Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 07

DATE:                        January 26, 1989

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:                          Myon and Agnes Bailey’s house at Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS:   Myon Bailey, Agnes Bailey, , Edward Couvillier, Lena Mae Couvillier, Kevin Couvillier, Carolyn Delahoussaye, Dorothy Couvillier

 Myon: Sometime they make mistakes. 

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

 JD:      How is he now?

 Myon: Allright….

 Agnes:           He’s old, yeah. 

 Myon: He’s About 86, 87.

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

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

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

 Carolyn:        But he’s happy.  He’s happy. 

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

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

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

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

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

 JD:      What was his name?

 Agnes:           Sead Daigre [sayodd]

 JD:      SEAD Daigre, that was his name?

 JD:      But they’re not connected? 

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

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

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

 Myon: St Martin [parish].

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

 Myon: Yeah. 

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

 Agnes:           I don’t think Myon would go.

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

 Myon  How far away is it?

 JD:      Morgan City, it’s not that far.

 Myon  How long is that a drive?

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

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

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

Alberta:         I was Marie Alberta Daigle.

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

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

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

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

 Myon: Petite.

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

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

 JD:      What boat?

 Myon: What boat Herman got killed Marie?

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

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

 Myon  Captain.

 JD:      He was the captain on it?

 Myon Him and his engineer was killed.

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

 Edward:        On the little island, or what?

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

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

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

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

 JD:      You don’t think, Myon?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Myon: ….controls in the front?

 JD:      No controls, got nothing inside, nothing.

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

 JD:      Uhhm.

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

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

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

 JD:      That was iron or aluminum?

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

 JD:      Big motor? 

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

 JD:      Yeah, this skiff is iron. 

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

 change in direction of conversation]

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

MYON: In the water?

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

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

 JD:      That was it, boy. 

 Edward:        Did he fuss at you?

 Carolyn:        He was just sittin there like this [mouth open].  [laughs]  ….laughin so hard.

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

JD:      [laughs] In Verdunville?

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

 JD:      It was at the landing?

 Lena Mae:     No, on the blacktop [road].

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

 Lena Mae:     We had all went and dip eel and ….

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

 Carolyn:        Still holdin the motor, man! [laughs] Just watchin me go. 

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

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

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

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

 JD:      Ohoh.  Ohoh.

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

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

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

 JD:      EJ?

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

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

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

 JD:      Two times in one morning [laughs]

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

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

 Myon: Hunh, pulled it off!

 JD:      You pulled it off!

 Myon: Ho yeah. 

 JD:      You took it off.

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

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

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

 JD:      That right?

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

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

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

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

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

 Carolyn:        What?

 JD:      Jumpsuits like that.

 Carolyn:        Oh.

 JD:      Larry didn’t go out today?

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

 JD:      That’s what I believe.

 Myon: Yeah, he already come back.

 JD:      He do any good?

 Edward:        Fair, he done good. 

 JD:      Catfish.

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

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

 Myon: Shore nuff!

 JD:      That’s gone be it. 

 Myon: I bet you shore hate that, eh?

 Carolyn:        …..Baton Rouge every day.

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

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

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

 Dot:  You was a hippy.

 JD:      Yeah.  That’s right. 

 Agnes:           [we] Call him the hippy. 

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

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

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

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

 JD:      Yeah?  Me and Mark, Mark Zarn. 

 Edward:        …..first time I seen him [JD]

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

 Edward:        I hate to tell you what I thought!

 JD:      [laughs loudly]

 Dot:  But they had another guy with you. 

 JD:      Yeah, Mark.

 Edward:        We call y’all: hippy, though!

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

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

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

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

 JD:      I don’t blame anybody….

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

 JD:      OHHH.  Uhuhuh. 

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

 Carolyn:        Oh yeah?

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

 Agnes:           Not the first one, Jim.

 JD:      Hunh?

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

 Myon: Jerry Breaux…..

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

 Carolyn:        Ohhhh.

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

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

 Myon: Yeah.

 JD:      Because [of] Joe Sauce.

 Myon: I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Edward:        Some people need a little help. 

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

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

 JD:      Oh yeah, she used to. 

 Edward:        Dope addict, eh?

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

 Myon: Since when?

 Carolyn:        June 24. 

 Myon: And it still bother you?

 Carolyn:        I dream about it.

 Myon: Come on!

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

 Myon: I used to do that too….

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

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

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

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

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

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

[several talking at once]

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

 Edward:        I quit drink coffee two weeks ago tomorrow.

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

 Edward:        I never did smoke.

 JD       Never did?

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

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

 Myon: Where you goin? 

 JD:      You goin smoke?????[laughs]

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

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

 Myon: Don’t bother me.

 JD:      Doesn’t bother you?

 Myon: Uhuh. 

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

 Myon: When we was, uh, Edward used to bring me up there, the Old Lady was in the hospital.  Me and Carol Ann [Hebert] comin back with Edward.  Carol Ann get in there, she say, “Get in the middle” she say, “I’m mon smoke a cigarette”.  [Ed says to her] “you can’t smoke in that truck”

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

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

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