Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 13

  

DATE:                        December 10, 1995

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:              Edward Couvillier’s house on Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS:   Edward Couvillier, Lena Mae Couvillier

JD:      …..anyway, that’s uh, what we…the way we did this before was I put it [the tape recorder] on the table and it took about five minutes before nobody even remembered it was there, and just kept talking.  Uh, while I have you here, if you could just….say some things about the way it was to live on the campboats themselves.                                       

Lena Mae:     Be sure to tell...be sure don’t lie, now, tell the truth.  [laughs]

JD:      Ok, Edward says don’t lie.  If you could start, for instance, what did y’all do for water, for drinkin water and wash water and all those kind of things, on a, on a campboat? 

Lena Mae:     We’d…catch water.  We had gutters on the camp.  Had our drums linded up on the bank and we’d catch ..rainwater, to drink.  Come to our washwater, every evening we had to take a bucket…fill a drum up, and put alum in it, to settle that water…to wash with. 

JD:      Do you remember about how much alum y’all would put, in a…you say a drum, how much water did y’all put in to….

Lena Mae:     Not much…..[alum]

JD:      So y’all would fill a 55 gallon drum? 

Lena Mae:     Put a very lil bit…alum..  not much.  It come in lil chunks…Come in lil chunks, you take that lil chunk and you wash it a lil bit in there?

JD:      Umhm.

Lena Mae:     Next morning you get up, it was clear as crystal. 

JD:      Did y’all……where did y’all get the alum from?

Lena Mae:     From the water plant in Morgan City.  Well, every time we’d wash, take a lot of water.  You wash and rinse you clothes in it, and we’d finish fillin the barrel up.  Keep it up, you see?  Whatever we’d use, we’d replace.

Edward:        Momma had a big ole iron pot, wash kettle….

JD:      Steel, iron,  I mean…

Edward:        Cast iron, round…

JD:      Cast iron pot, had little legs on it?  Three legs, at the bottom?

Edward:        Right.

Lena Mae:     Yeah. 

Edward:        But we had a stick [?], a sticker, uh [?]

JD:      Now this is your mother [to Edward] you talking about..

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      Now where was that happenin? 

Edward:        On Keelboat Pass.  Hog Island, wherever we lived. 

JD:      Yall lived on a campboat at the time?

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      Did you…this is Edward talking now, were you born on a campboat?

Edward:        Man, I don’t know where I was born, I was born in Charenton…

JD:      You were born on land ….

Edward:        I guess, I don’t know.  Might a been born in a stable, back in them days!  [laughs]

JD:      So, your early memories, your early early memories were, when you were a child,…..were…..where are your memories?

Edward:        We were livin on Lil Pigeon.

JD:      On a boat?

Edward:        On a house [on the bank], on Lil Pigeon. 

Lena Mae:     They lived in a big house…

JD:      On a house.

Edward:        A great big old house.

JD:      On Lil Pigeon?!  On the bank?!

Edward:        On the bank.  Then we moved ……Keel…uh, Lil Pigeon to Catfish [Bayou].

JD:      Now you tallk about that..I have you on tape, I have you on tape when we were talking I said that discussion at the table in the other house, y’all are talking about it and you mentioned Catfish several times on that tape, where is that?  I never heard of that…

Edward:        You ever been to Keelboat Pass? 

JD:      Well, that’s up …you talking about ….

Edward:        On the other side of the Lake, on the other side [of] Grand Lake. 

Lena Mae:     Above Big Pigeon. 

JD:      Above Big Pigeon…Towards Sorrel?

Edward:        Naw, uhuh, Bayou Sorrrel’s up on the …side over there.  But this is up Grand Lake. 

Lena Mae:     You know where Myon’s Canal is?

Edward:        So, the east side, what it is, the east side of Grand Lake. 

JD:      Well, you say Myon’s Canal, that’s the same as Blaise’s Canal you talking about??

Lena Mae:     Yeah, yeah.

Edward:        No.  Blaise’s canal was below Myon’s canal.

Lena Mae:     That’s where we were born and, and raised, in Blaise’s Canal. 

Edward:        You had Young’s Canal, you had Blaise’s Canal, you had Myon’s Canal, you had Boudreaux’s Pocket.

Lena Mae:     Myon and Blaise Canal is the same canal. 

Edward:        Uhuh.

Lena Mae:     Yeah, I’m telling you, I know. 

Edward:        Hunh, I know, I know too.  [laughs] I lived over there.  All my life.

Lena Mae:     It’s the same one.

JD:      We gonna get it, we gonna get it straight.  But anyway, what, what uh, you know when you start talking about what y’all did, I need to try to figure out, for tape, so I can get it down on paper about where y’all were and who you’re talking about when you say “We did it this way”.  Who’s we?  Your family, who was it?

Edward:        Momma and, and, the Old Man. 

JD:      Your mother’s name was what?

Edward:        Ella.

JD:      Ella?  What was her maiden name?

Edward:        Sanders.

JD:      Sanders?  Ella Sanders.  And your father’s name was? 

Edward:        Couvillier…Albert.

JD:      Albert, Albert Couvillier, was his name, and, and, your earliest memories was y’all were livin in the bank at Lil Pigeon, in a house. 

Edward:        Right.

JD:      And that had to be before the levees. 

Edward:        Oh yeah!  Yeah.  Long time before the levees. 

JD:      Had to be before the levees, so the water came….when y’all were livin …

Edward:        Right after the ‘27 high water, see, I was born in ‘28. 

JD:      You were born in ’28.  The ’27 high water came and flooded everything…

Edward:        Flooded everything, Franklin, everything. 

JD:      And that house you remember must have been flooded then in ’27.

Edward:        It probly was, but I wasn’t even born then. 

Lena Mae:     It was built on tilts [stilts]. 

JD:      It was?

Edward:        It was high off the ground. 

JD:      It was high off the ground.  So, there was some …..course every year the water rose…

Edward:        Yeah, every year the water would take the bank.

JD:      But it wouldn’t come up like it does now?   It would come up two, three feet, probably?

Edward:        Yeah, it would come up like it do now, but you had more room for it to scatter.   If we got water now like we got in them days, everything would be flooded. 

JD:      That’s what I mean. 

Edward:        You had that big Grand Lake and everything, and you still get five, six foot a water every year, you see.  So.

JD:      Yeah.

LC:     But you always had a hill, you always had bank, somewheres, you know.

JD:      That it didn’t flood…

Edward:        Canals over there, that was dredged, you see.  Now, Pigeon, Big Pigeon, Lil Pigeon, Bayou Catfish, and uh, Bayou Cowan…well that was all, that was there, that wasn’t man made. 

JD:      That was natural bayous.

Edward:        Right.  Below Big Pigeon, all them pockets they got over there, all man made.   That was dug.

JD:      All those canals.  You talking about Williams Canal, Blaise’s Canal, whatever…Myon’s Canal….

Edward:        They dug that when they was getting timber out the woods, and they’d go up there with them pullboats..

JD:      Ok.

Edward:        And you could walk back on any one a them canals and you’d have big ditches..go stright back in the woods.  That’s where they pull them logs out….

JD:      That’s what they call a pullboard road? 

Edward:        Pullboat [pullboat or pullboard?] road.  Right.

LC:      But you see what they call Myon’s Canal ….first it was Blaise’s Canal.  Momma, grandma and them stayed there all these years.  Then, when grandpa Blaise] died, they started….

JD:      On the bank?

Lena Mae:     No, no, we was on the water.  When grandpa died, well they started callin it Myon’s Canal.  But the real name of it, is The Branch of Vine.

JD:      Is what?

Lena Mae:     The real name of the canal, is The Branch of Vine. 

JD:      Branch…?

Lena Mae:     Branch of Vine. 

JD:      Of Vine?  Like grape vine?

Lena Mae:     Yeah.

JD:      Branch of Vine.  Was that in French, by any chance, you think?  It seems like such a strange name. 

Lena Mae:     But that’s the real name of the canal. 

JD:      Branch of Vine, humph.  And all those were timber canals that were dug back in there. 

Lena Mae:     But, I don’t know if that canal was dug. 

Edward:        Was.  I guess it was!  You can see the levees all along …..

Lena Mae:     You can go from this canal all the way to, uh, Fourmile Bayou, by boat.  You could go to, uh, Lil Texas.  They had a lil place called Lil Texas back in there.  Could go to all them places from that canal. 

JD:      From, uh, Myon’s Canal. 

Lena Mae:     From where we was livin.

JD:      From where y’all were livin at.  That was called Blaise’s Canal first, and Myon’s Canal afterwards?

Lena Mae:     Exactly. 

JD:      It was Blaise Sauce it was named after, I believe, right?

Lena Mae:     Yeah. 

JD:      ‘kay.

Lena Mae:     My grandpa.

JD:      Now y’all lived on, Edward, y’all lived on the bank in this big house when you first remember as a boy.  You were born in 1928, you said.  When y’all went, when, uh, where did y’all….what happened when y’all left that house, and why did y’all  leave that house?  On the bank.

Edward:        I don’t know why we left it.  Just left and moved to Catfish, Bayou Catfish, and just further up the river. 

JD:      Also, on the bank?

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      No houseboat?

Edward:        No. 

JD:      Just on the bank, again.

Edward:        On the bank. 

JD:      Ok.  And when you and Lena Mae met, you [Lena Mae] were livin on a houseboat already?  And you [Edward] weren’t livin on a houseboat.

Edward:        Yeah we was. 

JD:      You was?  So when y’all go…?

Lena Mae:     I guess they had a houseboat! 

JD:      When, how did…you want to tell me how y’all went from that second house on Catfish?  What, what was, what’d your family do …….The reason I’m interested in this is because I want to try to follow how the houseboat community got together before y’all moved across the lake back over here.  I want to try to figure out how the families got, all on houseboats, all in the same place in those canals. 

Edward:        Well, they wasn’t all in the same place, they was people all over out there.

JD:      Then that’s what I want to hear about, you see?  But I know that a certain number em moved together.

Edward:        Yeah, well, always had a bunch of people …livin together…

Lena Mae:     See, like us, same thing with Edward and them, like, grandpa moved there, OK?  And then the family…

JD:      Who’s your grandpa?  Who you talking about?

Lena Mae:     Blaise Sauce.

JD:      Blaise Sauce was your grandfather? 

Lena Mae:     Yeah.

JD:      OK. 

Lena Mae:     And then, daddy,  and,  momma and daddy got married and we all ….stuck together there.

JD:      Uhhunh.  So, so, you know this is really ….

Edward:        Complicated eh?

JD:      It’s complicated and the reason it’s a problem right is there’s so much to talk about, that sometimes I lose where I am and forget to ask the right questions.  Uh, but that doesn’t matter, sooner or later it’ll all come together. 

Lena Mae:     ….talk to him [Edward]and he….

JD:      Yeah but, what you need to say is important too.  I need to get all that too. 

Edward:        When we left Catfish [bayou] now, the Old Man built that camp.

JD:      The houseboat?

Edward:        Houseboat.  Then we moved to Keelboat Pass. 

JD:      In the houseboat? 

Edward:        In the houseboat.  Then from there we moved, well we moved from Keelboat then we moved to Hog Island….

JD:      OK, how old were you, do you think you were when y’all moved to Catfish?  Just take a guess. 

Edward:        When we moved to Catfish, I must a been about four, five years old. 

JD:      That young.

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      Alright, then y’all moved….then you built a houseboat while you were on Catfish and y’all moved onto it?

Edward:        Right.  We move to, uh,uh,…

Lena Mae:     Hog Island?

Edward:        Keelboat.  Keelboat Pass. 

JD:      You moved to Keelboat, and how old do you think you were when y’all went on to….

Edward:        When I started school I was twelve years old.  Maybe I was older than ….no I was about twelve years old.

JD:      Ok, when you started school though what I’m wonderin is about, when y’all went on to the houseboat and started livin on the houseboat, you remember …..

Edward:        Yeah, I must have been about ten.

JD:      About ten years old, so it was about 1938 when y’all moved onto the houseboat, then.

Edward:        No, it was in the early forties, when uh….In fact the school had started before we moved on the campboat.  Cause we used to walk from Catfish all the way to, uh, Keelboat to catch the schoolboat. 

JD:      To catch the school boat?

Edward:        Yeah.

JD:      Boy this is such…this is, this is, it’s just so…

Edward:        See, Ducie [Doozie] Mire, had a boat, he’d send his kids to school.

JD:      Who?

Edward:        Ducie  …[sp??? pronounced Dushy]

JD:      Ducie…..Ducie who?

Lena Mae:     Ducie Mire.

Edward:        What was his name?  Uh, ….

Lena Mae:     I don’t know, I always known him by Ducie.  That was Dan’s [Lange] brother in law. 

JD:      Whose?

Lena Mae:     Dan Lange’s brother in law. 

JD:      Dan Lange’s brother in law. 

Edward:        But he had a boat, he’d, he’d, his boy…he had two girls and two boys….and they’d pick the kids up …..like  from Keelboat, and we’d ride over there with them, we’d come back in the evening we’d get off,  we’d have to walk thru the woods to get back home. 

JD:      How far was that you suppose?

Edward:        Aw, three, four miles.

JD:      Three or four miles each way? 

Edward:        Aw yeah. 

JD:      Now, where was the school?

Edward:        It was on Hog Island. 

JD:      And where was that compared to Keelboat?  Is it still there?  Hog Island? 

Edward:        Yeah, it’s still there.

JD:      It is? 

Lena Mae:     The school’s still there.

JD:      The school’s still there?!

Edward:        The school’s on Keelboat, now.  They moved from Hog Island to Keelboat years later.  That was after we had done moved from over there.

JD:      And it’s on land.

Edward:        On land. 

Lena Mae:     They made a camp out of it. 

JD:      They made a camp out of it?  Somebody owns it now and uses it as a camp? 

Edward:        It’s uh, it’s all tore up. 

Lena Mae:     We went there last year. 

JD:      Did you?

Edward:        Not last year.

Lena Mae:     Year before last. 

Edward:        Four, five years ago we went over. 

JD:      No kiddin.  So, y’all…from the time you were about ten years old …..y’all, Edward, y’all were livin on a, a, houseboat.

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      And y’all moved to Keelboat Pass, on a houseboat.  Now, your daddy was a fisherman?

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      He fished with lines? 

Edward:        That’s all he ever done, fish and trap. 

JD:      Fish and trap.

Lena Mae:     Hunt frogs. 

JD:      And hunt frogs.  Hunt frogs. 

Edward:        He did a lot of frog huntin in his time.  Alligators, stuff like that. 

JD:      And I imagine he did like Myon kept telling me, gathered moss when it was moss season.

Edward:        Pick moss. 

JD:      And did all those things that…

Edward:        I picked a lot of moss! 

Lena Mae:     His momma, his momma did a lot of fishin, more than the Old Man did.

JD:      Is that right?  Well, you see that’s another thing I want to be part of this.  Another whole part of this I want to be the, the, the part that the women played in the fishin, in line fishin. 

Lena Mae:     She fished all her life. 

Edward:        I was twelve years old before I got my first pair of shoes. 

JD:      Is that right? 

Edward:        Hard to believe, eh? 

JD:      Well, compared to the type of life you telling me about it’s not too hard to believe.  I mean…

Lena Mae:     They even took his picture that day!

JD:      You have a picture of him…?

Edward:        Yeah. 

JD:      Do y’all have pictures …any old pictures of any of those old people? 

Edward:        ….has pictures of the school house

JD:      You do?!  You think I could borrow those?…when the time comes, not right now. 

Edward:        …..when we get em out, you know, uh,….later…

JD:      What I’d, what I’d like to do is I’d like to take the pictures and I can take em somewhere and have negatives made out of em and then we can print some more pictures from it, it won’t hurt the pictures.

Edward:        Umhm.

Lena Mae:     No.

JD:      If y’all could do that it would be really great…

Lena Mae:     I got pictures of him goin to school. 

JD:      Is that right?

Lena Mae:     Climbin in trees, and…..

JD:      I gotta make sure that thing [the tape recorder] doesn’t stop.  And I don’t’ see it….

Edward:        I remember cold like this here [now], well momma had them beds and them big ole mattresses and we’d get in em…them suckers that high off the floor.

JD:      The mattress, the bed would be ….

Edward:        The moss.  About three big mattresses on em, on em, and they’d be about that thick, each mattress

JD:      About a foot thick.

Edward:        And when you’d get in em,

Lena Mae:     You sink.

Edward:        You’d bury down… in the summertime, you talk about was rough boy, it was hot!

JD:      Hot 

Edward:        But I woke up, ….and we used to have mosquito bar they’d put over the beds at night for mosquitoes, ….and I woke up many a morning they had ice, that mosquito bar full of ice, it would come thru the cracks on that old …..and we’d have ice in bed with us. 

JD:      So, the mattresses were nice in the, in the winter…

Edward:        Wintertime, boy in the summer!….

JD:        Now, you telling me the mattresses were made out of moss? 

Edward:        Moss and, uh, shucks, them corn shucks. 

JD:      Corn shucks too?  Seems like corn shucks would be pretty….

Lena Mae:     Pooh, man you can’t….

Edward:        Make a lot of noise, it rattle a lot, when you roll…move on it?  It rattle, you know?

JD:      I guess there wasn’t too much opportunity for the older people to do what they felt like doin without letting everybody else know what they were doin hunh?  [laughs 

Lena Mae:     See, the best part, they, uh….

JD:      [laughs]  I don’t to pry….I’m not askin…

Lena Mae:     Right after we got married, not long after we got married we went and slept at his [Edwards] momma’s. 

JD:      Unhun…

Lena Mae:     And she put [us on] some a them shuck mattress, and you couldn’t move….you’d move ….and that stuff would rattle.

JD:      [rattling rustling sound] [laughs].  Well, then, uh, when you were livin on a houseboat ….and how old were you when  you met Lena Mae?

Edward:        Oh, I was, when we first met I was …..

Lena Mae:     We knew each other all our lives, uh….

JD:      How did y’all know each other?  How did y’all….how were y’all close enough together to know each other? 

Edward:        My sister used to live by…by them.

Lena Mae:     In the Canal with us. 

JD:      Now you lived, you were on  Keelboat Pass with your family in their houseboat and you were fishing for a  living by that time?  And you [Lena Mae] were with your family in Blaise’s Canal, fishing for a living, so y’all..both families were on houseboats….how far apart would you say those houseboats were when y’all met?

Edward:        Wasn’t but about seven, eight miles.

Lena Mae:     We was on one side the bayou and his sister lived right across from us on the other side the bayou.

JD:      His sister lived across from y’all?

Edward:        Yeah. 

Lena Mae:     He used to come down on the fishboat, and get off, and stay until the fishboat would come back.

JD:      Like a taxi.

Lena Mae:     Yeah.

JD:      Like a bus.

Edward:        That’s how we’d  get to Morgan City, we’d ride a fishboat out then you’d ride it comin back….

Lena Mae:     Fishboat would pass twice a week.

JD:      Was the fishboat about the only one with a … that had a motor?  About the only boat that had an engine

Edward:        Naw, everybody had them Lockwood motors…

JD:      Single engine ….single cylinder…

Edward:        Some of em had eight horse….

Lena Mae:     …..horse, two horse….

JD:      [laughs]

Lena Mae:     Well,  a six and a eight [horsepower] was a double cylinder.

JD:      So, you had two …

Lena Mae:     Yeah, a four and a two was one cylinder. 

JD:      That’s the one that popped…

Lena Mae:     Yeah.  Well, they all popped…..uh, uh

LC:     Air cooled motors…

Lena Mae:     A six horse Lockwood turn over real fast,  a eight horse didn’t turn over as fast as a six horse.

JD:      Yeah, yeah, and a one, the one cylinder was really….

Lena Mae:     The four horse and the two horse….

JD:      Ok, I keep gettin away from what I want to try to get to here….y’all were livin about eight miles apart, separately on houseboats but y’all knew each other.  Did everybody who lived on those boats spread out around?   Did everybody pretty much know everybody else? 

Lena Mae:     Aw yeah. 

JD:      Everybody knew the families and so on?

Lena Mae:     Aw yeah. 

JD:      Uh.  OK, I want to ask you ….I want to ask y’all how y’all got together and got married, and got courted and everything….

Lena Mae:     That happened after we move over here. See, they moved over here ….that’s the year Albert [Bailey, Jr.] was born.  Our campboat was right at the end of the canal, there, on the bank.  Daddy had put our boat on the bank. 

JD:      Blaise’s Canal..

Lena Mae:     No, no, over here. 

JD:      Oh, Myon’s canal….on this side?

Lena Mae:     We had left from over there…we moved over here.  Then we went back….

JD:      Wait, wait now, let me make sure we got this straight…

Lena Mae:     You finish with Edward first…

JD:      Ok, so…so… so you livin with your family over there then your family, your family moved their boat to Blaise’s Cana

Lena Mae:     No, they moved over here [Mn’s Canal]. No, we moved up the channel up there ….up, up, up the Atchafalaya River.

JD:      Up the Atchafalaya River, up to like where Mrs. What’s her name lives [Myrtle Burns]? 

Lena Mae:     It was below where Myrtle lives. 

JD:      Where Miss Myrtle…..

Lena Mae:     Between here and Myrtle, that’s where we stayed.

JD:      What’s her last name? 

Lena Mae:     Burns.

JD:      Burns. 

Lena Mae:     And then later, we migrated down here.

JD:      Ok, so y’all went from up there where Miss Myrtle Burns lives and y’all came down on this side?  On, on, on this side of the levee?  On this side of the levee 

Lena Mae:     Yeah, right up the channel, up the Atchafalaya River. Yeah, they put they camp on the bank……On Goat Island. Right as you go into the Cut?  Right on that side, there.  That’s where they camp, they house, was.  On the bank. 

JD:      Ok, and where was y’all’s house at that time?

Lena Mae:     We was on this side [closer to the levee], on the bank.

JD:      Ok, then that leads me to ask you when did y’all come over here?  Yall were….last I heard from you y’all were livin on Blaise’s Canal, now y’all moved over here…why?

Lena Mae:     We moved on this side and we tied up…it was a sandbar, we didn’t move at the canal [Myon’s].  We stayed on the sandbar.  Stayed there for a while, Daddy was fishin.  And we decided to move back across the lake [Blaise’s Canal].

JD:      Why, do you know why?

Lena Mae:     I don’t know why.  But we moved back.  We stayed there a while, and then Daddy wasn’t satisfied…so he say we gone move back, across the lake.  We hooked on and we moved back on this side.  Us and Grandma. 

JD:      You moved back…

Lena Mae:     We moved back to...over here.  We tied up in the Canal, right in the end of the Canal.

JD:      So, your early part of your life ….do you remember?  It was on Blaise’s Canal?  Is that what you remember? Is that what you remember?  That’s where you were born…When you were born, that’s where y’all lived, on Blaise’s Canal? 

Lena Mae:     That’s where we lived, but I was born in Morgan City.

JD:      Yeah, you were born in Morgan City but the family lived…you went back to live on Blaise’s Canal.  Then y’all went from Blaise’s Canal over here, to this side, for a while and then back to Blaise’s Canal, and then back here again.  You remember anything at all about what years those, those were, when y’all moved first?   If you can remember when y’all moved from there [to] here?  How old you were? 

Lena Mae:     The first time we moved…when we moved on the sandbar I was about 12 years old. 

JD:      You were about 12, now if you don’t mind my asking,  what year were you born?  That way I can calculate….

Lena Mae:     I was born 1929. 

JD:      You were born in 1929, OK you see I can figure that then as to when the move took place.

Edward:        That be ’41. 

JD:      OK. 

Lena Mae:     So, we moved on the sandbar, I was about 12 years old when we moved there.  Like I say, we went back…then I was 14 years old when we come back [to Myette Pt.]. 

JD:      So y’all stayed over there two years…two seasons, if you want to call it….and came back here on this side.

Lena Mae:     Came back over here, and then we stayed. 

JD:      Now this time y’all came  inside the canal [Myon’s canal]?

Lena Mae:     Yeah, tied up right at the end of the canal. 

JD:      Was y’all the only boat that did that at that time?  That did that at that time, moved to the canal?

Lena Mae:     No, us and grandma and them.  It was us, grandma, Jesse …

JD:      Jesse?

Lena Mae:     Jesse Daigle. 

JD:      Jesse Daigle, that’s Jesse…..that’s Ida’s husband?

Lena Mae:     Yeah, we all….and Nig Verret, that was Tootsie’s sister…

JD:      Nick?

Lena Mae:           Nig, called him Nig, I don’t know what h real name 

Edward:        Name was Wilson.

JD:      Wilson?  Wilson Verret?

Lena Mae:     Anyhow, we all moved on this side….tied up in the canal. 

JD:      So, alright, that’s another thing I need to find out.  You say that y’all moved, but how many boats were involved ….I know you just said it, but let’s say that again, if you can.  Uh, how many boats….how many boats were, uh, were involved in that move you talking about when you were, like, 12 years old and y’all came over here ….how many boats y’all think that was who did that?

Lena Mae:     Campboats...you mean?

JD:      Uhunh, yeah. 

Lena Mae:     Just two.

JD:      Just two.  Just y’all and your…

Lena Mae:     And my grandma..

JD:      And your grandma and grandpa…that was that was Blaise Sauce [actually, it was just her grandmother, Rosalee.  Her grandfather Blaise was dead by then].  OK, now so that’s just two of y’all over here on this side…and y’all moved back over there…still just two boats?

Lena Mae:     [nods yes]

JD:      So, those are the two boats that traveled together, then. 

Lena Mae:     Yeah. 

JD:      Alright, y’all stayed together two years.   In that time some other boats joined y’all, is that what you sayin? 

Lena Mae:     We come back, and some other boats joined us….Jesse Daigle…

JD:      Jesse Daigle joined y’all….

Lena Mae:     Nig Verret, my grandma, and us, that’s four families…

JD:      Four families…

Lena Mae:     That moved back…

JD:      that moved back..

Lena Mae:     that moved back, over here.  And Lester was already livin over here. 

JD:      Lester? 

Lena Mae:     Couvillier.

JD:      Lester Couvillier.

Edward:        My brother. 

JD:      Your brother…Edward’s brother. 

Lena Mae:     He was already on this side, him.  So, we tied up…he was tied up on the upper side the canal, we tied up on the lower side. 

JD:      So it ended up at the canal….when y’all got here, there was five boats then.  The four of y’all, and Lester Couvillier was already here.  So that’s when…and how…you say when y’all…you were 14 when y’all moved back, here.  So, from the time you were 14 on, the, the Bailey’s lived in Myon’s Canal on this side of the river. 

Lena Mae:     On this side.

JD:      On this side of the lake.  Ok, see, that’s fillin in a lot of, a lot of holes for me.  A lot of that stuff I didn’t know …cause I want to know about …as much as I can.  Now, Edward, when did y’all come into that story as far as moving the boat…moving over here to this side?  Yall were livin… when all this was going on with Lena Mae… y’all were still living on Keelboat Pass?

Edward:        Must a been about 1946, ’47, when we moved here. 

Lena Mae:     Uh, y’all moved here…y’all tied up by them cypress there right at the end of the canal.  That’s where y’all….they had a hole there, like.  Towed they camp in that hole…we was over here…grandma’s camp, then ours.  [showing arrangement in canal].

JD:      OK.

Lena Mae:     And, that’s when Tootsie and Nig first separated.

Edward:        That was, uh, in the middle 40’s, somewheres around there.

Lena Mae:     You was about, what? 

JD:      The middle 40’s when you…

Lena Mae:     Musta been about 18 years old.

Edward:        Momma, I was 18, 20 when we got married. 

Lena Mae:     You was 19 when we got married. 

Edward:        Whatever, 18…..

JD:      OK.

Lena Mae:     So, musta been about 18.

JD:      So, y’all had been over here just a lil while before you got married?

Edward:        Wasn’t too long.

Lena Mae:     Wasn’t too long.

JD:      OK.

Edward:        We …..we really didn’t get married, we jumped…broomstick.

JD:      [to Lena Mae]  Did y’all jump the broomstick?  Surely.  Did y’all really?!

Lena Mae:     Well, I guess not!!  …[you should know]...better than that!

JD:      Well, I didn’t know!  I didn’t know, I mean, if he tells me, you see [laughs].  You gotta keep it straight here.  Uh.

Lena Mae:     We got married in 1947.

JD:      OK, so you got married in 1947, and everybody, by that time, everybody was livin on Myon’s Canal

Lena Mae:     Right, at the end of the canal.

JD:      And, uh, when y’all got married how many more boats had come in there.  We talking about five boats now, right?  Five boats, your brother, well more than that…your brother [Edward], four boats from y’all [Lena Mae] and y’all.

Edward:        I had two brothers at that time.  Abner was there.

Lena Mae:     By the time we got married, …

JD:      Abner Couvillier?

Edward:        And Dan, Dan and them was there…

Lena Mae:     By the time we got married, it was his momma and daddy… when we got married they had done pulled they camp at the levee.  We had done moved in the back [to the levee end of the canal].

JD:      But, to the back end of the canal.  To the levee end of the canal.

Lena Mae:     Right.  Right there where the cut goes by the levee there where that ramp’s at? 

JD:      Yeah.

Lena Mae:     Momma’s camp was tied up here, grandma’s was there, Nig Verret was there, Jesse Daigle [she’s showing one right after the other], Tete and Dan…moved in,

JD:      They had their nose up to the levee?  Is that how they did it? 

Edward:        Naw, they was along that lil levee….

Lena Mae:     They was along…in the bayou, wasn’t along the big levee. 

Edward:        The lil levee at the boat landing, the old boat landing…

Lena Mae:     Let’s see who else, uh, somebody else, let’s see it was us, grandma, Nig, Jesse…Yank and Bootsie, by then they were married.  They were livin in a campboat.

JD:      Who’s that?  What’s their names?

Lena Mae:     Yank and Bootsie.

JD:      Bootsie who? 

Lena Mae:     Millet.

JD:      Yank and Bootsie Millet.  Yank is her, her name?

Lena Mae:     Yeah.  Well, Ophelia.

JD:      Ophelia?

Lena Mae:     Yeah. 

JD:      OK.

Lena Mae:     And, there was a bunch…Abner, had done moved, over here, and Liza…there was a bunch.

JD:      So, if you could guess, uh…

Lena Mae:     Jean Smith moved here.

Edward:        Joe Sauce.

Lena Mae:     Joe Sauce.

JD:      Who’s Joe Sauce?

Lena Mae:     Edward’s sister.

Edward:        My brother, uh, my sister’s husband.  

Lena Mae:     Oh, there was campboats tied up on both sides the canal, that lil canal there. 

JD:      If you could guess, how many would you say there were?

Edward:        Aw, there was ten or twelve.

JD:      Ten or twelve.

Lena Mae:     When we got married….

JD:      That’s about 1946, ‘47, you talking about.

Lena Mae:     We stayed in a lil camp, I guess about…I’d say about six foot wide, and maybe 15, …12-15 foot long.  And they had logs on each side of t to hold it …

JD:      Cypress logs?  When y’all got married?’’

Edward:        Them old cottonwood logs. 

JD:      Cottonwood?  Floats higher?

Lena Mae:     Not cypress, that’s cottonwood.  So, we lived in that for, I guess a year. 

JD:      Two rooms?

Lena Mae:     No rooms!  Just one…

JD:      One room. 

Lena Mae:     One.  I couldn’t even put a big bed in there.  I had to put a twin bed for us to sleep in.  My stove was at the foot of the bed.  And I didn’t have no table, I didn’t have no room to put a table.  And we lived in that.  One morning we got up and I stepped in water about that deep.  My camp had sunk. 

JD:      Ohh, the logs sunk?!

Lena Mae:     Somethin sunk!  [laughs].  So, we got it bailed out, we had to watch because if some people would come we had to talk to some of em on the bank cause they couldn’t get on  the camp cause we’d a sunk.  

JD:      You’d sink more.

Lena Mae:     So, uh, by then well I got pregnant for Justin.  No, I didn’t either…I believe, yeah, I got pregnant for Justin, and Edward started building us a campboat cabin on the bank.  Right there in the bend where that ramp comes down, and the levee do that [curves].  Build that right there.  A campboat cabin, three bedroom, I believe it had.

JD:      On what?  Was it built on..

Lena Mae:     He had build it on the bank…we was supposed to put it on a barge. 

JD:      OK.

Lena Mae:     We didn’t. 

Edward:        Never did put it on a barge.

Lena Mae:     Never did put it on a barge.

JD:      Where was the house built, where did y’all build it?

Edward:        Right on the edge of the levee, by the old boat landing over there.

Lena Mae:     Right there.

JD:      Right on the levee?

Edward:        On the outside the levee.

JD:      As the levee comes down….On the outside, you talking about…across the levee?

Lena Mae:     You know where that old ramp…

Edward:        Yeah, on the outside…

JD:      Where I met y’all where y’all lived…on the outside, that’s where you built it? 

Lena Mae:     Jim, that old ramp come down? 

JD:      Yeah, it’s still there now.

Lena Mae:     And you got the levee…

Edward:        Right there.

Lena Mae:     Well, right there.  The ramp come down, we built the camp right there. 

JD:      Where Myon was livin, and where y’all were livin.

Lena Mae:     Daddy [Myon] was livin in the canal, on the levee side of the canal.

JD:      On the lake side. 

Lena Mae:     And we was livin along the big levee. 

JD:      OK.

Lena Mae:     And, uh, we built that and Justin’s born there. 

JD:      OK, on the bank. 

Lena Mae:     that’s where Justin was born, in there. 

JD:            w, y’all were fishin at the time. 

Lena Mae:     Yeah.

JD:      What you did?  You leave your boat on the other side the levee?  Where everybody was tied up?

Lena Mae:     Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

JD:      Were y’all the only house on this side the levee?  On the outside?

[there is a big confusion here.  I thought they were saying they moved over the levee, and they didn’t.  The little house they built was on the lake side.  A lot of what follows for a while is due to my misunderstanding.]

Edward:        Aw, yeah, the only ones that…

Lena Mae:     Yeah, the only ones on the bank at the time.

JD:      So, when Justin was born, y’all were the only house on the outside the levee.

Lena Mae:     Yeah, on the bank.

Edward:        We was the only house on the bank, but Myon and them was livin over there in a campboat. 

JD:      And so were a lot of other people?

Edward:        Yeah.  Right. 

JD:      You’re sayin eight or ten other campboats were livin…so by that time the community was pretty well settled, I mean what families were gone be there and where they were gone stay, they never moved again.  Yall never moved again.  

Edward:        Them people started pulling their campboats over the levee, you see.

Lena Mae:     We moved from the back side….

JD:      OK, now when did that happen?  People started to…

Lena Mae:     Moved from the back side, to this side the levee.

JD:      Yeah. 

Lena Mae:     Cause Larry was born on this side the levee.  You remember where Lester had his house? 

Edward:        Was about 1949.

Lena Mae:     You should remember.  Where the church was at?

JD:      Where the church was!  Yeah.

Lena Mae:     A lil past the church.  Put my campboat there.  My cabin.

JD:      Your cabin. 

Lena Mae:     We put it there.  We lived there.  Larry was born there.  Then from there, I didn’t like it.  I was too much by myself back there.  So, Edward decided to pull it