Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 11

 

DATE: 1989

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:              Albert (Myon) Bailey’s house at Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS:   Myon Bailey, Agnes Bailey, Lena Mae Couvillier 

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 y’all got married.  What did y’all 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, y’all 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 tey 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 y’all 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 y’all.

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 y’all 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 y’all 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, y’all 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 yall 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  y’all, 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 yall, did they?

Myon: No.

Agnes:           No. It didn’t. 

JD:      Did y’all 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 yall didn’t know the date, y’all 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 y’all go for a doctor.

Agnes:           Oh yeah!

JD:      Who were the treaters where y’all 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 yall 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] yall would eat most of the time.

Agnes:           Yeah. 

JD:      So, beef was not something yall 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. 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 y’all 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 yall 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 nutin 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 yall 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 yall 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 yall 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 yall 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.  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” yall talking about?  And Napoleonville and this cemetery.