Center for Louisiana Studies Archival Catalog
This searchable database provides information on images, documents, and audio and video recordings, made between 1934 and the present.
Request a fileInterview with Myon and Agnes Bailey, and Lena Mae Couvillier
Blog Ch 11 Tape 06 Side A
Continued from Chapter 10
JD: Were you the oldest one?
Agnes: Uhhuh.
JD: You were the oldest one.
Myon: No, Monug was older than you?.
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: And you had two sisters, Ophelia [Yank?] and Ida?
Agnes: Uhhuh.
JD: [talking about how Myon and Agnes met, etc.] Well, that’s really something. And then, you say that you were campin out with your friend in his cabin boat…..
Myon: Yeah.
JD: …… at Lil Pigeon, and she was livin with Blaise [Sauce, her father] in a campboat, and got married. What did go live in when you got married?
Myon: I bought me a lil camp, [but] the hull was so bad I put it on the bank.
JD: The hull was so bad you put it on the bank?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Now this was before there were [big] levees, so the water wouldn’t raise as high as it did……
Agnes: They had a levee, when they built the canal, they made a levee.
Myon: [background] They did’n have no big water [annual flooding, like now]
Agnes: Well, we put the camp on that lil levee.
JD: But today, the water would come up high enough to go over that land, but in those days….
Agnes: Oh yeah!
Myon: In those days, it didn’t come up. It just over the bank there at Lil Pigeon maybe a foot, foot and a half, two foot.
JD: That’s all it would come up?
Myon: About all.
JD: It [would] spread out.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: It would go in all the fields, and everything.
Myon: [jumbled, something about “caulk”?], Never forget that….too. [?]
JD: Well, you remember, got caught in ’27 [1927], in the high water , before they had levees. They built the levees after that. Do you remember how long after that they built those levees? Things must have changed pretty much when they built those levees.
Myon: Yeah. I tell you, I couldn’t tell you exactly Jim.
Agnes: I don’t remember when they built the levees.
JD: But like, was it a long time after you got married? Was it after Milton [their oldest child] was born?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: After Lena Mae was born?
Agnes: Yeah. Oh yeah.
JD: It was after all that.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: So, it was in the middle of your children, somewhere?
Agnes: Uhhhh, just about, I guess.
JD: But when they built the levees now, you couldn’t go any more from Lil Pigeon to Fourmile Bayou.
Myon: No.
JD: You couldn’t get across [the levee just above Morgan City], could you? What did think about that…….[interrupted by Myon]
Myon: Yeah.
JD: You could, you could?
Myon: You could, you could go through Lake Palourde. Yeah.
Agnes: Followin, those, those bayous.
Myon: Them lakes.
JD: I guess I’m not thinking of the map very good.
Myon: Would go down, uh, through, uh, Grand Lake and then catch Sixmile Lake and go through…..in that time they didn’t have a levee, before they build a levee you could …. they had some passes there, other side of Morgan City. Go through Lake Palourde.
JD: But that’s what I’m thinking, you see, right now the levee cuts you off, you can’t get to Lake Palourde from this side.
Myon: Naw, naw, that’s right, correct.
JD: And that’s what I’m wonderin about, when they, when they built those levees, it must have made a big difference to .
Myon: It did make a big difference.
JD: You couldn’t travel anymore…
Agnes: Uhunh.
JD: It cut you off.
Myon: Not by boat, no. Only way you could have done it was all the way around through Bayou Boeuf and come back through Lake Palourde.
JD: Yeah.
Myon: It was a long way.
JD: That must have been a big change, when they built the levees.
Myon: Yeah. It was. You can believe that.
JD: Well, let me ask this, goin back a little bit. You told me that, uh, Blaise Sauce, and uh, at least Blaise Sauce, was livin in a campboat with his family. And his father and mother, Laurent [Larnce] and Ophelia, they didn’t. They had a… a farm.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: They were farmers. They were dry land people. Now somewhere along the line…..
Myon: They live in Morgan City a long time, too.
Agnes: They moved….When they left…..
Myon: When they left Lake Verret they moved to Morgan City.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: But they, but they lived on land. They didn’t go …houseboat.
Myon: They didn’t have no camp.
JD: Alright, so sometime between your grandparents, well, let’s see, is it your grandparents? Yeah. But sometime after your grandparents is when people took to the swamp in houseboats.
Agnes: Yeah. Well, then, after that, after, when they left Morgan City….they left Morgan City after Lena Mae was born.
JD: Who? Laurent?
Agnes: Yeah. And then they moved….in uh, they had bought a, a, like a bateau. It was a campboat but it was built like a big bateau. They bought that from Nonc [Uncle Jule?], and that’s what they lived in at the Canal, they lived at the Canal, with us [Blaise’s Canal/Williams Canal].
JD: So, they moved, though, uh,….you see what I’m tryin to do is understand is when this livin in houseboats in the swamp got started. That’s what I’m tryin to figure out.
Myon: [exclaims] ….back….
Agnes: That was a long time [ago].
Myon: That’s way back.
JD: That’s before them?
Myon: Oh yeah!
Agnes: Oh yeah!
Myon: You take them Burns and [?] and them, before I ever thought about movin in camp boats, they had camp boats.
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: They did?
Myon: Oh yeah.
Agnes: The Burns, there, they lived in camp boats…
Myon: All their lives.
Agnes: All their lives. When they left they place, there, where Ms. Myrtle’s [Burns/Bigler] at, there……
JD: Burns Point?
Agnes: That’s where Ms. Myrtle’s at, that’s, uh…..
Myon: Big Pigeon, Lil Pigeon, that’s where they used to live, mostly…
Agnes: No, they lived over there….
Myon: …..in the camp boats….
Agnes: Yah, camp boats, and then when they left they place over there where Ms. Myrtle and them livin now…
JD: I don’t know where that is, is that on the levee?
Myon: Nah, up the channel up there by Amarada [oil field]
Agnes: Along the channel, by Amarada
JD: Ohhh, I heard about her!
Agnes: On that side, yeah.
JD: What’s her name?
Agnes: Myrtle.
JD: Myrtle? Myrtle Burns?
Agnes: Myrtle Burns. When they left from there, well they built camp boats. And they took off.
JD: Now, they lived on the land there, on the bank?
Agnes: Yah, they lived on the land.
JD: Well, that must have been like those people who lived on Bayou Chene…..dry land…like a little settlement, kind of town almost.
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: OK, uh, so it goes back then [history of houseboat living]
Agnes: A long ways.
JD: Were these people as old, the Burns, as old as your grandparents, Laurent and Ophelia?
Agnes Oh yeah!
JD: They were?
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: Do you think it went past…., back past them? Too? Further back, even, that they lived on houseboats?
Agnes: No, I don’t believe, I don’t believe they ever lived in a campboat, them [the older Burns people]. But they lived on the bank. They had a big house on the bank.
Myon: [background] ….house on that point.
JD: OK, they lived in the Basin….
Agnes: And then when all they kids, they started getting married well then they….[started on the houseboats]
Myon: He kill a man there.
JD: Who did?
Agnes: Old man Nick Burns.
Myon: Nick Burns.
JD: He killed somebody, Nick Burns killed somebody?
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Why?
Myon: Him and a man had confusion, the man was livin across the channel from em. And they had some kind of confusion, didn’t get along. And the man was comin across in a pirogue to shoot him. Shoot Nick, but he didn’t let him get to the bank. He shot him. In the pirogue.
JD: He shot him in his pirogue in the channel.
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: A Charpentier.
Agnes: Uhuh. Chauvin!
JD: Chauvin.
Agnes: It was a Chauvin that was killed.
Myon: A Chauvin? I thought it was a Chapentier.
JD: And his name was Nick Burns.
Agnes: Yah, that was Ms. Myrtle and thems daddy, Nick Burns.
JD: Ohh,……her Daddy….Ok, uh, does anybody, Myon, remember what the argument was about? Why they were….
Myon: No, no I wouldn’t know. I know they had the argument…..Agnes: He was a funny old man.
JD: Which one was?
Agnes: Nick Burns.
JD: He was?
Agnes: Ohh yeah, he was funny and he was mean. He told him not to come on that side and Chauvin had a hard head too. He was comin in his pirogue.
JD: What’d he shoot him with?
Myon: Rifle.
JD: A rifle?
Agnes: Probably a rifle, I don’t remember.
Myon: Rifle.
JD: Not a shotgun, a rifle?
Myon: A rifle.
JD: And did the law do anything about it? What, uh,…..
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: The man was comin to kill him, he killed…self defense. He had witness.
JD: Do you remember what….did hear about this, or did you know about ….
Myon: Most likely………
Agnes: I was small when that happened.
Myon: I wasn’t there, around there when that happened, I was around Fourmile Bayou somewhere.
JD: Ok, ok, ok
Agnes: But we was there.
Myon: Y’all was up there.
Agnes: Umhm.
JD: You were small but ……
Agnes: I was small, but I remember.
JD: You were up there, were living up there?
Agnes: Umhm.
JD: Up the channel, by Amarada when that happened?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Son of a gun. And nothing ever happened to him, he never went to jail, or….?
Myon: Uhuh.
JD: Do you remember if the law ever came there?
Agnes: No.
Myon: I don’t know if the law ever went up there.
Agnes: They never, they never reported that or nuttin.
JD: They never reported it.
Agnes: Uhuh. They took that man and buried him. I believe they buried him in Charenton.
JD: Is that right? Never reported it.
Agnes: Uhuh. Never done him nuttin. But people used to kill, there, Jim, they wouldn’t say nuttin.
JD: But you would think his family. If he had somebody, people livin on the other side of the channel you would think there would be a ……
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Was there ever anything like that started….like there is in a lot of places, you get something happen like that ….bad blood that caused between two families. Like for instance in this case the Chauvins on one side and the Burns on the other side. And they start to fight among the families.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Did anything like that ever happen in the Basin? That y’all remember? Families that didn’t like each other?
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: It didn’t?
Agnes: No, wherever we went to live, Jim, we got along with people.
JD: I didn’t think , maybe you’d hear about other people.
Agnes: Yeah, but everybody’d get along. It was just them.
JD: Just the Burns.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Son of a gun. This, uh, this lady who lives there now, it was her father. Nick Burns was her father, and they lived on the bank. Didn’t live in houseboats.
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: But he would have been about the same age probably as your grandfather.
Agnes: Yeah, just about.
JD: As Laurent.
Myon: Yeah. Yeah.
JD: Bout the same as your grandfather. And that would have probably happened before 1900, before the turn of the century…
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: I imagine, still in the 1800s. I don’t imagine a date meant much to y’all, did they?
Myon: No.
Agnes: No. It didn’t.
JD: Did celebrate New Year or anything like that?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
Myon: Christmas, yeah.
JD: Yall did Christmas?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
JD: And New Years too?
Agnes: …..Easter, Christmas, New Years…
Myon: Thanksgivin…
Agnes: Thanksgivin, we always did….
Myon: Aw we knew it, we knew the date [?] . Holidays come there…..?
Agnes: Just like, we didn’t go to church, but my momma and my daddy always teach us that they had a God. We always knew, we all knew they had a God.
JD: You say you didn’t go to church. There wasn’t, uh, there’s some places in the Basin you hear about they had priests that would go around ….
Myon: Well, a….
Agnes: That was after, oh long time after that. The priest would come at the canal there with us…
Myon: Every three weeks he come and say Mass at my camp.
JD: Every three weeks?
Agnes: Yeah. Come have Mass. Mass at the house.
Myon: Gobeil.
JD: Father Gobeil. He was a Catholic?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah. We were Catholic then.
Myon: Every three week he come to my camp, then he go to Keelboat.
JD: Keelboat Pass?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: He had a boat. He go all the way around and go back to Charenton. He was in Charenton church, there.
JD: That was his route, huh?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: From Charenton. Gobeil. I wish I could figure out how long people had been living in that swamp, on houseboats. We take it back now to, to your grandfather’s age. I didn’t mean y’all didn’t know the date, didn’t care about the date, what I meant was the year didn’t matter very much.
Myon: No, we, well, we don’t remember Jim, that’s the big thing.
JD: I don’t imagine it made much difference if it was 1888 or 1889. I mean….
Agnes: But, yeah, it was in the 1880s, I guess. You know when my daddy and all, that was before my time.
JD: You were born, you said, in 1912?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: If you were born in 1912…?
Myon: She was born on a camp boat…
JD: You were born on a camp boat?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: In Blaise’s Canal?
Myon: No.
Agnes: No. Whenever time Momma would have a baby, well they tow the camp to Morgan City, you see
JD: Ooook.
Myon: [That’s what] I used to do when we used to live at Blaise’s Canal.
Agnes: Anytime we had a baby, we’d tow the camp to Morgan City where we…..[doctor?]
JD: Everybody make it every time?
Agnes: ……get a doctor. Oh yeah.
JD: They did?
Myon: Mmhm.
JD: Well, how far ahead of time would you leave, I mean…
Agnes: About a month, month and a half…
Myon: Three weeks
JD: Oh, you give it plenty of time.
Agnes: Oh yeah, you couldn’t stay with my daddy because he was too scared. We had to go.
JD: He was, hunh? What about?
Agnes: Bout us, you know, [in case] somthin woulda happened to us.
JD: He insisted go for a doctor.
Agnes: Oh yeah!
JD: Who were the treaters where lived? Who could treat for things like blood, and…
Agnes: Well that would be his momma [Myon’s].
JD: Your momma?
Myon: My momma.
Agnes: His momma would treat…..
JD: Ernestine? What kind of treating did she do? Did she do just prayers?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Did anybody do anything with plants? Roots, and stuff like that?
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: With what?
JD: Plants, sometimes some people would take bark off of willow trees….
Myon: Naw, the Indians used a whole lot a that, but a….
Agnes: We never did.
JD: Yall used prayers.
Agnes: Ahhah, used prayers.
JD: Umhm. That’s what my grandmother did. She used prayers. [pause] Well, that’s great, that’s great. That’s nice.
Well, if Felix, Blaise, was a fisherman he’s a, I guess he fished for a living, hunh?
Myon: Most….all the time.
Agnes: He fished, and then they had a closed season on the fish, he’d pick moss.
JD: Ok. But, of all the, his brothers and sisters, did any of them fish too?
Agnes: Some of em, some of em would ….
Myon: …….fished.
Agnes: A lot of em went to work on boats, and….on dredge boats, and whatever they could do.
JD: But he was full time fisherman.
Agnes: Yeah. He fished, he’d fish, the closed season he’d hunt alligators, he’d hunt frogs, he’d pick moss.
JD: So, he made his livin in the swamp all the time.
Agnes: Yeah. All the time. We never suffered for nuttin.
JD: No?
Agnes: Uhuh. We always had plenty.
JD: You don’t remember bein hungry…
Agnes: Uhuh. Never did. Well, things was cheap, you’d buy everyting by the fifty pound, by the hundred pound. I’d like to see now, buy a hundred pound of coffee. [laughs] see how much you’d pay for it.
JD: You would buy things by the hundred pounds?
Agnes: Oh yeah. That’s the way they buy they groceries, buy the case and buy the sack.
JD: What would you put something like a hundred pounds of coffee in?
Myon: Cans.
Agnes: Buy them fifty-pound cans, with the lids.
JD: What…were they tin cans?
Agnes: Uhmh.
JD: And the lids were tight?
Agnes: And the lids was tight, they’d put that in there .
JD: Course you ground your own coffee all the time…
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Aw yeah. Parch it and grind it.
Myon: Had to parch it.
JD: Every day?
Agnes: No, you’d parch…my momma’d parch a big pot full, you know, and uh…
Myon: You never did smell parched coffee?
JD: No, but I bet it smelled wonderful.
Agnes: Ooooh, you talk about! Haha.
Myon: You can smell that half a mile, I believe. [laughter]
Agnes: Then at night we’d grind it.
JD: You’d grind it for the next morning?
Agnes: Our lil grinder, yeah.
JD: Gaalee.
Myon: We used to do that too.
Agnes: Yeah, when [after] we was married we used to do that too.
Myon: Buy green coffee and parch it and grind it.
JD: That’s all there was, I guess.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: And those fishboats would provide all those groceries y’all needed?
Myon: Most of the time, yeah.
JD: Would you give em an order and they’d come back with what you wanted?
Myon: Right. …..like, like you had a store, unless you wanted something extra…
JD: Yeah.
Myon: Like a lil store in that boat. Everything you wanted, they had it in there by sacks and by boxes, and everything, just like a lil store. Now, if you wanted something like meat, you had to order that.
Agnes: Yeah, because you can’t have no freezers, or nuttin to save that.
JD: Where was most of your meat coming from, that you would eat?
Agnes: Wild meat. Deer meat. Squirrels. Ducks. Rabbits. We had meat.
JD: That’s what [meat] y’all would eat most of the time.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: So, beef was not something y’all had very often?
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: Very, very seldom. ….that preacher, that priest come there in my, in my place one time and we was eatin dinner. [and] I had some questions. I says, uh, I always did hear you didn’t eat meat on Friday. He looked, he say “When you get meat out yuh, you eat it!” It ain’t what you put in your mouth, understand, it’s what come out of it. He say “That just a penance for the people got it all the time”. That’s to make a penance….
JD: Like a sacrifice.
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
Agnes: My daddy smoked [meat]. Turtles…… Everywhere we went he built a smokehouse.
JD: And how was that built, can you describe it?
Agnes: Just a lil old… lil old house.
Myon: I built one back here with drums[barrels].
JD: Oh, just small like a drum, not big like this room.
Agnes: Uhuh. Like from that corner there square, like six by six, or eight by eight or something like that. And he’d put strips, and he’d hang that meat on there [the strips]. Pork meat, deer meat, smoked rabbits.
JD: And then what?
Agnes: And then it would keep.
JD: And I mean, he’d build a house but where did he….he’d just build a fire down in the…on the floor?
Agnes: Yeah. On the ground.
Myon: Use ashwood…
JD: Use ash?
Agnes: Ashwood, hickory, and pecan tree, hard wood, you know.
JD: And that meat would cure with just that smoke? Did it have to have salt, didn’t have to have anything else.
Myon: Jim, you got to season it, yeah.
JD: You do season it?
Agnes: You season your meat good before you hang it up.
JD: Before you hang it.
Agnes: Them big ole loggerheads? He’d smoke them legs, you talk about somthin good! He’d slice it kind of, so the smoke would go in.
JD: Oh, open it up, kind of. No kidding, hunh? Smoked meat, now how would care for that after it came out of the smokehouse?
Agnes: Momma’d take it….
Myon: ….didn’t do anything with it.
JD: But I mean how did you care for it…..
Myon: Can make a gumbo if you want.
JD: It was preserved, I mean,…..?
Myon: Oh yeah. After it smoked, it keep like that!
Agnes: Oh, for a couple weeks, three weeks.
JD: No kidding, huhn? Could you tell if it would start to get a little bit “phesante” [sp? Meaning slightly spoiled]?
Agnes: Oh yeah, yeah.
JD You could tell that, I guess, eh? But that smoke would mainly keep that …[?]
Agnes: Oh yeah, just like a ham, Jim, ….
JD: Yeah, yeah.
Agnes: That’s what they’d do.
JD: I’ll be doggone, and that’s when you had those little safes [screened shelves] in those days, didn’t you?, with the screen in the front to keep the flies out, but you could keep your stuff like that inside.
Myon: Yeah, I made one back there with a drum. I never did use it.
Agnes: No.
JD: A smoker?
Myon: Yeah, I made the…..dig a hole in the ground and face it with brick, put a drum on there. Put some strip of wire on top. Never did use that thing.
Agnes: Just rusted out. All the bottom.
Myon: I was gone smoke some catfish and never did do it.
Agnes: That’s good smoked, Jim!
JD: Catfish?
Agnes: Them lil catfish.
Myon: Garfish.
JD: Well, how long does it take, lets say, from the time you start to build your fire, get your smoke goin?
Myon: Well, it takes a good while.
Agnes: It take about three, four hours I magine.
JD: That’s all?
Myon: Longer than that.
Agnes: For the lil fish, daddy, it wouldn’t take too long. Little fish. But my daddy’d smoke that there, sometime two days, three days.
JD: And it never got hot in that house did it? Real hot?
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: No. You don’t make no big fire.
Agnes: The smoke would come out ….
JD: Now how did he have it vented so the smoke would leave? Did the smoke get out at all?
Myon: Oh yeah.
JD: He had to get…the fire to have some air. So, it would get out. Well, what did he…how did he make the thing smoke a lot?
Agnes: Green wood.
JD: Green wood. And it would burn green wood ok?
Agnes: Oh yeah.
Myon: ….start it with good wood, you know? Dry wood, and then, he’d put green wood on…make the smoke.
Agnes: Put his green wood, oak and all, something that would last, you know?
JD: Somebody must have had to stay and take care of that.
Agnes: Aw yeah, take care of it, yeah.
Myon: Look at it, now and then…..take care of it…
Agnes: All you had to do was just look at it, ….if they had too much fire…something like that.
JD: And your daddy, he had the smokehouse everywhere he went?
Agnes: Everywhere he went he built him a smokehouse. Pork? He’s smoke that pork, them hind legs, there, he’d hang that up and smoke that.
JD: You mean that smoke would go all the way thru those big old hind legs on pigs and cure that?
Agnes: Yeah, sure, just like a ham.
JD: But I would have thought the thing would rot before it would cure, something that thick.
Agnes: Uhuhm.
JD: That must have been what he went for two or three days, so thick.
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Well, it was a ham.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Pork leg would be a ham [of course]. Son of a gun.
Agnes: [?]…they had them big ole crock jars…
Myon: Jim, you want some coffee?
JD: No, thank you, Myon.
Agnes: He’d cut up, like a deer, he’d cut that up by lil steaks, and momma’s cook dat. She’d cook it ready to eat, and then she’d take the fat and dump it [the cooked meat] grease and all in there. When she’d get thru it would be covered with grease. That would last from one year to the next.
JD: No kidding, it would last that long?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
Myon: Put it in lard, yeah, stay….
JD: As long as it was covered with that lard…
Agnes: Long as it was covered with that lard…
JD: You know, I always thought lard would get rancid after a while, and start to get bad…
Myon: Yeah, if you keep it too long, yeah.
Agnes: But it would keep. Ducks, keep ducks like that…
Myon: …..way to keep stuff, didn’t have no refrigerator, or nothing.
Agnes: Keep ducks like that.
JD: That must have been something. So, most of what y’all ate was game.
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: Aw yeah. Go out there, I would have to limit my shells when I go hunt.
JD: Is that right?
Myon: Aw yeah! Shells was hard to get. Times was kinda hard.
JD: Was it pretty easy to kill deer?
Myon: Yeah, [pause] it was easy enough. Mostly duck, and squirrels, rabbits, and squirrels. I limit my shells when I go hunt squirrels. Cause I couldn’t afford to buy em, you know. I kill what we could eat.
Agnes: That’s all, you couldn’t kill more because ……
Myon: Ducks! Jim! I never seen so many ducks in my life! [I] Seen that, at Blue Point.
JD: No kiddin.
Myon: Sheee, you go…they had a point back there….we’d go in there, two three guns. Start shootin them ducks. It get black [so many ducks], they want to come and light in there, you know. It get black overhead, there. You ought to see that.
JD: Well to make your shells go further though, it probably be better if you shot em on the water, eh?
Myon: Well, we did do that, yeah, when we wanted to save the shells. But sometime it was fun to go out there and shoot em on the wing too.
JD: Uhunh. Mostly big.. mostly French ducks[mallards].
Myon: All French.
JD: All French ducks.
Myon: All French.
Agnes: He’d sell that fifty cents a pair, Jim.
Myon: And geese they had in the woods.
JD: Geese?!
Myon: Geese.
JD: In the woods?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
Myon: They had them lil onions, Jim, about that big [end of thumb] in there. That’s what they’d feed on in there. It was nuttin but a, but a slough, you know, but a...[?]. And they’d come in there and they’d feed in there.
JD: The ducks and geese both would eat those lil onions?
Myon: Right.
JD: Hm. That must have been….
Myon: I have seen em hollerin so much there you could……[?]. You could hardly sleep, hear em hollerin all night.
JD: So you didn’t have to go far to kill….
Myon: Uhuh. You could go make a pot shot [shoot many ducks at one time on the water], but, hm, we couldn’t do that, we had no way to save em.
JD: Yeah.
Myon: Sometime I’d go out there and kill bunch of em, and big boat [the fish boat] would come down, he’d stop. He’d tell me he’d stop and pick some up, fifty cents a piece. Fifty cent’s a pair!
JD: Pair?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: French ducks!
Agnes: Two French ducks for fifty cents. Boy,…what I could….I could eat that now! [laughter]
JD: So, how would you prepare em for the fish boats?
Agnes: Gut em.
Myon: Just gut em.
JD: Course, that would be in the wintertime, it would be cold.
Myon: Yeah, yeah. That’s when you got the ducks, is in the wintertime. ….in the summertime...
Agnes: He would come back with a tub full!
JD: A tub full of ducks.
Agnes: We’d get there, and we’d gut em and hang em up. And when the fish boat would come, well, he’d pick em up.
Myon: Some time he’d try to pass me up, but I’d get in my boat and I’d run him down.
JD: Why did he try to pass you up?
Myon: I don’t know, Jim, you know [laughs] never tell what they gone do you.
Agnes: Kind of rough [the fishboat operators]. They didn’t want to come in the canal.
Myon: They done that a couple time wit me, I had to run em down.
JD: He didn’t want to come in the canal?
Agnes: Yeah, so he’d go on by, but Myon [would] catch up wit im. “You ordered the ducks, you take em!”
JD: Ohhhhhok. [pause] Hey yi, looks like it’s getting brighter out there now.
Agnes: Yeah, it is. Shifted [the wind] I guess.
JD: Gone be cool when we go outside. Well, we got some stuff done today, boy. I got all my circles filled up. So, Joe Sauce and Felix Sauce are the only two y’all remember that fished. [Agnes’ uncles] Gayon and Milton and Bill ….
Agnes: They worked, them. [didn’t fish] But Joe Sauce, eh, fished.
JD: Did any of them stay with a job most of their lives? One job, where they worked somewhere?
Agnes: They’d work on them pullboats, and all, I guess they….
JD: But was still connected with the swamp, most of the work they did?
Agnes: Right.
JD: Lumber…..well, were they doin much lumber in those days?
Agnes: Sure. Oh yeah. Plenty, yeah.
JD: They were, they were, when your uncles were….
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: So, they were doin a lot of lumber before you got big enough to get into it?
Myon: Yeah, oh yeah! Yeah.
JD: Hmm. So, both the lumber and the…oh, when’s your birthday Myon?
Myon: Me? On the seventh.
Agnes: March the seventh.
JD: What year?
Agnes: He’s gon be 85.
JD: So that’s 1904?
Agnes: 1905, he was born.
JD: March seventh, 1905.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: [Sneezes] Scuse me, scuse me. And you [were born in] 1912?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: And you’re December 12, 1912.
Agnes: Fourth
JD: December 4, 1912. Right. December 12, that’s my daughter Holly’s birthday.
Agnes: Yeah [laughs].
JD: I need to talk…we need to talk to Ike at some time, and try to get….
Myon: …getting pretty sick, there, lately.
JD: Yeah? You heard more about it?
Agnes: Yeah, he’s pretty sick.
JD: Cancer?
Myon: Yeah, he got a cancer.
Agnes: He got cancer, and sometime he bleed so much he think he gonna die.
Myon: I wouldn’t like to bother him now.
JD: You wouldn’t? Well…..
Agnes: Aw, he could tell you some …….
Myon: If he had the time, he coulda told you some stories, but….
JD: Well, you know, maybe he’d still like to. Maybe it would give him something that he would feel like he was doin.
Agnes: Maybe so, I don’t know.
JD: I don’t want to bother him if y’all say it’s not a good idea. But…
Agnes: Well, if he’s sick it would be better….
JD: It depends on how sick he is, I mean…if he’s ….
Myon: ….I ain’t heard lately from em, but, uh, usually his son calls, [?] wife, and told him if there’s any news he gets from his daddy, to call cause she ….[?]. cause he’s pretty sick. And that’s the news I got.
Agnes: And we didn’t get no more news, I don’t know.
Myon: I been want to call him, but I hate to call him. Cause of that.
JD: Yeah. Agnes, you have a middle name?
Myon: Aurelia.
Agnes: Aurelia.
JD: Anybody else have that name [looks at family chart]? No. Nobody else has that name.
Myon: ….had that name, Rudolph’s wife.
JD: That’s right. Aurelia Vining, hunh?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: See, I’m learning who all these people are [laughs]. Of the, uh, Myon of your brothers and sisters and half sisters, I know your brother and sister are both not living any more. But, uh, your half brothers and sisters, Jesse died…
Myon: Yeah.
JD: How about the rest of em, are all the rest of em still living?
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Marie, and Odelia, and…
Agnes: Odelia died. Eula died.
Myon: Azima, Eula died, that’s right.
JD: Eula died too?
Agnes: Eula died, Odelia died, Norman died…
JD: But Marie is still alive?
Agnes: Marie is livin, and Azima is livin…
JD: Who?
Agnes: Azima, we call her “Petite”, but it’s Azima, her name.
JD: I don’t have that; I don’t have that person on here.
Agnes: You don’t? Well, that’s his half sister.
JD: Azima.
Agnes: Azima. There’s three of em livin. There’s four of em livin. Ike, and and Petite, and, uh, Marie and Nine [Elmira Sauce].
JD: Ok, see, we didn’t remember to get her on the list. And who… do y’all know who she married?
Myon: Fabre [sp?].
JD: Fabre?
Myon: Morris Fabre.
JD: What’s his first name?
Myon: Morris.
Agnes: He’s dead too.
JD: He’s dead?
Myon: He’s dead.
JD: He’s dead. She?
Myon: She’s livin.
JD: She’s livin?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah, she’s livin.
JD: Ok, and of course both Ike and Norman are both livin.
Myon: Not Ike, no. Norman died.
JD: I didn’t know that!
Agnes: Norman died, yeah.
JD: Not too long ago, though?
Myon: Quite a while.
Agnes: About a year and a half, been dead. Yeah.
JD: How about that. Well, Myon, you gotta hang on, [laughs] you gotta hang on Myon.
Myon: Odelia’s gone, Norman’s gone, and..
JD: Jesse?
Myon: Jesse…
Agnes: Jesse, Eula..
JD: Eula, Angelina and Rudolph
Agnes: Rudolph, Angelina ….
JD: How about Homer Daigle?
AB: He’s dead.
JD: Uhun. I can imagine. The reason I would have liked to talk to Ike, if he gets to feeling better, is because I would sure like to have some, just a few dates from these real old people [older than Myon and Agnes’ generation] if he can remember any of em. Like your great, like you grandmother and grandfather on your mother’s side – Leah Hebert and Joe Daigle. I’d really like to be able to get some sort of date around those people.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Do y’all know where they’re buried?
Agnes: Uhuh. I don’t know.
Myon: Yeah, on The Canal. By Napoleonville.
Agnes: By Napoleonville. Probly.
Myon: And probly that’s where they’re buried.
Agnes: That’s where they buried.
JD: Is there a lil cemetery there?
Myon: Yeah. They have a church right on the road goin to Napoleonville, on the Canal from the lake. On the right hand side.
JD: There are, there are markers on the graves that have….
Myon: I guess they have, Jim, I’m pretty sure they have.
JD: And how about….
Myon: I don’t believe there’s no more church there no more. It might be just [a] cemetery.
JD: How about Victorain and his wife [?].
Myon: Aaah, that I don’t know what they….they must be in The Canal too.
JD: Same place, you think?
Myon: I imagine.
JD: They all lived right there around Napoleonville?
Myon: ….about the same time.
Agnes: They ought to be, they ought to be buried there.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: You see, that would be a possible place where we could go and read the…if there’s stones on em we could find out when they were born…
Myon: Probly have, I don’t know.
JD: How about Fanny Mae Mason and Claiborne Mayon, and Laurent Sauce and Ophelia Simoneaux?
Agnes: They must be buried at Napoleonville, I guess.
JD: Same place?
Agnes: Must be.
Myon: Naw, I don’t believe.
Agnes: Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Cause them people, that’s where they’d go all the time. They’d go to church there, and all.
JD: You don’t remember going to the funeral? For your grandparents?
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: And, since you were the oldest, you probably would be the one mostly to remember. Where’s your [Agnes] brother Robert?
Agnes: Calumet. He lives in Calumet.
JD: He have a nick name?
Agnes: Yeah, we call him Tootse [toot say].
JD: Tootse, ok. He lives right on the levee, doesn’t he?
Myon: No, he live right at the landing.
Agnes: Right at the landing. In, in, uh, you know where that landins at? Well, that’s where he live, that house ….
JD: I believe I went….
Myon: The only house they got there.
JD: I went and talked to him when we were tryin to start the co-op. That’s why I remembered, I think, where he lives. Do you think he would remember anything like that?
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: You would be the only one?
Agnes: Just about, I guess.
JD: If anybody would have gone to a funeral, you would have been….old enough. You would have been the oldest one.
Agnes: Yeah. I remember goin, to the funeral, but I don’t remember where. But it must be around Napoleonville.
JD: Boy that thing is hard to see [where the tape is on the recorder].
Myon: [sighs] ……
JD: That could be, could be interesting to try to find…some of the dates on some of those people. There might even ….have some information…
Agnes: I know where my granma and grandpa buried on my Daddy’s side.
JD: Well, that’s what I was asking, is that…..Laurent and Ophelia.
Agnes: Pierre Part, they buried in Pierre Part.
JD: They are?
Agnes: Uhhunh. Bill’s buried in Pierre Part, I remember that.
JD: Bill, who’s Bill?
Agnes: That was my Daddy’s brother.
JD: Oh, oh, oh, oh. One of your fourteen [aunts and uncles]. He’s buried in Pierre Part?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Bill is dead….are all those people dead, Agnes?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: The whole….all of em?
Agnes: Yeah. I know they buried in Pierre Part, them. My Momma’s [parents]…I don’t know where they buried. But it must be at the Canal, because, I think….
JD: Now if you can place that, where you’re talking about so I can get it on tape we can go back and figure it out later. Where is this “Canal” y’all talking about? And Napoleonville and this cemetery.
Continued on Chapter 12
Interview with Myon and Agnes Bailey, and Lena Mae Couvillier
Blog Ch 12 Tape 06 Side B
Agnes: My Momma’s….I don’t remember where they buried. But it must be at the Canal because…..I think….
JD: Now if you can place that where you’re talking about so I can get it on tape and go back and figure it out later…. Where is this canal y’all talking about and Napoleonville, and this cemetery?
Myon: There ain’t no canal there, Jim. A lil canal right there at the end, there.
Agnes: .Lake Verret.
Myon: There used to be a beach…..
Agnes: There used to be a beach there…
Myon: Used to have a big dancehall right on the end.
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: And that road go right to Napoleonville. That’s when I drove….first time I drove a car that’s where I drove it at. I wrecked it, a brand new car.
JD: [laughs] First time you drove a car, and you wrecked it Myon?
Myon: Run into a stump. [laughs]
JD: [laughs] Wrecked it? Oh no.
Agnes: Ran into a stump.
JD: How did you do that?
Myon: Ahhhh. Don’t ax me. Happened…..They didn’t have much room, I made some room ….[laughs]
JD: So, it’s on this road, where they used to go to the beach and to a dancehall on Lake Verret….
Agnes: And you keep on going…’till you get to, uh, to Napoleonville. [if you start at the lake]
JD: Ok, and the cemetery is on that road?
Myon: Yeah, on the right hand side, going to Napoleonville.
JD: Close to, close to Napoleonville?
Agnes: They got one in Napoleonville.
Myon: Not to far from the……
Agnes: So, I don’t know where my grandpa and grandma on my Momma’s side …I don’t know where they buried. But I know where my grandma and grandpa buried on my Daddy’s side – Pierre Part.
JD: OK. OK, we can get that. So Mayon and Mason, you don’t know where they are..
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: How about, uh, where is your mother buried?
Agnes: My Momma’s buried over here, in Franklin. My Daddy’s buried in Morgan City.
JD: Your Daddy’s buried in Morgan City. How about your Mother’s brothers and sisters? Alvin, and Ivy, and Lydia and ….
Agnes: They buried in Morgan City.
JD: All buried in Morgan City. You see that makes me it’s possible that your grandparents, their mother and father might be buried in Morgan City.
Agnes: Might be buried in Morgan City….
JD: Umhm. Make’s me think that would be a place to look.
Myon: Could be.
Agnes: Might be buried in Morgan City, there.
JD: You know, isn’t it wonderful, how people don’t keep records of these kinds of things.
Myon: No, not in olden times, specially.
JD: None of us keeps records. I could not tell you right now where my grandparents are buried. I could guess where a couple of em are, and it’s got to be in New Iberia, ‘cause that’s were they were raised, in St. Peter’s Catholic cemetery, ‘cause they were Catholic. But on my mother and father’s side I couldn’t tell you where they...I mean my mother’s side I couldn’t tell you where they are buried. It makes me want to go back and find out. It’s stuff like that…..
Agnes: Now that you say that, they must be buried in Morgan City because...buried in Morgan City. They must be buried in Morgan City.
Myon: Yeah, it’s possible.
Agnes: They must be buried in Morgan City.
Myon: I wouldn’t know.
Agnes: I…….so.
JD: OK, so Myon thinks that all four of his grandparents are gonna be, around in that, Napoleonville. Why do y’all call it The Canal?
Agnes: I don’t know….
Myon: That’s the way they used to call it, there, Jim. The Canal. That’s the name they had for the place, there. They had a canal there [at one time].
JD: They did have a canal alongside that road?
Myon: Yeah, lil canal, yeah. Didn’t go too far, but it had a canal. Campboat would park in there. Had a restaurant on the end, a dancehall.
JD: Did y’all ever get any dancing, dancehall thing, when y’all were ….?
Agnes: Yeah. At, uh, the Canal.
JD: That’s after you were married…?
Agnes: We went one time before I was married. I used to go with Uncle Alvin, and them, you see?
JD: Ohhh.
AGNES: I didn’t know nobody. We just danced mongst us.
Myon: I used to go out with [a] Simoneaux then.
Agnes: And, uh…
Myon: Napoleonville.
JD: A girl named Simoneaux?
Agnes: And we went …..I was supposed to have a boyfriend. I was goin..Veay Daigre, he say I was his girl. Whenever he tell...I was his girl. And…met Myon there one night and I went and started dancing with him, and he got mad.
JD: Who got mad?
Agnes: Veay Daigre. He got mad, so, I kept goin with Myon.
JD: You let him go and went with Myon.
Agnes: Yeah. He took my ring and he throwed it and I ain’t found my ring until today.
JD: OHHHH! What kind of ring?
Agnes: A lil ring I had, with a lil green stone, and….
JD: He had given to you, or...?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: He did?
Agnes: Yeah, he had give me that ring.
JD: Well, you must have been his girl if, uh….he gave you a ring.
Agnes: I guess I was, mais…
JD: Gahh, you were fourteen years old.
Agnes: He got mad at me and threw my ring, and, that was it. Then Myon started comin around.
JD: [to Myon] I bet you didn’t even give her a ring, did you?
Myon: Sho didn’t. [laughs]
Agnes: Don’t give me no ring.
JD: Didn’t have to, hunh? You were big enough man not to have to give her a ring, hunh? [laughs]
Agnes: Aay, yi.
JD: What kind of music did they play at that dance hall?
Myon: They had good bands there!
JD: What y’all call good music?
AB: Oh, French bands.
JD: French bands?
Myon: Bands, different bands all the time. Was a big place. Big crowds there too.
JD: Mostly fishermen?
MB: No, mostly people from Napoleonville, all over, Jim.
JD: From towns?
Myon: Yeah. [?] .people from…..skidder camps not too far across, on Lake Verret there. Lot of people there.
JD: Yall lived at the skidder camps?
Agnes: We lived there a long time. That’s where Yank’s born [her sister], right there….
MB: They had a dance one night; I had a fight.
JD: You did?
MB: Yeah, oh yeah. I was a fightin fool in my time. [laughter]
JD: Where you talking about, they had a dance at the skidder camp?
Myon: mmhmm.
JD: And you had a fight there?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: And what were you fightin about?
Myon: My sister.
JD: Your sister, what, somebody, somebody wasn’t bein a gentleman?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: Correct. Yeah, he wanted to act bully.
JD: That was Angelina?
Myon: Naw, naw. Eula.
Agnes: Eula.
JD: Eula.
Myon: ……outside, but settle it right fast…..
JD: [laughs] So y’all went outside and tangled up?
Myon: Oh yeah.
JD: Galee. [to Agnes] How could he get to be a nice old man like he’s, like he’s talking, like he is right now.
Myon: Look, I had temper then. Didn’t take long to raise it, too. Didn’t do the right thing. Course I wasn’t dirty, now, I wasn’t pickin no fights. I wasn’t…..
JD: But you’d take offense.
Myon: Awwww, right fast.
Agnes: And…her, she was kind of wild, you know.
JD: Eula was?
Agnes: You had to watch her.
JD: Well, if he had that much trouble with Eula, [pause] Who came in?
Agnes: Lena Mae.
JD: If you had that much trouble with Eula, you must have had a time with Elmira [Nine, his half sister].
Agnes: No, …..
Myon: I wasn’t around when Elmira come up.
Agnes: No, Elmira was a year old when we got married.
JD: Ohhhhh. …….at a good time. [laughs][garbled] So Eula wouldn’t turn em away quite fast enough for you, she was a lil bit too, too nice.
Myon: She was kinda wild.
JD: And that poor boy you went out and fought, it probly wasn’t all his fault.
Myon: Yeah…he was putting on.
JD: He was, hunh?
Agnes: He was a show off.
Myon: He want to show off. I dunno. That boy was dancing with my sister, and he wanted to cut in. The other boy didn’t want.
JD: Unhunh.
Myon: He got kind of smart, in there.
JD: Uhhunh.
Myon: So, I went there and settled the thing. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I went.
JD: You took care of everybody. All your life you been takin care of everybody.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: One way or the other. [pause] Learn all kind of good things. [to Lena Mae] We been tryin to figure out where your great grandparents are buried. And we got it...we got it pinned down pretty well where we think we know where they are. Four of em, probably Napoleonville, two of em .. probly, well, all your people probly Napoleonville, half of hers probly Morgan City and half of em probly also Napoleonville.
LC: What about your grandma [to Agnes]? In Fourmile Bayou.
Agnes: Yeah, but…
Myon: Buried on the Canal.
Agnes: I’m pretty sure that’s where they buried.
Myon: I’m pretty sure that’s where they buried. …that’s where everybody …..the bayou buried they people, and they had a church, they had a cemetery. Half of the time they had to bail the, the grave, to put em down.
JD: It was filled with water?
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Well, in those days they had a lot of trouble with that, I believe. The caskets, in high water would come out of the ground. They had that problem, I remember, in uh, in New Orleans. They had a lot of problems with that.
Myon: Mostly Fourmile Bayou people, that’s where they buried their people at. That’s the closest town they had, there.
LC: Napoleonville?
JD: Yeah.
Myon: Between Napoleonville and the lake.
Agnes: At the Canal.
Myon: [to Lena Mae] We call it the Canal. The road goes to Napoleonville. They had a… on the right hand side they had a church and cemetery.
Agnes: But I definitely know that my grandma and grandpa is buried……No, grandma Tia and grandma Laurent, [correcting] grandpa Laurent. They buried in Pierre Part.
JD: Yeah, that’s what you said, Pierre Part.
Lena Mae: Granpa Claiborne buried in Morgan City.
[jumbled]
JD: We had figured that out from where most of their children are buried. We were right.
Lena Mae: You see, I remember when she died. They had the campboat, they waked in his house. Tied up in Morgan City in The Pit. That’s where they had the wake. That’s why I know they buried in Morgan City.
JD: So, you think, uh, Fannie Mae was her name, right? And Claiborne also, you think he’s buried there too?
Agnes: Yeah. Well, I don’t remember when he died.
JD: OK, where ….
Agnes: I’m sure they buried together.
JD: I imagine so. Where do you think in Morgan City, would the cemetery be? I mean, there might be several…
Agnes: Oh no, I know where the cemetery’s at.
JD: You do?
Myon: Only one cemetery.
Agnes: Yeah, you, you go over the railroad track, and when you go over the railroad track ….you can see the, uh…
Lena Mae: Way down there, you, uh, …cemetery. Know where the bowlin alley’s at?
JD: I wouldn’t, uh…I would have to find all that, but yeah, where’s the bowlin alley? And then it’s where from the bowlin alley?
Lena Mae: They got a bowline alley, and then they got a school.
Agnes: You turn right by the school and you gone see the cemetery.
JD: It must be in the old part of Morgan City instead of the…in other words on the right side of the…. the south side of the highway instead of the north side. OK, away from the lake. On the other side from the lake.
Lena Mae: Behind the tracks, for sure.
JD: That, you see that way, we could go ….and if we can find where they’re buried we could get dates off the tombstones, probly, about when they were born. And that’ll give us some, some good information. I would like to get that if I could for all sixteen….
Agnes: Yeah, because I know my daddy’s got it marked on the cross. For sure.
JD: I don’t know…did everybody get stones in those days?
Agnes: Some of em had crosses. Different….
Myon: Most of em.
JD: Crosses out of wood or out of stone?
Agnes: My daddy’s out of cement.
JD: OK, so it would still be there. Hopefully. Do y’all know if anybody is takin care of those graves now?
Agnes: I don’t know. They had a, grave, uh….was takin care of it. Long time ago. I don’t know now.
JD: I wonder how those graves get taken care of.
Lena Mae: Well, they got a caretaker in there…
JD: But I mean the, the, tomb itself.
Lena Mae: Oh, I don’t know.
Agnes: They got a house way in the back of the graveyard….
Lena Mae: Yeah, but what he’s talking about, like grandma Claiborne and them, they ain’t nobody there to take care of them graves.
JD: To paint em, and to see what ….falling down, whatever
Lena Mae
JD: “But us” you talking about the, uh, uh, children?
Agnes: kids, yeah. That’s Lena Mae doin that [making a noise].
JD: Nervous. ….There’s a book comin out that I want to get a copy of, that y’all might be interested in, uh, I dunno, me comin over here and reading some of it to you, or something like that. It’s coming out this month, and iit’s called, uh, I forget the name of it. A fellow up the canal, up the levee by the name of Greg Guirard. He’s been working with people, and, photography for a long time. He also works a lot with these movie people who want to come down and do filming in the Atchafalaya…he shows em where to go and the people to talk to and all that. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s written a book that involves stories from 25 interviews with people who’ve lived all their lives in the Basin, who were fishermen. Would y’all like to hear some of those stories?
Lena Mae: Sound interesting
Agnes: If you willin to read…
JD: Oh, I would love to come and read to you if you want to hear, right? I don’t want to come and force it on you if you don’t want to hear, is what I’m sayin. Because what it might do, you see, is it might, for my sake, the selfish part of this is it might help you remember some stories from your ….your past. You might not have reason to think about it [otherwise]. I know stuff like that does it for me. I’m gonna get a copy of that book and, um, if Myon doesn’t want to hear it, we’ll kick him outside [laughs]. I’m on have to go folks, what time is it getting to be? Five oclock. Oh yes, I have to be back at my Mother’s house to eat.
.
Fini
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier
Blog Ch 13 Tape 08 Side A
JD: …..anyway, that’s uh, what we…the way we did this before was I put it [the tape recorder] on the table and it took about five minutes before nobody even remembered it was there, and just kept talking. Uh, while I have you here, if you could just….say some things about, about the way it was to live on the campboats themselves. For instance, start off…
Lena Mae: Be sure to tell...be sure don’t lie, now, tell the truth. [laughs]
JD: Ok, Edward says don’t lie. If you could start, for instance, what did yall do for water, for drinkin water and wash water and all those kind of things, on a, on a campboat?
Lena Mae: We’d…catch water. We had gutters on the camp. Had our drums linded up on the bank and we’d catch ..rainwater, to drink. Come to our washwater, every evening we had to take a bucket…fill a drum up, and put alum in it, to settle that water…to wash with.
JD: Do you remember about how much alum yall would put, in a…you say a drum, how much water did yall put in to….
Lena Mae: Not much…..[alum]
JD: So yall would fill a 55 gallon drum?
Lena Mae: Put a very lil bit…alum.. not much. It come in lil chunks…Come in lil chunks, you take that lil chunk and you wash it a lil bit in there?
JD: Umhm.
Lena Mae: Next morning you get up, it was clear as crystal.
JD: Did yall……where did yall get the alum from?
Lena Mae: From the water plant in Morgan City.
Lena Mae: Well, every time we’d wash, take a lot of water. You wash and rinse you clothes in it, and we’d finish fillin the barrel up. Keep it up, you see? Whatever we’d use, we’d replace.
EC: Momma had a big ole iron pot, wash kettle….
JD: Steel, iron, I mean…
EC: Cast iron, round…
JD: Cast iron pot, had little legs on it? Three legs, at the bottom?
EC: Right.
Lena Mae: Yeah.
EC: But we had a stick [?], a sticker, uh [?]
JD: Now this is your mother [to Edward] you talking about..
EC: Yeah.
JD: Now where was that happenin?
EC: On Keelboat Pass. Hog Island, wherever we lived.
JD: Yall lived on a campboat at the time?
EC: Yeah.
JD: Did you…this is Edward talking now, were you born on a campboat?
EC: Man, I don’t know where I was born, I was born in Charenton…
JD: You were born on land ….
EC: I guess, I don’t know. Might a been born in a stable, back in them days! [laughs]
JD: So, your early memories, your early early memories were, when you were a child,…..were…..where are your memories?
EC: We were livin on Lil Pigeon.
JD: On a boat?
EC: On a house [on the bank], on Lil Pigeon.
Lena Mae: They lived in a big house…
JD: On a house.
EC: A great big old house.
JD: On Lil Pigeon?! On the bank?!
EC: On the bank. Then we moved ……Keel…uh, Lil Pigeon to Catfish [Bayou].
JD: Now you tallk about that..I have you on tape, I have you on tape when we were talking I said that discussion at the table in the other house, yall are talking about it and you mentioned Catfish several times on that tape, where is that? I never heard of that…
EC: You ever been to Keelboat Pass?
JD: Well, that’s up …you talking about ….
EC: On the other side of the Lake, on the other side [of] Grand Lake.
Lena Mae: Above Big Pigeon.
JD: Above Big Pigeon…Towards Sorrel?
EC: Naw, uhuh, Bayou Sorrrel’s up on the …side over there. But this is up Grand Lake.
Lena Mae: You know where Myon’s Canal is?
EC: So, the east side, what it is, the east side of Grand Lake.
JD: Well, you say Myon’s Canal, that’s the same as Blaise’s Canal you talking about??
Lena Mae: Yeah, yeah.
EC: No. Blaise’s canal was below Myon’s canal.
Lena Mae: That’s where we were born and, and raised, in Blaise’s Canal.
EC: You had Young’s Canal, you had Blaise’s Canal, you had Myon’s Canal, you had Boudreaux’s Pocket.
Lena Mae: Myon and Blaise Canal is the same canal.
EC: Uhuh.
Lena Mae: Yeah, I’m telling you, I know.
EC: Hunh, I know, I know too. [laughs] I lived over there. All my life.
Lena Mae: It’s the same one.
JD: We gonna get it, we gonna get it straight. But anyway, what, what uh, you know when you start talking about what yall did, I need to try to figure out, for tape, so I can get it down on paper about where yall were and who you’re talking about when you say “We did it this way”. Who’s we? Your family, who was it?
EC: Momma and, and, the Old Man.
JD: Your mother’s name was what?
EC: Ella.
JD: Ella? What was her maiden name?
EC: Sanders.
JD: Sanders? Ella Sanders. And your father’s name was?
EC: Couvillier…Albert.
JD: Albert, Albert Couvillier, was his name, and, and, your earliest memories was yall were livin in the bank at Lil Pigeon, in a house.
EC: Right.
JD: And that had to be before the levees.
EC: Oh yeah! Yeah. Long time before the levees.
JD: Had to be before the levees, so the water came….when yall were livin …
EC: Right after the ‘27 high water, see, I was born in ‘28.
JD: You were born in ’28. The ’27 high water came and flooded everything…
EC: Flooded everything, Franklin, everything.
JD: And that house you remember must have been flooded then in ’27.
EC: It probly was, but I wasn’t even born then.
Lena Mae: It was built on tilts [stilts].
JD: It was?
EC: It was high off the ground.
JD: It was high off the ground. So, there was some …..course every year the water rose…
EC: Yeah, every year the water would take the bank.
JD: But it wouldn’t come up like it does now? It would come up two, three feet, probably?
EC: Yeah, it would come up like it do now, but you had more room for it to scatter. If we got water now like we got in them days, everything would be flooded.
JD: That’s what I mean.
EC: You had that big Grand Lake and everything, and you still get five, six foot a water every year, you see. So.
JD: Yeah.
LC: But you always had a hill, you always had bank, somewheres, you know.
JD: That it didn’t flood…
EC: Canals over there, that was dredged, you see. Now, Pigeon, Big Pigeon, Lil Pigeon, Bayou Catfish, and uh, Bayou Cowan…well that was all, that was there, that wasn’t man made.
JD: That was natural bayous.
EC: Right. Below Big Pigeon, all them pockets they got over there, all man made. That was dug.
JD: All those canals. You talking about Williams Canal, Blaise’s Canal, whatever…Myon’s Canal….
EC: They dug that when they was getting timber out the woods, and they’d go up there with them pullboats..
JD: Ok.
EC: And you could walk back on any one a them canals and you’d have big ditches..go straight back in the woods. That’s where they pull them logs out….
JD: That’s what they call a pullboard road?
EC: Pullboat [pullboat or pullboard?] road. Right.
LC: But you see what they call Myon’s Canal ….first it was Blaise’s Canal. Momma, grandma and them stayed there all these years. Then, when grandpa [Blaise] died, they started….
JD: On the bank?
Lena Mae: No, no, we was on the water. When grandpa died, well they started callin it Myon’s Canal. But the real name of it, is The Branch of Vine.
JD: Is what?
Lena Mae: The real name of the canal, is The Branch of Vine.
JD: Branch…?
Lena Mae: Branch of Vine.
JD: Of Vine? Like grape vine?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Branch of Vine. Was that in French, by any chance, you think? It seems like such a strange name.
Lena Mae: But that’s the real name of the canal.
JD: Branch of Vine, humph. And all those were timber canals that were dug back in there.
Lena Mae: But, I don’t know if that canal was dug.
EC: Was. I guess it was! You can see the levees all along …..
Lena Mae: You can go from this canal all the way to, uh, Fourmile Bayou, by boat. You could go to, uh, Lil Texas. They had a lil place called Lil Texas back in there. Could go to all them places from that canal.
JD: From, uh, Myon’s Canal.
Lena Mae: From where we was livin.
JD: From where yall were livin at. That was called Blaise’s Canal first, and Myon’s Canal afterwards?
Lena Mae: Exactly.
JD: It was Blaise Sauce it was named after, I believe, right?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: ‘kay.
Lena Mae: My grandpa.
JD: Now yall lived on, Edward, yall lived on the bank in this big house when you first remember as a boy. You were born in 1928, you said. When yall went, when, uh, where did yall….what happened when yall left that house, and why did yall leave that house? On the bank.
EC: I don’t know why we left it. Just left and moved to Catfish, Bayou Catfish, and just further up the river.
JD: Also, on the bank?
EC: Yeah.
JD: No houseboat?
EC: No.
JD: Just on the bank, again.
EC: On the bank.
JD: Ok. And when you and Lena Mae met, you [Lena Mae] were livin on a houseboat already? And you [Edward] weren’t livin on a houseboat.
EC: Yeah we was.
JD: You was? So when yall go…?
Lena Mae: I guess they had a houseboat!
JD: When, how did…you want to tell me how yall went from that second house on Catfish? What, what was, what’d your family do …….The reason I’m interested in this is because I want to try to follow how the houseboat community got together before yall moved across the lake back over here.
I want to try to figure out how the families got, all on houseboats, all in the same place in those canals.
EC: Well, they wasn’t all in the same place, they was people all over out there.
JD: Then that’s what I want to hear about, you see? But I know that a certain number em moved together.
EC: Yeah, well, always had a bunch of people …livin together…
Lena Mae: See, like us, same thing with Edward and them, like, grandpa moved there, OK? And then the family…
JD: Who’s your grandpa? Who you talking about?
Lena Mae: Blaise Sauce.
JD: Blaise Sauce was your grandfather?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: And then, daddy, and, momma and daddy got married and we all ….stuck together there.
JD: Uhhunh. So, so, you know this is really ….
EC: Complicated eh?
JD: It’s complicated and the reason it’s a problem right is there’s so much to talk about, that sometimes I lose where I am and forget to ask the right questions. Uh, but that doesn’t matter, sooner or later it’ll all come together.
Lena Mae: ….talk to him [Edward]and he….
JD: Yeah but, what you need to say is important too. I need to get all that too.
EC: When we left Catfish [bayou] now, the Old Man built that camp.
JD: The houseboat?
EC: Houseboat. Then we moved to Keelboat Pass.
JD: In the houseboat?
EC: In the houseboat. Then from there we moved, well we moved from Keelboat then we moved to Hog Island….
JD: OK, how old were you, do you think you were when yall moved to Catfish? Just take a guess.
EC: When we moved to Catfish, I must a been about four, five years old.
JD: That young.
EC: Yeah.
JD: Alright, then yall moved….then you built a houseboat while you were on Catfish and yall moved onto it?
EC: Right. We move to, uh,uh,…
Lena Mae: Hog Island?
EC: Keelboat. Keelboat Pass.
JD: You moved to Keelboat, and how old do you think you were when yall went on to….
EC: When I started school I was twelve years old. Maybe I was older than ….no I was about twelve years old.
JD: Ok, when you started school though what I’m wonderin is about, when yall went on to the houseboat and started livin on the houseboat, you remember …..
EC: Yeah, I must have been about ten.
JD: About ten years old, so it was about 1938 when yall moved onto the houseboat, then.
EC: No, it was in the early forties, when uh….In fact the school had started before we moved on the campboat. Cause we used to walk from Catfish all the way to, uh, Keelboat to catch the schoolboat.
JD: To catch the school boat?
EC: Yeah.
JD: Boy this is such…this is, this is, it’s just so…
EC: See, Ducie [Doozie] Mire, had a boat, he’d send his kids to school.
JD: Who?
EC: Ducie …[sp??? pronounced Dushy]
JD: Ducie…..Ducie who?
Lena Mae: Ducie Mire.
EC: What was his name? Uh, ….
Lena Mae: I don’t know, I always known him by Ducie. That was Dan’s [Lange] brother in law.
JD: Whose?
Lena Mae: Dan Lange’s brother in law.
JD: Dan Lange’s brother in law.
EC: But he had a boat, he’d, he’d, his boy…he had two girls and two boys….and they’d pick the kids up …..like us from Keelboat, and we’d ride over there with them, we’d come back in the evening we’d get off, we’d have to walk thru the woods to get back home.
JD: How far was that you suppose?
EC: Aw, three, four miles.
JD: Three or four miles each way?
EC: Aw yeah.
JD: Now, where was the school?
EC: It was on Hog Island.
JD: And where was that compared to Keelboat? Is it still there? Hog Island?
EC: Yeah, it’s still there.
JD: It is?
Lena Mae: The school’s still there.
JD: The school’s still there?!
EC: The school’s on Keelboat, now. They moved from Hog Island to Keelboat years later. That was after we had done moved from over there.
JD: And it’s on land.
EC: On land.
Lena Mae: They made a camp out of it.
JD: They made a camp out of it? Somebody owns it now and uses it as a camp?
EC: It’s uh, it’s all tore up.
Lena Mae: We went there last year.
JD: Did you?
EC: Not last year.
Lena Mae: Year before last.
EC: Four, five years ago we went over.
JD: No kiddin. So, yall…from the time you were about ten years old …..yall, Edward, yall were livin on a, a, houseboat.
EC: Yeah.
JD: And yall moved to Keelboat Pass, on a houseboat. Now, your daddy was a fisherman?
EC: Yeah.
JD: He fished with lines?
EC: That’s all he ever done, fish and trap.
JD: Fish and trap.
Lena Mae: Hunt frogs.
JD: And hunt frogs. Hunt frogs.
EC: He did a lot of frog huntin in his time. Alligators, stuff like that.
JD: And I imagine he did like Myon kept telling me, gathered moss when it was moss season.
EC: Pick moss.
JD: And did all those things that…
EC: I picked a lot of moss!
Lena Mae: His momma, his momma did a lot of fishin, more than the Old Man did.
JD: Is that right? Well, you see that’s another thing I want to be part of this. Another whole part of this I want to be the, the, the part that the women played in the fishin, in line fishin.
Lena Mae: She fished all her life.
EC: I was twelve years old before I got my first pair of shoes.
JD: Is that right?
EC: Hard to believe, eh?
JD: Well, compared to the type of life you telling me about it’s not too hard to believe. I mean…
Lena Mae: They even took his picture that day!
JD: You have a picture of him…?
EC: Yeah.
JD: Do yall have pictures …any old pictures of any of those old people?
EC: ….has pictures of the school house
JD: You do?! You think I could borrow those?…when the time comes, not right now.
EC: …..when we get em out, you know, uh,….later…
JD: What I’d, what I’d like to do is I’d like to take the pictures and I can take em somewhere and have negatives made out of em and then we can print some more pictures from it, it won’t hurt the pictures.
EC: Umhm.
Lena Mae: No.
JD: If yall could do that it would be really great…
Lena Mae: I got pictures of him goin to school.
JD: Is that right?
Lena Mae: Climbin in trees, and…..
JD: I gotta make sure that thing [the tape recorder] doesn’t stop. And I don’t’ see it….
EC: I remember cold like this here [now], well momma had them beds and them big ole mattresses and we’d get in em…them suckers that high off the floor.
JD: The mattress, the bed would be ….
EC: The moss. About three big mattresses on em, on em, and they’d be about that thick, each mattress.
JD: About a foot thick.
EC: And when you’d get in em,
Lena Mae: You sink.
EC: You’d bury down… in the summertime, you talk about was rough boy, it was hot!
JD: Hot?
EC: But I woke up, ….and we used to have mosquito bar they’d put over the beds at night for mosquitoes, ….and I woke up many a morning they had ice, that mosquito bar full of ice, it would come thru the cracks on that old …..and we’d have ice in bed with us.
JD: So, the mattresses were nice in the, in the winter…
EC: Wintertime, boy in the summer!….
JD: Now, you telling me the mattresses were made out of moss?
EC: Moss and, uh, shucks, them corn shucks.
JD: Corn shucks too? Seems like corn shucks would be pretty….
Lena Mae: Pooh, man you can’t….
EC: Make a lot of noise, it rattle a lot, when you roll…move on it? It rattle, you know?
JD: I guess there wasn’t too much opportunity for the older people to do what they felt like doin without letting everybody else know what they were doin hunh? [laughs]
Lena Mae: See, the best part, they, uh….
JD: [laughs] I don’t to pry….I’m not askin…
Lena Mae: Right after we got married, not long after we got married we went and slept at his [Edwards] momma’s.
JD: Unhun…
Lena Mae: And she put [us on] some a them shuck mattress, and you couldn’t move….you’d move ….and that stuff would rattle.
JD: [rattling rustling sound] [laughs]. Well, then, uh, when you were livin on a houseboat ….and how old were you when you met Lena Mae?
EC: Oh, I was, when we first met I was …..
Lena Mae: We knew each other all our lives, uh….
JD: How did yall know each other? How did yall….how were yall close enough together to know each other?
EC: My sister used to live by…by them.
Lena Mae: In the Canal with us.
JD: Now you lived, you were on Keelboat Pass with your family in their houseboat and you were fishing for a living by that time? And you [Lena Mae] were with your family in Blaise’s Canal, fishing for a living, so yall..both families were on houseboats….how far apart would you say those houseboats were when yall met?
EC: Wasn’t but about seven, eight miles.
Lena Mae: We was on one side the bayou and his sister lived right across from us on the other side the bayou.
JD: His sister lived across from yall?
EC: Yeah.
Lena Mae: He used to come down on the fishboat, and get off, and stay until the fishboat would come back.
JD: Like a taxi.
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Like a bus.
EC: That’s how we’d get to Morgan City, we’d ride a fishboat out then you’d ride it comin back….
Lena Mae: Fishboat would pass twice a week.
JD: Was the fishboat about the only one with a … that had a motor? About the only boat that had an engine?
EC: Naw, everybody had them Lockwood motors…
JD: Single engine ….single cylinder…
EC: Some of em had eight horse….
Lena Mae: …..horse, two horse….
JD: [laughs]
Lena Mae: Well, a six and a eight [horsepower] was a double cylinder.
JD: So, you had two …
Lena Mae: Yeah, a four and a two was one cylinder.
JD: That’s the one that popped…
Lena Mae: Yeah. Well, they all popped…..uh, uh
LC: Air cooled motors…
Lena Mae: A six horse Lockwood turn over real fast, a eight horse didn’t turn over as fast as a six horse.
JD: Yeah, yeah, and a one, the one cylinder was really….
Lena Mae: The four horse and the two horse….
JD: Ok, I keep gettin away from what I want to try to get to here….yall were livin about eight miles apart, separately on houseboats but yall knew each other. Did everybody who lived on those boats spread out around? Did everybody pretty much know everybody else?
Lena Mae: Aw yeah.
JD: Everybody knew the families and so on?
Lena Mae: Aw yeah.
JD: Uh. OK, I want to ask you ….I want to ask yall how yall got together and got married, and got courted and everything….
Lena Mae: That happened after we move over here. See, they moved over here ….that’s the year Albert [Bailey, Jr.] was born. Our campboat was right at the end of the canal, there, on the bank. Daddy had put our boat on the bank.
JD: Blaise’s Canal..
Lena Mae: No, no, over here.
JD: Oh, Myon’s canal….on this side?
Lena Mae: We had left from over there…we moved over here. Then we went back….
JD: Wait, wait now, let me make sure we got this straight…
Lena Mae: You finish with Edward first…
JD: Ok, so…so… so you livin with your family over there then your family, your family moved their boat to Blaise’s Canal?
Lena Mae: No, they moved over here [Myon’s Canal].
Lena Mae: No, we moved up the channel up there ….up, up, up the Atchafalaya River.
JD: Up the Atchafalaya River, up to like where Mrs. What’s her name lives [Myrtle Burns]?
Lena Mae: It was below where Myrtle lives.
JD: Where Miss Myrtle…..
Lena Mae: Between here and Myrtle, that’s where we stayed.
JD: What’s her last name?
Lena Mae: Burns.
JD: Burns.
Lena Mae: And then later, we migrated down here.
JD: Ok, so yall went from up there where Miss Myrtle Burns lives and yall came down on this side? On, on, on this side of the levee? On this side of the levee?
Lena Mae: Yeah, right up the channel, up the Atchafalaya River. Yeah, they put they camp on the bank……On Goat Island. Right as you go into the Cut? Right on that side, there. That’s where they camp, they house, was. On the bank.
JD: Ok, and where was yall’s house at that time?
Lena Mae: We was on this side [closer to the levee], on the bank.
JD: Ok, then that leads me to ask you when did yall come over here? Yall were….last I heard from you yall were livin on Blaise’s Canal, now yall moved over here…why?
Lena Mae: We moved on this side and we tied up…it was a sandbar, we didn’t move at the canal [Myon’s]. We stayed on the sandbar. Stayed there for a while, Daddy was fishin. And we decided to move back across the lake [Blaise’s Canal].
JD: Why, do you know why?
Lena Mae: I don’t know why. But we moved back. We stayed there a while, and then Daddy wasn’t satisfied…so he say we gone move back, across the lake. We hooked on and we moved back on this side. Us and Grandma.
JD: You moved back…
Lena Mae: We moved back to...over here. We tied up in the Canal, right in the end of the Canal.
JD: So, your early part of your life ….do you remember? It was on Blaise’s Canal? Is that what you remember? Is that what you remember? That’s where you were born…When you were born, that’s where yall lived, on Blaise’s Canal?
Lena Mae: That’s where we lived, but I was born in Morgan City.
JD: Yeah, you were born in Morgan City but the family lived…you went back to live on Blaise’s Canal. Then yall went from Blaise’s Canal over here, to this side, for a while and then back to Blaise’s Canal, and then back here again. You remember anything at all about what years those, those were, when yall moved first? If you can remember when yall moved from there [to] here? How old you were?
Lena Mae: The first time we moved…when we moved on the sandbar I was about 12 years old.
JD: You were about 12, now if you don’t mind my asking, what year were you born? That way I can calculate….
Lena Mae: I was born 1929.
JD: You were born in 1929, OK you see I can figure that then as to when the move took place.
EC: That be ’41.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: So, we moved on the sandbar, I was about 12 years old when we moved there. Like I say, we went back…then I was 14 years old when we come back [to Myette Pt.].
JD: So yall stayed over there two years…two seasons, if you want to call it….and came back here on this side.
Lena Mae: Came back over here, and then we stayed.
JD: Now this time yall came into…..
Short break in the recording here
JD: Now this time yall came inside the canal [Myon’s canal]?
Lena Mae: Yeah, tied up right at the end of the canal.
JD: Was yall the only boat that did that at that time? That did that at that time, moved to the canal?
Lena Mae: No, us and grandma and them. It was us, grandma, Jesse …
JD: Jesse?
Lena Mae: Jesse Daigle.
JD: Jesse Daigle, that’s Jesse…..that’s Ida’s husband?
Lena Mae: Yeah, we all….and Nig Verret, that was Tootsie’s sister…
JD: Nick?
Lena MaeLena Mae: Nig, called him Nig, I don’t know what his real name….
EC: Name was Wilson.
JD: Wilson? Wilson Verret?
Lena Mae: Anyhow, we all moved on this side….tied up in the canal.
JD: So, alright, that’s another thing I need to find out. You say that yall moved, but how many boats were involved ….I know you just said it, but let’s say that again, if you can. Uh, how many boats….how many boats were, uh, were involved in that move you talking about when you were, like, 12 years old and yall came over here ….how many boats yall think that was who did that?
Lena Mae: Campboats...you mean?
JD: Uhunh, yeah.
Lena Mae: Just two.
JD: Just two. Just yall and your…
Lena Mae: And my grandma..
JD: And your grandma and grandpa…that was that was Blaise Sauce [actually, it was just her grandmother, Rosalee. Her grandfather Blaise was dead by then]. OK, now so that’s just two of yall over here on this side…and yall moved back over there…still just two boats?
Lena Mae: [nods yes]
JD: So, those are the two boats that traveled together, then.
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Alright, yall stayed together two years. In that time some other boats joined yall, is that what you sayin?
Lena Mae: We come back, and some other boats joined us….Jesse Daigle…
JD: Jesse Daigle joined yall….
Lena Mae: Nig Verret, my grandma, and us, that’s four families…
JD: Four families…
Lena Mae: That moved back…
JD: that moved back..
Lena Mae: that moved back, over here. And Lester was already livin over here.
JD: Lester?
Lena Mae: Couvillier.
JD: Lester Couvillier.
EC: My brother.
JD: Your brother…Edward’s brother.
Lena Mae: He was already on this side, him. So, we tied up…he was tied up on the upper side the canal, we tied up on the lower side.
JD: So it ended up at the canal….when yall got here, there was five boats then. The four of yall, and Lester Couvillier was already here. So that’s when…and how…you say when yall…you were 14 when yall moved back, here. So, from the time you were 14 on, the, the Bailey’s lived in Myon’s Canal on this side of the river.
Lena Mae: On this side.
JD: On this side of the lake. Ok, see, that’s fillin in a lot of, a lot of holes for me. A lot of that stuff I didn’t know …cause I want to know about …as much as I can. Now, Edward, when did yall come into that story as far as moving the boat…moving over here to this side? Yall were livin… when all this was going on with Lena Mae… yall were still living on Keelboat Pass?
EC: Must a been about 1946, ’47, when we moved here.
Lena Mae: Uh, yall moved here…yall tied up by them cypress there right at the end of the canal. That’s where yall….they had a hole there, like. Towed they camp in that hole…we was over here…grandma’s camp, then ours. [showing arrangement in canal].
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: And, that’s when Tootsie and Nig first separated.
EC: That was, uh, in the middle 40’s, somewheres around there.
Lena Mae: You was about, what?
JD: The middle 40’s when you…
Lena Mae: Musta been about 18 years old.
EC: Momma, I was 18, 20 when we got married.
Lena Mae: You was 19 when we got married.
EC: Whatever, 18…..
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: So, musta been about 18.
JD: So, yall had been over here just a lil while before you got married?
EC: Wasn’t too long.
Lena Mae: Wasn’t too long.
JD: OK.
EC: We …..we really didn’t get married, we jumped…broomstick.
JD: [to Lena Mae] Did yall jump the broomstick? Surely. Did yall really?!
Lena Mae: Well, I guess not!! …[you should know]...better than that!
JD: Well, I didn’t know! I didn’t know, I mean, if he tells me, you see [laughs]. You gotta keep it straight here. Uh..
Lena Mae: We got married in 1947.
JD: OK, so you got married in 1947, and everybody, by that time, everybody was livin on Myon’s Canal.
Lena Mae: Right, at the end of the canal.
JD: And, uh, when yall got married how many more boats had come in there. We talking about five boats now, right? Five boats, your brother, well more than that…your brother [Edward], four boats from yall [Lena Mae] and yall.
EC: I had two brothers at that time. Abner was there.
Lena Mae: By the time we got married, …
JD: Abner Couvillier?
EC: And Dan, Dan and them was there…
Lena Mae: By the time we got married, it was his momma and daddy… when we got married they had done pulled they camp at the levee. We had done moved in the back [to the levee end of the canal].
JD: But, to the back end of the canal. To the levee end of the canal.
Lena Mae: Right. Right there where the cut goes by the levee there where that ramp’s at?
JD: Yeah.
Lena Mae: Momma’s camp was tied up here, grandma’s was there, Nig Verret was there, Jesse Daigle [she’s showing one right after the other], Tete and Dan…moved in,
JD: They had their nose up to the levee? Is that how they did it?
EC: Naw, they was along that lil levee….
Lena Mae: They was along…in the bayou, wasn’t along the big levee.
EC: The lil levee at the boat landing, the old boat landing…
Lena Mae: Let’s see who else, uh, somebody else, let’s see it was us, grandma, Nig, Jesse…Yank and Bootsie, by then they were married. They were livin in a campboat.
JD: Who’s that? What’s their names?
Lena Mae: Yank and Bootsie.
JD: Bootsie who?
Lena Mae: Millet.
JD: Yank and Bootsie Millet. Yank is her, her name?
Lena Mae: Yeah. Well, Ophelia.
JD: Ophelia?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: And, there was a bunch…Abner, had done moved, over here, and Liza…there was a bunch.
JD: So, if you could guess, uh…
Lena Mae: Jean Smith moved here.
EC: Joe Sauce.
Lena Mae: Joe Sauce.
JD: Who’s Joe Sauce?
Lena Mae: Edward’s sister.
EC: My brother, uh, my sister’s husband.
Lena Mae: Oh, there was campboats tied up on both sides the canal, that lil canal there.
JD: If you could guess, how many would you say there were?
EC: Aw, there was ten or twelve.
JD: Ten or twelve.
Lena Mae: When we got married….
JD: That’s about 1946, ‘47, you talking about.
Lena Mae: We stayed in a lil camp, I guess about…I’d say about six foot wide, and maybe 15, …12-15 foot long. And they had logs on each side of it to hold it …
JD: Cypress logs? When yall got married?’’
EC: Them old cottonwood logs.
JD: Cottonwood? Floats higher?
Lena Mae: Not cypress, that’s cottonwood. So, we lived in that for, I guess a year.
JD: Two rooms?
Lena Mae: No rooms! Just one…
JD: One room.
Lena Mae: One. I couldn’t even put a big bed in there. I had to put a twin bed for us to sleep in. My stove was at the foot of the bed. And I didn’t have no table, I didn’t have no room to put a table. And we lived in that. One morning we got up and I stepped in water about that deep. My camp had sunk.
JD: Ohh, the logs sunk?!
Lena Mae: Somethin sunk! [laughs]. So, we got it bailed out, we had to watch because if some people would come we had to talk to some of em on the bank cause they couldn’t get on the camp cause we’d a sunk.
JD: You’d sink more.
Lena Mae: So, uh, by then well I got pregnant for Justin. No, I didn’t either…I believe, yeah, I got pregnant for Justin, and Edward started building us a campboat cabin on the bank. Right there in the bend where that ramp comes down, and the levee do that [curves]. Build that right there. A campboat cabin, three bedroom, I believe it had.
JD: On what? Was it built on..
Lena Mae: He had build it on the bank…we was supposed to put it on a barge.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: We didn’t.
EC: Never did put it on a barge.
Lena Mae: Never did put it on a barge.
JD: Where was the house built, where did yall build it?
EC: Right on the edge of the levee, by the old boat landing over there.
Lena Mae: Right there.
JD: Right on the levee?
EC: On the outside the levee.
JD: As the levee comes down….On the outside, you talking about…across the levee?
Lena Mae: You know where that old ramp…
EC: Yeah, on the outside…
JD: Where I met yall where yall lived…on the outside, that’s where you built it?
Lena Mae: Jim, that old ramp come down?
JD: Yeah, it’s still there now.
Lena Mae: And you got the levee…
EC: Right there.
Lena Mae: Well, right there. The ramp come down, we built the camp right there.
JD: Where Myon was livin, and where yall were livin.
Lena Mae: Daddy [Myon] was livin in the canal, on the levee side of the canal.
JD: On the lake side.
Lena Mae: And we was livin along the big levee.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: And, uh, we built that and Justin’s born there.
JD: OK, on the bank.
Lena Mae: that’s where Justin was born, in there.
Lena MaeJD: Now, yall were fishin at the time.
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: What you did? You leave your boat on the other side the levee? Where everybody was tied up?
Lena Mae: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JD: Were yall the only house on this side the levee? On the outside?
[there is a big confusion here. I thought they were saying they moved over the levee, and they didn’t. The little house they built was on the lake side. A lot of what follows for a while is due to my misunderstanding.]
EC: Aw, yeah, the only ones that…
Lena Mae: Yeah, the only ones on the bank at the time.
JD: So, when Justin was born, yall were the only house on the outside the levee.
Lena Mae: Yeah, on the bank.
EC: We was the only house on the bank, but Myon and them was livin over there in a campboat.
JD: And so were a lot of other people?
EC: Yeah. Right.
JD: You’re sayin eight or ten other campboats were livin…so by that time the community was pretty well settled, I mean what families were gone be there and where they were gone stay, they never moved again. Yall never moved again.
EC: Them people started pulling their campboats over the levee, you see.
Lena Mae: We moved from the back side….
JD: OK, now when did that happen? People started to…
Lena Mae: Moved from the back side, to this side the levee.
JD: Yeah.
Lena Mae: Cause Larry was born on this side the levee. You remember where Lester had his house?
EC: Was about 1949.
Lena Mae: You should remember. Where the church was at?
JD: Where the church was! Yeah.
Lena Mae: A lil past the church. Put my campboat there. My cabin.
JD: Your cabin.
Lena Mae: We put it there. We lived there. Larry was born there. Then from there, I didn’t like it. I was too much by myself back there. So, Edward decided to pull it
Continued on Chapter14
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier
Blog Ch 14 Tape 08 Side B
Continued from Chapter 13
JD: [Talking to the tape] Ok, I want to summarize in case we didn’t get piece of this on tape. The first house came over, that was Lena Mae and Edward, built a cabin that was gonna be a houseboat but got built on land and it stayed on land. It never did become a houseboat. Did it?
Lena Mae: Never did become a houseboat.
JD: So, they were the first ones that crossed over, and that was 19…
Edward: No, we weren’t the first.
Lena Mae: No, momma and them was. Momma and them was.
JD: Oh, I thought…
Lena Mae: Momma and them brought they camp first.
Edward: No, the Old Man [Ed’s father] towed his first.
Lena Mae: The Old Man did, den Momma.
JD: No, wait. I guess I misunderstood then. I thought y’all built your cabin and crossed over the levee, the first house.
Edward: No. The Old Man was the first one…..
JD: The Old Man was…who’s the Old Man, your daddy?
Edward: My daddy. My daddy. [Myon Bailey]
JD: Your daddy was the first one crossed the levee.
Edward: Right.
JD: He pulled his houseboat across the levee?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
Edward: Yeah. Sho did.
JD: Set it up on this side.
Edward: Then Myon…
Lena Mae: Then momma and them..
JD: Then Myon….more or less where he lived when I met em? When I came?
Lena Mae: Yeah, exactly.
Edward: Yeah, exactly where you…
JD: That’s where it was, right there? And then y’all moved over. Yall were the third one and y’all moved further down the levee.
Lena Mae: Between his momma’s house and my momma’s house. We moved between them.
JD: Between them.
Lena Mae: From down the levee, by the church, pull our camp between them.
JD: Ok.
Edward: Then after that everybody started pullin …..
JD: After that everybody started over, and that happened in 1949.
Edward: ’49, ’50…
JD: Would you say Myon pulled their house over in 1949? Just a lil bit before y’all crossed over?
Edward: Yeah, wasn’t too long.
JD: Why did he do that? Why did the old people do that, y’all think?
Lena Mae: I don’t know, it was …I don’t know what…made em pull over the levee.
Edward: When we first got electricity we was all…most of us on the other side the levee.
JD: On the other side, on the lake side.
Edward: Umhm. Lake side…run that electric out there.
JD: They run a power pole out there and y’all could connect to it? From there…
Edward: Phillips 66 had a…had a boat landing and had a generator, and a lot of us hooked up to that generator.
JD: No kidding!
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: You see, by that time momma and them had done towed they boat, they campboat against the levee.
Edward: And then, when they started moving over the levee, well then Teche Electric, the only one would…they tried to get CLECO to come out there. They wouldn’t come put juice to us. Teche Electric…
JD: Teche Electric came and ran power out there?
Edward: Out to us, now your flat rate was $3.50 a month.
JD: Is that right!
Edward: And we hardly ever paid over $3.50 a month.
JD: No kiddin.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Well, what happened to the…when, when Myon and them moved over and your father and mother, Edward, moved over, and y’all moved over the levee…what happened? Did boats just gradually then start comin over? A few at a time?
Edward: Yeah, unhun.
Lena Mae: See, Abner had already his lil house over the levee when momma and grandma and them…
Edward: Yeah, when we got married, his house was over there.
Lena Mae: They had a lil house and they pulled theirs over the levee.
JD: Now, Abner is your brother?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: And, and Jesse and your other brother who was already in Myon’s canal when y’all came...Lester.
Edward: Lester, yeah.
JD: Now Lester, was he, did he, did he die…he drowned?
Edward: No, no. Ah, heart attack. Clifton, that was his boy drownded out there.
JD: Oh, OK. Clifton? His son?
Edward: Then Ida and them had a boy drown out there too. On the levee.
JD: Ida and them did? What was his name, do you remember?
Lena Mae: Jesse.
JD: Jesse? He was Jesse Junior?
Lena Mae: I guess. Ah, they call him Neggy.
JD: Ok.
Lena Mae: Everybody knew him by the name of Lil Neggy.
JD: Well, that’s got a lot on tape that I wanted to hear, because I,one of the things I want to write about is, is how the families got onto houseboats, and you telling me you don’t remember why they got on a houseboat. I imagine its because the levees were built, and it was…you couldn’t live on the bank anymore. In the Basin.
Edward: Well, back in them days people would move from place…wherever the fish would bite that’s where they would go.
JD: But…but…ah, I didn’t say…what I said, I didn’t say it clearly enough. Ah. You got everybody livin on land, first of all. Somewhere, everybody was livin on land. I have all this stuff from Agnes about how her momma and daddy lived on that farm that her grandparents had, I mean, ah, on Lake Verret.
Edward: That was before my time. [laughs]
JD: I know that, but I’m goin back further than that, you see?
Lena Mae: My daddy, they lived on Fourmile Bayou.
JD: You talking about Myon.
Lena Mae: Myon.
JD: They lived on land? On Fourmile Bayou?
Lena Mae: On land, in a house.
JD: Now this I don’t have on tape. Myon and them lived on Fourmile Bayou? Myon and Agnes?
Lena Mae: No, no. Just Daddy.
JD: Just, just Myon.
Lena Mae: Before they got married.
JD: Before they got married. He lived on land on Fourmile Bayou. And if I recall correctly, Agnes lived in Verdunville, her family.
Edward: No.
JD: They weren’t in Verdunville?
Lena Mae: Momma met daddy on Big Pigeon.
JD: I missed something, because I had, I’ll go back and get it…I know I just don’t have something right.
Edward: No, not Verdunville.
JD: Ah, OK.
Edward: Not Verdunville. I remember that.
JD: So, Myon lived on land on Fourmile Bayou. His family lived there. Did he grow up there? As a boy, you think?
Lena Mae: As a boy he grew up there.
JD: He grew up on Fourmile Bayou, and they were fishermen? His family was fishermen?
Lena Mae: His stepdaddy was.
JD: His stepdaddy was.
Edward: Well, that’s all people did in them days.
Lena Mae: That’s all he ever done for a livin, him.
JD: Some people did some farming, I mean like, like…
Edward: That wasn’t over there though, you know.
JD: No. Ok, so Myon lived on Fourmile Bayou and he met Agnes when she was livin where?
Lena Mae: I guess at the canal. Or Big Pigeon, somewhere up in there because Daddy would come here floatin timbers.
JD: He was working in, uh,…timber?
Lena Mae: He was workin in them pullboats.
JD: The pullboats?
Lena Mae: Yeah. And uh, that’s where momma met daddy. Must a been at the canal because they had a lot of pullboats in there.
JD: Now, what was she doin at the canal? Why…?
Lena Mae: Livin with her momma and daddy.
JD: Her momma and daddy were livin…..Ok, that’s interesting because apparently…I don’t have very much about Agnes’ parents. I have what…I have on tape that her grandparents lived on that farm. Her father bought the farm when he came over from Spain. And they lived on that farm on Lake Verret and when their family was, uh, when the children were raised, I suppose that means Agnes. When the children were raised, her grandfather and grandmother moved to Morgan City, off that farm, and they went to work as cooks on these pullboats. Agnes’ parents, that’s what I have on tape. Her grandparents. But I don’t know anything about her parents, in other words that would be your grandparents. What can you tell me about them? Where, where…? Do you remember much about them?
Lena Mae: Jim, I, I know all about grandma. But my grandfather, I remember some things about him, but I was little when he died.
JD: Yeah. OK.
Lena Mae: All I remember, he had bought a big radio, big ole thing. And people didn’t have no radio in them days, you know?
JD: A big radio, umhm.
Lena Mae: Well, he put him a chair right there and he’d sit me on the arm of the rocker, with him. I remember that like it would be tomorrow…uh, yesterday. But, that’s all I really remember about my grandpa.
JD: So, you were real young when he died.
Lena Mae: I was young when he died. You see, I don’t remember that…now I remember when he died…I remember goin to Morgan City with the campboat…which we brought the campboat down there. Daddy went and brought him to the doctor and they put him in the hospital. Then he come back and got the campboat and brought it down there but grandpa never did get out the hospital. He died in the hospital.
JD: OK, so he and his wife, your grandfather and grandmother were livin on campboats…in Blaise’s Canal?
Lena Mae: Oh yeah. Big campboat.
JD: Big campboat, they lived there. Uh, OK. So where do we take it from there? Uh, I’m tryin to figure …Agnes, then, ...so that would be Agnes’ momma and daddy we talking about right now. So, they lived on Bla…were they fishermen?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: They were fishermen. Um, their…their, their names
Lena Mae: Fishermen, and working on pullboats.
Edward: He was a Sauce.
JD: That was Blaise Sauce. And what was his wife’s name? Do y’all remember?
Lena Mae: Rosalee.
JD: Rosalee was her name. Do you remember what her maiden name was? Agnes’ mother?
Lena Mae: Momma’s momma? Mayon.
JD: Mayon. M a y o n ? Mayon, OK. So she was already livin …see, I could follow this anywhere we could go but …cause I’d like to know how THEY got to that canal. How Agnes…now I’m gone talk to her about that to find out…
Edward: You gone have to ask [garbled]…
JD: Well, I will…how they got to the canal. You see what I’m tryin to get get to? How did people get to Blaise’s Canal, and form a community of houseboats right there.
Lena Mae: I remember how my grandma got there, daddy’s momma.
JD: You do?
Lena Mae: I remember that like it would be yesterday.
JD: Tell me how that happened. Myon’s mother.
Edward: Did she live there too?
Lena Mae: Yeah, see they were livin on Fourmile Bayou.
JD: Myon’s family was livin on Fourmile Bayou…he was a boy.
Lena Mae: …Momma and them and grandma [Ernestine Daigle Sauce]. And, uh, they built em a, a lil shack on the bank. At the canal, they had a hill there, and they build that house on the hill.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: It was just a, a …no petitions [partitions] no nuttin. Just a…
JD: Just a room.
Lena Mae: …wood frame, big room.
JD: Ahmm.
Lena Mae: And we went got em in a big barge. I remember that long as I live. We left…in the boat, me and momma and daddy…Milton, I believe was born by then, I’m not sure. I don’t remember Milton in the picture, but I should.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: But anyway, we went to Fourmile Bayou in Daddy’s boat…
JD: Now, y’all took a barge that was a cypress barge
Lena Mae: Yeah, yeah.
JD: Made out of wood, cypress barge, and y’all pulled it with a Lockwood?
Lena Mae: Wit a six horse.
JD: A six horse, bateau, big open bateau…
Edward: They didn’t have iron in those days…[laughs]
Lena Mae: So we went down there, and we, uh, loaded the barge up. You know, with all they stuff...all they furniture, everything. Just fixed us a place in there for us to ride…
JD: I hear you.
Lena Mae: And we all got in there. Grandma boiled a pile of eggs, I’ll never forget that…
JD: eggs.
Lena Mae: Boiled eggs and baked sweet potatoes. And that’s what we had to eat on the way.
JD: How long did it take y’all to get back and forth, you remember? One day, I imagine.
Lena Mae: One day. We made it in one day.
JD: Umhm.
Edward: Well, it wasn’t that far over there, go straight across…
Lena Mae: The barge with all they furniture, everything they owned was in that barge and we brought it and put everything in that house. And they lived there for a good long while.
JD: They lived in that..that room that… now they left a big house on the bank where all that family grew up and moved into one room on that little levee?
Lena Mae: Well, the boys was grown up already, Uncle Ike and all them, they was already old enough…he was already livin with us here [in the canal].
JD: He was livin with y’all? Ike was livin with y’all?
Lena Mae: He was livin wit us. And Norman lived there for a while, but he didn’t stay, he went back home, but they all come back. They all moved in that house.
JD: So, Myon, Myon was still…how old do you think he was when that happened? Somewhere in there.
Lena Mae: My daddy?
JD: Yeah. I mean, he was still one of the sons of the family, you sayin, and it was his parents that y’all loaded up with everything they owned and moved the family over to Myon’s canal [no, Blaise's Canal] to live on the bank..?
Lena Mae: Right.
JD: OK, so…well I’ll ask how old that was when that happened.
Lena Mae: Ask daddy, cause I don’t remember.
JD: And Agnes was already there.?
Lena Mae: Oh yeah, we were livin there already, us.
JD: Yall were already on the canal [Blaise's Canal].
Lena Mae: We were livin there.
JD: OK, so that’s how Myon and Agnes got together?
Lena Mae: No, Momma and Daddy was already married by then. I guess so! I was born, I remember! [laughs]
JD: I guess that’s true! I was a little confused there. That’s right. OK. So, OK, so y’all went over there and got em.
Lena Mae: Got em in a barge.
JD: So the…so you could say it was the old people who were still livin in that house [on Fourmile Bayou].
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Myon’s parents…
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: …who were still livin in that house, y’all came a brought over here? OK. I get a little confused with these…
Edward: It is confusin…
JD: Ins and outs…
Edward: …from that long ago, you know?
JD: So, when y’all got..y’all got those old people on the bank, and they lived in that house, then you had…you had the Baileys, and the Sauces….
Lena Mae: You had the Baileys, the Sauces, and the whole shoebang.
JD: OK, OK. That’s good. You’d be surprised how long it takes me to type all this. It’s one thing for us to talk…
Lena Mae: You see, at one time at the canal [Blaise's Canal], we had…
Edward: Stomach growlin, must be getting hungry.
Lena Mae: Uh…
JD: Time…
Lena Mae: Alcide Verret, the Percles [???]…
JD: Who?
Lena Mae: The Percles…
JD: The Percles? That was another family?
Lena Mae: Yeah. And that’s at one time, that I remember. We had Tootsie and Nig, they was first married…we had Jesse [Daigle], us, grandma, uh, Vina…aunt Vina…
JD: Who’s that?
Lena Mae: Edward’s sister.
JD: Vina?
Edward: Elvina.
JD: Elvina.
Lena Mae: And, uh, my granpa Sauce, that’s my momma’s…wait…what that would be? Aunt Teah…that was my grandpa’s momma and daddy.
Edward: That was before my time.
JD: You grandfather’s momma and…your great grandparents were there!!!
Lena Mae: My great grandparents. I remember them good, they were livin there. They was about ten or twelve families livin there at the time.
JD: Why do you suppose people got together at that place? That one spot?
Lena Mae: I don’t know. Now the Percles was livin in Morgan City, I don’t know what made them come in the canal, I couldn’t tell you.
JD: The, uh,…I mean you think it was because it was good fishin there? That was a good place to fish from?
EC ….what it was, move where the fish was at.
Lena Mae: In fact, uh
JD: But the thing is…interests me about this is…I hear you that they moved where the fish were and that was…seems like what y’all tell me is that was the reason for the BIG moves. People would move across the lake and stay there two years, but, uh, there must have been somethin else why people collected right in Blaise’s Canal.
Edward: People, Jim, used to move just for the hell of it.
JD: They would just pick up and go?
Lena Mae: Just pick up and go.
Edward: They had an old man Blankenship used to…George Blankenship…? He’d pull in a place, might stay a week, and he’d be gone. He’d pull somewhere’s else another week or two and he’s gone. You’d see him comin, all you’d see, he’d have a campboat and he’d have barges, had chickens, you’d see chickens all over that place…you talk about something!
JD: Runnin all… runnin loose on the campboat, and everything?
Edward: Yeah! Just load them chickens on that sucker, and take off with it.
Lena Mae: Every now and then…he’d… he’d…
Edward: You’d, uh, you’d go to bed at night and get up the next morning…old George Blankenship be tied up next door to you. [laughs] Moved in at night.
JD: Moved in durin the night?
Edward: Durin the night, oh yeah, that happened many times.
Lena Mae: One time in the lake, we wasn’t livin far from the lake…
Edward: …used to laugh about, you how he’d….
Lena Mae: …you hear something comin, you’d look out there it was a campboat, either goin up or down…
Edward: Yeah, there goes George…
JD: Could y’all see the…see the lake from where y’all lived?
Lena Mae: Oh yeah, yeah.
Edward: Oh yeah, could see clean across that lake.
JD: No but I mean…you could…you didn’t live back in the canal back in the woods…y’all lived right at the mouth.
Lena Mae: No, uhuh, almost at the mouth…not, not quite at the mouth, you know, a little ways back
Edward: You could see the lake.
JD: Oh boy! So, there’s no real reason that y’all know of why everybody collected around that one spot?
Lena Mae: Got no idea, besides, want to fish?
JD: And when y’all left, when the four boats left and came across the lake the second time, was there anybody left at Blaise’s Canal?
Lena Mae: There wasn’t too many left. I seen the time where there was just us livin there.
JD: On Blaise’s Canal? You need some help Edward?
Edward: I’m gone feed the chickens right now.
Lena Mae: Everybody’d leave, move out, there was just us and my grandma and them livin [there].
JD: So, people just kind of came and went, came and went, came and went all the time…
Lena Mae: That’s right. Come and go, come and go.
JD: And all the time, all those people were fishin for a living?
Lena Mae: Fishin for a livin, working on pullboat.
JD: Fishin lines mostly? Workin pullboats too, but they fishin lines mostly?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: And they never… how about with all those people in there, did they have enough space to all fish lines? Wasn’t any problem?
Lena Mae: Yeah, man, that was a big lake, man, there was no sandbars. I mean it’s not like it is today…all dis [east across the lake from Myette Pt.] was open.
JD: I know, and that brings another question up. Uh, we gonna get into a lot of this stuff a little bit later, cause I don’t have time to stay here long. I could talk here till ten o’clock tonight, and I’m sure y’all could too, but, uh, I have to go back. Just on an outside thing, just so I can get finished, uh, y’all didn’t move – Myon didn’t move – from place to place a lot.
Lena Mae: We didn’t move a lot.
JD: Like a lot of people did. If you had to think back…what you knew…you say everybody knew everybody else, so y’all all knew who was what, where, most of the time.
Lena Mae: Everybody was mostly related.
JD: How many, if you can recall, how many “collections” of houseboats were there, when you were a young girl old enough to understand who was what? How many…do you… for…, in the Basin, that y’all knew about? I mean like Blaise’s Canal was one, let’s say there was ten or twelve houseboats there, you could call that a community. I mean you could, you could call that a community. It’s got everything that you needed….
Lena Mae: Keelboat Pass, Hog Island was the same thing.
JD: Same thing. OK, that’s another one, that’s two.
Lena Mae: Big Pigeon.
JD: Big Pigeon? That’s another one?
Lena Mae: Yeah, lot of people livin in Big Pigeon.
JD: Now, Big Pigeon, that was in the bayou – close to the lake?
Lena Mae: Well, they was further back than we was.
JD: Further back in the bayou.
Lena Mae: Yeah, further back in the bayou. Where most of the people was livin, you couldn’t see the lake.
JD: OK, you had to go back up in the bayou…
Lena Mae: You see, we lived up on Big Pigeon for a while. It was a lot of people livin, even, uh, colored people livin out there.
JD: How many would you say there was when you can remember…what would you guess would be a number, for the biggest number of houseboats?
Lena Mae: At one time, I remember, Joe’s momma and daddy lived out there…
JD: Joe…Joe who?
Lena Mae: Joe Ackman.
JD: Ackman? A k m a n? [she didn’t confirm]
Lena Mae: Yeah, was married to one of Edward’s niece.
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: Well, they were livin there, Old Man Richard was livin there, they had a …
JD: Richard who?
Lena Mae: Oh, uh, Edward knows, I don’t…
JD: OK. OK. This is on Big Pigeon, you talking about.
Lena Mae: And they had Fry, the Black, and they had, uh,…
JD: His name was Fry?
Lena Mae: Yeah, they call him Fry.
JD: OK. He had a family or he was by himself?
Lena Mae: By hisself. It was us, my nannan and parain was livin next door to us…
JD: Who were they?
Lena Mae: Brod Verret.
JD: Brod Verret, and his wife…
Lena Mae: and his wife, his family.
JD: His wife was…what was her name? You remember?
Lena Mae: Lola.
JD: Low?
Lena Mae: Loge.
JD: Loge.
Lena Mae: Lola.
JD: Lola! OK.
Lena Mae: …call her Lowg. [pronounced it long “o”]. And, uh, his name was Brod. But I can’t remember them olther people’s name. We use to…
JD: But, anyway, what I’m interested in, mostly, is how, about how many boats there were. When y’all lived on Big Pigeon…would you say more than twenty? Or less than twenty?
Lena Mae: It’d be less than twenty.
JD: Less than twenty. Fifteen?
Lena Mae: Maybe fifteen.
JD: Fifteen. But it was bigger than…than Blaise’s Canal was.
Lena Mae: Yeah, yeah, they had a lot of people lived on Big Pigeon.
JD: And all those people fished, or worked on the pullboats. So, it was fishin at that time or the timber industry. That was the two ways everybody made a livin.
Lena Mae: That’s about how…you see when we lived on Big Pigeon, that’s what Daddy [Myon] was doin – floatin timber.
JD: Yeah.
Lena Mae: That’s why we moved there.
JD: Yall moved there to be closer to the pullboats?
Lena Mae: To be closer to the, uh…
JD: To where they were cutting timber…
Lena Mae: They find…they’d find the trees that…sinkers, you see, they’d sink them cypress, and they’d find em and go with a thing and pull em up.
JD: They did that “en cachet”, so to speak, what they said “under the table”?
Lena Mae: No, no…
JD: Well, Myon was telling me a lot of times they’d hide those logs when they’d cut em…they’d hide em in the swamp and they’d sink and they’d go back and get em later.
Lena Mae: They had to, cause they’d steal em. That’s why they’d hide em.
JD: [pause] no, but Myon was telling me they did it on purpose so that they would go back and sell some logs on their own that didn’t go to the lumber company.
Lena Mae: Yeah, right.
JD: What was the lumber company’s name at that time, when y’all were on Big Pigeon? What company was it?
Lena Mae: Uh, …
Edward: Williams?
Lena Mae: Williams.
JD: Williams? Williams lumber company?
Edward: Williams, and uh…
JD: They had sawmills where? That the logs would go to?
Lena Mae: In Patterson…
Edward: They had one in Patterson, had one in Franklin…
JD: Patterson and Franklin…
Edward: Morgan City, had one in Morgan City.
Lena Mae: Old, uh, Ben Lard, you remember? He used to float for him.
Edward: Had a big lumber mill, Williams I think, it was in Patterson. And, uh, had one in Garden City – that May Brothers.
JD: Garden City, May Brothers?
Edward: For years.
JD: So the people that owned the land…I mean the people that did the cutting didn’t necessarily own the land or the trees, they just cut em and take em to the sawmill for the owner, is that how they did that?
Edward: Well, a lot of em just went out there and cut trees, didn’t ask nobody, they just did it, you know. Stole em.
JD: You mean the logging companies would just go out there …?
Edward: No, individuals.
JD: Individuals.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Yeah, Myon used to tell me about that.
Edward: Yeah, used to do that.
JD: So, uh, what I was askin Lena Mae was, I’m tryin to get an idea of how many houseboat communities there were, because you’d have to…you’d have to call ten or twelve boats a community. I mean, y’all all lived together, like a group. And she’s telling me that there was one at Keelboat Pass and one in Big Pigeon. So that’s three that we’ve…and one on Hog Island you sayin? That’s four?
Lena Mae: Campboats. See, they had a lot of people livin on Big Pigeon.
JD: Campboats [to Edward, just came back in] that all lived in one place, bunches of em in one place?
Edward: Yeah, you had, uh, Big Pigeon, you had Lil Pigeon, Bayou Smith…
JD: Bayou Smith?
Edward: You had Catfish…
JD: Bayou Catfish [Catfish Bayou]
Edward: And you had, uh, Keelboat and Hog Island.
Lena Mae: Now Lil Pigeon, they had a lot. All my kinpeople live in Lil Pigeon.
JD: Lil Pigeon.
Edward: Now, goin up, further up, Bayou Chene there was some others…
JD: Bayou Chene, that’s where Carl is from isn’t it? Carl Carline.
Edward: Naw, uhuh.
JD: I thought he was from Bayou Chene.
Edward: His wife is from Bayou Chene.
JD: His wife?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: He was born and raised in the lake, just like we was.
JD: Carl was?
Edward: He just moved up here by Lil Pass, along the levee up there.
Lena Mae: Grand Avoille, around that place.
Edward: [that’s] where they was at.
JD: OK, all right. How about below, how about below Pigeon? Down around Bayou Boutte there…
Edward: Yeah, Bayou Boutte, they was all along Bayou Boutte.
JD: Had houseboats all along Bayou Boutte?
Lena Mae: Lot of people livin there!
JD: There’s even a cemetery there. On the island, Fisher Island? Did y’all call it Fisher Island? What did y’all call that island on Bayou Boutte?
Lena Mae: And Bayou Fisher, lot of people used to live on Bayou Fisher.
Edward: Bayou Fisher [the bayou on the other side of the island]
JD: What did y’all call that island, where those people lived, where that cemetery is right now?
Edward: I don’t know. Man, I don’t know Jim.
JD: Didn’t have a name?
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: Just Bayou Boutte, probably.
Edward: Bayou Boutte.
Lena Mae: But there’s a lot of people lived there, Bayou Boutte.
JD: And I guess all down below too then, from there on. All those other bayous, Bayou February, January, all those places.
Edward: All down there, they had people.
JD: Fourmile Bayou, you talking about? That’s where Myon’s family was from.
Edward: I had a brother lived on Bayou Boutte…Bayou Boutte too.
Lena Mae: He lived there pretty near all his married life. Till they moved to Morgan City. All the Comeaus lived up there.
Edward: Comeaus, Duvals,…
Lena Mae: Duvals…
JD: So, if you had to guess, just for what you could guess…
Lena Mae: The Anslems…
JD: Anslem?
Lena Mae: Yeah, Russell’s [Daigle] wife’s daddy.
Edward: They had three or four hundred…three or four hundred families scattered around in there.
JD: That’s what I was going to ask you…my next question was…you’re guessing that three or four hundred houseboats lived all around the Basin?
Edward: Aw yeah. All around back in there.
Lena Mae: Like Big Pigeon, they had a lot of people livin in Big Pigeon.
JD: And everybody moved around, pretty much? Or, some of em didn’t move around too much?
Edward: Aw, lot of em had houses on the bank.
Lena Mae: We always had…
JD: Oh, they all had houses on the bank?
Edward: Not all of em, but a lot of em did.
JD: But that was before the water started comin up high, and then they all had to either get on houseboats, or leave.
Edward: All your younger generation, when they built, then they built houseboats.
JD: Younger generation built houseboats?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: This man, when we was livin on Big Pigeon…….
Edward: I mean the younger generation what you’d call, like, I’m 67, they would be about 80, 80 or 90 now, you see. So, that was the younger generation.
Lena Mae: …..his name was Irvin Gaudet. That man’s name, he had a house on the bank. His name was Irvin Gaudet. When we lived on Big Pigeon.
JD: Irvin Gaudet.
Edward: Fargey, the Fargeys used to live out there.
JD: Foggy? Fargey?
Edward: Fargey [s?]. Burnses, they had Burnses. Aw…
***** 450
Lena Mae: Even had niggers livin out there.
Edward: Yeah, they had old Fry, they used to call him old Fry [black man]. Good old…
JD: And by himself, he didn’t have a family Lena Mae said.
Edward: By hisself, old Fry lived…old Fry lived up on Lil Pigeon up there.
Lena Mae: I was telling him about old man Richard, you know more about Richard than I do.
JD: Richard who?
Edward: Richard Witters [sp?], he used to take care of the lights.
JD: Witters. What lights?
Edward: There used to be a light at…right at the mouth of Bayou Boutte, in the lake, and there was another one at Big Pigeon. And they had one right at the lower end of Hog Island.
JD: Now that was why? What lights? For what?
Edward: Range lights, like if a boat was comin up the lake…for them steamboats and all back in them days, well, they’d go by them lights.
JD: OK, and how…what did…course there wasn’t any electricity….
Edward: …ah, all coal oil, they had coal oil.
JD: Coal oil?
Edward: And he…he the one took care of em. He’d go from one….Everyday he’d go oil em up, everything.
Lena Mae: We had one.
JD: What was his name?
Edward: Richard Witters.
JD: Richard Witters [Wooders?].
Edward: Now, he didn’t live out there. He lived in Morgan City.
JD: He’d come up everyday by boat? And do all that every day by boat?
Edward: Yeah…I don’t know if he’d come every day, or, ….
Lena Mae: I thought he lived on Big Pigeon, for a while.
Edward: No, not Richard Witters. Uhuh. They had a old man named Richard there but I done forgot his last name.
Lena Mae: That must be the Richard I’m thinking of.
Edward: Yeah, they had another old man over there…lived on bayou…lived on Pigeon. But, ah, ah, like I say I don’t know if it was every day, or once a week or whatever, but he…he kept oil in them lamps.
JD: And it was three lights that you remember?
Edward: Three.
JD: Three? Three separate lights…
Edward: ….one they put on on Lil Pigeon. They put on on Lil Pigeon, it was later.
Lena Mae: And we had one too. And uh, but uh, we put it ourself.
JD: Yall put it yourself? Is that….come back at night? Is that why y’all put it?
Lena Mae: Yeah, to mark the canal.
JD: Yeah. There’s so much I want to ask y’all. I want to ask y’all about how y’all did with religion. How y’all did with….
Edward: We didn’t have religion, back in them days. [laughs]
JD: Well…
Edward: Until, until Brother Marks, the Baptist preacher came down and started…
Lena Mae: Brother Gobeil came first.
Edward: No.
JD: You see what I’m talking about …
Edward: That was in the 40s.
JD: Talkin about just that kind of thing. How did it work, you know, I want to talk about …
Lena Mae: Father Gobeil came first.
JD: A Catholic came first?
Lena Mae: And then the Baptist.
Edward: He used to come over there.
JD: He used to come on…by boat…he’d come up…he had a campboat?
Edward: Old Father Gobeil had one a them ChrisCraft? You remember them ChrisCraft boats…?
JD: You have any idea how he spelled his name… Gobeil?
Edward: G o…G o b e l.
JD: G o b e l.
Lena Mae: He’s the one taught my catechism, my first communion, everything.
JD: He was a Catholic priest?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
Edward: And he, he drink that wine…
JD: Now you lived on Blaise’s Canal while you had all that, uh, education for catechism and first communion and all that? And a whole bunch of y’all did, I imagine, more than just you.
Lena Mae: Yeah. Well, I was the oldest, you see. The other kids didn’t do their first…uh…
Edward: You know what got Myon against priestes?
JD: Against priests? What?
Edward: He say years ago, and I think is was old Father Gobeil [correct spelling], he come over there and he was tryin to get Myon to fix him up with a woman. [laughs]
JD: Oh, come on! Really?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: I don’t remember that.
Edward: Yeah, Myon said that many times.
JD: That’s what got him against priests, eh? Got him against…..
Edward: Got him against the priests. Well, I had one of em tried to molest me. When I was a kid.
JD: You did?
Edward: Yes sir.
Lena Mae: Then after we got married….Little Brown Church.
Edward: He used to come out there and, they…they…they’d sleep out there. They come spend the night or somethin they’d sleep at somebody’s house. See, that’s…
JD: They had a campboat themselves, or just a boat to move in?
Edward: No…come in a boat. They go from house to house.
JD: And they had…the priests had Mass? He would come and say…have Mass in somebody’s house? And other people would come from other houseboats?
Lena Mae: Some of em.
Edward: Most of em didn’t. He go from house to house.
JD: Some of em. So…so he lasted for a while? While y’all were livin…
Lena Mae: Naw, he lived…after we moved over here he died, uh, he lived in Patterson, for years. Till he died.
Edward: He old…Father Gobeil, they called him.
JD: But there were some other religions you said started comin…
Lena Mae: Baptist.
Edward: Baptist.
JD: The Baptist came, at the same time as he did?
Lena Mae: No, after.
Edward: No, it was after…Brother Marks came out there and he built a school.
JD: Brother Marks?
Edward: Ira Marks.
JD: On the bank?
Edward: He’s the one built that schoolhouse out there.
JD: At Blaise’s Canal?
Edward: No, at Hog Island.
JD: At Hog Island. Oh, he built the school you talking about that y’all went to.
Edward: Yeah, right.
JD: Well then you say y’all would walk…sorry, go ahead Lena Mae.
Lena Mae: Then he built one on this side the lake.
Edward: On the levee…by the levee, on the levee out there.
JD: This was…what was his name, his whole name?
Edward: Ira Marks.
JD: Ira Marks, was his name. He was Baptist?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: He built a school, first on Hog Island, then the one on this side of the lake?
Edward: Then they had the Little Brown Church, you heard [of] the Little Brown church?
JD: I guess no.
Edward: You ain’t heard of the Little Brown…? He built…well, it wasn’t little, it was big. Big old…aw, it was like one of them mudboats now, see one a them big mudboats…but it was high…[talking about an offshore supply boat].
Lena Mae: It was wide…
JD: It was on a barge, you talking about?
Lena Mae: I have a picture of it on a calendar.
JD: You do?
Edward: It was self propelled, he had two V-8 motors in it.
JD: that’s Bonnie [Daigle] that said that. She’s not talking loud.
Edward: He had two V-8 motors in it.
JD: Two V-8 motors.
Edward: He would go from place to place, and have revivals.
JD: On the lake!
Edward: On the lake.
JD: No kiddin, Baptist revivals!
Edward: Yeah, it was real funny. Now, we didn’t have no lectricity, you see? When they’d come with that church…park it, and they had…they had a generator on it, and boy you’d go on there boy that thing be lit up…!
JD: Blazin lights, eh?
Edward: It was weird to us because everything was so bright at night, you know? And we used to live by them coal oil lights. There was nuttin bright by that. And that Little Brown Church be lit up, boy, you could see that sucker for miles.
Lena Mae: See, when we first got married, they came.
Edward: We lived on it, us.
Lena Mae: And uh…
JD: Hunh?
Edward: We lived on it for a while.
Lena Mae: Bernadette, and uh, what’s his name?
Edward: Scadlock? Sam Scadlock?
Lena Mae: Sam Scadlock and his old lady was…worked for years on that. And they would…
JD: Worked how, you mean?
Lena Mae: Take care of the church. Take care of the building.
JD: And the barge and…
Lena Mae: So, they wanted to quit. And the Little Brown Church come over here. So, they wanted us to take it.
JD: You and Edward?
Lena Mae: Me and Edward. So, Edward say let’s give it a try. [she said] give it a try but when I want to come home, I’m comin home.
[the last few inches of the tape seem to be missing on this copy, but the essence of what is on it is:]
Edward: They hired us to work on it right after we were married. We stayed on it for about two weeks but Lena Mae got lonesome and so we quit and came back to Myon’s Canal. They never did pay us anything.
Continued on Chapter 15
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier
Blog Ch 15 Tape 09 Side A
Continued from Chapter 14
Edward: ….be alongside of him when it happens, Hoss.
JD: That’s right.
Edward: I don’t never stay by a 18-wheeler.
JD: Especially, boy, you see those…every once in a while you can see those tires start to jump. Underneath those things like that, you better get out from behind…
Edward: You know, we was workin on Carlin’s house [Lange] one day over there in Centerville, and he had his driveway….my car…three or four cars parked in his driveway? And they had a 18-wheeler goin toward Morgan City right by his house, there. Both of the back wheels fall off that thing. And it come thru them cars some kind of way…one of the tires, and they had a woman had a garage right here [gestures] and it went thru that garage…in that garage. And that Shell Station, it’s a good ways from where Carlin lives, eight, nine hundred feet down there. And they had a car parked and it went over…they had a, a highline across the road right by the station. That tire come down that road and it hit something and it went up, went clean over that highline, come down went thru the trunk of that car. And they was lookin for that other tire, found that un but they couldn’t find the one that was by the house…by Carlin’s over there. We all got to lookin and come to find out it went thru that woman’s garage…in her garage. Now that would hit somebody, that’s it you dead man. Or hit a car, you know?
JD: That’s right.
Edward: You just figure you’d be comin …he’d be comin.. .and both of them tires would fall off and just a bout the time they’d hit the front of your car, bof of em at one time, or either one of em…
JD: Just think of the damage that just happens when you hit a deer or something like that. Or a hog, or something. And that can’t be anywhere near as bad.
Edward: I believe a tire would be, would be worse.
JD: Worse. Not only…not only would it, well it would be…well it would be…actually, it would be goin forward, you’d catch it. It wouldn’t seem like it,’cause it’d happen so…you’d be goin so much faster…but the tire would be movin like this [forward] too. It would seem like it would be comin at you, but it wouldn’t.
Edward: But if you’d be on a single road, and you’d be passin …then you’d be comin right on it, you see?
JD: Yeah, yeah. …like that.
Edward: On a four lane, well it’s different. Even, even a four lane…it cross that media.
JD: Well, if it cross the median, that’s different. It could kill you.
Edward: Yeah. [pause] You imagine a tire…well, I imagine a truck make forty, fifty mile and hour when it come off. And they was both inflated, they just…they both come out or something, I dunno what…
JD: You talking about wheel and all?
Edward: Yeah, both tires come off the back.
JD: Wheel and all?
Edward: Yeah, everything! They just…come off the truck.
JD: Bet that would weigh 200 pounds, anyway.
Edward: And I imagine bouncing, you know, with air in em them suckers would bounce. I can’t see how it didn’t do more damage than it did…hit that car and went thru that trunk. Course, that’s enough, you know? But you see them daggone tires on the highway, trucks blowin up…wheels…blowouts on them big trucks.
JD: Can I get a lil bit of information from you to finish…finish out some of this…what I’ve got right here. Somehow in all those tapes I managed to…I have transcribed all the tapes I had of Myon and Agnes, and y’all, in this house and more…we were over there [Myon’s house] sittin around the table. One thing I didn’t get was Myon’s mother and father. Who were they? Well, his mother was Ernestine Daigle?
Lena Mae: Ernestine Daigle.
JD: What was his father’s name?
Edward: Rudolf, eh?
Lena Mae: No, daddy’s daddy was Rudolf [no, he was Wilson Jean Ballay], but grandpa [?] was…
Edward: That’s what I’m sayin. But he wants his daddy…Myon’s…
JD: Myon’s daddy.
Lena Mae: Rudolf Bailey.
JD: Did he have a middle name, do you know?
Lena Mae: I don’t know.
Edward: Agnes would know that.
JD: Yeah, I, I’ll get that. Now, you said you knew his father? What his father’s name was? Rudolf Bailey’s father? Myon’s grandparents? His grandmother or his grandfather?
Lena Mae: I knew his grandmother.
JD: What was her name? You remember? First name…
Lena Mae: …name was, let’s see now, if I can remember …cause I remember her. Grandma Leah.
JD: L.. e.. a.. h?
Lena Mae: I guess… that’s what they called…
JD: I thought that that was his mother’s mother…
Lena Mae: It was.
JD: I’m lookin for his father’s mother. Myon’s father’s mother?
Lena Mae: I don’t know.
JD: OK. I’ll get that from Agnes. I’m pretty sure she would know…
Lena Mae: Momma…I dunno…know if momma would know.
JD: No?
JD: But his father, his father’s name was Rudolf. Cause, cause, one of his brother’s name was Rudolf too.
Lena Mae: …one of his brothers…
JD: Now, I understand that Myon’s…Myon…Myon’s, Myon had both half brothers and sisters and whole brothers and sisters.
Edward: Oh yeah.
Lena Mae: He had two…he had a whole brother and a whole sister. There was three of em.
JD: Who was that? His whole brother and his whole sister.
Lena Mae: Was Aunt Angeline…
JD: Ok, that was whole?
Lena Mae: That was his sister.
JD: And then Rudolph?
Lena Mae: And then Rudolph.
JD: That was his whole brother?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: And the rest of em…I have Marie, Odelia, Eula, Norman, Amizan [sp?], Ike and Elmira. I have all those. Do you know if I left any of em out?
Edward: Amazon? Who is that?
JD: Amizan? Her name was Tete.
Lena Mae: …was Alma…uh
JD: Her nickname was Tete.
Edward: Tete.
Lena Mae: Petite.
Edward: Petite?
Lena Mae: Azima, her name is.
JD: Azima?
Lena Mae: Right.
JD: From the tape, sometimes, it’s hard to…it’s hard to understand what they were.
Edward: You know how to spell it now, you all right. [laughs]
JD: Well, I’m on take a guess at it – it’s A z i m a. And she married Morris Fabre. OK. And is she…is she still alive?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Where does she live?
Lena Mae: Right now she’s in Campti Louisiana.
JD: Kempty?
Edward: That’s in north Louisiana.
JD: Now that’s…the Tete we talking about is not the Tete that used to live here?
Lena Mae: No, uh that Tete…
Edward: That’s my sister.
JD: That’s your sister…
Lena Mae: But she’s originally from Morgan City.
Edward: They call her Petite.
JD: Petite?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Um, so I have Myon with seven half brothers and sisters, and one whole brother and one whole sister. Does that sound right? Now, I’ll check this out with Agnes, but the more people I ask about this the more sure I am…about what I have. And, the reason that I want this is not all this is gonna be used, but when y’all mention somebody in the stories, and y’all tell me about this person did this, I can go back to this and I can see….Yall know who this is, but I have to sometimes go back and figure out how they connected.
Edward: Well, you know getting back…way back in them olden days, they got some funny names Hoss.
JD: Yeah, they do. They sure do, I know.
Lena Mae: Azima, Uanine [?]
JD: Even, Agnes’…Agnes apparently had a brother … had an uncle named Gayon? He’s dead, but apparently, she had a brother named… no, her,…Felix …was, was Agnes’ father…his nick name was Blaise, or his real name was Blaise?
Lena Mae: His real name was Blaise.
JD: Was he also named Felix?
Lena Mae: yeah, Blaise Felix…Felix Blaise, something like that.
JD: Is that the way it was? But it was really…that was his real name, not his nickname, eh?
Lena Mae: No, no, uhuh.
JD: Cause sometimes the tape refers to him as Felix and sometimes as Blaise.
Lena Mae: …always used the name Blaise.
Edward: Yeah, you see some of them…that’s some of my kinfolks…
JD: You have some of em there?
Edward: A whole bunch of em.
JD: Well, I want a whole thing on you too.
Edward: …I don’t even know how they all kin to me, that’s something…Gloria Ann [Lange] made this up. G G G Gaspard…something…
JD: ‘K, what was Agnes’ mother’s name?
Lena Mae: Rosalee.
JD: One word, do you know? Have you seen it spelled? I am going to spell it as one word…Rosalee.
Lena Mae: Well, that’s how it was pronounced.
JD: Rosalee, Rosalee, and her last name was wait a minute… last name was Mayon. See, this thing begins to make sense once I get enough pieces in it.
Edward: Look here…it’s my great, great, great grandpa.
Lena Mae: Ain’t no use to hurry, we got plenty to do here.
JD: [to someone else] I didn’t mean to run you off with this.
Verna Oh no, I gotta go get some wood and…
JD: You sure?
Verna Oh, no sir! I had my day cut out…
Edward: You see, that’s the way it goes, Jim, this is me, that’s the old man, and I guess that was his daddy, and his daddy’s daddy…grandpa…
JD: You want to sit down? You leavin? OK, you….
Lena Mae: Listen [to someone in the room], if you can help, Miss Verna and Mr. Palumbo, help em, you hear?
JD: I’m on show you this book when you come back. It’s got all pictures of frogging and how you did…how people did this…how they made nets and everything else, and anchors and all kind of…pictures of old people doin all this stuff. I thought you might be interested in that.
Verna I’ll look at it when I get back.
Edward: Let me see it Jim?
JD: All right. I don’t want to get you sidetracked on this, I got something else to do with this [the Comeaux book].
Verna We see y’all later.
Lena Mae: Ok, come back Verna [??]
Verna: Nice meeting you.
JD: Ok, bye bye. Ok, so Myon and Agnes…check this out just to make sure I have it right. Lena Mae, you were the oldest? The first born? Was Milton next? And then Dot?
Lena Mae: Alberta.
JD: Alberta was next? And, and, was Dot after that?
Lena Mae: Dot.
JD: And, and then…
Lena Mae: Albert.
JD: Albert, and then Carol Ann. Now that was the children, the six of y’all. Right?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Ok. Alberta…Milton, Milton married…who?
Lena Mae: Hester.
JD: And then Hester married Pete [Johnson] after that [Milton was killed offshore]. And, what was Putt’s first name?
Edward: Albert.
JD: It was Albert, hunh? Lena Mae and Edward, Milton and Hester, Dot and Putt, Carol Ann…what, what’s his first name?
Edward: Elton.
JD: Elton, that’s what I thought. Gertie’s first…Gertie’s last name was what?
Edward: Who?
JD: Ah, uh…
Lena Mae: Persilver.
JD: [garbled] Persilver? She was probly from Charenton, eh? Charenton area?
Lena Mae:
JD: [or] Baldwin?
Lena Mae: I think so…Charenton…
Edward: …on the levee…
JD: And Alberta? Married…?
Edward?
Lena Mae: Jerry.
JD: Jerry…Marcotte.
Edward: My name be Jerry Marcotte, I’d change it [laughs].
JD: I thought y’all were friends. What you got there Lena Mae? A game? I say, I thought y’all were friends?
Lena Mae: They are, Jim.
Edward: Yeah, we are.
JD: Alright Lena Mae, I already have your people. Ok Edward, …OK, Edward. Edward, can you list em your…your brothers and sisters? Please?
Edward: How you want em?
JD: Any way they come, it doesn’t matter.
Edward: Oldest one first?
JD: That would be best, if you could.
Edward: Oldest one was Lester.
JD: Lester. Is he alive or dead?
Lena Mae: Half brother.
JD: That’s half brother?
Edward: Half brother.
JD: OK, and, and…
Edward: And oldest sister was Elvina [Alvina].
JD: Elvina? Is she alive?
Edward: No. Ain’t but two of us livin.
JD: And who’s next?
Edward: I think it was Son…Joseph.
JD: Joseph? They called him Son?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: OK, and he’s deceased also?
Edward: …Tete. Viola.
JD: Viola.
Edward: Lange.
JD: That’s Tete? And she married…?
Edward: Dan Lange.
JD: Dan Lange? [Tete, Viola] She was the one who didn’t like me?
Edward: Yeah. There was Tootsie…her name was Nelly [Nellie].
JD: Nelly? Tootsie.
Edward: Yeah. She married to a Verrett...then a Loreauville.
JD: Tell me, tell me if these people are still alive.
Edward: None of em’s livin. Uhuh.
JD: And who else after…after Tootsie?
Edward: …was Abner.
JD: Abner? And he married…?
Edward: Louisa…Louisa Domingue. She was a Domingue. Then, Margaret.
JD: Margaret.
Edward: She’s livin.
JD: Abner’s dead, OK. Now, you said some of these were half and some of em whole?
Edward: Lester’s the only half.
JD: Only half. OK. Would it be useful to me to know who these people married? I have the ones that…Dan Lange is connected to your…
Edward: Lester was married to Lula Meyers [sp?]
JD: OK.
Edward: And Son was married to Arma [actually Felicia Louise] Ganaway.
JD: What’s her first name?
Edward: Arma.
JD: Arma?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Ganaway?
Edward: Ganaway.
JD: OK. Tootsie…Elvina, Elvina…OK, so…all right. Well, that’s a good, that’s a good…that’s a good…
Lena Mae: Margaret was married to Floyd Mayon.
Edward: She married Floyd Mayon.
Lena Mae: He’s deceased.
JD: Floyd? Mayon. They brought Mayon blood back in…back …
Edward, when were you born?
Edward: November the 12, 1928.
JD: OK. And Lena Mae, I already have you…I already have all of your brothers and sisters down, so, we got that. just for the sake of getting in down here, [pause] let’s see if, let me just make sure I can…I list your, your oldest, you’re oldest child was Larry?
Lena Mae: Justin.
JD: Justin is your oldest? OK, Justin…and then?
Lena Mae: Larry.
JD: And then?
Lena Mae: Bonita.
JD: Then?
Lena Mae: Gwen.
JD: Then Kevin?
Lena Mae: Kevin.
JD: Ok. All right. Now, if I could, I’d really like to get…if y’all can remember …I’m gonna start this off now. I’d really like to start this off…this piece…by finding out what were the families that crossed the levee? Because what I’m tryin …what I’m tryin to focus on here is what I’m goin [proposing to] call the Myette Pt. community, and those that came and went, came and went, that’s not part of it – except if they were…if they…if there was a…if there’s something that involves them I’ll bring em in, but, mainly what I need to do is define the Myette Pt. community so I need to know what families crossed the levee. I’d like to start with…the best of your recollection…when did the people start to cross the levee…from the houseboats…bring something over the levee and put it on the bank on the other side. You said Myon was first? No…?
Edward: No…
JD: No, Abner, was first.
Lena Mae: That was…poo lord, that was before I got married..
JD: Now, by Abner, you talking about your brother? [Ec]
Edward: Yeah.
JD: OK, OK, Abner first. Then…that would help me to know [for dating, what she said] before you got married, alright, when did you get married?
Lena Mae: Hold it, hold it. It wasn’t Abner first, it was the dagoes first. John and Pete. [It was the
JD: Daigle?
Lena Mae: No, Galdalf [Gondolfo]. Frank’s uncle and daddy. They was the first, back of the levee [crossed over].
JD: OK. Were they on…were they on the canal with a houseboat? With y’all for a while?
Lena Mae: Yeah, they was livin in Bayou Grue.
JD: That’s close, to Myon’s Canal, right?
Lena Mae: Yeah. That other canal above us. They the first one moved over.
JD: OK. And that was who? John…
Lena Mae: John, Pete…and what was…Sam, there was three of em.
JD: John, Pete and…?
Lena Mae: Sam.
JD: Sam?
Lena Mae: They was three brothers.
JD: Gondolfo [Gondolfo]. OK. So, they were the first ones that moved…now you say they moved before you got married, now, ok. Let’s try to pin that down if we can.
Lena Mae: That was when we first moved over here [from across the lake].
JD: OK, when did you get married?
Lena Mae: I got married 1947.
JD: 1947. Alright, and they moved across the levee before…
Lena Mae: I guess maybe…two years before.
JD: About…but not ten. Not ten years, not that long…
Lena Mae: NO! No.
JD: But maybe two.
Lena Mae: Maybe two years before we moved.
JD: And you were married in ’47? So, they came across about in 1945.
Lena Mae: I’d say that.
JD: While the war was still goin on. While the second world war was still goin on.
Lena Mae: Yeah, oh yeah.
JD: Right at the end of the second world war, then, was when they moved. Cause it was over in 1946. Ok, so they moved over in 1945. Alright, and then…did people start comin over pretty regular right after that, or…?
Edward: Oh yeah.
Lena Mae: Right after that, Abner. And then us.
JD: Abner?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
Edward: No, I believe Bootsie was over there before your momma and them, eh?
Lena Mae: No. Bootsie and them had they house along the lake.
Edward: Yeah, but him and Yank, remember was married a long time before we got married…
Lena Mae: I know they was. But they was livin in the campboat.
Edward: I don’t know, ask em…
JD: Alright, so, so, if you can, if I can start then, if you would…y’all will…let’s name the families that were livin in the campboats that moved across the levee and became part of what you call Myette Pt. People who lived at Myette Pt. Alright, let’s start with y’all, we have, we have Edward Couvillier. OK, who else?
Lena Mae: There was my grandma and them.
JD: I put Myon Bailey down here. And then…who’s your grandma? What was her name?
Lena Mae: Rosalee.
JD: Rosalee…and did she…she and her husband have a houseboat?
Lena Mae: Her husband deceased for years before she…
Edward: Before they moved over here.
JD: But she had…who was she livin with?
Lena Mae: With her son, Monug… Preston.
Edward: Lived with two of em [sons] there for a while, Neg and Monug.
JD: Ok, Rosalee…or…I don’t have but three…I don’t have but three people here…that are Rosalee’s brothers and sisters. Oh, oh, Rosalee’s son, then that would have been Neg then, you talking about. Neg and…
Lena Mae: Preston, and Neg.
JD: How about Robert? There’s a Robert also there, huhn? And Preston? Neg was Cleo.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: OK, so, but…but she…but she, …but she lived with, but she lived with somebody else.
Lena Mae: Yeah, I mean that was they family, they lived in the campboat. Her and her two sons.
JD: Ok, then, her sons would have been Cleo Sauce…he was married to Nine at the time? Neg was married to Nine at the time?
Lena Mae: No…
JD: Cleo and Pres…Preston, you said? Sauce? Alright. So, when Neg…when Neg came across [the levee], he wasn’t married to Nine.?
Lena Mae: No.
JD: He and his brother pulled the houseboat across, and were livin in it like that. OK, lived with…Ok, so far we have…y’all were married, of course, by that time. Lena Mae. Myon and Agnes. Ok, so far I have four, now where we going from there? We already have Gandolfo, and Abner Couvillier. Right?
Lena Mae: Umhm.
JD: Who else?
Edward: Puttin…putting em in order gone be hard. The old man I believe, Lena Mae [??].
Lena Mae: And then, his [Edward’s] momma and daddy moved they camp, over the levee before we did.
JD: Who’s that?
Lena Mae: His momma and daddy.
Edward: Albert.
JD: Albert? That would be Albert senior?
Edward: Well, Putt was named Albert but he wasn’t…that was Putt’s grandpa. So, he wasn’t a senior, the old man, he didn’t have nobody named after him.
JD: He wasn’t a senior. Ok, Albert Couvillier. That’s, Edward, that’s your father.
Lena Mae: Putt, Albert and Ella, like that, that’s his momma. Then, you know, you’ll know the difference between the two Alberts.
JD: I don’t have…put what?
Lena Mae: Ella. Next to Albert.
JD: That’s who his wife was?
Lena Mae: Is that… was his momma’s name, yeah.
JD: Nella?
Lena Mae: Ella.
JD: Ella?
Lena Mae: …speaking.
JD: Oh, speakin? I thought you said sleepin. Your guests are still here?
Edward: Who?
JD: Your guests.
Edward: Yeah. [his kids staying in his house for awhile].
JD: [laughs] alright, who else came across?
Lena Mae: Us.
JD: I have y’all. I have y’all.
Lena Mae: Got momma and them?
JD: Uhun, Myon and Agnes.
Edward: Bootsie Millet.
JD: Who’s that? Who’s that? What was Bootsy’s first name? Roy?
Edward: Roy.
JD: Roy…Bootsie. Millet. Is it his family [that] the Point is named after?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: Yeah. …[then] Jesse Daigle.
JD: Who was he married to? Bootsie? Yank? What was her…what was her real name? Was that her real name?
Lena Mae: Ophelia.
Edward: Ophelia her real name.
Lena Mae: …first.
Edward: Yeah, my sister moved back here too.
JD: Ophelia, Yank, last name?
Lena Mae: Sauce.
JD: Sauce.
Lena Mae: Now let me get [?]…Jesse and them moved they house before Aunt Vina and them did.
Edward: Yep, I remember here done did this Jim. [looking at the Malcolm Comeaux book, moss picking, etc.]
JD: Where do i…Hunh? I thought you did!
Edward: I guess so.
JD: I thought you did.
Edward: Stand up in that derrick, go in them trees…pickin…
JD: Where am I tryin to find Yank on here [the chart I made?]. Where am I tryin to find Ophelia Sauce? Where was she…was she Agnes’ sister?
Lena Mae: [yes] Momma’s sister.
JD: Ok, ok, alright. Ok, Bootsie Millet and Ophelia Sauce.
Lena Mae: And then Joe Sauce.
JD: Joe Sauce, now we talking about Joe Sauce, Neg’s son?
Lena Mae: His [Edward’s] sister.
Edward: That was my sister’s husband. Elvina Sauce.
JD: Joe Sauce. That’s Neg’s brother, you sayin?
Edward: No, Neg’s uncle. That was my sister’s husband.
JD: [laughs at the confusion]
Lena Mae: That’s Elvina’s husband.
Edward: That was Agnes’ uncle.
JD: Agnes’ uncle. That’ll do it for me. That’ll do it.
Edward: Her daddy’s brother. Wasn’t it?
JD: Yeah, that’s what I have down here. I have Joe as Blaise’s brother.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Along with Milton and Bill, Guyon, …fourteen, there were fourteen people, apparently in that family. I don’t have all their names… Blaise’s brothers and sisters.
Lena Mae: Oh, I know them.
JD: You know them? Well, I want to get them from you in a minute. But I’d like to finish this list if I could. So, so far I’ve got y’all, Myon, Neg, who was livin with Preston and, and Rosalee Mayon.
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: And the Gondolfos. Uh…
Edward: There was Jesse Daigle.
Lena Mae: Jesse Daigle was the next one to move.
Edward: And my brother Lester was moved, across there.
JD: Is that [pronounced] “Dayg” or “Daygle”?
Edward: “Daygle” used to be Dayg, used to call it Dayg, but they changed it …
JD: Jesse Daigle, and he was married to Ida, right?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Ida Sauce. No, Ida Mayon.
Lena Mae: Ida Sauce.
Edward: Ida Sauce.
JD: Ida Sauce, that’s right. Sure, sure, sure. OK. Then, then who? After Jesse?
Lena Mae: Next one, they had a Miss Grace. that was Pete’s [Gondolfo] wife’s momma. She moved right next door to Jesse and Ida’s house.
JD: Did she have a houseboat of her own?
Lena Mae: She didn’t live on the water, she moved back of the levee.
JD: Oh, ok. What was her name?
Lena Mae: They call her Miss Grace. That’s all I know.
JD: Whose mother was she?
Lena Mae: That was Miss Clara’s momma.
JD: Is that somebody I should know?
Lena Mae: Pete…Pete Gondolfo…his wife’s momma.
JD: Ohh, ok. Alright, what was her name?
Lena Mae: They called her Grace.
JD: Grace.
Lena Mae: I guess she was a Postillo [sp?] cause….
JD: Postillo ??
Lena Mae: Petey! [fussing at the parrot]
JD: And she moved from, moved from another place on land.
Lena Mae: Bayou Grue canal.
JD: But she was on land anyway…
Edward: I believe they lived around Bayou Grue up there, eh? You know where Bayou Grue’s at?
JD: Just up the lake.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: OK. Anybody else was livin on the levee? If you take the first house when I met y’all, in 1972, the first house on the other end, far end, and come all the way this way. Have we left anybody out?
Edward: We left Lester, Arthur…
Lena Mae: You see, we started with Pete and them.
JD: Pete Gondolfo…
Lena Mae: Ok, there was them…
Edward: Goin the other way…
Lena Mae: There was…comin towards …our place. Then there was, …
Edward: Like from the blacktop goin…
Lena Mae: …Jesse,
JD: From the blacktop goin that way, from here goin back that way
Lena Mae: We up to where Yank and Bootsie and them was livin .
JD: Ok.
Lena Mae: Then they pulled grandma’s cabin right next to Yank and Bootsie. Back of the levee.
Edward: Then there was a Sam…
JD: Your grandmother?
Lena Mae: My grandmother. She was next door to Yank and them.
JD: Let me see…your grandmother would have been…
Lena Mae: Rosalee.
JD: Rosalee.
Edward: When you go up the levee, when you get to the levee? On the left hand side, that was Sam Gondolfo, Pete’s uncle. Had a lil shack. On the left hand side.
Lena Mae: I forgot that.
JD: I have Sam Gondolfo as comin across. I just need to get all the names, all the people who were head of the houseboat, or the family.
Edward: Pete Gondolfo…
Lena Mae: We up to grandma’s house.
Edward: And Dan Lange, Dan was next to…
JD: Lange, we don’t have Lange down here.
Edward: They was next to us.
JD: OK, now, he moved across the levee?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Dan Lange. Do y’all know who he was married to?
Edward: That’s Tete.
JD: Your sister?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: OK, what was her real name?
Edward: Viola.
Lena Mae: Shut up Petey! [the parrot again]
Edward: And then next to, next to them, my uncle, Uncle Joe used to live in a lil shack. Joe Sanders.
JD; Joe Sanders?
Edward: Yeah, that was momma’s brother.
JD: Your mother’s brother.
Edward: Umhm. You ain’t had his name cause we hadn’t….[gotten to his family]
JD: I don’t have your mother, see I got…
Edward: Yeah you had, I just gave it…Ella.
JD: Right here, I wanted to get right here…Ella?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Ella what?
Edward: Octavie.
JD: That was her last name?
Edward: No, that was her middle name.
JD: Octavie.
Edward: Umhm.
JD: What was her last name?
Edward: Sanders.
JD: Sanders. So that’s how you’re kin to the Sanders.
Edward: First cousins, you know?
JD: Your father’s full name?
Edward: Albert.
JD: Albert.
Edward: I think that was the only name he had…Albert.
JD: OK. I do…I do want to get, in a minute…I want to get…you have some records there …I would like to get your father’s brothers and sisters, if I can, and your mother’s brothers and sisters, if you have any memory of that. Wait, let’s make sure I got this, I want to complete this if I can. About all the people that came across and settled in at Myette Pt.
Edward: Ok, Uncle Joe Sanders?
JD: OK, I have Joe Sanders down here. Who he married?
Edward: Hunh?
JD: Married?
Lena Mae: TeeNug.
Edward: He was married…what was Aunt TeeNug, used to call her TeeNug, Arthur’s momma. TeeNug, that’s all…
JD: I’ll put that down. What was her last name before she was married?
Edward: Uhhhhh. Blankenship., no wait a minute…wait a minute. Jim, I might not even know.
Lena Mae: Ashley. Uhh? Was it Ashley?
Edward: No.
JD: OK, well probably Agnes might know.
Edward: No, Agnes…
JD: Agnes wouldn’t know that? She wouldn’t…
Edward: Arthur [Sanders] would know.
JD: Arthur Sanders would know?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Ok, well, if I need it I can go get that.
Edward: Yeah. But, uh…
JD: OK, Joe Sanders moved across…was he across on the canal with y’all?
Edward: Yeah, he used to live in a lil camp over there.
JD: On the canal…in the canal?
Edward: Unhum. And then next to him was Jesse and them, eh?
Lena Mae: Next to him was Jesse…
JD: Jesse Daigle.
Edward: Yeah, and then Russell…no, then Neg, huh? Neg…
Lena Mae: Yeah, there was Old Man Naquin next to Ida…Neg and them next to Ida.
Edward: And Old Man Naquin.
Lena Mae: Then Old Man Naquin.
Edward: Where was Russell [Daigle] at?
Lena Mae: Russell wasn’t married.
Edward: Don’t tell me Russell…
Lena Mae: He was livin in Morgan City.
Edward: Russell had that trailer out there Momma, when we moved…
Lena Mae: Yeah, after, he married Gail.
Edward: That’s what he [Jim D] talking about, he want to get who all was on the levee.
JD: Who all was on the levee…
Lena Mae: Oh, OK, it was Russell next door to, Neg I believe.
JD: But Russell, Russell and EJ ..talkin about Russell and EJ…
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Russell and EJ were, was their father, that was Jesse Daigle?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: So Jesse Daigle, when he pulled his boat across the levee, it was him and his [?]….Russell and EJ?
Lena Mae: It was, him, Russell, EJ and, Lil, the one that drownded.
JD: OK, but that takes care of him, see we got him down here as, we got his family so I’ll trace…I’ll…I’ll…I’ll get Russell and EJ, because I got Jesse Daigle down here.
Lena Mae: …the next one, Jesse, then there was Abner. You got old man Naquin, he was…
JD: I don’t have him. No, who is he? What was his first name?
Lena Mae: I don’t even know.
JD: I know this is hard, but …
Lena Mae: All I know is Mr. Naquin.
JD: Old man, and I put that…Naquin, huh?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: And where was he, did he have a wife that you know?
Lena Mae: No..
JD: Not married. OK. Do y’all know anything about, like, where he came from? Was he across the levee?
Lena Mae: You remember Jay Boudreaux, used to have that store at Western Auto?
Edward: Used to work….
JD: ….but anyway, was he a houseboat person?
Edward: No, no, uhuh…
JD: Mr. Naquin wasn’t? He came from on land? Moved there on land?
Edward: Yeah. Must have been from Franklin, I don’t know.
JD: It’s interesting that, some people moved out there who didn’t come across the levee.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: So far you got, you got, Miss Grace Postillo, I guess her name was?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: And Old Man Naquin, who both came from some place on land, they didn’t come from the houseboats.
Lena Mae: She came from a houseboat.
JD: She did?
Edward: [from] Bayou Grue.
JD: OK, on houseboat, then. I keep sayin houseboat cause that’s what I’m used to, but y’all always call them campboats.
Edward: Yeah, campboats.
JD: OK, is that the whole list?
Edward: You got Lester?
Lena Mae: You got up to Abner .
JD: No I don’t have a Lester on here. Where should I have Lester?
Lena Mae: You got Abner?
JD: I got Abner Couvillier.
Edward: …was Lester, you got Arthur Sanders?
Lena Mae: You see that…Abner was the next one after Old Man Naquin.
JD: Abner Couvillier?
Edward: No, wait a minute Momma, Abner lived next door to where Bootsie and them used to live, right there.
Lena Mae: …Bootsie, and then, uh…
Edward: Old Man Naquin was further up toward Neg.
Lena Mae: Yeah. It was Yank and them’s house, and then Abner’s house.
Edward: And you got Joe Sauce?
JD: I got Joe Sauce. That’s Agnes’ uncle.
Edward: Right.
JD: I got that.
Edward: And they was next door…to Bootsie, Roy.
JD: Roy Myette, I got him. With Yank Sauce.
Lena Mae: And Grandma next door. To Yank.
Edward: Then there was Myon.
JD: I got Myon.
Lena Mae: And then Abner.
JD: Abner Couvillier.
Edward: Then Putt [Couvillier] and them.
Lena Mae: After Abner, it was us, Momma.
Edward: Your momma, but I’m talking about after your momma…was Putt. Putt brought that lil house we had.
Lena Mae: Yeah, but we was there first Daddy…
Edward: We already moved up on the other end, over there [laughs], we can’t be in two places.
Lena Mae: …tryin to get it in order.
Edward: That’s what we tryin to do, that’s gon put it in order.
Jd; When Putt was married to Dot, were they livin on a campboat? In the canal?
Edward: No.
Lena Mae: No, no, uhuh.
JD: So they got married after y’all moved across [the levee].
Edward: Yeah, uhunh.
JD: So, most of the marriages, then, we could say that …if the movement started across in 1945..?
Edward: But what I’m talking about, put em in order,
JD: On land, you talking about?
Edward: Hencock [Putt Couvillier] was livin next door to Myon.
JD: OK, the reason that I thought…
Edward: And the old man was next door to Putt.
JD: The reason that I thought to put em in order, I don’t mean that I have to get em like they were on land. What I thought was that would be the easiest way to remember every one of em.
Edward: Yeah. There was Arthur Louviere, had a house.
JD: Alright, now there’s another name. Was he across the levee? Was he in the water?
Edward: No, they never did live in the water.
JD: Arthur Louviere…
Lena Mae: Tootsie did….
Edward: Tootsie did, but she didn’t move a camp across the levee.
JD: Arthur Louviere. Is that Bernie Louviere’s family?
Edward: That was Bernie’s brother… my sister [Tootsie].
JD: OK, now, who did Arthur Louviere marry?
Edward: My sister, Nellie.
JD: Nellie?
Edward: Tootsie.
JD: Tootsie.
Edward: [?]
Lena Mae: No, there was Duttie and Bernie, after they got married. They was between Arthur and the church.
Edward: When?
Lena Mae: When they first got married.
JD: Where did Arthur Louviere come from…?
Lena Mae: Down the levee, by the …?
JD: OK, so he came from the land too?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: ….so he came from the land too.
Edward: …don’t have a recollection…Bernie lived…Bernie was livin…
Lena Mae: When they first got married, they lived between Tootsie and the church…
Edward: Bernie built that house up there where Joe Sauce used to live…
Lena Mae: Yeah, after.
Edward: That house he got there now.
Lena Mae: After. Duttie was livin next door to Tootsie when her and Bernie first got married.
Edward: What they was livin in?
Lena Mae: Some lil shack they had between there.
JD: Ok, see if…see if I can make some sense out of this now.
Edward: We can’t Jim, how you gone do it?
JD: [laughs] See if, …y’all gon fight…see if let me see if I can name these family names and if y’all can be thinking about who was in the canal. Who was in campboats in the canal.
Edward Couvillier, Myon Bailey, Cleo Sauce, the Gondolfos, Abner Couvillier, and then Albert Couvillier, Bootsie Millet, Joe Sauce…
Edward: Bootsie wasn’t livin in a camp, there.
Lena Mae: Yeah, they lived in that flat yellow campboat.
JD: Bootsie and Yank?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: [continuing] Joe Sauce (Agnes’s uncle), Jesse Daigle, Miss Grace Postillo, but y’all didn’t …she was up at Bayou Grue…
Lena Mae: No, she wasn’t around us, she was …
JD: But, she was on a campboat?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: [continuing] Dan Lange, Joe Sanders, …old man Naquin came from land, and so did Arthur Louviere.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: But then, that’s the families we can think of that were in the canal?
Edward: You got Lester? Lester and them was livin out there too.
JD: Lester who?
Edward: Couviller…Putt’s daddy.
JD: He was in a campboat?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: What was his married…? He married who?
Edward: Lula.
JD: Lula Meyers?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: Do I have her anywhere on this list?
Edward: Umhm. Sposed to have.
JD: Who was she?
Edward: Putt’s momma.
JD: I don’t have her on this list. Oh…no.
Edward: You got her somewhere…I give it to you just now.
JD: ….ooohh…
Edward: Where’s Lester? Find Lester.
JD: Lester….Lester was half! That’s what it was…Lula Meyers was his…ok, ok, that was his wife. Ok, but he was half.
Edward: Right.
JD: Ok, alright. Well, that’s it then. That’s the…that’s the Myette Pt. community…
Edward: Umhm. You got Arthur Sanders? Arthur Sanders?
Lena Mae: They got one more family livin there that you don’t have…in a campboat.
JD: Wait a minute, Arthur Sanders? And he was married to?
Edward: He wasn’t married, he shacked up with …uh…
JD: Well, was it, common law …you would say?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: What was her name?
Edward: Avia Comeaux.
JD: Avia, that was her first name?
Edward: Avia. She was a Comeaux.
JD: Avia Comeaux. Arthur Sanders…that’s our Arthur Sanders, right here [at Myette Pt. now] you talking about?
Edward: Yeah. The one used to live here [Oxford Loop]
JD: OK.
Lena Mae: There was a Gene Smith lived in the canal too.
Edward: Yeah, but Gene Smith didn’t pull over the levee.
Lena Mae: No.
JD: So he didn’t become part of the canal…part of the community..
Edward: Yeah, he didn’t pull over the levee.
JD: You named somebody else just now while we were talking about Arthur Sanders. Who was that?
Edward: Hm. Me?
JD: I got you.
Edward: I…I…I named somebody else?
JD: Yeah, you or Lena Mae, One of y’all named somebody else while we were talking about Arthur Sanders.
Lena Mae: Talkin about Gene Smith, livin in a campboat …
JD: No, got that and it’s not…
Lena Mae: Then you see, Al Smith and them lived on the levee, but they moved to Venice over there. They weren’t on a campboat.
JD: Were they fishermen?
Edward: Oh, there’s a bunch of people.
JD: Were they fishermen? Al Smith?
Lena Mae: I don’t know what …
Edward: He might a did a lil fishin, but not that much.
JD: He’s the one who just died, you talking about?
Edward: Yeah. And all the kids, like …
JD: OK, what Gandolfo’s were livin in that, when they came across? We talking about John, Pete and Sam were all livin in the same houseboat?
Edward: Naw, uh there were different…
Lena Mae: No, there was three different boats.
JD: OK, three boats. Which one is kin to Frank [Gondolfo]?
Lena Mae: John, John was his daddy.
JD: John was his father?
Edward: They both was…the rest of em was Frank’s uncles. Pete and John, I mean Pete and Sam.
JD: So, John was Franks father.
Edward: Umhm.
JD: And Pete is his brother?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Boy, how you can create two things that are not alike, eh? Pete and Frank?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: Alright. Well, that’s…there were…must have been …well, let’s try to figure this out, then. From this let’s try to figure out how many campboats were in the canal. Let’s try to figure that out from here. Couvillier. Edward had one. Myon Bailey had one. Rosalee Mayon lived with Neg and and Preston Sauce, all of em together in one.
Edward: Umhm.
JD: Gandolfo had three. Right? Abner Couvillier had one. Albert Couvillier had one. Bootsie Millet had one. Joe Sauce had one. Jesse Daigle had one. Miss Grace Postillo, she moved from Bayou Grue, she didn’t have one in the canal.
Lena Mae: No.
JD: Dan Lange had one. Joe Sanders had one.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Old Man Naquin didn’t.
Edward: No.
JD: Arthur Louviere didn’t.
Edward: No.
JD: Lester Couviller.
Edward: Lester had one.
JD: He had one. And Arthur Sanders had one. That’s it? That’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
Lena Mae: Nick Verrett had one.
JD: Oops. Who?
Lena Mae: Nick Verrett, Tootsie’s husband.
Edward: But he didn’t move it over the levee.
Lena Mae: No. He want to know who was in the canal.
JD: Ok, let’s do that. Nick Verrett.
Edward: If we keep goin back you can go to Laurie Mayon and all them. Laurie live there for a while. Alvin Mayon lived there for a while.
Lena Mae: Not on this side…
Edward: Alvin used to live in that canal years ago.
JD: I’m interested in who was livin the canal when y’all started movin over. In 1945…
Edward: Laurie and them wasn’t there at that time.
JD: And Nick Verrett was in a houseboat , in a campboat, but did not move it over.
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: OK. So he was in a campboat but didn’t move it over. So he had one. Anybody else that y’all can think of that was in the canal that didn’t move over? Left? One, two, thee, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…sixteen campboats in that canal? That was a good-sized bunch. Sixteen campboats! That’s a good-sized bunch!
Lena Mae: You see they didn’t maybe all was there at one time, but they’d move in and move out. Some of em.
JD: But all of em…but uh…
Lena Mae: Most of em moved over the levee.
JD: What I was gonna say, right at the end though, there was at least, fifteen of em. That had to be there pretty close together because they all moved over the levee.
Edward: Well Jim, I got some diet coke there, you want some?
JD: I want some. I’d take some diet coke. [laughs]
Edward: Knew you was comin. So I went and got a bottle.
JD: And y’all welcome to share any amount. I know y’all don’t drink it but.
[noise in the kitchen with ice]
Edward: I ought to, don’t get me wrong.
JD: You what? You ought to? Oh well. Well, that’s good stuff! You see I didn’t have any of that [the people in the canal and crossing the levee]. That’s good stuff. That’s good stuff. And started move over in 1945. OK, Edward, OK, Edward, your daddy’s name, Edward, again.
Edward: Albert.
JD: Albert. Not senior, or anything else.
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: Your mothers name?
Edward: Ella.
JD: Ella Octavie, eh?
Edward: Yeah, Octavie.
JD: Sanders. Ok, Edward, …
Edward: Here, you want some ice? Want some ice?
JD: Thank you Edward, I appreciate you doin that. Edward, your brothers and sisters? Can you list em for me?
Edward: I give em to ya [already].
JD: Well…there they are right there.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: I got that. How about your…what I need is your…is your…is your uncles and aunts, if you remember them. How about your daddy’s brothers and sisters, you have any…This doesn’t have to be all of em…just what you can remember.
Edward: My old man had one sister.
JD: One sister.
Edward: Full sister.
Continued on Chapter 16
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier
Blog Ch 16 Tape 09 Side B
Continued from Chapter 15.
Edward: Amelia.
JD: Amelia, she was Couvillier, of course. You have any idea who she married?
Edward: No.
JD: OK, that’s all right.
Edward: I wouldn’t have the least idea, Jim. I remember when I was a kid…
JD: How about your daddy’s brothers, you remember any of them?
Edward: He had Uncle Willie…
JD: Willie?
Edward: That was a Anslem…that was half brother, now.
JD: Anslem.
Edward: yeah. And Uncle Pete. Pete Anslem.
JD: Pete Anslem, was another half…
Edward: And Uncle Joe…
JD: So that’s how the Anslems get into this family, huh?
Edward: Joe Anslem. Uncle Pete, Uncle Willie and Uncle Joe. And Uncle Bud. Bud Anslem. …was my daddy’s half brothers. And that’s about it.
JD: Bud.
Edward: Yeah. I guess that…that…I don’t know if that was a nickname or what. …Uncle Bud.
JD: That’s ok, that’s ok, now, do you remember any of your momma’s brothers or sisters at all?
Edward: Yeah. There was Uncle Henry…
JD: Henry?
Edward: I knew more of hers. Uncle Joe…
JD: He was of course…they were all Sanders.
Edward: Sanders.
JD: These were all full brothers and sisters.
Edward: Yeah. Aunt Elizabeth.
JD: Elizabeth.
Edward: there was Aunt Rose. Uhhhh…
Lena Mae: Aunt Emmalena was your momma’s sister, eh?
Ed: Yeah, Aunt Emmalena.
Lena Mae: And what about your uncle John? The one that died?
Edward: That was half. That was Uncle, the one that lived in,…the one we went and seen up the country up there Momma?
Lena Mae: Uncle George.
Edward: There was Uncle George. Alberta, his name was Alberta.
JD: Was it really Alberta?
Edward: And Aunt Mary, she was Mary Alberta, that was Momma’s half brother and half sister.
JD: George Alberta Sanders.
Edward: …Mary…
JD: That was half.
Edward: Half.
JD: And…Mary?
Edward: Mary.
JD: Also half?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: What was her…?
Edward: Alberta.
JD: George Alberta, George Alberta…half. Was that half a Sanders? In other words…
Edward: Naw, he was Alberta.
JD: The last name was Alberta??
Edward: Yeah, that was his name.
JD: I had no idea…I never head that before. His last name was Alberta?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: George Alberta.
JD: And Mary Alberta, too?
Edward: Yeah. That was his sister, his full sister.
JD: I never heard of that. How about John?
Edward: John?
JD: John …his half…his half something? That was a Sanders…
Edward: Yeah, that was full brother, there.
JD: That was full.
Edward: Yeah. He died…I remember him …Uncle John. …that was the brothers.
JD: Henry and Joe…
Edward: Henry, Joe and John.
JD: And then Elizabeth, Rose and Emelina…sisters.
Edward: [mumbles] I believe that was all. Wait a minute, Tom Randal…that was Aunt Rose…
Lena Mae: You got Aunt Elizabeth?
Edward: I’m tryin to figure how A.J. and them….OK, that was the Old Man’s brother’s…[?] Yeah, OK. What names you got on there?
JD: Your father’s…your father’s brother? I have, I have all halfs.
Lena Mae: All half’s daddy.
JD: All halfs.
Edward: Not A.J. A.J.’s daddy was full.
Lena Mae: A.J. was a Couvillier…
JD: A.J.?
Lena Mae: Wasn’t he?
Edward: Yeah, OK. He had a brother named Ozime, the Old Man.
JD: Ozime, hunh? And that’s full.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: So, he was a Couvillier.
Edward: Yeah…that’s all I can remember…might have more than that.
JD: So far you have Odelia [?] and Ozime as the two full. Brother and sister. One full brother and one full sister. And we have…we have four half brothers.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Willie, Pete, Joe and Bud.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: These people may never come up, you understand? They may never come up in any of this. But, it’s nice if I can go back and see where they fit in.
Edward: When you [?], make that book, put some names in it. See like some of these people…I might know some of them …
JD: You mean the pictures like that? [looking at Comeaux’s book?]
Edward: I might know some of em.
JD: Yeah you might. His, …
Edward: Like these people here? Crab fishermen…have a name, you know? And that way you’d know if you know em.
JD: Uhunh. Yeah, that’s right. OK. That is good.
Edward: And all this stuff here [in the book] looks familiar to me, you know?
JD: Well, sure it does look familiar to you, I think you probably did it all.
Edward: This here…I know that man right there.
Lena Mae: Let me see that book, Daddy?
JD: Do yall happen to know…have yall ever heard, Rosalee Mayon, Agnes’ mother. Her parents were Claiborne Mayon and Fannie May Mason? Do yall know, do yall know at all if they were in the United States … were they born here?
Edward: I don’t know Jim.
JD: the reason I ask that question is Agnes’ grandparents on the other side – Larnce Sauce and Ophelia Simoneaux were both born in Europe. One was from France and one from Spain. And I was curious to know if the other two came from Europe.
Lena Mae: I don’t know.
JD: Let me ask yall another question while I’m on this right here. Do you think it’s alright to talk to Agnes about this kind of stuff? Right now? Or do you think she’s …I’m worried…I thought maybe it would remind her of Myon and stuff, and…
Lena Mae: No, she likes to talk about Daddy [Myon].
JD: She does?
Lena Mae: She don’t mind talking about Daddy. Sit down and tell us some stories sometime…
Edward: Jim? On the Couvilliers …If you want to know anything about the Couvillier family, go talk to Gloria Ann.
Lena Mae: She’s got books…tryin to make a family tree.
JD: All right, help me out, I don’t know that person. Who’s Gloria Ann?
Lena Mae: Alvin Marcotte..
Edward: Alvin Marcotte’s wife, my niece. Tete and Dan’s daughter.
JD: Wait a minute, wait a minute…
Edward: They got the history on the Couvilliers, her and Darlene [Soule].
Lena Mae: They tryin to build a family tree, you see. They got all a that.
Edward: She can tell you which ones come from overseas, or what.
Lena Mae: But that’s gone be on the Couvilliers and Lange side.
JD: Let me try to find this now…
Edward: What you mean, on the Lange side? Noo, on the Couvillier side, ain’t nothing to do with the Langes. [to JD] you got both of em, you got Dan and Tete down there somewhere.
JD: I got Dan Lange married to Viola.
Edward: Yeah, that’s it, that’s her…their daughter.
JD: OK, their daughter is who?
Edward: Gloria Ann.
JD: Where does she live?
Edward: Baldwin.
JD: Baldwin?
Lena Mae: [looking at the Malcolm Comeaux book] You know this look like Myrtle’s old camp. cabin.
JD: It is. it’s in there.
Edward: Where?
JD: It’s in there, her and her husband are in there.
Lena Mae: That’s it, eh?
JD: Well, it should say it. I don’t know if it says in on there. But, her married name was Bigler, wasn’t it?
Edward: Yeah. No, this is Belle River.
JD: That’s in Belle River?
Lena Mae: Daddy, go see. She say the TV ain’t workin. I don’t want you messin with my TV. [speaking to a child in the room]
JD: So, she [Gloria Ann Lange] has records, you’re sayin.
Lena Mae: Yeah, she got all kind of records.
JD: In Baldwin. All right. That’s good. That’s good. I’m gonna draw all this up in a chart, that’s gonna show the family.
When, when people came over the levee, or even while they were livin on the houseboats on the other side – there were fifteen houseboats and fifteen families – was there a good bit of marriage between people who lived in the houseboats?
Lena Mae: Yeah, Neg and Nine got married.
JD: OK, Neg and Nine, that’s one.
Lena Mae: Me and Edward got married.
JD: You and Edward got married.
Edward: Bootsie and Yank.
Lena Mae: Yank and Bootsie got married.
Edward: Putt and Dot.
JD: Putt and Dot.
Lena Mae: Well, they was over the levee when they got married.
JD: That’s ok, just still in all, just…
Edward: And Roy, and Tootsie’s daughter, and Bernie Louviere’s daughter and Roy Millet’s son had got married too, you see. So, ah there was a bunch of em.
JD: People like Joe [Sauce] and EJ and Russell [Daigle] and them, they found girls in town I guess, huh?
Lena Mae: Well, no, you see Blue [Anslem] and them was livin in, …
Edward: They was livin in Calumet.
Lena Mae: In Calumet.
Edward: They come from on the water too.
JD: In Calumet?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
Edward: You see, Joe, Joe, Joe’s wife and EJ’s wife, well, me and her daddy…their daddy first cousins.
JD: Joe’s wife?
Edward: Joe’s wife and EJ’s wife. Me and their daddy is first cousins.
JD: Right, now I have, what was …what was their maiden name?
Edward: Anslem.
JD: They were Anslem, both of em, both EJ and Joe’s wife …both Anslem?
Edward: That was Pete Anslem…that was Uncle Bud’s son.
JD: Ok, I was about to say, so they come from …no…they weren’t on …those people weren’t on … at Myette Point, though.
Edward: No, Blue and EJ and them, I don’t believe Blue lived at Myette Pt. when they got married.
Lena Mae: Blue and EJ? Well, yeah.
Edward: Where they lived at?
Lena Mae: Daddy, they were livin at Myette Pt. when we moved over here, they put they trailer over next to Neg’s.
JD: Did you say Pete Anslem? And that was Blue?
Edward: Blue’s daddy.
JD: OK, and, and Joe’s wife too?
Edward: Flo, yeah.
JD: Were they sisters?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: They are?
Edward: uhhunh.
JD: I didn’t know that. I didn’t know they were sisters. So, there’s quite a few pairs that got together, including yall – because the houseboats were around each other. So that means that those houseboats must have stuck around together pretty well.
Edward: Uhhunh. Well, after everybody moved in there, moved across the levee, that was it. Before that, you know, people would always move around, but they’d always come back. They’d move out and come back.
JD: Was there anybody that wasn’t welcome to come back? That moved out?
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: Everybody got along pretty well?
Edward: Aw, we had lil squabbles every now and then, everybody do that. Bootsie Millet and them, he was about the worst one. Thought he was a big bully out there.
JD: Is that right? But it seemed like, from what I gather from all of this, that throughout all of these moves, early on when yall were livin at Blaise’s Canal on the other side, it seemed like Myon, look like he was, people kind of collected around him. Is that , is that,…?
Edward: Not really.
JD: Not really?
Edward: Uhuh. Until he got kids, [then] some of em stayed around him.
JD: Because I understood that he, he kind of…
Edward: Like he was a leader?
JD: Yeah.
Edward: Naw, uhuh.
Lena Mae: Well…everybody…something would happen they’d run to daddy.
JD: Well, that’s what I’m talking about, I’m not talking about he told people what to do, that’s not what I mean.
Edward: People that lived around here, you know, after we moved in here [to Oxford], but uh…
Lena Mae: They, they’d all go to daddy, you know, if something …they needed to know somethin, or, somebody get sick or something, or …
JD: Or there was trouble and they were trying to decide what to do? They would go and at least find out what he thought.
Lena Mae: Yeah, they’d find out what he thought, and …
JD: Now was his…was Agnes’ father the same way, Blaise, did people kind of…?
Lena Mae: Kind of…
JD: Go to him for…
Edward: I didn’t know him…fact I never did see him.
JD: You never did?
Edward: Uhuh. If I did, I don’t remember.
JD: Now your people…your people ….
Lena Mae: For as getting along with people Jim, we always did get along with people. Fer as that, there was no problem. You’d have a few words maybe, and then it would…
JD: Clear it up?
Lena Mae: Clear it up. Forget about it. Nobody held grudges.
JD: Ok.
Edward: Wasn’t nobody perfect, but…
JD: Well, yeah. OK, you, Edward, your family, Albert and Ella, when all this was goin on, all this campboat livin in the Basin and everything was goin on, where was your family livin?
Edward: We lived different places, Jim, like I say, people moved.
JD: But I mean you lived on campboats?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: See, that’s something I don’t have. I don’t have that on tape.
Edward: Well, not all my life. You see, when we lived on Lil Pigeon we was livin in a house. Then when we moved on Catfish [Bayou], we lived in a house.
JD: Because the Basin didn’t rise and fall like it does now?
Edward: It would rise, the house …was settin on logs, put it on logs, yeah.
JD: But it would be that high, it would be safe. Not like now.
Edward: Right, and then after Catfish, we moved in a houseboat. Then we moved – then we moved from Catfish to Keelboat, we moved to Bayou Boutte, we moved to them canals down there, we Canal lived in Young’s, we lived (at) Myette Pt., we lived up the channel. I mean, that’s what I said, just so many different places…
JD: I understand, I understand and I want to get information on all that too.
Edward: We moved up the channel….
JD: Let’s try to figure out when it was yall moved onto campboats, so, if we could, based on how old you were.
Edward: That was in…I guess it was in the early 40s, the beginnin of ’40, ’41, somewheres around there.
JD: Let’s see, let’s take it from your age.
Edward: I was 12 years old….
JD: I got that the other day on tape, when I was….
Edward: I started school … was 12 years old, and right after that we moved into a campboat. Cause I was going to school (when) we was still livin in Catfish in this house.
JD: Yeah, and you told me you had to walk across the …thru the swamp to get to the schoolboat …
Edward: It was about ’41, ’42 when we…when we got that camp.
JD: How many of yall moved onto the camp?
Edward: There was just me and the old man and Momma.
JD: Just the three of you?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Well, where were all these brothers …
Edward: Well, yeah, Abner was married when we moved on that camp. Margaret was married, and, …
JD: OK, so, by the time yall moved onto the campboat….
Edward: I take it back. Margaret wasn’t married, cause Margaret and Floyd got married when we was livin in Young’s Canal over there. Me and Abner and Margaret and the Old Man and Momma. There was three of us …four…five.
JD: Five of yall that got on the campboat.
Edward: Umhmm.
JD: And do you remember, I may have asked you this on tape the other day and I may have it, if I do that’s alright, but [the question of] why yall went on the campboat?
Edward: I wouldn’t know Jim.
JD: You just don’t remember.
Edward: Just don’t remember. We built the camp and just started movin different places with it, you know.
JD: Well, that’s, that’s…
Edward: I wish we woulda built it anther 10 years sooner and moved where they had a school at where I coulda went…all of us coulda went to school. I was the only one that went to school a lil bit.
JD: How long did you go to school?
Edward: I went to eighth grade.
JD: You did? You started when you were 12…you started in the first grade?
Edward: Yeah. I made two, three grades a year.
JD: You did? So, you went…you went like maybe…four years, five years to school?
Edward: Six, seven years, I guess.
JD: Six or seven.
Edward: Six years.
JD: And when you quit in the…you quit in the eighth grade?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: You remember why you quit?
Edward: That’s the highest they went.
JD: Oh, that’s the highest…you had to go to another school?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Where was the other school?
Edward: That woulda been in town. They didn’t have none out there.
JD: In town, so you only went to the eighth grade.
Edward: Eighth grade was the highest they went out there. That’s as fer as I could go.
JD: That was on Keelboat [Pass]?
Edward: Yeah, Keelboat and Hog Island.
JD: There was a school on….?
Edward: Well, on Hog Island, I didn’t go over there. They moved the school after I left Keelboat.
JD: Let me…is there anybody in your bathroom, you think? Let me shut this off.
[resumed in conversation about who had houses on the levee and who moved to Oxford when the Corps of Engineers made them get off the levee]
Lena Mae: EJ [Daigle] had his trailer here, I forgot about that.
JD: In the right here…. [looking at a map]
Edward: Over here…
Lena Mae: Over there by Ida’s [Daigle]. Ida’s house, EJ’s trailer, Joe’s trailer, and Neg’s house. All in a line.
JD: Yeah. That’s a good thing for us to put down…..
Edward: Russell [Daigle] lived here too.
Lena Mae: Russell was livin right here…
Edward: Where? Yeah, Russell lived right there after me.
JD: OK, move to Oxford then. [from the levee to Oxford Circle]. OK, that would be yall, Myon, well, let me go down this list I have down here. This would be Neg?, Gondolfo, but that would be Frank, Abner Couvillier….he moved here [Oxford] ?
Edward: No, he moved right over there, I mean it was right here [down the road from Oxford but not in the Loop where Edward and the rest moved].
JD: OK, so that’s to Oxford, then [general area]
Lena Mae: Still Oxford.
JD: Albert Couvillier?
Edward: No, no….yeah, Putt [nickname].
JD: Putt did. Where was Putt during all these 15 houseboats I have right here [list previously made]. Where was he?
Edward: He didn’t live on the…with his daddy and them. Well, he live out there when he was a kid, you see, but after he got married, he got married after he moved back of the levee.
JD: But who was his daddy in here [the list]?
Edward: Albert, I mean Lester.
JD: Lester, Lester was his daddy.
Edward: Putt’s daddy.
JD: Should I have him on here as one of the people who owned a houseboat out there? Lester?
Edward: Yeah, yeah.
JD: I don’t. I have Albert Couvillier.
Edward: Lester’s on there [the list], should be way at the bottom.
JD: He should? Arthur Sanders, Nick Verrett….no, I don’t have Lester Couvillier on here.
Lena Mae: He was livin here when we moved here.
JD: But he was in a campboat out there?
Edward: Yeah, he lived in a campboat at the end too [on the lake end of Myon’s Canal]. And he moved back of the levee, that was Putt’s daddy.
JD: And…who was his wife?
JD: Lula, Lula Meyers. You got that, I done give it to you three times.
JD: Here it is. Right there. There it is.
Lena Mae: Tell you who else you don’t have. Carol Ann and Elton moved on the levee, Jack and Helen [Sauce]…
Edward: You not gone to be able to get everybody lived out there…
Lena Mae: Jack and Helen lived on the levee.
JD: Ok, Lester, these are Putt’s parents.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: OK, who else moved here? Bootsie Millet didn’t, he moved to town didn’t he?
Lena Mae: Yeah. To town.
Edward: Yeah, well they moved to town before we moved over here.
JD: Joe Sauce, he didn’t move here. Jesse Daigle did.
Lena Mae: Yeah, Joe Sauce moved here.
Edward: Not Joe….
JD: Blaise’s brother [Joe]. Miss Grace didn’t here. Dan Lange…
Edward: Yeah, they did.
JD: Joe Sanders. No. Arthur Sanders did. Lester Couvillier?
Edward: No.
JD: Nick Verrett?
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: So, the families that moved here then would have been, Couvilliers, Baileys, Sauces, Gondolfos, Daigles, Langes and Sanders.
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: Louvieres.
JD: Louvieres?
Edward: Arthur Louviere.
JD: Arthur Louviere did.
Lena Mae: Arthur’s daddy. Bernie…they all moved over here.
Edward: Bernie Louviere moved over here – but you don’t have Bernie on there I don’t believe.
JD: Bernie would have been…Arthur Louviere’s brother?
Edward: Brother.
JD: Bernie…Bernie moved out to the levee too?
Edward: Yeah, Bernie was livin at the levee, then he moved that house over here.
JD: From the bank?
Edward: Yeah, unhun.
JD: OK, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine family names…moved to Oxford. OK. Nine family names.
Edward: Yeah, not counting the kids.
JD: No, just the family names. Just Couvilliers, Baileys, Sauces, Gondolfos, Daigles, Langes, Louvieres and Sanders,.
Edward: You see, Larry lived out there in a trailer on the levee; Bonita lived in a trailer out there at the levee.
JD: That was all the kids, yeah.
Edward: Yeah. That’s what I’m sayin, if you named everybody that moved out there and moved back, man you need a whole….
JD: Yeah, I don’t need to do all that, just…
Edward: Mike Sanders lived out there, Annie lived out there, Panhandle [Albert Bailey Jr.]
Lena Mae: It’s just beaucoup, you know, if you want to go down the line…you know…
JD: No, I think this is enough. What I was thinking of was I’m thinking of I’m drawin a blank…those….I’m tryin to think of Elton or somebody like that. A tall, good lookin fellow that, when yall moved here, he moved up in the front [near the highway]. Right on the corner over there, who was that?
Lena Mae: You mean, not in the block?
JD: Yeah. Just up in front.
Lena Mae: That was Abner’s son, Abner…
Edward: That was Elton. Elton and Charles.
JD: Now, were they…Abner, who was his wife?
Edward: Liza, you got that too.
JD: OK, I’m goin to put it down here anyway.
Edward: They all live in New Iberia, now.
JD: OK, OK, that’s good. That’s a good start.
Edward: You get to Neg, there, you get another big start. Ida give you a coupla pages.
[Phone rings, Lc has a conversation on it]
JD: I don’t know if you were….Yeah you were too…I have some tapes, talking to Myon and Agnes next door over there and we were trying to figure out…talking to Myon and Agnes about there parents and their grandparents…is where they lived. To start off with, where they lived on land, and so on. And I got a good bit of information about Agnes, and when we were talking about the older people, where they were buried, Myon and Agnes started talking about – Agnes started talking about “the Canal” on Lake Verret. And…you remember those conversations? You remember her talking about that?
Lena Mae: I heard em talk about it years ago.
JD: Well, they got to talking about what it was, The Canal, that people were buried in a cemetery on the canal, and I asked Myon, I said, well, what canal you talking about? He said well it’s really not a canal. He says there’s a road that goes from Lake Verret to Napoleonville. And he says on the right side of that road somewhere along there there’s a cemetery and there used to be an old church, and he said that’s where I believe those old people are buried. Agnes said she thought that too. So, I was lookin at some maps this week and I was tryin to figure out where could that old church have been, where could that cemetery be and why was this place called a canal when there wasn’t any water. And I made some real interesting, interesting, connections to what they were talking about, I think. Turns out that that highway, that road that Myon was talking about that goes from the lake to Napoleonville, it’s still a highway, it’s now called highway 401, it’s on the map. But it still left the question, if it’s a highway why did they call it a canal? Well, I searched one place and another and one place and another and I came up with what I think is the answer. At one time, it was a canal, where the road is now there was a canal. And that’s the map [showing one] that tipped me off to it, right here.
this is the Atchafalaya Basin in 1863….1863, that a hundred and what? That’s about almost a hundred and fifty years ago. That’s what the Atchafalaya Basin looked like. And these arrows on here point out where the major places were where people moved. That is, I’m talking about, if you wanted to get, if you wanted to get, let’s say you were in the Mississippi River, and you wanted to get across the Basin to New Iberia, how would you get across that Basin to New Iberia in 1863? It turns out there were two ways you could cross the Basin in 1863 by water. One of em was Plaquemine Bayou, so you had to go down the Mississippi…you had to go down the, ….
Edward: Bayou Plaquemine?
JD: Yeah. Bayou Plaquemine.
Edward: Come out into Grand Lake.
JD: Yeah, right here. Here’s Bayou Plaquemine. You come out of the Mississippi into Bayou Plaquemine and you follow these arrows somehow…Bayou Sorrel, into Grand Lake, down Grand Lake to Charenton. That’s where Charenton would have been, right there. So, that was one way to get to Bayou Teche. And then you would come up Bayou Teche to New Iberia. [Using the Malcolm Comeaux book here]
Edward: You see, in 1863 that was all water.
JD: Well, no this is the way it actually looked in 1863 Edward. This is the way it actually looked. This much was water. [still using the Abbot map?].You would look from the town of Charenton to….
Edward: This is your bank, here…
JD: No, no, this is the bank right here.
Edward: That’s what I’m talking about, this is all wooded area.
JD: That’s all wooded, that’s all the old swamp…that’s all….that’s open water.
Edward: OK.
JD: So you would look from Charenton right here, to here, you’d be looking across at Blue Point.
Edward: That’s right. We’d come…I crossed that way before..
JD: I know, you told me….that would be the distance you were talking about, right across from here, before the levee. See, you were there after the levee but this is actually the way before the levee.
Edward: No, I was here before the built the levee, now.
JD: You were?
Edward: Yeah. They build this levee after the 1927 high water – a long time after.
JD: That’s right, that’s right. So, what I was sayin is that Bayou Plaquemine… [disturbance with the cockatiel]. Lena Mae, look what I was talking about. You could come across, if you were in the Mississippi River you could come across in Bayou Plaquemine – that’s one place right there, you could do that. Or you could keep goin down the Mississippi river until you got to Bayou Lafourche. It was open then. You would come thru bayou Lafourche, down Bayou Lafourche like this, and look what happened when you got right here, you could cross by water, now this is 1863, there were no roads, you could cross by water from here [Napoleonville] to Lake Verret. Guess what that is right there [points to the canal on the map], that line, that’s that damn highway 401.
Lena Mae: I’ll be damned.
JD: Exactly! Highway 401, and that cemetery is right there, and let me show you what got it for me. I was starting to, look, if that’s the highway, and that’s the canal…there was a canal! Now does anybody else remember if there was any kind of a canal, look, what I found. On the quad maps that we have now, I mean these are the modern, the modern maps of the way it looks like right now. Here’s Lake Verret, right here, here’s that road, 401, goes all the way to Napoleonville and look at this settlement – Attakapas Canal.
Lena Mae: I’ll be darned!
JD: The name “Canal”. Now Myon didn’t remember anything else except “the canal”, but that’s what he remembered, that settlement right there [on the quad map]. Attakapas Canal, it has a church and it has a cemetery, right there.
Edward: That’s that road over here?
JD: In this sense it’s not a road yet, cause it’s in 1863. That’s it! Look, follow it. Look, follow the curves. Comes straight up that little line from Lake Verret, look how it does. Curve over to the right, a big belly, curve down right here, and straight into Napoleonville.
Edward: Umhm. See, what I’m lookin at here…you don’t even see the Atchafalaya River up here.
JD: No, because it’s all in the channel in the lake.
Edward: This is Morgan City, where it goes around Morgan City…
JD: Yeah. That’s right, that’s Morgan City right there. But I was as excited as all get out when I found that.
Edward: It don’t even show Hog Island, Cat….
JD: Yes, it does, it does. It does, but you have to be able to read…I got em on a different map to show you [Abbot is hard to read]. Where’s Keelboat Pass and Hog Island?
Edward: And they was below Bayou Chene, now, where…?
JD: Let me get my bearings, here. I have other pieces of this map that show the…let me show it to you, it’s there. There it is. That’s Hog Island right there. That piece of land. On one side it’s Hog Island Pass, on the other side it’s Keelboat Pass.
Edward: you mean right…that the land right there?
JD: Umhm. Now look, I expanded this, I took it and I made this bigger with a photocopy machine. Now here it is here, let me follow this up…here’s the main channel of the river, right here. Let me follow it, now, Edward, I got it on that other map, I can show you real well. I have one marked [a map]. Look and see where I have one with some names on it. It might be…
Lena Mae: Right here?
JD: Yes, yes, yes, that’s it. It’s one of the expanded ones. If you come up from here, this is what was left of the lake – now this is modern, this is what the lake looked like in 1969.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: So, the lake is all filled in by now [1969]. But you come up the main channel…this is the other side of the lake, that’s what was left of the lake in 1969 on the Blue Point side. You get to Big Pigeon first,
Edward: No, you should get to…yeah, Big Pigeon.
JD: Big Pigeon first from down below. You go up you get to Little Pigeon.
Edward: Then Bayou Catfish.
JD: Bayou Catfish is right there. And there’s Keelboat Pass on one side and Hog Island right there in the middle. So that’s Hog Island. Now, this is what it looks like in 1975. That’s what it looks like in 1975. There’s Hog Island. Here’s Keelboat Pass. Here’s Hog Island Pass. Here’s Grand Lake. Here’s Catfish Bayou.
Edward: They don’t even show it comin out [out into Grand Lake, like it used to]
JD: It does not come out anymore. It does not contact the lake anymore, in 1975.
Edward: Bayou Cowan?
JD: Bayou Cowan is there, it doesn’t contact the lake either.
Edward: Bayou Smith….
JD: Here’s Little Pigeon.
Edward: Lil Pigeon still come out.
JD: Lil Pigeon there, see. Lil Pigeon got this pass right here. Now I’m gonna make maps like this, anyplace yall tell me that there were houseboat communities. I want to make maps like this and place em ….
Edward: They was all…. every one of these bayous had people livin in em.
Lena Mae: Umhm.
JD: You can tell then, pretty close, where they were.
Edward: Bayou Pigeon, the Burns’s used to live…that’s where we used to live.
JD: Now, one thing I’d like to do before I leave it is, before I leave this map…
Edward: I don’t remember Bayou Pigeon comin out in that, position.
JD: Well, that’s what it does now.
Edward: It went more straight in.
JD: Well, it could be you don’t even notice one of these bayous right here. Could be you just do this [?].
Edward: Umhm.
JD: Could be you don’t make that big curve, like that. But if you look at it in, well, where’s that old, old, map – you can see what Pigeon did on that old map. There’s Big Pigeon, Lil Pigeon is not, uh… That’s Lil Pigeon. Lil Pigeon right there. So it shows it coming straight out [into the lake].
Edward: Yeah, see it’s more on a slant here [in 1975]. Used to go in right here and they had a big old hill right there in the front, and it would make a turn. It would be straight, it’s goin up the bayou a lil ways, then it would make another left hand turn, after that I don’t know which way it went, then.
JD: That’s probably your big left hand turn right there.
Edward: Yeah, Jesse Burns and them used to live…Jesse Burns lived on that point here. And we used to live right here in a, in a house. Big old house on the bank. And they had another big house up here, the Fargeys [sp?], Charlie Fargey, Bill Fargey’s grandpaw…had a great big old house up here on the bank. They owned all this land, them Fargeys.
JD: Still, now?
Edward: Yeah, still own it. But we live here, we lived at Pigeon, we lived…Keelboat [another conversation starts with Danny, Bonita’s husband]
JD: [to Edward] mark on here, use your pencil…
Edward: You mark.
JD: OK. Where did…I know that yall told me there was a…a…campboat community on Keelboat, Catfish, Hog Island. Now show me if you can, do you remember about where those, those houseboats were tied up? I’m talking about where the bunches were tied up.
Edward: OK. See, that’s Flat Lake Pass, right there. OK, there used to be a little…we’d call it Coal Island, there used to be a lil bayou that went down thru here. Started about…let me see your pencil,
JD: You can mark on here, that’s all right.
Edward: It would start about right in here, that lil bayou, and it went on down, and it would come out. OK, they had people livin here, had people livin here,
JD: Tied up to the bank?
Edward: Yeah, well, some of em livin on the bank. my aunt and them had built a house on the bank. Aunt Lizabeth. They lived right on this…there was a point right there…they lived right on that point. And they had houseboats tied there, and we used to live right there.
JD: On the bank.
Edward: No, we was on a houseboat. And they had people livin over here…here’s where they put that, they put that schoolhouse, see, right in here.
JD: That’s where the school was?
Edward: Umhm, and look like they…they call it Deshotel Ditch…
JD: You see, there’s a ditch that runs right there.
Edward: OK, you see, that’s what it is. We used to go into Bayou Persimmon, and that Bayou Persimmon would come down…you see Catfish used to come out here…well it would come out into Catfish.
JD: That wasn’t Bayou Persimmon right here, I bet you.
Edward: I don’t think it was that far up.
JD: See, there’s Catfish right there?
Edward: Well, it used to come all the way out though, Jim.
JD: What did?
Edward: Bayou Catfish.
JD: Yeah, I know, it came all the way down here, but…
Edward: And, I don’t know what your mileage is in here…
JD: Oh, I don’t either, but it’s big.
Edward: It’s blowed up.
JD: Well, you know how big Hog Island is. You know how big Hog Island is, you can see that it’s not as wide as Hog Island.
Edward: Yeah. But anyhow, that ditch used to come down and used to hit…we used to call it Bayou Persimmon, and it would come on down into Catfish, and you had all kind of other bayous that forked up in there.
JD: You can see everything…
Edward: And we lived, I dunno, it seemed like we was close…we was closer to the lake…you know, I mean, like I’m sayin, what I’m talking about close to, where we lived to the lake… oh, it might a bin 2000 feet.
JD: Talking about…
Edward: On Bayou Catfish.
JD: Oh, Bayou Catfish.
Edward: Big old shell hill, all that was shell, you had shell all along that bank…
JD: That was Indian mounds, you think, those shell?
Edward: I guess.
JD: Did yall ever find pieces of, pieces of pots, and stuff.
Edward: Oh Jim, they had all kinds of stuff. Back in them days, you didn’t even look for nuttin like that, you know?
JD: But they did have it mixed in the shell?
Edward: Oh yeah. Umhm. And even Bayou Smith, that was all shell bank. Big hills, shells, you know. On Keelboat and Hog Island, they didn’t have that. You take Bayou Cowan, that bayou right here, well that was shell bank too.
JD: And it was all comin out to the lake at that time.
Edward: All come out, right into the lake. Every one of em. You take all the way…Lil Pigeon, Big Pigeon, Bayou Smith, Bayou Cowan…well Bayou Cowan, Bayou Cowan…
JD: Bayou Smith right there, what was left of it.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: That used to come out down in here somewhere.
Edward: Aw yeah. It was by Lil Pigeon, see?
JD: The mouth of Lil Pigeon?
Edward: Yeah, well, pretty close to it, I mean, it wasn’t close…maybe a mile apart, and then you had Bayou Cowan, then Bayou Catfish.
JD: Let me see your pencil a minute. You say there was a community…I’m talking about, like…would you say there were ten houseboats tied up…
Edward: No, well, they had, all along the bayou, it was, you know, one here and maybe two here, different places, you know.
JD: All along. Would you say they’d start up as far up and the point…
Edward: No, they started right here.
JD: And they went to where?
Edward: Way down to this bend right here.
JD: About to there?
Edward: Yeah. They got a water gauge…I guess it’s still on that bend right there in Bayou Catfish. Well, that’s where Dushy Mire used to live, right there.
JD: Now, you said there was one on…there was a campboat community on Hog Island too, where was that?
Edward: And Jesse Higgins, that was right around here, right around where the school used to be. And Jesse Higgins, Jesse Higgins lived there, and uh…
JD: Somewhere in here?
Edward: Yeah, and you come on down here that’s where people lived there. Ok, that used to come out on the channel.
JD: Yeah, it did, look at that.
Edward: what they used to call that bayou? I used to know the name of that bayou. I went through it many a time. Alonzo Palmer [sp?] used to live right there on the point.
JD: Ok, now, would you say there were houseboats tied up all the way from here….
Edward: Different spots, you know, not all the way, but you had some livin here, you had some here, and you had some on this side too, both sides.
JD: Both sides. Would you say to about right here, there was some…
Edward: Yeah, yeah. Umhm. Right.
JD: So, the ones you talking about on Hog Island, you talking about actually in Hog Island Pass.
Edward: Yeah, umhm. Right, in Hog Island Pass. You see, that where Dan and them had a house…
JD: Dan Lange and them?
Edward: Yeah, they had a house, and then they put that school up there, right on there.
JD: That’s where the school was?
Edward: Yeah, right in that bend there. And we used to walk from here, we had us a trail, walk through the woods, and come out on Keelboat Pass.
JD: Where was it you think yall were livin…if you can take a look at Catfish Bayou, what’s left of it right there, you can see it…
Edward: Well, I can’t tell, it, it, look like we was livin further down in here…
JD: There’s a delta right in here, so could be the mouth was right in here someplace.
Edward: Yeah, that’s what I say, we was livin pretty close in here, I would think, you know? And we used to walk across over here and we’d catch a school boat.
JD: You’d walk all the way across there?
Edward: All the way across, it’s three or four miles across there. And we’d catch a school boat and we’d take it all the way around here and come around and bring us to school. That was a pretty good little hike.
JD: You bet.
Edward: And, at one time, we walked…from over here, when we lived over here we used to walk across…
JD: Somebody would take yall across right here?
Edward: They had a…a skiff for us to pull across to go to school. Row across, they wasn’t no motor on it.
JD: Yall lived on, on a campboat.
Edward: Yeah, on a campboat.
JD: And you would walk across.
Edward: We lived in a house, over here. And the Burns’s used to live over here, straight across, they had a big road they cut, we used to walk to them Burns’s. Lot of times we’d leave here, walk across here, cross the bayou there, and walk all the way across to the Burns’s, spend the day.
JD: [note to recorder] Edward’s talking about leaving Keelboat Pass, walking across Hog Island, crossing Hog Island Pass and then walking across the swamp to where they had a place on a, on a…
Edward: On Atchafalaya.
JD: The channel?
Edward: Yeah. The Burns’s. Old man Nick Burns.
JD: Oh, is that where? Oh is that where Miss Myrtle and them still live? Right there on Hog Island…not on Hog Island, but across from Hog Island?
Edward: On the channel, yeah.
JD: Is that where Amarada is now?
Edward: Yeah, that’s probably Amarada still right there, fact it is, you see? They lived just above. They lived right here.
JD: OK, so I’m goin to put a mark there, says…
Edward: Pretty close to they house.
JD: Myrtle is her name, right?
Edward: Yeah, Myrtle Burns. Bigler now, but it used to be Burns.
JD: OK, Bigler. OK, very good.
Edward: You see, years ago…
JD: Amarada?
Edward: Yeah. There was, Myrtle and them daddy…..
Continued on Chapter 17
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, and David Daigle
Blog Ch 17 Tape 10 Side A
Continued from Chapter 16
JD: Oh, you supposed to be babysitting?
Edward: No, I do not babysit.
JD: Me either, Edward. So, it would be nice to go up the lake here and see what we can find what we can find [talking about going back to the area of Grand Lake where Bayou Catfish, Smith and Cowan used to empty into it. They are blocked off by sediment filling in now].
Edward: Yeah. I can find…I can find…
JD: You think you can still come all the way up past Lil Pigeon…
Edward: Once you get in there you can come all the way up.
JD: You don’t suppose in high water you could find this channel that Catfish is….
Edward: No. No, I think that’s closed completely off.
JD: In high water…
Edward: I don’t think…the only way you can go into Catfish would be, come, come, thru this, the other side, get in there. ….you can still get in there or not. You don’t know anybody with a helicopter or seaplane, eh?
JD: Not right off hand. Not right off hand.
Edward: I thought a man in your position would have something like that at your disposal.
JD: I can have, if it’s for state business, but this….[laughs]
Edward: This is state business.
JD: Tell em it’s state business, eh? OK, so you got two of the communities set up right here. Where was the one in Catfish, you say right here, [this] was another community?
Edward: Yeah, right there…
JD: Would you say there was a bunch of boats tied up there?
Edward: Yeah. Back when I was livin there they had four, five families.
JD: Well, you could actually think about this, maybe, as all one community.
Edward: Well, I dunno.
JD: I mean, didn’t all these people talk to each other all the time and…
Edward: Yeah, we used to go visit…Momma…every now and then we’d go all the way down these canals down here and visit. Take you all day to do it….
JD: Did y’all know, did y’all know when y’all were livin here, who lived all up and down…
Edward: Aw yeah!
JD: Y’all knew all these people?
Edward: Umhm. Yeah.
JD: How about at Lil Pigeon, was there any…was there a community at Lil Pigeon?
Edward: Yeah. Lil Pigeon…uh, the Burns’s used to live right at the mouth of it over there – Doozie Burns.
JD: Right here?
Edward: Yeah. And Jesse Burns lived up in this corner up here.
JD: More than one person? Or just one person?
Edward: No, just one person. Just one family.
JD: More than one? Just one.
Edward: Yeah. Him and his brother. They lived in Bayou Smith for years, you see, that where they used to live.
JD: [Bayou]Smith over here.
Edward: OK. That’s where they used to live for years. Then they moved to Bayou Pigeon. To Lil Pigeon.
JD: But that’s just one, one campboat.
Edward: Yeah. One campboat there on the corner. Well I say one, his daughter, his daughter lived there by em for a while – Berta Mae, and Leroy Sauce used to live by em.
JD: Sauce?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Who?
Edward: Leroy Sauce.
JD: He’s not on that sheet anywhere? He’s not kin to…
Edward: No, he’s not kin to Agnes. Agnes’ first cousin, I believe.
JD: OK, so that musta been…that would be Blaise’s brother’s kids, or sister’s kids.
Edward: [to Lena Mae] How’s Leroy kin to your Momma?
Lena Mae: Uh, Leroy was, uh, Bruno Sauce’s son.
Edward: That was Brad Sauce’s, uh, brother.
JD: Bruno?
Edward: Bruno was Blaise’s brother, eh?
Lena Mae: I dunno.
Edward: Oh, yeah.
JD: I don’t have em down as brothers.
Lena Mae: Uhuh, they wasn’t brothers.
JD: No, I don’t have em as brothers, but now, to say no, I can’t say that cause…
Lena Mae: They was cousins, Bruno Sauce, and uh, …
Edward: Agnes would know that.
Lena Mae: Momma’d know that, yeah. But that was cousins.
JD: But Blaise had 14 brothers and sisters.
Edward: Fourteen!
JD: So uh, so uh, so you know…
Lena Mae: You got all his brothers and sisters?
JD: No, I only have, I only have four of em down here.
Lena Mae: Ok, I got…
JD: I got Joe, Milton, Bill and Gayon.
Lena Mae: OK, you ain’t got none of the girls.
JD: No.
Lena Mae: OK, there was, uh, Bill, I dunno, I dunno…
JD: I have Bill.
Lena Mae: You got Bill?
JD: I have Bill.
Lena Mae: OK. There was, uh, …Tante Nini, I don’t even know her name.
Edward: She was a Mayon, hunh?
Lena Mae: She was, uh, Nini Mayon.
JD: Mayon, Mayon, that would be…that…
Edward: That wasn’t her real name.
JD: That would be, that would be her grandmother’s, maybe, her grandmother’s sister. That would be Rosalee Mayon’s sister, maybe?
Lena Mae: Her brother.
JD: Her brother, what was his name? I thought it was a girls name…
Lena Mae: Uncle [?] , we used to call him.
Edward: ….no, uh,
Lena Mae: I don’t know they real names. I don’t know…
Edward: All them people, them days, went with nicknames.
JD: That’s ok, what were the nicknames?
Lena Mae: Buny[?], Alvin, OK, his name was Alvin.
Edward: Alvin Mayon.
JD: Alvin? I got Alvin down here. I got him. What was his name? Buny?
Lena Mae: Well, his nickname was Buny, but his real name’s Alvin Mayon.
JD: I have Alvin, Ivy and Lydia, as Rosalee Mayon’s brothers and sisters.
Lena Mae: OK. And uh, on his granpa’s side there was, uh, uh, Alvin Mayon’s wife.
Edward: That was my nanan.
JD: They was first cousins.
Lena Mae: No, not Tante Nini. Kadi was…
JD: No, that’s marriage…
Lena Mae: We don’t have none of them.
JD: Well I’ll get Agnes….you know Agnes will probably remember a lot of those people.
Lena Mae: Yeah. Nini, Aunt Kadi, Aunt Kadine, that’s three sisters.
JD: OK, I can get those from her then. I think. Whew, that’s a lot of stuff!
Lena Mae: Daddy [Edward]… you want to start warmin the dinner now so y’all can eat?
Edward: Whatever.
JD: Y’all got somethin for dinner?
Edward: Got some ducks.
Lena Mae: Got a little bit of everything, mostly leftovers.
JD: Ducks!?
Lena Mae: Got some ducks…
Edward: Kinda tough, but they ducks.
JD: Ducks. They homegrown?
Edward: David killed them.
Lena Mae: Duck spaghetti.
JD: This, uh, this is an interesting thing, right here.
Edward: What is that?
JD: Uh, shows the English speaking and the French speaking parts of the Atchafalaya Basin. [using the map in Malcolm Comeaux’s book] And, if you remember this, look…I compare it to this map right here that shows the movements. You look at the movements that these people had, uh, like I say, one of the big…there’s two places to get in the Basin, one was Bayou Plaquemine and one was this canal, over here. The one on Bayou Plaquemine led right to Bayou Sorrel, so a lot of people came in from the Mississippi thru Plaquemine and Bayou Sorrel. If you follow this right here it came in thru Bayou Plaquemine right here and down, what was this?, Grand River?
Edward: Grosse Tete.
JD: Grosse Tete, that’s what they called it, right here?
Edward: Bayou Grosse Tete.
JD: OK, and they hit Bayou Sorrel from there.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: But look at this, as soon as they got to Bayou Sorrel all of this crosshatch right here is English speaking, all of this is English speaking right here, so it looks like they came in on Bayou Sorrel and they spread out from Bayou Sorrel.
Edward: Naw, that there’s, uh….
JD: This right here is where there’s a lot of English and French both.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: But this is pure English. And that takes in all that Bayou Chene area…
Edward: All this was French, here…
JD: All of that’s French, the whole rest of the Basin is French speaking. Just that little piece around Bayou Sorrel was English.
Edward: That’s where I was from.
JD: You were from this area?
Edward: Well, I was in Keelboat and all them places there.
JD: Yeah, and you didn’t grow up speaking French.
Edward: No, none of them people, hardly, up there spoke French.
JD: Your Momma and Daddy?
Edward: Momma and Daddy did, but, uh, the rest of em, like Dan [Lange] and all them, and Mires, none of em spoke French.
JD: Well, there’s very few French names in there if you think back at it. You know, Couvillier is one of the few French names, but Lena Mae’s [name] is not French.
Lena Mae: And they all spoke French.
JD: And they all spoke French. Now they went the other way… they were originally… probably spoke French and they, I mean didn’t speak French, and they ended up goin to places where they had to learn. Y’all went the other way, y’all spoke it and went to a place you didn’t have to.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: But, this fellow did some good work when he put this book together. That all comes out of this book right here. These maps.
Lena Mae: See, both of my grandmas, Daddy’s momma and Momma’s momma, neither one of em could speak English.
Edward: Them suckers used to make me so mad, get together…
JD: Really?
Edward: They get together and go to talking French and I’d get up and walk out.
JD: They didn’t want you to know what they were sayin.
Edward: It wasn’t that, that’s the way they talk…
Lena Mae: It wasn’t that, they was just used to talking that way, Jim, and they’d forget.
Edward: Jim, you could put five hundred English speaking people in a pile and you have a Frenchman over here and a Frenchman over there and it wouldn’t be long, well, them two Frenchmen gone find one another and they gone be talking French. That’s the way they was. They could find one another.
JD: They were more comfortable I guess…
Edward: I guess.
JD: You know something else that shows up nice on this map, that’s interesting, it shows up on that, uh, on that, uh, on this here also – is where, which one did I have marked Edward? This one? Yeah. Myon talked where his people were all from and they were all from Fourmile Bayou. And this shows Fourmile Bayou right there, and so does this, right at the bottom of Lake Verret. Fourmile Bayou came right down here and connected to Grassy Lake. So that’s Fourmile Bayou right there.
JD: Now, they talk about, on that map, Agnes is talking about a skidder camp, on Lake Verret. Do y’all know anything about a skidder camp on lake Verret?
Edward: I don’t.
JD: What was a skidder camp?
Edward: People used to, uh, pull them logs out the, uh, woods with a, them pullboats, well they lived on them skidder camps. They go out there and live. Like a quarterboat.
JD: It was like a quarter boat?
Edward: Yeah. People used to… man used to go out there and live on it.
JD: Cause Myon and them were telling me that they used to, uh, they had dances on those skidder camps, at the skidder camps.
Edward: Maybe so.
JD: They were telling me about a fight he had there one time. Where, uh, Agnes thought that…, I mean this boy thought that Agnes was his girlfriend…his name was V.A. Daigre.
Lena Mae: Oh, [?] V.A. Daigre, Shorty, or Wayne Meacom [sp?], knows him real well. And he say he sees him often cause he runs around with his son. I believe he said he was 83 years old.
JD: V.A. Daigre is? 83 years old?
Lena Mae: And every time he see that man, he want to know about Momma. Momma went out with his Daddy.
JD: Yeah, I know, that’s what she said.
Lena Mae: When she was real young.
JD: He gave her a ring.
Lena Mae: And he always…Shorty was telling me that the other day at [?]. He said he’d love to see Momma.
JD: V.A. would?
Lena Mae: Yeah. Shorty say that’s all he talk about every time he sees Son, he ax him if he heard about Momma.
JD: Is that right?
Lena Mae: Heard anything about Momma, from Shorty.
JD: Yeah. Well, apparently he gave her a ring. It was a silver ring with a green stone in it. And they were at this dance and, uh, Myon come around and started dancing with Agnes and V.A. Daigre thought that wasn’t right, so he took his ring back and threw it away, and she never did find it. But then Myon started comin around and she never went out with V.A. Daigre anymore. So he still asks about her, hunh? It must be 70 years, more than that, probably 75 years ago.
Lena Mae: He’s 83 years old.
JD: You know what I want to do, Lena Mae? I want to, uh, after I talk to Agnes a lil bit about these maps, particularly this one right here…
Lena Mae: This is your coke, Jim?
JD: That’s mine, yeah.
Lena Mae: Want some more ice?
JD: No, that’s alright, I’m fine. I would like to, if she wants to do that, I’d like to do it anyway, and maybe y’all would like to do it, but I would like to…if I could come by and pick y’all up, and pick up Agnes at the same time in the car, and take a ride around here thru Morgan City up here….
Lena Mae: Thru Fourmile Bayou and all?
JD: Well, not by boat. Talking about first of all by car. And I’d like to come down this road, 401, by car and see if we could find that cemetery, and see if we can find the old gravestones. And, uh, and I’d just like…has Agnes been back there lately?
Lena Mae: Momma ain’t been back there in years! And I was a…was a young, young kid the last time we went.
JD: You shoulda said something, we coulda went today.
Lena Mae: I never have been [as an adult].
JD: Well, I’m available to plan it. What I’m saying is I’m off for…I’m takin off some of the Christmas holidays, between Christmas and New Years. If y’all would like to plan a day in the middle of that, I would like to…you think she would like to go?
Lena Mae: Oh, Momma’d love to go!
JD: Well, why don’t we do that? The five of us, Carolyn and I and y’all three. And go take a ride over there and take a ride down this highway 401, see if we can find that old cemetery. Down at the end of this road down here where they used to have that restaurant and a great big dancehall, down here. That’s what Myon says…a big dancehall down there…of course all that, I’m sure, all that’s gone. But I’d like to see, maybe Agnes would like to see where it used to be.
Lena Mae: [low voice] been there in years and years and years.
JD: But that’s something, if y’all would like, to see what day y’all are free during those holidays.
Edward: We free any day!
JD: You are? Well let me give y’all a call then, and we’ll make sure Agnes doesn’t go anywhere, and we’ll come and pick y’all up. That sounds good. That sounds good. Anyhow, kind of interesting maps, hunh, what you can see on those things?
Edward: Yeah, umhm.
JD: What I want to do is, like we plotted where these houseboat communities were here, I’d like to get a bigger map and try to get a map of the whole Basin, and try to make a mark on it everywhere that you can tell me there was a bunch of houseboats collected all at one place. Now, down in Blaise’s Canal it’s further down, below Big Pigeon,
Edward: Yeah, right.
JD: Below Big Pigeon. And I’d like to be able to…put that one down [?]…
Edward: Bayou Boutte.
JD: Bayou Boutte too, like Fisher Island…did they call it Fisher Island in those days?
Edward: Yeah, Bayou Fisher, yeah.
Lena Mae: We lived on Bayou Fisher.
Edward: We lived on there too. I say, we lived, phew, all over.
JD: What made y’all move?
Edward: Man, I don’t know Jim. We just…everybody did that. They’d live a while in one place, first thing you know….lived for years, and first thing you know they’d move around, you know.
JD: It wasn’t because the fish would bite better in one place…
Lena Mae: No.
Edward: Well, sometime maybe you might hear the fish bitin somewhere, they’d move, you know.
JD: So they just moved just cause they got the envie…
Lena Mae: We the only one that really didn’t move around too much, until we moved on this side the lake.
JD: Y’all didn’t move as much as a lot of people did?
Lena Mae: Uhuh. We stayded right there at the canal, all them years.
JD: On, uh, Blaise’s Canal. And all the time y’all fished….
Lena Mae: Fished over there and over here, across the lake, Daddy’s run here…
Edward: Trap, pick moss, or whatever you had to do…
Lena Mae: You could run across here in ten, fifteen minutes.
JD: In what kind of boat?
Lena Mae: Two horse Lockwood.
JD: It would only take ten or fifteen minutes to cross the lake?
Lena Mae: Or maybe a six horse or a four horse.
Edward: I believe that bird trying to come out of that cage.
Lena Mae: But, uh, it didn’t take to run over here, and Daddy had lines over here.
JD: So, he’d run over here with those inboards. Would he run the lines in the inboard boat?
Edward: Umhm. Oh yeah.
JD: So the boat wasn’t too big, then.
Edward: Uhuh. Well…
Lena Mae: He had a old bateau, like they got in here [Comeaux book].
JD: I imagine a lot of people had boats that were the same.
Lena Mae: Yeah, they was all about built the same.
Edward: They thought they was a good looking boat in them days. [laughs]
JD: All built out of cypress?
Edward: Aw yeah. Frog grabs [in the book]
JD: Did people ever use frog grabs like that? [the mechanical grabs that were sold commercially. Trigger in the middle and two jaws that would close]
Edward: Umhm. Yeah.
JD: To me you never could catch as many as you could catch with your hands
Edward:` No,….[they would] kill a frog, too, you know?
JD: Well, if it was illegal.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: File the trigger down it would cross over like that.
Lena Mae: I had one that belonged to Milton…
Edward: We had them suckers, go clean across [the frog gig]
Lena Mae: See what kind of boat we had….
JD: That was the kind of bateau y’all had?
Lena Mae: The kind of boat we had, two horse Lockwood on it. Some of em had a six.
Edward: Now that push skiff there, I seen…, used to do that a lot.
JD: [to the tap] They talking about page 43 in the Comeaux book.
Lena Mae: See, that push skiff there? That’s what we had to make a livin in, me and Edward, when we first got married.
JD: [to the tape] they talking about figure one in the Comeaux book, the pointed skiff with the oars on it. Y’all had to make a livin in that, how did y’all make a livin in that?
Lena Mae: Fish.
Edward: Push and bait lines in it, that’s what you did.
JD: You’d stand in the front and bait lines?
Edward: Yeah, umhm.
JD: They didn’t have any lil deck on it in the front…?
Edward: Oh, yeah. They had a deck. That’n there got a deck, you can see it.
JD: Where would you put your fish?
Edward: Just throw em in the boat.
JD: Loose?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: Just throw em loose in the boat?
Edward: Some of em had bulkheads in em.
Lena Mae: Some of em had bulkheads to keep em live, cause we couldn’t sell em every day.
Edward: These boats here that they used to raise nets in…
JD: They had live wells in em, eh?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: They didn’t have no, uh, no icebox, no ice or nothing to keep that. We had to put em in a wellbox.
Edward: Would be nice to have a, a, place that had a, like a museum… that woulda kept all that old stuff that you had back in them days. But, they got an old boy in Patterson got them Lockwoods.
JD: The old motors?
Edward: He brings em for that sawmill stuff [festival?] every year, run em.
JD: Oh yeah?
Edward: Got em hooked up, and they run. And I been wantin to go see it, and I missed it, been missin it, never did go.
Lena Mae: We went one time…
Edward: Like these shrimp bushes, [page 44 in the Comeaux book]
JD: Yeah, he’s got a good picture of the way those shrimp dips, the shrimp bushes are lined up down the canal…
Edward: …not the same fishermen we are but….[means they didn’t do it that way]
JD: …didn’t have, didn’t string em loose to the rim like that…you strung em tight.
Edward: Naw, uhuh.
Lena Mae: Where’s the shrimp bush?
JD: That’s them in the water right there, and also y’all’s shrimp bushes don’t have a pocket in em like that, his net goes way down, yours is shallow. [nets?, not bushes]
JD: That’s one of the old outboards.
Edward: Yeh, he got a outboard on there.
JD: Talking about Figure One.
Edward: I remember these too. Catch shrimp with that.
JD: Lena Mae, I’m just goin to have to get out of that smoke, I just can’t…I got a headache already.
Lena Mae: Oh, I’m sorry, Jim . Put that fan on right there.
JD: I took medicine before I came because I knew I would get a headache. Getting it anyway.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: This was a, a, a shrimpbox, a old wooden shrimpbox, hunh?
Edward: Yeah, that’s how they catch shrimp with em.
JD: Y’all made em like that too?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: All out of cypress?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: There was no wire in that, all the throats and everything was all made out of wood.
Edward: Yeh, that catch shrimp good cause it was dark and that’s what the shrimp want, something dark.
JD: They get inside…
Edward: Umhm.
JD: Did y’all bait that at all with cottonseed cake and stuff?
Edward: Naw, well sometimes, most times you just throw an old gou or piece of garfish in it.
JD: Piece of meat, fish…of some kind.
Edward: And they would catch. Course, mostly big shrimps, you know.
JD: Well, that’s what I was about to say, if they caught mostly big shrimps, and today when you bait your lines you never use a big shrimp to bait a line. Did y’all use big shrimp in those days?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: You must have.
Edward: Yeah, well, you catch goujons on big shrimp, goujon bite on…
JD: That’s what y’all were tryin?
Edward: Yeah. That’s what you wanted, goujons. Yeah…
JD: That’s what you were tryin to catch all the time, was goujons?
Edward: Naw, not all the time, but, uh…
JD: That was the bigger fish.
Edward: It was bigger fish, it weighed more, you see?
JD: Did they also live better in the livebox?
Edward: Yeah, goujon live good. Your gaspergou and buffalo don’t live long nowhere.
JD: They don’t? They hard to keep alive
Edward: Yeah. …… [looking further in the book] Jiggerpole, now, you see, these days we got aluminum jiggerpoles.
JD: I know, I see that.
Edward: [laughs] [talking about page 53 in the Comeaux book] Yeah.
JD: Yeah, well, they went from the jiggerpole like that to, uh, what y’all usually took – ash, didn’t you? You cut ash for, for…Now there’s a jiggerpole right there, set up.
Edward: Yeah. [page 55 in the Comeaux book]
JD: They got some pretty good drawings in here, I think we can do better, but he’s got some pretty good drawings of some of this stuff. Cause, I’m going to have to put stuff like this in that book too. What the jiggerpole looked like, and, and how it worked.
JD: Now, this is not right. ….got this drawn right.
Edward: Naw, usually the hoop net is left in the boat.
JD: Well, that’s where it….it says that, OK…Cause it shows the hoop net…to set it like he is you’d have to come back and set the net up and stretch it back.
Edward: It tells you right there, usually the hoop net is set in the boat. But, it also shows, in them days when they fished them hoopnets they had a buoy on em.
JD: Did they actually do that, you think, they had a buoy on the tail?
Edward: Yeah, everybody had a buoy…
JD: Cause nobody stole em?
Edward: Aw naw, they didn’t steal em and they didn’t run em.
JD: Nobody ran em in those days either?
Edward: Very seldom, you know? But, uh, you do that these days, you go back and you wouldn’t have no net left.
JD: Yeah, I know. I know.
Edward: They got either more thieves, or whatever, I don’t know you call it.
JD: What? More thieves? …. I want to talk to y’all more, more, about certain pieces of this. Ah, one of the things I’d like to do is what you’re doin right now…go thru the books and turn the pages and see what kind of things you can tell me about what y’all did…you know, bring to mind because you can see these … That sure looks good Lena Mae [food].
Lena Mae: All leftovers, Jim.
JD: Sure looks good.
Lena Mae: Can’t throw it away.
JD: Sure looks good.
Edward: Old time boat. Getting a lil better built, back in here, you know how…
JD: He’s talking about Plate 15, page 69 [in Comeaux], you say they’re better built than those?
Edward: Well, they must be later on in here, but that’s a Mercury you see.
JD: Yeah. They’re goin more to the outboard-get up on top.
Edward: This is after the [19] 50’s. And them Mercurys like that didn’t come out until after….that look like one of them, uh, Super Tens….
JD: Like a 20?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: But, the boats, the boats, the old, the old bateaux were built to go through the water and by the time you got to these outboard motors they were tryin to build em to get up on top. Huhh?
Edward: Yeah. Crab fishin [still looking at the Comeaux book]. See, that’s what they used to call a fly line right there.
JD: He’s on Plate 16.
Edward: That’s a fly line. I used to fish one like that.
JD: The line went through this box right here?
Edward: Yeah, that was a roller.
JD: OK, and the bait would just keep goin…
Edward: You tied, you tied your bait right on the line…you didn’t have a, like, hook or nothing.
JD: No stageon or anything on it.
Edward: Use mostly it was bull lip.
JD: A bull lip, that’s what you used? Tough, tough.
Edward: Tough, tough. You could use it, use it like today and tonight and fish and when you come in you take it off and put it into some brine, salt. And you had another barrel.
JD: You could use it over and over like that?
Edward: Over and over and over. Just keep usin it.
JD: How long you think?
Edward: You just use it till it gets so rotten you couldn’t hardly stand the smell of it.
JD: Is that right? And the crabs would still bite on it?
Edward: Aw yeah.
JD: Now, that’s mostly fresh water you talking about.
Edward: Yeah. And you’d run that, you’d run that boat…see when we did it we had air cooled motors. It wasn’t a outboard, it was a inboard, was a air cooled. And the lake was, aw, three or four miles across well you could just stretch it on out. And you didn’t have to put too many stakes on it, you know, you just run it for maybe two, three thousand feet with just two stakes. And when you start, you just sit there and run along that line, as that crab comes up you just catch him and throw him in that box, another come up you throw him in the box. I seen high as three and four of them big old crabs come up on one bait.
JD: Gaalee. Where did y’all fish lines like that?
Edward: Over there in Six Mile Lake.
JD: Six Mile Lake?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Duck Lake…
Edward: Below Big Pigeon, they had that Willow Cove…
JD: Willow Cove?
Edward: Willow Cove was a good place.
JD: Y’all did that for money, or for just for y’all?
Edward: No, money. People didn’t boil crabs too much in them days like they do now. Like boiled crawfish? People didn’t do that.
JD: What did they do with the crabs you sold em then?
Edward: They’d take em to the factory, factory in Morgan City – peel em.
JD: Ohhh, factory, crab meat.
Edward: And they peel em. Yeah, you don’t see no more of them.
[Angel Sauce, asking about Agnes, comes into the house, short conversation,]
Edward: You see, that’s one thing you never did see, a cane loader to pick the moss up.
JD: Is that what they’re usin there?
Edward: That’s what they usin there. A cane loader bein used to work the moss. Work it, turn it over, whatever, you know?
JD: Yeah, yeah. Did y’all used to pick it and cure it too?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: When y’all lived on the bank?
Lena Mae: Picked what?
JD: Moss.
Lena Mae: I guess so!
Edward: Yeah. Put it in the water and leave it soak in the water about a week or two. It soak in that water and it start turning…
Lena Mae: I got a scar on my knee where I can show where I stuck the pitch fork in it.
JD: You what?
Edward: ….turnin brown. You put it on the bank and it [?] dead. And then that sun get to it and get…talk about get hot!
JD: It gets hot? It rots all that, uh,
Edward: Every now and then you got to turn it over, you know, turn it over and keep, keep that moisture down in it.
JD: Then what’d y’all do with it?
Edward: Hang it on a line. We had moss lines…just run a line out, just hang it on it and let it dry. Once it’s dry you pick it up and bail it. Had a box made that was 12, 14 inches wide…it might a been three foot long, maybe three foot deep. You put you wire…you had a wire, go down, like over here, one over here, all the way around. And you put one thisaway. And we used to put that moss in there and get in there and jump on it. Just jump on it.
JD: Jump on it, pack it down.
Edward: Pack it down, pack it down, when you get it just as tight and you can get it you take that wire and you twist it.
JD: Like bailing wire.
Edward: Bailing wire, that’s what it was. And you get there and push it out, you had that thing made on a lil slant, you know?
JD: [talking about the box made to pack the moss down in] So it …so it…so it would come out like, uh, so it would slant up…
Edward: Right, it wasn’t much , just enough, you know, where, where, where you could get it out. Once you’d get it going, well it’d come right on out.
JD: So, you put those wires in there kind of like the chains in a sugarcane truck. Lay em down in the bottom and pack on top and come right over with em.
Edward: Tighten em down just as tight as you can get.
JD: What’d those bails weigh, usually?
Edward: Some of em, aw, just depends how big you build your boxes. You build it, you can make em weigh a hundred, but there ain’t nobody wanted a hundred pounds. It might be fifty, sixty pound bails, you know.
JD: You remember about what y’all would get by the pound?
Edward: I think it was about three cents.
JD: Three cents a pound?
Edward: Two, three cents a pound.
JD: Two, three cents a pound?
Edward: I know there’s a lot of em sold it for a cent a pound.
JD: Is that right?
Edward: Oh yeah. And a lot of em traded moss for groceries.
JD: Just direct trade, when the boat would come?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: You would trade a bale for so many…pounds of coffee or whatever?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: That’s what we did.
JD: That’s what y’all did?
Edward: Well, we did it too, you know? Yeah, that’s plenty moss!
JD: Well, that’s what I kept wondering. And I kept wondering about that, you know, they…everybody talks about how they did do a lot of gathering moss…it seems to me that moss doesn’t grow that fast. Did y’all have to keep going further and further back, further and further…
Edward: It grows, Jim, moss grows fast. But you don’t have the cypress trees, and, and, uh…
JD: Oak trees?
Edward: Well, not oak trees so much, you didn’t get too much out of oak trees. Oak used to grow on land…them cypress trees and all, in water, well that’s where you’d go, where you could put your barge under the tree in the water, you see?
JD: Yeah.
Edward: And they had, uh, worlds and worlds and worlds of cypress. I mean you could pick moss forever and never, never get back hardly in the same cypress.
JD: OK.
Edward: And that’s what it was.
JD: So you could pick a …you didn’t have to go very far to pick a load? On you boat, I’m talking about, like, one tree?
Edward: You get that pole…you had a hook on it and you stick it up there and you’d twist it, wrap it around the pole and pull it. When you’d pull it, well the moss would come aloose. And just drop…and you had that deal on that barge and you just start putting it in there…
JD: Like the sides on the barge, you talking about.
Edward: All the way up to the top of that scaffold. And you get that sucker full, you come home with it.
JD: How long did it usually take to fill up a barge?
Edward: Aw, it wouldn’t take two, three hours.
JD: Oh, so one day…
Edward: Oh yeah.
JD: Go out and come back in one day…
Edward: You can maybe make three trips in one day, if you want to.
JD: You could?
Lena Mae: Get a load, come home, throw it on the bank and bed it. They you could go back and get another one.
Edward: We used to…we used to put it overboard and let it soak awhile, then bed it. I used to love that, that’s where you get to swim.
JD: Oh, really?
Edward: Yeah, when you get that…get ready to get that moss out that water, well Momma and them would let us get overboard…get it to the bank where the Old Man could get it with a pitchfork.
JD: Yeah? Y’all would get in the canal or wherever and you would walk it up to the bank and somebody would push it up…? Did they ever have anything living in that moss, in that water…?
Edward: Aw yeah, snakes and all that sometimes, but we didn’t worry about that. Wasn’t no poisonous snakes.
JD: Why you say you like that? Cause you like to go swimming? Y’all didn’t go swimming for fun?
Edward: They wouldn’t let us swim.
JD: Why?
Edward: Very seldom they let us swim.
JD: Why?
Edward: They always said [for instance], in May it’s bad for boils, and at certain time of year it’s bad for typhoid fever, and different kind of sickness in the water.
JD: So they would warn y’all that there was sickness in the water and they wouldn’t let you…even if you could swim? I mean you could… y’all could actually swim?
Edward: Aw yeah. Swim like a fish.
JD: But they didn’t want to let you get in it.
Edward: We used to run off, take off and …
JD: Run off and go swim?
Edward: Go down the bayou or somethin…did that a lot. But, that’s where we’d get to swim. They’d let you get out there and swim then.
JD: They had little sayings like “May is bad for boils” or…
Edward: Not May, never could swim in May, that was, that was a nono to Momma and them. You get full of boils, they claimed. That’s bull! You know? Course, I could understand…stagnated water, you might could catch the….
[People come in and there is conversation about me being Santa Claus, and David killing some ducks, and people being invited to eat…]
Lena Mae: [turned the tape off for awhile, she resumes talking about life on the houseboats] there was no meat, you know? …meat, porkchops unless you kill a hog.
JD: It was hard to kill a hog if you was livin on a campboat, moved around a lot.
Lena Mae: We always had hogs.
JD: On the campboat?? Moved em?
Lena Mae: Sure he’d move em, we had a big dock. Like I say, we never did move that much.
JD: Aw, that’s right. [to Edward] Y’all moved a lot.
Edward: We had, uh, we had hogs too. Chickens. And uh, you’d kill a hog, you had them crockpots. You’d salt the meat down.
JD: Yeah. When y’all moved, what did you do with em.
Edward: Take em with us.
JD: Put em in pens?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: You had barges to put em in, or something?
Edward: Umhm. Yeah.
Lena Mae: See, we had a big old dock built with logs.
JD: A floating dock?
Lena Mae: Yeah. And we always had grandmaw’s camp on one end and ours on the other. Well, when we’d move, we moved the whole thing.
JD: Dock and everything?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
Edward: You didn’t move fast [laughs].
Lena Mae: One time we move to Lil Bayou Long, and uh, we pulled the two camps and the dock with us. Grandma had chickens and all on there.
Edward: You’d very seldom move up the lake on a high water. [laughs] It was always down [downcurrent].
JD: I guess that was always pretty fast, when you were going down. One of your problems could be stopping it once you got to where you were goin.
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: We stayed there a long time with no bank at all.
JD: Where? Lil Bayou Long?
Lena Mae: Umhm.
JD: No bank because the water was high?
Lena Mae: Umhm.
JD: The chickens, pigs and everything lived on the, lived on the dock?
Edward: …had a log crib. Logs made…back in them days you could go, man you could go anywhere…find them big old cottonwood trees…suckers float half out the water, man, make you a big…
JD: Down? They were already down? Or you cut em down?
Edward: They’d be down. Driftin down.
JD: You found em driftin, in other words.
Lena Mae: Yeah, you look in the lake sometimes you see a big old cottonwood comin down…
JD: You’d go out and catch it, and tie it to the bank, even it you didn’t need it, I betcha, hunh?
Edward: Umhm. Oh yeah, they had plenty of them for logs [to make cribs out of, rafts]…
JD: …that’s good food Lena Mae! Thank you David for killin it too [ducks].
Lena Mae: ….this is a treat.
Edward: That rice is hard, though.
JD: [Laughs] Those of us with teeth don’t worry about that.
Lena Mae: Me either.
Edward: Don’t let it happen no more.
[lots of dishes sounds, and meal sounds, some conversation in the background that is hard to understand]
JD: I’m goin to have another piece. I sure don’t get that very often.
Edward: Eat it all!
JD: Can I have the neck, y’all don’t fight for the neck?
Edward: You can eat it all, if you want.
JD: Oh, there’s the gizzard. Y’all don’t eat that either? I love that.
Edward: Oh yeah. I eat gizzard.
JD: Want this one?
Edward: Uhuh, I done had one.
JD: I love that.
[Edward talks about regulation of chemical plants in Louisiana, and they ask about my job at LDEQ]
David: Yeah, we go in the ground with all our water.
JD: All your produced water [from oil wells], all your brine? It’s all goin in the ground.
Edward: Boy, I tell you what, Amarada put many and many a gallon of salt water in the Atchafalaya River.
JD: Put all that produced water in the river?
Edward: They were supposed to put it in a…they had a well had to pump it in.
JD: Injection well?
Edward: But most of the time that thing wasn’t…they couldn’t get it in there. They’d put it…and they’d work it over and…nobody around they’d go in the river. Course they didn’t check it then [gov’t]. I don’t know about now, they probably can’t do it as easy now as they could back in the ‘60s, you see?
JD: Yeah.
David: …goin in with 18,000 barrels a day.
JD: In what? In a…? overboard? Just overboard?
David: No, in the ground. You see, see when that compliance [regulation] come out, we was a year ahead of schedule. Had to have it in, I think ’94, and we had it in ’93.
JD: Did y’all have to [tape goes off here for some reason, resumes with a different conversation, same time and people]
Edward: ….fifteen pounds of undersized fish with five, six hundred pounds of fish [legal], well, that ain’t no problem. When you come in with eight, nine hundred pound of small fish and 20 pounds of big fish…well, you get rid of it, you [game agent] take his license and he don’t let that sucker fish no more. I told a game warden, he talking about small fish, I said that’s the easiest thing in the world to stop, stop em with small fish, catch the dock. No, we can’t do that. I say that’s bull, you catch…can catch me or catch somebody else with em. And if he [dock] know that’s the law and you can catch him and you can book him, he is not gonna handle em. That’s simple. Like, Henry Wayne [a dock owner], you catch that sucker with small fish, you close him down. Well, he ain’t gone mess with no small fish.
JD: That’s right, it’s not worth it to him anymore
Continued on Chapter 18
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, and David Daigle
Blog Ch 18 Tape 10 Side B
Continued from Chapter 17
JD: And what I want to ask you about it, if I could, Edward, uh, tell me about the hooks yall used to use when you first started fishin as a young boy. What about the hooks that yall used to use? What were they? How big were they? Where did yall get em? Where were they…what were they made of? How long did they last?
Edward: They didn’t last long. They last…up to two, three months – summertime. Wintertime they last longer in the winter.
JD: They did?
Edward: Yeah. You get em off them fishboats.
JD: They’d carry em on the fishboats?
Edward: Oh yeah, umhm.
JD: And what size hooks were they?
Edward: They was 2/0, 3/0. A different type than we got now, got stainless now, you know.
JD: Different types? Were they the same shape?
Edward: Yeah, mostly. Used to be a hook called Kirby, was crooked.
JD: A Curvey [Kirby]?
Edward: Yeah. [motions how it was crooked]
JD: Instead of comin straight like that, they, they were bent like that?
Edward: Yeah, they call that a Kirby.
JD: Eagle Claw, oh, Kirby?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Eagle Claw makes a hook like that, I believe…
Edward: Now Eagle Claw, but used to be they didn’t have Eagle Claw. There used to be a Phlueger…
JD: Phlueger, that’s what they were?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: Were they brown or silver?
Edward: They were black.
JD: Black.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: They were regular steel?
Edward: Oh yeah.
JD: They, uh, they lost their point?
Edward: Aw, they’d rust.
JD: They’d rust.
Edward: Rust out, yeah.
JD: The whole hook?
Edward: Aw yeah.
JD: I seem to recall they’d, uh, [other talk, a child] they’d rust out around the eye, wouldn’t they?
Edward: Yeah. Eye…
JD: …where the stageon was tied around the hook?
Edward: Yeah. And the point would rust off.
JD: And they’d last two or three weeks? Two or three months?
Edward: Whatever. They’d last better in the wintertime than they would in the summertime.
JD: Why do you suppose that is?
Edward: I dunno. There’s something in the water in the summertime they don’t have in the wintertime… I don’t what it would be. I guess it’s the cold, you know?
JD: Maybe it’s the cold itself that, uh, that maybe the process of rusting itself is faster when it’s hot than when it’s cold.
Edward: Yeah, you take a stainless steel hook in the wintertime, well a fish’s mouth won’t rot. Summertime, overnight, two days, well that’s it, you gone lose him cause his mouth rots.
JD: Mouth rots.
Edward: Wintertime, they don’t do that in the winter.
JD: Now, when yall fished, um, we talking about fishing bentlines or tight lines you talking about with those hooks? How about with the 2/0s….?
Edward: Used to fish a lot of…lot of…uh, bushlines.
JD: Well I was about to ask you about bushlines. What…when you first learned to fish, when you were…how old were you, you think, when you first went out by yourself in a lil boat, or whatever, to fish lines?
Edward: Aw, about ten years old.
JD: Ten years old? Did you set em yourself? Or did…
Edward: …yeah.
JD: You set em at ten years old?
Edward: Aw yeah.
JD: And, uh, what kind of lines?
Edward: Bushlines, mostly.
JD: Bushlines mostly. So how many would you set?
Edward: Aw, wasn’t many, fifty, forty, something like that.
JD: You’d hang em from what? Hang em from poles or hang em from the trees?
Edward: From the trees.
JD: You wouldn’t set poles in the ground, uh…?
Edward: Uhuh. Back in them days you didn’t have to…you had cypress trees all the way around…
JD: It was mostly from cypress trees?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: How would you know where to set a bushline?
Edward: You just set it anywhere they had a good limb [laughs].
JD: What about the water, though, you didn’t have…?
Edward: You had clear water all the time; you didn’t have to worry about water then.
JD: You didn’t have a place though, where you had a tree…I heard if there was an eddy behind a tree or something like that…if you set a bushline there it was likely to have a big fish…
Edward: Sometimes, you know…you didn’t have that many…that many trees with eddies behind em, you know. You had to set em just about anywhere. But see back in them days, when the bank would come off…like this was the edge of the bank right here, well straight down you had four foot of water.
JD: You did? You didn’t have a gradual slope at all?
Edward: No, uhuh! I mean, straight down.
JD: Why do you suppose that was?
Edward: Well, didn’t have all that sand in here like we got now.
JD: But you used the same sized hooks on those bushlines that they used on regular lines? Small hooks? Two ought?
Edward: Mostly three ought. Cause back in them days you had plenty big fish.
JD: 3/0? So you did use a bigger hook than you did on bentlines.
Edward: Yeah. You had some people used them, uh, six and eight.
JD: Six and eight? Hooks [6/0 and 8/0]?
Edward: Big, big hooks.
JD: Great big hooks.
Edward: Yeah, they used to catch goujons, specially when the water was up in the woods, you’d catch 50, 60,70 pound goujons on them lines. Blue cats too.
JD: You would…you would, uh, you talking about on…still on bushlines in the woods?
Edward: Yeah. In the woods. That’s what they used to fish mostly, was…
JD: So you didn’t set em right along the bayou then, right along the edge?
Edward: When the water’s up, when the water’s up you go in the woods with em.
Lena Mae: When the water’s down, you fish the lakeshore.
JD: Right on the edge?
Edward: Man I seen…come up to a…a…a line Jim, and you can see the water dripping off the bush where you got it tied.
JD: Off the bush you got it tied to?
Edward: A big fish, take it and go plumb under with that sucker. And let it come back up. [laughs, whistles]. Yeah, you knew…you knew you had a big one when you had one like that.
JD: And that cypress limb doesn’t often break off…?
Edward: Uhuh, naw, they’d bend. Buttonwood limbs and all that. Well, fishing was different back in the ‘40s than it is now, you know? See now, now…now you fish, you fish bentlines in the lake most of the year round. Back in them days, you didn’t. I mean…
JD: What was it like? Start at the beginning of the year. How was it like for the whole year…for what lines you fished?
Edward: Well, it was usually pretty good in the wintertime, uh, if you get live bait, stuff…bait…go in them lil bayous and all…
JD: To fish what kind of lines though, in the winter?
Edward: Uh, crossings.
JD: Crossings? Cross bayou?
Edward: Cross the bayou, yeah.
JD: Not in the lake? Not, not, uh…
Edward: Uhuh. They didn’t have too much lake fishin, mostly they had all them big bayous people would fish in.
JD: Oh, really, so they didn’t fish that much in the lake, in the open lake itself?
Edward: Uhuh. Now down here, [the lake further south, around Blue Point] this part they would.
JD: Oh, you talking about up around Keelboat, and Hog Island, and so on.
Edward: Yeah, down here where Myon was at, they fished the lake. Lot, lot of…well, back in them days you couldn’t fish anywheres in the lake because they had too much water. You couldn’t get…
JD: Too deep?
Edward: Too deep. We didn’t have jigger poles like we have now. See, people didn’t know about all that. You cut your poles and you know, longest you could cut a pole was maybe 15, 18 feet. Then you had to have at least three, four foot of it sticking out the water so you could drive it.
JD: Sure, sure, sure.
Edward: Fifteen foot a water, it was almost impossible to make a, a line.
JD: When do you suppose jigger poles were, were invented, I mean…
Edward: Well, they had em…they had em back in them days, uh, but there’s nobody fish lines with em…they didn’t…
JD: They were like, nets, instead? [used for]
Edward: Just for nets.
JD: OK, so in other words, the only kind of…the only kind of bridle you would make in those days was tied onto a pole.
Edward: On a pole, onto a pole.
JD: So, and your pole had to be…had to be driven from the top.
Edward: Right.
JD: But they were usin stobs to drive…to hold nets with, even in those days.
Edward: Aw yeah.
JD: But people hadn’t started usin stobs to fish lines with? I see, I see.
Edward: No.
JD: Well, that’s interesting, Edward.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: So, up there around Keelboat Pass and all of those where you had…you didn’t have any lake. It was all bayous.
Edward: Naw, bayous. You take Keelboat, might have been as wide as from here across the bayou [Teche]. You could take…you could take a crossing clean across, without no…you could tie it from bank to bank.
JD: You didn’t have to put an anchor in the middle like we do in the channel?
Edward: Aw naw. The only time you couldn’t fish was high water…with high water you couldn’t fish bayous.
JD: Too much current?
Edward: Too much current. Course you could fish, like, uh, Bayou Catfish cause they didn’t have like a main stream that was comin out. It was all branches.
JD: Yeah, umhm.
Edward: You had current in em, but they didn’t have plenty current.
JD: Well, people…places like Keelboat Pass and Hog Island Pass and the main Grand Lake channel…?
Edward: Well, the main…that was just like the Atchafalaya River. Cause it was wide open comin down both sides [of Hog Island]. That was uh, that was uh, that was one thing you…and…and…and up that part of the country, you take Flat Lake above, uh, Catfish and, uh, I mean Keelboat and Hog Island well they had a lake there…sometime they’d fish in that lake.
JD: Flat Lake you talking about?
Edward: Yeah. You could fish in there with lines cause they didn’t have a lot of current in it.
JD: Now, at what time did you start learning to fish bentlines?
Edward: Aw, man, that was years later when we…in fact, when we moved over here.
JD: When you moved over to, uh, to Williams Canal on the other side you talking about or the Myon’s Canal on this side?
Edward: Yeah, on this side.
JD: On this side? So it was not till after 1945 you learned to fish bentlines?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: And who did you learn that from? Everybody?
Edward: Everybody was fishing that way, and you just fall in with the crowd, you know, that was it [laughs].
JD: Umhm. Umhm. umhm.
Edward: There wasn’t nobody had to really teach you how to do nothing, you know, you just…you learn it…you knew…you see somebody else do it, you could do it. That was it, you know?
JD: Well, I mean, but you did learn. Even if it’s to just watch somebody one time. At least you had to watch somebody one time to see what they did? Then you could go ahead.
Edward: Oh, yeah. People tell you what they doin, you know, how they putting them out, stuff like that. But, fer as shrimp bushes we always…we always fish bushes about like everybody fish now, you know. You get along the bank, tie em off of the bank.
JD: Didn’t some people dip willow roots for shrimp too, from time to time?
Edward: Well, Neg and them did that for years.
JD: Instead of tying bushes?
Edward: Yeah. I could make 25 bushes; catch all the shrimps you want in about 15 minutes. Him and Nine [Neg] would rake for two hours under them willow roots. Every day. Might catch four or five, three or four shrimp to the dip and we would go dip shrimp bushes an come up like that! And they wouldn’t make no…
JD: Double hand full.
Edward: I guess they didn’t like to make bushes, or whatever, I don’t know what…what they problem was.
JD: What did you use for sinkers up there, when you were up around Keelboat?
Edward: We used to get, uh, bolts and nuts or whatever, old scrap iron…
JD: I guess you had the timber industry around…
Edward: Chain dogs, them old chain dogs, chain dog made a excellent…
JD: I bet they did. What is it? Two spikes and a piece of chain in between?
Edward: Yeah. Two spikes and a chain about 18…some of em about 14, 15 inches long. They weighed about two, three pounds apiece.
JD: Umhm. Perfect sinkers.
Edward: That’s mostly what people had, chain dogs.
JD: Chain dogs?
Edward: Yeah. Them big old steamboats would come by there, and they’d…I seen em pile up on the end of them booms of timber…two foot high…you could …up there, get all you want.
JD: How about, uh, how about line itself? Starting back from the very beginning, what did yall do about line? What sizes and so on? What was it like?
Edward: Well, it was old cotton line, it wouldn’t last, it would rot.
JD: How long would it last? Usually, in water?
Edward: It wouldn’t last but over three or four months.
JD: About the same time as the hooks would last? Would they both go about the same time?
Edward: Aw, yeah. You take a hoop net, a hoop last would last long, but they put em out and fish em for about two, three weeks at the most. They’d pull em up and dry em and then they’d tar em. And they did that time after time…In the summertime you couldn’t hardly fish…maybe two weeks. Put them nets out there you had to pick em up, clean em, put em on the bank [and] let em dry, and you’d tar em. Most of the fishermen had enough nets they could just replace…
JD: Swap, yeah. So they were always tarrin?
Edward: Yeah. Aw, yeah.
JD: What did yall do…how, what was the line like when you would buy it? Could you buy [.]36 and 48, did you have line size like that?
Edward: Yeah. Yeah, you could buy 36.
JD: Would you buy it by the pound?
Edward: Yeah, it came in, uh, some of it five pound hanks, some of it in pound hanks.
JD: Now, you talking about hanks, so it wasn’t rolled like you buy it now?
Edward: No, it was just hanked up.
JD: Just rolled…loose, real loose.
Edward: Aw yeah, just a hank. Course it was done with a machine, you know? It was more even.
JD: Yeah, was it tied around the hank, around there with small line…?
Edward: Yeah, different places it was tied.
JD: It would be tied up?
Edward: Lot of it would come in a five pound pack. You’d have five pounds of it. Well, you could buy one pound or two pounds or buy whatever you want. They had some of it was five pounds to the pack. The bigger your line was the bigger the pack was, you know? That’s the way it would come.
JD: But it was still sold by the pound, though.
Edward: Yeah, oh yeah.
JD: Just like today, you get more in .36 than you would in .48.
Edward: Well, nylon now, uh, you take your [.] 15 nylon would hold better than your [.] 48 cotton line back in them days, you know?
JD: Yeah.
Edward: Cause it was…nylon is tough. And old cotton line wasn’t that tough, it would break easier.
JD: Did you, uh, did yall dip that cotton line when you were using it?
Edward: Oh yeah, umhm.
JD: What did you use to dip it in?
Edward: Coal tar.
JD: You actually used coal tar, same as the nets?
Edward: That’s all they had, coal tar. You had coal tar and, uh, red lead.
JD: Red lead?
Edward: Lot of people dipped their’s [in] red lead.
JD: And it would make the line stiff?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: But it still wouldn’t last eh?
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: I wonder how long it would last if you didn’t treat it or dip it at all?
Edward: Aw, it wouldn’t last no time.
JD: A week, you think, two weeks?
Edward: Oh, it would last longer than that, but it wouldn’t last long.
JD: Umhm.
Edward: I remember, you get out there and get you a bunch a lines together, get em out, fish em…maybe a month or two months, three months whatever, they’d last better in the wintertime than would in the summertime. First thing you know the fish would go to bitin and go out there and start your line [and it would] be breakin in half.
JD: In your hand?
Edward: Yeah. Then you’d have to be changing line.
JD: You try to do the whole thing all at once, or you had…the main line, the stageons, the hooks all brand new at the same time?
Edward: Aw yeah. Umhm.
JD: They would all wear out at the same time?
Edward: Sometime the stageons would go faster cause they was smaller.
JD: The stageon was?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: How about, uh, talking about stageons, how about swivels? What’d yall do for swivels?
Edward: Used to make those.
JD: I’ve seen em make em out of those two nails. What did yall do?
Edward: One nail.
JD: One nail?
Edward: Well, I used to make some out of two nails, no, it was one nail and a wire.
JD: And a wire?
Edward: Yeah. And Ida and them used to make what they call a double swivel, that was a piece of wire and a nail.
JD: What did that look like? Can you draw that? Could you draw that? What the swivel looked like?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: [to Lena Mae] Edward’s going to draw me a swivel here, like he used to make em.
Edward: You see, like you had a eye here…
JD: You’d make a ring?
Edward: Yeah, you’d come on down here, and you’d make another eye, but it would be turned thisaway, you see? And you nail, this would be you nail would come…
JD: Alright, your nail would come thru there.
Edward: And then you nail would turn up…
JD: In another eye, so you had a piece of…you had…you made, you made a 90…you made one eye in the top of the wire and one at the bottom turned 90 degrees, like this.
Edward: Right, so the nail would go…
JD: And the nail head would slip into that eye right there, and then you would make a loop in the bottom of the nail to be your bottom.
Edward: Right, and when you put…when you put it on your hook, like when you stage it?...
JD: Yeah.
Edward: Well, you didn’t want to put your hook on the nail part.
JD: You didn’t put your hook on the nail part?
Edward: Naw, cause you see if your hook would come up, you line would come over here and it wouldn’t swivel. You’d turn it over and then it couldn’t hang up.
JD: So you’d attach it, you’d attach the, uh, …
Edward: The hook to the wire.
JD: The hook to the wire and the nail to the main line.
Edward: And then Ida and them used to make em like this, you see, they would…it’s made like this…would come down, and you had two loops and you’d bend em over, and they’d meet one another.
JD: Two loops.
Edward: Yeah, your nail would come thru here.
JD: OK, so in other words, OK…
Edward: And over here, you didn’t want to put your hook on your, uh, on your wire part, you had to put it on your nail part.
JD: The other way around.
Edward: Cause, if you had it the other way, Jim, that line would come around…it would get over here, it would hang up. Not all the time, but most times it would.
JD: So, you had to put it one way on the single swivel and one way on the double swivel.
Edward: Right, you put it on…you put you hook on you nail part on this’n and your wire part on this’n here.
JD: How did yall make these little, uh, these little circles, these little eyes on that wire?
Edward: Pliers, pliers.
JD: You do it by hand with pliers?
Edward: You had…you had a pair of pliers that would cut, you had one side…and a little further down you had a smaller…like, like for your nail you had to have a small hole. Well, up here you had to have a bigger hole. You had a bigger part on your pliers and that’s what you bent your wire with.
JD: Where did the pliers come from?
Edward: You bought em. You had to buy em and make em.
JD: Ready-made pliers?
Edward: Naw, you had to make em. You had to file em.
JD: Needle nosed pliers?
Edward: Needle nose pliers…you can cut em off and you, and you, uh…back in them days you had files, now you’d have grinders to do it…wouldn’t be no problem. Back in them days they didn’t have grinders…you take a pair…a file.
JD: A regular hand file.
Edward: Right.
***** 200
JD: And you would grind the needle nose down to where it was the right diameter for one, and you slip the other one…
Edward: Right, and a lil further down you get a lil bit smaller, for your hole, for your nail cause it had to be a small…just for that nail size, I believe it was a number three nail…number two, number two or three nail.
JD: And it was, uh, galvanized nail [yes]?
Edward: And you take this…this swivel here, they used to make it out of number 14 wire. [he’s pointing at the double one].
JD: Fourteen wire?
Edward: Yeah, this’n here you had to have a bigger wire, it was a number 12.
JD: Number 12 wire.
Edward: Yeah.
JD: And what was the wire? Just regular iron, black wire?
Edward: Just regular iron wire. It wasn’t black, no, galvanized.
JD: Galvanized.
Edward: Umhm.
JD: And how long did the swivels…did the swivels outlast…?
Edward: Aw, them swivels there will outlast the ones you buy.
JD: But, they did outlast the line though?
Edward: Oh, yeah! Yeah.
JD: You saved your swivels, in other words, when you threw away your old…
Edward: What would really wear out, lot of times, would be your nail head.
JD: Because of it’s moving in there?
Edward: Movin, and it would wear out…lot of times that’s where it would pull in two at.
JD: Umhm. Umhm.
Edward: But that’s all I used to use. I never did like these kind, Jesse and Ida made…
JD: [That’s the double kind he’s talking about ]
Edward: They made thousands and thousands of them thing. People from Morgan City come over and buy em from em.
JD: Is that right?
Edward: But I made my own, I always made my own.
JD: How big were they?
Edward: They was about that long.
JD: About an inch, the whole thing?
Edward: Maybe a lil over a inch. It was…it wasn’t big.
JD: Have to get you to, uh, have to get you to made me some, of both kinds, so I can take pictures of em. So you’d take up your line and you’d save your swivels.
Edward: Oh yeah! Until they’d wear out, when they go to pullin thru then you start changing swivels.
JD: Ida did the double ones. Hunh?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: Where’d she learn to do that, you suppose?
Edward: Hm. I don’t know. They’d been doin that ever since I can remember. They made them things by the thousands.
JD: Really?
Edward: Umhm.
JD: And she’d sell em huhh?
Edward: Yeah. It didn’t take long to make a swivel. Man, I could throw you a hundred of em together in 30 minutes.
JD: Is that right?
Edward: Oh yeah. Didn’t take long. And then, them days, there’s a lot of people didn’t use no swivels atall. Course they lost a lot of fish. People didn’t make swivels. Like on a bushline, stuff like that, well you didn’t…you didn’t…you didn’t hardly use no swivel on a bushline.
JD: You didn’t put a swivel on a bushline?
Edward: Uhuh.
JD: Why do you think not?
Edward: Well, you had more line, I mean…
JD: Oh, it could twist further.
Edward: Yeah, it could twist further.
JD: Without it getting up tight up against something.
Edward: Yeah, right. Umhm. But on a short…man on a short stageon, a 14 inch stageon? That fish would get in that current? That sucker twist off in ten minutes.
JD: Really?
Edward: Aw yeah. They get in that current, man you see em [motions spinning around].
JD: So it was more the current that caused this…caused you to put swivels on your line.
Edward: Yeah, umhm.
JD: So, Lena Mae, you were down on this end [Myette Pt./Blue Point]. Uh, you remember your Daddy fishin, uh, bentlines, in the lake?
Lena Mae: Oh yeah.
JD: How far back you think you can remember that? Did he always fish bentlines in the lakes, in the lake?
Lena Mae: Ever since I can remember…young [old?] enough to remember.
JD: Yeah? And, he drove poles in the lake bottom to hang a line from? He didn’t use stobs? Didn’t use a jigger pole?
Lena Mae: Drive a row of poles, poles would stick out the water, I guess, about this far [about four feet].
Edward: …get some drift come down…!
JD: I was about to say, the drift would take all that line, if it hung up.
Edward: Aw yeah.
Lena Mae: If it would pass, yeah.
Edward: You see, that kind of line, even drift that was on top the water would catch a pole.
JD: Well, that’s what I mean.
Edward: Only way, on [using a] jigger pole, what get your line, when you get a whole tree come down and draggin the bottom…it would take everything.
JD: Yeah.
Edward: Just drift floatin on top the water, well…kind of line we fish now you ain’t got no problem.
***** 250
Lena Mae: Jim I remember, the year that was so bad, I was the oldest one, and then we had Milton I guess about seven years old, and we’s talking about moss a while ago. Well, we were pickin black moss. Black moss was hard to find.
JD: Dead moss?
Lena Mae: Yeah. And we trade it with the fishboat when it come, and, uh, for groceries. And Daddy didn’t have no line, his line rotted out. So, we had to buy ten pound a line on credit. Bought ten pounds. Drove him a row of pole, suckers almost [went] across the lake [to] over here. Put his line out, and it turned real, real cold. Had a big freeze. Put them things out, never got to run em. Freeze hit and when he went back all he’s line…the ice had cut it off at the pole.
JD: The ice had cut it?
Lena Mae: Ice, had cut all the lines off. He didn’t have no more lines left.
JD: So he didn’t get a chance to make any money to pay back that ten pounds of line?
Lena Mae: Not at all. Not at all.
JD: Plus the stageons, plus the hooks, plus everything.
Lena Mae Everything, everything went. There wasn’t nuttin to be found. The lake was pretty deep then, you see, and the drift, and…took everything.
JD: How, uh, how much of the lake would be, uh, would he be able to fish with those bentlines…you say he came sometimes all the way across?
Lena Mae: Sometimes he came almost across the lake with a row of line.
JD: But it must have been he found some places where it was shallow enough to drive those poles?
Lena Mae: Yeah, I mean it wasn’t too deep to drive poles. You know?
JD: OK. So the lake must have averaged then…well, you would drive your poles in low water? I guess?
Lena Mae: Anytime we needed em, we drive em.
JD: Umhm. OK. That’s interesting that, uh, that Grand Lake was where the bentlines were being fished and there was nothing, nothing like that up above…they were all fishing crosslines…crossings.
Lena Mae: Oh, everybody was fishing…Uncle Alvin, all of em, up the country.
JD: They were fishing with crossings mainly?
Lena Mae: Yeah. Umhm, bentlines [too].
JD: Bentlines? Anywhere there’s enough lake to do it?
Lena Mae: Yeah.
JD: When did yall start using jiggerpoles, you think?
Edward: Oh, I imagine back in the 40s, oh, later than that.
Lena Mae: After than that, Daddy [later].
Edward: Oh, the 50s, I guess.
Lena Mae: We was married.
JD: Yall was married when you started using jiggerpoles to set your lines?
Lena Mae: Oh, yeah.
Edward: It was the late 50s.
JD: How about floats? What did yall use for floats back there at the beginning?
Edward: Glass bottles.
JD: Glass?
Lena Mae: Cypress knee.
Edward: Cypress knee, go cut cypress knees and let em dry.
JD: You could do that too?
Edward: Oh yeah. You get them…you go out and cut then cypress knees and peel em? And let em dry for two, three weeks and bore a hole in em, tie your line in, and that made a real good…but most of the, uh, if you didn’t have that you go find you…you could…just like now you [have] plastic bottles all over? Well you could find glass jugs, bottles, all over and that’s what you’d use.
JD: Glass jugs?
Edward: Glass jugs.
JD: Or cypress knees.
Edward: Yeah. See, didn’t have no plastic or they didn’t have no Styrofoam or, didn’t have none a that.
***** 300
JD: Umhm. Well, no, because a lot of that came after they invented nylon.
Edward: Well, it come after nylon. ….just go find you a piece of wood or something that floats good, yeah. Use that.
JD: How about, uh, you say yall used to…yall used to try to keep your fish alive, as much as you could. I guess you had to keep em all alive, didn’t you, I mean if the fishboat hadn’t come but what? How often did the fishboat come by?
Edward: About twice a week.
JD: Twice a week?
Edward: You had what you call limber holes in your boat, bore a hole? Either on the side or on the bottom, depends what kind of bottom you had, uh, you put em on the side and [it was] just a plug, you know, pull it out and water would go back and forth. That’s one way, but you get just so much water in it that way cuz the boat would float [just] so deep, and that was it. But must of them boats back them days would float eight or ten inches deep in the water, you know? But, but, uh, another way you do it like if you was runnin, you made you a plug and you hollowed it out. And like when you runnin you turn it where that hollow would be towards the front and it would fill that bulkhead up. And when you would want to bail it you just turn it [the plug] backwards and that sucker’d bail it right on out.
JD: Now, what you mean by hollowed? What you mean you’d hollow it out?
Edward: Well, you just take a plug, like you had a plug you’d stick in a hole?
JD: Cypress plug, or something, yeah.
Edward: You just hollow it out, you see? Half of it.
JD: You’d make a groove down one side of it?
Edward: Right. Just open it up, to where it would be hollow, where water could run through it. You stick it down there, it would go below the bottom of the boat…might stick out that far, and when that water would hit it well it would, it would…
JD: It would force the water inside.
Edward: Into the boat, and when you’d turn it backwards, well naturally it would suck it out.
JD: I’ll be. Look at that, hunh?
Edward: Yeah, we used to do that. Course it only worked when the boat was movin now, it didn’t work when it was…when it was stopped.
JD: Sure, sure. The uh, the uh, the fish that you would catch…you would have to try to bring em back…you would bring em back to the campboat and put em in, uh, in fish cars?
Edward: Fish cars, and put em in there and a lot of times you’d have to throw some overboard cause some of em would die.
JD: They would die anyway?
Edward: Oh, yeah. You see, nets, what they’d do with nets… well, like a boat would come up Monday and Thursday – lot of time that’s the way they’d run, on Monday and a Thursday. Well, that’s when you raised your nets. Like uh, by time he get to us up there on Keelboat it was late, late, that evening. Sometime just at dark he’d…he’d get up there. People would raise they nets well they wouldn’t leave early in the morning, you see, cause they might take two, three hours to raise they nets. Well, they know what time that boat was gone get there and they try to time it to where they’d be done just about the time the boat was there. Cause you couldn’t keep a gou live.
JD: A gou wouldn’t stay alive?
Edward: Oh no, uhuh. That was impossible. And all they did, go raise they nets and when the boat would get there they’d be fresh, he’d weigh em up and ice em down. Always have ice on the boat.
JD: And so if the boat couldn’t come for some reason, broke down, you lost all those fish.
Edward: If the boat broke down, didn’t have no radios, nothing to call you in them days. That was it, you just lost em.
JD: You lost all the fish?
Edward: Oh yeah. Nothin you could do about it. There wasn’t that many lost, you know, cause they was pretty…they was pretty accurate…they…Now he leave Morgan City in the morning probly eight, nine oclock in the morning he’d have every place…
Lena Mae: Sometime though we had two fishboats runnin.
***** 350
Edward: Well they had more than one. He’d stop at his first place and people would buy what they want, and sell they fish or whatever, and get through and he’d leave and go up to the next place. And when he’d get to the house he’d always sleep at the house.
JD: Where you mean, sleep?
Edward: On Keelboat, that where he’d…
JD: At your house?
Edward: Well, he’d sleep on his boat, but that’s where he’d tie up.
JD: Oh, yeah. He’d tie up there?
Lena Mae: He’d either sleep over….[?] or sleep over there at they house.
Edward: That’d be his last stop. When he got home, he got his fish iced, he come into the house. Lotta time momma and them would cook supper, eat supper, and make ice cream and, uh, we used to look forward to that, boy! We’d make that ice cream every, every time he’d come, if he had ice.
JD: Twice a week?
Edward: Oh yeah. So the kids like that too?
Edward: Aw yeah. Use to make that ice cream. Get up the next morning…now, on the way down [back to Morgan City] he wouldn’t stop nowheres. If you want to…if you want to sell him…if you had some fish or something, you had to meet him. You could watch and see him comin down the lake, you run out; well he’d stop and take your fish. But he wouldn’t stop on the way down…that was a straight shot going back to Morgan City. Unload his fish, and then…
JD: How many places do you think he stopped on his way up to buy fish?
Edward: Aw, he stopped probly fifty, sixty places.
JD: That many!?
Edward: Aw yeah.
JD: He didn’t go to one place where people had collected all a bunch of fish all at one place?
Edward: Sometime there was, like that. When he get to the house, lot of times there was a whole bunch of us around there well he stop right there and everybody would come in that had fish would come over there and bring their fish.
JD: And you say he would ice em down? He had ice?
Edward: Aw yeah, he’d bring ice.
JD: He didn’t try to bring…try…he didn’t try to transport the fish alive?
Edward: Aw no, uhuh. No, that was all iced fish.
JD: So he’d take em live and ice em right there, when they were live.
Edward: Aw yeah. Next day he was back in Morgan City, I guess, two...two o’clock in the evening he was back at the dock, they unload em and…and they process em and that was it.
JD: Always Morgan City, hunh? That’s where the…that’s where all the docks were?
Lena Mae: That’s where they’d all go.
Edward: We had one old boy used to come from, uh, Percy Wisdom used to run a boat [fishboat] from Bayou Sorrel.
JD: Wisdom?
Edward: Yeah. He had a boat, he’d come down. Had Allen Blanchard, Edric Guidry…
JD: Edric? Was that his name?
Edward: Edric Guidry, umhm.
JD: Now did these people own the docks in Morgan City too…?
Edward: Oh no, uhuh. Most of the time the dock man owned the boat, them people run it fer um, for so much a pound. They’d work by the pound. I [mean] Edric Boudreaux, I said Guidry, it’s Boudreaux.
JD: Eddy? Edric…Boudreaux. Edric Boudreaux.
Edward: And Allen Blanchard, and, uh…
Lena Mae: Pinkerman Mendoza.
Edward: Pinkerman, Jew Robert…
Lena Mae: Mertile Theriot, Pinkerman Mendoza, Allen Blanchard
JD: Pinkerman you sayin? Pinkerman?
Edward: Not all at one time, now, they wouldn’t be all comin by your house at one time. Over the years. They had Jesse Higgins used to run a, a boat.
Lena Mae: Allen Blanchard.
Edward: Dan’s brother in law, he used to run a boat.
JD: Dan Lange?
Edward: Yeah.
Lena Mae: Had another one comin from across here, uh, I can’t remember…
Edward: Jesse Higgins [that was].
Lena Mae: No, no. That wasn’t Jesse Higgins.
Edward: That’s where Jesse was from, Charenton, he haul his fish to Charenton.
Lena Mae: He, he was, he’d go around in a bateau. A big boat, but it was a bateau-type boat.
Edward: Dan had a big bateau.
JD: Well, what kind of boats were the regular fishboats?
Edward: Lugger-type.
JD: What’s the difference between a lugger and a…?
Edward: A lugger is built like this.
JD: A lugger had a point?
Edward: Yeah. Bateau…
JD: OK, but a lugger had a point and was built like a regular pointed boat.
***** 400
Edward: Yeah. Most of em was luggers.
JD: They were?
Edward: Yeah. Jesse Higgins had a bateau too, one time. Dan had a bateau. Allen had a lugger. Boudreaux had a lugger. Mertile had a lugger. Pinkerman had a lugger. I remember Pinkerman’s boat named Baby Dot.
JD: Baby Dot.
Edward: Name of the boat.
JD: And they had inboard engines, of course, in all of those things? That’s all they had in those days.
Edward: Either Model A’s or Fords.
JD: Model A’s or Fords? Gasoline engines? They get up and move pretty good?
Edward: Aw, they’d make six or eight miles an hour.
JD: That’s all?
Edward: Yeah. But you take from Morgan City to Keelboat, just comin up that lake it ain’t much over about 25 miles. You know, mile wise? Really, just runnin up there…three or four hours they could run straight up there, where they start in the morning and stopping, by the time they get there, depend how much fish people had…
JD: How much they [the people] wanted to buy?
Edward: Yeah. Sometime he’d get there early; sometime he’d get there a little later, sometime after dark before he come.
JD: And they he’d make his straight run back so he could [?] …the fish would be on ice and he’d have to get back fast.
Edward: You catch him on the way down if you see him comin he’d stop and take your fish but he wasn’t gone stop…he wouldn’t stop at your house on the way down…that was, that was headed for the dock.
JD: Did he make any stops on the other side of the lake, on this side?
Edward: Well, uh, Mertile Theriot used to run up this side and, uh, Jesse Higgins used to run up this side, uh,
Lena Mae: And that other guy I’m thinking about too…used to be on this side.
JD: Where did, uh, where did they stop? I mean, I know on the other side you talking about they’d stop in Bayou Boutte probably, and…
Edward: Well, they stop at every house comin up on this side.
JD: Where did people live on this side?
Edward: People lived on Oaklawn Canal, people in Belleview Canal, had people all over out here.
JD: Oaklawn and Belleview?
Edward: Oh yeah. Myette Point, then all the way up the channel.
JD: So they had people livin in Myon’s Canal before yall came across the lake all in one bunch and went in there? Was there people there when yall got there?
Lena Mae: At the Canal?
JD: Yeah.
Lena Mae: I wouldn’t know, Jim, I wasn’t born.
JD: OK. No, when yall, uh, when yall came across the lake and settled…came into Myon’s Canal right here by the levee on this side?
Lena Mae: Yeah, and you talking about goin back?
JD: No, comin on this side.
Lena Mae: Oh, there wasn’t nobody here by Lester.
JD: Nobody here by Lester?
Edward: Lester and Hubert Nix.
Lena Mae: Hubert Nix, yeah.
JD: Why did that canal ever get dug? Do you have any idea why did Myon’s Canal…? What was the reason for that canal?
Edward: That used to be a drainage canal.
JD: Drainage for what?
Edward: For Southcoast.
JD: Before the levee?
Edward: Umhm. ‘sall it was. You see, they had a pump above…up there where the boat landing is now, you go up there…go up that canal they got cement…
JD: Yeah.
Edward: OK, there was a big pump there. And all the fields used to drain [into] them canals and they’d pump it out.
JD: The fields used to drain into they canal and then the…?
***** 450
Edward: Before they put the levee, you see, the fields go clean to the lake. And all your drainage was goin out to the lake. So they built them canals, put levees around…when the water come up, well the water didn’t take the fields. And had to pump it, had to keep it pumped. And after the levee was built, well that canal on this side the levee, well that’s the drainage canal. They got a big pump down there at Belleview, that’s where they…I don’t know if they still…I imagine they still use it. When it rains and all that drains in, in uh, in that canal well they go back there and they pump it.
JD: Um, um. So that canal’s been there a long time?
Edward: But that’s what them canals are for, you see, out there.
JD: Oaklawn and all of those for that reason.
Edward: They built them levees out there to keep the water out. See Oaklawn, above the boat landing, when you go out…you got that levee all along by the boat landing here, you know, and you go out…well that’s a levee right there. But if you look a lil further down here you got this other ramp come down there. Well, OK, you go on, they still got a levee and it just, it just went on…
JD: Yeah, alongside the, the uh, …
Edward: Right, and up there, up there [at the] first bend, then it come up to the edge of the levee, and that was Southcoast’s property, right there, that’s where it would come up all the way to the edge of the levee. And right in here is where they had that pump.
JD: That’s Oaklawn Canal you talking about, not, not the old landing…?
Edward: No, up above. Going toward Charenton.
JD: Going towards Charenton from Myette Pt. right now.
Edward: The other’n did the same thing but they didn’t have none for some reason below Myette Pt. …landing, I don’t know why they didn’t have…have a levee there.
[Summary: In the Myette Pt. area there is a set of small levees on the inside of the big levee, along with the canals that the dirt came from to build them. Before the big levee was built, the sugarcane fields came down to the lake edge. In order to protect the fields from the relatively small rises (3-5 feet?) in those days, the levees were built along the lake. But, in doing so rainwater falling on the fields was prevented from draining back into the lake and had to be pumped over/thru the levee system. That’s what Edward is talking about.]
Edward: [looking at a map] That’s your boat landing right here, you come up and land to your boat landing and you got this other ramp that goes across.
JD: Well, yeah, you talking…this is the Myette Pt. landing…?
Edward: Right.
JD: It makes this cove in here like this.
Edward: Right, but see out here where…
JD: There’s a canal all along here…starts right here and goes this way.
Edward: It’s all the way here, Jim. When you comin out the boat landing you got this…
JD: Oh yeah, that’s right, it comes all the way there, that’s right it sure does. But the canal, I thought the canal kind of stopped there.
Edward: Naw, Myon…Myon’s Canal is a lil further down there.
JD: Yeah, it’s up here. And it goes to the levee just like that.
Edward: Right, and you had that levee built up right here, all the way out here, and it was built out here [still looking at a map] you see. Well, let’s say it looks like it’s a lil further out, when you come out from Myon’s [Canal], well you just come on up…
JD: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, it sure is.
Edward: And you got the cove right here where you unload, and you come out, and you go out and come out in the lake.
JD: That’s right.
***** 500
Edward: And it used to go all the way. But they done cut a lot of that out. And, over here, I remember when it was [stopped?], you couldn’t get in here with a boat, so they come out here and they cut it right here, and that’s where that canal went all the way out.
JD: Ohhh, is that right?
Edward: Yeah. That was diked right there.
JD: Now, tell me about this again. You say that this canal, this is…this is a, a leveed canal, right here, right? Just like that.
Edward: Right. Your levees, your levees, no, your levees on the outside.
JD: On the outside. They’re outside. Now where…you’re sayin that the drainage from the lake…from the fields, would go where? It would come…?
Edward: It would go into this canal.
JD: But, the canal was all of this.
Edward: Yeah, and you had that pump up here you see, and had that levee all the way up and it [water] come up against the levee up here when…
JD: Make like a big impoundment, like this.
Edward: Right. And if, if you come up here, the levee went here and it crossed on across, back up here where they got a levee go all the way across around Oaklawn field [oilfield] back there. Until they built the big levee, see, and then the big levee, when the big levee crossed, well the levee [small] went up to the levee.
JD: Umhm. From here they would pump water from this side…
Edward: They would pump the whole field. Pump the whole field out…
JD: Over into here…rainwater?
Edward: Yeah. Yeah.
JD: OK, so they built the levee to keep, the, the high water from floodin the fields.
Edward: Right.
JD: But the levee also did the bad thing, it trapped all the rainwater that fell on
the fields. They had to pump that over.
Edward: Yeah, umhm. And just like that, that barpit they got behind the levee, there, well, you see Arthur Louviere’s Daddy used to run that pump down there. He lived over there. And long as it didn’t rain he was alright, [then] you get a three, four day rain well he pump 24 hours a day.
JD: You talking about the barpit that you can see on the backside of the levee? Where yall used to live?
Edward: Right. Right.
JD: I thought that was from the levee, when the built the levee.
Edward: Right, they used that to build the levee, but Southcoast had to put some pumps down there cause they wouldn’t had a way to drain it, and get the water out when it rain it would of just kept fillin up. So they had to pump it.
JD: OK, and they pumped it over the levee?
Edward: Pumped it over there into Yellow Bayou. Goes into Yellow Bayou. Pump is still…I’m sure they still use it.
JD: [changing topic] There’s a big gate, I’m tryin to think of where it is. When you come out here, you come out into those big holes? You know there’s a couple big holes here with some willow islands in em? And so on like that? You come around here and you come into a little slough, if you go through…
Edward: That’s where the pump was at.
JD: OK, is that where that…there’s two concrete…looks like a gate, sittin there like this…that’s where the pump was?
Edward: Yeah, yeah. That was a gate. It was a gate.
JD: It was a sluice gate?
Edward: They could open it when the water was down, but when the water was up they couldn’t open it, cause they had to keep em pumped out [they could open the gate and let rainwater out into the lake if the lake was low, but not if the lake was high]
JD: I see, so that’s what that was about. It was all a drainage thing. OK.
Edward: Yep. Lot of cement poured there.
***** 550
JD: What else we got here we can talk about? You can talk about some more stuff when you think about it. Um, did you read some of what I have down here?
Edward: I was just glancing over it.
JD: Uh, what are some of the…what are some of the, uh, the products that you used over here to dip nylon in to stiffen it up? What did you use?
Edward: That green dip, plastic.
JD: What do they call it?
Edward: Plastic coat.
JD: Plastic coat? Is that what they call it?
Edward: Umhm. And you got Netcoat, that’s black, that’s just a regular tar.
JD: This is green [plastic coat].
Edward: Yeah. Well, you can get it in black too.
JD: Plastic coat? You can get it in black?
Edward: Yeah. I didn’t like the black, but you can get it in black.
JD: Or Netcoat.
Edward: Netcoat. Then coal tar.
JD: Netcoat was always black, right?
Edward: Yeah, it’s just tar, but it.. it wasn’t a pitch tar, you know, it wouldn’t get hard. It get hard when you put on your lines, but…
JD: How would you buy that tar in the old days when you had to dip that line and everything?
Edward: By the drum.
JD: You bought it by the 55 gallon drum? So it came in a liquid?
Edward: Yeah, a big drum.
JD: And you would, uh, you would use it straight?
Edward: No, you’d mix it. Put gas, or coal oil, use mostly coal oil.
JD: Coal oil?
Edward: Yeah.
JD: And, and make a…
Edward: You just go…whoever had a tar vat…tar nets…always give you three or four gallons, whatever you want…
JD: Whatever they had…
Edward: Yeah. You didn’t buy it by the five gallon like you do now, it come in 55 gallon drums.
JD: But that was always coal tar, in the old days.
Edward: You either had a pitch, or a regular…you get a pitch tar [it] was hard, hard. And a lot of times, well they’d mix the pitch with the regular tar cause they didn’t want it too soft, and they didn’t want it too hard. So you buy you, a…a drum of pitch and if you…when you…when you start…start getting too soft where it wouldn’t dry? And you mix some of that pitch in it and that would stiffen it up.
JD: That stuff hardens almost like glass isn’t it, when it hardens, that pitch?
Edward: Yeah. Well, that pitch that you use is just like that, when you heat it…it’ll get soft, but when it dries it’ll just flake off. It break off, it’s pitch, it’s hard hard, you know? Couldn’t use it like that.
JD: Um.
Edward: And you could use, uh, like I say, red lead.
JD: Yeah, we said that already.
Edward: Umhm.
JD: But, but, you don’t use that lately?
***** 600
Edward: I never used red lead, I never did use red lead.
JD: But you used, uh, lately was Netcoat or this plastic?
Edward: Yeah, I been using that Netcoat lately, I got out of the plastic because it freezes your swivels up. Gets hard and it won’t swivel. Course that tar does that too if …. I tarred some, uh, stageons a while back [and] I didn’t use em for about four or five months and they, they was [gestures]…so every one, I had to take em and loosen em before…
JD: Yeah.
Edward: Before I put em on the line.
JD: The swivels you use now, what did yall go to when you stopped using the nails. What did you start using after that?
Edward: Brass swivels.
JD: You went right to brass? Is that what there was…?
Edward: Well, that’s all they had then. They didn’t have the nickel plated.
JD: Nickel plated?
Edward: And they come out later with the nickel plated swivel.
JD: So you went right to brass. Was it the barrel type, just like, like we use now? The barrel type?
Edward: Yeah, umhm. I never did like the twisted type. More or less got that barrel type and wires that twisted [the other kind of swivel].
Continued on Chapter 19
Interview with Agnes Bailey, and Edward, Lena Mae, and Dorothy Couvillier
Blog Ch 19 Tape 11 Side A
Continued from Chapter 18
JD: …on your daddy’s side came from France and Spain. Your other grandfather and grandmother were Claiborne Mayon and Fanny Mae Mason. Do you know if they were already in the United States when they met, or did they come from overseas [already knowing each other]…?
Agnes: I don’t know.
Dot: I know we always understood they were all over here.
Agnes: Irish, that’s what nationality that is.
JD: Fanny Mae Mason?
Agnes: Yeah.
Dot: From Ireland, I imagine.
JD: Could have been, could have been English, that’s not too far different. Um, now the people that might be buried here, on the Canal, which ones of those people would that be? Would that be your grandmother and grandfather on both sides?
Agnes: I think so. I think they was buried there for sure.
JD: Claiborne and Fannie Mae?
Agnes: Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s where they were buried. And my grandma and my grandpa on my daddy’s side, they was buried in, in uh, …
JD: Morgan City maybe?
Agnes: No. In Pierre Part?
JD: Could be, some of em…I have on tape some of em were in Pierre Part.
Agnes: Either Pierre Part or…you remember, Dot, that storm that destroyed the church, and everything…I think it was the Pierre Part church, eh? I think, yeah. Cause there’s a storm that destroyed the whole church, broke some of the graves, some of em, uh, it messed up the whole graveyard and everything. I think it’s the Pierre Part.
Dot: …the Napoleonville church?
Agnes: No, I think it’s Pierre Part…not sure, you’d have to see.
JD: Well, how about Myon’s people? Joe Daigle and Leah Hebert, you have any idea?
Agnes: …Joe Daigle, his grandpa’s name was Joe Daigle. His momma’s daddy.
JD: How about his momma and daddy, Ernestine and Albert, you have any idea where they were buried?
Dot: Ernestine…his momma and daddy, that’s in Morgan City. Grandma’s buried in Morgan City, wasn’t she?
Agnes: Yeah, they both buried in Morgan City. His momma and daddy. .
JD: And Blaise is in Franklin?
Agnes: No, Blaise is in Morgan City too. And momma…Momma’s in Franklin.
JD: Why two places?
Agnes: I don’t know. You see, when he died, he died in New Orleans. And we had the camp down there because he was so sick. So, when he died Myon brought him back to Morgan City and buried him there.
JD: Yall took the Mississippi [river] down to New Orleans with the campboat?
Agnes: Uhuh, no, they brought him by car. And, uh, to bring him back he put him on the train and brought him home.
JD: Back to Morgan City. OK, these people are sure spread around, eh? Dot, this has been so interesting, to see where all these people came from and where they went and everything. I’ve got, uh, the families that lived on the canal [Myon’s], that crossed over the levee, and believe it or not, when they started crossing over the levee there were 15 houseboats that crossed the levee. I didn’t realize there were that many. There was, uh, the Couvilliers, the Bailey’s…
Dot: Now wait, the Couvilliers, they were livin…when we moved there…they were livin by Oaklawn bridge, there.
JD: OK, but that’s different Couvilliers, you talking about Lester.
Dot: Yeah, what Couvilleirs you talking about?
JD: Edward and Lena Mae.
Dot: Yeah, his daddy, yeah.
JD: And then there was y’all. And, uh, and then Neg, the Gondolfos, Abner Couviller, Albert Couvillier, . Bootsie Millet, Joe Sauce, Jesse Daigle, Dan Lange, Joe Sanders, Lester Couvillier, Arthur Sanders, and Nick Verret. And Nick Verret was on the canal, but he didn’t move over, apparently. He didn’t come over and become part of the community. He stayed on the canal.
Dot: Yeah, that was, uh, Tootsie’s first husband.
JD: Which is…which Tootsie we talking about?
Dot: Nick Verret…Tootsie Louviere, uh, Arthur Louviere’s wife. That was,um, Dutie, the one we call Dutie.
JD: I have her real name as Nellie, is that right?
Dot: Uh, Louella. That was their daddy.
JD: That was…who?
Dot: That was Tootsie’s first husband. Nick Verret.
JD: He died, or she divorced him, or…?
Dot: No, they were divorced, and she married Arthur Louviere years later.
JD: And that’s Bernie’s brother.
DOT: Yeah, uh, you missed one too. Grandma’s campboat in there. Momma’s momma.
JD: She lived by herself in a campboat?
Dot: Yeah, her and uncle Monug.
JD: I didn’t have them down, did they come across the levee?
Dot: Yeah.
JD: Uh, you talking about …
Dot: Rosalie Sauce.
JD: Rosalie Mayon?
Dot: Yeah, Rosalie Mayon Sauce.
JD: So you sayin she and Blaise…no Blaise was dead by then.
Dot: No, Monug. The one they called Monug, uh, I didn’t know his name either. Um, she told you his name.
JD: Um, I missed something then, when I was writing this down. I have Alvin, Ivy, and Lydia, for Rosalie Mayon’s brothers.
Dot: This is her son. That would be momma’s brother.
JD: Preston?
Dot: Yeah, umhm. Granma had a campboat and they moved it on [over the levee].
JD: OK, so it was 16.
Dot: And I’m thinking they had another one Jim, um, Jack Sauce’s momma and daddy.
JD: I have Joe Sauce down here, was that his momma and daddy?
Dot: No, uhuh,…Plot Sauce, that was his name.
JD: What was it?
Dot: Plot. Plot Sauce, and Vina, Edward’s sister.
JD: They lived to together?
Dot: Yeah, they were man and wife.
JD: Plot Sauce and Vina? .
Dot: That was Jack and thems momma and daddy.
JD: Plot Sauce? That’s Jack Sauce’s momma and daddy? . Did they come across the canal?
Dot: Yeah.
JD: Where did they come to live when they came on this side the levee? …a houseboat over the levee and set it up on the bank like the rest of y’all?
Dot: Umhm. And they come from across the lake…
JD: Rosalie Mayon and Preston come across the levee too…?
Dot: Who? . Yeah. . Cause, let’s see if I can remember, startin on the other end, well Arthur Sanders lived about three miles up, at Oaklawn Canal. And then there was Miss [?] and them, Miss Lester and them. Tootsie and Arthur, and Lena Mae had lived in after that in her lil house,…
JD: Who?
Dot: Lena Mae and Edward. They pulled their lil house across there, and then there was momma’s house, Abner’s house, um, my grandma Rosalie and my uncle put their house there, and then Bootsie Millet and them, and then Plot Sauce and his wife, and then they had some old man from town build a house out there, and then there was Uncle Neg, Uncle Jesse and them, and you go a piece and there was, uh, Joe Sanders, uh, . Old Man Naquin, and then there was, uh, uh, Joe Sanders, Tete and Dan, and then further down was the Gondolfos.
JD: Somebody Joe Sanders was married to was named Te Nug. Do we have a name, who they are, what…
Dot: …Te Nug’s name Momma? That’s Arthur Sanders’ momma.
JD: That’s all I have is a nickname on here. .
Dot: That’s, uh, Arthur Sander’s momma. . Where’s my picture, I know I have one. I know somebody got one, I saw it. All of us standin up there takin a picture at school.
JD: Agnes, tell me, if you will, what was it like to run a family on a houseboat?
Agnes: [laughs] [JD is given a gift of some kind]
Dot: Jim asked you a question.
JD: It’s too big a question, I guess. When you got…when you were in a campboat, and you got up in the morning let’s say in the summertime, you get up in the morning…were you the first one up?
Agnes: Almost all the time. .
JD: You see, nobody knows, nobody knows anymore, how y’all managed to have a good life like y’all had on those campboats. And I’d like to be able to describe just something that seems silly but…how did, what did y’all do on the campboats all day?
Agnes: I would do the same things that I do at home right now, Jim. I’d get up and get my kids up, sometimes I wouldn’t call em up, I’d let em sleep. I’d scrub all around my camp, I’d have my washin out.
JD: Now you say you’d scrub all around your camp, what do you me you’d scrub…?
Agnes: I had boards all around my camp.
JD: You had a walk, there was a walk all the way around. Right?
Agnes: Yeah. And I’d scrub on my knees, there.
JD: Every day?!
Agnes: Almost every day. That floor was yellow, like you could have ate off of it. And, uh…. we’d, uh, I’d do my washin, I’d do my ironin, I’d do my scrubbin and I’d…everything, my sewin, and, I’d do everything, Jim. Make bread and …
JD: What did you do for breakfast, before the kids…did you make that just before the kids got up?
Agnes: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I had my breakfast ready for when they’d get up.
JD: What kind of breakfast would it be?
Agnes: I did, uh, fry potatoes and grits, or I’d smother potatoes, or them times we’d buy the salt meat by big shoulders, . you see, well I’d cut some of that meat up and boil it and fry it, some with rice or…We didn’t have no cereal and all like they got today.
JD: Or milk?
Agnes: Milk, we didn’t have no milk. My kids was raised mostly on cream.
JD: On cream? . Aw, you talking about canned cream?
Dot: Canned cream.
JD: Pet cream?
Agnes: That’s the milk they had. Sometimes when the fishboat would come, well, I’d get a couple jars of milk. You couldn’t buy much because you couldn’t have no way to keep it. . I’d buy two quarts, or sometimes three quarts of milk.
JD: That was a treat almost, eh?
Agnes: Aw, yeah.
Dot: Or she’d, uh, every day she’d make light bread.
JD: Light bread, what’s that? .
Agnes: Mix your bread like you make biscuits at night. . Flour and water and yeast and…
JD: You put yeast in there? You kept yeast growing all the time?
Agnes: Um, I’d make my own.
JD: Did you buy it in a little packet and keep it going, or?
Agnes: Yeah. Now and then when they’d get too old…
JD: It would die?
Agnes: Well, they’d fade away [?]. But, uh, I’d buy maybe three, four months…I’d buy one lil biscuit, and I’m make …make me my own, to last.
JD: How did you do that? How did you make yeast?
Agnes: I’m make my, my yeast…mix it with water and flour…
JD: So you’d buy the lil pack from the, from the, grocery boat?
Agnes: Yeah, it was a lil, uh, biscuit, about like dat square.
JD: About an inch, square.
Agnes: And, uh, I’m mix dat with flour and water and [?] bit raise, and I’d take some cornmeal and I’m make my own…my own yeast cake.
JD: You’d mix that, uh, mixture with cornmeal and that would make yeast cakes, and then…and then, how would you use the yeast cakes when you were cooking?
Agnes: I’d, I’d, I’d take…I’d make my yeast cakes about dat big.
JD: About two inches around. They were square, or they were round?
Agnes: Round. .
JD: Flat, like a pancake?
Agnes: Yeah. And I’d mix my yeast at night. Then next morning I make my bread.
JD: Mix your yeast at night. . You see you know about all those things that you know exactly how you did, but …to describe that [Agnes laughs]…Now what do you mean you would make the yeast at night?
Agnes: I’m make my yeast at night, and I’d let it raise. Next morning I’d get up and put that in my pan and take my flour and I’d mix my bread. And I’d mix my bread and let dat raise, I’d let it raise ‘bout that high over the pan [.about 6 inches high]. Then I’d redo it …
JD: Punch it all down again…?
Agnes: Yeah, punch it all down, let it raise again, then I’d take my roller and roll it out.
Dot: She’d bake that in the evening [afternoon?]. And we always had to take a nap, after dinner [lunch]. And when we’d wake up, well she’d cut that hot light bread…and we didn’t have jelly or nothing like that but she’d take ., she’d take syrup or lard. . And spread a lil bit of that on there and put black pepper on there.
JD: What!?
Dot: That was good
Agnes: Sheee, …[kids]used to go crazy.
JD: Lard and black pepper? . You didn’t put black pepper on the syrup did you? .
Dot: No. She’d either put the syrup, if she had some. She didn’t have no syrup, she’d put the lard and a lil black pepper on it.
JD: Now, [was] the lard was flavored at all? What kind of flavor…?
Dot: Just plain lard. . umhm.
JD: . Now when you say you made your yeast at night…you took the little yeast cakes that you had made with the cornmeal? . And you mixed that with what?
Agnes: With flour. . You put so much water and then you put you flour and mix it…and let it raise.
JD: And let it raise overnight by itself. Now, you just talking about a small lil bitty amount, right?
Agnes: Yeah. Lil bitty thing about this big…
JD: About two inches square.
Agnes: …make loaves of bread that big [gestures].
JD: The next morning when you got up that had… that would raise…you would take that and mix it with you flour and water – a big bunch-. and then let that raise twice, and then you would bake that. . Did you put salt in that bread?
Agnes: . Umhm. Salt, sugar…
JD: Sugar too?
Agnes: Umhm.
Dot: She can still make it, now, Jim. . Well, I guess so. .
Agnes: Aw yeah, I could make it. I don’t know how it would come out…ain’t made none in a long time.
JD: You don’t have a wood stove to bake it in, either.
Agnes: But now, I’d have to buy the yeast cake, you see? . But them kids, about 2:30 – 3:00, I’d call all them kids and give em each a big piece of bread with syrup.
Dot: Not just [us], that was the whole…the ones that was in the canal [that] had kids. . Everybody would come…
Agnes: …bunch of kids we’d call. Sometime it would take me two big loaves of bread.
JD: And you had that in the daytime. What did you have for breakfast? You had some of that bread for breakfast too?
Dot: Most of the time she ain’t had enough left for breakfast, or anything else. Every day she made her bread. . But, after she get us up in the morning this is what I can remember – by the time we got up she had her bread ready, she had scrubbed everything, and she’d get us up and put starched an ironed clothes on us. Now, here we are livin in the woods, but we wore our starched and ironed clothes. . Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then she’d …[?]…”All right now, y’all go play, I got to cook dinner and do the rest.” . And everywhere we lived, over the lil levee [there was always one], Daddy would clean that out, and we’d play in there. . And then dinner. She’d call us in, bathe us again, now.
JD: What? Before dinner [lunch]. ?
Dot: Oh yes! Bathed us again, put some more clean clothes on…
Agnes: And I’d iron all them clothes with black irons. . Heated on a wood stove.
Dot: And then she’d feed us, and then we laid down for a while.
JD: Now, how old were y’all when all this was taking place?
Dot: I can remember that being four years old, Jim. .
JD: You the youngest?
Dot: No, Carol Ann’s the youngest. Cause I was about four years old when they left me…when Milton cut his throat ., and they left with the camp, they left me on the lil levee. . And I remember that, and I was about four years old.
That was when Milton hurt himself and y’all tried to go down to…y’all took him down to Morgan City?
Dot: Daddy had took off with him [Milton, their son] in the boat, and then somebody [Monug] hooked onto the camp to bring the camp.
JD: Oh, is that how it was? To go meet em?
Dot: Yeah, cause they didn’t know if he’d be alive or not when they got there. And they had left me.
JD: So you were on the campboat or you went with the…with the, uh…?
Agnes: I was on the campboat.
JD: You stayed on the campboat, Myon went with Milton on the small boat.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: They left you on the…when did they discover you were gone?
Agnes: We was out there in the canal, we was just turning out [of the canal]…we got out the canal and was just turning out to go down, like that, and uh, Aunt Rose, Plot, they was livin there, them too. And she took off and she run [down the levee towards the lake]…and uh, Momma happened to get on the porch. Well, she [Aunt Rose] was at the end of the canal over there, waving. We had left Black.
JD: Black? That’s what they called you [Dot]? That’s what you were called?
Agnes: Black. We had left Black. So, we left the campboat go, we went to the canal and got her, and it was rough. That campboat looked like it was gonna turn over. And, uh, we went picked up her, hand her too me through the window. You couldn’t get close enough to the guard, he handed her to me through the window, and he took off again [pulling the campboat]. And when we got to Big Blue Point, I never thought we’d make it.
JD: It was that rough?
Agnes: Rough?! When we notice, when we got almost at the mouth of the Boutte [Bayou], . , uh, we notice they had that much water in the hull.
JD: Where was it getting in?
Agnes: On the side. .. We had to stop, [started looking for some place to stop out of the rough water] we got, we got at the, uh, in the bayou, and Monug stopped and we bailed it out. We took off again.
JD: Yall bailed out the whole hull?
Agnes: Oh, yeah. We bailed it out dry. “Now”, he say “we can go”. [When] we got in Sixmile Lake it was still rough ..
JD: The wind must have been comin from the east.
Agnes: It was a wester. . A norwester. . Blowin cold, ohhh, it was cold! Myon and them like to froze before they got to ….
JD: They were in an open boat?
Agnes: No. They met Pinkerman. Pinkerman was goin up the lake.
JD: Pinkerman [Mendoza] was one of the fishboats?
Agnes: Yeah. And when Brud had a bigger boat, so they jumped in Brud’s boat with him, wrapped him [Milton] up in a quilt, and they jumped in Brud’s boat. And Pinkerman was comin so they started flaggin Pinkerman. So he turned around and come met em and they took off back to Morgan City.
JD: So, so, they were takin him down the lake and…who’s Brud you talking about? Who was that?
Agnes: Brud Verret. . He was a….
JD: One of the people who lived on the canal? . So you took off…y’all took off with him, and met the fishboat comin up the lake and the fishboat picked em up and turned around and went back to Morgan City.
Dot: But, it’s a good thing it was cold. Cause he’d a bled to death if it been summer.
JD: You think so?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: It helped it to close. . He slipped on a log or something and got…but he had the knife in his hand…
Agnes: He went to cross a log and his foot slipped, and the lil knife went in. And Jim, he was about from here to that door [about ten feet]. I was standin up by the foot of the bed, and he was at the kitchen door, and when he said “Daddy I cut myself”, that blood just come out. [gestures]
JD: It sprayed, hunh?
Dot: Now, I remember that.
JD: So, he cut a big artery? .
Agnes: Oh, yeah, he cut the main arter[y]. And, and, uh, the doctor said…Some doctors wanted to cut on him, some said let’s leave good enough alone. They say if it bleedin inside, he say, he get fever. And, uh, they left it to the next…he say we gone wait till tomorrow, tomorrow morning. And they waited, and it was alright after that. They took x-rays and all, and everything had closed up.
Dot: But you see, then, you couldn’t jump in the car and go to a doctor. . You had to go to Morgan City. .. We caught pneumonia and stuff, Momma used to keep what they call flannels. Yeah, and I remember them things.
JD: What was it like Dot?
Agnes: A piece of material.
Dot: Yeah, and it used camphor.
JD: About a foot by a foot? Piece of material? Like a piece of carpet square?
Agnes: Yeah, you could buy it by the yard in them times. You can’t…you don’t see it no more, now.
JD: It’s not like a flannel shirt? .
Dot: No, it’s flannel, pure flannel.
JD: What’s that you talking about? Thick?
Dot: Material, and it’s thick and it’s pure flannel.
JD: Wool? Is it wool, cotton? .. Anyway, go ahead.
Dot: And they’d soak that in camphor. That’s what it was, eh Mom, camphor?
Agnes: Umhm. And turpentine. .
Dot: And they’d treat pneumonia with that.
JD: How?
Dot: Put it…put it in that hot stuff…turpentine and camphor…
Agnes: Myon would put it in a skillet, and he’d put all his stuff in there. And he’d, Jim, I seen him get his hands so burnt, that he couldn’t hardly do nuttin with em, they were so burnt. Messin with those kids.
JD: Tell me about how he would treat with that, though….
Agnes: He’d put his, uh, cloth in the skillet ., and he had two. He’d put one [on their backs] and he’d take one hot, hot, hot and then he’d stick it on em. It’d get cold, he’d come back and get that one, and put the other one.
JD: . For pneumonia. That’s all he treated was pneumonia, not….
Dot: Well, and bad cold, and things like that.
JD: Yeah, anything that messed up your chest and your throat….
Agnes: Milton had pneumonia one time, and uh, we was, uh, at Blue Point. And he treated him all night. .. We kept that. We kept that medicine all the time. .. And, uh, next morning he told his daddy, “Daddy? What you did with those dirty rags you had?” . He say, “Well, don’t worry about them dirty rags”. [chuckles] We saved those dirty rags..
JD: Why did you remember em so badly [strong memory].
Dot: Because I had pneumonia several times, and they treated me like that.
JD: It wasn’t pleasant?
Dot: It was hot! . And it stink to high heaven. I can remember em treating me with that.
JD: Did it bring you any relief that you could tell, when they were doin it?
Dot: Oh yeah! The next morning…if you…they could tell we had pneumonia by pressin…I could tell now if I have pneumonia now…. by pressin on the back and the breathing. . And they’d start that, all night maybe, and all day. But in a couple days you was up and around.
JD: Is that right? Well, did you have fever with that too?
Agnes: Sure. .
Dot: . And, in the evenins, Milton was the oldest, we had the wood stove. Well, it was his job to cut the wood. . So me and Alberta, Pan [Albert Jr.] was too small. We’d follow Milton, wherever he was gonna cut down the tree to get some wood. As he cut, he’d cut the wood, we had to carry out, and bring it to the house.
Agnes: She’d come with two pieces of wood. [laughs]
Dot: I was little. .
Agnes: She’d carry wood, though!
Dot: And, our past time, playin…we’d walk drums.
JD: Do what?
Dot: Walk drums. .. We just had 55-gallon drums. And Daddy’d buy fuel at the time, like that. . And when it was empty, well he’d put it back there and we’d walk them drums, just like a clown, you know? Walking the drums.
JD: For fun? Just to play?
Dot: Yeah. And Momma’d save all the tin cans. We’d play house. .. I remember, Jim, really the best time of my life…well, of course, I wasn’t out there struggling to make a livin…we were kids, but it was the most peaceful time that I ever remember.
JD: How old were you when you’re thinking like this?
Dot: As far back as I can remember.
JD: Tell how long, I mean, how old were you?
Dot: When I faced reality! [laughs] .
JD: Well, for most of us, that’s about five years old, but, I mean, you were sayin you had a longer childhood…a pleasant childhood.
Dot: Oh yeah, because, you know, we didn’t know what a movie house was. We didn’t know what school was until we moved across here and went to school. .. Just didn’t know. We thought that everybody lived that way. .. And, I look back now and remember those things, and that was the most peaceful time of my life. And we thought everything was fine. Now, of course, Daddy was out there bustin his butt to feed us, and clothe us.
JD: But even he says that wasn’t a bad time.
Dot: Uh, the pace was so slow. .. I can remember in the evening, all those in the canal would come there to visit. Every evening they’d go to one house or the other one. .
Agnes: Make coffee and call each other. .. “Coffee’s made!”.
Dot: And we’d all go to that one house.
JD: Get off on the bank and walk down the headland, to the…?
Dot: Yeah. But, the children didn’t come in the house with them grownups. .. The children? You go play with the other children. .
Agnes: We didn’t…Jim, we didn’t talk in them times like the people do in front of the kids. You know, a woman was pregnant, she was pregnant…grownups knew but the kids didn’t know all that. .. Like now, they, they know everything. . But we didn’t talk any kind of way in front of our kids.
[tape goes off for a moment]
JD: You know, I could talk to you for…day after day if you wouldn’t mind talking to me about these kinds of things. Uh, as many of you as are willing to talk to me about it, because what I do is I take this and I’m putting it on these tapes and then I type out a transcript of what is said. And then I can use that information to write what it was like. And, when you look at this outline, when you look at this outline, right at the top of it is the people. That’s the first thing I want to talk about is the people, and the people: I want to talk about the families. Who they were, so I just talk about who they were. But then I’m goin to put about how they came to live together, how y’all ended up in Myon’s Canal all together, those fifteen or seventeen boats – however many it was. What the houseboats were like, and when we talk about the houseboats I want to talk about what the life was like, on the houseboats. And that’s where I can get into all this other stuff about what’s goin on. We can talk about here the movements of the community…where the boats went, around in the Basin. Now, some of y’all moved more than others, I know. . Some people didn’t hardly move at all apparently, apparently y’all didn’t move very much, but other people moved like every two weeks they would pick up and move. . And then onto the land at the levee…to talk about when y’all crossed the levee and how it was done, and then away from the levee to Oxford, and then what it’s like now.
Dot: Lot of changes.
JD: And that’s why I want to write that. Because, I think all those changes ought to be on paper somewhere, and like I’ve told…like I’ve told other people that I’ve told that I’m doing this…I’m not doing this to sell it, what I want to do it for is I truly believe that what y’all did and the way y’all lived is so… I think it’s good thing. It…it…it’s…other people, [if] other people had similar lifestyle, I don’t know them. Other people [to the] north had one, people in Bayou Lafourche had one ., but y’all had a thing that has never been described anywhere and if somebody doesn’t put it down on paper nobody’s gonna remember what it was. And I just don’t want that to happen. So that’s why I’m doing it, like I tell people, if I finish this and I’ve only got one copy, two copies…I’m gonna put one at USL in a special place where people go to look for the histories of things that people in Louisiana . lived. And the other one at the state archaeologist’s office in Baton Rouge.
Dot: Well, you gonna have to make more copies than that [laughs]. But something else I wanted to add, you know, there’s no religion mentioned there.
JD: No, and that’s another thing.
Dot: But, uh, we were raised very religious. Every Sunday morning after we had breakfast, and all, we went and knelt down. . We were Catholic, and said prayer beads. I mean, that was a ritual. That’s something we knew we had to do.
JD: The whole family did that?
Dot: The whole family did that. And many times, Uncle Jesse knew how to say the prayer beads in French. .. Jesse Daigle, and he’d come and he’d say it in French.
JD: I’ll be. Did y’all understand it in French?
Dot: Then, yeah Jim. . I most probably could understand it now. I still understand the French language, I just can’t speak it. Because when we started school, we didn’t know how to talk English…very little, very few words. We had to be taught English and forgot French.
JD: Well, this young lady who came to teach at Myette Pt., did she know French?
Dot: No.
JD: So, did y’all know enough English to talk to her?
Dot: Yeah, by then we knew enough English to talk to her. And, that time, my grandma, her [Agnes] momma, still couldn’t talk English. . We had to talk to her in French. But like I say, I mean, our religion was there. It was not, uh, you know, well “they in the wild, what they know about religion?” But we had a priest that would come there. Every once in a while.
Agnes: Yeah, every three weeks.
Dot: And we’d make communion and all.
JD: This was Father Gobeil?
Dot: Father Gobeil. I made my confirmation and all at home. Father Gobeil.
JD: And he would come and say Mass, say, in one of the boats every three weeks or so?
Agnes: Every three weeks. Had church in my camp. . Sometime it was so full the end of the porch would touch the water. .
Dot: And wasn’t he there when I was born, Momma?
Agnes: Uh, no. . They went and got, uh,…after we moved back at the canal, Daddy went and got him. He’d come at the beach, there…Charenton Beach and he’d pick him up and bring him…bring him over there.
JD: Yall had to come …?
Agnes: He’d come pick him up.
JD: Who…who would come?
Agnes: Myon.
JD: Myon would come and pick the priest up at the beach? . Oh, so the priest didn’t have a boat to go around himself…by himself?
Agnes: He got him [one] later on…got a boat.
JD: Later on he got one?
Agnes: Umhm. Then he’d come.
JD: Would he go other places too? Other than Blaise’s Canal?
Agnes: No, he used to come there…yeah, he used to, uh, Keelboat [Pass]. . And Hog Island, and all.
Dot: I can remember him. Him and Daddy were real good friends. .
JD: Your daddy…one of em…one of those priests got in trouble with your daddy one time he told me…because he, uh, the priest tried to get him to fix him up with a woman. And your daddy didn’t go for that. . Matter of fact he told me he never talked to that priest again after that. . Your daddy told me a lot of nice stories, I have em on tape. . And, if y’all would like, at some point, again I didn’t know how approach you about this because I know how you and Myon were and still are. When I started listenin to those tapes, it was like he was sittin in the chair right next to me again. And, and just to hear his voice as strong as that telling those kind of stories…it made me feel good, it really made me feel good. But I could tell that if somebody was grieving for him then it might not make em feel good. It might make em feel bad.
Dot: No, I don’t think, because we have him on video. . And she [Agnes] sets and watches.
JD: . Well, if y’all would like, I’m workin on a way to…the problem that I have right now is the tapes I have him on are those lil bitty tapes and I need to convert those lil tapes to this standard tape. Like this, and I have to find the right wire to connect the two machines together to copy them. If y’all would like when I get that set up I’ll make y’all copies of the tapes. .
Agnes: Yeah, my kids would like that, I bet. .
Dot: I think it would be a good thing to have. . Not for us now, but for our kids, those that does remember their grandfather. Cause I don’t think he’s the type of person they’ll ever forget. . It would be good for them.
JD: . It’s good for me. After I sat down and listened to those tapes for awhile, I’d get up feeling just like I used to feel when I would be here and go home…I would feel better than I did when I came.
Agnes: Darlene [Soule] say when they made him they throwed away the mold. . There ain’t no more like Myon. .
Dot: …just that…that he lived with so much dignity.. That’s the way he died. . We were there.
Agnes: He was a good man when he was young, he was a good man till he died. .
Dot: And I ain’t braggin, but he raised six fine kids. .
JD: Even if he had to defend Eula’s…Eula’s honor at the dance against some of those guys who wanted to get….
Dot: He was determined that was his. .
JD: But anyhow, I have to go home. So I’m gonna have to stop. But, I would like to have the opportunity to come back and sit down with y’all and talk some more. And I mean talk about a lot of things. All the things y’all remember about how it was and how y’all lived…I would like to get down. You see, you talk about making yeast, and yet, nobody…nobody does that anymore. So it’s necessary to learn how you did it. I might even bring you some yeast cakes and you might even show…show us how you did it.
Agnes: It’s not hard Jim. It’s not hard at all.
JD: That’s the end of this session. We’re going to stop right now. [stop recorder]. Start over, we talking some more. [laughs] Alberta fell in the water?
Dot: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah, Jesse had to get a…jump after her.
JD: Well, Edward was telling me that there was actually…there was actually something y’all did…y’all didn’t want the kids to go swimming, even if they could swim later y’all would keep em out of the water.
Dot: Well, no, I was a teenager … we’d go in there…we’d go by the Boy Scout house along the, uh, the uh, shore…at Myette Pt. They had a big Boy Scout house out there. . It was abandoned by then, but we’d ax Momma can we go swimming. . “No, not until y’all learn how”. . So we used to sneak off at the end of the canal, when that water was high, with the current, and they had a vine there…I don’t see how one of us didn’t drown. We used to swing on that vine and jump overboard.
JD: Did y’all learn to swim by that time? All by yourselves?
Dot: Yeah, we’d sneak off and learn how to swim. But shame on us to go swimming until we learned how. And we’d tell her, well, how we gone learn how if we don’t go in the water?
JD: Edward told me that y’all actually, uh, people would say that you can’t go swimming in May because that’s [causes] boils…. You can’t go in some other [time] because that’s fever, and all that kind of stuff.
Dot: Bad water, that’s when bad water would hit. When it would do that we wouldn’t o in the water.
JD: I wonder if there was any thing to that?
Dot: Oh, definitely.
JD: There was?
Dot: Ohhh yes, definitely. .
Agnes: You see, when the water was high, and when the water’d come out of them woods, that water was bad. . And that’s why we didn’t want em to go in it. Until the water’d get right.
Dot: Now, everywhere we went Daddy had a tar vat out there.
JD: What would he dip in it?
Agnes: His nets, his lines.
JD: . I didn’t know he fished hoop nets? He did? .
Dot: Aw yeah. Now, all them nets were made out of cotton though. .
Agnes: Every three weeks you had to do your nets. Every three weeks you had to cut em off the rims…
JD: You cut em off the rim and did that????!
Dot: Yeah, they wasn’t no good. That cotton would…[rot]
Agnes: I had to knit all the time, Jim.
JD: You mean, you could, you would…the net, no matter what you did to it would only last three weeks? Even if you dipped it religiously?
Dot: It rotted, right.
Agnes: We’d knit all the time.
Dot: Always knittin.
Agnes: Always knittin, until they got to that nylon, and that was it.
JD: Made a big difference, nylon did, eh?
Dot: I can remember Daddy sittin at night…we didn’t have no electricity, didn’t have no radios, no TV. We’d all sit in that kitchen around that wood stove, in wintertime. Well, Daddy would sit there at night with his needle. Momma’d knit every chance she’d get. And you could see Daddy sittin there. . I can remember that.
Agnes: Yeah, knit many a net.
JD: I’d like to know how many pounds of line you actually used, and threw away.
Agnes: That’s what I say, Jim, I can’t….
Interview with Agnes Bailey, and Edward, Lena Mae, and Dorothy Couvillier
Blog Ch 20 Tape 11 Side B
Continued from Chapter 19
JD: …on your daddy’s side came from France and Spain. Your other grandfather and grandmother were Claiborne Mayon and Fanny Mae Mason. Do you know if they were already in the United States when they met, or did they come from overseas [already knowing each other]…?
Agnes: I don’t know.
Dot: I know we always understood they were all over here.
Agnes: Irish, that’s what nationality that is.
JD: Fanny Mae Mason?
Agnes: Yeah.
Dot: From Ireland, I imagine.
JD: Could have been, could have been English, that’s not too far different. Um, now the people that might be buried here, on the Canal, which ones of those people would that be? Would that be your grandmother and grandfather on both sides?
Agnes: I think so. I think they was buried there for sure.
JD: Claiborne and Fannie Mae?
Agnes: Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s where they were buried. And my grandma and my grandpa on my daddy’s side, they was buried in, in uh, …
JD: Morgan City maybe?
Agnes: No. In Pierre Part?
JD: Could be, some of em…I have on tape some of em were in Pierre Part.
Agnes: Either Pierre Part or…you remember, Dot, that storm that destroyed the church, and everything…I think it was the Pierre Part church, eh? I think, yeah. Cause there’s a storm that destroyed the whole church, broke some of the graves, some of em, uh, it messed up the whole graveyard and everything. I think it’s the Pierre Part.
Dot: …the Napoleonville church?
Agnes: No, I think it’s Pierre Part…not sure, you’d have to see.
JD: Well, how about Myon’s people? Joe Daigle and Leah Hebert, you have any idea?
Agnes: …Joe Daigle, his grandpa’s name was Joe Daigle. His momma’s daddy.
JD: How about his momma and daddy, Ernestine and Albert, you have any idea where they were buried?
Dot: Ernestine…his momma and daddy, that’s in Morgan City. Grandma’s buried in Morgan City, wasn’t she?
Agnes: Yeah, they both buried in Morgan City. His momma and daddy. .
JD: And Blaise is in Franklin?
Agnes: No, Blaise is in Morgan City too. And momma…Momma’s in Franklin.
JD: Why two places?
Agnes: I don’t know. You see, when he died, he died in New Orleans. And we had the camp down there because he was so sick. So, when he died Myon brought him back to Morgan City and buried him there.
JD: Yall took the Mississippi [river] down to New Orleans with the campboat?
Agnes: Uhuh, no, they brought him by car. And, uh, to bring him back he put him on the train and brought him home.
JD: Back to Morgan City. OK, these people are sure spread around, eh? Dot, this has been so interesting, to see where all these people came from and where they went and everything. I’ve got, uh, the families that lived on the canal [Myon’s], that crossed over the levee, and believe it or not, when they started crossing over the levee there were 15 houseboats that crossed the levee. I didn’t realize there were that many. There was, uh, the Couvilliers, the Bailey’s…
Dot: Now wait, the Couvilliers, they were livin…when we moved there…they were livin by Oaklawn bridge, there.
JD: OK, but that’s different Couvilliers, you talking about Lester.
Dot: Yeah, what Couvilleirs you talking about?
JD: Edward and Lena Mae.
Dot: Yeah, his daddy, yeah.
JD: And then there was y’all. And, uh, and then Neg, the Gondolfos, Abner Couviller, Albert Couvillier, . Bootsie Millet, Joe Sauce, Jesse Daigle, Dan Lange, Joe Sanders, Lester Couvillier, Arthur Sanders, and Nick Verret. And Nick Verret was on the canal, but he didn’t move over, apparently. He didn’t come over and become part of the community. He stayed on the canal.
Dot: Yeah, that was, uh, Tootsie’s first husband.
JD: Which is…which Tootsie we talking about?
Dot: Nick Verret…Tootsie Louviere, uh, Arthur Louviere’s wife. That was,um, Dutie, the one we call Dutie.
JD: I have her real name as Nellie, is that right?
Dot: Uh, Louella. That was their daddy.
JD: That was…who?
Dot: That was Tootsie’s first husband. Nick Verret.
JD: He died, or she divorced him, or…?
Dot: No, they were divorced, and she married Arthur Louviere years later.
JD: And that’s Bernie’s brother.
DOT: Yeah, uh, you missed one too. Grandma’s campboat in there. Momma’s momma.
JD: She lived by herself in a campboat?
Dot: Yeah, her and uncle Monug.
JD: I didn’t have them down, did they come across the levee?
Dot: Yeah.
JD: Uh, you talking about …
Dot: Rosalie Sauce.
JD: Rosalie Mayon?
Dot: Yeah, Rosalie Mayon Sauce.
JD: So you sayin she and Blaise…no Blaise was dead by then.
Dot: No, Monug. The one they called Monug, uh, I didn’t know his name either. Um, she told you his name.
JD: Um, I missed something then, when I was writing this down. I have Alvin, Ivy, and Lydia, for Rosalie Mayon’s brothers.
Dot: This is her son. That would be momma’s brother.
JD: Preston?
Dot: Yeah, umhm. Granma had a campboat and they moved it on [over the levee].
JD: OK, so it was 16.
Dot: And I’m thinking they had another one Jim, um, Jack Sauce’s momma and daddy.
JD: I have Joe Sauce down here, was that his momma and daddy?
Dot: No, uhuh,…Plot Sauce, that was his name.
JD: What was it?
Dot: Plot. Plot Sauce, and Vina, Edward’s sister.
JD: They lived to together?
Dot: Yeah, they were man and wife.
JD: Plot Sauce and Vina? .
Dot: That was Jack and thems momma and daddy.
JD: Plot Sauce? That’s Jack Sauce’s momma and daddy? . Did they come across the canal?
Dot: Yeah.
JD: Where did they come to live when they came on this side the levee? …a houseboat over the levee and set it up on the bank like the rest of y’all?
Dot: Umhm. And they come from across the lake…
JD: Rosalie Mayon and Preston come across the levee too…?
Dot: Who? . Yeah. . Cause, let’s see if I can remember, startin on the other end, well Arthur Sanders lived about three miles up, at Oaklawn Canal. And then there was Miss [?] and them, Miss Lester and them. Tootsie and Arthur, and Lena Mae had lived in after that in her lil house,…
JD: Who?
Dot: Lena Mae and Edward. They pulled their lil house across there, and then there was momma’s house, Abner’s house, um, my grandma Rosalie and my uncle put their house there, and then Bootsie Millet and them, and then Plot Sauce and his wife, and then they had some old man from town build a house out there, and then there was Uncle Neg, Uncle Jesse and them, and you go a piece and there was, uh, Joe Sanders, uh, . Old Man Naquin, and then there was, uh, uh, Joe Sanders, Tete and Dan, and then further down was the Gondolfos.
JD: Somebody Joe Sanders was married to was named Te Nug. Do we have a name, who they are, what…
Dot: …Te Nug’s name Momma? That’s Arthur Sanders’ momma.
JD: That’s all I have is a nickname on here. .
Dot: That’s, uh, Arthur Sander’s momma. . Where’s my picture, I know I have one. I know somebody got one, I saw it. All of us standin up there takin a picture at school.
JD: Agnes, tell me, if you will, what was it like to run a family on a houseboat?
Agnes: [laughs] [JD is given a gift of some kind]
Dot: Jim asked you a question.
JD: It’s too big a question, I guess. When you got…when you were in a campboat, and you got up in the morning let’s say in the summertime, you get up in the morning…were you the first one up?
Agnes: Almost all the time. .
JD: You see, nobody knows, nobody knows anymore, how y’all managed to have a good life like y’all had on those campboats. And I’d like to be able to describe just something that seems silly but…how did, what did y’all do on the campboats all day?
Agnes: I would do the same things that I do at home right now, Jim. I’d get up and get my kids up, sometimes I wouldn’t call em up, I’d let em sleep. I’d scrub all around my camp, I’d have my washin out.
JD: Now you say you’d scrub all around your camp, what do you me you’d scrub…?
Agnes: I had boards all around my camp.
JD: You had a walk, there was a walk all the way around. Right?
Agnes: Yeah. And I’d scrub on my knees, there.
JD: Every day?!
Agnes: Almost every day. That floor was yellow, like you could have ate off of it. And, uh…. we’d, uh, I’d do my washin, I’d do my ironin, I’d do my scrubbin and I’d…everything, my sewin, and, I’d do everything, Jim. Make bread and …
JD: What did you do for breakfast, before the kids…did you make that just before the kids got up?
Agnes: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I had my breakfast ready for when they’d get up.
JD: What kind of breakfast would it be?
Agnes: I did, uh, fry potatoes and grits, or I’d smother potatoes, or them times we’d buy the salt meat by big shoulders, . you see, well I’d cut some of that meat up and boil it and fry it, some with rice or…We didn’t have no cereal and all like they got today.
JD: Or milk?
Agnes: Milk, we didn’t have no milk. My kids was raised mostly on cream.
JD: On cream? . Aw, you talking about canned cream?
Dot: Canned cream.
JD: Pet cream?
Agnes: That’s the milk they had. Sometimes when the fishboat would come, well, I’d get a couple jars of milk. You couldn’t buy much because you couldn’t have no way to keep it. . I’d buy two quarts, or sometimes three quarts of milk.
JD: That was a treat almost, eh?
Agnes: Aw, yeah.
Dot: Or she’d, uh, every day she’d make light bread.
JD: Light bread, what’s that? .
Agnes: Mix your bread like you make biscuits at night. . Flour and water and yeast and…
JD: You put yeast in there? You kept yeast growing all the time?
Agnes: Um, I’d make my own.
JD: Did you buy it in a little packet and keep it going, or?
Agnes: Yeah. Now and then when they’d get too old…
JD: It would die?
Agnes: Well, they’d fade away [?]. But, uh, I’d buy maybe three, four months…I’d buy one lil biscuit, and I’m make …make me my own, to last.
JD: How did you do that? How did you make yeast?
Agnes: I’m make my, my yeast…mix it with water and flour…
JD: So you’d buy the lil pack from the, from the, grocery boat?
Agnes: Yeah, it was a lil, uh, biscuit, about like dat square.
JD: About an inch, square.
Agnes: And, uh, I’m mix dat with flour and water and [?] bit raise, and I’d take some cornmeal and I’m make my own…my own yeast cake.
JD: You’d mix that, uh, mixture with cornmeal and that would make yeast cakes, and then…and then, how would you use the yeast cakes when you were cooking?
Agnes: I’d, I’d, I’d take…I’d make my yeast cakes about dat big.
JD: About two inches around. They were square, or they were round?
Agnes: Round. .
JD: Flat, like a pancake?
Agnes: Yeah. And I’d mix my yeast at night. Then next morning I make my bread.
JD: Mix your yeast at night. . You see you know about all those things that you know exactly how you did, but …to describe that [Agnes laughs]…Now what do you mean you would make the yeast at night?
Agnes: I’m make my yeast at night, and I’d let it raise. Next morning I’d get up and put that in my pan and take my flour and I’d mix my bread. And I’d mix my bread and let dat raise, I’d let it raise ‘bout that high over the pan [.about 6 inches high]. Then I’d redo it …
JD: Punch it all down again…?
Agnes: Yeah, punch it all down, let it raise again, then I’d take my roller and roll it out.
Dot: She’d bake that in the evening [afternoon?]. And we always had to take a nap, after dinner [lunch]. And when we’d wake up, well she’d cut that hot light bread…and we didn’t have jelly or nothing like that but she’d take ., she’d take syrup or lard. . And spread a lil bit of that on there and put black pepper on there.
JD: What!?
Dot: That was good
Agnes: Sheee, …[kids]used to go crazy.
JD: Lard and black pepper? . You didn’t put black pepper on the syrup did you? .
Dot: No. She’d either put the syrup, if she had some. She didn’t have no syrup, she’d put the lard and a lil black pepper on it.
JD: Now, [was] the lard was flavored at all? What kind of flavor…?
Dot: Just plain lard. . umhm.
JD: . Now when you say you made your yeast at night…you took the little yeast cakes that you had made with the cornmeal? . And you mixed that with what?
Agnes: With flour. . You put so much water and then you put you flour and mix it…and let it raise.
JD: And let it raise overnight by itself. Now, you just talking about a small lil bitty amount, right?
Agnes: Yeah. Lil bitty thing about this big…
JD: About two inches square.
Agnes: …make loaves of bread that big [gestures].
JD: The next morning when you got up that had… that would raise…you would take that and mix it with you flour and water – a big bunch-. and then let that raise twice, and then you would bake that. . Did you put salt in that bread?
Agnes: . Umhm. Salt, sugar…
JD: Sugar too?
Agnes: Umhm.
Dot: She can still make it, now, Jim. . Well, I guess so. .
Agnes: Aw yeah, I could make it. I don’t know how it would come out…ain’t made none in a long time.
JD: You don’t have a wood stove to bake it in, either.
Agnes: But now, I’d have to buy the yeast cake, you see? . But them kids, about 2:30 – 3:00, I’d call all them kids and give em each a big piece of bread with syrup.
Dot: Not just [us], that was the whole…the ones that was in the canal [that] had kids. . Everybody would come…
Agnes: …bunch of kids we’d call. Sometime it would take me two big loaves of bread.
JD: And you had that in the daytime. What did you have for breakfast? You had some of that bread for breakfast too?
Dot: Most of the time she ain’t had enough left for breakfast, or anything else. Every day she made her bread. . But, after she get us up in the morning this is what I can remember – by the time we got up she had her bread ready, she had scrubbed everything, and she’d get us up and put starched an ironed clothes on us. Now, here we are livin in the woods, but we wore our starched and ironed clothes. . Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then she’d …[?]…”All right now, y’all go play, I got to cook dinner and do the rest.” . And everywhere we lived, over the lil levee [there was always one], Daddy would clean that out, and we’d play in there. . And then dinner. She’d call us in, bathe us again, now.
JD: What? Before dinner [lunch]. ?
Dot: Oh yes! Bathed us again, put some more clean clothes on…
Agnes: And I’d iron all them clothes with black irons. . Heated on a wood stove.
Dot: And then she’d feed us, and then we laid down for a while.
JD: Now, how old were y’all when all this was taking place?
Dot: I can remember that being four years old, Jim. .
JD: You the youngest?
Dot: No, Carol Ann’s the youngest. Cause I was about four years old when they left me…when Milton cut his throat ., and they left with the camp, they left me on the lil levee. . And I remember that, and I was about four years old.
That was when Milton hurt himself and y’all tried to go down to…y’all took him down to Morgan City?
Dot: Daddy had took off with him [Milton, their son] in the boat, and then somebody [Monug] hooked onto the camp to bring the camp.
JD: Oh, is that how it was? To go meet em?
Dot: Yeah, cause they didn’t know if he’d be alive or not when they got there. And they had left me.
JD: So you were on the campboat or you went with the…with the, uh…?
Agnes: I was on the campboat.
JD: You stayed on the campboat, Myon went with Milton on the small boat.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: They left you on the…when did they discover you were gone?
Agnes: We was out there in the canal, we was just turning out [of the canal]…we got out the canal and was just turning out to go down, like that, and uh, Aunt Rose, Plot, they was livin there, them too. And she took off and she run [down the levee towards the lake]…and uh, Momma happened to get on the porch. Well, she [Aunt Rose] was at the end of the canal over there, waving. We had left Black.
JD: Black? That’s what they called you [Dot]? That’s what you were called?
Agnes: Black. We had left Black. So, we left the campboat go, we went to the canal and got her, and it was rough. That campboat looked like it was gonna turn over. And, uh, we went picked up her, hand her too me through the window. You couldn’t get close enough to the guard, he handed her to me through the window, and he took off again [pulling the campboat]. And when we got to Big Blue Point, I never thought we’d make it.
JD: It was that rough?
Agnes: Rough?! When we notice, when we got almost at the mouth of the Boutte [Bayou], . , uh, we notice they had that much water in the hull.
JD: Where was it getting in?
Agnes: On the side. .. We had to stop, [started looking for some place to stop out of the rough water] we got, we got at the, uh, in the bayou, and Monug stopped and we bailed it out. We took off again.
JD: Yall bailed out the whole hull?
Agnes: Oh, yeah. We bailed it out dry. “Now”, he say “we can go”. [When] we got in Sixmile Lake it was still rough ..
JD: The wind must have been comin from the east.
Agnes: It was a wester. . A norwester. . Blowin cold, ohhh, it was cold! Myon and them like to froze before they got to ….
JD: They were in an open boat?
Agnes: No. They met Pinkerman. Pinkerman was goin up the lake.
JD: Pinkerman [Mendoza] was one of the fishboats?
Agnes: Yeah. And when Brud had a bigger boat, so they jumped in Brud’s boat with him, wrapped him [Milton] up in a quilt, and they jumped in Brud’s boat. And Pinkerman was comin so they started flaggin Pinkerman. So he turned around and come met em and they took off back to Morgan City.
JD: So, so, they were takin him down the lake and…who’s Brud you talking about? Who was that?
Agnes: Brud Verret. . He was a….
JD: One of the people who lived on the canal? . So you took off…y’all took off with him, and met the fishboat comin up the lake and the fishboat picked em up and turned around and went back to Morgan City.
Dot: But, it’s a good thing it was cold. Cause he’d a bled to death if it been summer.
JD: You think so?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: It helped it to close. . He slipped on a log or something and got…but he had the knife in his hand…
Agnes: He went to cross a log and his foot slipped, and the lil knife went in. And Jim, he was about from here to that door [about ten feet]. I was standin up by the foot of the bed, and he was at the kitchen door, and when he said “Daddy I cut myself”, that blood just come out. [gestures]
JD: It sprayed, hunh?
Dot: Now, I remember that.
JD: So, he cut a big artery? .
Agnes: Oh, yeah, he cut the main arter[y]. And, and, uh, the doctor said…Some doctors wanted to cut on him, some said let’s leave good enough alone. They say if it bleedin inside, he say, he get fever. And, uh, they left it to the next…he say we gone wait till tomorrow, tomorrow morning. And they waited, and it was alright after that. They took x-rays and all, and everything had closed up.
Dot: But you see, then, you couldn’t jump in the car and go to a doctor. . You had to go to Morgan City. .. We caught pneumonia and stuff, Momma used to keep what they call flannels. Yeah, and I remember them things.
JD: What was it like Dot?
Agnes: A piece of material.
Dot: Yeah, and it used camphor.
JD: About a foot by a foot? Piece of material? Like a piece of carpet square?
Agnes: Yeah, you could buy it by the yard in them times. You can’t…you don’t see it no more, now.
JD: It’s not like a flannel shirt? .
Dot: No, it’s flannel, pure flannel.
JD: What’s that you talking about? Thick?
Dot: Material, and it’s thick and it’s pure flannel.
JD: Wool? Is it wool, cotton? .. Anyway, go ahead.
Dot: And they’d soak that in camphor. That’s what it was, eh Mom, camphor?
Agnes: Umhm. And turpentine. .
Dot: And they’d treat pneumonia with that.
JD: How?
Dot: Put it…put it in that hot stuff…turpentine and camphor…
Agnes: Myon would put it in a skillet, and he’d put all his stuff in there. And he’d, Jim, I seen him get his hands so burnt, that he couldn’t hardly do nuttin with em, they were so burnt. Messin with those kids.
JD: Tell me about how he would treat with that, though….
Agnes: He’d put his, uh, cloth in the skillet ., and he had two. He’d put one [on their backs] and he’d take one hot, hot, hot and then he’d stick it on em. It’d get cold, he’d come back and get that one, and put the other one.
JD: . For pneumonia. That’s all he treated was pneumonia, not….
Dot: Well, and bad cold, and things like that.
JD: Yeah, anything that messed up your chest and your throat….
Agnes: Milton had pneumonia one time, and uh, we was, uh, at Blue Point. And he treated him all night. .. We kept that. We kept that medicine all the time. .. And, uh, next morning he told his daddy, “Daddy? What you did with those dirty rags you had?” . He say, “Well, don’t worry about them dirty rags”. [chuckles] We saved those dirty rags..
JD: Why did you remember em so badly [strong memory].
Dot: Because I had pneumonia several times, and they treated me like that.
JD: It wasn’t pleasant?
Dot: It was hot! . And it stink to high heaven. I can remember em treating me with that.
JD: Did it bring you any relief that you could tell, when they were doin it?
Dot: Oh yeah! The next morning…if you…they could tell we had pneumonia by pressin…I could tell now if I have pneumonia now…. by pressin on the back and the breathing. . And they’d start that, all night maybe, and all day. But in a couple days you was up and around.
JD: Is that right? Well, did you have fever with that too?
Agnes: Sure. .
Dot: . And, in the evenins, Milton was the oldest, we had the wood stove. Well, it was his job to cut the wood. . So me and Alberta, Pan [Albert Jr.] was too small. We’d follow Milton, wherever he was gonna cut down the tree to get some wood. As he cut, he’d cut the wood, we had to carry out, and bring it to the house.
Agnes: She’d come with two pieces of wood. [laughs]
Dot: I was little. .
Agnes: She’d carry wood, though!
Dot: And, our past time, playin…we’d walk drums.
JD: Do what?
Dot: Walk drums. .. We just had 55-gallon drums. And Daddy’d buy fuel at the time, like that. . And when it was empty, well he’d put it back there and we’d walk them drums, just like a clown, you know? Walking the drums.
JD: For fun? Just to play?
Dot: Yeah. And Momma’d save all the tin cans. We’d play house. .. I remember, Jim, really the best time of my life…well, of course, I wasn’t out there struggling to make a livin…we were kids, but it was the most peaceful time that I ever remember.
JD: How old were you when you’re thinking like this?
Dot: As far back as I can remember.
JD: Tell how long, I mean, how old were you?
Dot: When I faced reality! [laughs] .
JD: Well, for most of us, that’s about five years old, but, I mean, you were sayin you had a longer childhood…a pleasant childhood.
Dot: Oh yeah, because, you know, we didn’t know what a movie house was. We didn’t know what school was until we moved across here and went to school. .. Just didn’t know. We thought that everybody lived that way. .. And, I look back now and remember those things, and that was the most peaceful time of my life. And we thought everything was fine. Now, of course, Daddy was out there bustin his butt to feed us, and clothe us.
JD: But even he says that wasn’t a bad time.
Dot: Uh, the pace was so slow. .. I can remember in the evening, all those in the canal would come there to visit. Every evening they’d go to one house or the other one. .
Agnes: Make coffee and call each other. .. “Coffee’s made!”.
Dot: And we’d all go to that one house.
JD: Get off on the bank and walk down the headland, to the…?
Dot: Yeah. But, the children didn’t come in the house with them grownups. .. The children? You go play with the other children. .
Agnes: We didn’t…Jim, we didn’t talk in them times like the people do in front of the kids. You know, a woman was pregnant, she was pregnant…grownups knew but the kids didn’t know all that. .. Like now, they, they know everything. . But we didn’t talk any kind of way in front of our kids.
[tape goes off for a moment]
JD: You know, I could talk to you for…day after day if you wouldn’t mind talking to me about these kinds of things. Uh, as many of you as are willing to talk to me about it, because what I do is I take this and I’m putting it on these tapes and then I type out a transcript of what is said. And then I can use that information to write what it was like. And, when you look at this outline, when you look at this outline, right at the top of it is the people. That’s the first thing I want to talk about is the people, and the people: I want to talk about the families. Who they were, so I just talk about who they were. But then I’m goin to put about how they came to live together, how y’all ended up in Myon’s Canal all together, those fifteen or seventeen boats – however many it was. What the houseboats were like, and when we talk about the houseboats I want to talk about what the life was like, on the houseboats. And that’s where I can get into all this other stuff about what’s goin on. We can talk about here the movements of the community…where the boats went, around in the Basin. Now, some of y’all moved more than others, I know. . Some people didn’t hardly move at all apparently, apparently y’all didn’t move very much, but other people moved like every two weeks they would pick up and move. . And then onto the land at the levee…to talk about when y’all crossed the levee and how it was done, and then away from the levee to Oxford, and then what it’s like now.
Dot: Lot of changes.
JD: And that’s why I want to write that. Because, I think all those changes ought to be on paper somewhere, and like I’ve told…like I’ve told other people that I’ve told that I’m doing this…I’m not doing this to sell it, what I want to do it for is I truly believe that what y’all did and the way y’all lived is so… I think it’s good thing. It…it…it’s…other people, [if] other people had similar lifestyle, I don’t know them. Other people [to the] north had one, people in Bayou Lafourche had one ., but y’all had a thing that has never been described anywhere and if somebody doesn’t put it down on paper nobody’s gonna remember what it was. And I just don’t want that to happen. So that’s why I’m doing it, like I tell people, if I finish this and I’ve only got one copy, two copies…I’m gonna put one at USL in a special place where people go to look for the histories of things that people in Louisiana . lived. And the other one at the state archaeologist’s office in Baton Rouge.
Dot: Well, you gonna have to make more copies than that [laughs]. But something else I wanted to add, you know, there’s no religion mentioned there.
JD: No, and that’s another thing.
Dot: But, uh, we were raised very religious. Every Sunday morning after we had breakfast, and all, we went and knelt down. . We were Catholic, and said prayer beads. I mean, that was a ritual. That’s something we knew we had to do.
JD: The whole family did that?
Dot: The whole family did that. And many times, Uncle Jesse knew how to say the prayer beads in French. .. Jesse Daigle, and he’d come and he’d say it in French.
JD: I’ll be. Did y’all understand it in French?
Dot: Then, yeah Jim. . I most probably could understand it now. I still understand the French language, I just can’t speak it. Because when we started school, we didn’t know how to talk English…very little, very few words. We had to be taught English and forgot French.
JD: Well, this young lady who came to teach at Myette Pt., did she know French?
Dot: No.
JD: So, did y’all know enough English to talk to her?
Dot: Yeah, by then we knew enough English to talk to her. And, that time, my grandma, her [Agnes] momma, still couldn’t talk English. . We had to talk to her in French. But like I say, I mean, our religion was there. It was not, uh, you know, well “they in the wild, what they know about religion?” But we had a priest that would come there. Every once in a while.
Agnes: Yeah, every three weeks.
Dot: And we’d make communion and all.
JD: This was Father Gobeil?
Dot: Father Gobeil. I made my confirmation and all at home. Father Gobeil.
JD: And he would come and say Mass, say, in one of the boats every three weeks or so?
Agnes: Every three weeks. Had church in my camp. . Sometime it was so full the end of the porch would touch the water. .
Dot: And wasn’t he there when I was born, Momma?
Agnes: Uh, no. . They went and got, uh,…after we moved back at the canal, Daddy went and got him. He’d come at the beach, there…Charenton Beach and he’d pick him up and bring him…bring him over there.
JD: Yall had to come …?
Agnes: He’d come pick him up.
JD: Who…who would come?
Agnes: Myon.
JD: Myon would come and pick the priest up at the beach? . Oh, so the priest didn’t have a boat to go around himself…by himself?
Agnes: He got him [one] later on…got a boat.
JD: Later on he got one?
Agnes: Umhm. Then he’d come.
JD: Would he go other places too? Other than Blaise’s Canal?
Agnes: No, he used to come there…yeah, he used to, uh, Keelboat [Pass]. . And Hog Island, and all.
Dot: I can remember him. Him and Daddy were real good friends. .
JD: Your daddy…one of em…one of those priests got in trouble with your daddy one time he told me…because he, uh, the priest tried to get him to fix him up with a woman. And your daddy didn’t go for that. . Matter of fact he told me he never talked to that priest again after that. . Your daddy told me a lot of nice stories, I have em on tape. . And, if y’all would like, at some point, again I didn’t know how approach you about this because I know how you and Myon were and still are. When I started listenin to those tapes, it was like he was sittin in the chair right next to me again. And, and just to hear his voice as strong as that telling those kind of stories…it made me feel good, it really made me feel good. But I could tell that if somebody was grieving for him then it might not make em feel good. It might make em feel bad.
Dot: No, I don’t think, because we have him on video. . And she [Agnes] sets and watches.
JD: . Well, if y’all would like, I’m workin on a way to…the problem that I have right now is the tapes I have him on are those lil bitty tapes and I need to convert those lil tapes to this standard tape. Like this, and I have to find the right wire to connect the two machines together to copy them. If y’all would like when I get that set up I’ll make y’all copies of the tapes. .
Agnes: Yeah, my kids would like that, I bet. .
Dot: I think it would be a good thing to have. . Not for us now, but for our kids, those that does remember their grandfather. Cause I don’t think he’s the type of person they’ll ever forget. . It would be good for them.
JD: . It’s good for me. After I sat down and listened to those tapes for awhile, I’d get up feeling just like I used to feel when I would be here and go home…I would feel better than I did when I came.
Agnes: Darlene [Soule] say when they made him they throwed away the mold. . There ain’t no more like Myon. .
Dot: …just that…that he lived with so much dignity.. That’s the way he died. . We were there.
Agnes: He was a good man when he was young, he was a good man till he died. .
Dot: And I ain’t braggin, but he raised six fine kids. .
JD: Even if he had to defend Eula’s…Eula’s honor at the dance against some of those guys who wanted to get….
Dot: He was determined that was his. .
JD: But anyhow, I have to go home. So I’m gonna have to stop. But, I would like to have the opportunity to come back and sit down with y’all and talk some more. And I mean talk about a lot of things. All the things y’all remember about how it was and how y’all lived…I would like to get down. You see, you talk about making yeast, and yet, nobody…nobody does that anymore. So it’s necessary to learn how you did it. I might even bring you some yeast cakes and you might even show…show us how you did it.
Agnes: It’s not hard Jim. It’s not hard at all.
JD: That’s the end of this session. We’re going to stop right now. [stop recorder]. Start over, we talking some more. [laughs] Alberta fell in the water?
Dot: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah, Jesse had to get a…jump after her.
JD: Well, Edward was telling me that there was actually…there was actually something y’all did…y’all didn’t want the kids to go swimming, even if they could swim later y’all would keep em out of the water.
Dot: Well, no, I was a teenager … we’d go in there…we’d go by the Boy Scout house along the, uh, the uh, shore…at Myette Pt. They had a big Boy Scout house out there. . It was abandoned by then, but we’d ax Momma can we go swimming. . “No, not until y’all learn how”. . So we used to sneak off at the end of the canal, when that water was high, with the current, and they had a vine there…I don’t see how one of us didn’t drown. We used to swing on that vine and jump overboard.
JD: Did y’all learn to swim by that time? All by yourselves?
Dot: Yeah, we’d sneak off and learn how to swim. But shame on us to go swimming until we learned how. And we’d tell her, well, how we gone learn how if we don’t go in the water?
JD: Edward told me that y’all actually, uh, people would say that you can’t go swimming in May because that’s [causes] boils…. You can’t go in some other [time] because that’s fever, and all that kind of stuff.
Dot: Bad water, that’s when bad water would hit. When it would do that we wouldn’t o in the water.
JD: I wonder if there was any thing to that?
Dot: Oh, definitely.
JD: There was?
Dot: Ohhh yes, definitely. .
Agnes: You see, when the water was high, and when the water’d come out of them woods, that water was bad. . And that’s why we didn’t want em to go in it. Until the water’d get right.
Dot: Now, everywhere we went Daddy had a tar vat out there.
JD: What would he dip in it?
Agnes: His nets, his lines.
JD: . I didn’t know he fished hoop nets? He did? .
Dot: Aw yeah. Now, all them nets were made out of cotton though. .
Agnes: Every three weeks you had to do your nets. Every three weeks you had to cut em off the rims…
JD: You cut em off the rim and did that????!
Dot: Yeah, they wasn’t no good. That cotton would…[rot]
Agnes: I had to knit all the time, Jim.
JD: You mean, you could, you would…the net, no matter what you did to it would only last three weeks? Even if you dipped it religiously?
Dot: It rotted, right.
Agnes: We’d knit all the time.
Dot: Always knittin.
Agnes: Always knittin, until they got to that nylon, and that was it.
JD: Made a big difference, nylon did, eh?
Dot: I can remember Daddy sittin at night…we didn’t have no electricity, didn’t have no radios, no TV. We’d all sit in that kitchen around that wood stove, in wintertime. Well, Daddy would sit there at night with his needle. Momma’d knit every chance she’d get. And you could see Daddy sittin there. . I can remember that.
Agnes: Yeah, knit many a net.
JD: I’d like to know how many pounds of line you actually used, and threw away.
Agnes: That’s what I say, Jim, I can’t….
Interview with Joe Jr. and Flo Sauce
Blog Ch 21 Tape 12 Side A
[begins with some talk about the genealogy of the Sauce family, looking at charts JD had made, and some records Joe has]
JD: …cause it was Agnes’ grandfather who came directly from France. And I don’t know….
Joe: …and here’s some taken from census, in here.
JD: You got this from a commercial service?
Joe: Yeah. I don’t know how much light it shed, but a lil bit…
JD: Well, every lil bit helps, cause like I say, all I have for this is word of mouth.
Joe: Well, that’s what all the old folks say, they came from France, but I think that’s assumed.
JD: From what you showed me, it well may be assumed. But the thing is, I think that what I want to…what I’m holding as important here is not so much where they come from but the fact that they did…this generation came from…at least this piece of this generation came from Europe. Somewhere. And they came and settled down here and gradually, between this generation and this generation, became houseboat people. Between here and here…these people didn’t live on houseboats, they lived…these people right here lived on, uh, had a big farm on Lake Verret: your grandmother and grandfather on this side. And this generation…let’s see, that would be your great grandmother…your grandfather would have been Blaise Sauce?
Joe: My great grandfather would have been Blaise Sauce. My great great grandfather [on the chart] would have been Larnce.
JD: …so they lived on this…they lived on this big farm on Lake Verret, apparently. And Blaise Sauce was a houseboat person. His family was on a houseboat. So, somewhere between this area and this area [parts of the family], this family [Blaise Sauce] became involved on campboats in the Basin. And the same thing over here. I don’t know about these people right here, I have to ask…I have to find out more about them, about what they were like. But, Myon is the one that became a houseboat person in this branch of the family. Because apparently all of his people, these people, lived on Fourmile Bayou – just north of Grassy Lake, just south of Lake Verret.
Joe: They lived on the land?
JD: On the land. They sure did.
Joe: I knew they lived on Fourmile Bayou, I didn’t know it was on the land.
JD: Yeah, in houses on the land. On Fourmile Bayou. And they moved…
Joe: Because, uh, my grandfather, Momma’s daddy, had uh, he lived along The Pit [Morgan City]. They fished the Basin.
JD: The Pit would have been in Morgan City?
Joe: ..this comes from Myon. Myon was Baileys, but uh, …
JD: Your mother’s last name was not Bailey. She was Daigle.
Joe: You see, Uncle Myon was a half brother. But, Grandpa fished, and did just about everything people on this side did. His house was a campboat on a barge that was pulled up on the edge of the…the other side of The Pit in Morgan City. And then they moved it …
JD: Give me a name, give me a name…your grandpa on what side? Daigle? Your mother’s father was named Daigle, he’s not on here.
Joe: Yeah, but you see, Ernestine Daigle was my grandmother, but she was married to, uh, to my…Albert Bailey, whoever he was, Uncle Myon’s dad, died or was killed, in a boating accident – nobody figure out. Somebody think it was a murder involved in there. That maybe my grandpa killed Albert Bailey. Possibly. Yeah, they went out in a boat together and one come back alive. That’s what we understand.
JD: The other one drowned? Didn’t come back?
Joe: I’m not sure if he didn’t come back, or he came back dead. And, and, I don’t even know…I think his name…. Daddy would know his name, but he was married to Ernestine. And they both were Daigles.
JD: That was her second husband then? So, his name was what? Daigre or Daigle?
Joe: Uh, just like you spell the Daigle name, Daigle.
JD: So, his second marriage was…
Joe: [he calls Neg Sauce] Daddy, you remember, uh, grandpa Daigle’s first name, what it was? Grandpa Daigle, momma’s daddy. Yeah, Homer?
JD: Homer Daigle, I remember that… So, she married…so she was married to him, to Albert Bailey, and Albert Bailey was the father of…how many of these, you remember how many of these were halfs and how many…in other words of em were Daigles and how many of em were Baileys?
Joe: Oh, just, uh, for as I know, I don’t know if Angelina was Bailey or not …she may have been. I think so. Rudolph and Myon…those three.
JD: And the rest, Marie, Odelia, Eula, Norman, Azima, Ike and all of them, they were all halfs. So,,ey were all Daigles, then.
Joe: All Daigles, right. I don’t even know if, uh, Angelina was Bailey. I think she may have been. But for sure the rest were Daigles. And you see…her…she was a Daigle and he was a Daigle. Those two Daigles, maybe were kin, married to each other.
JD: Interesting. See, the more people I talk to the more complete this gets. You’d be surprised how many people seem to be interested…in this sheet. So that when I finish with it, I’m gone to give all of .y’all a copy of it so that .y’all’l all…you know, for whatever it’s worth…
Joe: Larnce Sauce had a brother too…what I heard there were two brothers.
JD: Yes, remember his name by any chance? The other Sauce? His brother?
Joe: Not at the moment. Like they got two branches of Sauce in this area that are not kin anymore, and that’s probly why…those two lines. That’s the only two lines of Sauces that I know of.
JD: [do you] realize that we can put down on paper, for these people, seven generations of people? Seven? From what’s known right now, seven. Starting with these and going to your grandchildren, seven, generations. That’s a lot for a family to be able to just look at and say here’s for sure who they were.
Joe: And, boy, we just had, like, Daddy’s aunts just a few years ago…they all dead now. Eight, ten year’s ago, somebody would do this? They could a had all kind of information from those older people.
JD: Now, your daddy’s aunts would have been…would have been, uh…
Joe: Felix, Felix…Blaise Sauce.
JD: Blaise Sauce’s brothers and sisters. All these people here…all these people here. [pointing to the family chart] Now, there’s two more that I don’t have on here…but he had apparently…
Joe: Well, Daddy could tell you...Agnes could, and Daddy could.
JD: This is as many as Agnes could come up with. Uh, but there’s fourteen of em. Fourteen brothers and sisters, of Blaise.
Joe: Now, Milton, Milton might still be alive…not sure.
JD: But there’s some of em in here, like, nobody knows who this Chouki was, what his real name is, nobody knows that.
Joe: That’s her, that’s a lady. Chouki, Aunt Chouki, yeah. She was married to a Aucoin. His name was Phillip Aucoin.
JD: But, we don’t know her real name. And nobody knows the pronunciation of this “Souri”, that’s the best pronunciation I can come up with.
Joe: I remember her, I knew her. And probly the only one that’s in my memory because she lived next to Grandma Daigle not far from where we used to visit when we were children, so I kind of remember her.
JD: Where did .y’all visit? Where was that?
Joe: Uh, The Pit, in Morgan City.
JD: All right, who would your Grandma Daigle have been?
Joe: Oh, Ernestine.
JD: Ok, Myon’s mother. … this stuff gets complicated. Now Edward, I put Edward down here so I could show him married to Lena Mae, and Edward’s brothers and sisters. And Edward’s mother and father. Now I’m going to follow his line, the Couvilliers, back, because he can take me…this family can take me to Keelboat Pass, and to people who were born and raised. He wasn’t born on a houseboat, but he was 12 years old when they got their first houseboat. He lived on land in Lil Pigeon when the got their first houseboat, in Catfish Bayou. So u see, he can take me again from livin on land to livin on houseboats. So, to Keelboat Pass and to Hog Island.
Joe: The Langes could also, well of course the Couvilliers married the Lange family. They could take you to Keelboat Pass.
JD: Dan Lange, right here, Dan Lange married Viola…Tete. So, yeah, so that’s another one, so the more of these things I can get…the more stories I can get of how they went from livin on land to livin on houseboats, the better idea I have of how it was…what brought it about. And I’m always interested in what caused people to go from livin on land to livin on houseboats.
Joe: I think it was probly the fishin.
JD: Well, they lived on land for a long time, apparently. And fished from on land. I think part of it, part of it may also be that when the built the levees that the water started rising so high that you couldn’t live on land inside the Basin anymore. Because the idea is [the water] wouldn’t spread out…
Joe: Well, they had a whole town in the center of the Basin, did you know that?
JD: That was at Bayou Chene, you talking…I think, isn’t it?
Joe: I got, uh, a book…a history of Baptists, that can take you back to some of that Baptist work in different areas of the Basin…too might be helpful.
JD: Blog chapter 22 TAPE 12 SIDE B
Yes. I would like to see that, when you get a chance. After awhile. Maybe I could photocopy…they have maps in it and stuff?
Joe: What I did, I photocopied it. It’s not, it’s not good, but you can make out a lot of stuff. It might be Bayou Chene, I don’t recall right now, where you had a settlement [of] all different kinds of nationalities. And that’s how they all became French, they developed the language, and they thought they were all French, but they were Germans, they were all kinds of people.
JD: Let me show you something. Yeah, it, uh…they call it English speaking but it wasn’t all English speaking. This is interesting. [Malcolm Comeaux book] This is a wonderful book in terms of just information. And it’s old, 1972, published the same year you and I met. One of the maps he’s got in it is neat. Just real quickly [looking at map], course the Atchafalaya Basin is this, bordered on the Mississippi on one side and Bayou Teche on the other side, those were the natural, natural levees for the Atchafalaya. And uh, the scale of it reads all of this cross hatching was French speaking in the Basin. And this area right in here was English speaking. Right in the middle of it. And this area right on the edge was both. It was kind of a …partly one partly the other. But let me show you what’s fascinating by what led to that. Uh, this map that shows all big Grand Lake, see?, see how Grand Lake isn’t filled in. this is before the levees because this was in 1863, and shows the two places that people got into the Basin in these years from the east. From the Mississippi River. Because if you look at a map you realize the Atchafalaya Basin in those days presented a huge natural barrier, almost like a mountain chain that you couldn’t go [across it]. So, the two ways people got into the Basin in 196…in1863 was one, Bayou Plaquemine, right off the Mississippi river right down Bayou Plaquemine right into Bayou Sorrel, across Bayou Sorrel and then up, and down, from Bayou Sorrel. Look where the English speaking community is.
Joe: Well, let me let you a note on the Baptist work. They had a boat from New Orleans, the Gospel Boat, they called it. That guy’s name was Cross, he came from the Mississippi River, he was the first one to preach in the Atchafalaya Basin. And to reach some of these settlements in the Atchafalaya Basin. So, obviously, he probably came down…
JD: Came down here, came down Bayou Plaquemine. The neat thing about it is look how Bayou Sorrel is the main…also Grand River…was a way to go with it. Bayou Sorrel, look where the English speaking is, there’s Bayou Sorrel, right there.
Joe: OK, now you want to notice something, you notice the difference in the French, dialect, from the people from this area, and like Daddy and them similar, they…they…obviously they came from some had that influence, because you notice the French, and then you go down to Lafayette, and you go down to St. Martinville and you notice the difference. I mean, uh, they sound completely different. Did you ever notice that? And you know the more sophisticated and clean-flowing, and the sound of the French, and even the way the people speak… remember the people from up around Bayou Sorrel – when we went and did the surveys [referring here to the attempt to start a fishing cooperative in the mid 1970s]? They were more fluent [in English]. And you went down to Pigeon [Bayou Pigeon] [laughs][language mix changed to English/French].
JD: That’s right. But they had a more English background, those people from Bayou Sorrel. But anyway, I found this really interesting, that you have this influx of people right thru here and they were primarily English speaking because that’s where Englsh [people entered the Basin].
Joe: I think that’s mainly where the Sauces evolved in thru here.
JD: Thru Bayou Plaquemine?
Joe: Yeah, because, uh, they way, uh, Daddy speak. That’s where they originally were from, Bayou Sorrel.
JD: Who?
Joe: Daddy. He talks about Bayou Sorrel. You gonna find some involvement in that area from the Sauces, the way I see it so far.
JD: Another interesting thing, too, is, if you look at these two maps, this is the 1863 map, and it’s before any levees were there, and look how big Grand Lake was..wide open. This is the map, 1969, course this is well after the levees. Here’s the same thing for Grand Lake, look, it’s all gone. What a difference, hunh? Something else that’s really fascinating that I worked out for myself, so I’m kind of proud of it. I was talking to Agnes about where these people are buried, some of these people up here, and, uh, I also have some old tapes of Myon… I made some tapes while Myon was still alive, and he was talking about the Canal, people were buried on the Canal – in a cemetery on the Canal. I said, well, where is the Canal? Said, well, it’s just off of Lake Verret, and uh, I say, well, it is a canal? He said no, there’s no canal there. But I said, but you call it the canal?” He said yeah, well that’s what everybody calls it…was The Canal. But I said there’s no canal? No, there’s no water. So I took that and I went back to some old maps that I could find at work [DEQ], and sure enough, I looked at this place where he said the canal was supposed to be and there’s a highway there now. No canal, no water, there’s a highway that…and then I came and found it here [Comeaux book]. This is the…what he called the canal, this lil piece of waterway right here, from Lake Verret to Bayou Lafourche. And you notice it’s the other main entry into the Atchafalaya Basin? right there, so it WAS water. In 1863, this was water. Right now this is highway 401, no water at all. Isn’t that something? And there’s a lil settlement right there on that bump [on the map] called Attakapas Canal. There’s no water anywhere around it, but it’s called Attakapas Canal even today. And there’s a church there and an old cemetery, and we’re gonna go Thursday. I’m goin to take Agnes Thursday…see if we can find that old cemetery. To see if there are any markers left, on those graves.
Joe: Well, there might be some records at that church.
JD: Might be, if the church is still there. Nobody from here seems to know if even if the church is still there. But it’s possible. There’s a bunch of…there used to be a big restaurant and a dance hall right on the end of that right there [tip of land called Attakapas Landing] where Myon and them used to go dance. Because Myon lived right here where this arrow is, this is Fourmile Bayou…
Joe: OK, I’m tryin to…where’s, uh, oh Pierre Part’s up here? And this is along 70, maybe?
JD: That highway down here, on this side of Lake Verret. . You see this is Napoleonville right here. That’s Napoleonville.
Joe: Well, Napoleonville’s, uh, I’m trying to think. . Uhhh, how would you go there?
JD: Thru, uh, Morgan City and up on Highway 1. . Up along Bayou Lafourche. I’m goin to take Edward and Lena Mae and Agnes – and Carolyn and I, we’re gonna go. I’ll see if I can rent a van. If I can rent a van for the day from Lafayette, I might take a van just to….
Joe: When you goin?
JD: Thursday, ., you interested in goin?
Joe: . I’m interested in all of this. . And, boy, you sheddin a lot of light….
JD: You know me, I’m an outsider, I don’t belong with this group. I’ve just always found it good to be here [laughs].
Joe: Yeah, but I mean, uh, there’s so many mysteries ., and I always been interested in that. You got the way, and the knowledge [to] put this stuff together. Kinda unique for us.
JD: We can share what we can share. Um, if you’re really interested in goin I’ll see if I can rent a van. Because, all we got…I got…my car…five people can get in my car right now. That’s what we got, but, I was thinking about renting a van, just in case, for instance, if Dot wanted to go.
Joe: Oh, I could go in my car, you know?
JD: It’s more fun to have everybody together in one car .. Because everybody can talk, and besides which I can put my lil tape recorder on the seat and everybody talks about all that and that’s all stuff that might be useful. Cause, you can’t tell when somebody’s gonna remember something and just come out and say it. Well, it’s too late to tape record it. . Well, I’ll see if I can rent a van. .. We’ll try to leave Edward’s house at 9:00, in the morning, Thursday morning. Anyhow, that should be neat, to do that. But just to…the two main areas to get into the Basin in 1863….
Joe: It just so happened, eh?
JD: Yeah, yeah. And of course the town of Plaquemine was situated right there just because this waterway existed. That’s why Plaquemine sits right on that entrance, and by golly, that’s why Napoleonville sit’s on this one. Because it was a main highway, waterway, to get in the Basin. There’s no water there now at all, if the highway’s there, there’s no water. Anyway, I just thought that was, uh, that was neat. . I’m workin in this book [Comeaux] right now so I can’t offer to loan it to you right now, . but I’m actually workin in it. If I wasn’t I would give it to you right now for you to look at. But you can see as you get back into it there’s a whole bunch of stuff about how people did things…
Joe: There’s some theses in the seminary in New Orleans too, on the Baptists workin in the Atchafalaya Bain. Probably, I wouldn’t know where to find…or even what it’s called even, but I’m certain there’s a thesis a doctoral student did…you probably could find out a lot…
JD: Well, I was about to say, if he did a lot of recording…if they did a lot of recording about what they found while they worked in the Basin…how the people lived, what they did? All that could be brought together. .. Anyhow, that’s Malcolm Comeaux [the book]. Um, let me show you what I’m doin so far, so you can see…Oh, I do want to do something else, .. Do you know if your Daddy’s name is really…I know it’s Joseph Cleo…
Joe: Cleophas. [spells it]. ..
JD: Is that your middle name?
Joe: Yeah.
JD: Cleophas is your middle name? .. So you’re a real junior! Joseph Cleophas Sauce, Jr. Yeah, I didn’t know his first name was Joseph until yesterday.
Joe: Everybody know him as Neg or Cleo. .
JD: Uh, OK, what I need is your direct family. .. Now, you married Flo? . What’s her full name?
Joe: Margie Anslem.
JD: That’s her whole name? Not Flo? Flo is not in it?
Joe: Florence.
JD: Florence? What? First or second.
Joe: First. ..
JD: Were you kin to…uh,…oh here, Edward’s father had three half brothers and…three half brothers. And their, and their…their half was Anslems. Were you [Flo] kin to them? .
Flo: The Couvillier’s were somehow connected…
JD: Well, that’s it, you see? Edward’s daddy had one brother Ozime, but he had three half-brothers – John, Pete, and Joe Anslem. .
Joe: Yeah, that’s your uncle…great uncle, or something like that. . You call him Uncle Pete, the one live across the bayou in Calumet. Hunh? The one who raised….
Flo: OK, yeah. I guess that would be Uncle Pete he was talking about. They had so many Joes and so many Petes. Well, they called Daddy Pete, but they called Daddy’s Daddy Pete but his name was Bud. But Uncle Pete, yeah, he lived in, uh, across the bayou.
Joe: Ricohoc…Calumet.
JD: . Yeah, the Anslems settled over there near Calumet, didn’t they? Quite a bit?
Flo: Yeah, I was an Anslem. .
JD: Yeah, OK, now, your kids. Names, full names.
Joe: Lauren, that’s my oldest. Elizabeth Sauce Hebert.
JD: Hebert? . What’s her married name? Her husband’s name?
Joe: Chris. .. James Hebert.
JD: Ok. Before I forget Joe, what’s your birthday?
Joe: Four, twenty three, forty nine. 4/23/49.
JD: Flo? You mind telling me your birthday?
Flo: No, I don’t mind, I probly look it, especially ….2/11/50.
JD: Thank you, this helps me to get a, um, for instance from this I can tell that you weren’t born on a houseboat or in the canal, you were born on the levee.
Joe: I was, I was, no, I was last generation born on a houseboat. . I was born on a campboat. . Right. They were livin at Myette Pt. but still on a campboat.
JD: See, I don’t have…I don’t have the whole story, obviously, yet then. . Because from the best I could figure out they started pullin the campboats across the levee…
Joe: When I was five years old, I remember crossin the levee and goin to a campboat across the levee… I can remember this. I can remember the times we lived, uh, at Blue Point, Lil Blue Point, just faint memories
JD: Across the Lake?
Joe: Yeah. Lil Blue Point. Uh, EJ and Russell with their mom and dad lived across the bayou from us and, and…
JD: Wait, where, where though?
Joe: At Lil Blue Point. They got a lil canal right on the end of Blue Point, a lil bitty canal, that’s…that was the first point where the Thibodeaux Chute used to dump at. . The first lil point, that’s not Big Blue Point…was down by the Big Chute. Remember Big Chute used to…?
JD: the Crevasse, or whatever they called it?
Joe: No, not the Crevasse, further down there’s uh, was a big Chute that used to go down across the lake before it all grew up in sandbars. And that was Big Blue Point, but above that about two or three miles was Lil Blue Point. That’s right below Williams Canal. . The first point, major point before all that sanded up. And they had a lil canal, I could remember even the lil crook in it right here [map]. We were on this here and one of Daddy’s cousins, Bouac [sp?] Aucoin and his wife used to live there. That was Aunt Chouki’s son. . And Uncle Jesse and Aunt Ida and the boys lived across the bayou from us. We camped there.
JD: That’s when you were five…no, that’s before you were five…
Joe: Aw, just three, four years old possibly. Faint memories…I can remember walking on a hill, playing on a hill. Amanda got snake bit.
JD: Who?
Joe: Amanda, my sister. . On the toe. A snake, but it was non poisonous obviously. . Her toe swole up a lil bit, she was alright. I remember that snake, and everything. A few traumatic experiences…I remember the, the uh, the houseboats…I mean I remember the, uh, the uh, the sellin boats, the lil lugger boats used to come…
JD: The fishboats?
Joe: The fishboats used to come and, and deliver groceries. And we’d get a chocolate candy bar, Hershey Bar? And that was a big treat. . I can remember that. . And another traumatic experience is I fell between the bank and the barge, the barge was right close up to the bank and they had a lil space…
JD: The barge was what the campboat was on, eh?
Joe: Right, and I fell in between and was drownin. . And Amanda saved my life. . I can remember drownin and she, she reached down there and pulled me out.
JD: Ga, cause if you had slipped underneath the barge…
Joe: I guess maybe she seen my feet kickin I don’t know but…she pulled me out of there.
JD: And so you think you were three, four years old when that was happenin…?
Joe: Yeah.
Flo: I knew he was on a campboat because we lived on a campboat. I wasn’t born on a campboat ., my daddy married a city woman, from Morgan City ., my grandma was a midwife. . My grandma delivered Laura. . I did not have Laura in the hospital. ..
JD: No kidding! On the levee?
Joe: She [the midwife] lived in Morgan City right off of the levee a lil ways, one of the lil side streets about two blocks from the levee.
Flo: And that’s how my daddy met my momma. .. My grandma was midwife and delivered a lot of babies ., and they lived not far from the levee. My daddy and them lived in campboats that traveled all over the place, and we lived in campboats…
JD: They were Anslems, your daddy was Anslems…
Flo: Yeah. .
Joe: I guess she delivered half of Morgan City.
Flo: Yeah. They still got the books.
JD: She delivered Laura? So .y’all were livin on the levee at the time, so you went to Morgan City? To have the baby?
Joe: We went to Morgan City…well, we were livin in Charenton…when we were first married we were livin in Charenton, uh, in a rent house for about a year. . And two years, probably, in a rent house in Franklin and then we bought a trailer and moved back to Myette Pt.
JD: Ah, OK, so you moved away from Myette Pt. when you got married, for a while?
Joe: Umhm. But I was there every day. [laughs]. . Yeah, fishin and whatever.
JD: Well, obviously, I have to do some more thinking about what the timing was, cause what I was trying to get was the dates…from talking to Edward and them…the dates of when the campboats collected at Myette Pt….
Joe: Some of em were movin over…you know this was a gradual process, the way I understand…
JD: Ok, the first ones moved over, I got, in 1945. Now that was Edward’s, uh, …
Joe: But what happened, Jim, is a lot of em moved to Myette Pt. and were campin at Myette Pt.
JD: On the canal, Myon’s canal you talking about?
Joe: Well, around Myette Pt., you know, in this vicinity. God knows how close to whatever, the levee, I don’t know. I can’t say. .. Daddy can fill you in a lot about that. . Who were the first and who came later and that kind of thing. ..
Flo: There was a hurricane, and I can tell you exactly when our campboat went out the water and on the land. We sunk.
Joe: Oh, you talking about [hurricane]Audrey.
JD: That was 1957. [?]
Joe: Yeah.
Flo: And we had to go to, uh, Morgan City to live with an aunt, cause everything was under water. And daddy sent us to Morgan City to stay with an aunt until they raised it [the houseboat] up and dried everything out.
JD: Do you remember where .y’all were when that happened? I mean where was the campboat?
Flo: Oh yeah. I can take you to the spot. Calumet locks. .
Joe: They got a lil slip, a lil hole used to come in from the Cut, and they were camped in that hole. . The high water came up and [the houseboat] obviously got on something, and when the water went down, receded, it sunk the camp.
JD: Oh, it got up on a stump?
Joe: The back went under, something like that.
Flo: Yeah, cause I remember, like Joseph, I remember me fallin off…they used to have sides to the camp, and we used to walk the sides, and I fell over before too.
Joe: You see they [Flo’s people] stayed in a campboat a long time, you see, living next to land.
Flo: You see, right next to land with conveniences and all…still lived on a campboat.
Joe: You see, livin next to land…eventually they just…
JD: Well, that’s equivalent…that would have been equivalent to the campboats movin over the levee at Myette Pt. to get to the electricity and things like that.
Joe: Yeah, right, and when they…they just pulled up on a hill next to the levee. They pulled the camp up, eventually he added onto it, which is the house they took and…
Flo: My momma is still livin in it.
Joe: Still livin in it…Milling street…right next to EJ’s. [in Franklin]
Flo: . that’s the same house.
Joe: [laughs] an old campboat.
JD: That’s what would have happened to .y’all too if .y’all, uh, if the Corps hadn’t decided to move the levee in 1972? …people probly still be livin there.
Joe: Well, you see Daddy, Daddy’s house was a campboat.
JD: Umhm, so was Myon’s. So was Frank’s. .. Ida’s. All of those were campboats.
Joe: All of those were added on. . Matter of fact, Ida’s house, the campboat that Daddy traveled the Basin in, Daddy gave it to them and they tore it down and added on to Ida’s house.
JD: The same lumber? The original lumber?
Joe: Cypress lumber. .. And uh, the way I understand, Daddy…what they did…when Grandma Mayon Sauce died, Daddy and Monug had built, uh, that house, uh, that she lived in. And so he inherited that and so he gave the old camp he had to Ida and Jesse and they rebuilt their camp, house with it.
JD: So the lumber was recycled. It sure wasn’t thrown away.
Joe: Exactly, it wasn’t thrown away. .. And Daddy, we lived in another camp…the first camp I lived in, was a camp that was pulled across the levee. . And so was Daddy’s momma’s, who lived further down the levee by…by Yank…Bootsie Millet, closer to where Albert Bailey lived.
JD: Rosalie…that would have been Rosalie Mayon…if it was your daddy’s mother.
Joe: Right. And, and I’ve got faint memories of her too, ., she was a lot like Aunt Agnes. . Just real sweet, you know, loving. I got those kind of memories of her. Ernestine, I got bad memories…[laughs] . She wasn’t too mean, not so much her, as Grandpa Daigle…he was mean. He scared me to death.
JD: Myon’s daddy was mean, hunh?
Joe: That’s the kind of memories I got of him. But anyway, the campboats, uh, and uh, Daddy inherited grandma Rosalie’s campboat, and they took it and they put it…he went and cut two big cypress logs, which the house was probly still on. Remember, they squared em off, timbered em, you know, ., and put em underneath the house, and he slid it…got a tractor from Southcoast, I believe, and they drug that thing all the way down the levee to where we lived at Myette Pt. .
JD: They crossed the levee with it?
Joe: No, it was already on…. but they took it off the barge, put it on those logs and slid it down, and so we had those two camps next to each other, and we moved over into the good one, and eventually tore down that old one.
JD: I wonder what happened to things like those big old logs that it was on? That must have been some real timber.
Joe: Yeah, it was cypress logs Daddy cut out of the Basin and squared em off, not too big, uh, cypress trees, you know about a foot squared after you squared em off, . and got the bark off. And that’s what they laid those things on. That was tremendous trees though, . at least thirty, forty foot long. Imagine, you can square off a foot all the way. . Imagine the work involved in that? With a ax? Can you imagine that?
Flo: Now, the Anslems [Anslums ?] had sawmills. There was a sawmill…
Joe: Yeah, but that was on Bayou Boutte, that was…came later.
Flo: Yeah, that’s where Daddy was from.
JD: Your daddy was from Bayou Boutte? Connected to that…is any of the Anslems buried in that cemetery on Fisher Island? On Bayou Boutte? There are some people there? Some of your people are there?
Flo: Yeah. We still traveled. After we moved the campboat from Calumet we still traveled. They had orange trees and all, and in places where they were, where they used to have the campboat?...we would travel every year at a certain time right around Christmas and right around Halloween, I think it was right around Halloween, and we’d go and get the oranges off the trees and stuff…go get things and that’s what Daddy and them gave away for Halloween.
JD: On Bayou Boutte, you’re sayin, they had orange groves on Bayou Boutte and everything?
Flo: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, Daddy and Myon would talk about orange trees and stuff like that too, I remember. .
Flo: I don’t know if Daddy planted em, or they were there, but…I don’t know how they ever got there. But they were there.
JD: Aw well, somebody a long time ago planted em. It was interesting to find out that apparently the, uh, people who originally settled the Atchafalaya Basin came from two separate areas, culturally I’m talking about. One was a French, like .y’all came from…I’m not sure, I don’t know that…the other one was a bunch of outlaws…I say a bunch because . that’s who the people were. And they came to the Basin originally because they were running from the law, and they couldn’t be found in the Basin. And they gradually learned how to live in the Basin ., and they were some of the first people to live on houseboats because you couldn’t catch em if they were on houseboats.
Joe: I was thinking maybe that’s some of the people…[laughs]
JD: Maybe that’s why you can’t find out where the Sauces came from [laughs].
Joe: Bayou Chene…was an interesting thing about that .
JD: Yeah, you would think that’s where the people, outlaws, would have gone, to a place like Bayou Chene because it was accessible…you remember that route in that book?, it was accessible, it was also English speaking, and they could communicate with people there. So anyway, and the other people who came in were the French people who came in from…usually from the south, from the Morgan City area.
Joe: So you see, it was a possibility, the way I understand, that these people who came in and learned the French heritage [but may not have been French originally], their idea is that they are French and they may be…could be anything.
JD: The Bailey’s are not French, that’s not a French name.
Joe: Obviously, that’s an English name. .
Flo: You see, now, we know we got Spanish in us. Daddy had a grandma that he couldn’t speak to because…he said all he could remember was she sat in a rocking chair, she spoke strictly Spanish.
JD: . [pointing at the chart of people]
Flo: He said all he could remember was she was always in black.
JD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that from somebody else, yeah! [Agnes, maybe?]
Flo: She used to sit in a rocking chair and he said, um, ., he spoke French and she spoke Spanish, and they could understand just a few words, but there wasn’t a whole lot of communication. . And Daddy didn’t have any education, cause he went…they were gonna send him to school and they spoke strictly French, and a few words of Spanish…but he didn’t even understand what they were sayin one way or another [he didn’t understand English], so they didn’t go back, I mean, what’s the use sittin in a chair . and…?
Joe: Obviously, you see the Spanish blood in Myon.
JD: And Dot.
Flo: See, Daddy had it too.
Joe: Came out in the Sauces, Yank, Daddy’s sister. One of Daddy’s sisters.
JD: Yeah, she married Bootsie Millet.
Joe: And, uh, on the Anslem side. Dark.
Flo: Yeah, my daddy, you can see my daddy.
Joe: And even them Anslem [Anslum] boys in Morgan City, you notice they fairly dark too. .. What was uh, I forget his name now, what was Terry…? What was their daddy’s name?
JD: Terry? He even looks Spanish.
Flo: Yeah, my grandma really looked it. My grandma looked squaw [Native American]. ..
JD: [a picture] . we looking at a picture of Jacob Edward Anslem, that’s Flo’s father. That’s a whole other thing that I need to do, get into the Anslem side of it, because of their connection to you, see. That and the houseboat thing, so I can get more information about the houseboat living from them too. There’s no way we gonna finish everything I want to do today, as you can tell, I mean this…you start one lil place and all of a sudden you got 20 places that you could go.
Joe: Where we were just now, before we got on another track, was about the time span that they houseboats moved over at Myette Pt. . and it may have been a period ..
JD: Now they told me, like I say, the only date that I have to go for right now is that some people remember when some people were born. That’s Edward and Lena Mae and them. And by placing it that way, we put that the first houseboat apparently came over the levee in 1945, or close to 1945…45 or 46, right in there. What I didn’t understand from that was that it took a long time for the rest of em to come across. Because you [Joe:] obviously ended up on the other side of the levee and you weren’t born for another several years.
Joe: I was born in the campboat. Dr. Horton from Franklin, one of those traveling doctors that still made house calls came and delivered me.
JD: Where?
Joe: In the campboat.
JD: Where was the campboat though, I mean?
Joe: At Myette Pt. .. Daddy could tell you exactly where it was parked, I don’t know.
JD: It was floating then, in Myon’s canal? That’s what I call Myon’s Canal, I don’t know what .y’all call it.
Joe: One of those canals, . I would assume. Probly Myon’s and the lil branch that came further over.
JD: Laura [his daughter], children? . How many? Who were they? . Who are they, I meant to say…..
Continued on Chapter 22
Interview with Joe Jr. and Flo Sauce
Blog Ch 22 Tape 12 Side B
Continued from Chapter 21
Interview with Joe Jr. and Flo Sauce
Blog Ch 22 Tape 12 Side B
Continued from Chapter 21
[still talking to Joe Sauce at his house in Franklin, conversation has shifted to talking about tools used in fishing]
Joe: Anchors, we were talking about anchors, and, uh, ., we used iron anchors and that type thing a lil later, but first of all, the way that lines were anchored at the beginning, in my memory of fishing…was poles, willow poles. . Driven into the ground, ., to anchor the line down. ., you want to talk about anchors…include poles. ., and uh, malls were used. ., you might add that to this list.
JD: Yeah, I see that, I don’t have that on the list [of tools to talk about in the interviews].
Joe: And that…and the old malls…course now and then they’d get ahold of a iron piston with a hole already in it, you know, and they’d drive a wooden handle into it. .. But the old people, I understand, and daddy…they’d go cut down an oak tree or an oak limb about six to eight inches in diameter . and get a short stump of it, you know, about 12 to 18 inches long ., whatever they wanted it, and they’d auger a inch and a half, two-inch hole in it . and drive a wooden handle into it, and they drove these poles down in the mud in a straight line.
JD: I had no idea. So that must have been…the poles must have been pretty heavy poles too, to drive…
Joe: I can recall helping Daddy right around the lower end of Myette Pt. at the Cut. What we call the Cut, you know?
JD: Below Goat Island you talking about?
Joe: Goat Island, driving poles when I was a boy. And helping Daddy hold against the current with an inboard, air-cooled, and sometimes it was a lil too fast for the current, sometimes a little too slow, and you’d speed up, slow down, and I was trying to help him to hold up against the current to drive the pole and that was a hard task ., and he would be up following the pole along the side of the boat and swinging [the mall]. And one time he missed the pole…hit me on top the head.
JD: Oh no! Really?
Joe: [He] Say “you want to go home?”. [I] Say “Yeah”. [laughs] You know, they would be cussin and a fussin trying to get the pole in the ground and the current was aggravating. And so, you know that was…uh, they had a lot of flow through the Basin [then]…during the high waters….
JD: Well, the poles, Joe, if you could drive a pole with a mall, uh, the poles I’m used to seeing…they’re slim, they go out to a point. But these poles must have been cut off pretty thick on the end?
Joe: they were cut, to get into 12, 14 foot of water you talking about poles that probably were four inches, three to four inches in diameter at the butt. .. And they were pretty straight, maybe they were two inches in diameter toward the top
JD: All right. So, you had a two-inch target to hit with that big mall, then?
Joe: Right. You had about a two-inch target and you had to get a…deeper the water, you know, ., the stouter, stiffer the pole you needed. .. And uh, you try to get the poles…you know…and uh, in the old clay bottom, was the hardest bottom to drive in, that’s really why originally you needed those heavy malls to drive…it [the Basin] had a lot of clay bottoms. Later it changed to sand and [in] some sands you could shove the pole down into it pretty good, you know, and drive and get down to good stuff ., and other sands, you know, would spit the pole right back up, ., as well as stob poles [would spit these back up too]... But poles were aggravating, because, uh, course in low water times, and, and, probably it evolved from the time when there was no current in the Basin and you needed your lines off the bottom, ., and so we had some of that sense in low water times when had… the lines had to be halfway off the bottom, or a foot off the bottom, two foot. You could adjust your bridles accordingly, you know, and your line sinkers, to keep it adjusted like you need it, wherever the fish were up and down.
JD: So those lines would be hanging almost straight down from the pole.
Joe: Yeah.
JD: You’d be tying your bridle on top of the pole…
Joe: And no current ., no current issues. But you had to…as it developed in high waters in the spring of the year, water’s coming thru the Basin now more than it did before ., because of Old River Structure, and Mississippi water comin through the Atchafalaya Basin versus…it’s like Red River water that came was natural throughout the Basin, the way I understand, you know which would be less current. .. Anyway, during low water times…probably prior to high water times in the Basin and it narrowing, and the current speeded up and that sort of thing, and so what I would say from the poles you would need longer and longer bridles ., in order, because your lines needed to be on the bottom ., and you’d use heavy sinkers, pieces of iron you could find, old railroad spikes, whatever, old chain links from the sugar mills, and all those kind of things. So, you might want to put iron anchors…that might be what you meant by anchors.
JD: Actually, what I meant by anchors here was anchors for crosslines in the main channel. Where you drop a 40 or 50 pound…hunk of steel..
Joe: Yeah, but you can see…....anyway, you could see the reasoning behind it, ., that technique. .. How it developed, and uh, the more the current the longer the sinker line…you might have 30 foot of bridle line . in order to get your line down at the bottom. . The water came high and it was, uh, it became, uh, more of a hardship in order to run the lines .. And it became a problem keeping the poles down in the mud cause they would spring out cause of the pressure on the top of the pole ., you’d reach down as far as you can and tie the line [to the ] pole, you know. And then later another thing that developed was tyin…
JD: Let me make sure of what you just said, you’d reach down as far as you could and tie the bridle as low as possible…. on the pole.
Joe: Yeah, when you knew the rivers would be comin up, ., and from that idea…which developed maybe a lil later, was tying the line on the bottom of the pole, then driving the pole ., just tie the loose part at the top and come back and…that way your lines would stay on the bottom .. And say, then from that idea, why do all of that trouble? Use what the net fishermen use: a jiggerpole and stob your pole down with jugs and come back and pick up your jugs and tie it to your line.
JD: Now, do you know that that’s the way it happened? Or do you think that’s just the logical way it could have happened?
Joe: I think it logically took place in that fashion. .. As the fishermen adapted to the Basin, as it filled in ., the change of the Basin. But I think first of all it started out with poles for bentlines, you know, along the edge of the woods, maybe two or three bents out ., you know, and uh, just elevated the line, you know, so it would be under the water, ., and at the right depth to catch the fish, and it was adjusted, and I think that’s how it evolved into the type of fishin that’s done in the current in the Atchafalaya Basin that we [had] later.
JD: Now how do you think, do you think it’s possible that these poles were driven on the edge of the bank and could have even evolved from further back that they were tightlines to start with?
Joe: Uh, that’s another thing, because, uh, they knew how to fish tightlines. As the Basin filled in you’d go in the holes, the coves and stuff, and fish the tightlines. I can recall doin that with Daddy. .. Back in Raymond’s Cove, probly during low water still had two foot of, a foot, of water or so back in Raymond’s Cove, and fishin tightlines back there. Pullin ourselves with paddles and fishin the tightlines and catchin . big eelcats like that.
JD: Big eelcats, hunh?
Joe: Bullhead eelcats. .. Great big old things. And just tremendous, six, seven, eight pound eelcats. .. Lot of four or five pounders.
JD: So I guess what I’m sayin is…you set those with poles?
Joe: Yeah, they’d set em with poles and just tie em directly to the pole without bridles.
JD: So you see what I’m sayin, the evolution from the pole to the bridle to the…
Joe: Yeah, they could of…lot of times when the, the fish [were] on top of the water I’m sure that’s the reason they did it way back, you know, ., along the edge of the woods ., and uh, I seen Daddy already, just fish tightlines on the edge of the woods, so I learned to do that too, ., you know, and even in low water times you catch fish. .. And so I’m sure they had learned that from way back, ., somewhere along the line. . And it seems like the fish in any area you go always…usually against the bank more. But as the Atchafalaya Basin developed the way it is now into lil channels…lil chutes and that sort of thing, all that adapted . into the bottom fishing, more bottom fishing because of the current. So, in low water times, you still wanted to maintain that idea to be able to elevate your lines, . like you needed to, and uh, fish…even in high water times fishing tightlines along the lil willow trees, because you fish along the edge of the woods in the lil willow trees, and that sort of thing ..
Boats. I don’t know if there’s any more we could say about the lines.
JD: Well, we can come back to lines, if we think about it. We can come back to it.
Joe: Anyway, what I was telling you earlier about the Lockwood Ash pullin the campboats and that sort of thing . [my] recollection . and of course most of the guys would build their boats, or get a cousin, or somebody knew how to build boats to build their boats. And they would build em out of cypress lumber. and even, even the bottom was cypress lumber. . Cypress planks. And uh, they built boats of tremendous size, narrow by the way I understand, and . long, 20 foot long and maybe three foot wide . at the widest point.
JD: Yeah, that seemed to go thru the water better when you, when you have those Lockwoods and the boat had to stay below water [not planed out] and push thru. .. Seems like the big change took place when you got these outboards so that the boat was expected to get up on the top. .. That’s where it became better if it was wider, seems like.
Joe: Right, easy to plane. .. That’s the type of boats they used, they even fished out of em. Of course, we considered, alongside of this line fishin, paralleled the net fishin, . which really needs to be mentioned.
JD: Well, as long as I stick with this…
Joe: They did both.
JD: They did both, right. . But the reason I’m not as concerned about net fishin is that seemed likely to stay…keep goin.
Joe: Yeah, well they had to, uh, the boats the way they were built had…probly had a lot to do not only with the line fishin but with the net fishing also, ., in the way the wells were separated, ., and that sort of thing. You know, [one well] to dump the fish ., dump the net and another well to throw the fish in. Maybe two wells to throw the fish in. You would dump your net in the front ., and you culled different types of fish. Course these boats were the Cajun bateau-type flat with the . rise in the bow…rise in the bow, and uh later developed…went from the Lockwood-Ash to uh, to uh, air-cooled.
JD: The Lockwood…
Joe: The Lockwoods were water cooled? .. They used what was called a Arkansas pump. It was just a elbow underneath the bottom of that the propeller shoved water thru. It went to the engine, piped to the engine, that cooled the engine. . There was no cooling in reverse, you didn’t stay in reverse too long. The Lockwood-Ash would reverse by the timing. You would slow it to a point where you’d move your timin and the motor would reverse, turn backwards. .. That’s how you achieved reverse.
JD: There wasn’t a gear?
Joe: Wasn’t a gear. But they had a outboard, a Mercury outboard years ago that was made like that…that reversed itself.
JD: With the timing?
Joe: Yeah, it reversed itself and that’s how they had reverse. ., before they came out with gears.
JD: That’s amazing, let me make sure I got this down now. I had never heard it called a Lockwood Ash. That’s what the name of the engine was? Lockwood…Ash?
Joe: When you talk to Daddy, ask him because I’m sure that …Lockwood-Ash. .. And they had different types [of engines]: Calmers, they call? ., and maybe there was one, I think, called a Detroit, or something, but they had different brands and maybe Lockwood-Ash was the brand name ., I don’t know. One cylinder, two cylinder, six cylinder, had a six horsepower and a eight horsepower – was a two, two and a half Lockwood-Ash, a six and a eight, the way I understand, horsepower. .. But that was the horsepowers. .. And all those engines of that type were around that, and they had a…uh, worked off [of] a dry coil, lil wood box with wire and tar, I guess it was a type of coil, ., with uh, just uh, you know. And it would be wired…that would be wired to the plugs. .. And the timer would, would time your speed. The timer was a lever and obviously the carburetor speeded up automatically…it was spring loaded, if I could remember a lil bit about it, [?] and it would suck more gas, as much gas that was needed, obviously. . And uh, some of the old people tell you more about it. .. It was an amazing engine. And, and, and my connection was because they were gone, by my time, . but as a boy and wanting a boat, I put and old set together at 12-14 years old. .. And that was my first boat.
JD: You put a set…what do you mean?
Joe: I had an old boat…Daddy had an old boat in the canal, one of those old 20-foot, 18, 20 foot bateaus. Cypress boards. I pulled it along the edge of the levee, as the water was comin up, and made a little horse for it and, and uh, I had the old Lockwood-Ash and I put it together and, uh….
JD: What do you mean…you had the old Lockwood-Ash?
Joe: He had the old Lockwood-Ash, it was just goin to waste, and so I cut out foundations…he had a air-cooled in that old 20…the foundations were different. So I put in more foundation timbers, and cut it out to fit the line of the shaft and all of this, and, and uh, Daddy’s brother had an old coil, it was still good, these coils were….
JD: Daddy’s brother’s name was what?
Joe: Bob Sauce, Robert, ., and he gave me a coil, and we got that thing a-runnin. And that was my first boat. It lasted a couple years, ., till I got an air-cooled, and that’s when the air-cooleds…
JD: Why did they go from the Lockwood to the air-cooleds?
Joe: Well, the air-cooleds were the new thing, you know? Modern thing. .. Then came the outboards. See, that was the next step from the Lockwood-Ashs and the long, skinny boats, and they got the air-cooleds and they built the boats a lil wider, . a lil different because they were goin to more line fishin than net fishin. You see, the old longer boats, they were designed for the campboats, and….
JD: They were really a workhorse, pulled the campboats, run nets out of em…
Joe: Run nets out of em, fish lines…they were a lil heavy I imagine for lines.
JD: That’s what I kept thinking.
Joe: I pulled…I had one, you know, and I did a lil fishin out of it as a young boy…. and so I did it out of one, and, and uh,
JD: Don’t stop, keep going with that if you can. And you say that, uh, that uh, I’m really curious about this…
Joe: And uh, you could see the adaptation of the boats and how they changed in the Basin, you know, alongside the fishin. And so, uh, they went to air-cooled and they still…Daddy, I remember raised…I never fished nets but Daddy did and I . raised nets with him and helped him, and uh, with the air-cooleds as well. But they were made similar, just maybe a lil wider, you know, ., not as long because they wanted the boat to go a lil faster so they could travel a lil further because they became more stationary, meanwhile, you know, because they didn’t travel the Basin. They didn’t need anything [to] go fast.
JD: Well, they were on the land by this time.
Joe: Yeah, they were on the land by this time. .. And so, uh, the air-cooled moved faster, they probably moved ten – twelve miles an hour, to the point where they wouldn’t quite get on a step…some of em may have. .. Because air-cooled, uh, when they first came out with em, you know, were about seven horsepower, five horsepower, that sort of thing, .. Daddy had a Wisconsin, was the brand of the air-cooled. And that’s what we mostly used. They were a good brand. I seen, uh, some of the other people had Briggs and Stratton I found out later, when I met my wife from Calumet. They used Briggs and Stratton a lot. .. Those were air-cooled also. But, uh, the Wisconsin was the type Daddy used, and uh, so I ended up, uh, my next boat was a, a air-cooled also. And we build the boat a little wider than the one he had, and we thought maybe it would move a lil faster, you know? .. And uh, my major fishing experience probably out of that boat, as it developed, and I began to fish a lil bit more.
JD: The air-cooled was a lil bit faster? .. And was it any more reliable than Lockwood was?
Joe: Uh. The Lockwoods were real reliable, I mean, they were a slow turning engine. They were low horsepower, but uh, they had good horsepower because they would turn a bigger prop than the air-cooled would. .. Air-cooled would just turn em up faster. .. But they were real reliable engines; they’d hardly ever wear out. If they did, you take the tongue of your shoe, if the bearing would wear out, and you cut it….
JD: The bearings…?
Joe: Yeah, if you had some leather…the tongue of your shoe was leather, you just cut that off and take your engine down and throw you a piece of leather in it. It would get you back home, you know?
JD: No kidding! .
Joe: That’s right. I did that with the old Lockwood Ash when the bearing had worn out. But they poured their own bearings, you know, Babbit bearings. They’d make a mold and pour bearings…
JD: I can’t picture that in my head. I don’t know what that would look like. How could you replace a bearing with a piece of leather? What, what would, uh…?
Joe: You just cut it out and fit it in inside the bearings cup holder. You just put it, bolt it back, and that leather is real smooth when oiled up. And it would hold up for quite a while. .. And, the bearing had worn out in that old Lockwood Ash that I had and that’s what I did. That’s some tough leather, put in there and it kept going a long time…til I quit usin it, on a piece of leather. .. It was slow turning, you know, . not many rpms. .. And so they would last a long time. But they all repaired em themselves that way. And that’s the main thing that would wear out, the bearings in em. I mean, uh, the pistons and rings hardly ever wore out…I’m sure it did [but hardly ever]. And the fishermen maintained em and they would keep em goin as long as they could. The air-cooled replaced it, and, uh, …
JD: Did the boats get somewhat shorter, you say, and maybe a little wider with the air-cooled?
Joe: Yeah, shorter and wider….maybe four foot bottoms, we went to mostly, and uh, sixteen foot long. .. Fourteen foot long, versus twenty and three foot wide. .. And so that changed the mobility, got around a lil faster, might move 12 miles an hour versus five or six or eight or something like that.
JD: Yeah, well that was a big jump – 30%. Do you have any memories of, uh, of uh, either the push skiffs, the push oared skiffs…?
Joe: Not too much, I was just…seen a lil bit, some of the old timers pushin, and uh, never used it much, other than uh… I remember Aunt Ida kept…Jesse [husband] kept an oared skiff, even after they had outboards on em. .. Yeah, they keep the oars. It was a tradition, in case you break down. .. You know, to come back in? .. That’s my memory of oars, pretty much. .. But I was told, you know, that’s the way people got around before the Lockwoods…even in the time of the Lockwoods a lot of em still held to the oars. The way I understand, my grandpa Daigle, Homer Daigle, used an oar boat a lot the way I understand. They oared a lot. .. But my memory is what I was told and what I seen when we would go visit them in Morgan City, so my memory [would] be a lot less in that tradition than over at Myette Pt. and the Sauce family.
JD: OK, see. How about pirogues?
Joe: Uh, just, uh, they were always around. .. In the woods, pirogues in the woods, fishing tightlines…I recall some of that experience, a lil bit, you know. Daddy, when I was a young boy, goin in the woods and fishing lines usin a pirogue, and that sort of thing, and they was…everybody had a pirogue draggin around the bayous. I used to play in the canal back of the house, that drainage canal back of the house, that drainage canal from Southcoast, you know? Which the levee was dug. Right back of where Edward and Uncle Myon used to live ., I can remember me and Justin playin around in a pirogue in the bayou…still didn’t know how to swim too much. .. And goin in that lil canal and it was cold, one time, we turned over in the middle of the canal [laughs] and I swum to the edge, made it to the edge…, and my neck…well, to reach bottom my neck was still stickin up. One of the guys, well it was Milton…Milton Bailey, he’s deceased now, Myon’s son, reached out and grabbed me, pulled me out. .. [laughs]
JD: You were always getting in the water, weren’t you!? [laughs]
Joe: And another experience, course I had build a lil pirogue, uh, later. And when I…
JD: …well, what happened to Justin? Everything was ok…?
Joe: No, he was out of the boat, he had stayed on the bank…we would take turns going up the bayou and back. . And he was on the bank and he was hollerin and I was in the water, so…thank the Lord for that. I also had built a lil pirogue, and maybe, my first…remember when I told you Daddy would put out the lines for me when I was a lil boy? . And I wanted to get some lines and fish on my own. . So I built this lil pirogue and I got some old tangled up line, untangled em and fixed the hooks on em, I recall that. And I begged Daddy [to] let me go across the levee in those holes, where they dug the levee they left those holes, you know?
JD: Big bar pits.
Joe: Those bar pits and stuff. . on the Atchafalaya Basin side. And the water was low, say “Let me go put out some line”, and finally they let me go. And, and I was about 15, or something like that. Chorological it might be mixed up somewhat in my mind, but anyway, it might be earlier, 12 or something like that. And uh, that was really, uh, on my own my first fishing experience, and then that pirogue, and I put out those tightlines and I’d catch me 15, 20 pounds of eel cats in those willows. That was my first money I made for myself, you know, on my own .. And then it evolved into that boat I was telling you about. .. The first Lockwood….
JD: You talking about holes on the Basin side of the levee where they built to put the levee…?
Joe: Yeah, they had a project some years later where they came in and they heightened the levees, and they had dug these holes.
JD: Where are the holes now, Joe?
Joe: They still there. That’s right at the boat landing where you come around Myette Point boat landing, you know…
JD: The one now?
Joe: Yeah. And you see the, you see the…after you come around the old levee, the little levee, you know? When you come around to go to the lake? .. When you see that [small levee] to the right, the first water going down on the right? . Those are some of the holes. They went all the way down to Belleview. They were just dug in different places here and there. They took mud and they rebuilt the levees.
JD: Oh, oh. So those must have been pretty deep at one time?
Joe: Umhm. Yeah, they were eight, ten foot deep. .. Course when they redid the levee project this time they still took a lot of dirt from that side again, and all those [?] holes…they got [?] holes, they got [?] holes now but they all different, because the [?] holes they had before were different, they were all unique. And a lot of guys, when high water came, they’d go back in these holes and fish line in these holes a . and they’d be piled up with fish that lived there all during the low water times…
JD: Because they were deeper.
Joe: Yeah, and they’d survive to then…... But anyway, that was my . earliest fishin experience on my own, when I made money from it, you know? And then, uh…
JD: They were tightlines? . Cause you didn’t have to have poles, drive poles or anything like that, you just went from tree to tree…
Joe: Yeah, and then the Lockwood Ash, and I would earn enough money in the summertime to buy my clothes for school. Momma would fish with me.
JD: Your momma would fish with you?
Joe: Yeah, when I had the Lockwood. . We’d go down with Daddy, down the lake…
JD: Two boats together?
Joe: Yeah, below Goat Island, and we’d have a lil set of lines out, you know? Two or three lines, three or four bents, from the sandbar at the end of Goat Island to the channel. Some on the other side. And uh, we would fish there. Make a few dollars, I made enough money to buy my school clothes and that sort of…
JD: You did? You were going to school by that time?
Joe: Yeah, I would keep half the money and Momma would get half, I believe that’s the way we did it. .. They wouldn’t let me go alone, in a boat.
[someone comes in with some ducks they killed this morning]
JD: Well, we just barely got into the boats thing, and we talked about how that was. If you want to talk a little bit about how bridle lines…
Joe: We talked a good deal about that.
JD: Well, I mean the actual line itself. The actual…what was used for bridle line…the earliest you remember.
Joe: OK, well, the nylon that we would buy. We would use that.
JD: Ok, so by the time you first started fishin, y’all were already using nylon? You don’t remember fishing cotton then?
Joe: No, I remember Daddy fishing cotton . and they would tar it regularly and uh, to keep it from rotting ., and they hoopnets were cotton. They would tar em regularly, they had to pick em up every two or three weeks and tar em. .. [or] they were gone, you know? .. That’s what kept em as long a possible. But uh, I remember nylon, we used nylon, and then every now and then you’d get ahold of an old tugboat rope, inch, two inch rope, or something like that and unravel it, and then use that. . Would save cost, that’s still done. .. Far as bridle line…that’s from the pole to the main line.
JD: And then, if you want to go to bug light, uh, all we’re talking about there is that light that y’all developed to use when you’re buggin on the river. You want to describe how that was built? How that was made?
Joe: Uh, well, we talking about buggin a lil bit. We used to fish our lines in the summer months [at night] and we kept hearing all these fish on the water you know .. Boy you’d stomp your foot and boy there would be a roar [laughs]. But, um, Daddy and some of the other guys had already tried catching these fish different ways, with gill nets…float the net down the river, and all kind of things, and it wouldn’t work. .. And uh, but anyway we’d be fishin lines and we would see these fish drifting on us, we’d tie the boat down [to the main line] and put the hook under the bow, or something, and grab our shrimp nets, you know, that we dip shrimp bushes, and uh, so we’d try to catch some of these fish drifting down on us. I was a half-hour sometimes trying to catch one or two just to see if we could [laughs] .. And finally we got the knack of how to do it, you know? And uh, you just scoop em real quick, throw the net and scoop. And, so, we had heard some of them guys from Bayou Sorrel and Pigeon…well, mostly Bayou Sorrel had done developed a process . for catching these fish…and, that they used monofilament nets. And so, uh, we knitted some monofilament nets and, they said they used lights on the back [of the boat]. Well, we knew the lights attracted the bugs, for sure .. And so we tried it, and it worked out pretty good. And, uh, during the times when the bugs were heavy, during the summer months, it was hard to fish anyway cuz they was around you so much it was hard to bait lines, they get in your eyes and everywhere. So, we learned how to hang a bright light on the stern, either a 12-volt bulb with a 12-volt battery, or a lil sealed beam. Usually worked good, a sealed beam plus a bulb that would cause em to stay around and drop on the water.
JD: Why both?
Joe: Uh, more light, more light, course it would cause the batteries to go down quicker but you wanted your light as low to the water as possible, without touching the water, so they would fall in the water. .. You gather you a pile of bugs, more bugs, and you just drift with em….catch as many fish as you could. And, some of those guys were pretty successful at catching a lot of fish like that. I guess the most I caught was about 300 pounds.
JD: You did catch that much? 300 pounds?
Joe: Some of those guys, they way I understand, would get as much as 1000 pounds sometimes in a night. .. Usually they were a nicer fish than what you caught on lines during the summer months. All nice fish, like that, course you get to pick em out. . If you was going to waste a dip, cause you scare the fish for a moment, you’d try to get the nicest one out the bunch. So, you accumulate a pile of, you know, four, five…three, four, five pounds… I struggle a few times trying to catch a big one and every time I’d either break my net or hurt myself. .. They were almost impossible to catch.
JD: How big would you say some of those were, that you tried to catch?
Joe: Aw, 30, 40, 50 pounders. And, uh, I caught like a 15 pounder, get him in the boat and they so lively when you do it he just stands on his tail, . jump right out the boat. [laughs]. You stomp your foot and get mad, and keep on. .. Yeah, but it was unique. It was a lot of fun.
JD: It was something different. ..
Joe: And you would go out and bait your line up before dark, and then you’d go ahead, you’d bug until about 11:00 or midnight, go back and make a run on your lines. You might want to make another run, another run would probably take you till daylight. .. And if you wanted to quit on the run after the buggin, you quit on that one and get home about 3:00 oclock. ..
JD: So y’all inherited…you think, uh, developed the technique that Bayou Sorrel…
Joe: Kind of developed, kind of heard, and, yeah…the monofilament idea.
JD: How about what fish you would actually catch? Was it all blue cats?
Joe: Just about, you’d get along the edge of the woods…we did that already also…the cypress trees before the sandbars built up against the cypress…you’d get eel cats.
JD: You’d get eel cats along the woods, and, uh…
Joe: Mostly, all blue cats in the channel.
JD: No goujons?
Joe: The goujons wouldn’t come to the top. Well, along the edge of the woods you might see a goujon stick his nose now and then. But they were very shy, even more shy than the eel cats and blue cats, cause they would barely stick their nose up. But I think you’d see one now and then, not much. They don’t like to come up. Different habits. And the nets, uh, I guess were about an inch and a half stretch, two inch.
JD: What size monofilament was it?
Joe: Uh, the lighter the easier it moved through the water. We started with real light stuff, like about maybe 20 or 30 pound test, and we tried some 40 or 50. What would get the monofilament was during the summer months they would dry rot. .. They would get kind of brittle and you’d use em the next season a lil bit and you’d have to patch holes. And you knit you a new one. The last one I had I used some plastic shrimp webbing, inch and half stretch, . that seemed to work pretty good …not as easy as the monofilament, it was plastic multifilament. . The monofilament was plastic single filament. .. The shrimp netting was multifilament, you know, like twine, .. But it was still dried and was plastic so it moved through the water . pretty well. Good enough to catch em.
JD: How long has it been since you did any buggin?
Joe: Well, last time, I took Mr. Benefield out, oh, about seven, eight years ago, something like that. We went buggin for a lil while. It wasn’t’ too much. It wasn’t right, we caught a few to eat, maybe 20-30 head or something like that, and we went and caught frogs after that, mostly for the sport…eatin. . Every summer I mean to get a rig together to go back for the sport and for the fun of it to get some, . and I never do. I still want to go back and do it, but my eyes are getting a lil worse and so it’s hard for me…. to see at night…as well. I got [?] and I think the glare, light shinin on that [?] and interferes with the way I see at night a lot. .. Course, I’m a lil far sighted and I gotta wear these glasses.
JD: Shoot, we ought to try next summer to do it. .. I’d like to do that.
Joe: It’s fun. Get some fish to eat, whatever. . Who knows, might even go out there and whomp em.
JD: That’ll be fun, we ought to think about that for next summer.
Joe: OK. [looking at list]. Castnet, that was used mostly by commercial fishermen to get bait, shads…
JD: Before we leave the bug net, if you would, explain if you would how you made the rim and the handle.
Joe: Oh, OK. First we started…we go to the hardware store and buy one-inch round pole, fir I believe ., and later I found that it was [better] a inch and a quarter pole, it was heavier but more stouter. . and, uh, you’d get some uh, quarter inch steel, hoopnet steel, .. Hoopnet steel, it’s springy steel . and it was made for hoopnets.
JD: And it comes round?
Joe: Yeah, I comes in a coil, a hundred pound, whatever, if you buy a whole…but most of the time you’d rob an old hoopnet of its rim or something like that. . Later on we got…we had bought…between two or three of us…we had bought . a coil, we divided. But we bought the bigger steel which was hard to get. The bigger steel was 5/16 I believe, and uh, it was better for the dipnets for shrimp nets and for crawfish nets cause it was stouter. . But we mostly used ¼ for bug nets.
JD: Because it was lighter?
Joe: Lighter, and uh, it didn’t need to be that strong. . as the ones to dip shrimp bushes. And uh, we just square it off, you know, the steel off…off the round part to the shape of the pole and then make some lil, some lil uh, dips, you know on the end, you know to drive into the pole.
JD: So, if I can explain, I need to be able to explain that so that I can write it. Joe’s going to write how these hoops are supposed to look, when you make em. We’re putting that right on the outline, here. . Did you, did you notch the pole to put these alongside the handle?
Joe: Yeah, you could make a lil notch that would cause em to stay in a lil better, yeah. . A lil channel in the pole. And uh, then you’d…you could use, uh, pipe clamps . to clamp it, or you can . staple, or if I used staples I’d take a piece of wire and wrap the wire around it, round and round, or you can use nylon and keep half-hitchin it just to tighten it securely to the pole. Cause the staples would work loose on its own. ..
JD: Haven’t I seen these wrapped with nylon all the way from where the hoop starts to the end of that.
Joe: Right.
JD: That looks pretty.
Joe: And on the bug net what you’d want to do if you were looking at a side view of the rim, you’d want to shape it…kind of dip it.
JD: From a side view, you didn’t want it straight, you wanted it, uh, yeah. [looking at what he’s drawing] that’s so it would be like a scoop. . I see what you’re talking about. .. You’d want to make it like a scoop.
Joe: Yeah, mostly toward the top end, you know?
JD: How would you shape it, if it was springy steel like that?
Joe: You just put it under your feet and you bend it ., pull on it, and finally it would take a lil shape, you know. . You’d want to kind of bend it more toward the…about the top 1/3 of the rim. .. Like a spoon. ..
JD: OK, now how about the other end of the…how about the end of the handle of the net?
Joe: Oh, ok, we’d put a paddle because you need to move around. . and you’d just, uh, split the end of the pole and put you a lil piece of wood in it and screw it down, nail it down. Just a lil piece of plywood, or whatever, nothing big. .. And of course you wanted to put it at the right angle of the net to make it more convenient. I don’t quite recall, uh…
JD: Which way it was?
Joe: Which way it was [laughs], maybe crossways, or…you wanted the net to be handy for when you seen the fish to get to it as quick as possible. But either way, the paddle would work. But later on [we] got aluminum poles also. The last one was aluminum pole, but I found it a lil heavy. And the wood, you just drive you a piece of wood into the aluminum pole.
JD: Drive a plug into the aluminum…?
Joe: Yeah, in order to . attach the rim to. . Last one was a lil short so I drove me a piece of wood pole in the end. I guess I still got it back there, I don’t know if I do or not. But I’d have to start all over, if I’d go again.
JD: See, nobody would have cause to know any of this unless we write it down and save it someplace. Nobody would know all of that, and it would be lost. So that’s why I want to do this. ..
Joe: Yeah, and uh, that came toward the end of…well, it’s not ended yet, some people still fishing, but the end of my linefishing career so to speak, to make a living because…I’m still hoping I could do like Russell [Daigle], he gave the shrimp boat to Louis [his son] to run and he’s out there runnin it, and Russell’s havin all the fun in the Basin. [laughs].
JD: Yeah, just playin around, like, almost, huh?
Joe: Yeah, but still makin money. .. It’s just, uh, the money difference is so, so vast between shrimpin industry and nowadays catfishing. Linefishing, it was a hard livin, it was a good livin but…
JD: It’s a hard livin, lot of hard work, a lot of hours, and not much return for it.
Joe: A lot less money.
JD: That’s right, a lot less money.
Joe: And so we do a lot better with the shrimp boats, and…and uh…
JD: So that’s why all this is goin away, I mean it’s…if it would be a good livin, now, if it would be a good livin people would be doin it. . And they’re not.
Joe: Well, I think what caused it to come to a point of, uh [collapse]…was the ponds. And people just gave it up ., when you couldn’t sell em anymore.
JD: The market.
Joe: The market caused their…’cause people would still go back to it, I’d still go back to it during the months I couldn’t shrimp ‘cause up until ’85 ., and ’86, we fished below Calumet spillway [Wax Lake Outlet] in the winter months . and catch a lot of catfish.
JD: In the new delta down there.
Joe: The new delta, you see. And fishing was tremendous! Easier to fish, didn’t have the hangs you do up in the Basin, . fish a lot more hooks…
JD: Bait wasn’t hard to get?
Joe: I recall, uh, probly about ’84, something like that, and first month I fished I grossed $4000.
JD: What?!
Joe: In, uh, I believe it was the month of…part of the month of March and part of the month of April.
JD: Gollee! $4000 in line fish. . But ’85, what happened?
Joe: Well, uh, I sold my boat [shrimp boat] in ’86. . I went to seminary. And then the fishin, the market got bad right after that, after ’85 I believe. You couldn’t hardly sell em. We did a lil fishing in the winter months, I had a seine then. We did a lil seining, we couldn’t sell the fish, they didn’t want the seine fish. They would take a few line fish.
JD: Why?
Joe: Uh, because they had too much fish, really. That was the extent of it. .. If they would have needed em, they would have bought em. They just didn’t want us to catch too much. .. I could recall going out with the seine and wrapping about a 2500-pound haul of catfish. And I gave some to EJ and Russell, my father-in-law, we were parked together in a…by Belle Isle Lake .. We skinned, in order to sell those fish we, we had got a sale for 1200 pounds…well, that what we had, 1200 pounds skinned. You know, collar.
Continued on Chapter23
Interview with Joe Jr. and Flo Sauce
Blog Ch 23 Tape 13 Side A
Continued from Chapter 22
JD: This is the second tape with Joe Sauce on the 26 of December, 1995, and we’re still talking here doing gaspergous.
Joe: And uh, it was getting hard about that time to, to sell fish. We sold that 1200 pounds and, uh, I believe that was probably one of the last years, maybe the following year we did a lil fishing down below Calumet Spillway and that was probably the last time. Around…it was in the ’84 and ’85, because I may have fished in the spring of ’86, I don’t recall, but I sold my boat in the spring of ’86. In the summer of ’86, rather…July or August. And we used the shrimp boats, you know, as camps.
JD: In those middle ‘80s [is] when yall were fishing in the delta?
Joe: Yeah. We also used the shrimp boats as camps, we went around from place to place along the delta, and uh, as far as Oyster Bayou and Four League Bay, uh, fishing gill webbing. We mostly fished garfish. We caught a few other fish like flounder and redfish, that kind of thing, but uh, we were mostly after garfish, we used gar webbing. And uh, we traveled…that was back in the mid ‘70s to the ‘80s.
JD: Yeah.
Joe: I don’t know how we got on that.
JD: We were talking about castnets. We drifted away from castnets [laughs].
Joe: You might find some useful information….
JD: Oh yes! None of that is wasted. Believe me.
Joe: I know, because some of this applies to other…
JD: Other stuff, exactly. So castnets, when yall first started using castnets it was…they were made out of cotton, I imagine. Well, no, not you, your’s would have been nylon.
Joe: I recall, Daddy’s old castnets…Daddy had, made out of cotton.
JD: And they had to dip them too? In tar?
Joe: Yeah. I remember some of em were black.
JD: Boy, it must have been hard to open those things! If they were…well, I guess once they dried, they didn’t stick together…
Joe: Umhm. They needed a light dippin, I imagine. But, uh, anyway the nylon soon came in, it wasn’t long. And uh, and that lasted long periods of time. The most damage was done, was… being caught on a stump and tearin a hole in em.
JD: The lines that pull the net up, what do you call those? [braile lines] You know, the line that came down…
Joe: I don’t know, uh, probably bridle lines.
JD: Bridle? Could have been, could have been called bridle.
Joe: You had your bottom line with your castnet balls, the hanging would get bad sometimes.
JD: Now you used a term just now, you used the term “light dippin”? that means that there was different variables…?
Joe: Yeah. Well, they dipped the nylon in that nylon net dip, and you’d mix it thinner, a thinner mixture. Just like we do the shrimpnets now, you know? You know, you dip in, like, we got the plastic dip now, and uh, like my last set of nets [for his shrimp boat] I dipped em three light dippings, I mixed a lot of Varsol .
JD: Is that what it’s cut with? Varsol?
Joe: That’s one of the things they use. If you use gasoline you waste…what’s left is wasted because it spoils it…it dries it up. If you don’t have an airtight container and the can’s full, it’s gonna dry up on you, that plastic dip. There’s no way to keep it.
JD: If you use gasoline?
Joe: Well, even if you use Varsol but Varsol’s less…
JD: Volatile?
Joe: Right, umhm. But anyway, they, most of the fishermen would probably use gasoline to thin the nylon net dip, and uh….
JD: What size were the castnets? Do you remember?
Joe: Around five foot, probly most of em. For bait. And some of em might have six foot, and uh, they was mostly used to catch bait – shads, mullets and that sort of thing. I don’t know what more we could say about that.
JD: Dipnets.
Joe: OK, that’s not the shrimpnets. The dipnet was a lil…an extra net other than the shrimpnet, or crawfish net, that a fisherman kept in his boat in order to dip a fish that was barely hooked. Or a larger fish, whether it was hooked good or not, you used the dipnet. Large goujon, or blue cat, probly anything…. Like more than five pounds, because it had a tendency to pull off the hook. And so, dipnets…
JD: How about the oldest, the earliest ones, you remember how they were made? Were they made about the same as…
Joe: About the same as a shrimpnet. Probly with the quarter inch steel because they needed to be as light as possible. And uh, course the nets were tarred, probly, the original ones the older people used were probly…during the cotton time were tarred heavy, so that they wouldn’t…and then of course a dipnet, the stiffer it is the less…easier it is to use because the fish isn’t tangled. Soft twine would…catfish with the kind of fins they have would tangle bad, so you needed to dip that good.
JD: The webbing? Big mesh webbing?
Joe: Big mesh, two inch. Three inch stretch. Something to that extent. Course you wanted you wanted something that wouldn’t get tangled, probly it was mostly nylon webbing used for that. And uh, I really never did carry a dipnet that much, I would use my shrimpnet. I had dipnets on occasion but mostly used my shrimpnet because, uh, big fish…you’d catch some but it was an unusual thing, to catch a lot of big, big fish. You’d get a lot of nice fish, three four five pounds, and stuff like that, but you could bring them in if they were hooked good…you know, you’d go for it. Lose some sometimes, [laughs]. But usually when I have a line up [fishing it] I’d take my shrimpnet and turn it around and put it handy. Or if I had a dipnet and sometimes I did, not always, but I find it inconvenient…the less stuff you had in your boat, the easier it was, and so I tried to get , I guess, too conservative. But anyway, that’s what I did. Also, you might get into a gaff hook right here.
JD: Gaff hook?
Joe: Yeah, because that was also used to catch a fish that might be falling off the hook.
JD: I never…I didn’t know that…I never saw that. Gaff hook. How was that made? What’d it look like?
Joe: Well, you’d get a large hook, you could buy an alligator hook or 5 or 6 or 8/0, whatever. Hooks about that…
JD: About six inches long…
Joe: Yeah, about four to six inches long and you could, uh, either…we used a lil mop handle, or something, and tack it to the end of that and tie it up with nylon, just let the hook protrude and you knock the beard [barb] down or file the beard, part of it off and use it as a gaff. And it was real handy, you could save a big fish a lot easier with a gaff sometimes than you could with a dipnet, because is was light, easy just to…
JD: Reach down and hook em and bring em in the boat.
Joe: Yeah, I saved about a 40-pound blue cat one time. It done fell off the hook, you could see his tail goin down, and I just reach down far as I could and yanked, and I got him in the tail, pulled him up by the tail. And so they were handy for that, but they…
JD: I don’t recall seeing those things, I never used one.
Joe: They wasn’t too good for, for uh, smaller fish cause what you did for smaller fish was try to gaff and most times just knock him off, and don’t get him, and so the net worked the best for smaller fish. Also, what you might not have on here…they used a lil small type gaff hook…some of the fishermen did, they made with a lil bittty hook on the end to put around the hook to unhook the fish.
JD: OK, that’s what I’ve got right here.
Joe: I never did use em too much, but a lot of the Charenton fishermen used em. I don’t know what you’d call it.
JD: I thought I had something on here like that but I don’t…OK…I’m going to put down “unhooker” on here just for the sake of not knowin better what to call it right now.
Joe: Some of em, when they would get bad, they’d want to use those things. But I thought they were a lil bit dangerous…sling the catfish.
JD: You see, Edward uses one of those now. He takes a , he’s got about a fourteen inch long piece of styro…of pvc pipe and he’s got a little…he’s got 90 degree stainless steel point comin out the end of it, and all he does with that is he catches a fish, he hooks em [flips it over] does that and…
Joe: Right into the well [box].
JD: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: Saves your hands.
JD: Yeah, yeah, he never touches a fish anymore.
Joe: Could be a lil dangerous too. Slinging a catfish [laughs].
JD: It could, but then he also handles em out of the wellbox the same way, with that same hook, so it’s a pretty good tool.
Joe: Right. Yeah, it’s also used to…to…transfer fish, and we used them…I used it…one like that quite a bit...for transferring the fish, but to unhook the fish, really I found it slower to me…
JD: You’d have to reach over again to get something else…
Joe: Well, they wasn’t hooked that well, you know, it was easier just to unhook em by hand.
JD: But I’m goin to put it in there anyway because it’s something that you…
Joe: Yeah, it’s a tool.
JD: A fish box is not something that you would have too much of a memory of, I don’t think.??
Joe: Yeah, I remember em, and uh, but uh, we never used em too much.
JD: Well, by the time you came along there was ice.
Joe: Well, some of em…right…some of em used, uh, fishing at night kept their fish…tried to keep their fish alive long as possible, maybe beginning my memory of night fishing maybe fish boxes were used a lil bit, you know? I remember…recall Daddy using a fish box quite a bit…
JD: [breaking in, talking to tape] I want to remember to put night fishing on here as a technique to talk about with all these guys.
Joe: Daddy used a fish box and all the old people did, for the fishboats when they came around to buy the fish, and to keep em alive. They kept em alive.
JD: As long as they could.
Joe: As long as they could, some of em died. And they just threw em away.
JD: You remember how they were built?
Joe: Uh, at first, they were built with cypress slats , and wood cages. Complete wood cages.
JD: And the cypress would sink, Joe?
Joe: Yeah, it would get water soaked and it would sink, and they would tie em up in trees and that kind of thing…close to the camps, around the camps. And later on they used wire, for fish boxes. Wire mash of some type or another. They also used fish boxes to get crab fishing [hold crabs], off of lines, trotlines also, in the Atchafalaya Basin. And, uh, I remember using a fish box made with crab wire…we’d frame with wood and use…crab wire…
JD: Plastic?
Joe: No, steel wire, one by two inch…mash, wire.
JD: And that was for what?
Joe: Crabs. To keep crabs alive, they’d put, uh, ten twelve, up to twenty dozen crabs in probably a four or five foot box…four foot wide, maybe four-foot-high cage, or something like that.
JD: Why would you keep em in there? Crabs?
Joe: To keep em alive until you sold em.
JD: How would you sell em? Somebody would come along and buy four or five …
Joe: Right, either sell em to the public…people would come from Franklin to buy crabs, or they might have a buyer that would come around couple times a week. So sometimes slack was taken during the summer months when catfish wasn’t biting by fishing crabs in the Basin, on trotlines.
JD: On those flylines, they call em?
Joe: No, trotlines, they just use the bentlines and just made em go on bottom real well and baited em with catfish heads, or that sort of thing.
JD: Just hook em…hook the hook in the catfish head, or something like that…? And just fish em like you do catfish?
Joe: Yeah, right.
JD: And they would catch crabs like that pretty good?
Joe: Yeah. I recall uh, doing it in my teenage years, and fish all night and come in with about thirty, forty dozen of crabs.
JD: Off your trotlines?
Joe: Umhm. It was a prosperous lil business for a while, you know, and some of em kept doin it and then later crab traps…well, they used crab traps a lil later, I remember Daddy did both sometimes. Fished lines sometimes and then had maybe thirty crab traps also. But they didn’t fish em like the bay fishermen did, they had a round trap with that one by two wire mash, with a funnel throat.
JD: That’s kind of like what Edward uses now, that one by two trap that’s got a funnel…wire…that’s got a mesh throat, a webbing throat. Is that what you’re talking about?
Joe: Yeah, you seen some like that?
JD: Edward fishes those, they’re short, they’re not high, about that high and about that long and about that wide. And he puts a webbing throat in em.
Joe: Yeah, first they would make wire throats, and then a lil later they made, uh, little later they started knitting some nylon throats. Putting in em. They found the nylon throats were better cause they didn’t get out.
JD: Is that what it is? [why they did it]
Joe: Yeah, it was flatter [the flue was] …and the crab could squeeze thru [to get in]. Wire when it was stiff…and you had to have a big enough opening for a big crab to get thru, and so they could get out easier [also].
JD: Well, listen, I don’t want to wear you out here. You been talking to me steady now for about three hours, and I’m not worn out but I don’t want you to get discouraged, so what I want to offer you is a chance to stop right here and let me come back, and later, maybe in the next two weeks or so…
Joe: We goin to go over this whole thing [the list of items on the interview sheet]?
JD: I would like to hear what you have to say.
Joe: [laughs] we might be ten more hours. Did everyone else talk to you that much?
JD: Yeah, you’re the second, you’re the second person. I talked to Edward and Lena Mae for about the equivalent of three days already, about this, and sometimes yall say somewhat similar things but you have lot more things you remember that they don’t remember, and they had some things that…
Joe: They, they…it’s just that they probably didn’t have nothing to key it off, you know?
JD: So, would you mind, like, if I was to call you back next week or something like that?
Joe: We could probably finish the material [now] if you want.
JD: It’s up to you. I meet with EJ at 1:00.
Joe: We can go a lil further…
JD: You want to come? You want to come with me to EJ’s? And we can talk together at 1:00? The three of us? I’m thinking yall could feed off of each other.
Joe: It’s possible. I don’t know, we’ll see if I decide not to do any work today or not.
JD: That’s what I don’t want to do; I don’t want to get in your way.
Joe: Well, you not in my way, uh, we kind of in between, I could do a few lil things, you know what I mean, but…
JD: I brought another tape recorder to follow you around with, if you wanted to go work. I got a small one. But, you want to keep going say tell 12:00?
Joe: Yeah, let’s go a lil further.
JD: We did fish box; you want to do floats now?
Joe: Yeah, the fish boxes were made out of cypress slats, later used wire…, and the purpose behind the fish box was no ice. I can recall one experience where Daddy, Daddy told me about, him and his brother Monug, which is…he’s deceased now…had a box full of fish. They did real good one week and it developed a hole, or a slat came out or whatever, and they lost a whole bunch of fish, so that happened. And another bad thing, they had thieves in the Basin in those days [laughs]. Yeah, it was a problem, uh, maybe Daddy might elaborate, but I heard, you know, you had to watch your box close. You didn’t want anybody stealing your fish. But, uh, they would lose weight in the box also cause they were….
JD: They wouldn’t feed. Well, how long were the fish usually kept in the box?
Joe: I’m not certain, I would assume different periods different times, you know, because maybe the fishboats had different intervals. And some of the old people can tell you more about it. And uh, maybe later on they just kept em for their own purposes until they could get to deliver em to an ice box somewhere. Or they were out camping somewhere, you know, maybe they… I guess different reasons.
Joe: Far as lines are concerned? Uh, well, floats could be used for several things. Floats could be used to adjust the, uh, the distance from the bottom. Some lines…trotlines were used across spans without poles. These floats were put in between, you know, to keep the line a certain distance off the bottom. I never did fish too much that way, but we mostly used em, uh, during times we wanted to elevate the line a certain distance from the bottom and the currents wasn’t real strong to hold the line up. And so, uh, instead of, uh, we’d adjust the bridle somewhat, that would help, but we’d also put a float at each sinker at the bridle when it was on a pole. When you’d fish lines that were stobbed down, and the water would fall out, and you needed to raise, elevate your line, you’d use floats then, to keep em…
JD: Floats all the way at the surface?
Joe: Or you could just use em to balance the uh, sinker. Sinker a lil heavier than the float will float. To keep, you know, a certain…the line up against the weight of the sinker. Adjust your sinker line, you know, a foot, two-foot, three foot, however long you wanted it.
JD: And that would be the distance from the bottom?
Joe: From the bottom.
JD: But floats would also be, course, when you sent bentlines you put floats on the stobs…
Joe: Yeah, when you usin stobs you use a…we’d use milk jugs or…probably most used float for a trotline probly was a milk jug. [laughs]. Any plastic jug, you know? You’d drive your stub and milk jugs floated well in the current. Then you’d go back and grab your milk jug, tie your line to.
JD: What you suppose was used before plastic jugs were out there?
Joe: Probly, uh, cork floats, I would imagine.
JD: Yeah, Agnes also tells me that they used to use cypress knees. They’d put cypress knees and dry em?
Joe: Yeah, now you say it, you see I had forgotten about that. Cypress knees, I remember Lester Couvillier, and uh, when we was fishin lines, he’d use that a lot for his hoop nets.
JD: His hoop nets?
Joe: Yeah, the cypress knees?
JD: Cut and dried cypress knees? They say those things would float real high when they were dry.
Joe: Umhm. You’d tie em to your hoop net tail lines or whatever. When they’d move nets around, so you’d go back [to a marker] to it later if he wanted to fish his net in that spot again. I don’t know about far as line fishing, I guess they used em too, but it was before my time. But jugs, or Styrofoam sometimes would be used or small coke bottle [plastic] you know, to float your line the distance you wanted it off bottom with the distance of the anchor line, sinker line tied up. Lil blocks of Styrofoam. We did that quite a bit below Calumet. You know, closer to the Cut in somewhat deeper water, we’d do that. We’d keep it off bottom.
JD: Keep the crabs off of it?
Joe: Yeah, yeah, in those kind of areas they had a lot of crabs. Places like [a] dead lakes, like probly Lake Verret and Lake Fausse Pointe, probably had a lot of line fishing was done in that fashion, you know, without many poles, just a pole on each end with float lines in between, you know. Probly without sinkers, just let the line sink itself cause it still water, and just tie your sinker lines as deep as you would tie the line, you know, to the top. So, that fashion. Not a whole lot about floats [that] you could say.
JD: Headlights. ‘Course that’s something that people used at night for night fishing, but…when you started off I would imagine everybody was already using electric bulbs and everything else. Carl Carline and them remember using the old, uh, and Russell does too, I believe, the carbide lamps.
Joe: Yeah, Daddy could tell you about that. And uh, there may have been a couple varieties of that, he can tell you about.
Flo: I’m pretty sure that Blue’s got one.
JD: Got one of those, those old carbide head lamps?
Flo: She had something that was Daddy’s that they used for froggin and stuff, and uh, she asked if she could have it and I’m pretty sure Blue has it.
JD: I’ll ask her, I’m going to go see her this afternoon. Maybe she’ll let me take a picture of it.
Flo: She either has it, or someone in the family has it. I saw it.
JD: Hand ax.
Joe: Uh, yeah, it was used to uh, chop poles, willow poles, ash poles…
JD: What was it like?
Joe: Uh, we used, uh, either hatchet or small hand ax. either one. Ax was a lil bit more dangerous cause it seemed to glance more than a hatchet. For some reason. So, an ax is more slicker, slimmer. But I used those, both were good for choppin poles. That’s why we used em in the boat.
JD: Did yall use machetes at all? Big knives…
Joe: I never used it too much. E.J. and Russell probly did. Aunt Ida liked to use a machete, and a cane knife a lot, I remember. I always kept a hatchet or a lil ax and a knife for cutting equipment in a boat. Like I said, I didn’t like to clutter my boat. I liked to keep it as clean as possible. Move around much better. But there was only a certain limit of things you could get by with, that you needed. So, I never used a…I had a machete one time I used a lil bit, but I didn’t like to use it, so…I went back to the ax.
JD: Hooks, huhn?
Joe: Hooks? A necessity [laughs], for line fishin.
JD: What were the hooks that you first used when you first started. Were they…? Before stainless steel so they were still…
Joe: Probly cadmium plated limerick hooks. Buy at Medric Martin’s [a country store that serviced the community at Myette Pt., now a very old place]
JD: He had em?
Joe: Yeah, that’s where everybody got they hooks, you know? Just about, you know? Years ago.
JD: Line too?
Joe: Line, he kept line. All the things…supplies fishermen could use.
JD: He did? Medric did?
Joe: The limerick…I remember the limerick hooks, that’s mostly what he carried. He didn’t have a variety.
JD: Black hooks?
Joe: Daddy or one of the other ones could probly tell you more about it, but I know they were plated. Pretty sure they were cadmium plated, if I remember right. They may have been some that wasn’t plated before then. These processes probly came out as it was needed.
JD: What size hooks did yall use?
Joe: Uh, I mostly used 2/0s, myself, because the size of the fish in the Basin. We even tried, like, 1/0 or 1/X hooks which caught better but didn’t hold the fish as well. Yeah, 2/0 hook was the all-around hook. In some cases larger hooks were used, and uh, for bigger fish course larger hooks…as people began to catch more the smaller size fish, you know, two-three pounds fish and under…2/0 hooks was the most common kind they used I believe. But before those times uh, in my Dad’s time, they used larger hooks 3/0, 4/0s, cause they fished for uh, big blue cats, you know.
JD: They did fish with big hooks, though, huhn? You talking about trotlines or uh, bushlines?
Joe: Trotlines, trotlines and bushlines. But uh, it wasn’t nothing for them to catch two or three 50 to 80 pound catfish, you know, in a day.
JD: Fishing with what for bait?
Joe: Uh, what they’d use when they… they’d fish with live perch a lot. You understand, to catch the goujons and blue cats also would go for that, but…course, shrimp was always a widely used bait for catfish, and goujons also, but…the live bait for goujons…I remember they’d talk about going put out goujon lines, you know, in particular places along the trees, and baitin with live perch in the fall of the year.
JD: Uh, bushlines?
Joe: No, bentlines. Two or three bents out, you know, from the woods area…it was good for goujon. Catch those. I remember a few experiences with Dad when I was small, those big goujons and blue cats pulling on the line, man from way off they’d take [motions a line sinking down into the water from the boatside]. You could feel it, it would take the line that much, you know. One time he caught a 70 or 80 pound blue cat or something like that…I was with him in the boat…a couple big fish anyway, and uh, right at Myette Pt., right at the cypress tree that used to stick the furthest out. Had a line right there, I remember, and we caught a couple…two or three big blue cats. I was small.
JD: How’d he get that in the boat?
Joe: Just dipped it and rolled it in with the net.
JD: The dipnet was big enough to put a fish that size?
Joe: Yeah, they were pretty big….. [laughs] you can notice that through the years the net size shrunk. Because big fish…wasn’t as many. Course I think a lot of that had to do with the situation in the Basin, you know. Conditions changing, and uh, always usually in dead-type water fishing situations you catch larger catfish.
JD: Dead-water type…?
Joe: Yeah, you go to other areas like the lil lakes down in the delta area, you know, and you’ll catch nice catfish, big catfish, like in dead-end locations below Bayou Sale and all that, you catch you know, fish like that.
JD: You do catch big catfish…?
Joe: You go down in Grand Lake and uh, White Lake, big catfish.
JD: In dead water areas…
JD: Mermentau, yeah.
JD: Places without a lot of current?
Joe: Right, I think uh…and certainly they have a lot of big fish in, in the Basin, but you don’t catch em as well. I don’t know why, what’s the thing…cause in the summer months when you put out lines in the deep water in the channel, you know its….when the current’s [slack], you catch larger fish. Obviously the current has something to do with it.
JD: I never could figure that out. It seems like fishing in deeper water…that’s where the big fish seem to be caught, in deeper water. Are they there, I wonder, because the water’s deep, or are they there…or can you only fish there …no…are they there when the water’s clear and there’s not much current, or is it that you can only fish there when the water’s clear and there is no current? Are they there all the time or not?
Joe: I’m not sure. I think during the high waters, the strong currents, the fish come out of the channel…the deeper…come out into the shallows, the colder the wate...sometimes, after… Well specific time in the fall of the year when you don’t have much water, like they all pile up in the deep water. But there’s a point [where] they all come out of there.
JD: So, you think they spread out [in high water]?
Joe: I think they do. Cause then, they move up to the coves, like Raymond’s Cove. We used to go in there in the winter months and catch big catfish. Thirty, forty pound blue cats. Ten- or fifteen-pound catfish, five, ten pound catfish, stuff like that.
JD: On tightlines?
Joe: Uh, tightlines. Even lines a lil bit under the water on poles.
JD: Just dippin down [a weight between two poles]?
Joe: Like that also. Different ways. The bayous below, in the delta area, too, big catfish.
JD: Along the edges in those coves and stuff?
Joe: Well, no, in the bayous. Crosslines. You got a chance…you got a good feeling running those kind of lines cause you got a chance…and I notice also going fish up toward Charenton in the G.A. Cut up yonder? The water gets about 20, 25 foot deep in the G.A. Cut, way up above Buffalo Cove?. It’s just a straight body of water, G.A. Cut, it’s like a channel, and you’ll catch bigger fish in there too, I found. I fished that a lil bit …
JD: Fun to catch em but you can’t sell em.
Joe: Not nowadays. That was the big thing, you know? Catch you a couple a big fis...but now, you avoid em. [laughs].
JD: In one way, in one way like I said, maybe it’s not all bad because what it’s doin is it’s putting the breeding fish back in the lake.
Joe: Yeah, that’s true.
JD: OK, we did hooks.
Joe: You know, another thing I think, maybe, the channels were good for big fish, during their spawning I think the caves and stuff along the edge of the drop offs may have been spawning areas inside these mud caves and stuff. For these catfish…
JD: Isn’t there a bunch of logs and everything, too, that’s in that drop off?
Joe: Oh yeah, along that edge there’s logs and hangs all kind of…
JD: I understand those fish like to breed, spawn inside those logs that have holes in em and stuff…
Joe: I think so. I think that has a lot to do with it.
JD: Of course you hang a big fish on that edge like that, you don’t have much of a chance of keeping him because of he can wrap you around almost anything down there.
Joe: That’s a lot what happens. It’s hard to, to keep a line and run it cause they always hanging in the Basin all over, you know ? I guess not all over, cause a lot of sand’s done covered that up now. But in areas that’s left to fish…
JD: I saw a cross-section of the main channel of the Atchafalaya the other day…some Corps of Engineers thing I was at, they were showing what the typical…what the profile looks like, the cross section of the main channel, and they showed it just like, you know how it is, comin out from the bank with a long slope 10 or 12 feet deep, and then it hits the edge of that slope and it drops, in a short period of time usually, from 10 or 12 to well, 30 or 40 feet along that slope like that. And then a flat bottom across to the other side and then the beginning of that slope up and then another shelf up on the other side. And the thing that was neat about it was it showed like this, like that, like this, and then like that [gesturing]. … this edge right here is what we’re talking about, this thing right here. And they showed this was just packed with logs and trash and junk, and everything. For some reason [all of this is] all embedded in this slope right here. And nothing on the bottom here, it’s clean, on the main channel…the very middle of the channel, clean all across the bottom.
Joe: On the slope [logs] yeah.
JD: But right along this slope, from here to here, for some reason…
Joe: That’s where your lines would…course, your lines would go down a long ways to go across the channel, and then boy all along that slope that’s where it would hang, you know? It was a pain to pick up.
JD: That’s the first time I ever saw that, saw somebody actually say that [that the slope to the bottom of the main channel was filled with logs].
Joe: And I guess that’s how…all the logs and stuff…it must have been just trash left as the Basin filled in, you know, as the logs drifted in, it was dug out …
JD: Maybe so, stuff that was buried …
Joe: Or maybe, as nature made the Basin, or whatever, before hundreds of years, you know, old forests…
JD: Yeah, stuff stickin out that used to be live trees, that’s possible. So it’s not necessarily stuff that came drifting down. OK, so we did hooks, as much as we can. Um, how about…when were you first introduced to jigger poles?
Joe: Uh, it was probably a few years after, you know, I started fishing as a teenager and…mostly used driving poles with the malls and stuff until [we] finally got enough sense to use what the net fishermen used [laughs]. You know, when the currents were strong and the Basin was up? It was so much easier to keep the lines on the bottom, and so…course the older poles were made out of…you go cut a long cypress…lil cypress tree…
JD: Is that what you liked to use, cypress?
Joe: Yeah, or ash pole, or whatever, and put a pipe on the end. And uh, started using that, and that was much easier to keep the lines on the bottom…
JD: How long were they, usually, the poles?
Joe: Oh, about 18 foot, probably about average I would imagine. Course it was some places in the Basin, below Goat Island and stuff, where you could get further out into the channel with a longer pole – about 25 foot. We came out with the aluminum poles and got extensions and stuff like that.
Go a lil further out in the deeper water... and closer into the edge of the channel cause it seemed like …obviously those stumps we talking about in the channel were hot, because the fish liked to stay on the edge. And so, uh, first bent out from the channel, you know when you were comin in…not going out into the channel...coming away from the channel, was the best …some of the best fishin, first couple a bents out from the channel.
JD: Course you tried to get as deep as you could.
Joe: Right. During extreme high water conditions you had to keep retreating…. from that situation, cause, it got just unbearable to run usually.
JD: Too tight?
Joe: Most cases, so…but poles, jigger poles certainly came a lil later, and uh, and uh, course they had been used for hoopnets a long while, and the line fishermen just adapted and used that as they seen the need, I would assume. Probably wasn’t until after my teenage years before we started usin stob poles. A jigger pole and a stob pole…course the stob poles were lil willow trees or ash or whatever you could find. Cut about four-foot [long], three or four foot long. You know the process. ‘Course I introduced you to that process…
JD: Yes, you did. The whole thing, the whole thing. You and your daddy. You went shrimpin and your daddy took me over after you went shrimpin. [laughs]
Joe: That’s probably…what year was that?
JD: ’72…I was learning from you just about the season before that big high water came and almost came over the levee.
Joe: That’s what I figured it was. As I recall.
JD: That was 23 years ago. Doesn’t seem like it could have been 23 years ago.
We already talked about a landing net a little bit, cause that’s basically the same thing as that dipnet that we talked about before. But, uh, how about line. Tell me about the line that yall used to use, the sizes you used, uh…you told me that you…you came along after nylon was…was introduced, so you didn’t have too much to do with cotton. But, uh, what line did yall use when yall…when you first started?
Joe: Uh, I can remember we…we probably used 27 and 30 a lot, number 27 and 30 a lot.
JD: For the main line?
Joe: Yeah. And, uh, course we wanted to get as much as we could for the money...the distance [amount of line on a one pound ball]…but we found out that 36, a lil later, was…as we…as I did it more, uh, larger and larger so to speak.
36 was probly the most, most used, and I used 42. 42 was good for channel lines. And if you get a line bigger than that, it caught more current for the crossings in the channels and stuff, so uh,…
JD: Made it too tight?
Joe: Yeah, 36…42, 36 were most commonly used. You wanted tougher line, use 42, and if you wanted all-around line, use 36. 48 was a lil too big.
JD: OK.
Joe: Then, course, we used line that had been dipped…
JD: Black line?
Joe: Black line. Now there’s…you can buy it in the plastic dip but [I] hardly ever used plastic dip for main line. Some of the guys tried it but I never did like it, I liked my black line. But I liked the plastic dip for stageons.
JD: Did you start with…did you always use white line to tie your stageons and then dip em after? Or did you use black line?
Joe: I always mostly used white…I’ve done on occasion used black line, and they were already dipped [black] and use em like that, but when it was pressing and, for the time, and get the line that I needed quickly into the water. I’ve done that, but as a rule of thumb, always used, uh, tied the white stageons, dipped em, after the stageons was completed, myself. Either black dip, or later on, we discovered the plastic dip [green] and used the plastic dip, which I. Well, you can buy it in lots of different colors now, you get the black, the green, the blue, for shrimpnets, so. Pick the color you like. The green was OK. For the stageons I found that it stayed stiffer. Course, uh, a lot of the old fishermen would argue that point – the stiff stageons. [they] say it’s better for a soft stageon. Some of em wouldn’t even dip their stageons at all.
JD: White line?
Joe: White. Tangles, but easier for a fish to get hooked because it was limber, and they thought that, uh, the limber stageon would cause the fish to…to get hooked quicker, you know, it was free-er.
JD: Really? I didn’t know that.
Joe: Momma’s, momma’s brother, Norman Daigle, he fished trotlines years ago before he ever shrimped and stuff like that. And he would tell us we was crazy for dippin our stageons …to his own.
JD: Well, I know there was a lot of talk about the dip might mess up the, the swivel.
Joe: It does, uh, at the beginning. You free em. You know, most of your first run you’ll have quite a few twisted [swivel didn’t turn so the fish could twist the line up and get off]. Most of em will still work. But, I find the green plastic dip…what you do, even the black dip…what I do after they were dry good, I’d take my stageons by the hooks [a bunch together], you know, in front of the hooks, fix it good so you don’t get stuck, and I’d take em and I’d beat em against a tree, or beat the heck out of em and limber em all up.
JD: A bunch of em all at once?
Joe: Yeah. Beat em, and that would limber everything up. And so they’d be pretty free. You’d get one on a fresh new line, first run, you’d get a few that would tangle up [twist] and they’d be set free after that.
JD: Even with the green plastic…?
Joe: Green plastic probly was better than the…than the black dip, for as it was a lil lighter and it did a stiffer job to the…to the line, and it didn’t interfere with the swivel as much, probably. Close to the same, but maybe not as much.
JD: We’ve already talked a lil bit about line preservative. It was…in the old days it was tar.
Joe: And, and, really, for the nylon you didn’t need a preservative. It really was used just as a stiffening agent, instead of a preservative.
JD: And a stiff line’s always good because it doesn’t get hung up, doesn’t get tangled I can imagine what it would be like to try to put out a tub of white line with no stiffener on it with the hooks on it.
Joe: Me either!
JD: Have you ever heard of anybody tryin to do that?
Joe: Yeah. They did it, the guys that fished Lake Fausse Pointe from Charenton did that. But they made, uh, lil boxes. What they did, uh, they had lil square frame of wood, about that wide, would go on the bottom, OK?. Yeah, they’d coil up some line but they’d put a hook in every one of those lil notches around the…
JD: They’d notch all the way around the edge of this box? And the box would be in a tub?
Joe: No, the box was self contained, it was…had a bottom, build it the first layer, may have been tacked to the bottom, ok, and they’d put those hooks all around in those notches as they’d coil the line up.
JD: So, the line would go in the box?
Joe: Yeah, and then you’d put the next layer of wood on top, you know? It would have a lil piece of wood that would stick down in the corners, you see? They put it on and then they would have these notches all around, again, you see. All around the top of the wood, and they’d coil the line and notch it all around. And when they get ready to pull out [put out the line] it was white line, but it would just go out on its own.
JD: Really? It really worked?
Joe: Umhm. Another thing that worked for, uh, the way we did it, in tubs. Just coil the black line in tubs, I seen sometimes hooking em on the tub, You know, that works somewhat, but still they get crossed, they get messed But one way to do it, if you want to put em out fast is to take the point of the hook and hook it in the knot….[the knot that ties onto the main line, and the hooks don’t snag the other line as they go out]
Interview with Joe Jr. and Flo Sauce, and EJ and Blue Daigle
Blog Ch 24 Tape 13 Side B
Continued from Chapter 23
Continued from Chapter 23
Joe: We’d do that when we’d rig up lines in the house…
JD: You’d rig em up fresh?
Joe: Yeah, we’d just tie em on the main line and we’d stick em onto, into the knot.
JD: Bury the tip of the hook into the knot…
Joe: Bury the tip of the hook the first time you put out [fresh line].
JD: I never heard that, y’all never showed me that. [laughs]
Joe: We not givin you all the secrets! [laughs]. It wasn’t handy when you were pickin up lines. To stop…it would take you forever to pick up lines. So we’d just let the hook fall where it may and you’d have to be just a lil bit more careful, but if you never…if your coils were good you could just…you’d hook up now and then but [makes a motion to throw outward] throw the line out, always keep a situation where you weren’t getting tight on yourself, you know, keep the bow of your boat up the current and idle it slow and throw out till you get enough, and run [to the next place you needed to tie off the line], you know, never get yourself in a bind.
JD: If you got in a bind that was the end of it.
Joe: Keep a knife close by, you know, so you can cut it, that’s your best bet.
JD: ‘Cause once it hangs up in that tub, the whole thing’s gone [can lose all the line in the tub, it gets dragged out by the force of the current]. That ever happen to you?
Joe: Oh yeah. [laughs] it’s amazing…
JD: [laughs] That’s how you learned to keep a knife close by?
Joe: Yeah. It’s amazing how, how, how uh, how well you could put out that line and how fast it goes out. When you get the knack of it, you know?
JD: I, I got to where I could do that after a while. You pick up one hook and throw as many as four at a time out, when you throw that hook.
Joe: And you, you know, you wouldn’t throw it too hard where it would….
JD: If it would hang up, it would just stop…
Joe: Make sure you had, your first, initial throw wasn’t too close to [?]. Throw off of one, and it it hook a little it wouldn’t tangle nothing.
JD: Right. You could just reach down and grab that hook [the tangled one] and throw it.
Joe: But sometimes two or three would come out, you know? Sometimes two or three…some get hooked…unhook that one and throw it again. Out it goes. We did good.
JD: People…people don’t believe you can do that. You try to tell em that, they don’t believe it’s possible to do that. They think it’s necessary to have something like you’re talking about that box, with the rig, and the hooks all put separately so they didn’t hang up. I would have thought that’s the way it was too, not seeing y’all do it.
Joe: I still got a tub of line in the shed, practically new line hardly used, about 1200 hooks in a tub. Last time I tried to do a lil fishing, about four or five winters ago. Didn’t have nothing to do so I went and put out a, a few lines. It wasn’t much. It was in the winter months, I just had some fun for a while. [laughs]
JD: Just playing with it, huh, more than anything else? OK, we talked a lil bit about motors, especially about inboard motors. We talked about the Lockwood Ash, you’re telling me, and what was that brand name…of those, some of the brand names if you can remember, of those air-cooled motors? When they first came out. Briggs and Stratton, did you say?
Joe: Yeah. Wisconsin was used mostly by the Myette Pt. clan. I dunno, maybe daddy could tell you, I think maybe Coleman and Becnel [local store?], maybe they bought em from them, seems to stick in my head, I’m not certain, or they order em out of a cat catalogue, whatever. But you’d have to…Daddy could tell you more about em. My first one, I got…Arthur Sanders gave it to me, it was one that was stuck . An air-cooled, Wisconsin, he had used and discarded, and I took it and kind of fixed it up and got it goin. That was my first air-cooled engine. He had given it up. It needed a…some work on the ignition system. The coil box in the back of it, uh, had some points and stuff in it, and uh, it needed a lil work, but uh, the bearings rattled a lil bit in it but it was still good. It rolled, you know, it just was a lil rusty and made noise. Anyway, Wisconsin and Briggs and Stratton were used. There may have been some other brands, but uh, maybe some other folks can tell you more about those, I don’t know.
JD: And then the outboards came, what do you remember about the first outboards?
Joe: Oh, that was every boy’s dream. [laughs] To have an outboard that get up on a step. Couldn’t wait to have a boat and a outboard motor, I remember that. My first outboard was an old, Mercury with the…it had the…it had the…the handle, the shift was on the end…made into the throttle where the handle…
JD: Like the ones now, the new ones?
Joe: Well, well it’s similar, on the handle, but what they had was a…it was…in the lower unit they had some kind of spring and a cylinder that would control the shifting. And, and uh, it was bad because they tore up, …that cylinder out, the springs would tear up. It had a, a troll, t r a w l, I guess, not trawl, like a shrimp trawl. Obviously made for sport fishermen, you know. Had a troll setting, had a lever, you put it on troll, start, on the throttle, whatever, and uh, use that handle for that. But uh, that was my first outboard motor, and uh, …
JD: Did it run?
Joe: Yeah, it ran well, and uh…be good…where I had taken my first air-cooled boat and converted it…fixed a squarer stern for a outboard motor. And that’s the boat…
JD: Now that’s a different thing, you say the boats…when they shifted from the inboards, even the air-cooled, to the outboards you had to come with a square stern. The stern was slanted in on the other ones?
Joe: Yeah. Slanted in. Because the put the… sometimes they put the rudder thru the deck and it would come thru the stern up high where there was no need for any kind of stuffin box or anything, for the water to come up the…
JD: Oh, ok, so that’s why those stern boards were…
Joe: Or they’d have a pipe, or they’d have a pipe, if it was in the boat, they’d have a pipe. That’s the reason I think mostly the old boats with the Lockwood Ash was like…had a lot of slant, and they kept that idea…the air-cooled there was no reason to have a square stern, you know, it had the slant. Course you could put a pipe all the way to the top. I’m sure that’s what they had, thinking about it, but most time they was from the bottom thru the “lean” [?] if I remember right.
JD: When you say there was a pipe, you talking about something that was bolted to the bottom…?
Joe: Yeah, on a flat plate, and a pipe that came…
JD: Umhm. And the, the rudder shaft would come up thru the pipe?
Joe: Yeah, right. And you’d have a lil, stiff, uh, piece of steel or butt… it was uh, your rudder lines would attach with pulleys all around, on the air-coolers.
JD: OK. So…and it had…did it have a front and back stick? For your rudder control?
Joe: Yeah, we put a stick, uh, on the air-cooleds we got away from the stick and just had the chain…and we’d use the chain for the…pull the chain.
JD: Just a chain, you could push it and pull it, it would…
Joe: Use a lil rudder chain, around the pulleys and that would work, but um, on the old Lockwood Ash they had that stick.
JD: That’s where Myon got that idea of, uh, putting a front and back stick to steer an outboard motor with instead of a, a, steering wheel? He rigged that up one time, with a front and back stick? He didn’t know how to use it…[laughs] he tells the story about how he ended up on bank…
Joe: He turned one way and …
JD: That’s right, goin the other way…he was up on the bank, he had three…three deer hunters and five dogs in his boat with him, he was high and dry on the bank, and so they got it off the bank and they went and he put em down in the canal and everything and put the dogs…he was gonna go put the dogs off somewhere else to run and no sooner than he got back in the canal there was a Christmas tree in the middle of the canal..he was comin down the canal…he turned that thing the wrong way…he hit that Christmas tree [laughs] and he went in the water, the boat kept goin up on the bank. He said a brand new Evinrude on it, he went up on the bank, he said all he could think of…he was in the water…like 30 degrees…he said the motor was up there goin poppoppoppop on the bank and uh, and Albert Jr. yelled at him, he said “Daddy, you all right?” He said “Yeah I’m all right, go turn that motor off, it’s gone burn up!” He wasn’t worried about him, he was worried about the motor. [laughs]. So, that’s how I remember that front and back stick, it’s opposite of what you think it is!
Joe: Yeah, I recall my first experience as a lil boy tryin to drive a outboard motor, and I turned in the direction I wanted to go and [went] in the opposite! I couldn’t understand that at first, you know?
JD: [laughs] Ay, yi. OK, oars…that would be about…
Joe: We talked about that on the tape. Course, we uh, we kept a paddle in the boat.. I like the old oar-type, uh, paddle, you know, it was strong.
JD: The long, round…
Joe: Nowadays, those plastic paddles, I don’t care for em too much. I got one, plastic paddle now, I bought for my crawfish skiff, but it…it has a…it has a metal handle and so it’s pretty stiff. But, uh, the old ash-type paddles, you know, buy it at the hardware…
JD: About five feet long?
Joe: Yeah, five foot long. With round…
JD: You could almost make em into oars if you wanted to.
Joe: Yeah, they used to make em, uh, they used to make they paddles out of cypress. Daddy used to have a cypress paddle, but they’d carve em out themselves.
JD: Make em out of those pieces of floating cypress you find…piece of stumps, and stuff?
Joe: Umhm. I made a couple paddles, uh, probly out of ash, already.
JD: You had to dry the wood first?
Joe: I remember makin one or two. Makin one out of an old piece of cypress, already, too. When I was younger. We talked about oars; I didn’t use that. It was about gone…comin off the scene by the time…
JD: The skiffs, push…push skiffs? That what they called those things?
Joe: Yeah, either bateaus or skiffs was it, yeah.
JD: They put…they put those oars on bateaus too…the flat fronted boats?
Joe: I’m sure they did, uh, but uh, it was more of a bigger thing for skiffs. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s a reason behind that …you might investigate…
We talked about the rake nets…[looking at the outline of interview items]
JD: We did that. Umhm. Stobs, we talked about stobs, uh, shrimpnet…that’s what I’m talking about, really, what you dip in uh…dip shrimp dips with. Anything special about them?
Joe: No, just uh, made similar to the way we made uh, bug nets that we talked about. Only thing, the thicker steel, you know, 5/16s steel, and I still got some. If ever you need a piece. Yeah, every now and then somebody comes and get some from me.
JD: You have much left? Off that piece of coil?
Joe: Enough to make several rims. We don’t hardly use em [laughs]. I got one out there…the handle rust… rot on the ends.
JD: The handle rotted…well, you still have the rim.
Joe: Yeah, the last time I fished, I had to put a new net on it. Probly rotten by now. But I got all that stuff inside, in my shed, so it keep a lot longer. The biggest thing with the size of the steel for a shrimpnet…used it both for dip shrimp or lil crawfish along the levee and in the holes in the swamp with. And a stiff handle so it didn’t bend or break, bend back, those bushes, well, you know. You can speak to that, put together the same way as the, uh, the way I drew…
JD: The bugging net.
Joe: Yeah, the same principle. You might bend them a lil bit.
JD: You do that too, a lil bit?
Joe: A lil bit, not as much as the buggin net. [you] want a good curve on the front of the buggin net, like a spoon. The hardest hardship on the shrimp or crawfish net was crawfish, draggin it thru the grass.
JD: You ever put any kind of…run any kind of uh, heavier line along the front like that? You know like you do for shrimp trawl?
Joe: No, I never… never did, but uh, it would …when you dip crawfish a lot.. would wear out the hangin [line used to attach the net to the rim]. We uh, on the boat, the shrimp boat we use, uh, a lil net…well, it’s a square net, and it drags the bottom of the boat…we sew a lil net on it to…to dip the fish out and [then] you dip the shrimp on the bottom, you know to clean your shrimp catch. And uh, what’ll happen…the line will wear on the bottom. So, we learned how to get another lil piece of aluminum…weld it in front…all the way…another lil rod, in front of that...so to protect the net, the hanging from wearing out, or you use wire…Or use a piece of hose. … water hose, and put on the end. Wear the hose out. And it lasts a lot longer [before] wearing the line out. Could a did something like that, l don’t know, we didn’t.
JD: It was obviously never necessary.
Joe: Nah, change the hangin. And the nets would wear out.
JD: If it hadn’t of worked, y’all would have done something else.
Joe: Yeah, I mean the bottoms were soft, didn’t wear out that bad. So, it wasn’t a necessity… to worry about. [back to the interview items] Uh, sinkers, we talked about that. Anything you could get…iron…
JD: It pretty much had to be iron, though, didn’t it?
Joe: Yeah, a lot of guys tried bricks and, and uh, stuff like that. That just didn’t work in the strong currents…
JD: It just wouldn’t hold it down, would it?
Joe: Yeah, slack water, it worked, you know… to hold line down, but …anything cement, brick, didn’t work too good. And, talking about anchors, you know, which we didn’t talk about…
JD: …at the beginning.
Joe: We didn’t talk about, like in the channel, we use anchors in the deeper water, so either…that would work, you get a piece of…heavy piece of granite rock off of one of those pipelines, or something like that, you know, and you could tie a line to [it] for an anchor, and tie a jug to it and run your main line…
JD: That would work?
Joe: That would work. Cause it was plenty heavy enough.
JD: Probly if you got something like that it would have to be bigger than it would if it was steel.
Joe: Yeah, and a piece of iron, it wouldn’t have to…well, the size… Net fishermen developed some…a lil rod anchor they used, uh, just a sucker rod, they just weld a piece of sucker rod to a lil cross…a lil cross bar The just drag it till it would hook on something, put their nets on it. We never did use that for lines, but…like we’d get any, any old junk we could, you know.
JD: Outboard motor? An old motor?
Joe: Old motor, pieces of something, another pipe…worked good.
JD: Piece of pipe?
Joe: Yeah. I found, uh, we’d fish old crossings in the channel sometime, but sometimes what we do…we’d put a couple anchors in the middle and use bridles like we did for poles. One time I divided the channel, in one wide part, into about four bents, about three anchors in the middle, and that worked pretty good…only thing, you had to have extra long, long bridles…hundreds, maybe a couple hundred foot long cause of the depth of the water, so it would be easier to raise. [if you didn’t] you would get to the bridle [and] it would be hard to raise. But, we used also…I’d tie a milk jug at that particular point, make it come up easier.
JD: Oh, but you had enough weight to sink the milk jug.
Joe: Definitely, it would sink itself with the current in the channel. [even] when the channel was low it was a hard place to fish, always hard to fish in the deep water.
JD: So, you actually did…did put bentlines across the channel? Did you ever get any of those anchors back up?
Joe: No, I wouldn’t worry about getting em…. that’s why when you get ahold of old rope, and use…you’d save a lot of money cause if you use main line [for the long bridles], you know it was four, five, six dollars a shot, for about two bridles off of it [one pound ball of nylon].
JD: So, you’re saying that y’all actually did use main line for bridles when you didn’t have any of the rope…
Joe: Yeah, I used main line a lot because, uh, that was a lot of pain to unravel rope all the time, and we wanted to put out line quick, so, you’d spend extra money and use…get 42 [number] or something like that, main line…sometime I’d use 36, but I used a lot of. A lot of the guys took their time and liked to do those kind of things, but I was impatient kind of guy. I wanted to do something, I wanted it now, and so I spent a lil bit more. [laughs] I call myself conservative but I don’t know sometimes I’m liberal [laughs].
JD: You and Mike, huh?
Joe: Mike?
JD: Foster. [the governor]
Joe: Oh, Mike Foster! We can hope the best for him.
JD: OK, snaghooks, I don’t suppose you can talk too much about that?
Joe: No, I just heard Daddy and the old people talk about it. They used it somewhat, and uh, they’d put the hooks real close, that’s all I know. And they’d just snag a fish with lil sharp hooks, I understand. Very inconvenient thing to fish.
JD: I can imagine. So, OK, stageons.
Joe: That was usually two pieces of number 15, nylon, usually, I believe, sometime twelve, but mostly 15 nylon was used. Uh, and after you tie em together you…it would be about six inches, but the time you tied your knot [the loop]. You need to…probly cut about a 18-inch piece of line. Use a wooden block and wrap it and heat a knife on the stove…whatever…cut across. And uh, your stageons, by the time you tie [the loop] be six to…different, your particular desire, you know, how long you wanted your stageons. Ours ended up usually…total about maybe fourteen, sixteen inches, something line that [total length of the tied stageon, loops, hook and swivel]. And, you had your swivel in the middle, which gave you an inch, and your hook, on one end. And uh, course that’s how it was put together, your two…after your line [loops] was tied together…then you attach your swivel in the middle, hook on the end. That was your stageon. Another way of doin it also…
JD: Did everybody always use swivels in your memory?
Joe: No, we did, even way back before they come out with the brass, you know, with the bent wire. And the Charenton fishermen, again, you know I keep referring to em, seem to do things different. Maybe they were more conservative, didn’t want to spend as much money, lazy [laughs], I don’t know, but uh, you find they…didn’t use swivels. Used long stageons, light line, and…like I said, with just the hook on the end. Didn’t spend much into it, and those guys, lot of times would put out line [and] just leave em, never come back to em.
JD: Are you talking about…did you ever know them to use bentlines?
Joe: Uh, some of em, but I guess they did…
JD: [they mostly used?] ightlines.
Joe: Yeah, lotta tightline type fishing. I don’t know if they ever…some of em did, because uh, that I know of, did like we did. Some of the Persilvers knew about the way we did it, and they kind of adapted…Higgins, uh, course I seen what they use…they were used to no swivels, lines like that you know…
JD: I’ve even seen em take, number 15 white line and to make the stageons they just come along and tie a knot in it…two feet or three feet long.
Joe: Well, that’s what I got in my mind, that’s what I’m talking about, that’s how they make it…with just the hook on the end. And, and, uh, they pile em up in this box, you know. Make it right off the main line, just tie a knot, use long, long stageons. White line. And it was cheap. They go put these things out and they, in Lake Fausse Pointe, just leave those things and never pick em up. Be dangerous.
JD: The hooks just stay there.
Joe: I seen that out in the bay, I seen toward the other side of the river, leave trotlines with long stageons out the water just about that high, just about neck [high]…
JD: Hooks actually four feet out of the water? [he actually means the main line is that high, but the hooks are in the water on the long stageons]
Joe: Yeah, yeah, dangerous, dangerous. [whistles]
JD: Well, that’s the kind of thing that gets people who don’t do that in trouble.
Joe: We never did fish like that, even when we fished tightlines we fished em about level with the water where it couldn’t hurt anybody. What’s the purpose, I mean? I don’t have no idea. White Lake, White Lake and, uh, Grand Lake, and all, the guys that do it, that’s the way they do it. They, they fish fifteen hooks in one lil place, with stageons just like that, have a pole on each end with about 15 hooks, here and there.
JD: Short, short, short pieces of line.
We getting close, Joe, [to the end of the topics for interview], swivels we’ve already talked about. Uh, the 12-volt battery…
Joe: Well, uh, battery, used to use…buy…used it for night fishing you know, for the headlights, but used a lil, uh, lil six-volt battery with the lil…
JD: The round ones?
Joe: No, lil square ones, you know? We’d carry around…we’d burn one a night, you know. Sometimes two a night. And that got to be expensive, and so we adapted, we got some sense…used storage batteries with long wires.
JD: So those were six-volt, square…. Were they metal or paper when y’all first started using em?
Joe: I can remember some paper, uh…with the tar [on the outside of the battery holding the paper on]…I can kind of recall that.
JD: And then it came to the metal ones.
Joe: Came to the metal ones. And Daddy might be able to tell you, some of the old people, probly…done told you more…Edward probly…
JD: No, I haven’t gone over this list with Edward [Couvillier] yet. This stuff… just in pieces.
Joe: So, you gone pick up a lot more information from someone else.
JD: Different people…
Joe: You know, about those things that were a lil bit before my time, things I could faintly remember.
JD: Sure, sure. And there’s things that you would remember if you were…if you were triggered to it, uh, there’s stuff that you know that you’re not remembering.
Joe: And things “hand me down”, you know, stories and.
JD: Sure, well what I’m going to do with this eventually is…I’m talking to you about these things…I want to get at least two more, three more people to tell me about the tools, cause they…most of the stuff they gonna repeat what you’ve said…but some of it will be somewhat different, and then I’ll be able to include that. Once I get all this done, I’m gonna write it…write it up…and then I’m gonna give it to y’all to read. And if you would read it then, and tell me “Aw, well you forgot this”, or “Aw, well that’s not right”, or “I remember something like…”, then it will trigger a…maybe a new set of memories and I can include those too.
Joe: You gonna find that uh, each family was a…might be a lil unique. Did things just a lil bit different, you know, nobody’s the same, you know?
JD: Variable…variability, within the community, a variability. I’m not gonna talk about the white line [and] three-foot long stageons, cause that’s not part of the tradition on the Myette Pt. community. You see, that’s something else. I might point it out as, as, other people did. But that’s not part of what I’m gonna focus on, which is what y’all did.
Joe: Most of em [Myette Pt. people] always did it with the tarred line and the swivel stageons, and even way back when they made em themselves, you know?
JD: That’s what makes it possible for me to do this, cause I can tie it to just that one period and people.
Joe: And of course other people used the swivels too, cause they used to come from all over to buy swivels, I remember, from Aunt Ida [Daigle].
JD: They did?
Joe: People from Morgan City, and you gonna find some similarity in the way some of the people in Morgan City did it [fished] and the way we did it. [if you would] investigate anyway, but a lot of it was done the same way. Course a lot of it was because, the…the roots came out of the same tradition.
JD: That’s right…exactly…
Joe: Branched off different. That was unique too, because of the pole under the bushlines…the Sauce boys in Calumet fishing the delta area retained that, and we didn’t.
JD: Well, anyway, uh, I…you have to start somewhere with something like this [the writing of the story] that’s why I’m trying to hold it to one community and one group of fishermen. It could be branched out afterwards, you know, to talk about different techniques of how people elsewhere did…those various different techniques. I don’t know enough about net fishing to… to do much in the way of net fishing, so I’m not…I’m not including that in this.
Joe: You might want to mention [it] in fact, because uh, the boats…like we seen, like we determine in here, the boats…the way the boats were built because of the different type of uses. All that had a bearing on…
JD: What do you think came first, netfishing or linefishing? Cause you know this netfishing, this hoopnet’s not used anywhere else in the world [found out later that this is not so, they came from the upper Mississippi]…that I know of. The hoopnet evolved right here in the Atchafalaya Basin, it’s not…you don’t find hoopnets used anywhere else. If you go to Texas or Mississippi, people will tell you they got…they came from here, or they got the pattern from here. It originated right here in the Basin, as far as I can tell.
Joe: They adapted and figured it out here, you know, somebody…
JD: Somebody…maybe they used it in Europe. The idea came, maybe, from someplace in Europe. I have no idea. You might be able to go the Rhine River in Germany, or something, and find people using these things...even today.
Joe: Somebody, somewhere along the line knew a lil bit something about it maybe. Either that or it was invented here, but…
JD: So, this was a six-volt…and the 12-volt battery, later. We talked about the gaff hook and we talked about the unhooker thing, whatever you call that thing, already.
Joe: Have to ask…I don’t know if it was ever named [laughs], but…
JD: We’re going to stop right here for a second.
[resumes with another conversation]
JD: Go ahead. I knew he had a brother that died…drownded.
Flo: …fell in a fish cage.
JD: Talking about Russell and EJ’s brother.
Joe: I’m not certain…no, he was in a boat runnin lines and…or something…and. I don’t know if he drownded or something happened to him or what…the way I understand there wasn’t no water in his [lungs?]
Flo: …a kid.
Joe: He was. He was a teenaged boy, maybe 12, 14 years old something like that.
Flo: Yeah, he was young, like that. It’s hard to believe that fishermen don’t know how to swim.
Joe: And Aunt Ida also could be one that could tell you a lot.
Flo: Russell [?] don’t have a birth certificate. He has a, um, he doesn’t have a birth certificate. What he has is a, um, [?].
Joe: Jim, you want to eat? We got plenty…
JD: I have to be at EJ’s at 1:00. So, I thought I was gone to pick up a hamburger in town or something, just to eat something quick.
Flo: We got plenty food.
JD: You sure? Y’all gonna eat right now?
Joe: Rice dressing, microwave some stuff up.
Flo: Yeah, whenever y’all finish…
JD: Well, we not finished but we gone stop. I wrung Joe out, here, for four hours straight [laughs].
Joe: I didn’t know I had that much in me.
JD: Ok…oh, you got a lot more than that in you, believe me, and I’m gone get some of it [laughs].
That’s the end of this session with Joe [Sauce]. Cut.
JD: We gone to start over right now, start here with, uh, with EJ, uh, Daigle, at his house. Still on the 26th of December, 1995. OK? Uh, the reason I started this was to be able to trace back a, a family, and then I want to do others as much as I can. [referring to a chart with family lineages on it] But starting with Lena Mae and going up to her parents. Her parents were Myon and Agnes. We followed Agnes’s up where we got Blaise Sauce and Rosalie Mayon, for her parents. And then each of their parents…these are the two that came, we think, from Spain, and France. These two, we don’t know where they came from, that would be Agnes’s mother’s family – Mayon and Mason. On the other side, with Myon, his parents were these two people. I don’t know if this Daigle is kin to you.
EJ: That’s my grandmother. Myon and Daddy were half brothers. See, Myon’s daddy died and then she married my daddy…my grandfather.
JD: OK, I’ll get to that in just a minute. The second marriage, Homer Daigle? That’s it. That’s your grandfather.
EJ: Charles Homer Daigle.
JD: Charles…that was his first name? See, I get a lil piece of information everywhere I go. So, that was your…your grandmother, and her mother was Leah Hebert, and Joe Daigle. And then, on the other side, Myon’s daddy, which wouldn’t be kin to you, would be Albert Bailey was Myon’s daddy, and Victor and we don’t…can’t find her, Catherine’s, last name, right now. But that would have been Myon’s grandmother. And then, under each one of these, what I tried to put is for this person I put their brothers and sisters, for this person their brothers and sisters, the same thing…Edward, everybody’s brothers and sisters. All the way through here, like this, and I also tried to put who they married. And this is not because it’s gonna end up in this history anyplace necessarily, but I…every time somebody refers to somebody…
EJ: You have to know where it’s comin from in order to talk about it. Or put it on paper the way it…
JD: Exactly! To know what the connections were.
EJ: You gotta have a reference point somewhere.
JD: Exactly right. So, that’s why I’m doin this [family lineage chart]. And, what I’d like to do, if you could hand me that blank one, right there. If you could give me…I want to try to sketch your family, on here. So, we can go to Ernestine Daigle, and Charles Homer [Daigle]…now, they weren’t related by blood, or were they related by blood?
EJ: They say no. Lot of skeletons in the closet as far as that thing there went [laughs].
JD: And you don’t know how close the skeletons were either, they might not have been very close. OK, so you have those two people, as your grandparents. Now, your parents were Ida Daigle, and Jesse [Daigle]. Ok, now, their kids were, now wait a minute, let me get this straight, these would have been Ida’s parents?
EJ: No, that’s Jesse’s parents. Blaise [Sauce] and Rosalie was momma’s parents.
JD: OK. Jesse and Ida, who’s…was the oldest Russell of you?
EJ: Umhm.
JD: And he married…?
EJ: Gail.
JD: Gail, I couldn’t think of her last name. Was it G a i l? Guillory?
EJ: Umhm.
JD: Ok, are you next?
EJ: No, there was one between me and Russell, that drowned when he was about 10 years old, Jesse junior.
JD: OK, Your …your name is actually EJ [not initials] isn’t it?
EJ: Umhm, EJ Felix Daigle.
JD: Felix is your middle name? From…from Blaise [Felix Blaise Sauce].
EJ: I suppose so. And then when I Confirmed, the Church put Joseph between Felix and Daigle [laughs]. Man I had a handle…I got a handle! [laughs].
JD: Anslem, right? Blue…[EJ’s wife]?
EJ: Yeah.
JD: OK. All right. Uh, can you list Russell’s kids for me?
EJ: Well, Russell had two wives, so, first wife, oldest son named David.
JD: What’s her name?
EJ: Helen Anslem.
JD: Was she kin [to Blue’s family]?
EJ: Umhm. Cousins, third cousins or so. Son named David, David and Janet…a boy and a girl.
JD: Ok, and with Gail?
EJ: Uh, Paul… Paul, Louis and Mathew.
JD: And let me list yours.
EJ: I only had one wife [laughs], so, Leland, Weldon and Joan.
JD: OK, and theirs [children]?
EJ: Leland has a oldest daughter named April.
JD: What’s his wife’s name?
EJ: Lisa Chauvin. Their two children, two lil girls, April and Amy. Weldon married Kacy Louviere, got one son named Drake. Joan married Kory Champaigne, that’s as far as she’s got [laughs].
[referring to the chart] that’s Leroy and Wayne also, I don’t know…
JD: That’s Leroy and Wayne [EJ and Russell’s two brothers]…could put on there. They’re not part of all…they’re not directly part of the fishing thing, but let me get em anyway. Leroy would be next? Gil [wife], g i l ?
EJ: Gail is his first wife. Gail, Gail Landry. They had, four children, Chris, Kurt, Elwood, and Blake. His second wife was, Gil Monroe.
Blue: Gillian. She well says, we call her Gil, but her name is Gillian.
JD: M o n r o e?
EJ: Scottish Monroe. Had one daughter named Gillian. [laughs].
[Switch now to Wayne Daigle]
EJ: First wife he had no children with.
JD: What was her name?
EJ: Uh, Benefield, uh, Bonny Benefield. And second wife is, uh…what’s Wayne’s wife [laughs], I forget her name now. [laughs]
Blue: Lynne, her name is Lynne.
EJ: Lynne Jacobs. They’ve got two boys, Casey and Josh. [spelling on Casey?]. Josh, Joshua, I guess.
Blue: Kasey spells his with a K. He spells it with a K.
EJ: People don’t know how to spell? Casey starts with a C.
JD: That’s right, you would think they would know by now, huh? [laughs].
Kasey and Joshua.
EJ: That’s it.
JD: That’s it. Ok. That…you tie into this through here…Ernestine Daigle.
EJ: …because Ernestine had, another six kids. There was Daddy [Jesse Daigle], Uncle Ike [Isaac], Uncle Norman, Aunt Nine [Elmira], Aunt Odelia, Aunt Eula…seven kids.
JD: Wait a minute…now…let me see how I got this working. Alright, so, she had…
EJ: This is her first husband…[Bailey]
JD: Umhm. And she had…she didn’t have all these kids with, with, uh…probly these are your uncles [from first husband].
EJ: Angelina, Rudolph, these were Baileys. Marie, Odelia, Eula, Norman, uh, Aunt Petit, Uncle Ike and Aunt Nine…that’s all with Charles Homer [Daigle].
JD: Those were all Daigles, OK, see, this is what I’m trying to keep…OK and I have it like this…I have… these are all halfs, with Myon, that is, and they’re all Daigles? Um, did you say your…you said your father?
EJ: Jesse, he’s not on there.
JD: Well, that’s what I’m sayin, he’s not here though.
EJ: Daddy was, older than all of these [referring to chart].
JD: Was Myon his half brother?
EJ: Umhm. Jesse Benoit Daigle. Jesse B.
JD: I have Ida here, with Jesse Daigle over here, and I needed to…look at that. Agnes’ sister married…
EJ: There’s three sets of Daigles in there. Daigles and Baileys. See? Aunt Nine and Cleo, Momma and Daddy’s brother and sister, and Agnes and Myon, so that’s three sets.
JD: And Jesse and Ida, three sets. How about that? Ok, so, you got an idea what I’m trying to do with these? Um, some of this that…some of this that I’m kind of goin over with you right now…try to give you an idea of where I’m trying to go, because what I would like to do is…I’m taking these tapes and I’m transcribing these tapes at night, whenever I have time, into actual “he said – she said” stuff, like this, and then it doesn’t matter what we talk about, I can go back and pull out various pieces of it to go with various places that it needs to be, so we don’t have to do anything in any kind of order or anything, or for any length of time…whatever I get is useful somewhere. Um, this is the basic outline that I can anticipate right now that I can follow.
It’s not written in stone anyplace, I can add things to it…probably won’t subtract anything necessarily from it, but I can always add things to it as we find out more things need to be included. The people, the families that congregated at Myette Pt., how they got to be together, what the houseboats were like that they lived on, what kind of life was that, movement of the houseboat communities back and forth in the Basin, why, how, how they moved onto the land at the levee, and then eventually away from the levee to Oxford, and what it’s like now. Just describing how this community came to be, and in fact, is disintegrating, basically. Comin apart, natural process…the way things are. Then I’m going to talk about the river cycle, and an area description. The river cycle about how it was before ’27, what the high waters were like before ’27. What happened in ’27? After…how they built the levees, how that affected the way the water acted in the Basin, um, the sources of water in the river, because that has to do with different qualities of water…all the way from the Tensas, you know that Ouachita water nobody likes to fish in, and whatever. And then the area description of the overall Basin, the physical…The fishes that, that line fishermen catch, the catfishes, gaspergous and all these various gamefishes, and so on. This is where I am right now. I started with something I knew something about, that’s the tools. Everything, anything that’s underlined on here I’ve already written about what I know about those things, but I need to address each one of these things from a historical point of view: what was it like when y’all first remember using these tools, add tools to this if I’ve forgotten anything, and what it’s like now…what it came to be now. All of these tools, Joe added two this morning, he added uh, gaffhook that he said people sometimes used to use.
EJ: Never used to use a dipnet on big…great big fish, couldn’t dip em. Big 60, 70-pound fish you gaff em. Soon as he came up, you had him, you didn’t have to fight to get him in the net.
JD: And he called to my attention that there were six-volt batteries used for headlight before y’all started using the 12-volt car batteries.
EJ: Matter of fact, we used to use the old dry-cell batteries first.
JD: I think that’s what he was talking about, those six-volt…those old…he said you used one a night, or maybe two a night even sometimes.
EJ: Yeah, well it used to be you could get two nights out of em, but all these new modern miracle batteries wouldn’t make a night [laughs].
Better stuff? You know? Won’t make a night. But we used to also use the 1.5 volt batteries, that we’d get about a week out of. They were this big around, about this long.
JD: Round, or square?
EJ: Round, about that long.
JD: About 12 inches tall. The tape recorder can’t tell how far “this” is [laughs].
EJ: Yeah. The women, the women used to…like the mothers would build a shoulder pack, and it would fit on your back, four of those big batteries on your back, Lug that thing around…I guess it weighed about 12, 15 pounds, by the time you finish with it. Each battery weighed three or four pounds I guess, and, you had a load on your back all night.
JD: And what did you do with that?
Fini
Interview with EJ and Blue Daigle
Blog Ch 25 Tape 14 Side A
Continued from Chapter 24
JD: …at [EJ Daigle’s] house, this is the third tape today, and this is still December 26, 1995. We talking about 1.5-volt batteries that…people used to sew into…or put into a pack and carry on their backs. Now what were you saying about em?
EJ: The reason we did that, the batteries would last longer and uh, you could get more time for your money on em. Rather than buyin individual batteries for about a dollar apiece every day. These four batteries [would] last you maybe two weeks.
JD: Hmm. Where did you get those…where did you get those batteries? Do you remember?
EJ: Different hardware places. Uh, Mr. Medric used to get em sometimes. Uncle Myon used to pick some up different places where he used to pick up his supplies. He’d sell batteries at the lake, stuff like that.
JD: I heard for the first time this morning that Myon was kind of a, a land-based fishboat. .. He just took over where the fishboats left off on the lake and would bring y’all’s fish up to sell em in Calumet, I guess it was?
EJ: Well that’s how he earned his living. Three, four cents a pound, and go up to the docks twice a week, ., about a Tuesday and Saturday, and uh, bring the fish up to the docks. Anybody had orders, he’d take the orders and bring em. Bring supplies back. He’d bring loads of ice, slide ice blocks down the levee to the old iceboxes. .. And uh, we had the old insulated boxes, wasn’t any type of electrical refrigeration, .. And uh, I picked up quite a few blocks of ice and hauled inside [laughs].
JD: Hm. How big were the blocks?
EJ: Fifty pounds usually. Something you could handle, he’d break em up. He’d buy em at the old ice house here in Franklin and break em up into smaller blocks.
JD: What kind of vehicle did he have to do all this with?
EJ: He had an old 1950 model Chevrolet pickup…green truck. He worked out [of] that thing for a long time. But, uh, he pretty well kept, you know, gas…well, he didn’t earn a big livin, but he earned a living without any real labor. ..
JD: He provided a convenience so to speak.
EJ: A service, and uh, ., earned a meager living… besides…he never was much of line fisherman, he never fished lines very much. . A few hoopnets, and they’d do good with the crabs in the summer. But uh, otherwise he’d buy line fish and net fish and…
JD: Well, let me ask you this, then, uh, when…when…do you have information about when they used to live across the lake on Blaise’s Canal, and so on? Was Myon not a line fisherman then?
EJ: Uh, in those days most people fished goujons, ., local fish. .. And uh, what they called linefishing [in] those days, today we couldn’t even begin to leave the leave the door [not worth going out for that few hooks]. Two hundred hooks a day, go run em in the morning, come back at the camp, go back in the evening and run em again. That’s how they lived.
JD: You talking about…were those bushlines or bentlines?
EJ: Both, . both. They fished the bushlines in the stumps and bentlines in the summertimes…live perch and live shads, they always had perch traps in the lil sloughs in the swamps where they catching live perch. .. And, uh, strictly local. Two or three bents of line in one place, live bait. Pick it up the next day and move it somewhere else. .. Fishing these big fish.
JD: Now…by local you talking about they fished in dead water all the time?
EJ: Well, that’s how the lake was - pretty much dead water.
JD: The other side of the lake?
EJ: Yeah, the eastern side of the old swamp. .. And uh, their style of fishing I can still remember as a real small [child]. Alvin Mayon, one of Momma’s uncles, every time the fish boats would come, he’d come grab me and walk over all the cribs – everybody had their own cribs with their fish cars, kept fish alive in em.
JD: Cribs, cribs and fish cars are the same things? Or not?
EJ: A crib is a log…a log floatation with logs.
JD: That’s what y’all called it? Crib?
EJ: Take logs and bind em together, called cribs. And uh, have openings in em where the fish cars – live boxes, made out of one inch lats or so, something like that, two inch lats with space between em. And just sink em down into the cribs and keep the fish alive, .. Fish boats come around once or twice a week and pick up the fish ., and deliver groceries, stuff like that. And old uncle…Uncle Alvin, there, he used to be what all the old people used to term as king of the goujon fishermen ., local fishermen. .. And always, “Come see” he called me Pushtoon [sp?]. He say “Come see my big fish”, you know, and he’d go around showing us all the big fish that he had. I can remember that well. But uh, this was when we were livin up Blue Point, William’s Canal, Big Pigeon…those places.
JD: Now, you lived on the houseboats for awhile?
EJ: Umhm.
JD: You really did, as a young boy .? You remember about what age you were when…when y’all moved to the levee…not to the levee, but to Myon’s Canal?
EJ: When we moved to Myon’s Canal, Leroy was just big enough to uh, to walk, so I had to be about four years old, three or four years old.
JD: You were three or four years old? .. You just reminded me of something. .. Uh, what’s your birthday?
EJ: December 19, 1942.
JD: 12/19…
EJ: ’42.
JD: OK, 12/19/’42. And you were about five years old when y’all crossed the lake to Myon’s Canal?
EJ: No, I was younger than that. .. Yeah, younger than that, because we were over the levee and I started school and I was five then. Started school at five…September of my fifth birthday.
JD: And you have memories before y’all crossed the lake?
EJ: Before…before that.
JD: That’s amazing. You have memories when y’all lived in the canal in a campboat across the lake?
EJ: Umhm. I can remember pockets across the lake used to have acorn trees. Used to have big acorns ., big overcup acorns, you know? I can remember that far back. .. As a matter of fact, I can remember when my daddy still had his camp in The Pit, at Morgan City, before we moved up the lake. Uh, when, uh…
JD: This is important, I need to know about this. So, so, so your daddy had his camp…Jesse Daigle had his camp in The Pit in Morgan City…
EJ: Tied right by my grandma’s house…
JD: Rosalie?
EJ: No, Ernestine .. And I can remember that far back. I can remember the furniture, even. .. That’s when Leroy was first born, I was two years old. Leroy was sick, sickly child, and we had to move to town in order to try to get him…get him well. .. I remember that.
JD: So y’all moved on a campboat from The Pit at Morgan City up the lake someplace .. Was it to Blaise’s Canal, you have any idea?
EJ: It’s in that area, I have no idea which canal it was, but it’s normally Blaise’s Canal or, or Big Pigeon, or Lil Pigeon…one of those up in that area.
JD: Yeah, yeah. Uh, this is the way I…I date things. .. To find out when…
EJ: To set it all…all…in…one scenario, matching scenario.
JD: Exactly. Exactly, by when you were born, when you remember somebody else went someplace, who was married, who got born…you can pretty well place a year because…by this way I’ve been able to pretty well ascertain that the first campboats crossed the levee about 1945 to ’46, somewhere in there. That’s what I’ve been able to…
EJ: Uh, ’42, I was born in ’42, about ’47. .. We were just over the levee not long before I started school. ..
JD: What Blue?
Blue: I was telling him [that’s] just about right. He said they moved out there [when] he was about four years old. .. I’m born in ’46, and he’s born in ’42 …
EJ: Bootsie [Millet] was the first man to pull over the levee. .. Bootsie, then my daddy, and then it was either Mr. Lester or Mr. Lyle. Edward’s momma and daddy [Lester Couvillier]. One of the two followed…and then Myon and them came over. .. Reason I remember so well, they had a herd…a humongous heard of cattle on that levee.
JD: They did? These were the…this was the community that was in Myon’s Canal apparently, in 1945 .. Uh, Edward was there, Myon was there, Rosalie Mayon was there. I think that’s, uh, that’s Neg’s mother…
EJ: Yeah, that’s my grandma.
JD: Yeah, Neg’s momma…
EJ: Grandma Sauce.
JD: Uh, the Gondolfos were there, all of em? Apparently John.
EJ: They were…they were, uh, I can remember, as a kid going into Bayou Grue, and Mr. Pete Gondolfo was still on Bayou Grue. .. He had a big, big hill there with uh, fruit trees of all kinds. .. I can remember Rochelle[?] picking oranges and throwing us oranges out of the boat. We’d go in there to fish the perch, for the live bait for goujons and stuff .. And I can remember that. When they came over the levee, I can’t, I can’t remember.
JD: They been told to me that they were the first ones to pull over the levee, in 1945. Does that sound…do you have anything that would say that’s not right?
EJ: No, I couldn’t remember that. I can remember what was going on in the lil corner at the canal, as a child ..
JD: It’s amazing that you can remember what you can. Abner Couvillier was early and, uh, so was Albert…that’s Myon’s…I mean Edward’s daddy.
EJ: Edward’s daddy, I think he was after us, ., you see? Cause you remember where Bernie Louviere used to live? . That’s where my daddy pulled up. .. And when my lil brother drowned, couple months later, Daddy wanted to leave, didn’t want to stay there no more. So we traded…we traded uh, our house on the bank for Joe Sauce’s campboat, which is Jack’s, uh, Sauce’s daddy. .. And uh, we moved…we moved to Bayou Boutte.
JD: Y’all were still in the lake when your lil brother drowned?
EJ: No, we was…we were over the levee. He snuck over the levee and got in a pirogue and…in the wintertime…January or February and fell over and drowned…was ten years old .. Snuck over the levee. But…
JD: You say y’all moved to Bayou Boutte?
EJ: Yeah, we went back to Bayou Boutte.
JD: On land?
EJ: No, on campboat.
JD: So y’all went back to a campboat from livin on the backside of the levee? .. Back to a campboat and moved to Bayou Boutte.
EJ: Moved to Bayou Boutte right across from where Bayou Chene comes into Bayou Boutte. Used to have a slip there, and uh, Junior Scadlock had house on the bank there and we moved in the slip right next to Momma’s brother, Bob Sauce. He was in the slip with us, right there. .. And we stayed there…I don’t know the time frame…but it wasn’t very long Daddy came down with a stroke.
JD: He had the stroke on Bayou Boutte? In the swamp.
EJ: Umhm. Got up one morning had a stroke, . and uh, then we brought the camp back to Myette Pt. and uh…where he could go see doctors, whatever, you know? And uh, we stayed in the houseboat for a while, we were one of the last houseboats left in the canal…goin over.
JD: Because y’all had come back and gone back again.
EJ: So we caught a high water…they caught a high water where [you] could get up along the levee, and pulled it over where Momma was livin, again. .. We went over the levee twice.
JD: I see, I see, so y’all were one of the last ones to pull over, then. .. Any way you could remember about when that was, when y’all came back and pulled back over the second time? .. The first time y’all came over, did you start goin to school right away when y’all first came over?
EJ: At the lil Myette Pt. Mission. I just started school in September .. My brother drowned that winter, then we moved back to Bayou Boutte.
JD: Ok, so you dropped out of school then for a while. ..
EJ: And then…I’d have to ask Momma, I don’t know the timeframe [of] how long that was the time we moved back to Boutte…[and] we came back. But I don’t remember spending a winter over there. Yes I do, yes I do! We spent one winter over there. And if I told you why I remember, you’d never believe it.
JD: [laughs] You want me to turn the tape off? Is it OK?
EJ: No, [laughs] that don’t matter. I got…[remembers] I got…one of Bob Sauce’s kids, Barbara, but she’s…but she’s dead, she died of diabetes eight ten years ago, I guess. And she was real heavy heavy. And hell, when they had to go the bathroom they’d hang it over the side of the barge. . And I can remember it was cold and rainy and I could see her behind sticking out the back of the barge using the bathroom [laughs]. That’s how I associate that winter with it! [laughs]. I say “Look at that, cold as it is, look at that!” [laughs]
Blue: Boy, I tell you!
JD: Well, I don’t imagine anybody had any choice when it came to that.
EJ: No. No, not in those days. Just living in a barge…and he had a…he had a pile of kids, all livin in one…one room, you know.
JD: Joe Sauce did?
EJ: No, this was Bob Sauce, Robert Sauce. .. At the boat landing in Calumet, that’s where he died last year. And uh, I can remember that! But the whole family in one lil old shack, there. .. So I’m sure we were there one winter, cause I remember that being cold. So, it seems the following spring, uh, . it was pretty much in the summertime ‘cause I can remember the preacher by the name of Einstein, Eystein Einstein, something like that from Patterson. Used to come up to a lil Baptist mission up there, and he’s the one put Daddy in the boat, after he had the stroke, and brought us all in. He had a big inboard some kind, big wooden bateau…. and brought us…brought us in.
JD: How incapacitated was your father with that stroke?
EJ: He never really recovered. Uh, he did a lil fishing after that, after a few years, uh, we had taken the barge that, uh, we’d pulled over the levee from our other camp. We had the barge. And Momma’s kitchen, just the kitchen, we built that camp…we built that camp…on that barge.
JD: One room.
EJ: One room, just a bedroom. That lil camp…took it to Belleview [canal] and we stayed there fishin as best he could for a lil while. Mostly Momma fishin with him, and stuff like that. But after that, the camp…we brought back…and he never went out again. He’d fish a lil bit with our help, he couldn’t dip shads, or throw a castnet, or nothing, you know?
JD: Was his mind affected by what he did?
EJ: Uh, yeah.
JD: I meant…I guess what meant by…what I meant was, his speech and uh…
EJ: Yeah. At first, and then he recovered, uh, pretty well but…if he’d a had today…today’s therapy, he would have recovered totally. But, he did have the arm [impaired], he just couldn’t…couldn’t hold bait in his left hand [to] hook it. He had to actually learn to bait the opposite hand…., you know, to bait hooks. . But uh, I think a lot of Daddy’s problem, especially once that stroke hit, got to learn to think with the other side [of] the brain. Those days, they didn’t know anything about that. .. And uh, he just couldn’t get his brain, you know, right again, as far as… Oh, he did a lot of things, he…but he’d really have to uh, struggle with it and work at it. And when they came up with the lil welfare check, well [he said] “If I go try to work I’m gone lose the check”. .. Catch 22 situation, . for $64 a month. ..
JD: Well, uh, like I was telling Joe this morning, every time…every time you say one thing when you start something like we’re doing right here, it opens up ten more questions out there that all have some bearing…
EJ: Something correlates somewhere…
JD: Exactly. Exactly. And like I’ve told people, I’ve said this could take five years, it could take ten years, seven years to do. Just because of all the research that…every time we talk for an hour it takes me three hours to transcribe it ., onto paper. Um, the other people that apparently were living in Myon’s Canal, as things were starting to come over the levee, was apparently Bootsie Millet was living there, uh, Joe Sauce was living there, y’all, and Dan Lange.
EJ: You see, you see when we first…everybody first moved to Myette Pt. canal, they were at the mouth of the canal.
JD: That’s what I…well, that makes sense . because there wasn’t any reason to be connected to the [land]…
EJ: Umhm. And at one time they had a little, uh, uh, oil field pocket right in the lil cut, and that’s where my Daddy had his camp, in that oil field pocket.
JD: Isn’t there still a… a break in the levee?
EJ: Well, this oil field pocket was in the cut itself .. In the cut itself, and that how…that’s how I can associate how young I was because I remember Leroy, uh, falling over in the rocker and cutting the end of his finger off. He was just big enough to stand up in the rocker and the rocker…Leroy was two years younger than me. And uh, so he was just about a year old…so I couldn’t have been more than three or four. . at the most, and uh, I remember that part of it. But, but before the lil levee, you see, at Myette Pt., that goes all the way around, where the shad point used to be, . the current used to run crazy around that thing.
JD: Still runs pretty good there.
EJ: Not like it used to. Not one tenth of what it used to. .. Cause see, all the river, when the water’s flood[ing], they had no river channel to keep…to keep the flow in the channel…the current would run down against the western lake…....it would run along the western levee and sweep down off of Myette Pt. and turn south .. And it would go thru the woods there at ninety miles an hour .. And those days, with the lil air-cooleds and Lockwoods you were…you were very careful how you got caught in that current. And uh, everybody…the current at the mouth of the canal would get so strong everybody was concerned about it. So, one year Daddy and Bootsie Millet took a shovel and they dug that levee with a shovel.
JD: Dug it?
EJ: Where Myon’s Canal goes out? . There was a levee across…there was a levee across that canal.
JD: There was a levee across the mouth of it?
EJ: You see where the levee from this side goes? Where the two canals fork, ., where the levee follows it? And the levee at Myon’s Canal comes up? That levee used to cross…that was solid levee. ..
JD: So that was a pocket? Myon’s Canal was a pocket?
EJ: Pocket. They couldn’t get…they couldn’t get uh, camps in there. .. So Bootsie and Daddy dug that levee with shovels, in order to when the rivers would rise they could get the camps in a safer harbor, rather than being out in that current.
JD: So what the camps ended up doing was going closer to the…to the levee ., uh, than that pocket…than that corner with that pocket with the current going around it?
EJ: Umhm. You see, you had the lil levee from all the way where the boat landing is now, that levee came all the way down ., and made the turn and came back to the main levee…and it was dead water in there. You see, and none of that…none of that headwater, until the Corps of Engineers, when they rebuilt the levee, they cut those gaps in that lil levee, to get their digging equipment out there to rebuild that levee .. And that’s when the current started comin thru inside the levee .. See, and everybody uh…that was a deadwater area and the campboats were safe inside…
JD: What’s that canal? Was Myon’s Canal one of those original Southcoast canals that was dug to, uh, to drain the agricultural fields?
EJ: Well, evidently, it must have been. I really don’t know, but uh…
JD: The levee just cut across it? The big levee? . Just cut across it…?
EJ: Umhm. You see, before they built the big levee the farmers used to have this levee .. You still got the old flood gate…I don’t know if you ever been to it…
JD: Yeah, those two concrete things stickin up?
EJ: Yeah, well, all the way from Bayou Grue…the levee used to come out at Bayou Grue like this, make a turn and go all the way down to Myette Pt. and come back down. And there’s another one like that down at Belleview.
JD: And that was to hold that agricultural drainage water…?
EJ: Stop the…stop the…stop the flood waters from coming into the fields.
JD: Oh, I thought it was the other way around…
EJ: See, that’s before the Basin was built. They did that to keep the flood waters out…out of the fields. And uh,…
JD: What I was told was, once they did that, that was well and good, but that meant that all the rain that fell…that wanted to drain, would drain into that pocket and that’s what the pumps were for. Was to pump the water, from rainwater, out into…
EJ: Yeah, well you see that’s when they had the pumps down at Belleview.
JD: That’s what I mean.
EJ: But, the small levee used to go along and then turn, and follow the big levee down. .. But the levee…what they did…they just came along and threw the big levee over that small levee they had ., because that other lil levee was just…it had a outward curve to it so they just cut across it with the big levee.
JD: One of these days, not right now, but one of these days I’d like you to draw that for me…what that structure looked like. .. I’d really appreciate that.
EJ: Umhm. I was to it the other day…that lil flood control thing, you can go into it now. .. You can get into…inside the levee, since they redug the levee they dug that bar pit ., and you can go in the lake just above where the camps are? Catch the canal and come right into the levee…..
JD: So anyway, these are the rest of the people…that uh, were in the canal…at that time. Joe Sanders, uh, Lester Couvillier apparently, uh, [who was] Put’s daddy, Arthur Sanders, somebody called Nick Verrett.
EJ: Yeah, but I don’t remember Nick and them pullin over. You see, Nick was married to Tootsie. Her first husband. And uncle Plot, well, I have no memories of Uncle Plot being there.
JD: He didn’t pull over either, apparently
EJ: You see Uncle Ike, the way I understand Uncle Ike stayed at the mouth of the canal a little while too. But he didn’t stay there very long. He went down to Morgan City. ..
JD: So anyway, this is useful, this helps. Um, so, we finished talking about the 1.5-volt batteries that you could carry on a backpack, so to speak. Um, this is where I stopped with Joe this morning, we went thru this tools list this morning. Him talking to me about that. Now the rest of this, I need to talk about the bait, I mean, the shrimp, shad, black eels, mullets, white eels, crawfish, freshwater shad, perch…and so, all those various things that were used in linefishing.
EJ: Also, you got another piece of equipment that’s not in here. .. The shrimp box. .. We never used many of em, but the old people used to…used to use em. It’s a big old square box with throats in it.
JD: I remember that, that long uh,
EJ: Drop the bait in it…a lil bait in it…the shrimp would [get in]…even on the slime, it would catch shrimp just on the slime…they would work in dead water areas where shrimp trap needs uh, pretty much current.
JD: OK, that’s uh, you see this is…this is something we need up here to talk about what it was…what it was built like…how it was built. Down here I would like to talk about how it was fished .. See? Under “bait” we talk about shrimp and all the various ways there are to catch shrimp. .. This right here could take a long time just to talk about all the various things, from the beginning to now, how y’all catch shrimp. Because I understand y’all just recently found out that you could drop shrimp traps on…on a bent line in 20 feet of water, and come up with shrimp…
EJ: Yeah, this just in the last 20 years, this stuff….. But back then, uh, shrimp boxes, shrimp bushes and willow roots were a big, a big help in wintertime. .. Get down steep, steep banks with heavy willow roots, and your shrimp were looking for something to hole up in for the winter, and it would, uh, be a smaller shrimp but you would…you could dip em in clear water at night, . when you couldn’t catch em in daytime, and you get your baitin [with] shrimp. ..
JD: Anyway, I need to talk about all of these things, on the techniques…this is another thing…bentlines. I already talked about bentlines, I wrote about four pages of what I know about…On this thing I want to talk about how you set em, every detail of how you set em. What you look for, the kind of water you set em in, all of that. How far apart you set everything else, all of that. And I put down as much as I know about bentlines, but then we need to talk about crosslines in bayous or the channel when the water’s low. Uh, about tightlines, bushlines and we can talk about some…how y’all went about bugging, I understand some people actually made money with it.
EJ: Yeah, we did., we did. It would…lot of times it would be three quarters, all night’s work. I caught as high as four, five hundred pounds a night on it.
JD: Anyway, I was wrong when I said that about this right here. This is just talking about what was used for bait. Here’s techniques…. how you went about getting them. How you did shrimp bushes, dipping willow roots, castnets, uh, dipnet along the levee for crawfish, uh, shrimp traps…wire and wood. Dipping white eels, how that came about. How long has that been done, and…
EJ: That is a very, very old art. .. Every since I can remember, people…I can hear Daddy talking about…they’d leave, uh, across the lake when the lake was wide open, to come places like Lake Fausse Pointe or go down [to] Lake Verret, behind the levee, before they had the levees, ., in order to dip white eels.
JD: Always on a north wind, always on a front?
EJ: Always on a front.
JD: Were those the only two places you know of? Lake Verret and Lake Fausse Pointe?
EJ: No. You had, uh, by Ramah, and uh..
JD: Up north?
EJ: No, uh, Bayou Ramas, over here…Morgan City…Lake Palourde?.. Well, when you going out of Morgan City on the old highway, when you cross that first bridge the other side of Amelia, that lil bridge ., little narrow bayou there? .. The other side of Siracusa Shipyard down there, at Greenwood? That’s Bayou Ramas, it comes out into Lake Palourde.
JD: Now, the one at Fausse Pointe is uh, is uh, a lake that…got a big lake that narrows down into one lil outlet, and the water pours thru that outlet in that north wind. Is that the same as the Lake Verret one and the Bayou Ramas one?
EJ: It all works on the same principle, the north winds, uh,…the eels are bottom dwellers, they live in the mud ., and uh, the lake gets shook up enough to where…it causes a…the north winds cause a strong out tide, and the eels come up with the tide and travel with the tide. And it’s normally the time of the year when they’re migrating out, headed back to where they come from.
JD: Do we know where that is…come from?
EJ: I’m told it’s the Grasso Sea. I don’t know, exactly, if that’s true for this type of eel, but I do know once they’re gone you don’t see em again till the following year.
JD: I, I haven’t followed this up yet, and it’s one of the things I will do with this thing. But this white eel thing, the black eel, it’s an adult in fresh water, and it migrates out to the Sargasso Sea where it lays it’s eggs and has it’s babies, and it dies. And the babies are the ones that come back up here, and they stay here until they become those big adults and they leave again and go back and breed in the Sargasso Sea. This little eel that we talking about, this black eel [white eel] seems to be doing the opposite thing. It’s here as a, as a young one.
EJ: Yes, ‘cause you got…some years all you have is lil bitty ones up here. Like this year, there wasn’t hardly any big ones at all.
JD: By a “big one”, you’re talking about…?
EJ: Big as a pencil, ten or twelve inches long .. That’s a big eel. Small ones like a…like a number two spaghetti, you know? Six inches long.
JD: What I’m thinking is that these are very possibly not the same species as…
EJ: I don’t think they are. I don’t know, really, what happens to em, but I’ve seen, uh, programs on TV where they actually show em sticking their heads up out the sand and they…[it’s] something to see, I’ve seen em…
JD: In fresh water?
EJ: Right, I’ve seen em filmed. And uh, it’s, it’s identical eel. See like Southwest Pass [between Marsh Island and the coast] ? I’d love to go get white eel out there.
JD: You see em in there?
EJ: You catch em in inch and a half mesh.
JD: No kidding!
EJ: Dump em on deck this long, this big around.
JD: And they are white eels? Same species? .. They’re going to salt water to get bigger and coming back?
EJ: And uh, I always did say I’d like to get in the, in the eddy below the number eight light, if it wouldn’t be so rough, with a bateau and a eel net with a light one night, just to see how many I could catch. Cameron also. .. Calcasieu Lake is loaded.
JD: Is that right? So they’re not confined to fresh water?
EJ: No, no, not at all.
JD: So anyway, we talk about all the different techniques of catching bait for baiting. And then the last thing I have on the list right now is the, the history of fish transport and sales. The fishboats that used to come thru, the fish docks, once you got locked here, on the land. The prices, uh, that traditionally have been paid for catfish, how they were treated, rough, collarbone, fillets, how it was done. Local handlers that handled em, like Myon. Prices, and then something about the coop that we tried in 1975, what effect that had. So that’s the outline.
EJ: You got a long row to hoe [laughs].
JD: I think so.
EJ: You say, well, just linefishing communities not gone be much, but you start breaking it down…
JD: You start breaking it down, yes, it sure is, it’s a great deal. And you realize how much y’all know about this, you know. Joe thought he could talk to me about 30 minutes and that would be that. Well, he talked four hours non stop this morning, and we got just this far…we got just this far .. If, uh, if you don’t mind spending a couple more minutes with me…
EJ: I’ve got all evening. .. I’m not doin anything.
JD: Would you mind if we would start right here with bait, and we’ll start with shrimp, and we talk about as much as you know…as much as you can think of at one instance like this, to tell me about shrimp as bait for linefishing.
EJ: Uh, let’s get back to this for a lil while.
JD: Ok, ok, he’s pointing at the shrimp box.
EJ: No, the jigger pole. .. That’s a technique that we…we really came up with. I don’t know if Joe mentioned that. Nobody used to fish with jigger poles. .. Until about 30 years ago, right after I got married. And everybody would…malls, and hammers and…cut a piece of oak tree, get a big wooden mall and put a handle in it, and we’d drive poles, like we use stobs now, a pole would be at every stob. .. And the rivers would get to runnin, like fishin at Belleview in high water, forget it. You’d fish one or two bents from the bank and that was it, you couldn’t hold a pole. .. Current be so strong they’d just whip right out the bottom.
JD: Really! And anything came along and caught em, too.
EJ: That’s it, the logs, the drifts, they had water lilies. .. It’s a pain in the neck and it’s labor oriented – cutting and dragging these big…I seen me cut 27 foot poles. .. You take a pole this big around, eight inches, six, eight inches at the bottom ., you know, in order to drive in deep water you gotta have a good top three [inches]. So you gotta select a pole that’s gonna be, uh, not too taperin… the way up. .. And, uh, when we was camping at Belleview, Russell used to tell me how he and his first father-in-law had made a cypress jigger pole where they could use [it] in 40 foot of water. .. They take a big cypress tree and they honed it down, and uh, used it to put nets in Bayou Boutte, fished them big buffalo. .. So I asked him, “You still got that pole?”, he says yeah, so went to Bayou Boutte from the camp, and we got the pole, and that when I…that’s my first experience using a jigger pole to put lines down. .. And I don’t remember anybody else usin em until we started usin em, then we came up with the aluminum jigger pole. We tried steel, which was extra heavy, .. Then we came with the lil one inch aluminum jigger pole that didn’t have much current drag, and much easier to handle .. You could put out ten times the line in one day [that] you could trying to use the old pole method.
JD: I can’t imagine what it would be like to try to drive those poles, compared to a jigger pole…
EJ: Well, you see, during high water times, when the water would come up in the winter and in the spring, nobody would fish below Myette Pt…south of Myette Pt. along the river edge, nobody would fish down there for that reason, you couldn’t hold poles. .. Everybody would come above Charenton where with less current and shallow water where you could do it with smaller poles .. And uh, we didn’t uh…to begin with, a line that’s on a stob, with a jigger pole, can take twice the trash, ‘cause it’s on the bottom. .. Trash rolls over. With a pole, you could put ten pounds of weight to the bridle and enough leafs would get on [the line] and she would just float to the top and you lose everything .. Everything…you work all day to put a line out and go out the next day you didn’t have nothing left. .. And uh, when we started with the jigger pole technique, just like the net fishermen used to use, uh, we started being able to fish lines in three times the current we used to fish in previously.
JD: I’ve been told that uh, that prior to the line fishermen acquiring the technique of using a jigger pole and a stob, that net fishermen had been using a stob technique for their nets for a while.
EJ: Right. Long as I can remember.
JD: So, in some ways it was probably adapting net technique to linefishing.
EJ: Yeah, yeah. It’s just take the cross-using the equipment. You know, jigger poles as long as I can remember, the net fishermen use em. And, uh, now most net fishermen use anchors.
JD: Anchors instead of stobs?
EJ: Rather than stobs, yeah. Saves time and labor. .. So, uh, it’s just adapting it to what we wanted to do. And now I’ve got a jigger pole I can hit 27 feet of water with.
JD: Have you really? Is it screwed together?
EJ: Screwed together. And I get a 10 foot stob and hit 32 foot of water with it.
JD: Where do you fish in water that deep? With stobs?
EJ: The edge of the river .. When the fish are on the edge of that river like, uh, between Myette Pt. and Belleview Point, you got a hole cut out in there that, uh, you can’t, uh, you can’t get to the edge of the channel without that type of pole, ‘less you use an anchor to fish the channel, because it makes your crossings too long.
JD: Makes your crossings too long?
EJ: Umhm. Instead of having just the channel, you got about four bents of line to contend with in 25 plus feet of water. ..
JD: So when you talking about the slope, like this, you actually off the slope to start with.
EJ: Umhm. That’s right, you way up there. .. With a long pole you can get yourself right to the edge, and it helps keep your line from hanging up under all the, uh, all the roots and stuff that’s sticking off the edge of the bank (the slope of the channel side).
JD: I was telling Joe, I saw a Corps of Engineers cross section of the Atchafalaya River the other day. They didn’t have any reason to think that, for any reason, this was interesting to me, but I was fascinated by it. They showed a, uh, a cross section and they showed what we normally…what we normally know of as this long, uh, slope. And then [an] accelerated slope, and then a flat bottom in the main channel of the river, and of course the other side does the same thing ., like that. And, uh, this is where…well, you talking about you can get 27 feet, you can get as close to this point as you possibly can, and most of the times we were probably over here somewhere.
EJ: What we call the dropoff.
JD: Yeah, exactly. The, thing that fascinated me is, they said the typical cross section shows like this…this is fairly clean, this right here is nothing but a mass . of trees and stumps, and everything sticking out…and this is clean.
[The profile of the lake and channel below Myette Pt. is what are being discussed. The lake is about 12 feet deep leading to the edge of the channel, it gradually gets deeper to where the channel “dropoff” is. This is the steep slope on the side of the channel itself. The steep slope is where the mass of tree stumps, etc., is. Lines fished there often get hung up. The channel itself does not have a lot of stumps in it]
EJ: It’s not as clean as they like to think it is. ..
JD: Compared to this, though…they said the bottom scours itself.
EJ: Yeah, you…you…your thirty hooks…your pole on the side, this way…you use a heavy, heavy weight, and that’s what gives you your problems. You…you better off not even having a hook here, even though that’s where most of your fish are gonna be at [along the trashy steep slope], cause nine times out of ten after two or three runs you can’t get your line back up out of the…out of the hangs.
JD: I understand, that it will hang, even, on both sides.
EJ: Right.
JD: You can’t go back to the other end and run it.
EJ: Umhm. And uh, that’s like the drags, when we started using the drags…we never used to use drags. Once we started learning how to use drags, we can unhang these lines with these drags. .. Pull em downstream, or upstream.
JD: I don’t have a drag on here, I don’t think. No, I don’t. So, yeah, so yeah, that’s, uh, the jiggerpole is, uh…and I don’t…do, do line fishermen use that anywhere else that you know of? Do they know about jiggerpoles in Pierre Part? The line fishermen?
EJ: Pierre Part are not people that have a knowledge of fishing the rivers in a strong current. All backwater fishermen. They may use jiggerpoles, you know, or something, but I don’t think they use it, uh, to the extent that we fish. They used to fishing lil bitty ole twine. When they see our twine they wonder why we fishin with rope, you know? [laughs] They don’t fish the currents. .. I had one guy when I went to Blue Point one year “What you do with all of that, that big ole line?”. I say “ Come on the river, I’ll show you why I use it” [laughs]. “Use that lil stuff you use, first thing it ain’t gone be there when you get there, and if it is it’ll cut your hands to pieces trying to run it” [laughs] ..
JD: So, I’m open to you talking about anything you want to talk about here. I’m suggesting we start here because…just because that’s a place, if that’s all right with you. If not, pick something you’re interested in.
EJ: No, it doesn’t matter to me, we can go down the list. What I know about shrimp, you know, uh, pretty well, uh, should pretty well cover, you know. It’s just fresh water shrimp, we catch by making myrtle bushes, which, with uh…pieces of myrtle wax that we cut and uh…eight or ten good limbs and we tie em together up at the…at the big part of the limb. [someone comes in]. And we soak em in the water for two or three days, let em get water soaked, and the shrimp seem to like it. They feed on it, they come up into it. Then we dip em with what we call a shrimpnet, which is like a dip net, about 34, 36 inches across, and go down a consecutive line of 40, 50 up to 100 of em, until you get enough shrimp you need…bait lines with. And, another way to fish em would be with shrimp traps, built out of ¼ inch hardware cloth. And it’s noted to where the bigger you build the trap, the more throat area you have, the more effective it is.
JD: That’s why y’all build em with those big fans out in front of the trap itself?
EJ: Umhm. Right, it’s a guide wall ., you know, the more you can get to hit the guide wall the better it comes into it…just a huge cone-shaped throat that sits into it [the front of the trap] that funnels the…like a huge funnel…funnels em right into the trap, cause the shrimp are traveling against the tides…
JD: Let me suggest something that we can go to from here. What season do you fish shrimp in?
EJ: It used to be…
JD: What water color, in other words, or what season…?
EJ: …shrimp work better in your muddy waters. Now, in deeper waters, fishing the bottom of the river, your shrimp would be more effective, uh, sometimes in kind of a semi-clear water…in deeper waters, ‘cause the sunlight doesn’t reach down there as far into it. But, uh, in shallow waters it takes…shrimp are about the best, and it’s the fastest bait that you can fish with, as far as fish hitting the shrimp fast. Cut bait, shad, mullet generally fairly slow compared to shrimp. Uh, [when the] fish are really biting you can run line back every three or four hours and have fish on em already.
JD: So, shrimp would be primarily, primarily a muddy water bait?
EJ: I would say, my experience with it, that moving water…shrimp will work in waters where just about any other bait will fail . in muddy water. Other baits will fail because the mud tends to get on the bait and blocks it and builds a film on it and fish won’t touch it after that, hardly. But shrimp is uh, is fast enough that before any siltation can build on it, uh, a fish will usually get it.
JD: And what kind of fish usually? Do they have any preferences that you…in your experience…for shrimp?
EJ: Shrimp? Your small fish will tend to hit shrimp, in muddy water. Your bigger fish will work on shrimp in muddy water when your waters are colder, in the wintertime. And your fish are biting slower, so your bigger fish will hit on shrimp…I mean the shrimp stays on the hook longer.
JD: OK. Do they have a preference for what size shrimp to use to bait with?
EJ: Up in the Basin, you look for a smaller…a smaller shrimp, I guess, uh, inch and half, two inches long. .. Out on the coast when you fishing muddy waters on the rivers below Belle Isle and those places, and uh, warmer waters, we look for the biggest shrimp we can get. .. It’s just the opposite of what it does in the Basin.
JD: And in the Basin, if I’m right, the big shrimp will just stay there and rot.
EJ: Big shrimp will stay on the line. And on the coast it’s different. .. We catch…we catch…what we catch on the coast is not…it’s called shrimp bushes, but it’s not…doesn’t look like a river shrimp. You know what the long-paw prawns are? . That’s what we…looks like we catch out there. They get about that long.
JD: About 3 ½ or 4 inches long?
EJ: Real long, and they that big around.
JD: Big fat ones, eh?
EJ: And uh, in the spring, when they movin up on the beaches, when they getting full of eggs, uh, shrimp bushes along that beach will load up on em. .. They go big, it’d take us a foot tub to bait 1000 hooks.
JD: What?! And the bigger the shrimp the better? . Do you think it’s the same shrimp?
EJ: No, I don’t. .. Looks different. Because we can go up into the bayous, all the marsh bayous where they got the…lot of em at one time got the steep banks and we utilize em just like we would the willow roots. You got this elephant ear grass and the elephant ears grow a long white thin root ., and those small shrimp like we talked about we catch in the Basin under willow roots, is what we find in the bayous. Then we move out in the Bay, and we find a different shrimp. .. In the bushes.
JD: Hmm. It could be a different shrimp. It sure could.
EJ: They hit just about the time in the spring when the buster crabs start. You’ll have two or three busters to the bush out there.
JD: They’ll stay in…they get in there for protection too, eh? Son of a gun. OK. What about salt water shad?
EJ: That is a clear water bait. Use it when your Basin is falling, uh, and the water is beginning to clear. When your shrimp won’t hold [on the hooks] anymore, when your smaller fish, uh, small eel cats and small blue cats will just tear the shrimp off the hook in two or three minutes.
JD: In the summer, right?
EJ: In the summer, late, late spring, early summer. .. Sometimes, it depends on the river, it’s just the stage of the river, what the river does? .. If the river falls fast you get clear water early, if the river stays up longer, well it kind of delays everything, but uh, you start looking for shad along when the water starts to clear and the shrimp don’t hold any more. And you’ll catch a nicer fish with your shad, than you would with the shrimp.
JD: Now, you talking about baiting em whole?
EJ: Uh, if you found em small enough, you bait em whole, or sometime we just cut the tip of the tail off – to where the fish can’t grab the tip of the tail and yank it off the hook .. Your catch ratio is better by cutting the tip of the tail off. ..
JD: And, and the same fish…same fish will be biting the salt water shad as the shrimp, most of the time?
EJ: Yes, your lil uh…what we call lil potbelly white bluecats, you know, that’s pretty much the same fish. As your water clears up, uh, your smaller fish will quit jumpin on the shrimp and go to peeling the shads off fast as you put em on. So you gotta go lookin for a harder bait even.
JD: So that brings us into black eel.
EJ: Black eel, which is…we use mostly, uh, when we lookin for big fish. And we used to have big fish sales, years ago. We used to fish local fish, you’d put out a crossin and bait it with black eel…or, like at the end of the week…you fish Monday through Friday, Saturday, whatever…you want to take a day or two off, you would, uh, spot bait some black eel…
JD: Spot bait? Like every so often?
EJ: Every other ten hooks you have a shad, then you drop a piece of eel on it .. And uh, that black eel, after 24 hours or so it begins to sour ., and your shrimp like it. So your shrimp would be gathering on that bait, and, and you’d have your big fish [would] hit these live shrimp. ..
JD: Now, was that always the case, you would use the…you would use the black eel as bait for shrimp, [and them] as bait for fish?
EJ: Well, we would say it was bait for fish but nine times out of ten that’s what it would…what would be happening. Now the coast, when we fish the bayous on the coast back of Belle Isle, before all the hoop nets moved in start fishing the big nets in the bayou, you had plenty fish in [those] bayous. .. And, uh, we’d bait whole lines with em, go back in the morning have eight or ten head of fish that weighed 200 pounds. .. My first year down there was unreal, Jim. .. I had seven crossins, I go down in the morning have 200, 250 pounds. .. Run to Calumet Cut and bait my lines with the shrimp, for 24 hours, get back to the camp about two or three o’clock, go back in the bayou, rerun those lines again with 100, 150 pounds on em. .. Crossins no more than 40 hooks. ., 45 hooks. It was fun to fish.
JD: That’s not local fish though, I mean, that had to be movin fish.
EJ: Well, you…you had a tidal action in these bayous. Your tide would actually run up, so to a certain extent they were local, your first run would always be better…but with the tidal movement in both directions, your, uh, your fish would kind of move around, they wouldn’t stay in one place all the time like they do in the river. .. So you did get a certain amount of fishing…and, you would have schools of fish, would migrate out of the bays into these bayous, and you could tell. Your lower crossings would do good today, the next day your upper crossings…so these fish would be traveling up and down these bayous.
JD: And you were baiting that with black eel?
EJ: Black eel and shrimp, we would use in there. .. And we also would use shrimp traps in the lil ditches and catch what we would call the lil lush, uh, there’s another name for em, the lil green minnow-types, uh, we call em lush.
JD: Lil fish?
EJ: Yeah…
Continued on Chapter 26
Interview with EJ Daigle
Blog Ch 26 Tape 14 Side B
Continued from Chapter 25
EJ …[laughs] but those fish at certain times of the year, when they spawn, they real colorful. .. Real pretty.
JD: Oh, yeah! The common name for em is pupfish.
EJ: Pupfish? .. Southwest Pass when a norther start, you ought to see that! I’m talking about this big around! .. Humongous.
JD: Big sailfin sometime on their backs? ..
EJ: Pretty fish. …big head, big wide mouth…evidently they’re aggressive. [laughs].
JD: How about mullet?
EJ: Mullet is also a clear water bait [that] we used to use in the rivers when we fishing crossins mostly. Once your fish would fall off your flats into your deep water. And you would, uh…
JD: Rivers, what rivers you talking about?
EJ: Well, the Atchafalaya River.
JD: OK.
EJ: And, uh, I guess it would work basically in any river you would fish that would have deeper waters. Cause your fish will leave the flats and fall into deeper water. And my reasoning is, the reason the fish leave the flats and fall into deeper water is because when the rivers clear up, your shrimp will also bottom down in your deeper water.
JD: They do?
EJ: They do. Your fish…you can find some places in clear water, especially when it’s cooler, you drop your shrimp dips down 15, 20 feet and raise em real slow, you find shrimp there when you can’t find any near the top. .. And you raise…you talk to hoop net fishermen, they’ll be raising hoop nets and the big shrimp will just be raining off their nets. So, um, evidentially the fish follow the feed. .. And, uh, they down on the bottom but you also got small shrimp too. Humongous schools…small fish, I mean…and uh, they’ll clean your lines off with shrimp so you have to resort back to mullet or another hard bait. And your live mullet are used when you also…your small live mullet, two or three inches, four inches long…when you looking for big fish also.
JD: I never saw y’all fish with live mullet in the Basin.
EJ: Well, those years you remember we had a lot of high waters. We had very little low waters .. And the rivers never cleared up that much. .. If you remember the years you fished with us. .. And uh, that’s the difference. .. You just have to develop your techniques to whatever is there at the time. .. Or you use whatever works, put it that way.
JD: That’s right. That’s how all this came about. OK. Let’s talk about white eel, if you will. Uh, where they come from, how y’all know that they were there, what you…when you look for em? Basically, uh, what’s the story on white eel?
EJ: We…we have no knowledge of where they come from. Um. All we know is they’re there and every winter you find these clear dead water lakes with soft mud bottoms, and uh, when you get a big north wind that rakes the bottoms – big waves, you know, rake the bottom, muddy the water. The eels will come out of the mud and they’ll just start traveling south with the tide that’s created by the strong north winds. And uh, they’ll come up…they’ll travel on top the water for ten or fifteen feet, and they’ll go down and pop right back up again. Uh, they’ll uh, they won’t just come up and swim continuously. It’s an up and down thing. You’ll see one pop down in front of you, watch back your boat he’ll pop back up again behind your boat lot of times, and uh, some times they’re real…some years they’re real plentiful. The past years, they haven’t been plentiful. The last plentiful year we had, I think, was uh…I sold the boat in 19…the winter of ’86, I think it is. Uh, when the norther first started, I’d go to Lake Fausse Pointe and uh, I would dip as much as uh…as 1500 in an hour or two. 2000, and could have continuously kept dipping. It’s rated as the number one bait at that particular time of year, when nothing else will hit your hooks, you can put, uh, white eels which you cut into lil quarter inch to half inch sections. Roll em in cornmeal first in order to be able to hold em when you cut em cause they’re slimy. And uh, cut em in very little pieces and hook im on the thin edge of the skin so that uh, when you come to take the old bait off you can rip it off. If you hook it all the way thru from one end of the skin to the other, there is no ripping it off. You have to push the barb backwards through it to get it off. It’s a slower baiting technique than anything else you can use, but it…you find in the line that you’re fishing with any other cut baits in the Fall of the year…where you might be catching ten, 12 head of fish on a line…your first run on white eel, you may…you may be good for 100 head. .. And, uh, fishing local fish it’s really effective at that time of the year. You can use it as, for local fish, uh, to the point to where one run [then you have] to pick up and move, cause you’ve caught everything there. .. And one reason that you catch…the thing on the eel that the fish really want is the slime, cause you can take eel and let it dry and lose the slime, and uh, it won’t be effective. You’ll catch a few but it won’t be near as effective.
JD: Is that what I hear people talking about…about some people freeze em, and some people don’t and…?
EJ: The frozen eels, if you freeze em like that, and you defrost em, the slime tends to ball off…ball up and fall off .. I have dried em, and froze em .. And uh, you put em to soak in warm water before you’re ready to cut em up…and it’ll…it’ll swell back up and still retain some of the slime .. It’s not as effective as fresh eel, but it’s still more effective than any…any conventional bait you use at the time. And I have used em at times in muddy water. I was fishing down at Calumet, the last year I fished, as a matter of fact, and I had lines in water this deep…
JD: Six inches deep.
EJ: Six inches deep. My bateau would drag bottom, with the motor up. .. And, uh, the tide be low…I have to take my net and a tub and walk out there to take the fish off the line .. Hard sandbars out there? .. And, uh, I seen right there where the game warden camps are on the delta area, lil pocket in the back in there, water was real muddy, and that’s when the winter fish will tend to pull up in the shallow waters. I guess cause the shallow waters are warmer, that’s where most of your feed’s at in the winter. So, uh, big fish normally, three, four, five, eight, ten pound fish, with eels that were frozen – muddy water, you catch four, five hundred pound of fish.
JD: Frozen…with frozen eel…
EJ: Frozen eel. Dry em, and then freeze em.
JD: Uh, people still try to keep em alive?
EJ: They…they…they keep alive real well. Uh, and eel is something you can put in any old boat you got, or tub, or anywhere where you don’t have to stack em too thick. You just put water lilies in em with a inch or two of water in em and give em a place to get into the lilies and, and uh, you can…I’ve kept, uh, 2000 as long as two weeks. .. I’ve got that big freezer chest…ice chest, rather, I used to have in my big boat. Used to use it in my transfer boat down at Belle Isle .. And you put about this much water in it ., about two inches of water in it, and uh, put my eels in it and just throw water lilies in it and uh, the problem with that is as long as it’s cold they’ll keep well, ., but when it gets hot you tend to lose em…lack of oxygen in the water, so, a cure for that was I would take a…get me a bucket of ice ., and just set right in the middle. . And let the ice defrost slowly…melt slowly . and I guess it would radiate enough coolness in the water to where your eels would keep…stay alive. .. But uh, I always thought of getting, you know, aerators and stuff .. I’m sure that would work real well.
JD: Now, you talking about using white eel…in any circumstances out there in the lake? I mean fishin…cause when that water’s low like that, a lot of times the water’s clear and the channel…the channel is low…you fish white eel both in the lake and across the channel, in crossings?
EJ: Yes. Uh, white eel, your fish in the summertime…late fall…will go local, and they won’t move. But they’ll move for this eel. You know, it’s like a vacuum cleaner [to] run the line .. You [can] come back and bait with other baits and not catch a thing after that. It will take a week or ten days before you start [catching fish again].
JD: Does it really? Well, what do you have to do, move your line or…?
EJ: Well. When you fishing white eel, what I used to do, the last year I fished em I was fishing something like eight or nine crossings in the river .. What I would do, I would move three a day .. Three a day, and uh, when the river’s that low…the river was dead low to where [when] normally the current…takes about 190 hooks to cross, ., and the river was so low that, uh, a crossing took 130 .. You could pull the line tighter. And we were fishing with long [?] lines. And, uh, when it’s that low it’s nothing to run one out without the current…the current pressures, current pressures. on you that’s it’s so bad that it makes it difficult to fish. But when the river gets down like this year, it’s not bad to fish.
JD: Interesting. I hadn’t heard that statistic. 190 hooks under normal low water to cross…
EJ: Umhm. When the river…from uh…I fished the river at six feet, at Butte La Rose, and you need a full complement of 190 to 210 hooks to hold a crossing. .. And uh, that’s with a heavy two and three pound weight every ten hooks. ....to maintain em on the bottom…which…backbreaking work like that. But, uh, [unintelligible] …one of the years where there was no current, you know, you couldn’t…you could run lines in a hurry.
JD: I remember I was pulling up next to you and you said I could hang on because there wasn’t any pressure on the boat, I remember that.
EJ: And uh, that was one of the worst years I had on the coast, cause the water got so low the fish just moved up the river. The sharks moved in uh, into the coast, the blue cats moved up, and after that they never stopped…they just…
JD: Back on. I think we’re talking about crawfish now, as bait…
EJ: As bait? .. Crawfish as bait is used in, in just about the times when spring is converting to early summer. Uh, where your water temperatures are starting to rise from your winter lows. And, lot of times…mostly uh, mixed waters. In the real strong current in muddy water, well they just rather…your shrimp are still more effective. But when your shrimp get to where…the waters are warming and you’re catching a little smaller fish, you can put crawfish on and you’ll catch a…catch a nicer run of fish. It holds better and, at that time of the year your fish are…are hitting crawfish just about everywhere, even your bass and stuff in the woods. When you see them [sportfishermen?] start going, uh, using crawfish colored crankbaits and stuff, you can pretty well start using crawfish on your lines, and uh, stuff that way.
JD: What size crawfish?
EJ: You want your smaller crawfish. Two inches long, is about the most I like. You get to your bigger ones, well you break the tips of the heads off in order that the crawfish is not too big for the hook. .. And if the crawfish is too big for the hook, your fish can just grab the head and he’s gone with the head and, you lost the fish and half your bait [laughs].
JD: How do you bait the crawfish?
EJ: Crawfish, what we call, we string em…the term we use. You go in underneath the tail and come out just about where the mouth is, between the claws. .. And try to get the whole barb of the hook out of the crawfish. ..
JD: Freshwater shad.
EJ: Freshwater shad is, uh, what I would call a bait of circumstances. Um, in muddy water I seen it pay off. .. For the simple reason, same thing like the eel does. Your shrimp will gather on it. .. And the fish…nicer fish will hit these clusters of shrimp. Because shrimp can also…also use…a technique we use [with shrimp] I didn’t mention, is uh, we don’t use it much today because we can’t sell big fish, but uh, when everyone was looking for big fish, cause when you caught a big one you made a days work ., you would uh, what they call bunch up live shrimp. Take your bigger shrimp alive and just hook as many of em on a hook as you can to where you’re not killin em.
JD: Like where? Through the tail?
EJ: Like through the tip of the tail, the top of the tail right through the shell, or through the top of the head shell, to where you’re not injuring the shrimp [enough] to kill him. Just jam as many as you can, and you call that live goujon bait. .. Umhm, big goujons like live shrimp ., and the fishermen used to go along…that’s what they used to do when your big goujons were prevalent, uh, now we throw big shrimp away, use the small ones. .. But those days they used to just take the big shrimp and…when you accumulate enough of em on top your pan [whatever the bait shrimp were kept in] you would just live hook em, four or five to the hook .. And every now and then you would do that and it would, uh, catch a big fish every now and then. ..
JD: So, but, you said that you’ve seen freshwater shad work in dirty water, but it’s primarily a clear water…
EJ: A clear water bait, a hard bait that uh, when your other baits won’t hold and your smaller fish strike at it they can’t knock it off the hook, allowing it to be there longer till a bigger fish comes along, takes a bite of it.
JD: We talking about cut, or whole, shad?
EJ: Well, you…we used to use whole fresh water shad, as big as six, eight inches long, live. ..
JD: How’d you keep em alive in your boat, long enough to do that?
EJ: Uh, you’d go dip em in your wellbox…
JD: And you’d have a wellbox full of water…
EJ: And we used to have to go at night, and uh, it was used mostly for local fish. You’d go move four or five…you’d go mostly before dark and move four or five lines, bents of line, in the stumps…which is about 100 hooks, and uh, go that night, dip your live shad, put water in the wellbox, run straight to your line, hook em on the line crossways the back, and just let em swim around. And uh, next morning you’d go run em, and, and, . have four, five, six head of 15 to 40 pound fish. .. So uh…
JD: Both blue and, and goujon?
EJ: Blue and goujons. Goujons more prevalent in your stumps, but you could get a lot of blue cats also. And uh, it…it’s a bait used a lot in…in salt…in your saltier water areas, cut…like when you fish the coast, and stuff like that.
JD: Cut shad?
EJ: Cut shad, is…is better in any of those areas.
JD: Then you used to use perch.
EJ: Perch. Perch in my experience, unless you were fishing for [with] live bait…or if it was a small perch, inch and a half, that you could string on when the lil blue cats are biting, and the water’s kind of mixed like it was settling out from muddy water, your pressure’s are falling off the river and your water’s starting to settle, these lil string perch would…
JD: By string, you mean like, uh…thru and then thru again?
EJ: Sideways thru the eye, coming out at the tail. .. And uh, it’s effective on the smaller blue cats. Cut perch, very seldom have ever caught fish on cut perch. For some reason it’s just not a bait that really works. It’s not effective, as compared to other cut baits. .. Now live, goes back again to when you could fish bigger fish ..
JD: Sure, but that…I do need to go back . into the historical things.
EJ: Umhm. Your lil…your lil black goggle eyes were the best. .. Were the best, comin out of clear, clear water. Small, whitish colored perch not near as effective. .. Sac-a-lait, useless except to eat [laughs], as a bait. .. Never could catch anything on em.
JD: But those lil bluegills and punkinseeds and things, you’d catch things on them?
EJ: Yeah, strung. If they were small enough to string, uh, you’d string em on your hook and your lil blue cats would love it.
JD: Now, the goggle eyes, they got after the big fish?
EJ: That was your big fish bait, if you fish your lil goggle eyes, lil black ones about four inches long. .. Goujons love em! ..
JD: That makes sense because there’s goggle eyes… usually you like to catch em around stumps when you’re fishing for em…goujons there too. Interesting.
EJ: Cause you see, years ago you didn’t have the separation from sandy areas and stumpy areas like you got now. It was all stumpy areas all the way around the entire Basin, you didn’t have the sand in the middle. And that’s where the feed and the fishes were hanging out [in the stumps]. .. So uh, that’s what was worked. Now, you see my Daddy, uh, was one of the first fishermen to come to Myette Pt. and start fishing. ..
JD: Oh, really? From…from where? Blue Point? .. Come across the lake and…?
EJ: Come across the lake. And he moved the campboat here, fishing, by his lonesome…here. And then moved back [to Blue Point], and then came back. He made…my Daddy, before Leroy was born, when Momma was pregnant for Leroy, Daddy said he made big money at ten cents a pound .. Those big blue cats in that current off of Myette Pt. were uh…the current [was] so strong they were fishing wire line. .. Swivel wire? That 16 gauge galvanized wire Momma used to make swivels with? .. And that’s what they would fish as a main line. Cotton line couldn’t hold.
JD: You kidding me? They really did?
EJ: All them big 4/0 limericks they used to use in those days.
JD: 4/0 limerick hooks?
EJ: Umhm. They would, uh…blue cats…such big fish, and the current was so strong, if you didn’t dip him when he came to the top all he had to do was curl his tail in the current, ., the current would just straighten the hook up. They used to use those, uh, black yellow tags…
JD: What’s that?
EJ: It’s a black hook. It was the sharpest hook on the market in those days, but it’s livelihood didn’t last very long. They would rust off right away .. But it was the most efficient, deadly hook they had in those days.
JD: Black, yellow tags, they called em. Big hooks too. 4/0, you said…
EJ: 4/0s and sixes. [6/0]. You know, big fish.
JD: Now, when you talking about your Daddy coming across the lake to fish over here at Myette Pt., he came over and fished, uh, what we would call bentlines? Now, . with poles, mallet driven poles? And they would drive, like how many?…how much line you think?
EJ: I don’t know how much they would fish, but they would mostly maintain along the banks, you know….
JD: Along the current?
EJ: No, what I’m saying is, uh, three or four bentlines stretch you know, without big long stretches out in the current .. But, uh, I remember Mr. Pete Gondolfo used to tell me, uh, before uh, they had nylon, and they had cotton nets that,uh…the fish used to come around Myettte Pt. in that bunch of cypress trees, but that bunch of cypress used to be two times bigger than now.
JD: That’s those few cypresses that used to be out around the end of Myon’s Canal?
EJ: There used to be a big, big clump there. And, uh, they’d fish hoop nets there, and, uh, no way that they could raise em. They’d lift em to the top of the water and cut em open to get the buffalo and the catfish out. .. And, uh, the nets, after fishing three or four weeks, the fish would just tear em to pieces…they were cotton, and couldn’t last. They say fish was unreal.
JD: Now those were the days you could see across the lake, I mean, all the way across?
EJ: Yeah, no sandbars. I can remember…far back as I can remember, uh, when we moved back to Myette Pt., and I can start remembering geography, . the sandbars were just even with Goat Island, the bottom end of Goat Island…which Goat Island was only half as big as it is now.
JD: The bottom end of Goat Island, you saying, so you…so at that point you could not see across the lake from Myette Pt. then?
EJ: Not as I can remember. This was, I guess, in ’52, something like that.
JD: But if you got below Goat Island you still had the full lake width?
EJ: You could look…you could look across and see what we call Thibodeaux Chute in them days. It was just two lil hills, with a chute going through it. And you could see the low bars in the lake. You could still see over em, lil short willows growing up on em .. And uh, from there to 1960 it just blossomed unreal kinda.
JD: But if you know if you have any memory of uh…Let me ask you this. I’m trying to get a picture in my head of what the lake would have been like when the bars were still…? In the ‘30s, in the…in the ‘40s, before the lake really started to silt up. I wonder what was Grand Lake like in terms of…we know how wide it was…. What I’m wondering about is…was there a channel in the middle of it…that the…was there a main channel then, even…?
EJ: They had a…they had a, a…
JD: A deep spot?
EJ: I guess you could call it a deep spot, that the boats used to use, but they were always running aground. I remember as a kid, tugboats stuck for days and days and days…before they dug the channel, I think in uh, 1957 or ’58, in that neighborhood, they started redigging that channel where the made it deep as it is now ., and prior to that you had uh, you could sit there and listen to these big river boats just grindin away trying to get their tows unstuck ., right there at Goat Island, you know? .. And uh, like what you’re talking about, uh, those years I guess you could sit right there at Myette Pt. [and] look straight across to Hog Island. .. Kind of northeast .. To Hog Island, all the way across. .. And you could look to your left, and you could see, uh what they call uh, Chicken Island going up above Charenton. Which is a good ways above Charenton, another eight miles north of Charenton. And you had Shaw’s Island, Chicken Island…
JD: All right, let me do this. Let me show you why I’m asking. Uh, I’m just trying to get clear in my head, what was it like when you could get all the way across? Was it…was the lake a deep lake, like ten feet deep ., from Blue Point to Myette Pt.?
EJ: Yes, right. Yes.
JD: It was? . and was there a channel, a natural channel in the middle of it where the main water came down through the middle of the lake?
EJ: Well, you see, what you gotta remember is there was no main water, prior to the Basin [levees]. The lake had one, one continuous depth . all the way around, pretty much. And the boats, those days, we didn’t have the big boats…tugboats and stuff you got now…so whatever they had, had a minute amount of barge traffic. ‘Cause you see, I can remember uh, living on Bayou Boutte and having barge traffic…barge traffic going up Bayou Boutte. .. Instead of going up Six Mile Lake and finding shallow water, [they would] hit the deeper bayous. They come up from Morgan City, hit [?] Pass, American Pass, come up through Bayou Boutte and then shoot on up north.
JD: So, there was shallow water in those lakes then, though?
EJ: Well it, it…I say shallow, uh, six, seven, eight feet .. Uh, barge traffic and all, you know, took…takes more water than that .. I remember Daddy saying the lake straight across to Blue Point was…was pretty much one continuous depth, at one time.
JD: And was that shallow enough to drive poles with a mallet? To fish all the way across?
EJ: Umhm.
JD: You could?
EJ: You could have put lines all the way across. You could have.
JD: OK, that’s…that’s what I was wondering about. Before we leave this, can you tell me what you know about the way they used to fish with soap?
EJ: Soap? Best soap to use was P&G. That’s a white soap that uh, when…when you put a hook through it, it was pliable enough that it didn’t split, or crumble or break up. .. P&G…and it was used in clear water, when the fish would go local. Clear water days, that you bait with soap. Also, some Octagon soaps would work.
JD: And how would you prepare it to fish with it?
EJ: You cut it in lil cubes, and uh, bait your lines with it. It, it was a technique though that you had to sell your fish right away, . because once your fish bit on the soap and swallowed it, they wouldn’t do so well in the fish car [laughs]. I guess the gas would bubble em up, or whatever. So uh, but I have used some soaps in my earlier days.
JD: You did use soap? And you did catch fish on soap?
EJ: Umhm. I never had no real luck with it [laughs], course in those days I was just beginning…my fishing techniques, and my resolve then were not as good as they developed to be.
JD: Well, I want to…I want to ask you, when I come back and talk to you some more…I want to ask you about your early days at fishing. Uh, you know, how you got started as a young boy…how Russell got started, when he was there, going with your daddy or whatever it was you did. Talked to Joe about it this morning, it was really neat, kind of predictable, where…where the kid was, man, living to go out there with Daddy in that boat, and…and then living for those first few days when Daddy gave him three bents of line to use…just for his own ., and then living for that day when he could go and set a lil bit of line and run it all for himself? I mean, was that the same sort of thing? Does that kind of happen with you too?
JD…over again because it might be that you can pick up some stuff here. The reason I think this is…this book…have you ever seen this book before?
EJ: Uhuh.
JD: This was a master’s degree…(there is nothing on the front), it was written by Malcolm Comeaux. Uh, it’s a master’s degree that he wrote called “Atchafalaya Swamp Life, Settlement and Folk Occupations”, and he’s got a LOT of good stuff in here. Although it doesn’t cover what we’re talking about in the detail that we’re . that we’re talking about. It was written in 1972 so it’s not terribly, terribly old. But uh, one of the things that’s fascinating about it is he…he uses a base map in here that was based on a map used by this guy Abbot in 1863. So it’s that Civil War age map we were talking about before ..
EJ: What I’ve got is bigger detail.. But it’s hard to read ‘cause it’s been recopied so many times, it’s off the original.
JD: I sure would like to see that.
EJ: I got it in the room here.
JD: OK. Here’s the thing I wanted to show you about how, how fascinating this was to me. Talking to Myon and Agnes about where the old people were buried…they kept telling me, what Joe was talking about outside? . They kept telling me the Canal, they were buried at the Canal. I said, “Well what canal? What canal is it?”. And Myon says, “Well, it really wasn’t a canal, there wasn’t any water there”. And he said “I don’t know why it was called a canal, but that’s what it was”. So I was left with that. So, I went back to work and started lookin at some various maps of where he was talking about, and he was talking about a place that starts on Lake Verret and ends up in Napoleonville. And somewhere along the end of that was a canal, and a restaurant and a dancehall. No water. I go back and I look and see, I said “The only thing that goes from Lake Verret to Napoleonville is what they now call Highway 401”. And there is no canal there but it’s a highway, and by God, on the map halfway between Lake Verret and Napoleonville is a little settlement they call Attakapas Canal, in the middle of nowhere. There’s no water there. But they still call it a canal. So I’m thinking at some point in time…., something was there that had water in it. So I took that uh, I took that map and I took…and when I found this map I started looking at it. If you look at this map, and what this of course indicates from hearing…from the thing [Comeaux book) is, these are the routes that people took to go from east, in these days, in 1863, to everything that was west, and of course the Basin was a natural barrier just like a mountain range . you had to cross. You had to get in it through the passes, and so on, to get there .. The only two ways to get in it was one here at Bayou Plaquemine, which of course was the seat of the town of Plaquemine, and I know that the reason Plaquemine was there was because of the bayou and the river traffic from the Mississippi to the Basin. well, that’s one. The other one was this little thing right here, with the town of Napoleonville right there. Now, in 1863 they show this [canal] as water. I went back and compared it to that highway 401, and it’s exactly the same, curve for curve.
EJ: Bayou followed it, eh? Or it followed the bayou.
JD: Bayou’s gone. The roads still there, the lake [canal] is still goin, I mean is gone. And it went from a waterway, which was one of the two primary ways you got into the Basin, in 1863, to no waterway at all…just a highway. It’s amazing to me, to be able to make those kind of connections. But anyway, this is where Agnes and Ida would go dancing. Right at the tip of this…what in those days was still a dirt road, right there. There was a restaurant and a dance hall, right on that tip.
EJ: That’s not where they got Shell Beach is today?
JD: Uh, there probably is shell beaches in there.
EJ: Cause, they got what they call Shell Beach. It’s back here, you know where we went spend the night [when] we took the surveys? [fisherman’s co-op surveys].
JD: Yeah. It was back in there, sure was. I never made that connection. Could be. But anyway, this is where Myon’s people were from, Fourmile Bayou. Right here, and uh, and Agnes and Ida and them lived right here. There was a uh, there was a canal there with what they call a skidder camp, right there?
And they used to paddle a pirogue from here across to here, to uh, to go to these dances. .. That’s where we want to go Thursday [trip is planned to go to the graves if they can be found]. Want to come around here and drive down this road and see if we can find the settlement [Attakapas Canal], and the old church and cemetery is about right there. [referring to a state map now]
EJ: Cause you see, my family owns a lot of property…well, they did own a lot of property right back of Fourmile Bayou .. Right in here, uh, I went there this past year uh, I [had] never been down Fourmile Bayou, where Daddy was from, so I went over there and that’s where T-Man Bailey has a store…has a store there.
JD: Still has a store there? .. Myon’s, uh, kin people? ..
EJ: Umhm, yeah, umhm. And you go through Stephensville and you drive and you follow…your pavement ends…and you got about six, seven miles of shell road and you come out right on Fourmile Bayou. He’s got a store and gas pump, and got a brick home right there. He built him a brick home there hauling stuff in on barges. .. Cement trucks and all, on barges, there. . And uh, yeah, he’s cleaning…trying to clean a lot of property don’t belong…still belongs to the family .. So, uh, my cousin Byron [Daigle], you knew him ., Byron just got his settlement and uh, he fixing to hire a surveyor. Survey all that property …
JD: Byron got his settlement?
EJ: Yeah.
JD: Did he do good?
EJ: Little over a million, I believe. He had been pushing for 2.3 if it went to court. And they settled for around half of that I believe. .. Well, his lawyer got 30%. You know how that goes. .. But, uh, he still…well, he’s still in the air about, he said, the moneys…they coming from different factions. The clutch people, the engine people, the turbo people…so he say the money are comin together and they’ve got to pay a mechanic something like $50,000 for his testimony. What caused the whole thing is was the mechanics put a bearing in backwards in the clutch .. Instead of the oil squirting onto the bearing, it broke a line and it was squirting it on the turbocharger which was red hot, causing the fire.
JD: Ummm. That where the fire was?
EJ: So, when they proved that, and uh, he said he shouldn’t went ahead and took it but he’s tired fighting it all those years, so he…
JD: Well, ¾ of a million will probably help him…
EJ: Well, like he says, his lifestyle, what he used to live…live on whatever interest he get off of that and try invest a lil of it to bring him something back.
JD: Does he get some sort of continued medical treatment…?
EJ: I would think he did. He didn’t go into details…he didn’t go into detail. I told him, “What you got gone haunt you forever”. You know? ..
JD: So anyway, uh, this was interesting to see this, right here, and to see that Plaquemine was formed here, Napoleonville was formed there. There’s not a bit of a reason for Napoleonville to be there anymore, once the canal was gone.
EJ: No. But see, where Fourmile Bayou comes into Magazille [Bayou], there’s another bayou called the Magazille here, comes around. And that’s where the part of the property my grandfather daddy had – Sead Daigre.
JD: Sead. I have him on there [genealogy chart].
EJ: And, uh, he owned all kinds of property back here. And he sold some it through time, he lost some of it for taxes, his wife was schoolteacher…she went back and recovered it, and the state’s got some of the property right now for taxes that needs to be recovered. And that’s what Byron wants to look into. .. Because they had one old aunt livin, she had power of attorney over it all in Tampa, Florida. And I don’t know how, but Uncle Ike and Huey been trying for years to get that power of attorney from that old lady. She never would give it to em, but somehow Byron got it. And he’s got it, I saw it. Notarized in writing. .. Notarized in writing. Matter of fact last year I paid the taxes on the property we got. There’s 200 acres on there, that is cleared. The title’s cleared, and uh, I paid $270 something dollars worth of taxes last year on it. And I’ve got aunts…I’ve got aunts that’s worth 10 million dollars and she won’t…you know…at least try to keep it in the family, you know? .. But there’s another, uh, I don’t remember Byron said two…two…or 400 more acres that the state has taken for taxes that needs to be reclaimed. .. Byron’s attorney knows a lot about this and properties that T-Man [Bailey] has taken, cause his family uh, got land in here too, and T-Man was grabbin some of their land. What he do is putting camps on and selling leases on em for years. .. For 30, 40 years he’s been collecting leases. And he didn’t like it, what he did, he went over to the property records that uh, at the courthouse in St. Martinville. He went look in the books and you could see where he cut the title fee page out. It shows no transaction. .. And that’s how he’s claiming the property he’s got .. Always got one in the bunch.
JD: How is that kin to Myon? T-Man?
EJ: First cousin, I believe. When I went there last year…see, talk to T-Man…he kind of fish…give me the fish eye…figured…what I was after, you know, cause he…he hated Ike. Cause Ike was…was…pretty much hair strung, you know, he would tell T-Man just like it was and T-Man didn’t like it. They went on up there one day…to do some…upper canal there, that was the boundary and T-Man come there and [wanted to] run em out the canal. He [Ike] say he “Had the papers, you want to see em?”. [laughs] and T-Man didn’t like that at all. But Byron is fixin to get a survey in there, and uh, survey some of that property. ..
JD: So anyway, when you look at this right here [looking at the 1863 Abbot map], now don’t forget this is 1863, so uh, this does show however what the lake looked like before there was any filling. in on it. And this is what you were talking about…about looking from uh, from Blue Point…
EJ: This is Cypress Island Pass…
JD: Cypress Island Pass, yeah, so this would be Myette Pt. right here…
EJ: This would be Belleview, this would be Myette Pt.
JD: And that’s Charenton…
EJ: Charenton, Grand Avoille Cove, coming into Lake Fausse Pointe. See, coming up in here you…up here you looking at most probably Shaw’s Island or Chicken Island, one or the other right here.
JD: This I believe is Hog Island right here….
EJ: Bayou Sorrel, no…Hog Island would be somewhere right in here ., somewhere in that area I believe because it’s just above Bayou Pigeon, and it’s below Bayou Sorrel ., it would be somewhere in that area...
JD: And this is what ended up as Catfish Bayou and Bayou Cowan….
EJ: That not what it is? That’s not Lake Murphy?
JD: Well, don’t forget, this is 1863, and your main waterbodies below Sorrel are Catfish Bayou, Bayou Cowan and then you get to , uh, Little Pigeon, which is this, and then Big Pigeon is much smaller. And of course this is before any of the canals.
EJ: Yeah, this is where Williams [Canal] would be, this is West …coming up Bayou Long…this would be West Fork…Main Fork…and East Fork right here. And Blue Point Canal.
JD: So, this was…was this Blue Point right here?
EJ: No. .. That would be right here.
JD: Oh, that’s Blue Point? Way down below?
EJ: See, you got two Blue Points. This is a Blue Point , and this was a Blue Point. You had two canals. I know they had one here, and I guess it [the other one] must have come in later when they started pullin the timber out of there.
EJ: Let me get this big map I got, see what it…see what it looks like.
JD: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
[unknown voice, EJ’s son?]: Bayou Teche, I think?
JD: Yeah, Bayou Teche was the…the backside limit of it [the Basin] during high water. Actually continued from the Mississippi to Bayou Teche, that’s right. That’s right.
So you a shrimper, huh?
[UV]: Well, we try to make a living out of it.
JD: One of them rich fellows! [laughter]
[UV]: We try to make a living out of it, put it that a way.
[EJ returns with another map.]
EJ: See, Major General N. P. Banks, Henry L. Abbot…well didn’t you say Abbot?
JD: That’s Abbot, that’s Abbot’s map, yeah…after Abbot 1863.
EJ: 1863, February. 1863…. this is [more] detail, you see. This covers all the way down to Mermentau, and uh….
JD: Let’s see, this is the Mississippi, right?
EJ: It’s hard to read ‘till you start…get you a start…here’s Grand Lake here
JD: Find Grand Lake, all right. .. Where’s uh, where’s Bayou Lafourche? Here. Bayou Lafourche, see, comes off the Mississippi right there. There’s that road! Look! Look! What’s it called? What’s it called?
EJ: Right there! Attakapas Landing.
[difficulty reading the name of the canal/road on the map that corresponds to Attakapas Canal – later La. Hwy. 401.]
JD: You know what though…now that I know this is here, we need to find out where the original is…take a look and see what the name of that thing is…
EJ: I can tell you where the original is February 8, 1862…
[UV] You mean they did this? Come on! They can’t do this in 1862, nowadays they can’t even control the floods. [laughter].
EJ: I rest my point.
JD: Look at the fragments…look at the fragments of the parchment, It’s all torn .. I want to copy this. See, that’s Fourmile Bayou, right there. I want to get the information off of that.
EJ: Don can’t see a damn thing far, but he’s got x-ray eyes close up. Let’s see, Lake Verret right here. I’ll tell you who can tell you, Carl Carline. He’s the one got this for me.
[more trying to read the name on the canal/road]
JD: Oh, Carl Carline got that for you? Oh, well then that’s it. I’ll get it… I’ll get it. I’ll get it from Carl.
EJ: You see, here’s Shaw’s Island and Chicken Island up here ., above Charenton here, this ought to be able to tell us uh…all filled in…you see this right here, right now there’s five foot of bank all around all of this, all you got is a river coming down the middle of it. And you got one chute that comes right on up through here…And all the rest is…is…is banks.
JD: This is the same map, right here. This is the same map, except what they did was redraw it. Because it says “After Abbot, 1863”, so they redrew this to make this, but look, here’s what it looks like now, right here. All of this that you would see…here’s Grand Lake…this is what it was like…all this Grand Lake, all this is gone [silted in].
EJ: This is the levee.
JD: This is 1969 [another map], so it’s a hundred year difference. .. You were trying to see where Hog Island was.
EJ: This is Chicot, one of these got to be Keelboat Pass and this got to be Hog Island right here.
JD: I’ll bet you that’s Hog Island right there. .. This is Flat Lake, it says. ..
EJ: See, here’s Attakapas something up here.
JD: Attakapas boundary. Doesn’t that say boundary? Country, country!
[UV] [confused, trying to follow a line on the map]
JD: There were territories that they drew in 1863, about where Indian Lands were, and where various things were…yeah…also various governing areas of Louisiana were divided into things like territories,., like the uh…Opelousas was called Attakapas Post, and that was a big civic area.
EJ: Yeah, but I mean, it [the map he has] goes way on up, all the northern part of the state.
JD: I’m going to have to stop this tape now. I’m gone have to go home and leave these guys.
Fini
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, Agnes Bailey, Joe Sauce, and Carolyn Delahoussaye
Blog Ch 27 Tape 15 Side A
[Much of this tape was done in a moving vehicle. Road noise was a problem for transcription, and the notation “[?]” was used where voices are unintelligible, or where conversation was just directional issues about the highways to take, etc.]
Jim Delahoussaye describes who is in the car and checks around inside to see if Agnes is OK. It was a very cold day!
JD: [pretty sure we’re talking about Medric Martin and his store] How would he charge you, so much for what? I mean…
EDWARD: He would put it on the books, and you could pay him.
JD: Oh, he charged what you bought. And you’d pay him once you got your fishing, uh…
EDWARD: Some never did pay him.
[general talk in the car]
[stopped recording, picked up EJ Daigle and Joe Sauce]
JOE: Jim, you know what we were talking about…about the need…the need to have campboats? Well obviously, it probably wasn’t the high water. I was talking to Daddy [Neg Sauce] and…and, he…his parents, that generation, moved around in campboats also.
JD: Oh, his parents did?
JOE: Before the flood on 1927… He was born in 1924 and he was born in Bayou Sorrel. Yeah, that’s how much they moved around from where…the lower end of Lake Verret all the way to Bayou Sorrel, and all those points…all around the Basin. So obviously they were, uh, …Daddy seemed to think it was hard times, the Depression, and that sort of thing that drove more people in the Basin to eke out a living the best way they could.
JD: [general talk in the car]
JOE: Also, I was looking at those notes, the Baptist work in the Atchafalaya Basin, the area…the Bayou Chene area that had Baptist work…and uh…and Hog Island Pass. Got some notes on that.
JD: And they talk about the people and the way they did things?
JOE: Lil bit, lil bit, uh, talk about sugarcane farming and…at Bayou Chene
JD: Sugarcane farming!
JOE: Yeah, hauled it off the island by barges. And uh, what it is, is the Basin began to flood more and more. The silt and sand took over and the ground wasn’t fertile enough to, uh, to grow anymore. It was a population of about 3000 people there at one time. I believe by 1942 they had 300 people left there.
EDWARD: You see that’s where Henry Williams and all them people were at, Bayou Chene, up in that area. Carl Carline, all them? Well Edward ought to remember all that, the graveyard and all that, Edward?
JOE: Two of the Carlines became preachers and uh, Bill Carline preached at Bayou Chene…
JD: You know, I talked to Carl about it because I thought he was from Bayou Chene too, but when I talked to him he said no. He was from further south than Bayou Chene, he…. Carl said that they lived on houseboats around Pigeon, uh…
JOE: [to EC] Do you remember that yall ever visited Bayou Chene or…?
EDWARD: Yeah.
JOE: It wasn’t too far from Hog Island…
EDWARD: Yeah, I used to go there all the time. Remember when they had that big light up there?
JOE: Did yall ever attend the church that was there?
EDWARD: Yeah.
JOE: Cause the got a picture in that book…Elton came by yesterday, he seen this [picture of the church] and he said that’s Abner…he say that’s Abner, and, and uh, and, uh, Liza. He was almost certain of it. But anyway, he took…he took the book and he’s making three copies.
JD: Uh, which book is that? The…the Baptist book?
JOE: When we get back home, he’s got a beeper number, he wants you to call him.
JD: This is Abner who?
JOE: Couvillier.
EDWARD: My brother.
JD: Your brother? Where does he live now?
EDWARD: He’s dead, Jim.
JD: [pause] Well…OK, who’s makin the copies?
JOE: His son, Elton.
JD: Somebody’s making copies…[not the dead person]
JOE: His son, Elton.
CD: He [Abner] wanted to help you real bad! [laughter]
JD: [laughter]…left a beeper number! …you talk about long distance! [much laughter]
JD: But he’s supposed to make, uh, a couple extra copies. That way you can have a copy …and redo it, whatever it’s worth, you know? There’s a lil bit of information in there.
EDWARD: …that’s where they from, Bayou Chene.
JD: Carl’s wife, who was she, her maiden name? What was her maiden name?
EDWARD: Kelly.
JD: Kelly? Joyce?
EDWARD: The other one [other Carline, Tuney] married Emily.
JOE: One thing that was bad character the people at Hog Island bayou, Hog Island Pass, whatever you call it, about the Baptist church. They tried to have…hold services in people’s homes and people wouldn’t come because they were…were either feuding or fussing or quarreling…So they got an old building that they cleaned out to…
EDWARD: Brother Marks started that.
JOE: Yeah. [?] each other’s houses. Some of em were fighting and feuding.
JD: So, they built a “neutral ground” place where they could come…?
JOE: Yeah, right, so they could come to service. Also they mentioned the fact that outlaws, went.
JD: They mentioned that?
JOE: Bayou Chene was uh, uh, outlaw [hideout?] then.
EDWARD: Kind of like Hole in the Wall.
JOE: There wasn’t much law, and the law couldn’t get to em.
JD: I got that from some other sources. Talked about how uh, some of the original people on the houseboats in the Basin were there because they were trying to get away from the law. And apparently it was a good place to do that.
EDWARD: I remember old Marvin Persilver. He killed a man. And he came down there [?] between Hog Island and Keelboat to [?]. Marshal came down there to look for him, and they got everybody in one house, made everybody stay together, didn’t let nobody leave. Pinkerman Mendoza pulled up, Pinkerman Mendoza on his fishboat, and he was gonna leave and that marshal told him “No, you got to stay here” he says, uh, he was afraid he would go pick him up and take him, you see, that’s what he didn’t want. “No” he say, “I’m gone”. He pulled out that big old gun, he put it in the back of his head, he say “You gone stay”. [?]
JD: When was that, Edward?
EDWARD: Aw, that was in the ‘40s. Way back in the ‘40s.
JD: And where did that take place?
EDWARD: At Keelboat [Pass] and Hog Island. Got on that island between Keelboat and Hog Island. And they finally caught him, but it took about three or four days with bloodhounds. They got back in there with bloodhounds, got him out.
JD: And what…what was it that had happened? He had…
EDWARD: He had killed a man Marvin Persilver …[?].
JD: And did he get taken off to jail, and everything?
EDWARD: Oh yeah, they hauled him off.
EDWARD: That’s how Jerry Breaux [sp?] dodged the draft. Went to the Basin. [?]
JD: Is that right? You know, I wanted to ask yall about that Edward, when we were talking about all those years right before all the houseboats came into the…to Myon’s Canal, it was around 1945, ’46. I didn’t hear anybody talk about World War II, from, you know… there was three or four years there, World War II was goin on. What happened to…did anybody from…from those houseboats get drafted.
EDWARD: Yeah. Elton got killed on [?] Island. Elton Sauce.
JD: But most of the rest of yall were probably draft age…?
EDWARD: I was too young. Yeah. When they drafted…called me, went to New Orleans, it was just about over. [?]
JOE: [?] the rations that went on, Jim, it was hard to get milk for the babies, that kind of thing, and [?] they used the cream in the cans, whatever.
JD: Agnes said she raised her family on Pet Milk. [?]
EDWARD: …and, [?] I remember that, I was pretty young, I remember that good. [?]
EDWARD: I remember Uncle Joe and them when they got word that Elton got killed. Well, I remember that, so that’s [?].
JOE: There was another Joe Sauce. He was our great uncle. It was Daddy’s uncle.
EDWARD: I was the last one seen Elton alive.
JOE: It was his [Joe Sauce’s] son got killed in the war.
EDWARD: Watched him get on a train, me and Clifton had went with him. And Clifton was sleeping, train come, he [Elton] got on it, took off. That was the last [they saw him]…[?]
JD: [holding the Malcolm Comeaux book] I don’t know if one of yall might want to look at this book…it’s the one I was talking…I don’t know who…did some…did yall all get a chance to look at this book?
EDWARD: I done seen it.
JOE: We just [only] looked at that map in it. Yeah, I would like to…and if ever you can get a copy, I would like to read it.
JD: Well, I’m going to get a copy for myself, and then when I get my own copy I’ll pass it around. [?]
[holding a map, 15 minute quad] See, where Agnes was showing me where…where they lived, uh, was in one of these canals right here, probably Norman Canal. Right there. She said they used to paddle a pirogue from here to the dances on this uh, point. And then Blaise Sauce would come pick em up in a boat, after the dance was over.
EDWARD: They believed in that in them days, them dances, Hoss!
JOE: That’s another thing you missed in equipment, Jim. Shrimp traps, or shrimp boxes. I’m reminded looking at this book. I was looking at the contents.
EDWARD: That’s what we called Williams Canal? Cause on the maps…
JD: I’m not sure. I’m not sure those are the same thing. Are yall sure those are the same thing? [?]
EDWARD: There used to be a Williams Pocket, they used to call, over there.
LENA MAE: Right after you get in the canal, there gone be a lil pocket…a good sized pocket…whoever get there, put the camp in the pocket.
EDWARD: Well, I can remember all kind of camps…I couldn’t remember exactly where they were at…
LENA MAE: EJ, you remember, we used to go fish perch. Me and Dot was little.
JOE: I been to a house in Belle River, old cypress house, like this, didn’t have electricity in it. Use coal oil, like they didn’t have electricity [available].
JD: Part of your ministry, you mean?
JOE: Umhm.
[general talk about drinks in the car, weather]
EDWARD: I went riding first time last fall…ride to Fourmile Bayou…T-Man’s…[?]
LENA MAE: We took off, me and Edward, one day and we [toward Fourmile Bayou]. [?]
JD: Well, how is this T-Man Bailey kin to the Bailey family?
EDWARD: First cousin to uncle Myon.
JD: Well…who would they have in common? Who would they have in common if he was his first cousin?
EDWARD: Myon’s daddy and T-Man’s daddy were brothers. [?]
JD: Myon’s daddy had two brothers, Ivy and Victor.
LENA MAE: Sead Bailey was T-Man’s daddy. Have to ask him to make sure, but I’m pretty sure…
JD: Cause you see, I got Myon’s father…all I have here is two brothers – Ivy and Victor. But that doesn’t mean that’s all there is. Could be more.
EDWARD: Byron just got his settlement…got over a million dollars. …already hired surveyors, survey the land, pay the taxes on it…[?] got a lawyer that works with this case that don’t like T-Man either. Say they gone work on it…try to get that [?] back. But what T-Man’s did…he went to St. Martinville and he got in the public record books and the page that the deed is on…he cut it out the book. The page is missing, it’s cut out. And they think T-Man’s old man had reason to cut it out. And Byron…Byron talks a lot of bullshit…but he’s got the papers to back this here…researching this and researching that, and he sat there and he said “A lot of people think I’m bullshittin”, he said “read this”. He’s got…he’s got letters and deeds that’s still written in French…Grandpa Sead and all this…he’s got it with the land deeds wrote in French. He’s got it all the way back to there. And like he said, he wants to get together with Leroy’s wife cause she teaches French and is fluent in French. So, he wants to…have her [translate the documents].
LENA MAE: Grandpa Daigre…Grandpa Sead was Grandpa Daigre’s daddy?
EDWARD: They used to do all their business at Attakapas Landing.
JD: Is that right?!
EDWARD: Yeah, that’s it. And he’s the one I was telling you that… that grandpa Sead’s daddy, he was so…such a bad character, that the sheriff’s wouldn’t even let him land at Attakapas Landing anymore.
JD: Where is he compared to this sheet [AJD genealogy of these families] you think. Sead…Sead’s daddy.
EDWARD: Sead is Charles Homer’s daddy. Grandpa Sead had something like six wives.
LENA MAE: Not at the same time [laughs].
JD: Sounds like a man after my own heart [laughter].
EDWARD: That’s how grandpa Sead…my grandpa…got his education from…one of his wives, that he married was a schoolteacher. That’s how these people thought…none of grandpa Daigre’s, Homer’s, kids had any education at all. And they all say the reason he didn’t want em to have education [is because] he didn’t want them smarter than him. But in those days you were kingpin of your clan, and you ran it the way…how it was done.
AGNES: Grandpa Daigre went to school.
EDWARD: He didn’t have to go to school. Grandpa Sead’s…one of his wives was a schoolteacher, and she educated him. And we lost that land, to taxes that one time, and she went back and paid the taxes and brought it back into family.
LENA MAE: Who was she?
EDWARD: I don’t…I don’t remember her name, Byron got the papers…
JD: So, so uh…Homer Daigre’s father was Sead Daigre?
EDWARD: Sead Daigre….S a i d.
JD: Yeah, and he…he wasn’t the bad character. It was his grandfather?
EDWARD: From what I can understand it was his…it was his, Sead’s, father.
JD: Sead’s father, do we know his name?
EDWARD: Byron’s got it. I just browsed through all his material real fast. We need to do is get it from him and sit down and study it. He caught it off guard one day, we talking bull…shootin the bull about Bateman Island…help us get the lease to fish crawfish…used to anyway. And, uh, he just pulled that out one day…we started talking about the power of attorney, said look what I got and said look the papers I got. And now that he’s run into a lil money he’d like to [?] the property and clear it…a beautiful place for kids. Maybe want to build camps out there . or something you know. He wanted to make crawfish ponds, but it’s a wetland, so I said that’s out. [? Plus general talk about directions].
JD: …if we do have a lil while [during this trip] what we might do is go down toward uh, Fourmile Bayou.
EDWARD: We went to Fourmile Bayou a while back, and uh…
LENA MAE: Ain’t been there since I was a kid.
JD: Is that right Lena Mae?
EDWARD: First time I’d been there.
EDWARD: I ain’t never been there.
EDWARD: I passed through it [on a ] boat. When I bought my houseboat, we came back through in my houseboat.
JD: That aluminum boat? [houseboat]
EDWARD: Yeah.
LENA MAE: Used to go often when I was a kid.
EDWARD: But I hadn’t been by road. And I know when I told T-Man who I was, he got nervous. [laughs]. Until he found out I was just riding around and lookin. He really didn’t want to talk to me. He was scared I was with Byron [?] tryin to get that property back. He got nervous right away. ‘Cause Ike told him in his face he was gonna try to get the property back. Cause he’s [T-Man] been collecting leases on that property for 20, 30 years.
JD: Somebody told me that Ike was working for one of yall’s kinpeople up in north Louisiana. Myon or Agnes, or somebody, yall told me that Ike was collecting a bunch of papers and a bunch of stuff.
AGNES: Ike had been behind that, Ike had been behind that…him and Norman both.
JD: Didn’t yall tell me that he was…he was…somebody [?]…
EDWARD: …lives up there around Shreveport.
JD: That’s…that’s what I was told.
EDWARD: But she died and then left the other aunt in Tampa and neither one of em had any children…one of em had one daughter… and, uh, the aunt that lived in Tampa she gave Byron the power of attorney. That’s what Ike was after, the power of attorney on the property.
JD: So, the aunt in Tampa was the surviving one of those two?
EDWARD: She had been paying the taxes on the property that…that was still clear. OK, and uh, there is 200 acres of it that is cleared. I paid the taxes last year.
JD: The title is clear?
EDWARD: The title is clear. And the other…the other one, Byron was telling me, you go to now and it’s posted State…uh, something to do with the state for taxes.
JD: Can you get it back from the state…?
EDWARD: Yes you can. By paying the taxes.
JD: Isn’t there a…isn’t there a length of time…?
EDWARD: There never used to be, what there is now I don’t know. What they’ll do after a certain amount of time…they’ll auction the property off. But nowadays the state is inclined to keep it, on account of the oil rights and stuff. But, uh, I don’t know all the statistics on it.
EDWARD: Years ago, anybody could pay the taxes and get the land. That how a lot of people got a lot of land. Grandpa Sead’s wife, they were auctioning it off on the steps of the courthouse, when she walked up and paid the taxes. You see, a lot of the property that was taken…he sold parcels of it. He had quite a few thousand acres of land, through Depression he sold a lot of it off. Got the bill of sale. And Brownell, he ruled Morgan City then, he stole a lot of it by buying stumpage on it. He bought stumpage to get the timber off of it…
JD: What is stumpage?
EDWARD: Stumpage gives you the right to get on it and get the timber. .. By buying the stumpage he ended up with the [?] and he got to be a powerful man and he’s got…he’s got canals back there roped off…property around there…you can’t go in. They had a number…they had a number when you had the stumpage you cut a tree down you had to stamp that stump…on the stump. On the stump. Show that…you the one that cut that log. Oh yeah. And you had to stamp the log too.
[general talk about road directions]
AGNES: I think between the Daigres and the Baileys, there, they owned all the other end of that Fourmile Bayou.
EDWARD: But uncle Ike had did a lot of work on it and Byron just taken it over since Uncle Ike died. And, he’s got a lot of paperwork.
JD: So, Byron’s got all the papers that Ike had? He does?
EDWARD: I remember one time old man Ben Lord [sp?] and them had a…had a boom of timber all stamped with that number. And Pinkerman Mendoza went and stole it and brought it up in a lil bayou and he cut the ends off…lil slabs…off each end and cut that number off. Stole a boom of timber.
JD: That the one had a fishboat? Pinkerman Mendoza had a fishboat?
EDWARD: Yeah. He used to run a boat. [?] Cook, Jew Robert…Robert Vuillemont. He had a net, you had to watch him when you weighing you fish he stick his foot under the net to hold up on it.
EDWARD: Oh yeah, I heard many stories about Jew Robert. You talk about a crooked sucker. Him and [?].
JD: He’s in that book I just got through reading, Jew Robert. There’s a book that…that I just finished reading that I got from the library called “Cajuns on the Bayou” and it’s a story by this person Carolyn Ramsey, New Orleans, and she did a whole bunch of traveling around in various places…what she was doing was she was lookin for the people that were the descendents of the original Cajuns, the Acadians, that came down…She went everywhere, and Jew Robert Vuillemont is one of the people she talks about she met on her…matter of fact she rode on his fishboat.
EDWARD: Him and Pinkerman about the two biggest crooks they had on shrimp, uh, on uh [means fishboats not shrimp boats]
JD: Pinkerman?
EDWARD: Pinkerman Mendoza. [looking at Comeaux book] Look at the way they build that net on the rim. Like we hang butterfly nets [laughs]. See them shrimp bushes? [confusing references].
JOE: That was a long time ago, before they had outboards.
EDWARD: You need to, uh, get pictures about dippin shrimp bushes?
JD: Oh, any pictures I can get.
EDWARD: I got a thing…remember Jim Ayres? [Fed that helped work on the coop]
JD: Yeah!
EDWARD: Well, he came down, and come one night in the lake with me. And he brought his camera, and uh, he took a whole roll of film just dippin bushes.
EDWARD: [to Jim] you got a bunch of them.
JD: Ohh, if I did do…I can’t…
EDWARD: Pictures of me…yeah!
JD: Pictures of you…I have pictures of you doin it but, um, I’m not going to turn down any pictures.
EDWARD: …just to say, I know you got some.
JD: If I can find…the more there are to choose from…
EDWARD: They might have a better way of doin it, you know…[laughs] I don’t know. [?]
[talk about shrimp boxes in the Comeaux book]
JD: I can remember we used to pass by…sometimes we’d go…we’d go fish down Bayou Boutte and we’d pass by and there was a great big log raft right on Bayou Boutte…and they would sell shrimp to sport fishermen for bait. And I remember when they would pick up those boxes, those boxes always smelled sour.
EDWARD: Yeah, well, that’s…that’s when they catch.
EDWARD: You see, Bernie Anslem, in his crib he’d have three or four fish cars and he’d have a shrimp box. And all his fish…and these shrimp would come around after these fish…that when he’d…If you leave a…a…a catfish in a fish box a few days and you’ll find his tail is all eaten…the shrimp.
JD: You mean the shrimp did it? [yes]
EDWARD: So, he had a shrimp box right by his fish cars, and just go in there and with a net most time and he’d dip…catch shrimp. [for bait]
JD: Son of a gun!
EDWARD: Yeah, them big shrimp, you’d catch in them boxes.
EDWARD: And all these logs [that the crib/raft was made of] had that slime underneath and there’s fish all up underneath these logs…shrimp, I mean, all up underneath these logs.
JD: That used to be a good place to catch perch and stuff, up under those logs?
EDWARD: Aw, yeah. I used to use them boxes all time. You see they work in dead water where a trap gotta have a [a current ?] to be effective. Me and Jim were talking the other day about [?] of the shrimp. And uh, the shrimp like we catch on the coast out there when we shrimp…when we fish Belle Isle, in the springtime it’s a different shrimp than we get in the lake. .. It’s all these long-paw shrimp. Suckers get big, all right. They that big around and they that long. It take a foot tub full to bait a thousand hooks. Big shrimp, there. One big paw. And they tough, I dunno…They hard…they hard to hold. You catch em out here sometime, every now and then. We’d just move up in the bayous and we’d catch the lil shrimp, like we catch up here. And that stuff that’s on that coast, I think, is a different species.
JD: It probly is, it probly had to do with a different amount of salt in the water. Because I’ve heard of that big shrimp. They call that, they call that big shrimp “prawns” I believe.
[general talk about the trip and some nets in Comeaux book]
JOE: Tarrin nets, I remember that! Everybody used to gather to tar nets with Milton on the end of the hill, there.
JD: Something I wanted to clear up, did yall say that no matter how many times you dipped a nylon net, they only lasted…I mean cotton nets…they only lasted three weeks and then you had to…
EDWARD: Naw, not the hoop nets Jim. The hoop nets would last longer. But you had to dip em every couple, two-three weeks in the summertime. But a line…the lines…in the summertime, just about the time they’d get to fishin good you had to change lines…get rotten. Hotter it was, the quicker it would rot. Cold…wintertime, last a little longer. That’s what I was telling Jim, old man Pete Gondolfo used to [?] fish them cotton nets at the Point, and he’d get so much fish in em, he couldn’t raise em. They’d bust. A hoop net, you had to take better care of it, cause it was harder to make, you know, and … They’d last two, three years, you know. You took care of em…you didn’t take care of em, [they would rot quickly]. [looking at a map] This is Ramos, Bayou Ramos, dip eels up where it comes in, up into the lake. That goes into, Lake Palourde. Lake Palourde…they used to come from Lake Verret, Fourmile Bayou [to] dip eels. Push that [distance] with a skiff.
JD: Really!? Push it [the distance] with a skiff all the way over here?
EDWARD: My grandpa [used to do it]. [looking at the Comeaux book] [?] See those? That’s what they call buffalo nets in them days. Great big hoop nets.
JD: Great big hoops?
JOE: Yeah. five foot, six foot fronts [front hoop]. That’s that anchor I was telling you about [that] they made.
JD: And didn’t yall tell me that’s that anchor they use now instead of stobs?
JOE: Yeah.
JD: I can remember people raising those wing-nets when I’ve been around em. And they catch a lot of game fish.
EDWARD: Aw yeah. That was…that was Willis’ [Broussard] thing in high water. Lead nets in the woods? He’s got roads cut all over that swamp below Myette Pt. You can run [all over the place].
JD: Until now eh?
EDWARD: Yeah, oh yeah, they still there. [still looking at the Comeaux book, at seines]. I tried to explain to Jim how these things work, it’s…it’s hard to understand until you do it a while and realize exactly what’s happening. You see, going round and round, you don’t realize what’s happening under the water.
JOE: Aw yeah. [but] this is the other kind of seine EJ.
EDWARD: …pull it from both sides.
JOE: Both sides.
EDWARD: Anchor the barge down, drive a pole in the mud.
JOE: Yeah…that would have worked better in the current than…
EDWARD: Yeah, that’s a two-roller seine. A roller on each side.
JOE: Anchor the barge, and pull the net in. Bottom was harder to pull. [road directions conversation]
EDWARD: Me and Neg and Abner used to seine…when me and Neg and Abner was seining one year, we like to starved to death. The daggoned seine…every time you would get ready to close it, it would jump the rollers. That was it, all your fish was gone. Yeah, never could keep that sucker in them rollers. Yeah…well, it all depended on who was pullin the cork line. If that man on the cork line don’t know what he’s doin, and when you closing that seine that man with that pole…to hold…help hold that barge got to know what he’s doin. [?] Aw look, if it was rough, or a stump at the last minute, you might lose it [lose all your fish because the net wouldn’t come in right]. But we got it to where we could lay it in that current and when you were closing that last circle, that…that bag was down straight [with a big load of fish]. And I’m talking about catfish rollin to where the cork man couldn’t…couldn’t keep em off. [so many fish they were escaping by going over the top of the net].
JOE: Catfish rollin over the cork [top line of the seine], man. Say like the Cajun “that’s fun yeah!”.
JD: You mean it took something like that to lift the net in[to] the boat? [referring to something someone said that I couldn’t make out]
JOE: Dip em out [because there would be too many fish to lift out of the water without tearing the net].
EDWARD: Dip net. You bring an outboard alongside and dip it [the fish] into the outboard. I saw us make a haul one time, we dipped, uh, all we could put in my skiff, all we could put in a bateau, and we still had the barge full!. [road conversation]
Continued on Chapter 28
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, Agnes Bailey, Joe Sauce, and Carolyn Delahoussaye
Blog Ch 28 Tape 15 Side B
Continued from Chapter 27
EDWARD: Your catfish all run downstream anyway, when a norther…
JOE: I thought about it when I built my seine, about that a lot, but I didn’t know how to do it.
[talk about road directions]
EDWARD: Well, that’s what I’m sayin, people holler they make $100,000 years, you know. Jim, I caught crawfish that year, the beginning and end, as much as any boat I ever saw bring any in, and I grossed something like $56,000. There’s a lot of exaggeration. People are talking and not checking their records.
EDWARD Until they fill out them surveys. [laughter]
JD: Yeah, that’s right. All of a sudden when they get a survey they didn’t catch anything.
EDWARD That’s why them people didn’t want to fill out them surveys…[?]
JS: That’s what I did on my tax return, from the previous year, ’94, ‘95. $60,000.
JD: You talking about 60,000 pounds of crawfish?
JS: No, no no. Dollars. Gross. That’s what I sold. That’s what I put down.
JD: Come to think of it, y’all had a lot more than 60,000 pounds of crawfish…
EDWARD: They dropped as low as thirty cents [a pound]. [?]
JOE: We made more than that, but that’s what I showed:.
JD: You know, those shrimp boats yall got…apparently they pay off pretty good.
EDWARD: It’s like anything else, when it’s there you got the equipment to do it…to get it, you know. Some years, you know, not good. This spring, we fought all spring for next to nothing. [?]
[talk about the road and directions]
JD: Just so the tape recorder will know where we are, we already turned off of highway 90, turned north on 662 and we just joined 398, still going north toward highway 1.
EDWARD I was at Jimmy Davis…Jim?...I went to Jimmy Davis inauguration. You know how I got to go there, eh? We were…what happened, we took some barges up there…they put some, uh, corks?? on em. We had four of them 110 foot barges. Went up to Baton Rouge…out in the river…that’s where they had it, on them barges. I was up there with the barges. Wasn’t invited, you know, I was up there with the barges, that’s how I got
[at Napoleonville at the junction of Hwy. 401 and Hwy. 1]
JD: OK, so right in front of us…right in front of us, must have been where the canal [Attakapas Canal] was connected to Bayou Lafourche. I mean, that makes sense right? Here’s where the canal would have come out from Lake Verret and come…I guess it would have come straight across into…right into Bayou Lafourche right there.
AGNES: Where would be the canal?
JD: The road is the canal.
JOE: I imagine on the lower end near the…the swamp, it probably…some remains of a canal.
EDWARD: It could be the landing.
JD: So, let me show y’all where on…what we got on this map right here. The one that…that EJ has, and I have a copy of it here. This is the one I’d like to follow now from down…from where we are. Hold on, getting too much papers. Here we go. Ok, here we are right now…that’s where we are right now…right where this blue line meets Bayou Lafourche, right there. We came up from this way, and the old maps showed this as being the actual canal, and now it’s actually Hwy. 401. So, they’re the same. This is where…this is the reason why this town is here is because of that road, which was the canal meeting right here with this bayou. That’s exciting. And I’ll guarantee you some of y’all’s: ancestors stood right here on this spot we’re at right now. That’s Bayou Lafourche, the Mississippi’s up here.
JOE: Bayou Lafourche goes into the Mississippi.
JD: Right.
JOE: I always wondered where it went.
JD: So, here we are, now we would be in the canal if we were in the old days, right now.
CAROLYN:: Attakapas Landing, ten miles.
JD: So, SIX this road is ten miles long. I don’t think there’s gonna be a…I don’t think would be any kind of a marker at a..the, uh…whatever you want to call it, village or whatever…Attakapas Canal, right here…
LD: There’s a church, Jim. Over there.
CAROLYN:: OH…you want to go look at it?
JD: Let’s just pass by there, would you? Let’s see if there’s…there’s a cemetery associated with it too.
JOE: That’s where Jonny and Darlene came and looked at some right there. .. Yeah, the uh, the Sauce brother that daddy had mentioned…his name was Enoch, or…how you say it, Aunt Agnes? Our great grandpa Larnce Sauce, wasn’t his brother Enos?
AGNES: Yeah, Antoine.
JD: I have a brother right here, but a question mark. You [JS] and I said, so Agnes said his name is Antoine?
JOE: Two, two brothers.
JD: Antoine, and who else? Enic, Enos?
AGNES: I don’t know how you say it in French.
JD: Did they all come from uh, come from France?
AGNES: Yeah.
EDWARD That’s a old church there, Hoss.
AGNES: I been at that church, there, lot of times.
JD: You did? Probly, this is probly rebuilt, uh, I’ll bet it burn EJ: down or something.
AGNES: That’s where we Christened Neg. That church over here.
EDWARD: But you know Jim, if you look in Father Hebert’s books… he’ll give you much of this genealogy back to this line here. He doesn’t [go] back to overseas [with his records] but he brought a lot of it back to here. When I started looking into grandpa’s side, uh, grandpa Daigre’s side, uh, he brought it just about back to here.
JD: There’s another cemetery over there, just for the sake of knowing it.
[general road talk]
AGNES: Grandma Teah and Grandpa, that’s where they buried. They said “at the Canal”.
LENA MAE: My grandpa’s momma and Daddy’s momma and daddy.
AGNES: My daddy’s daddy and momma.
LENA MAE: Grandpa Laurent and Grandma [Teah? Leah?].
AGNES: They said they was buriEJ: “at the Canal”. I didn’t come.
JOE: It might be the one we goin to further down.
JD: That’s what…that’s what I think it is, too.
[road talk] [laughter]
[road talk, looking for a bathroom]
[road talk, still looking for a bathroom]
[road talk]
JD: [heading down hwy 401 toward Lake Verret] Now, where’s the…where’s the evidence of a canal? The old map shows it to be right here.
EDWARD: They must have filled it in with dirt…sand.
JOE: I wonder if it was about the size of Bayou Lafourche, or smaller?
EDWARD: Not much more than a ditch.
JD: That’s what I would think too, that it was real small, but…
EDWARD: Well, Agnes ought to know that.
JD: Agnes said when she and Myon were here, it was already a road. It wasn’t a canal anymore. [pause] because the map that we have that shows it as a canal is about 130 years old.
[talk about what the ground looks like where the canal used to be]
EDWARD: Well, you had cane in those days. Possibility…just a drainage canal, you know?
JD: Well, it was major traffic, so we know it had to be big enough to carry boats and barges. Not big ones, but…it had to be big enough for…
JOE: Reading in that book of yours, the barges that were used…about 30 foot long and uh, I don’t know how wide. Couldn’t have been that wide. [looking out at the roadside where a ditch parallels the road] That’s a big ditch.
JD: Deep too. Look, there’s some, wood there.
EDWARD: Evidently, it was more than that at one time. That might be it, you know. Drain ditch wouldn’t be that deep.
JD: That’s right, that’s what I’m thinking too. This might be what’s left of it. Look how straight that son of a gun goes, too. It follows the highway. I wonder if we would be lucky enough to actually be looking at it.
EDWARD: Well, somebody ought to know.
JD: I’d be surprised if anybody knew anymore.
LENA MAE: If you’d see an old, old man sittin outside [you could] talking [to him about this canal]. An old one.
JD: Umhm. You right.
JOE: I imagine on the lower end [at Lake Verret] you might see some of the remains…[of the canal]ol
LENA MAE: Huh Jim? Lake Verret…goin thisaway, eh?
JD: Lake Verret is at the end of this road.
EDWARD: This road comes out at the bottom end of Lake Verret and Lake Verret runs back that way [gestures north].
[road talk about map]
EDWARD: I would like to have seen this about 150 years ago.
JD: Yeah, me too.
EDWARD: I tell you what, I wish they would have kept the Mississippi out of the Atchafalaya completely, just to see how this thing [the Basin] would be today.
JD: Oh, the swamp itself?
JOE: Oh, it wouldn’t be fillEJ: in like it is now.
EDWARD: You would have a little [settlerment] off the Red River, but that be about all.
JOE: There’d still be people livin on Bayou Chene.
JD: But you know I heard y’all talk about, uh…I heard y’all always talk about Ouachita [river] water being bad, and Red River water being good for shrimp, and so on…but I never heard y’all talk about Tensas…the Tensas is a big contributor to the Atchafalaya. Did y’all ever…?
EDWARD: Well, it pretty well mixes with everything else. Well, it does. It didn’t have that white water like the Ouachita has. But you know we always say…
JOE: We blame Ouachita…
EDWARD: Might have been Tensas too, you know?
JOE: Probly so, we just didn’t…
EDWARD: Boy, I remember you used to get a Ouachita water…that was it [fish quit biting].
EDWARD: Yeah, but Skip, you remember right…stop and think, fish never move til we get a Red River rise.
EDWARD Right.
EDWARD: And I always wondered why they moved ahead of that red water. They wouldn’t stay in it, they’d move down. And I been listening to some of this…this stuff going on up in the northern Red River. We actually got, up to a point…
JD: Wait, wait. Woa. There’s a cemetery and a little old church. This is not the church, I think, we talking about. This is way over here, this place called…I think…I think this is this thing called Evening Star Cemetery. Right, right there. There was a cemetery just behind it. I’m afraid I wasn’t looking, but back at the beginning of that curve there should have been another one. The cemetery, I’m thinking, that Myon and Agnes are talking about is the one down here at Attakapas Canal.
LENA MAE: This is a Black graveyard.
JD: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too.
[road talk]
AGNES: That’s the…that’s the way we used to come to Napoleonville.
JD: You remember this at all?
AGNES: We used to come at the end of the Canal, and call a taxi or something and go to Napoleonville. But I don’t remember
JD: Attakapas…we should be…this should be the settlement right here. Starting here. It’s called Canal Road, that’s what these addresses are [reading off of mailboxes]. Somebody said they thought the, uh, the church was gone. There’s some fishermen here…small, small nets [looking into yards].
Agnes, this is where Myon learned to drive a car. He say…he had a…he was driving a car down here one day and he wrecked it…completely wrecked it, totaled it…when he was learning to drive.
EDWARD: He hadn’t learned yet, then, eh?
JD: I guess he hadn’t. He hit a stump.
JOE: He didn’t hit another car, he hit a stump.
EDWARD: There probably wasn’t another car.
JD: Probably right.
EDWARD: Probably was the only car they had down here. [laughs]
[road talk]
JD: Yeah, right in this curve. That’s where it should be, and there’s a graveyard with it, by golly.
EDWARD: I wonder how you’d get in that graveyard though…
JD: Is it, uh…you think it’s locked or just gated.
CD: It might be just gated.
JD: That’s it….Immaculate Conception. Well, there it is. We can either go now and look, or we can go to the end [of the road at the lake] and come back and look. Let’s go and come back. That might be even a little gravestone over there, outside it. Most of these…Agnes told me that the stones that they had in…a lot in the old days were concrete.
LENA MAE: I don’t believe we got anybody buried here.
AGNES: [Lena Mae’s mother] Yeah, that’s where my grandma and grandpa is buried right here.
JOE: What their names, Aunt Agnes?
AGNES: Yeah, their names should be on they graves.
JOE: No, what are the names?
AGNES: Uh, Laurent and Ophelia…and then they buried Uncle Bill on top. [actually, those are the people who were buried in Pierre Part. The Mayons were buried here at The Canal]
JD: That was Blaise’s brother, Blaise’s brother Bill.
AGNES: Yeah. The buried Uncle Bill on top of one of em, I don’t remember which one it was…if it was uh, her or him…buried on top of em.
JD: We getting closer…we down here right now, so we getting closer and closer to the lake [Verret].
[referencing Myon’s car wreck] Myon said…he said “I wrecked the car because there wasn’t much room”, he said “I made some room”. Hit that stump.
[looking out at the roadside] No evidence of water or a canal anywhere.
EDWARD: This road was built just like it was in the canal.
JD: That’s right. There’s no rhyme or reason why it should be taking all of these curves and everything.
JOE: It may have been a road that followEJ: the EJ:ge of the canal.
JD: It’s natural bank.
[road talk]
JD: What you think Agnes?!
AGNES: I don’t recognize nuttin Jim. It’s….I remember passin on…on…on…and it wasn’t, um, it wasn’t paved or [?], it was shell.
[road talk]
JD: [to Agnes] You remember something now?
AGNES: That’s…that’s where the dance hall used to be [she points north of the landing]. Right here, and it would go way out.
LENA MAE: It was over the water?
AGNES: Yeah.
[road talk]
JD: That’s what I was thinking, how about yall can eat…we can eat lunch here?
[we are now at the end of the road at Lake Verret, at Attakapas Landing. There is a boat launch and a parking lot just before the lake starts, but nothing else.]
JD: …if I can go by what you told me on the map, all right? What you [Agnes] told me on the map was y’all lived right over there [pointing south along the shoreline].
AGNES: Right over there Bill…uh, Jim.
JD: And y’all would paddle a pirogue from right over there to here to the dance. And stay here till 10:00 o’clock at night and then Blaise [their father] would come pick y’all up in a boat from over there and bring y’all back. And the skidder camp was in the canal between here and that camp.
AGNES: The skidder camp was right in here.
JS: You was a lil girl? You was lil girl?
JD: She was old enough to go to the dance.
AGNES: I was a young girl. I must have been about what?...
JD: You met Myon at this, at this dance hall?
AGNES: I met Myon right here.
JD: Well, you see, she was like 13, I guess, when she met Myon at the dance. That’s when you were going out with V.A. Daigre, he thought, huh?
LC: V.A. was asking about you the other day.
JD: So, she picked out on a map…I’m amazed, you picked out on a map exactly what this is…you did.
AGNES: Look the ducks!
JD: She’s getting excited.
AGNES: That skidder camp was right [there] Jim! That skidder camp was right in there, and our camp was a lil bit further down, in there. [still looking south along the shoreline].
EDWARD: How far this is from Morgan City. I mean, where’s Morgan City at on there?
JD: Morgan City is…here’s where we are right now Morgan City would be about right here. It would be below Grassy Lake and below Fourmile Bayou. You’d have Grassy Lake and Lake Palourde and then Morgan City.
JOE: How much water they used to have in that lake right there, Aunt Agnes?
AGNES: They didn’t have…they didn’t have too much water.
JOE: Three foot, or something like that? That’s what it looks like.
AGNES: Oh, sometimes at the edge of the lake on the other side over there we’d get dry, way out. But in the middle, here, they might have had 12, 13 feet of water. It wasn’t deep.
JD: Out in here?
AGNES: Yeah.
JOE: That’s pretty deep. Cause you bet…
EDWARD: They got some birds over there.
AGNES: Boy, look at that!
EDWARD: Becrosse I bet. [Ibis]
JD: Pelicans, too, over there.
EDWARD: See the white stuff? That’s pelicans.
AGNES: Ducks, look the ducks!
LENA MAE: That’s not ducks Momma..
EDWARD: Cormorants. Well, they’re “low class geese”. You got your high class geese, which are white geese, and…
[? Getting the lunch out]
[more incidental talk about getting ready to eat lunch]
EDWARD: There ought to be crawfish in them swamps back there. That’s what I keep sayin. You know right now, you look at the water marks. There’s usually two more foot of water in that swamp yeah.
[incidental road talk]
JD: Now, we gonna cross Norman Canal right up here. It’s the first big canal on the right, it’d be about a mile. Which is maybe where Agnes and them lived, right there. [?] …low down, this would be Norman Canal. Look at the high banks on this canal, I guess this is dredged, huh?
EDWARD: This is a skidder pullin canal?
JD: I guess so, but it’s connected to a bayou. See how it’s straight right here, but it…it…it turns into a natural bayou about a mile below where we are. Agnes, it’s possible this is the one y’all lived on. Down there. I guess what they would have done is come to the end of the bayou and then dug the skidder canal.
EDWARD: That’s how they did most of em, Jim.
[road talk, getting out to take a picture of a wrecked skiff back in the swamp, background sounds for a long time]
Continued on Chapter 29
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, Agnes Bailey, Joe Sauce, and Carolyn Delahoussaye
Blog Ch 28 Tape 15 Side B
Continued from Chapter 27
EDWARD: Your catfish all run downstream anyway, when a norther…
JOE: I thought about it when I built my seine, about that a lot, but I didn’t know how to do it.
[talk about road directions]
EDWARD: Well, that’s what I’m sayin, people holler they make $100,000 years, you know. Jim, I caught crawfish that year, the beginning and end, as much as any boat I ever saw bring any in, and I grossed something like $56,000. There’s a lot of exaggeration. People are talking and not checking their records.
EDWARD Until they fill out them surveys. [laughter]
JD: Yeah, that’s right. All of a sudden when they get a survey they didn’t catch anything.
EDWARD That’s why them people didn’t want to fill out them surveys…[?]
JS: That’s what I did on my tax return, from the previous year, ’94, ‘95. $60,000.
JD: You talking about 60,000 pounds of crawfish?
JS: No, no no. Dollars. Gross. That’s what I sold. That’s what I put down.
JD: Come to think of it, y’all had a lot more than 60,000 pounds of crawfish…
EDWARD: They dropped as low as thirty cents [a pound]. [?]
JOE: We made more than that, but that’s what I showed:.
JD: You know, those shrimp boats yall got…apparently they pay off pretty good.
EDWARD: It’s like anything else, when it’s there you got the equipment to do it…to get it, you know. Some years, you know, not good. This spring, we fought all spring for next to nothing. [?]
[talk about the road and directions]
JD: Just so the tape recorder will know where we are, we already turned off of highway 90, turned north on 662 and we just joined 398, still going north toward highway 1.
EDWARD I was at Jimmy Davis…Jim?...I went to Jimmy Davis inauguration. You know how I got to go there, eh? We were…what happened, we took some barges up there…they put some, uh, corks?? on em. We had four of them 110 foot barges. Went up to Baton Rouge…out in the river…that’s where they had it, on them barges. I was up there with the barges. Wasn’t invited, you know, I was up there with the barges, that’s how I got
[at Napoleonville at the junction of Hwy. 401 and Hwy. 1]
JD: OK, so right in front of us…right in front of us, must have been where the canal [Attakapas Canal] was connected to Bayou Lafourche. I mean, that makes sense right? Here’s where the canal would have come out from Lake Verret and come…I guess it would have come straight across into…right into Bayou Lafourche right there.
AGNES: Where would be the canal?
JD: The road is the canal.
JOE: I imagine on the lower end near the…the swamp, it probably…some remains of a canal.
EDWARD: It could be the landing.
JD: So, let me show y’all where on…what we got on this map right here. The one that…that EJ has, and I have a copy of it here. This is the one I’d like to follow now from down…from where we are. Hold on, getting too much papers. Here we go. Ok, here we are right now…that’s where we are right now…right where this blue line meets Bayou Lafourche, right there. We came up from this way, and the old maps showed this as being the actual canal, and now it’s actually Hwy. 401. So, they’re the same. This is where…this is the reason why this town is here is because of that road, which was the canal meeting right here with this bayou. That’s exciting. And I’ll guarantee you some of y’all’s: ancestors stood right here on this spot we’re at right now. That’s Bayou Lafourche, the Mississippi’s up here.
JOE: Bayou Lafourche goes into the Mississippi.
JD: Right.
JOE: I always wondered where it went.
JD: So, here we are, now we would be in the canal if we were in the old days, right now.
CAROLYN:: Attakapas Landing, ten miles.
JD: So, SIX this road is ten miles long. I don’t think there’s gonna be a…I don’t think would be any kind of a marker at a..the, uh…whatever you want to call it, village or whatever…Attakapas Canal, right here…
LD: There’s a church, Jim. Over there.
CAROLYN:: OH…you want to go look at it?
JD: Let’s just pass by there, would you? Let’s see if there’s…there’s a cemetery associated with it too.
JOE: That’s where Jonny and Darlene came and looked at some right there. .. Yeah, the uh, the Sauce brother that daddy had mentioned…his name was Enoch, or…how you say it, Aunt Agnes? Our great grandpa Larnce Sauce, wasn’t his brother Enos?
AGNES: Yeah, Antoine.
JD: I have a brother right here, but a question mark. You [JS] and I said, so Agnes said his name is Antoine?
JOE: Two, two brothers.
JD: Antoine, and who else? Enic, Enos?
AGNES: I don’t know how you say it in French.
JD: Did they all come from uh, come from France?
AGNES: Yeah.
EDWARD That’s a old church there, Hoss.
AGNES: I been at that church, there, lot of times.
JD: You did? Probly, this is probly rebuilt, uh, I’ll bet it burn EJ: down or something.
AGNES: That’s where we Christened Neg. That church over here.
EDWARD: But you know Jim, if you look in Father Hebert’s books… he’ll give you much of this genealogy back to this line here. He doesn’t [go] back to overseas [with his records] but he brought a lot of it back to here. When I started looking into grandpa’s side, uh, grandpa Daigre’s side, uh, he brought it just about back to here.
JD: There’s another cemetery over there, just for the sake of knowing it.
[general road talk]
AGNES: Grandma Teah and Grandpa, that’s where they buried. They said “at the Canal”.
LENA MAE: My grandpa’s momma and Daddy’s momma and daddy.
AGNES: My daddy’s daddy and momma.
LENA MAE: Grandpa Laurent and Grandma [Teah? Leah?].
AGNES: They said they was buriEJ: “at the Canal”. I didn’t come.
JOE: It might be the one we goin to further down.
JD: That’s what…that’s what I think it is, too.
[road talk] [laughter]
[road talk, looking for a bathroom]
[road talk, still looking for a bathroom]
[road talk]
JD: [heading down hwy 401 toward Lake Verret] Now, where’s the…where’s the evidence of a canal? The old map shows it to be right here.
EDWARD: They must have filled it in with dirt…sand.
JOE: I wonder if it was about the size of Bayou Lafourche, or smaller?
EDWARD: Not much more than a ditch.
JD: That’s what I would think too, that it was real small, but…
EDWARD: Well, Agnes ought to know that.
JD: Agnes said when she and Myon were here, it was already a road. It wasn’t a canal anymore. [pause] because the map that we have that shows it as a canal is about 130 years old.
[talk about what the ground looks like where the canal used to be]
EDWARD: Well, you had cane in those days. Possibility…just a drainage canal, you know?
JD: Well, it was major traffic, so we know it had to be big enough to carry boats and barges. Not big ones, but…it had to be big enough for…
JOE: Reading in that book of yours, the barges that were used…about 30 foot long and uh, I don’t know how wide. Couldn’t have been that wide. [looking out at the roadside where a ditch parallels the road] That’s a big ditch.
JD: Deep too. Look, there’s some, wood there.
EDWARD: Evidently, it was more than that at one time. That might be it, you know. Drain ditch wouldn’t be that deep.
JD: That’s right, that’s what I’m thinking too. This might be what’s left of it. Look how straight that son of a gun goes, too. It follows the highway. I wonder if we would be lucky enough to actually be looking at it.
EDWARD: Well, somebody ought to know.
JD: I’d be surprised if anybody knew anymore.
LENA MAE: If you’d see an old, old man sittin outside [you could] talking [to him about this canal]. An old one.
JD: Umhm. You right.
JOE: I imagine on the lower end [at Lake Verret] you might see some of the remains…[of the canal]ol
LENA MAE: Huh Jim? Lake Verret…goin thisaway, eh?
JD: Lake Verret is at the end of this road.
EDWARD: This road comes out at the bottom end of Lake Verret and Lake Verret runs back that way [gestures north].
[road talk about map]
EDWARD: I would like to have seen this about 150 years ago.
JD: Yeah, me too.
EDWARD: I tell you what, I wish they would have kept the Mississippi out of the Atchafalaya completely, just to see how this thing [the Basin] would be today.
JD: Oh, the swamp itself?
JOE: Oh, it wouldn’t be fillEJ: in like it is now.
EDWARD: You would have a little [settlerment] off the Red River, but that be about all.
JOE: There’d still be people livin on Bayou Chene.
JD: But you know I heard y’all talk about, uh…I heard y’all always talk about Ouachita [river] water being bad, and Red River water being good for shrimp, and so on…but I never heard y’all talk about Tensas…the Tensas is a big contributor to the Atchafalaya. Did y’all ever…?
EDWARD: Well, it pretty well mixes with everything else. Well, it does. It didn’t have that white water like the Ouachita has. But you know we always say…
JOE: We blame Ouachita…
EDWARD: Might have been Tensas too, you know?
JOE: Probly so, we just didn’t…
EDWARD: Boy, I remember you used to get a Ouachita water…that was it [fish quit biting].
EDWARD: Yeah, but Skip, you remember right…stop and think, fish never move til we get a Red River rise.
EDWARD Right.
EDWARD: And I always wondered why they moved ahead of that red water. They wouldn’t stay in it, they’d move down. And I been listening to some of this…this stuff going on up in the northern Red River. We actually got, up to a point…
JD: Wait, wait. Woa. There’s a cemetery and a little old church. This is not the church, I think, we talking about. This is way over here, this place called…I think…I think this is this thing called Evening Star Cemetery. Right, right there. There was a cemetery just behind it. I’m afraid I wasn’t looking, but back at the beginning of that curve there should have been another one. The cemetery, I’m thinking, that Myon and Agnes are talking about is the one down here at Attakapas Canal.
LENA MAE: This is a Black graveyard.
JD: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too.
[road talk]
AGNES: That’s the…that’s the way we used to come to Napoleonville.
JD: You remember this at all?
AGNES: We used to come at the end of the Canal, and call a taxi or something and go to Napoleonville. But I don’t remember
JD: Attakapas…we should be…this should be the settlement right here. Starting here. It’s called Canal Road, that’s what these addresses are [reading off of mailboxes]. Somebody said they thought the, uh, the church was gone. There’s some fishermen here…small, small nets [looking into yards].
Agnes, this is where Myon learned to drive a car. He say…he had a…he was driving a car down here one day and he wrecked it…completely wrecked it, totaled it…when he was learning to drive.
EDWARD: He hadn’t learned yet, then, eh?
JD: I guess he hadn’t. He hit a stump.
JOE: He didn’t hit another car, he hit a stump.
EDWARD: There probably wasn’t another car.
JD: Probably right.
EDWARD: Probably was the only car they had down here. [laughs]
[road talk]
JD: Yeah, right in this curve. That’s where it should be, and there’s a graveyard with it, by golly.
EDWARD: I wonder how you’d get in that graveyard though…
JD: Is it, uh…you think it’s locked or just gated.
CD: It might be just gated.
JD: That’s it….Immaculate Conception. Well, there it is. We can either go now and look, or we can go to the end [of the road at the lake] and come back and look. Let’s go and come back. That might be even a little gravestone over there, outside it. Most of these…Agnes told me that the stones that they had in…a lot in the old days were concrete.
LENA MAE: I don’t believe we got anybody buried here.
AGNES: [Lena Mae’s mother] Yeah, that’s where my grandma and grandpa is buried right here.
JOE: What their names, Aunt Agnes?
AGNES: Yeah, their names should be on they graves.
JOE: No, what are the names?
AGNES: Uh, Laurent and Ophelia…and then they buried Uncle Bill on top. [actually, those are the people who were buried in Pierre Part. The Mayons were buried here at The Canal]
JD: That was Blaise’s brother, Blaise’s brother Bill.
AGNES: Yeah. The buried Uncle Bill on top of one of em, I don’t remember which one it was…if it was uh, her or him…buried on top of em.
JD: We getting closer…we down here right now, so we getting closer and closer to the lake [Verret].
[referencing Myon’s car wreck] Myon said…he said “I wrecked the car because there wasn’t much room”, he said “I made some room”. Hit that stump.
[looking out at the roadside] No evidence of water or a canal anywhere.
EDWARD: This road was built just like it was in the canal.
JD: That’s right. There’s no rhyme or reason why it should be taking all of these curves and everything.
JOE: It may have been a road that followEJ: the EJ:ge of the canal.
JD: It’s natural bank.
[road talk]
JD: What you think Agnes?!
AGNES: I don’t recognize nuttin Jim. It’s….I remember passin on…on…on…and it wasn’t, um, it wasn’t paved or [?], it was shell.
[road talk]
JD: [to Agnes] You remember something now?
AGNES: That’s…that’s where the dance hall used to be [she points north of the landing]. Right here, and it would go way out.
LENA MAE: It was over the water?
AGNES: Yeah.
[road talk]
JD: That’s what I was thinking, how about yall can eat…we can eat lunch here?
[we are now at the end of the road at Lake Verret, at Attakapas Landing. There is a boat launch and a parking lot just before the lake starts, but nothing else.]
JD: …if I can go by what you told me on the map, all right? What you [Agnes] told me on the map was y’all lived right over there [pointing south along the shoreline].
AGNES: Right over there Bill…uh, Jim.
JD: And y’all would paddle a pirogue from right over there to here to the dance. And stay here till 10:00 o’clock at night and then Blaise [their father] would come pick y’all up in a boat from over there and bring y’all back. And the skidder camp was in the canal between here and that camp.
AGNES: The skidder camp was right in here.
JS: You was a lil girl? You was lil girl?
JD: She was old enough to go to the dance.
AGNES: I was a young girl. I must have been about what?...
JD: You met Myon at this, at this dance hall?
AGNES: I met Myon right here.
JD: Well, you see, she was like 13, I guess, when she met Myon at the dance. That’s when you were going out with V.A. Daigre, he thought, huh?
LC: V.A. was asking about you the other day.
JD: So, she picked out on a map…I’m amazed, you picked out on a map exactly what this is…you did.
AGNES: Look the ducks!
JD: She’s getting excited.
AGNES: That skidder camp was right [there] Jim! That skidder camp was right in there, and our camp was a lil bit further down, in there. [still looking south along the shoreline].
EDWARD: How far this is from Morgan City. I mean, where’s Morgan City at on there?
JD: Morgan City is…here’s where we are right now Morgan City would be about right here. It would be below Grassy Lake and below Fourmile Bayou. You’d have Grassy Lake and Lake Palourde and then Morgan City.
JOE: How much water they used to have in that lake right there, Aunt Agnes?
AGNES: They didn’t have…they didn’t have too much water.
JOE: Three foot, or something like that? That’s what it looks like.
AGNES: Oh, sometimes at the edge of the lake on the other side over there we’d get dry, way out. But in the middle, here, they might have had 12, 13 feet of water. It wasn’t deep.
JD: Out in here?
AGNES: Yeah.
JOE: That’s pretty deep. Cause you bet…
EDWARD: They got some birds over there.
AGNES: Boy, look at that!
EDWARD: Becrosse I bet. [Ibis]
JD: Pelicans, too, over there.
EDWARD: See the white stuff? That’s pelicans.
AGNES: Ducks, look the ducks!
LENA MAE: That’s not ducks Momma..
EDWARD: Cormorants. Well, they’re “low class geese”. You got your high class geese, which are white geese, and…
[? Getting the lunch out]
[more incidental talk about getting ready to eat lunch]
EDWARD: There ought to be crawfish in them swamps back there. That’s what I keep sayin. You know right now, you look at the water marks. There’s usually two more foot of water in that swamp yeah.
[incidental road talk]
JD: Now, we gonna cross Norman Canal right up here. It’s the first big canal on the right, it’d be about a mile. Which is maybe where Agnes and them lived, right there. [?] …low down, this would be Norman Canal. Look at the high banks on this canal, I guess this is dredged, huh?
EDWARD: This is a skidder pullin canal?
JD: I guess so, but it’s connected to a bayou. See how it’s straight right here, but it…it…it turns into a natural bayou about a mile below where we are. Agnes, it’s possible this is the one y’all lived on. Down there. I guess what they would have done is come to the end of the bayou and then dug the skidder canal.
EDWARD: That’s how they did most of em, Jim.
[road talk, getting out to take a picture of a wrecked skiff back in the swamp, background sounds for a long time]
Continued on Chapter 29
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, Agnes Bailey, Joe Sauce, and Carolyn Delahoussaye
Blog Ch 29 Tape 16 Side A
Continued from Chapter 28
[Much of this tape is done in a moving vehicle. Road noise was a problem for transcription and the notation “[?]” was used where voices are unintelligible, or where conversation involves directional issues about the highways to take, etc.]
[Jim and the interviewees arrived at the church at the location called The Canal on the map. They went out into the cemetery and found some of the graves we were looking for. It was a very cold day!]
JD: Well, I am pleased with that. Did you show this to Agnes? This is what the grave markers look like, Agnes. That’s what the markers look like. The big square one is concrete and the other one is metal.
Lena Mae: Right next to granpa, there.
Agnes: I don’t know who it is. No name one it.
[road talk and laughter]
JD: Well, Agnes, if that’s where the Mayon’s are, where do you think the Sauces are?
Agnes: The Sauces, I donno Jim. I remember when that tornado hit in Pierre Part, now they might have been in Pierre Part, I donno.
EJ: What was Grandpa Sauce’s name.
Agnes: Laurent. [later found to be Larnce].
Lena Mae: Laurent and Ophelia.
JD: Well, we didn’t find a canal.
EJ: We didn’t find the canal, but we sure found a lake.
[so now we have visited the cemetery on “The Canal”. We found several graves that have ancestors of Myette Pt. people whose names are recorded in other notes. Now going to Pierre Part to look in a cemetery there.]
Joe: …have any recollection, uh. Think Daddy would remember em? Think Daddy would remember his grandma and grandpa?
Agnes: Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, Neg should.
JD: We didn’t have those dates before we read those stones…?
Joe: Yeah, some of em.
JD: It’s a pity they didn’t tell us where they were born. Sometimes they do say born such and such a date at such and such a place. These don’t say that. She was older than he was. She was three years older than he was. [?]
[road talk]
JD: Yall realize somebody’s been taking care of that gravesite for about 63 years? From where, he was buried? That’s how long that marker’s been there on the ground. Now, he’s been dead 63 years, that’s right.
Lena Mae: I remember him, yeah, but I can’t remember when he died. I don’t remember nuttin about when he died.
Agnes: I remember when he died.
Lena Mae: I remember when grandpa died.
JD: He would have been 71…72 when he died.
Lena Mae: I never forget…when grandma died. That’s when I saw that big light. Every year they had more [pictures?] on the porch…on the shelf…and it was getting dark. They had a big, big cypress by the lakeshore…you could see it from the house, and I used to play by that cypress all the time. We had a playhouse there. And I looked up there, man, there was a big old red light by that tree. Called Momma and Daddy, they never could see the damn light.
Agnes: We never could see it.
Lena Mae: And I seen that light just as plain as you want. I mean it went away…and I’d…it would come back. It done that three times. I kept telling Daddy…and nobody could see it but me.
Carolyn: This was after she died?
Lena Mae: No. Well, when she died. And that same night…that same night…Parrain ? I believe, is the one come and brought us the news…that Grandma Claiborne had died. And they was hookin onto the camp to bring it to, uh, Morgan City. They brought the camp over there in Morgan City.
Agnes: They brought the camp over there and come buried her over here.
Lena Mae: And they laid her out in the camp, cause we was there, and, then left with her, and I guess that’s when they come over here [to The Canal?], don’t remember nuttin after that.
JD: And that’s…that was Fanny Mae?
Lena Mae: Yeah, that was Fanny Mae.
JD: She must have gone by Fanny, because that’s all they put on her, uh, her gravestone.
Lena Mae: Well, all we knew her by [was] Grandma Claiborne. You know?
JD: And yet, her name wasn’t Claiborne, it was…it was Mayon.
Lena Mae: But we’d call her Grandma Claiborne.
Joe: Yeah, his name was Claiborne.
EJ: Boy, sure shows you who was boss of the house.
JD: That’s what I was thinking, too.
Joe: Traditional family.
Carolyn: [that’s] like calling me Grandma Jim.
Edward: There’s another graveyard, Jim.
JD: I kind of like that. [laughter]
[road talk for a long time]
Joe: You know how they are…those garden farms, uh, further south? Well, Grandpa Daigle [Homer] would grow…garden farms. Always had a garden, I remember as a lil boy. And Momma…Momma talked about that. They used to even…like some of these garden farms that do sell some of their produce and stuff like that.
JD: And where would that happen, Joe?
Joe: Well, when I was a lil boy…he…grandpa always had a big garden when he lived across the Pit. But, uh, Momma talked about him always gardening a lot.
JD: You talking about across the Pit in Morgan City?
[long period of talk not recorded]
Joe: Yeah. But uh, before [he gardened] wherever they lived. He talked about uh, Fourmile Bayou, he talked about where he used to live on the Lil Texas [a canal in the Basin], and …
Lena Mae: That’s the first time I went church, between, uh, [?]
[road talk and silence for quite a while]
[road talk and cane harvesting]
EJ: Remember we were talking earlier on…on the Red River and the fish ? What I was about to say is the Red River water runs the fish out. Once the Red River rises, you got to go down to the coast to find fish. Reading articles in different magazines, north in the Red River is full of salt water springs, and the Red River carries this salt water down. And I believe we keep saying the Ouachita water runs the fish out, but I believe the Red water running the fish out ahead of it. What the did, they blocked a lot of these springs off, and they were catching salt water stripers way up there at these springs. Where now, they’re going back to catching bass and sac a lait and stuff.
JD: They blocked the springs off now?
EJ: Umhm.
Joe: That had something to do with stirring the fish up…whatever…
EJ: Yeah, it would move the fish. You know there is no reason just plumb muddy water move the fish like that. After a Red River rise in that lake, you could hardly catch a fish until almost the next spring.
Joe: I figured it was just the cold of the water.
EJ: I did too.
JD: But it was good for shrimp. You catch a lot of bait shrimp [in a rise].
EJ: It was the muddy water [that] affects the shrimp. Brings em off the bottom to the top.
[road talk, various aspects of Pierre Part]
EJ: The way he got it [water in the yards][he could put] crawfish traps out in the yard.
Edward: Probly gets his 11/16th out of his ¾ [laughs, mesh size in crawfish traps].
Joe: Yeah, that’s gone be a problem.
Edward: I don’t believe they gone have to many from over here. These people over here don’t believe in them small mashes.
Joe: That’s the reason they got a Three Quarter Inch Law.
Edward: You put out a 11/16th by em…them suckers mash it up.
JD: They will? If they find em?
Edward: Yeah.
Joe: They been learning a lil different…last few years. Catahoula back there and us back there [using 11/16th traps]. Run into a few that’s hard headed…they change their minds.
[road talk and turtle farms]
JD: That was a houseboat, I betcha. [looking at the houses along the road in Pierre Part.
Joe: Aw, a lot of stuff along here was houseboats, believe me.
Lena Mae: There’s one across the bayou, Jim.
JD: Yeah, across the bayou, huh. Shore enough. Still had a cistern on the side of it. Agnes, you say you think some of the other people might be buried here?
Agnes: Yeah, where…wherever the church is at…
Joe: Church is right by the bridge…right across the bridge.
JD: An old fish car…fish box.
Lena Mae: You see some of these houses here…that was campboats too, but the built onto em and they look more like a house.
JD: There’s a fish house huh?
EJ: Crawfish place.
Edward: Look at the nutria rats.
JD: Where? On a log? Oh, dead ones?
Lena Mae: Yeah, they linded up. [some 15 or so nutria lined up on the bank…from a trapper, maybe].
Edward: They got a bunch of em.
EJ: That’s something [a problem] if they don’t do something about[them]. Even the swamps are full now.
Edward: They got any beavers in there?
JD: I couldn’t tell if they’d been shot or trapped, could yall?
Joe: The law…now…I believe, you supposed to shoot em if you see em. Or something like that.
Carolyn: You are? Why?
JD: Certain places.
EJ: …eatin up the country. Trappers have quit trappin em. They just…rampant.
Carolyn: Oh, I see.
[road talk]
JD: That was a wide houseboat! Maybe. Did they have em…did they have em that wide on barges that big?
Joe: It may have been added on [onto].
EJ: They had some wider ones too.
Joe: Shore they did.
EJ: The later ones did, the last ones that were much wider than…
JD: Well, the first ones were all on cypress barges…did they ever build em on those cottonwood logs?
Joe: Uhuh.
EJ: I never seen em like that.
JD: Eventually those cottonwood logs…those cottonwood logs would sink, wouldn’t they?
EJ: Well, thing is, they weren’t …well…to move around with em. But on something like that you couldn’t tow it well…
Edward: Go down current, but not up current.
JD: Carolyn, I swear, I walked through some of these houses when we were doing the co-op and every time I walked thru a door I’d hit my head. All the men were like 5 feet 4 inches tall. [Pierre Part is full of very short people]
EJ: Well, they weren’t freaks, you were. [laughter]
JD: That’s right. That’s right.
Joe: Talking about me and EJ, now, huh? [they are both not tall]
JD: [seeing a big boat] Where would you go with a lugger like that on this bayou? Lake Verret? I guess, Lake Verret?
EJ: Down through Lake Verret to Morgan City.
Joe: Bayou Boeuf.
JD: You can no longer get from here to the Atchafalaya, can you?
EJ: Only through the locks, Bayou Boeuf locks. See all these back waters? Catch a lot of choupique.
[road talk]
Lena Mae: See right here, the Rainbow Inn. I used to come to the dance here by boat.
JD: Where? Right there? By boat?
Lena Mae: That building right there.
JD: Where would yall live, to come here?
Lena Mae: We was livin, across the lake but but we’d come…we’d come from Lil Pigeon, we’d cross the boat right there.
JD: Yall would come all the way from Lil Pigeon here?
Lena Mae: Yep.
Agnes: We passed the statue. I remember that statue there. We used to come by boat, there.
Lena Mae: We go to the Rainbow Inn. Yeah, that big building there, right there.
Agnes: This is the church that the, uh, that the tornado took.
JD: And this is the graveyard that you think somebody [we know] might be in? [the Catholic graveyard and church in Pierre Part]
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Well, let’s take 15 minutes and walk around in there. And see. We’d be looking for…what’s the last name? Sauce?
Agnes: Yeah.
EJ: Larnce Sauce.
JD: Yall want to kind of divide it up? [to search the gravestones].
EJ: That would be the way to do it. Get so many feet apart where you can read one grave from the other.
JD: Lena Mae, I’m gonna…uh…
Lena Mae: I’m gone stay in here ‘till yall find it.
JD: But I’m gone to open this back door.
Agnes: …big graveyard. Pretty graveyard though, look how it’s fixed so pretty.
[several people stay in the van while others search the graveyard]
Agnes: Mr. Diaz and them had quit coming to church over here, oh yeah, the priest was awful they say.
Agnes: Some of em [graves] even build lil houses…big enough to put two or three of em.
Lena Mae: They need to get in the back, that’s where the old graves gonna be, way in the back.
Agnes: Yeah.
Lena Mae: That was Uncle Bill’s name? Bill?
Agnes: Yeah.
Lena Mae: They find one.
Agnes: Anh? They find one? They might find all three of em, right together, I guess. I’m not sure…I believe Uncle Bill’s name was Wilson?
Lena Mae: His name would be Willy. If they call him Bill, his name should be Willy. That’s what’s bad about not [caroling? Meaning using a nickname] you know? I believe all my kids go by their real name. All my kids go by their real name. Justin, Larry, Bonita…Gwen and Kevin. [if they] carry a nickname, and they grow up with it, and something happen…?
Agnes: [for example] T-Put, nobody knew her name.
Lena Mae: That’s it…all Uncle Joe’s kids.
Agnes: I don’t know…I don’t know T-Put’s name. The only one I knew her name was Sedolia.
Lena Mae: Wait…what’s Nut’s name, T-Put’s name? Nut was Hilda…T-Put’s Mary Lee.
Agnes: Yeah. And Tot?
Lena Mae: Tot? I don’t know her name.
Continued on Chapter 30
Interview with Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier, Agnes Bailey, Joe Sauce, and Carolyn Delahoussaye
Blog Ch 30 Tape 16 Side B
Continued from Chapter 29
Agnes: But this is the place that had destroyed…that tornado had destroyed. And that’s been long, long time ago.
Lena Mae: Before they moved off of Lil Pigeon. You remember? Uncle Si[sp?] and them was still livin on Lil Pigeon.
Agnes: It’s been a LONG time, I know. It destroyed the…everything.
Lena Mae: Me and Tot…Tot and them was older than me. We used to go to Lil Pigeon I remember Uncle Si[sp?] dug that storm shelter? And we used to go play in there…me and Tot and whoever else was there…Alfreda....
Agnes: You see, that was a campboat cabin back there, I betcha.
Lena Mae: Yeah, two of em.
Agnes: Yeah, big campboat.
Lena Mae: That’n there about the size of grandma and thems camp.
Agnes: Yeah.
Lena Mae: The one [a picture where] …grandma and grandpa standing on the side?
Agnes: Yeah. Some pretty flowers…red and white.
Lena Mae: Yeah, they sure kept up [the cemetery grounds] the graveyard.
[Carolyn comes back into the van and is shivering with cold]
Carolyn: They found it.
Lena Mae: They found it? How many?
Carolyn: They found one, and uh, oh man, I’ll never get warm again! Uh, but there was also an Edward Albert Sauce, I mean Edward Joseph Sauce. Do you know who that was?
Lena Mae: Edward Joseph Sauce…that would be Uncle Bill.
Carolyn: Well, his grave had a rosary on it and some flowers. It looks like somebody’s been taking care of it.
Lena Mae: Well, somebody’s taking care of it, I know.
Carolyn: And it’s right next to…your grandfather.
Agnes: I don’t know if she’s living yet.
Lena Mae: Aw yeah, Tante Bet (?) yeah she’s livin.
Carolyn: Oh, you see, so his wife is still livin?
Lena Mae: Oh yeah! You see, how long Uncle Bill been dead? I guess about 15 years?
Agnes: Oh, more than that!
Lena Mae: I don’t think so, Momma.
Agnes: Oh yeah!
Lena Mae: …if it’s on the grave.
Carolyn: It’s on the grave but I was so cold…
Lena Mae: You see, they had one child. Him and Tante Bet had one child. And then this child got married. I think before he got to see his granddaughter was born [he died]. I saw her twice. Somebody else died…her and her son and the lil girl. They lil girl come down. His wife was big, she was a big ole woman. Uncle Bill’s son’s wife, she’s a big, big woman.
Agnes: That’s all they had, that boy.
Lena Mae: That’s right. And the boy had a lil girl. That’s what I’m telling you…the only child they had. I’m sure she’s got something to do with it, that grave [being] kept up.
Carolyn: Oh, it’s kept up, let me tell you. There’s a blue rosary hanging inside the cross, and there’s flowers, and…
Lena Mae: They might of come put that there for Christmas, you know? What’s his name?
Carolyn: Edward Joseph Sauce.
Agnes: And they call him Bill, they call him Bill for short.
Lena Mae: Everybody had…everybody had a nickname in them days. And it shouldn’t be that. They should be called by they real names…
Carolyn: But…it’s ok if the nickname was like the real name, you know?
Lena Mae: But when they die they put the real name on there and then you don’t know who’s who half the time. [laughs] Jack Sauce and them? The whole family go by nicknames, the whole family.
Agnes: Yeah, Uncle Joe had em all…TPut and TNut and …
Lena Mae: Poo Lawd, he had a nickname for all of em. No, I didn’t get out [of the van to walk around the graveyard] this time Carolyn, I couldn’t of took it I don’t believe.
Carolyn: It’s bitter out there! It’s bitter out there!, and the wind’s blowing. It picked up a little, you know?
Agnes: You see Jim was looking for an old campboat,
Lena Mae: You see that campboat over there, that big one on this side? The green one with the white chair on the porch? That’s about the size campboat that my momma’s momma and them was living in, and my grandma’s house that she had on the bank was shaped just like that.
[people return to van, all talking at once] [back on the road]
JD: I didn’t expect to find…I didn’t expect to find all four people [?], course we never did see Thibodeaux but you’re saying that they’re…they’re on top of each other, right?
Lena Mae: …still got Grandma missin. Uncle Bill might be buried on top of Grandma, now…
[summarize: In Catholic cemetery in Pierre Part we found the graves of Larnce Sauce and Edward Joseph Sauce (Uncle Bill)]
[sounds of breathing trying to warm hands]
Carolyn: Well, Agnes, the house that you live in now, that house is bigger than my grandmother’s house was. My grandmother did not live on the water, but she lived in a little…he house could have been on the water very easily. My grandmother made bootleg whisky. [laughs] She was something else!
LS: Look how red Edward and EJ get when it’s cold! [laughs]
[talk about nicknames]
Carolyn: His name was Edward Joseph, but they called him Bill.
[talking about the names they found just now on the graves. Confusion about the names on the graves, use of “Joseph”. Comments about people being buried on top of each other]
Fini
Interview with Cleo (Neg) Sauce
Blog Ch 31 Tape 16-2 Side B
Jim Delahoussaye's opening monologue and plans for tape 16-2: We’ll start the tape now, with a different session. I’m leaving home. This is the second of January, 1994. [1/2/1996]. I’m going to leave Sunset, I’m going to drive to Myette Point and see if I can talk to Neg Sauce, and maybe Ida also. But this will be the end of the Napolianville trip with EJ and Joseph and Edward and Lena Mae, Carolyn and myself, and Agnes
Neg: …taking everything away from the fisherman.
JD: And also, the young people are not learning from the old people.
Neg: Umum.
JD: You know, you take like…like Joe, Joe is mostly shrimping.
Neg: Yeah.
JD: And then, his sons, they don’t seem to be learning line fishing, you know, not much line fishing. You know, in the same…Joe is mostly learning. So what I thought I would like to do is I would like to put down on paper everything I could find out about what y’all used to do, and how y’all did it. And it’s just in order to be able to, in the future, if they want to know about it, they can…they won’t do it, but at least they will hve some …they will be able to know about it.
Neg: Right.
JD: So, uh, that’s what I would like to talk to you about, if you don’t mind.
Neg: And, I don’t know, fisherman, they’d like to, a lot of em, I guess…can’t hardly make a living at it. The way the law is. Law is taking everything away from the fishereman. Gill nets, and all that…which is not right. I mean, not at all.
JD: [refers to the TV] You got something you want to watch on there, Neg?
Neg: I was watching, but I’ll turn it off.
JD: You could put it on “quiet”, if you want?
Neg: [turns the TV off]
JD: Well, one of the things I want to do…I want to describe the people that lived…live at Myette Point. And to do that I need to know how they got together. And who was on the houseboats, and what families there were…uh…I want to find out… I think I already know the people that moved across the levee, and then the people that moved here once the Corps of Engineers did what they did on the levee.
Neg: Yeah.
JD: I think I already have most of that…but there is still some information that I would like to get. When was your birthday, Neg?
Neg: January 27…it’s coming soon!...
JD: It’s coming soon, eh?
Neg: [laughs] 1924.
JD: 1924, eh? OK. Good. Very good. Uh, and your brothers and sisters…that was Agnes, Ida, Ophelia, Robert and Preston?
Neg: Yeah.
JD: OK. And Preston had a nickname. What was his nickname?
Neg: Monug.
JD: Monug. OK. Did Robert have a nickname?
Neg: Yeah. Tootsay.
JD: Tootsay [sp?]. Do you happen to remember who Robert marries? What his wife’s name was?
Neg: Yeah. It was…she was a Duval.
JD: You remember her first name?
Neg: Yeah. It was Gertrude.
JD: Gertrude Duval. Do you remember who Preston married?
Neg: He wasn’t married.
JD: Not married.
Neg: He died at 36 years old.
JD: He did? 36?! What did he die of?
Neg: Heart. He had a heart artsy.
JD: At 36?! Whistles. Boy, that’s young, huh?
ND: Talk about! My daddy died at 42, I believe, 42, 43.
JD: Blaise? He died that young?
Neg: Aw yeah.
JD: I didn’t know that!
Neg: Shore did.
JD: Same thing?
Neg: Ah, no. I don’t thing nobody knows what he had. At that time, when he died, doctors wasn’t too smart…like they is…I don’t think anybody knows what he had. I don’t know, for sure.
JD: And Myon brought him to New Orleans when he was sick, huh? And he died in New Orleans.
Neg: Dide in New Orleans.
JD: What did of symptoms did he have? Do you remember…how he was sick? Was it his heart, throwing up, or ….
Neg: No, he wasn’t throwing up. Just let himself go, as he was sick, you know. Never eat anything. I think what happened, he probably…something on his mind, you know, and he didn’t want to eat nothin.
JD: And he diedn’t eat, eh? And a young man like that?!
ND: And a young man! Yeah. I was 11 hears old when he died.
JD: Is sthat right? 11 years.
Neg: 11 years old.
JD: So, who’s the oldest of your brothers?
Neg: Preston.
JD: Preston was the oldest? And then after that?
Neg: I think it was Robert. I’m not sure on that no?
JD: That’s ok. So you were 11 years old? Is Ida younger than you?
Neg: Oh no, she’s much older than me!
JD: She is? Well, are you the youngest?
Neg: No, Yank’s the youngest.
JD: She…Ophelia, she was the youngest. 11 years old when Blaise died!
Neg: 11 years old.
JD: Well, that was kind of hard on you. How did you…?
ND: [laughs] wasn’t too easy, Jim! And Yank was younger than me.
JD: So that left y’all with your mother, Rosalee.
ND: Right.
JD: And how did…how did y’all make a living, when your daddy died, like that? How did y’all make a living?
ND: Fish, and pick moss, and things like that.
JD: Well, who did you learn to fish from?
Neg: My brothers.
JD: Your brothers? Robert and Preston?
Neg: Oh yeah.
JD: They knew how?
Neg: Oh yah. They knew how.
JD: With lines?
Neg: Yeah.
JD: Did any of you ever fish with nets? Any of you or your brothers?
Neg: Yeah, oh yeah. My brothers caught a lot of fish in nets…Robert. Yeah, caught a lot of fish in nets. And lines.
JD: Hoop nets, just like we…
Neg: Oh yeah. Three and a half, four foot fronts.
JD: But you used lines, mostly? For yourself? And Robert too? He was a fisherman?
Neg: Oh yeah. Fish lines and nets…he didn’t fish too many nets. We mostly fished lines at that time. When I was coming up. They had nets, but we ain’t had none.
JD: And they were expensive, I guess, huh?
Neg: They wasn’t too expensive, but it was to make a dollar to buy one! …pounds of line to make on…and your hoops. Didn’t cost too much…probly 10, 12 dollars a piece…at that time. But not they cost you 100, 100 and some dollars a piece! The four foot. They expensive!
JD: Well, when you started learning to fish…to fish lines, how old were you when you started to Leart to fish lines?
Neg: I wasn’t old. 12, 14 years old. Messing around with lines, and different things.
JD: Yeah? And, what kind of boat did you use?
Neg: A push…a push boat.
JD: A push skiff?
Neg: Messing around with lines and different thing.
JD: You were huh? What kind of boat did you use?
ND: A push…a push boat…a skiff. And I had bought me a lil 21/2 Lockwood, but that was a pretty good while after.
JD: You were older, huh?
ND: Aw yeah. We did a lot of pushing…a lot. We pushed from the anal over thete a Myette Point to…
JD: You pushed from Blaise’s Canal…?
Neg: We pushed from Blaise’s Canal to Myette Point.
JD: More than once?
Neg: Oh yeah, more than once. We pushed a whole week one time cause the batteries on the boat had died, and we used to use them lil drive tails…
JD: Them lil round ones?
Neg: Yeah. And uh…them batteries had went dead and we aint had no money to buy another set…
JD: Ahh…that was for the Lockwood?
Neg: Yeah. That push skiff? Had enough left [?] Laughs. We bought six batteries. We put em in the boat, four batteries now six, next morning we got up, and all four of the new batteries was dead again! So we had to push again! Talk about something! That we hard luck there, podnuh! [laughs]
JD: Yall had to push and run your lines? …till you got enough fish to buy some more batteries?
Neg: Buy some more batteries. And they didn’t cost mush either, but you “didn’t get much for nothing” them days.
JD: And y’all bought those batteries from where?
Neg: From the fish boat.
JD: Now, when your daddy died, y’all stayed living on the canal…on Blaises Canal?
Neg: Oh yeah.
JD: So, y’all were living with your mother? How many of y’all were still living with your mother when your daddy died?
Neg: We was all living with her.
JD: All of y’all?
Neg: Aw yeah. There was none married yet. … Not all, Agnes and Ida was married. The other two boys wasn’t married yet.
JD: So there was four of y’all, and your mother, living in a campboat?
Neg: Yeah.
JD: That still must be crowded when you living in a campboat, and I guess, Preston and Robert might have been pretty old, huh?
Neg: Yeah, they were pretty old.
JD: So, what was it like to fish lines in those days Neg? What was your oldest…if you can think back how it used to be when you first started running lines, how would you fish? If you…let me ask you this, if I could, let’s say that you…you started off today, back then, and you didn’t have nothin, and you would have to get yourself fixed up to run lines…and to do every thing…catch bait, run lines, get a boat…? What would you do? Tell me, if you can, tell me the story of how you would get started, back then, with nothing.
Neg: Well, you just start from hardly nothing, you know? You just get a few hooks, a few lines, and you start with that. And your bait, in then days, was mostly with shrimp. Put shrimp gush out like we always dis. And that’s what we did. Maybe get a few more…a few more hoods, line, something like that. And there you went.
JD: What kind of lines?
Neg: Cotton. Old cotton line. And we used to use 42.
JD: 42.
Neg: 27 for stageons.
JD: 27? That was thicker than 15, quite a bit thicker.
Neg: Oh yeah. 27 cotton line bigger.
JD: And y’all had to dip it?
Neg: Dip it, tar it…that pitch tar?
JD: Yall did that before it was ever used?
Neg: Oh yeah. It didn’t last but maybe two weeks after it was tarred.
JD: Even after it was tarred?
Neg: Oh yeah. Them stageon, we didn’t tar em every week, you had to put new stageons on em.
JD: You didn’t tar em? Why not, you think?
Neg: It worked better. You catch more fish on em. It was probably just a habit, because after we got the nylon we had the habit for years! [laughs]
JD: Yall tarred it anyway?
Neg: But the reason to tar the nylon…because it was so soft. It slipped and get all talked up and…talk about a mess! After we tarred it, it would make it stiff.
JD: And hooks? What kind of hooks and where dud you get…
Neg: A long time ago they had the yellow tag, they called.
JD: Yellow tag.
Neg: They didn’t last either. Maybe sometime you’d use em twice, that’s about it.
JD: The point would go bad, or what?
Neg: Aw yeah, they’d rust. The point would rust off.
JD: The point would rust off. !
Neg: That wasn’t an easy job…fishing! [laughs] It’s still not easy, but it’s better now than it was then. Like across that cut, there [a nearby canal], it get hung up or something, and you’d lose it all. You couldn’t fish in there!
JD: Why not? What would happen?
Neg: You line get hung up, and then that cotton line, you couldn’t pull on that!
JD: It would break? Did fish bread your lines like that too…easily?
Neg: Oh yeah, every two or three weeks you had to make another set. Three or four days old, a fish would pop it.
JD: That must have discouraged people from doing things.
Neg: Talk about a job! Put more hooks and swivels on em.
JD: You would save your swivels?
Neg: Aw yeah. Them days the stuffs they would make it out of was good!
JD: So, how would you make a swivel?
Neg: We used to make em straight. Now …makes em double. We’d use a #14 wire.
JD: Galvanized wire.
Neg: Yeah.
JD: And a galvanized nail?
Neg: And a galvanized nail.
JD: You think they worked good, those swivels?
Neg: Oh yeah, they workted good. Real good.
JD: Better than nothing, huh?
Neg: They worked just as good at them. They worked just as good as them brass swivels they got today!
JD: Is that right? No kidding! How did y’all learn to make swivels like that, you think?
Neg: I guess them days it just…it just come as you went.
JD: When you were young, they were already making those nail, and wire swivels?
Neg: Yeah. My Daddy would make em.
JD: I wonder how that got started?
Neg: That’s what I’d like to know, where it got started, and when. I don’t know how they learned that but, I don’t know but I guess there’s a way. I learned as I went along.
JD: When y’all fished on the other side, when y’all lived in Blaze’s canal, what kind of lines did y’all set mostly?
Neg: Uh, my daddy used to fish a lot of bush lines. Them stumps. Them big goujons. A norwester, like today, that’s when you’d catch them goujons. Them bushlines with live perch.
JD: You’d catch those goujons on cold wings, weather like this?
Neg: Oh, that’s when they’d bite! Get a good norwester and shake the water.
JD: A good norwester! Shake the water? Make some waves!
Neg: Right. Them goujons come out, by that stump!
JD: Is that right! So they’d fish in the winter like that?
Neg: Aw yeah. Put that bushline …live bait.
JD: About a foot, foot and a half under the water. You put a swivel? No?
Neg: No, they didn’t use swivels then. Just a double stageon.
JD: Just a regular stageon, with no swivel. Galeee! Fishing in the winter!
Neg: Aw yeah. We always fish in the winter. We fish all through the year!
JD: So, you say your daddy fished bus bushlines a lot, did he fish bent lines at all?
Neg: Aw yeah. They’d fish bent lines, and stuff like that. Yeah.. They’s put them bushlines in them stumps. Catch some big fish…big goujons!
JD: How did you set it? Set it from the tree? Tie it on a cypress?
Neg: Drive poles. On a slant.
JD: On a slant and put those…put the line off of it.
Neg: Yeh.
JD: Those big goujons didn’t pull those poles up? And go away with em?
Neg: Oh on, uhuh! They couldn’t bull them poles up! We caught some goujons along that lakeshore, there!
JD: Across the lake? On the other side?
ND: Yeah. Set up some bushlines…sometimes all the way to the…the other canal down there …Little Blue Poing.
JD: A hundred lines, sometimes? A hundred bushlines? [whistles]
Neg: Aw, sometimes yeah. They used to fish. They used to fish bushlines for catfish too, in them sandbars when the sand first started building, you had two, three foot of water, three, four foot of water? Drive poles in there and fish bushlines, two, 300 to the row!
JD: That was a lot of work too!
Neg: Yeah. They was hard to bait, especially when the wind was blowing, blow you into the line, in your poles, get hung up.
JD: What kind of boat did you use to fish those?
Neg: Our lil boats.
JD: You’d push?
Neg: Or those old Lockwoods, that’s all they had, or Detroit? Kelly? Two horse, three horse.
JD: Did you ever build a pushskiff?
Neg: Never did build a skiff.
JD: You built bateaus though.
Neg: I built bateaus.
JD: They must of gone out, after the motors cames out? The skiffs?
Neg: Oh no. Had a motor in the skiff. 16 foot skiff, put a motor in there. That’s what I had my 2.5 in, a 16 foot skiff.
JD: And you still had the oarlocks on the side?
Neg: No. I took that off.
JD: And what did you do if the batteries went bad?
Neg: I don’t know. [laughs]
JD: You couldn’t start them, those inboards, with a rope?
Neg: No, uhuh. They had a bog old flywheel, about that big…
JD: About 18 inches across? [whistles]
Neg: Yeah. That 2.5 had about a 14 inch flywheel. The 8 horse was bigger.
JD: And they had an electric starter on em?
Neg: Oh no. You give it a crank…
JD: You put a rope around the flywheel?
Neg: Aw no. You just take your flywheel…
JD: You pull it by hand?! Those big engines too?
Neg: Aw yeah. And them engines they used to have in the fishboat, used to call em Palmers. That thing had a flywheel like that…
JD: [whistles] 2 feet, or mere, across!
Neg: [describes how you had to start that big motor]
JD: So, you actually did that by hand?
[talking about starting a large outboard by pulling the starter rope]
JD: Did you have hears in em…?
Neg: The ones they used to use in the fishboats did.
JD Had a clutch, but the others, once you started em, you were gone…
Neg: Make sure you were turned abound and pointed down the canal! [laughs]
JD: Yall would catch shrimp, you say, in shrimp bushes? And y’all used boxes, too, those big box traps? For shrimp?
Neg: Aw yeah. Some people did. Boxes, put bait in there, the shrimp would go in there.
JD: Come up in the box, huh? Didn’t y’all used to dip shrimp in willow roots, too?
Neg: Aw yeah. Used to have a lot on this side.
JD: You would catch a few, or a lot like that?
ND: Catch a lot. Catch em like that, handfuls.
JD: Double handfulls, in those willow roots?
Neg: Aw yeah.
JD: When the water was dirty?
ND: In that Red River rise? Aw yeah!
JD: Do you remember how you set a bent line, when you first set a bent line, how you did it?
Neg: Oh yeah, I remember. Used to drive poles. With a mall. Had a mall about that long.
JD: About two feet long on a handle. Oak, or ash, or something like that.
Neg: I used oak. And drove your poles, and after you drive your poles, you put your lines. We used to twist em on top of the poles.
JD: Oh. You tied your main line on top of the pols, and then you tie your bridle afterwards. That way you didn’t have to have floats on your bridles, huh?! Oh, I see.
Neg: That was the best way to put it on. That way you could set your line like you want, you see? Slack like you want, tight like you want.
JD: When I first learned to fish with y’all, y’all were still talking about that, twenty years ago. Yall would set your lines on top of your poles. I believe Joe might have been doing that.
Neg: I believe so, cause [he saw some poles like that on the lake] Well, that’s all we know in them days, and then somebody come up with the stob.
JD: The stob, eh?
Neg: It’s a good thing, with all them sports [fisherman] they got out there right now.
JD: You must have been tired, using that mall.
Neg: Ask Joseph. I hit him on the head!
JD: I heard about that! What’s your side of that story? How did that happen.
Neg: I told him, I said Joseph, “Sit down on that seat there, and stay there” I’m gone be driving them poles, and I’m gone hit you over the head!” And that lil sucker snuck behind me. When I raised that thing…
JD: You hit him in the back?
Neg: I hit him on the head! We had to come back home. Thought I had killed him!
JD: Knocked him out?
Neg: Oh yeah.
JD: He was lying in the bottom of the boat?
ND: It was a hard lick…and when he come up like that…[laughs]. I didn’t bring him back after that when I would go and drive poles! He got a good lick, I tell you!
JD: Well, things were dangerous!
Neg: Weighed 12 pounds, I guess.
[he talks about silting in the Basin]
JD: Does she [Marie, his daughter] fish now, by herself?
Neg: Yeah. She goes out there by herself.
Continued on Chapter 32
Three Guys Plumbing...They Were Asking For You
00:19 - Versatile Abstract Theory
02:20 - Krusty Kube
05:30 - Why They Call You Juicy?
07:43 - Bring Back the Man
09:44 - (My) Buttlint (Bit Me On the Cheek)
12:12 - Picking Boogers Quickly
14:50 - Shoplifter, Sharecropper
16:46 - (I've Got a Crush on) Jesus
19:45 - I Don't Even Know You
23:20 - This One's For Da Ladies (In Da House)
25:22 - Bow Down to the Dutchmaster
29:17 - Use Ta Could
31:06 - Franka (Original Goodtime Gal)
33:26 - The Ballad of BIG MIKE
36:26 - Hubell Stubble
38:43 - For The Love of Coach Randy
41:07 - Satan's On Your Side
44:00 - Got Some Vinyl
Santeria - A Gift of One's Self
00:00 - You Got What I Need
04:33 - Death Trip
08:51 - Let the Morning Fall
13:13 - Zixox
19:40 - Bastard's Blues
23:25 - Bombay the Hard Way (1+2)
28:20 - Elron's Satan Boys
30:08 - The Drifter (demo)
36:48 - Moulmon Sty
38:30 - Moonlight Serenade
40:16 - Elron vs. the ZowZow
42:20 - Something for Nothing
47:23 - Halloween Police
50:49 - Blood Lines the Path
1:01:04 - Drifter
1:07:18 - Flatlands
1:14:10 - House..Dying Sun
Rare Avis
00:00 - Under
02:19 - Progression Slide
04:00 - Belle
07:10 - Fragile Killer
10:50 - Army Ants
11:56 - Planted
15:45 - Now Just Then It Died
19:16 - Unknown Song (Toxic Love)
24:47 - Teenager's Unite
28:20 - Metaphor Rock
33:10 - Unknown Song
37:36 - Enchantment Under the Sea Dance
40:37 - Urge of Repetition
43:00 - Heavy Drowning Rain
Frigg A-Go-Go - My Girl's Alright
00:00 - Looking For a Fight
02:08 - Falling All Over You
04:05 - Hot Rod Allie
06:09 - My Girl's Alright
08:08 - Pile Driver
10:48 - Pussyfinger
12:54 - Backseat
14:47 - Straight to Hell
Frigg A-Go-Go - Crash Up Demo
00:00 - HWY 389
02:33 - Swivel Hips
05:30 - Hot Rod Allie
07:46 - Daddy
10:10 - Pile Driver
13:13 - Pussy Finger
15:35 - Back Seat
17:47 - Crash Up Derby
Best Wishes, Simpleton. Post-Intellectual Misconceptions..
00:00 - Introduction Très Bon
03:43 - My Friend Say I Don't Like Anything
05:49 - Just Like Sophocles
10:47 - Chocolate Soldier
14:32 - Not Alternative Enough
17:50 - Stab Me Two
21:08 - The Underwhelming Importance of Overwhelming Regrets
26:15 - My Friends Say I Don't Like Anything (Reprise)
29:20 - G. I. Joe Sound Collage
*Samples from The Usual Suspects, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, G. I. Joe*
Dirt Franklin - Removal of the Breathing Apparatus
00:13 - We Found (the) Sound
03:24 - Teenage Slut
08:07 - Charming; In Formation
11:05 - The Greatest Known Cause of Stupidity
15:57 - Ms. America Is At Fault
18:25 - 8:21 PM, Sunday
20:57 - Died Inside
23:35 - Bunko Squad
26:50 - Maggots
28:20 - Theme From Bad Recording Session
30:04 - Chono
31:25 - Taste the Fruits of Treason
34:20 - Tear Gas
37:55 - As I Watched Myself Fall Down
44:00 - Bobby the Lung
Bois-Sec Ardoin Teaches a 1 on 1 Class at Augusta Music Camp
00:45 - Jolie Blonde;
01:45 - Jongle à moi - Bois-sec plays Mark's new accordion;
03:45 - Eunice two-step;
05:45 - Discussing how certain songs have similar melodies;
19:10 - Love Bridge Waltz;
11:45 - Crowley two-step;
15:00 - Crowley two-step;
16:30 -
19:15 - Bois-Sec talks about learning "Jolie Blonde" when he was younger;
20:45 - J'étais au bal;
22:15 - La valse de 'tit Maurice;
24:55 - Lacassine Special;
25:50 - Catch My Hat;
28:00 - Discussing how to break in the bellows of Mark's new accordion;
30:30 - Larry Miller, Randy Falcon Accordions;
32:00 - Practicing tips from Bois-Sec;
Shelton Manuel Teaches a Class at Augusta Music Camp
00:20 - Finger sliding style of Leo Soileau;
01:25 - Lovebridge Waltz
06:45 - Mark conducts a short interview with Shelton - Shelton says that Harry Choates didn't speak French. Says that Harry was born in Abbeville and raised in Port Arthur. Texas. Shelton met Harry in 1938 when he was playing electric guitar in Leo Soileau's band. Shelton started playing in Harry's band in 1945. Shelton would play drums in his band, Shelton would sub on fiddle when Harry would need a rest.
10:05 - Jolie blonde (In Harry Choates' style);
12:30 - Port Arthur Blues;
13:05 - Allons à Lafayette;
15:35 - Shelton calls his accordion the "starvation box;"
16:00 - Jolie blond (accordion version);
17:30 - Les flammes d'enfer (accordion version);
19:10 - Lovebridge Waltz (accordion version);
20:55 - Lacassine Special (accordion version);
22:15 - Shelton talks about Emmylou Harris recording a version of Lacassine Special;
23:55 - Evangeline Special (accordion version);
25:30 - Accordion techniques
27:15 - Walfus two step; Shelton talks about the Walfus Club
Zydeco Gumbo
Clifton Chenier - IÕm a hog for you baby;Boozoo Chavis - What is zydeco into Oh bye bye;Interview portion with Slim Grandy - owner of SlimÕs Y-Ki-Ki;John Delafose - music and interview;Interview with Leon Sam of the Sam Brothers Five;Sam Brothers Five - Josephine est pas ma femme;Terrance Simeon - Interview and Hee Haw Breakdown;Herbert Wiltz - KRVS DJ;Willis Prudhomme;Zydeco Straits - Bernadette;Warren Ceasar - Rubboard demonstration;Lil Jeff BouttŽ and the Zydeco Band - WhatÕs Good for the Gander is Good for the Goose, Interview;Anne Goodley - Zydeco StompInterviews with James Thompson and C.J. ChenierClifton Chenier live at the Plaisance Zydeco Festival- IÕm Coming Home
Interview with Mrs. Alidore Parfait
Recorded in 1978 - No actual date given