left, Aunt, in that family.

JD: Probly one of the youngest, huh?

AGNES: Umhm. The youngest one, she was my age.

JD: Boy that squirrel is good, eh?

AGNES: [something about JD finishing the squirrel in the pot]

JD: No, you go ahead, Myon you ……

MYON: No, I got enough. I got all I want right here.

JD: [to Agnes] You said you were hungry, you eat.

AG: I got enough

JD: Myon said you weren’t eatin.

MYON: I serve my plate one time, Jim, and that’s it.

JD: You do that on purpose?

MYON: Yeah. Got to, my clothes getting too small.

JD: [to Agnes] You say your grandfather came over here and they farmed, they bought a farm, eh?

AGNES: Yeah.

JD: Did they farm anything to sell?

AGNES: I don’t remember if they sell or not, Jim.

JD: I mean it wasn’t like a cane farm or rice farm or anything like that?

MYON: No.

JD: [they had] all the animals and everything like that?

MYON: Yeah.

AGNES: Yeah, all the animals, and they had that big old garden farm.

MYON: Boy its pretty, everything they eat.

JD: Cows and mules….

AGNES: Yeah. That’s how they worked they farm.

JD: So, it was mostly to live, they grew on the farm what they needed to live.

MYON: Yeah.

JD: Not too much, what you call, to sell?

MYON: No.

JD: They must have had some way to make a little money, because you have to buy some things. You have to buy flour….

MYON: Yeah, they had fish and everything else, like we got now. They live right on the lake, Lake Verret.

AGNES: Right on the lake.

JD: Right on the lake.

AGNES: I remember that place […?…] livin.

JD: You liked it?

AGNES: Yeah, in the middle of the front yard they had a, a big hole, with water in it. It was so pretty.

JD: Like a pond?

AGNES: Yeah, flowers planted.

MYON: They used to have a road goes from Belle River goes….

AGNES: Yeah, to Pierre Part and all…..

MYON: That lake, where they was livin, an all.

JD: The road’s not there anymore?

MYON: I dunno, Jim, it’s many years [since] I been around there.

AGNES: I think the road is still there.

MYON: I guess it is.

JD: They ever told you any stories about how they met?

AGNES: Uhuh. I don’t know, I don’t know if they came over yah …. They come here separate, I believe. Then they met. Over here. I believe my grandpa come on one of them ships, you know them big ole ships. How he got over here.

JD: What was your grandmothers maiden name?

AGNES: On my daddy’s side?

JD: Well, yeah.

AGNES: Well, she was a Simoneaux.

JD: That’s right, you said that , Ophelia Simoneaux.

AGNES: And when they came over here, my grandpa sent got his momma. She came over here too.

JD: She did?

AGNES: Umhm. Lena Mae [Agnes’ daughter] had seven grandmas when she’s born.

JD: What??? Seven?

AGNES: Seven grandmas livin. My great grandmas was livin, and my grandmas.

JD: Cawww! Do you remember her at all, your great grandmother?

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: You do? What was she like?

AGNES: She look-ted kind of like he did. She was kind of blond, fair, wore black dress all the time.

JD: Black dress!

AGNES: She died after Lena Mae was born.

JD: Ga lee. They lived together on Lake Verret.

AGNES: Yeah. After Lena Mae was born they move in Morgan City […..when they got old, grandparents now, I think]. You see him, and her both, after they family was raised, well they took on them pullboats and all, cookin.

JD: They did? Now what’s a pullboat. You mean like tugs?

AGNES: No, they’d pull timber out. Out of the woods and uh …..

JD: They’d cook for a crew?

AGNES: Yeah.

MYON: And they had quarterboats.

AGNES: And that’s what they’d do, they’d cook.

MYON: That’s in my time, Jim, them pullboats. I used to work on em.

JD: You did too?

AGNES: They’d work on them pullboats, on them big ole boats way off, and work. Talk about a cook, he was one!

JD: He was, hunh?

AGNES: Umhm.

MYON: Yeah Jim, I used to work on them pullboats pullin timber, I used to work in the swamps too. The pullboat was what, eh……They’d cut roads [clearings thru the swamp to make a trail to the canal where the “pullboat” was], put a shave [big pulley] back there and that pullboat was in the bayou, run cables back there to that shave. And you pass by them logs, you had lugs, you call. I used to put em in. When that buckle come around, that pullboat come around there with that buckle, you had whistles back there – three whistle, two whistle, depend what you want. Stop it [was] two whistle, you want him to go was three whistle. Stop and put that buckle in that ring there, that lug, on that log, blow three whistle – go ahead.

JD: So, the cable made a big circle, then, it went from the pullboat to a pulley, on a big tree, I guess.

MYON: To a pulley, a shave, we call it a shave. It’s a pulley.

JD: And then it would come around.

MYON: Yeah, right.

JD: And then you had ways on the cable to attach the logs to ….when you’re ready to pull it out. How did you get em from where you cut em down to the pullroad?

MYON: When you throw em, cut em down, you had to throw em toward the road, you see. They had roads different parts apart, but you always threw your timber to head to the road. The top to the road, then you cut [cut the top off?] em, and then you sharpen it. You had to sharpen it, like that. Then you take a auger, a two inch auger, bore a hole in it – two holes. And you take that lug, you come there you put that lug in there and hook it on that cable. And that would take em out.

JD: Well, there must have been a lot of those roads.

MYON: Oh yeah! Oh yeah. Everywhere they cut timber they cut them roads. You might run into some a them pullboat roads [even now].

JD: Still? Out there?

MYON: Still, yeah, in that swamp. Correct. That’s what it was [the logging].

JD: [back to eating] Can I have some of that jelly?

MYON: Yeah, I worked a long time on them things.

JD: In the swamp?

MYON: In the swamp, and on the pullboat.

JD: That’s a whole story in itself I want you to tell me about . I want you to talk to me about , the things you did in the lumber industry. It’s something I want to get, I want to spend some time just on that.

JD: [to Agnes] How about your other pair of grandparents, what about them?

AGNES: They was Irish.

JD: This would be your mother’s parents. What were their names?

AGNES: Umhm. They was Irish. My grandpa was Clairborne Mayon, and her, I dunno, I believe she was a Mason.

MYON: I don’t remember her too much.

AGNES: She was a Mason, her.

MYON: I think so, yeah, she was.

JD: A Mason?

AGNES: Fanny Mae Mason.

JD: Fanny Mae Mason…And they were both Irish?

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: They came from Ireland, as far as you know?

AGNES: As far as I know, they come from Ireland. And when they settled, they settled in [on] Bayou Long, you know where Bayou Long’s at?

JD: Bayou Long? Just north of Morgan City?

MYON: Umhm.

AGNES: They settled there, and raised they family there.

JD: Now, how did they make a living? What did they do?

AGNES: I don’t know, I don’t know, Jim. I know my momma told me when they were short of something they had a big old skiff, and when they’d get short a month, like us, like us every month I guess [short on money?], couldn’t afford grocery shoppin, well, he’d get in that skiff and pull [oars] to Morgan City.

JD: He’d pull that skiff by hand?

MYON: Double row of oars. [confirmed this with Edward C., they did have big skiffs with four oars]

JD: Double row?

AGNES: Push that skiff to Morgan City and come back with a load of – everything. But I don’t remember what they did for a livin.

JD: What kind of place did they live in?

AGNES: They lived in a big place, double storied house. And in 1912 the water took they house. The year I was born. And the water took they house, they had to live in the loft.

JD: All the way at the top?

AGNES: Umhm.

JD: But they saved the house?

AGNES: Yeah. They saved they house.

JD: What did they look like?

AGNES: They was fair complected. He was a short guy. A little bit a man.

MYON: Small man.

JD: Sounds like those people from Pierre Part. They all short, short, short.

MYON: Tell you one thing, if a snake would bite you, [and if he] could get to you, that was it. Treated for snakebite.

JD: How did he treat, Myon?

MYON: With prayers!

JD: Prayers?

MYON: Yes sir.

JD: So, he was a treater [treateur].

MYON: AWWW yeah! A snake bite you on the toe over there, and the swelling up here, he drew on that with his fingers, that swelling ain’t comin up [any further up the leg].

JD: You watched him do this?

MYON: AW yeah, I brought some customers there. [looks at Agnes] it was Joe or Nookie? Nookie, Nookie Wiggins. [recalls] He drowned a few years back, back there. Slabs. He jumped on a pile of slabs, you know them pullboats, them sawmills, they’d throw that and it would float – you could find some piles all along the bayou sometimes. They bring that and throw that there junk, was floatin [working the timber] in Cross Bayou, and he jumped on that pile of slabs and one of them copperhead moccasins bit him on the big toe. Man, you could see that thing swellin. I jump in my boat, had 8-horse.

JD: Eighty horsepower?

MYON: Eight horsepower-Lockwood-Ash. And I jump in my boat, it was runnin pretty good, I run him there. At the end of Lil Pigeon, that’s where he was livin. And I guarantee you the swellin was way up here already.

JD: Up to his knee?

MYON: …to his knee, yeah. But he [the treateur] stopped it right there.

JD: No kidding. This is where this old man was living, up at uh, mouth of Bayou Pigeon?

MYON: Yeah. Lil Pigeon.

AGNES: Yeah.

MYON: One treatment! And he begged me, “You ought to learn that treatment!” He explained me everything how it was, but [didn’t] keep it up. I could of! But I didn’t.

JD: You still remember it?

MYON: No. He say “I ain’t gon be here all the time”. He was getting pretty old then. “My days gettin short”. Somebody should a learn. And I guarantee you it’s first class. I seen Bill Aucoin , his boys draggin crawfish and he got bit in the water by somthin. He don’t know what. I mean he was swellin. Bring him to Dr. [Parker?], Dr. in Morgan City. [sounds like the Dr. couldn’t help]. Somebody told him about that old man, that old man…..When he found him he was at his daughter in Napoleonville. Bill Aucoin went and found him there, and when he treated, that was it. All over.

JD: Stopped it, hunh?

MYON: Aw yeah. He was first…I can tell you that. You couldn’t beat it.

AGNES: Sun pain? He’d treat you for sun pain.

JD: What’s sun pain? I don’t understand that.

AGNES: You ever get sun stroke?

JD: I’ve never had that.

AGNES: Get a high, high fever.

JD: Is that what it is, like sun stroke? …

MYON: Yeah. Ever you get it, you gon know what it is. Give you chills.

AGNES: Give you chills and fever and hurt all over…

MYON: I was in Morgan City one time, I was in the bay out there, and I caught it. Come in and look him up, come there, he treat me, that was it.

JD: Did he use a different treatment from the snakebite? A different type of treatment?

MYON: Oh yeah! Well Nine [Sauce] can treat for that. Nine can treat for blood too. Use the Bible.

AGNES: Yeah.

MYON: She’s good for blood….

JD: Blood problems? Or what?

AGNES: When you cut yourself and you bleeding, yeah, stop the bleeding.

JD: She can do that?

MYON: You just call her and let her know. She can stop it. And she’s good on sun pain too.

AGNES: Yeah, she learned from your momma though.

MYON: Yeah, Momma’s pretty good, good like that.

JD: Where did your grandfather learn to treat the snakebite and sun pain and all ……

MYON: I don’t know.

JD: He never talked about where he learned from?

MYON: Never did.

JD: That was your grandfather [Agnes’]?

MYON: Her grandfather, yeah.

JD: On your daddy’s side.

MYON: Claiborne Mayon. Yeah. I guarantee you, he was a crack shot [very good at healing].

JD: And they were Irish!

MYON: He was a crack shot on that.

JD: Did they ever talk at all, did your grandparents ever talk at all about life back in Europe? Before they came here?

MYON: No.

AGNES: My grandma used to tell us about my grandpa, you know, how rich they was. That they’d wear a piece of clothes one time, they didn’t wear it no more. But after they left over there and came over here they had to change their way of livin.

JD: Did they ever talk at all about why they came here? From there? What caused them to come over here?

AGNES: No, they never did.

MYON: Never did question about that. Why we didn’t, I dunno.

JD: Well, you don’t think of questions like this until you’re interested in knowing, you know?

AGNES: I guess it’s like us Jim, you see my grandma and grandpa on my daddy’s side, they raised they family in Lake Verret , ok. Later on they got a campboat , well they moved, they moved up the lake wit us. They stayed up the lake [around Bayou Pigeon region], well they died up the lake wit us.

JD: You talking about ….

AGNES: My grandma and grampa on my daddy’s side.

MYON: Claiborne…

AGNES: But, she used to tell us that. That, that family didn’t even wash they clothes, [they would] wear it and just throw it away. She say they had so much money, well it didn’t matter.

JD: And these were the ones that came from, uh, from uh….

AGNES: From Spain, and one from France.

JD: But which one was the rich one? From France?

MYON: Yeah.

JD: Well you see that probly about the same time my great grandparents came over here from France. Probly about the same thing. And probly for the same reason, they were gonna get their heads chopped off in France.

AGNES: Probly, yeah.

JD: Because that was the time of the French Revolution. And everybody who had money or fine clothes, they were….

AGNES: I guess that why left from over there. I don’t know why they left, but I guess that’s why.

JD: No telling, but if they were rich, that’s probly a good reason. Those people didn’t ask any questions, if you were rich they just chopped your head off. So, they bought a houseboat and yall had a houseboat.

AGNES: Yeah, one [houseboat] like us, they all left Lake Verret over here, and about 10 – 12 years ago they [oil people, etc] started looking up on the land and they had oil wells and everything, but we didn’t get nothing. They had, people had bought if for taxes.

JD: So, when they got on a houseboat they just left the land, the property there they had….

MYON: It was taken for taxes. Somebody bought it for the taxes. You go so many years, they can sell em for the taxes.

JD: A lot of land was bought like that around here. People didn’t care, or couldn’t pay the taxes on it, or didn’t see any reason ….

AGNES: Didn’t see any reason…

MYON: …..19….., Fourmile Bayou, a lawyer come and see me one time, about taxes, said nobody ain’t payin taxes. Say if yall don’t pay the taxes …[ain’t gone be yours ? ] So I paid the taxes that year, and that’s it, I didn’t pay it no more.

JD: When was that Myon?

MYON: Years ago, when we first moved at Myette Pt. On the bank [over the levee and off of the houseboats].

AGNES: Yeah.

MYON: I never did pay it no more, and it was only three dollars and ninety cents. A year.

JD: Three dollars and ninety cents a year????

MYON: All it was.

AGNES: It went for the taxes.

MYON: T-Man Bailey bought it for the taxes. On Fourmile Bayou. Where T-Man Bailey’s at there, that’s where was ours.

JD: How much property was involved?

MYON: Nineteen acres. It’s a oil company come and see me. They want to lease it.

JD: They had to have somebody that had title to it before they could lease it.

MYON: Oh yeah [sighs], people do things in them times, they didn’t worry bout land back then….

AGNES: You can buy land just from a handshake. That land was yours.

JD: But people respected that.

AGNES: Yeah.

JD: Myon, do you have any, do you remember your grandparents?

MYON: Yeah.

JD: They were all still living when you were born? All four of em?

MYON: Yeah.

JD: Did you have any great grandparents [living then]?

MYON: That I can’t remember.

AGNES: You see, he’s granma come from Spain too.

MYON: Yeah.

JD: Really?

MYON: Him and her both.

AGNES: Yeah.

JD: Both of your grandparents on which side?

Continued on Chapter 10