Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 01

 

DATE:                        1974

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:              Albert (Myon) Bailey’s house at Myette Pt., St. Mary Parish,

COOPERATORS:   Myon Bailey, Agnes Bailey, Putt Couvillier, Edward Couvillier, Lena Mae Couvillier

  [Myon is talking Agnesout how he took charge of Agnes’ brothers (his brothers-in-law) and taught them how to fish]

Myon: But, I say “Oh Mother” I say “You broke, we ain’t got no money?  You would like to go back up the lake and fish?”

JD:      Where would you go back to?

Myon: Right there at Blue Point.  Leaving from Lake Verret.  That’s where I was supposed to be headed.  He [Mertile Theriot, the fishboat operator?] say “I tell you what…” he says… Them boys was young, you see.  And I say, “Look, I’m takin responsibility for all their bills [debts?], that’s on me”.

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

Agnes:           My brothers.

Myon: Monug, he died…and, and Robert, he live in Calumet, and uh…

JD:      Your brother?

Myon: No, her brother.  Several of em.  So, I told Mertile [Theriot] that. And he say “What you need?”.  Well, I say “First I need Agnesout 30 gallons of gas” and I say “Agnesout 20 pound of line, I guess…25 pounds, 1000 hooks.  “Well”, he say “if you take charge of them boys” he say “you can have anything you want”.

JD:      Was he [they] living with y’all [her brothers]?

Agnes:           We lived with them.

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

JD:      A floating…houseboat?

Myon: Yeah.  So, I told em, I says, “Boys, it’s thisaway”, I say “Yall gone live with me.  Yall gone do what I say, now.  I’m yall daddy for a while.  What I say gone go.” 

JD:      How old were they?  The oldest one?

Agnes:           Oh, Monug [Preston] must have been Agnesout 20…

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

JD:      And how Agnesout you?

Agnes:           Monug must have been…uh, Agnesout 18 when daddy died.

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

JD:      Who?

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

JD:      How many boys?

Myon: Two…

Agnes:           Three, three boys.

Myon: Anh?  Well, Neg, Neg was a lil boy…Neg wasn’t old enough yet.  ..  And uh, after that…”That’s…that’s y’all part now” I say, “I’m goin on my own”.  I didn’t want to run their life all the time, you see?  [to clarify, there were two young men, Preston [Monug] and Robert (Tootsie], one boy, Cleo [Neg] and one unmarried daughter, Yank [Ophelia?], and their mother, Rosalee]. So, they agreed to that.  And them boys done good for theirself.  They build em a new campboat and sold the old campboat.  At least, I’m the one build em the campboat, and Neg helped me build the campboat for em, brand new campboat.

JD:      Where y’all build it?

Myon: Right at Blue Point.

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

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

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

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

JD:      And then it went back?

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

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

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

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

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

JD:      What kind of bait was he catchin?

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

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

Myon: No.  Just [big enough] to make a cut bait.  Just cut it up for bait.

JD:      Traps?  He was usin?

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

Agnes:           If they didn’t bite, he’d dip em, under the lilies. 

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

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

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

JD:      Yeah, to make a livin for yourself [one man]. ..  That was plenty. Uh, how long a day do you think y’all were putting in, in those days, like that?

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

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

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

JD:      Skiffs? 

Myon: Skiffs, yeah.

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

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

JD:      And y’all hand made your swivels? 

Myon: Yeah. 

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

Myon: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

JD:      That was around 1938, somewhere in there?

Myon: Umhm. 

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

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

JD:      And y’all would sell to him.

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

JD:      Just like now, just like now.  One thing I wanted to ask you Agnesout…I don’t want you to get tired of talking, here, at one time, cause I want to come back.  But uh, one thing I wanted to ask you Agnesout was your own families.  Uh, both your parents, on both sides.  Now, what do you know Agnesout your momma and your daddy as to where they came from? 

Myon: Well, uh, they was all raised on Lake Verret…Fourmile Bayou. 

Agnes:           Yeah, but they come…your Grandma Catherine come from Spain.

Myon: Oh, not her.  She was raised on Napoleonville.

Agnes:           Yeah.

JD:      Your mother’s mother?

Myon: The old man, come from Spain.  My Grandpa.

JD:      Your grandfather came from Spain?  What was his name, Bailey?

Myon: Yeah.  Victor Bailey. .. 

JD:      Did he have a middle name, that you know of?

Agnes:           Wilson.

Myon: I think it was Wilson, if I’m not mistaken. 

JD:      Victor Wilson Bailey, and he came from…straight from Spain?

Myon: Straight from Spain…far as I know.

JD:      And he met your momma [grandmother?] when he was living here?

Myon: Yeah, some kind of way.  Not my momma, my grandmother. 

JD:      Your grandmother, I’m sorry.  Do you have any idea what that old man did for a living when he was here?

Myon: Fisherman.

JD:      He was a fisherman?

Myon: Yeah, on Fourmile Bayou.

JD:      Houseboat?

Myon: A house, on the bank.  ..  We got a lil property there…we had…it went for taxes, on Fourmile Bayou.  Where we used to live. 

JD:      Hmm.  And how Agnesout your grandmother and your grandfather, Agnes?  What, uh, what do you know Agneso

Agnes:           My, uh, my daddy’s momma…well, her parents come from Spain. 

Myon: They was Spanish too.

JD:      Your grandmother on your father’s side? 

Myon: He was a Frenchman, him.  [on her mother’s side?].

JD:      Both parents came from Spain? 

Myon: And he come from France. 

JD:      Now wait a minute, let me get it straight now.  Wait a minute.  Your grandmother on daddy’s side came from Spain…

Agnes:           My grandmother…my grandmother.

JD:      Your grandfather, on you on your…

Agnes:           On my daddy’s side come from France.

JD:      Came from France, and how about…how about uh…

Agnes:           And my momma…

Myon: …was raised up here in Louisiana. 

Agnes:           My momma’s parents, not…not her, uh…

Myon: Claiborne…

Agnes:           Yeah, I’m talking about his parents.

JD:      Your grandparents…

Agnes:           They came from, uh, she was an Irish.

JD:      She was irish?

Agnes:           Umhm.  ..  And he…I believe…he was just from here. 

JD:      Well, he couldn’t have been here too long, unless he came with the Acadians, with the Cajuns, down from Canada.

Agnes:           Yeah, must a been. .. 

JD:      So that’s where your side of the Cajun comes from.  So you’re Irish, Spanish and French from the Cajun side.  Oh, you’re French from France too, though, cause you said one of your grandparents on your daddy’s side came right from France.  ..  And you’re [Myon] Spanish and French, together. 

Agnes:           My…my…my, uh, my grandpa’s momma and daddy was rich people.  ..  In France. 

JD:      Is that right?  Your grandfather’s momma and daddy.  Now, they probAgnesly came over during the Revolution [French Revolution] to keep from getting their heads cut off.  Cause if they were rich that means they were probably after em.

Agnes:           That’s when they come over here.  All of em. 

JD:      Now, did they go to fishing when they came down here too?

Agnes:           No. My grandpa was a farmer, and he farmed, you see, after he got over here.  On my daddy’s side. 

JD:      How about the rest of your grandparents?

Agnes:           My…my grandpa on my momma’s side was a carpenter.  That’s what he do for a living. 

JD:      Umhm.  Now, y’all must have lived in a town, or somewhere near a lil town, or a settlement to where he could make money as a carpenter?

Agnes:           No.  They was…lived on Bayou Long, at Stephensville?  ..  That’s when they came, you see, when they come from over there, that’s where they made they settlement, right there.

JD:      They settled in Stephensville, directly from France and Spain?

Agnes:           Yeah. 

Myon: Well, he was a carpenter and a fisherman too, at that.

Agnes:           Yeah.

Myon: You know, Jack of all trades, just like we are.  We don’t make it fishing, we do something else.  .

JD:      I see. Now, how about your parents themselves?

Agnes:           Well, my parents, my momma was raised in Stephensville, there. 

Myon: Right.

Agnes:           They called it Bayou Long, then.  And they was raised…my momma’s…my daddy’s people all on Lake Verret. 

JD:      I see, I see. And what did your parents do for a living, as far back as you can remember?

Agnes:           Fish.  We [Blaise Sauce family] fished, they picked moss, hunt frogs, alligators…

JD:      Trap?

Agnes:           Trap.  Everything that, you know, that make a living. [laughs]

JD:      And it took all that to make a living? 

Myon: …you didn’t make something at one thing, he’d go after the other one, you see?  That’s the way it was.  [if the] fish didn’t bite, well, he go hunt frogs, or [if they] didn’t have no frogs, he’d go…he’d trap sometime, a lil bit.  It’s not all the time the fish would bite.  It’s just like now, you see, at times you couldn’t catch no fish. 

Agnes:           In the wintertime he’d trap every winter.  Boy, he’d make money then!  Make good money.

Myon: Lot of people, you tell em you hunt frogs, you fish, you do the things you done… doing that [each of those things]  every day, but you don’t, you see?

JD:      Yeah, right, you do what you can do at the time.

Myon: Right.

JD:      Well, uh, to your knowledge, from Stephensville for instance, now, Agnes…now you [Myon] weren’t raised in Stephensville…

Myon: I was raised on Fourmile Bayou.  ..

JD:      Yeah, but in Stephensville, now,  when you can remember you were a lil girl growing up, you grew up in Stephensville?

Agnes:           Uhuh. 

JD:      Oh, by that time you were already on a campboat?

Agnes:           By that time, uh, my momma and daddy had a campboat.  They moved up the lake, and the fish was bitin in one place…they’d go there, if they’d quit bitin there and bitin in another place, they’d pick up and move, and…we lived all over in all them lil bayous and countries up there. 

Myon: Bayou Sorrel, they lived up there at Bayou Sorrel [for instance].

Agnes:           Bayou Sorrel, Bayou Chene…

Myon: Bayou Boutte even.  Bayou Chene. 

JD:      Was there any sale for crawfish back then, in those days?

Myon: No.

JD:      Nobody bought crawfish, eh?

Myon: No. 

JD:      Did y’all eat crawfish?

Agnes:           Yeah. 

JD:      Yall ate em yourselves, eh?

Agnes:           Oh, yeah. 

Myon: And they had plenty crawfish in them times too.  You take [a]cross the lake, there [Blue Point?]  Man they had crawfish in there beaucoup!  ..

JD:      Now, let go back to when y’all were both about, uh, of let’s say y’all were both 15, 20 years old.  Let’s say 20 years old because you can remember that pretty well.  How many houseboats would you say there were, now I’m not talking about exactly, you know what I mean?  I’m talking about just in general, just a figure that’s somewhere near about what it might have been.  How many houseboats would you say there were from Morgan City to Keelboat Pass?

Agnes:           Lord, Jim, they had some campboats!

Myon: Well, rough estimate in there…

JD:      When you were 20 years old, that would have been about1925, Myon.

Myon: Yeah, I wasn’t married then.  The time you talking about, I’d say from here to Keelboat, I’d say you had from 30 to 40 houseboats.  ..  Some spots they mighta had 10, 12 houseboats tied up there, maybe more in spots.  At uh, Lil Pigeon, Williams Canal [Blaise's Canal], well there wasn’t more than about seven or eight in there at one time.  And not all the time, you see?  Lil Pigeon always did have a good bunch of campboats…Bayou Smith, that’s another place, the Burns, they be livin there.  ..  And Keelboat, in Keelboat they had Dan [Lange] and them live there.  They had a lot of people live in campboats there.  I’d say from…I’d say 30 to 40 campboats.

JD:      30 to 40 in all?

Myon: Umhm. 

JD:      Well, uh, now, Dot [Dorothy Bailey Couvillier] told me last night that uh, like each place had like a little settlement.  I guess that was determined by…determined by good land next to where you tied up.  Wasn’t that right?

Myon: Right.  Fish would go to bitin one place, like I be… let’s say I be tied up and I stop catchin fish, fishboat bring that news that them other fishermen [were catching fish somewhere else]…pretty soon you see a campboat, two or three campboats comin up, moving, to where the fish was bitin. #.  And they’d fish.  That’s the way it would go. 

JD:      Now, is it true that when one boat moved, most of the time most of the boats moved from one place?  They all moved together. 

Agnes:           They all moved together.

JD:      So, in other words, you might have one family, one group of families…let’s say five or six families, the Baileys the Couvilliers, this that and the other, that yall would kind of stay together like a group all the time?

Agnes:           Yeah.

Myon: Most of the time, yeah.  [but] I stayed long time by myself at Blue Point [Blaise's Canal], there, long time.  ..

JD:      Well, your daddy [Agne’s] was there.

Myon: Well, when her daddy was livin, we was livin together.  We always did live there, me and her daddy.  Two families, all the time.  But sometimes some other camps would come in there like the Verretts, and bunch of em, they’d come there a while.  Fish quit bitin…some come from Morgan City, come up there up there, come with their camp.  Fish a while…fish quit bitin, they pull out and gone!  Sometime we’d stay by ourself there.  After he [Blaise Sauce] died, most of the time…we stayed a long time just me and her [Agnes] and two kids.  During the Depression?  Me and her, my father-in-law was livin then.  He wanted me to move in [Bayou]Pigeon with em.  I say “I’m not movin up to Pigeon”.  I didn’t want to move up there.  “Well”, he say “I’m gone have to go”.  I say “Well, go ahead”.

JD:      Why did he want to go up there?

Myon: He thought he could do better fishin up there.  That time, life was hard!  Time in life was tough!

JD:      Now, during the Depression, did uh, did the fishboats keep runnin? 

Myon: Very few.  Very few.  But you couldn’t buy hardly no credit with em.  They wouldn’t let too much credit out.  And uh, if the fish didn’t bite, they’d run up there [for] just a few fish…you didn’t have enough money to [even] buy your groceries.  It was rough during the Depression.  [apparently the fishboats would allow credit more freely at other times].

JD:      Oh, you don’t mean the fish didn’t bite in those years, just during the Depression [do you?].

Myon: Yeah, right.  You know what happened to me, one winter?  I bought 10 pound of line on credit, when a boat from, uh, whose run, uh, Bernie…Bernie…Bernie, how you call…boat, uh, lived on Bayou Boutte, there?

Agnes:           I know who.  Uh…

Myon: In other words, he was runnin a boat…

Agnes:           Bernie Johnson!

Myon: Bernie Johnson.  He run up there, and I bought 10 pound of line on credit with him…hooks, line and everything. I put it out there on that sandbar, and they had about…about four feet of water, in the middle of the lake there, that’s where [when] the sandbar was building up.

JD:      Beginning to build it, yeah.

Myon: Yeah.  about four feet of water, fish bite there sometimes.  I had to do something, I didn’t know.  I picked moss a while, and, fish awhile.  So, I put them lines out.  There come a freeze about five days [long]. The lake froze up. #. All that sandbar up there frozed up, you see?  And that water comin shallow, I couldn’t go to my lines. And it started warmin up, and that ice broke up there.  Come there, took pole and all, my line and all.  Never made a run on em. 

JD:      Ooooh!

Myon: That’s…when I had to go pick moss.  [laughs].  And poor lil Milton [his son] there, Milton was a young kid…

Agnes:           Must have been like Warren, there.

Myon: Lil bit bigger than Warren…lil bit bigger than Warren.  He was about, I’d say…he was pretty near as big as, uh, he was about Keith’s size 

Putt:     about10 years old.

 Myon: Agnesout 10 years old.  I’d come on this side the lake, there, that’s where I pick my moss, in the swamp.   And I had one of them corn sack I doubled, had two sewed together, for me to pack…pickin black, you know.

 JD:      Pickin black [dead moss].

 Myon: Could sell it right away. ..  And he had one them corn sacks.  Follow me in the woods and fill them two sacks up, bring it to the boat, and come back and get some more sack, bring it to the boat, go back home.  That same man [Bernie Johnson], pass, he buy moss.  Come by and give us beans, rice, potatoes, for cash.

 JD:      For your moss.

 Myon: Give us, uh, he was givin 3 cents a pound for it. 

 JD:      You were getting what you needed, though, by pickin moss.

 Myon: Well, yeah, we lived.  That’s all we had…

 JD:      You mean, actually, the fish quit bitin during the Depression?

 Myon: Aw, during the wintertime it was just as bad as it is right now [few fish in the winter].  The wintertime was just as bad at that time as it is right now.

 Putt:     It wasn’t only the fish quit bitin, you didn’t have the equipment…

 Myon: You didn’t have…buy the line and stuff…

 JD:      Well, how did you buy gas, for your…for running?

 Myon: Well, gas was so cheap then, Jim, you buy five gallons of gas and a quart of lube for $1.25.  ..

 Agnes:           And you’d buy…sometimes when the fish was bitin, you’d buy it by the drum, you see?  Like that.

 JD:      You’d keep a drum on the campboat?

 Agnes:           Right.

 Myon: We always had a…man, sometime it was rough.  We had plenty squirrels, if we could buy shells.  Sometime I’d slip up [meaning it was unusual and fortunate] and buy a box of shells.  But I had to limit my shells when I’d go hunt.  Had to, because I’d kill too many squirrels.  We’d kill as much as we could eat, that day. [no way to keep them longer without refrigeration] 

 JD:      Did the price change a lot from the beginning of the Depression, to in the Depression?  Did the price of fish go down a lot? 

 Myon: Yeah.  Oh yeah.  The price of fish went down to three cents a pound.  When we talking Agnesout them line…when I bought [and lost] them line. Three cents a pound, that’s what I was getting for catfish. Yeah.

 JD:      So, if you caught 100 pounds of fish, that was $10 you’d make.

 Agnes:           NO.  $3.00!  [quickly, and this lady can’t read or write]

 PC:     Jim, [in] 1959 eel cats [channel cats] were separated from blue cats, when we were getting eight cents a pound for eel cats.  ..  You don’t believe that, that’s gospel.  ..  You remember we were fishing Schwing Cove?  We were getting eight cents a pound for eel cats.

 Agnes:           Umhm.

 JD:      Why?  What did they say was the difference?

 PC:     There was a fish glut, and uh, and they had more [?]…

 Myon: They didn’t know what to do with em,  they had to do something.

 PC:     We was getting eight cents a pound fishing in Schwing’s Cove, me and Harry and Milton…in 1959.

 JD:      What were they givin for blue cats?

 PC:     I think about 18 cents. 

 Myon: I dunno if they paid that much.

Putt:     17, 18 cents for eel cats, uh, blue cats, and eight cents a pound for eel cats.  I swear on a stack of bibles, and Harry’ll do the same thing.  We were fishing and each one was catching uh, two and three and four hundred pounds of eel cats over there a day, and the eel cats went to eight cents a pound…in 1959.  ..

 JD:      You talking about bibles, now, that brings up something that I want to talk about just a second and find out how things were with that.  Uh, you know how y’all…y’all say that the lil houseboats, lil campboats would almost tie up in almost what you could call a lil community?

 Agnes:           Yeah.

 JD:      And they would stay together, like Myette Pt. does today. OK, now, y’all are very religious people and uh, what did you do…these lil communities of houseboats back then…now, what did you do on Sunday?  Was there any kind of religious service?  Or any kind of uh…

 Myon: Uh, at times, Jim, uh…they used to have a priest…we used to have a priest from Charenton used to run to us…

 Agnes:           Come every three weeks. 

 Myon: Every three weeks, he’d come.  He used to say Mass right in my house.  I was Catholic then, you see. 

 JD:      He used to say Mass right in this house [it was a houseboat] ?

 Myon: Never did in this one…[but] in our lil camp.  ..  And he’d leave my place, he’d go to Keelboat [Pass], go to Hog Island, Catfish [Bayou], he’d go, and…he’s still livin, he’s in a…a…a…Patterson Church, now.  Patterson Church. 

 JD:      Boy he could probAgnesly tell some stories too, couldn’t he?

 Myon: We used to call him Father Gobeil.  ..  I met him at…he was a outdoor man though!  He liketed boats.  He build boats, he tried to build boats.  Oh yeah, he’d run across there…he had a boat, I don’t know if he hadn’t build that boat hisself.  Or bought it.  But he hooked it up hisself.

 Agnes:           He hooked it up hisself.  [motor, steering, etc.]

 Myon: And he come at the house, well he’d get there and go to the stove, see what the old lady cookin, and…..  He was just a comical man you could see!

 JD:      He was a good man.  Well, did y’all have family bibles in each boat, did each boat pretty much have a bible?

 Myon: No, nobody had no bible.  I believe we had a bible, but we couldn’t read it, you know, then. 

 Agnes:           We had prayerbooks.  .. 

 JD:      Well, there wasn’t any…y’all didn’t get together on Sundays and things like that?

 Agnes:           Uhuh.

 Myon: No, but around Keelboat [Pass] and them places, them ladies, they heard they did, you see?  And they had church and all.

 PC:     Then they come down with the Little Brown Church.

 Myon: Then they came down with the Lil Brown Church…floatin church.

 JD:      Is that right?!  At Keelboat?

 Myon: Aw yeah.

 Agnes:           From Keelboat he come over here.

 Myon: Come further, over here.  The man…the man first brought the church here is Brother Marks.  We done had him twice here for the church supper [once a year reunion of the congregation at Myette Pt.]. 

 JD:      Here at Myette Pt.?

 Myon: Yeah, he was here about a month ago, month and a half ago…

 JD:      For that reunion y’all had?

 Myon: Right.  That man started the church here, and he even put…start the school here!  Me and him went to bat for that!  When he start a church here…build that church…he got the stuff from this old building somewhere [made up of] by panels.  That’s the first church we put up here.  I’ll never forget that.  I was Catholic, but I helped him.  I was there. 

 Agnes:           Not for you sake, but for the kids.

 Myon: That was for the kids and everybody else, so…Then he started telling…that was a mud road here…that preacher come here, he start telling me that, he says “Now, how them kids could get to school?”.  I used to take em in that mud in my old car, bring em to the front [Bayou Teche where they could catch a bus to Franklin], to school.  He say “We can do something else, we can do something else”. 

JD:      Dot says that sometime they used to walk from here, too.  Walk to the front.

 Agnes:           Umhm. 

 Myon: Yeah, well, when I couldn’t take em out, they had to walk. 

 Agnes:           When it was rainin, they had to walk. 

 PC:     But Jim, this [school in Franklin] is after the time when they built the school.  Mr. Myon is fixin to tell you about the school…that they had here on Myette Pt., and the church house.  He’s fixin to tell you about that now.

 Myon: And uh, he [Brother Marks] told me, he says, uh, “How it would be if we would put a teacher out here?”  Well, I say “I think that would be fine, Brother Marks”.  He say, “Let’s see about that”.

 JD:      What was his name?

 Myon: They call him Brother Marks.  And I don’t know his first name. 

 Agnes:           No, always know him by Brother Marks.

 Myon: So, uh, he say “I tell you what” he say “Let’s go to Franklin”.  So, me and him and John the Dago went to Franklin.

 JD:      John the Dago? [John Gondolfo]

 Myon: Umhm.  We went to see that school principle, it was Boudreaux then.  So anyway he didn’t want to hear about put a teacher back here.  ..  He had a hard time with that.  So, John started, man, old John after him!  And I told him too, you see we either got to have a teacher back there or put a bus out there.  I knew you couldn’t put a bus if that road wasn’t shell, you see.  So, Brother Marks say he knew where he could get a teacher and it wouldn’t cost that much money to pay that teacher.  And he could get a teacher [he told the principle], and they agreed he’d get a teacher.  So they start school back here with a teacher.  Her name was Miss Hazen, fine lady.  ..  So, I’m the one build the…I build that about in that schoolhouse for her, fix everything for her, a room and everything for her to live right there.  Put a stove in there for her.

 JD:      She lived there?

 Myon: Lived right there.

 Putt:     We got pictures of her. 

 JD:      You do?  She lived in the schoolhouse?

 Myon: Yes sir.  It told Brother Marks, I said “Look, I’m gone tell you one thing” I say “I’m willing to help you all I can, I’m not a Baptist, I’m a Catholic”.  He say “That don’t make no difference, you working for the Lord just as well with us, either way you working”  He say “I don’t buck the Catholic Church”, so he says, uh “Let’s work together on this here”.  I say “Let’s do that”.  So, I worked along with im.  And finally, we finally got em to shell this levee and shell that road out there, and they started to want to run the bus out here, you see?  #.  That’s the way we stopped that school out here.

 JD:      She stayed how many years teaching there?

 Myon: A whole year, the whole season, eh?

 Agnes:           Aw, she taught three years.

 PC:     about thee years. 

 Myon: I tell you Jim, I ain’t got no memory no more.  I can come back on that you know, if I work back, I could remember all that. 

 PC:     What happened to the old church house, that was built back when Mr. Myon is talking about , is that in 1953 it blew off it’s blocks, New Year’s Day, 1953.

 Agnes:           Yeah.

 JD:      It did what? 

 PC:     Blew off the blocks.  It was on them high blocks, and in 1953 on New Year’s Day, it blew off the blocks.  No more church, uh, school.

 Agnes:           Had a bad weather.  It was a church, and a school!

 Myon: Had church on Sunday, eh?

 PC:     I can remember that like it was yesterday, 1953, New Year’s Day, the day Hank Williams died…blew off the blocks. 

 Myon: She used to give them boys here, them bigger boys, a nice school.  For a while.

 JD:      The reason I asked about the little communities of campboats was, uh, it seems surprising to me that people could be as religious as y’all are now, and not have some…

 Agnes:           We was taught thataway though, Jim,…our mommas and daddys…

 JD:      Right, that’s exactly why I’m saying what I’m saying.