Atchafalaya Basin People: Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 09

DATE: 1989

INTERVIEWER: Jim Delahoussaye

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

COOPERATORS: Myon Bailey, Agnes Bailey

[Eating a noon meal] [Talk About why I want to tape this stuff]

JD: …..that yall know about. And, uh, the main reason I want to do that is there’s a lot of stuff that yall know that nobody knows anymore. Nobody is trying to remember anymore. And one of these days, if I ever get to it, I would like to be able to put all that down in one place.

Agnes: You gone write a book?

JD: Well, it may be. It may be. But I figure I come over here and we talk, and I forget half of what I hear. So I figured while I’m here, why not just get it on tape, just while we’re talking, and uh, if I can use it, good, if I don’t, well, I don’t, but at least that way I won’t forget it all.

Sitting at the table, passing food around, eating and talking]

JD: You want some hot sauce Myon?

Myon: Yeah, I guess so Jim.

JD: White beans, boy that’s nice.

Agnes: Good ole white beans Jim. Myon and his onions, him.

JD: You like raw onions Myon?

Myon: Mmmhm. They go with beans.

Agnes: I’m hungry today.

JD: You hungry today?

Agnes: Yeah. Never used to be hungry.

Myon: ……………..squirrels.

JD: Boy, that’s special. I didn’t expect squirrel!

Agnes: They might have one in there kind of tough.

more sounds of passing food around and utensils on plates]

JD: So, Frank [Gondolfo] doesn’t hunt squirrels anymore, eh? Or he’s not bringing….

Myon: Yeah, he hunts.

Agnes: He hunts all day, he’s been givin em away.

JD: Where’s he been getting the squirrels?

Agnes: Across the bayou there, Pearly [Frank’s mother] told me.

Myon: He ain’t been bring me none, but that don’t matter though. When he bring me some I give him shells. I buy him some shells.

JD: He hunt with a shotgun?

Myon: Umhm.

JD: Twelve gage?

Myon: I believe he got a 20 gauge that Putt [Couvillier] lend him. He had a 12 gauge pump, sold it to Putt last year. [after that] He didn’t have no gun, I believe Putt let him have his 20 gauge, this year.

JD: Boy, that squirrel is good Agnes!

Agnes: Yeah it’s good. Been cookin it a long time to get it tender.

JD: You got some ice in the freezer?

Agnes: Yeah, umhm.

Myon: Overloaded my plate today.

JD: Who brought you some roses? [vase on the counter top in the kitchen]

Myon: Alberta [one of the daughters], She come there with that during the week, and they was so pretty!

Myon: What?

Agnes: [to Myon] Alberta brought me them roses.

Myon: You don’t like milk?

JD: Uh?

Myon: You don’t like milk?

JD: Uhhah [yes]. Yeah I do, I like ice in it though.

Myon: Yeah? Edward too got to have ice [Edward Couvillier].

JD: Yall don’t want some ice?

Myon: Not me.

Agnes: I like water just as good, me.

JD: Well, I’ll tell you what I would like to do, if yall don’t mind, is, uh, I would really like to hear the story about your family. We could start with one of you, and, if you could start as far back as you can remember in your family. And I imagine that’s your grandparents, you both remember your grandparents?

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: Did both of you have all four grandparents?

Agnes/Myon: Yeah.

JD: Yall did?

Agnes: Yeah, they was all livin.

JD: Would you mind one of you starting? I don’t care, but just start with the names of your grandparents on both sides and then where they lived, where they came from….

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

JD: Your grandmother came from Spain?

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

JD: What was your grandmother’s name? Came from Spain.

Agnes: Ophelia.

JD: Her last name?

Agnes: Simoneaux.

JD: Simoneaux from France? But that must have been her married name? [I was mistaken]

Agnes: She was from Spain!

JD: Spain, I’m sorry. But that must have been her married name - Simoneaux is French.

Agnes: Uhuh.

JD: No? No kidding!

Agnes: And he [her grandfather] come from France.

JD: Opelia Simoneaux, and she was from Spain [surprised at the name]. And he was….?

Agnes: He was from France ….Laurent [found out later this is spelled Larnce] Sauce.

JD: Laurent Sauce.

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: And where did they move when they came here?

Agnes: They moved to Lake Verret. They had, they bought a farm. They make they own food. They raised hogs and cattle.

JD: You said this was on your mother’s side?

Agnes: Uhuh.

JD: On your daddy’s side.

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: Did they ever say, did anybody ever say where they got the money from to buy a farm when they got here? I say that because a lot of people who came didn’t have that kind of money.

Agnes: Well, he’s parents was rich. My grandpa’s family, was a rich family. And I guess when they come over here, they uh, they had enough money.

JD: Did you every hear em say if he was an only child? Or whether there was a lot of, whether he had brothers and sisters?

Agnes: I think they had one brother, if I can remember right. And that’s all they had. I believe two brothers came.

JD: Was he the oldest?

Agnes: I believe so, I believe he was the oldest.

JD: That could be why he got the money, lot of times everything went to the oldest son.

Agnes: Yeah.

JD: Nothin, I mean nothing went to anybody else [laughs].

Agnes: But they was two, they was two.

JD: Did you know him, was he alive? When you were….?

Agnes: Yeah.

JD: What did he look like Agnes?

Agnes: He was a redhead fella.

JD: Redhead!

Agnes: Fair.

Myon: Tall.

Agnes: Tall guy. Yeah.

Myon: She was short and black [dark complected].

JD: She was Spanish, she was short and black?

Agnes: Real dark. My daddy was dark [Blaise Sauce]

Myon: She used to smoke a pipe.

JD: Who did?

Myon: Her.

JD: Her grandmother?

Agnes: A little bitty pipe. Yeah.

JD: What did they do for tobacco?

Agnes: They had that, uh, Virginia Extry they’d buy.

Myon: ………tobacco over here.

JD: They ever tell you how old they were when they came over here? From Spain and France?

Agnes: No, but they raised all they family back over here. They had 14 kids.

JD: 14 kids!

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: And one of em was your Daddy.

Agnes: Yeah, one of em was Daddy. He was the oldest.

JD: What happened to all the other kids, your uncles and aunts?

Agnes: Some of em died [long ago], they got one left. They got one left, aunt, in that family.

JD: Probly one of the youngest, huh?

Agnes: Umhm. The youngest one, she was my age.

JD: Boy that squirrel is good, eh?

Agnes: [something about JD finishing the squirrel in the pot]

JD: No, you go ahead, Myon you ……

Myon: No, I got enough. I got all I want right here.

JD: [to Agnes] You said you were hungry, you eat.

Agnes: I got enough.

JD: Myon said you weren’t eatin.

Myon: I serve my plate one time, Jim, and that’s it.

JD: You do that on purpose?

Myon: Yeah. Got to, my clothes getting too small.

JD: [to Agnes] You say your grandfather came over here and they farmed, they bought a farm, eh?

Agnes: Yeah.

JD: Did they farm anything to sell?

Agnes: I don’t remember if they sell or not, Jim.

JD: I mean it wasn’t like a cane farm or rice farm or anything like that?

Myon: No.

JD: [they had] all the animals and everything like that?

Myon: Yeah.

Agnes: Yeah, all the animals, and they had that big old garden farm.

Myon: Boy its pretty, everything they eat.

JD: Cows and mules….

Agnes: Yeah. That’s how they worked they farm.

JD: So it was mostly to live, they grew on the farm what they needed to live.

Myon: Yeah.

JD: Not too much, what you call, to sell?

Myon: No.

JD: They must have had some way to make a little money, because you have to buy some things. You have to buy flour….

Myon: Yeah, they had fish and everything else, like we got now. They live right on the lake, Lake Verret.

Agnes: Right on the lake.

JD: Right on the lake.

Agnes: I remember that place […?…] livin.

JD: You liked it?

Agnes: Yeah, in the middle of the front yard they had a, a big hole, with water in it. It was so pretty.

JD: Like a pond?

Agnes: Yeah, flowers planted.

Myon: They used to have a road goes from Belle River goes….

Agnes: Yeah, to Pierre Part and all…..

Myon: That lake, where they was livin, an all.

JD: The road’s not there anymore?

Myon: I dunno, Jim, it’s many years [since] I been around there.

Agnes: I think the road is still there.

Myon: I guess it is.

JD: They ever told you any stories about how they met?

Agnes: Uhuh. I don’t know, I don’t know if they came over yah …. They come here separate I believe. Then they met. Over here. I believe my grandpa come on one of them ships, you know them big ole ships. How he got over here.

JD: What was your grandmothers maiden name?

Agnes: On my daddy’s side?

JD: Well, yeah.

Agnes: Well, she was a Simoneaux.

JD: That’s right, you said that , Ophelia Simoneaux.

Agnes: And when they came over here, my grandpa sent got his momma. She came over here too.

JD: She did?

Agnes: Umhm. Lena Mae [Agnes’ daughter] had seven grandmas when she’s born.

JD: What??? Seven?

Agnes: Seven grandmas livin. My great grandmas was livin, and my grandmas.

JD: Cawww! Do you remember her at all, your great grandmother?

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: You do? What was she like?

Agnes: She look-ted kind of like he did. She was kind of blond, fair, wore black dress all the time.

JD: Black dress!

Agnes: She died after Lena Mae was born.

JD: Ga lee. They lived together on Lake Verret?

Agnes: Yeah. After Lena Mae was born, uh, they move in Morgan City […..when they got old, grandparents now, I think]. You see him, and her both, after they family was raised, well they took on them pullboats and all, cookin.

JD: They did? Now what’s a pullboat. You mean like tugs?

Agnes: No, they’d pull timber out. Out of the woods and uh …..

JD: They’d cook for a crew?

Agnes: Yeah.

Myon: And they had quarterboats.

Agnes: And that’s what they’d do, they’d cook.

Myon: That’s in my time, Jim, them pullboats. I used to work on em.

JD: You did too?

Agnes: They’d work on them pullboats, on them big ole boats way off, and work. Talk about a cook, he was one!

JD: He was, hunh?

Agnes: Umhm.

Myon: Yeah Jim, I used to work on them pullboats pullin timber, I used to work in the swamps too. The pullboat was what, eh……They’d cut roads [clearings thru the swamp to make a trail to the canal where the “pullboat” was] , put a shave [big pulley] back there and that pullboat was in the bayou, run cables back there to that shave. And you pass by them logs, you had lugs, you call. I used to put em in. When that buckle come around, that pullboat come around there with that buckle, you had whistles back there – three whistle, two whistle, depend what you want. Stop it [was] two whistle, you want him to go was three whistle. Stop and put that buckle in that ring there, that lug, on that log, blow three whistle – go ahead.

JD: So the cable made a big circle, then, it went from the pullboat to a pulley, on a big tree, I guess.

Myon: To a pulley, a shave, we call it a shave. It’s a pulley.

JD: And then it would come around.

Myon: Yeah, right.

JD: And then you had ways on the cable to attach the logs to ….when you’re ready to pull em out. How did you get em from where you cut em down to the pullroad?

Myon: When you throw em, cut em down, you had to throw em toward the road, you see. They had roads different parts apart, but you always threw your timber to head to the road. The top to the road, then you cut [cut the top off?] em, and then you sharpen it. You had to sharpen it, like that. Then you take a auger, a two inch auger, bore a hole in it – two holes. And you take that lug, you come there you put that lug in there and hook it on that cable. And that would take em out.

JD: Well there must have been a lot of those roads.

Myon: Oh yeah! Oh yeah. Everywhere they cut timber they cut them roads. You might run in to some a them pullboat roads [even now].

JD: Still? Out there?

Myon: Still, yeah, in that swamp. Correct. That’s what it was [the logging].

JD: Can I have some of that jelly?

Myon: Yeah, I worked a long time on them things.

JD: In the swamp?

Myon: And on the pullboat.

JD: That’s a whole story in itself I want you to tell me about. I want you to talk to me about , the things you did in the lumber industry. It’s something I want to get, I want to spend some time just on that.

JD: [to Agnes] How about your other pair of grandparents, what about them?

Agnes: They was Irish.

JD: This would be your mother’s parents. What were their names?

Agnes: Umhm. They was Irish. My grandpa was Clairborne Mayon, and her, I dunno, I believe she was a Mason.

Myon: I don remember her too much.

Agnes: She was a Mason, her.

Myon: I think so, yeah, she was.

JD: A Mason?

Agnes: Fanny Mae Mason.

JD: Fanny Mae Mason…And they were both Irish?

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: They came from Ireland, as far as you know?

Agnes: As far as I know, they come from Ireland. And when they settled they settled in [on] Bayou Long, you know where Bayou Long’s at?

JD: Bayou Long? Just north of Morgan City?

Myon: Umhm.

Agnes: They settled there, and raised they family there.

JD: Now, how did they make a living? What did they do?

Agnes: I don’t know, I don’t know Jim. I know my momma told me when they were short of something they had a big old skiff, and when they’d get short a month, like us, like us every month I guess [short on money?], couldn’t afford grocery shoppin, well, he’d get in that skiff and pull [oars] to Morgan City .

JD: He’d pull that skiff by hand?

Myon: Double row of oars. [confirmed this with Edward C., they did have big skiffs with four oars]

JD: Double row?

Agnes: Push that skiff to Morgan City and come back with a load of – everything. But I don’t remember what they did for a livin.

JD: What kind of place did they live in?

Agnes: They lived in a big place, double storied house. And in 1912 the water took they house. The year I was born. And the water took they house, they had to live in the loft.

JD: All the way at the top?

Agnes: Umhm.

JD: But they saved the house?

Agnes: Yeah. They saved they house.

JD: What did they look like?

Agnes: They was fair complected. He was a short guy. A little bit a man.

Myon: Small man.

JD: Sounds like those people from Pierre Part. They all short, short, short.

Myon: Tell you one thing, ….could bite you, [he] could get to you, that was it. Treated for snakebite.

JD: How did he treat, Myon?

Myon: With prayers!

JD: Prayers?

Myon: Yes sir.

JD: So he was a treater.

Myon: AWWW yeah! A snake bite you on the toe over there, and the swellin up here, he surround that with his fingers, that swellin ain’t comin up [any further].

JD: You watched him do this?

Myon: AW yeah, I brought some customer there. [looks at Agnes] it was Joe or Nookie? Nookie, Nookie Wiggins. [recalls] He drowned a few years back, back there. He jumped on a pile of slabs, you know them slabs pullboats, sawmills, they’d throw that – you could find some piles all along the bayou sometimes. They bring that and throw that there – junk. was floatin [working the timber] in Cross Bayou, and uh, and he jumped on that pile of slabs and one of them copperhead moccasins bit him on the big toe. Man you could see that thing swellin. I jump in my boat, had eight horse.

JD: Eighty horsepower?

Myon: Eight horsepower, uh uh, Lockwood Ash [sp?]. And I jump in my boat, it was runnin pretty good, I run him there. At the end of Lil Pigeon, that’s where he was livin. And I guarantee you the swellin was way up here already.

JD: Up to his knee?

Myon: Pretnear to his knee, yeah. But he stopped it right there.

JD: No kidding. This is where this old man was living, up at uh, mouth of Bayou Pigeon?

Myon: Yeah. Lil Pigeon.

Agnes: Yeah.

Myon: One treatment! And he begged me, “You ought to learn that treatment!” He explained me everything how it was, but [didn’t] keep it up. I could of! But I didn’t.

JD: You still remember it?

Myon: No. He say “I ain’t gon be here all the time”. He was getting pretty old then. “My days gettin short”. Somebody should a learn. An I guarantee you it’s first class. I seen Bill Aucoin , his boys draggin crawfish and he got bit in the water by somthin. He don’t know what. I mean he was swellin. Bring him to Dr. [?], Dr. in Morgan City. [sounds like the Dr. couldn’t help]. Somebody told him about that old man, that old man…..When he found him he was at his daughter in Napoleonville. Bill Aucoin went and found him there, and when he treated, that was it. All over.

JD: Stopped it, hunh?

Myon: Aw yeah. He was first…I can tell you that. You couldn’t beat it.

Agnes: Sun pain? He’d treat you for sun pain.

JD: What’s sun pain? I don’t understand that.

Agnes: You ever get sun stroke?

JD: I’ve never had that.

Agnes: Get a high, high fever.

JD: Is that what it is, like sun stroke?

Myon: Yeah. Ever you get it, you gon know what it is. Give you chills ….

Agnes: Give you chills and fever and hurt all over…

Myon: I was in Morgan City one time, I was in the bay out there, and I caught it. Come in and look him up, come there, he treat me, that was it.

JD: Did he use a different treatment from the snakebite? A different type of treatment?

Myon: Oh yeah! Well Nine [Sauce] can treat for that. Nine can treat for blood too. Use the Bible.

Agnes: Yeah.

Myon: She’s good for blood….

JD: Blood problems? Or what?

Agnes: When you cut yourself and you bleeding, yeah, stop the bleeding.

JD: She can do that?

Myon: You just call her and let her know. She can stop it. And she’s good on sun pain too.

Agnes: Yeah, she learned from your momma though.

Myon: Yeah, Momma’s pretty good, good like that.

JD: Where did your grandfather learn to treat the snakebite and sun pain and all ……

Myon: I don’t know.

JD: He never talked About where he learned from?

Myon: Never did.

JD: That was your grandfather [Agnes’]?

Myon: Her grandfather, yeah.

JD: On your daddy’s side.

Myon: Claiborne Mayon. Yeah. I guarantee you, he was a crack shot [very good at healing].

JD: And they were Irish!

Myon: He was a crack shot on that.

JD: Did they ever talk at all, did your grandparents ever talk at all about life back in Europe? Before they came here?

Myon: No.

Agnes: My grandma used to tell us about my grandpa, you know, how rich they was. That they’d wear a piece of clothes one time, they didn’t wear it no more. But after they left over there and came over here they had to change their way of livin.

JD: Did they ever talk at all about why they came here? From there? What caused them to come over here?

Agnes: No, they never did.

Myon: Never did question about that. Why we didn’t, I dunno.

JD: Well, you don’t think of questions like this until you’re interested in knowing, you know?

Agnes: I guess it’s like us Jim, you see my grandma and grandpa on my daddy’s side, they raised they family in Lake Verret , ok. Later on they got a campboat , well they moved, they moved up the lake wit us. They stayed up the lake [around Bayou Pigeon region], well they died up the lake wit us.

JD: You talking about….

Agnes: My grandma and grampa on my daddy’s side.

Myon: Claiborne…

Agnes: But, she used to tell us that. That, that family didn’t even wash they clothes, [they would] wear it and just throw it away. She say they had so much money, well it didn’t matter.

JD: And these were the ones that came from, uh, from uh….

Agnes: From Spain, and one from France.

JD: But which one was the rich one? From France?

Myon: Yeah.

JD: Well you see that probly about the same time my great grandparents came over here from France. Probly about the same thing. And probly for the same reason, they were gonna get their heads chopped off in France.

Agnes: Probly, yeah.

JD: Because that was the time of the French Revolution. And everybody who had money or fine clothes, they were….

Agnes: I guess that why left from over there. I don’t know why they left, but I guess that’s why.

JD: No telling, but if they were rich, that’s probly a good reason. Those people didn’t ask any questions, if you were rich they just chopped your head off.

JD: So they bought a houseboat and yall had a houseboat.

Agnes: Yeah, one [houseboat] like us, they all left Lake Verret over here, and about 10 – 12 years ago they [oil people, etc] started looking up on the land and they had oil wells and everything, but we didn’t get nothing. They had, people had bought if for taxes.

JD: So, when they got on a houseboat they just left the land, the property there they had….

Myon: It was taken for taxes. Somebody bought it for the taxes. You go so many years, they can sell em for the taxes.

JD: A lot of land was bought like that around here. People didn’t care, or couldn’t pay the taxes on it, or didn’t see any reason ….

Agnes: Didn’t see any reason…

Myon: …..19….., Fourmile Bayou, a lawyer come and see me one time, about taxes, said nobody ain’t payin taxes. Say if yall don’t pay the taxes …[ain’t gone be yours ? ] So I paid the taxes that year, and that’s it, I didn’t pay it no more.

JD: When was that Myon?

Myon: Years ago, when we first moved at Myette Pt. On the bank [over the levee and off of the houseboats].

Agnes: Yeah.

Myon: I never did pay it no more, and it was only three dollars and ninety cents. A year.

JD: Three dollars and ninety cents a year????

Myon: All it was.

Agnes: It went for the taxes.

Myon: T-Man Bailey bought it for the taxes. On Fourmile Bayou. Where T-Man Bailey’s at there, that’s where was ours.

JD: How much property was involved?

Myon: Nineteen acres. It’s a oil company come and see me. They want to lease it.

JD: They had to have somebody that had title to it before they could lease it.

Myon: Oh yeah [sighs], people do things in them times, they didn’t worry bout land back then….

Agnes: You can buy land just from a handshake. That land was yours.

JD: But people respected that.

Agnes: Yeah.

JD: Myon, do you have any, do you remember your grandparents?

Myon: Yeah.

JD: They were all still living when you were born? All four of em?

Myon: Yeah.

JD: Did you have any great grandparents [living then]?

Myon: That I can’t remember.

Agnes: You see, he’s granma come from Spain too.

Myon: Yeah.

JD: Really?

Myon: Him and her both.

Agnes: Yeah.

JD: Both of your grandparents on which side?

Atchafalaya Basin People

Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 09

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