DATE: December
28, 1995
INTERVIEWER: Jim
Delahoussaye
LOCATIONeg: Myette Point,
St. Mary Parish
COOPERATORS: Cleo [Neg] Sauce
We'll start the tape now with a different session. I'm leaving home. This is the second of January, 1994. [1/2/1996]. I’m going to leave Sunset, I’m going to drive to Myette Point and see if I can talk to Neg Sauce, and maybe Ida also. But this will be the end of the Napolianville trip with EJ and Joseph and Edward and Lena Mae, Carolyn and myself, and Agnes
Neg: …taking
everything away from the fisherman.
JD: And also, the young people are not learning from the old people.
Neg: Umum.
JD: You know, you take like…like Joe, Joe is mostly shrimping.
Neg: Yeah.
JD: And then, his sons, they don’t seem to be learning line fishing, you know, not much line fishing. You know, in the same…Joe is mostly learning. So what I thought I would like to do is I would like to put down on paper everything I could find out about what y’all used to do, and how y’all did it. And it’s just in order to be able to, in the future, if they want to know about it, they can…they won’t do it, but at least they will hve some …they will be able to know about it.
Neg: Right.
JD: So, uh, that’s what I would like to talk to you about, if you don’t mind.
Neg: And, I don’t know, fisherman, they’d like to, a lot of em, I guess…can’t hardly make a living at it. The way the law is. Law is taking everything away from the fishereman. Gill nets, and all that…which is not right. I mean, not at all.
JD: [refers to the TV] You got something you want to watch on there, Neg?
Neg: I was watching, but I’ll turn it off.
JD: You could put it on “quiet”, if you want?
Neg: [turns the TV off]
JD: Well, one of the things I want to do…I want to describe the people that lived…live at Myette Point. And to do that I need to know how they got together. And who was on the houseboats, and what families there were…uh…I want to find out… I think I already know the people that moved across the levee, and then the people that moved here once the Corps of Engineers did what they did on the levee.
Neg: Yeah.
JD: I think I already have most of that…but there is still some information that I would like to get. When was your birthday, Neg?
Neg: January 27…it’s coming soon!...
JD: It’s coming soon, eh?
Neg: [laughs] 1924.
JD: 1924, eh? OK. Good. Very good. Uh, and your brothers and sisters…that was Agnes, Ida, Ophelia, Robert and Preston?
Neg: Yeah.
JD: OK. And Preston had a nickname. What was his nickname?
Neg: Monug.
JD: Monug. OK. Did Robert have a nickname?
Neg: Yeah. Tootsay.
JD: Tootsay [sp?]. Do you happen to remember who Robert marries? What his wife’s name was?
Neg: Yeah. It was…she was a Duval.
JD: You remember her first name?
Neg: Yeah. It was Gertrude.
JD: Gertrude Duval. Do you remember who Preston married?
Neg: He wasn’t married.
JD: Not married.
Neg: He died at 36 years old.
JD: He did? 36?! What did he die of?
Neg: Heart. He had a heart artsy.
JD: At 36?! Whistles. Boy, that’s young, huh?
Neg: Talk about! My daddy died at 42, I believe, 42, 43.
JD: Blaise? He died that young?
Neg: Aw yeah.
JD: I didn’t know that!
Neg: Shore did.
JD: Same thing?
Neg: Ah, no. I don’t thing nobody knows what he had. At that time, when he died, doctors wasn’t too smart…like they is…I don’t think anybody knows what he had. I don’t know, for sure.
JD: And
Myon brought him to New Orleans when he was sick, huh? And he died in New Orleans.
Neg: Dide in New Orleans.
JD: What did of symptoms did he have? Do you remember…how he was sick? Was it his heart, throwing up, or ….
Neg: No, he wasn’t throwing up. Just let himself go, as he was sick, you know. Never eat anything. I think what happened, he probably…something on his mind, you know, and he didn’t want to eat nothin.
JD: And he diedn’t eat, eh? And a young man like that?!
ND: And a young man! Yeah. I was 11 hears old when he died.
JD: Is sthat right? 11 years.
Neg: 11 years old.
JD: So, who’s the oldest of your brothers?
Neg: Preston.
JD: Preston was the oldest? And then after that?
Neg: I think it was Robert. I’m not sure on that no?
JD: That’s ok. So you were 11 years old? Is Ida younger than you?
Neg: Oh no, she’s much older than me!
JD: She is? Well, are you the youngest?
Neg: No, Yank’s the youngest.
JD: She…Ophelia, she was the youngest. 11 years old when Blaise died!
Neg: 11 years old.
JD: Well, that was kind of hard on you. How did you…?
Neg: [laughs] wasn’t too easy, Jim! And Yank was younger than me.
JD: So that left y’all with your mother, Rosalee.
Neg: Right.
JD: And how did…how did y’all make a living, when your daddy died, like that? How did y’all make a living?
Neg: Fish, and pick moss, and things like that.
JD: Well, who did you learn to fish from?
Neg: My brothers.
JD: Your brothers? Robert and Preston?
Neg: Oh yeah.
JD: They knew how?
Neg: Oh yah. They knew how.
JD: With lines?
Neg: Yeah.
JD: Did any of you ever fish with nets? Any of you or your brothers?
Neg: Yeah, oh yeah. My brothers caught a lot of fish in nets…Robert. Yeah, caught a lot of fish in nets. And lines.
JD: Hoop nets, just like we…
Neg: Oh yeah. Three and a half, four foot fronts.
JD: But you used lines, mostly? For yourself? And Robert too? He was a fisherman?
Neg: Oh yeah. Fish lines and nets…he didn’t fish too many nets. We mostly fished lines at that time. When I was coming up. They had nets, but we ain’t had none.
JD: And they were expensive, I guess, huh?
Neg: They wasn’t too expensive, but it was to make a dollar to buy one! …pounds of line to make on…and your hoops. Didn’t cost too much…probly 10, 12 dollars a piece…at that time. But not they cost you 100, 100 and some dollars a piece! The four foot. They expensive!
JD: Well, when you started learning to fish…to fish lines, how old were you when you started to Leart to fish lines?
Neg: I wasn’t old. 12, 14 years old. Messing around with lines, and different things.
JD: Yeah? And, what kind of boat did you use?
Neg: A push…a push boat.
JD: A push skiff?
Neg: Messing around with lines and different thing.
JD: You were huh? What kind of boat did you use?
Neg: A push…a push boat…a skiff. And I had bought me a lil 21/2 Lockwood, but that was a pretty good while after.
JD: You were older, huh?
Neg: Aw yeah. We did a lot of pushing…a lot. We pushed from the anal over thete a Myette Point to…
JD: You pushed from Blaise’s Canal…?
Neg: We pushed from Blaise’s Canal to Myette Point.
JD: More than once?
Neg: Oh yeah, more than once. We pushed a whole week one time cause the batteries on the boat had died, and we used to use them lil drive tails…
JD: Them lil round ones?
Neg: Yeah. And uh…them batteries had went dead and we aint had no money to buy another set…
JD: Ahh…that was for the Lockwood?
Neg: Yeah. That push skiff? Had enough left [?] Laughs. We bought six batteries. We put em in the boat, four batteries now six, next morning we got up, and all four of the new batteries was dead again! So we had to push again! Talk about something! That we hard luck there, podnuh! [laughs]
JD: Yall had to push and run your lines? …till you got enough fish to buy some more batteries?
Neg: Buy some more batteries. And they didn’t cost mush either, but you “didn’t get much for nothing” them days.
JD: And y’all bought those batteries from where?
Neg: From the fish boat.
JD: Now, when your daddy died, y’all stayed living on the canal…on Blaises Canal?
Neg: Oh yeah.
JD: So, y’all were living with your mother? How many of y’all were still living with your mother when your daddy died?
Neg: We was all living with her.
JD: All of y’all?
Neg: Aw yeah. There was none married yet. … Not all, Agnes and Ida was married. The other two boys wasn’t married yet.
JD: So there was four of y’all, and your mother, living in a campboat?
Neg: Yeah.
JD: That still must be crowded when you living in a campboat, and I guess, Preston and Robert might have been pretty old, huh?
Neg: Yeah, they were pretty old.
JD: So, what was it like to fish lines in those days Neg? What was your oldest…if you can think back how it used to be when you first started running lines, how would you fish? If you…let me ask you this, if I could, let’s say that you…you started off today, back then, and you didn’t have nothin, and you would have to get yourself fixed up to run lines…and to do every thing…catch bait, run lines, get a boat…? What would you do? Tell me, if you can, tell me the story of how you would get started, back then, with nothing.
Neg: Well, you just start from hardly nothing, you know? You just get a few hooks, a few lines, and you start with that. And your bait, in then days, was mostly with shrimp. Put shrimp gush out like we always dis. And that’s what we did. Maybe get a few more…a few more hoods, line, something like that. And there you went.
JD: What kind of lines?
Neg: Cotton. Old cotton line. And we used to use 42.
JD: 42.
Neg: 27 for stageons.
JD: 27? That was thicker than 15, quite a bit thicker.
Neg: Oh yeah. 27 cotton line bigger.
JD: And y’all had to dip it?
Neg: Dip it, tar it…that pitch tar?
JD: Yall did that before it was ever used?
Neg: Oh yeah. It didn’t last but maybe two weeks after it was tarred.
JD: Even after it was tarred?
Neg: Oh yeah. Them stageon, we didn’t tar em every week, you had to put new stageons on em.
JD: You didn’t tar em? Why not, you think?
Neg: It worked better. You catch more fish on em. It was probably just a habit, because after we got the nylon we had the habit for years! [laughs]
JD: Yall tarred it anyway?
Neg: But the reason to tar the nylon…because it was so soft. It slipped and get all talked up and…talk about a mess! After we tarred it, it would make it stiff.
JD: And hooks? What kind of hooks and where dud you get…
Neg: A long time ago they had the yellow tag, they called.
JD: Yellow tag.
Neg: They didn’t last either. Maybe sometime you’d use em twice, that’s about it.
JD: The point would go bad, or what?
Neg: Aw yeah, they’d rust. The point would rust off.
JD: The point would rust off. !
Neg: That wasn’t an easy job…fishing! [laughs] It’s still not easy, but it’s better now than it was then. Like across that cut, there [a nearby canal], it get hung up or something, and you’d lose it all. You couldn’t fish in there!
JD: Why
not? What would happen?
Neg: You line get hung up, and then that cotton line, you couldn’t pull on that!
JD: It would break? Did fish bread your lines like that too…easily?
Neg: Oh yeah, every two or three weeks you had to make another set. Three or four days old, a fish would pop it.
JD: That must have discouraged people from doing things.
Neg: Talk about a job! Put more hooks and swivels on em.
JD: You would save your swivels?
Neg: Aw yeah. Them days the stuffs they would make it out of was good!
JD: So, how would you make a swivel?
Neg: We used to make em straight. Now …makes em double. We’d use a #14 wire.
JD: Galvanized wire.
Neg: Yeah.
JD: And a galvanized nail?
Neg: And a galvanized nail.
JD: You think they worked good, those swivels?
Neg: Oh yeah, they workted good. Real good.
JD: Better than nothing, huh?
Neg: They worked just as good at them. They worked just as good as them brass swivels they got today!
JD: Is that right? No kidding! How did y’all learn to make swivels like that, you think?
Neg: I guess them days it just…it just come as you went.
JD: When you were young, they were already making those nail, and wire swivels?
Neg: Yeah. My Daddy would make em.
JD: I wonder how that got started?
Neg: That’s what I’d like to know, where it got started, and when. I don’t know how they learned that but, I don’t know but I guess there’s a way. I learned as I went along.
JD: When y’all fished on the other side, when y’all lived in Blaze’s canal, what kind of lines did y’all set mostly?
Neg: Uh, my daddy used to fish a lot of bush lines. Them stumps. Them big goujons. A norwester, like today, that’s when you’d catch them goujons. Them bushlines with live perch.
JD: You’d catch those goujons on cold wings, weather like this?
Neg: Oh, that’s when they’d bite! Get a good norwester and shake the water.
JD: A good norwester! Shake the water? Make some waves!
Neg: Right. Them goujons come out, by that stump!
JD: Is that right! So they’d fish in the winter like that?
Neg: Aw yeah. Put that bushline …live bait.
JD: About a foot, foot and a half under the water. You put a swivel? No?
Neg: No, they didn’t use swivels then. Just a double stageon.
JD: Just a regular stageon, with no swivel. Galeee! Fishing in the winter!
Neg: Aw yeah. We always fish in the winter. We fish all through the year!
JD: So, you say your daddy fished bus bushlines a lot, did he fish bent lines at all?
Neg: Aw yeah. They’d fish bent lines, and stuff like that. Yeah.. They’s put them bushlines in them stumps. Catch some big fish…big goujons!
JD: How did you set it? Set it from the tree? Tie it on a cypress?
Neg: Drive poles. On a slant.
JD: On a slant and put those…put the line off of it.
Neg: Yeh.
JD: Those big goujons didn’t pull those poles up? And go away with em?
Neg: Oh on, uhuh! They couldn’t bull them poles up! We caught some goujons along that lakeshore, there!
JD: Across the lake? On the other side?
Neg: Yeah. Set up some bushlines…sometimes all the way to the…the other canal down there …Little Blue Poing.
JD: A hundred lines, sometimes? A hundred bushlines? [whistles]
Neg: Aw, sometimes yeah. They used to fish. They used to fish bushlines for catfish too, in them sandbars when the sand first started building, you had two, three foot of water, three, four foot of water? Drive poles in there and fish bushlines, two, 300 to the row!
JD: That was a lot of work too!
Neg: Yeah. They was hard to bait, especially when the wind was blowing, blow you into the line, in your poles, get hung up.
JD: What kind of boat did you use to fish those?
Neg: Our lil boats.
JD: You’d push?
Neg: Or those old Lockwoods, that’s all they had, or Detroit? Kelly? Two horse, three horse.
JD: Did you ever build a pushskiff?
Neg: Never did build a skiff.
JD: You built bateaus though.
Neg: I built bateaus.
JD: They must of gone out, after the motors cames out? The skiffs?
Neg: Oh no. Had a motor in the skiff. 16 foot skiff, put a motor in there. That’s what I had my 2.5 in, a 16 foot skiff.
JD: And you still had the oarlocks on the side?
Neg: No. I took that off.
JD: And what did you do if the batteries went bad?
Neg: I don’t know. [laughs]
JD: You couldn’t start them, those inboards, with a rope?
Neg: No, uhuh. They had a bog old flywheel, about that big…
JD: About 18 inches across? [whistles]
Neg: Yeah. That 2.5 had about a 14 inch flywheel. The 8 horse was bigger.
JD: And they had an electric starter on em?
Neg: Oh no. You give it a crank…
JD: You put a rope around the flywheel?
Neg: Aw no. You just take your flywheel…
JD: You pull it by hand?! Those big engines too?
Neg: Aw yeah. And them engines they used to have in the fishboat, used to call em Palmers. That thing had a flywheel like that…
JD: [whistles] 2 feet, or mere, across!
Neg: [describes how you had to start that big motor]
JD: So, you actually did that by hand?
[talking about starting a large outboard by pulling the starter rope]
JD: Did you have hears in em…?
Neg: The ones they used to use in the fishboats did.
JD Had a clutch, but the others, once you started em, you were gone…
Neg: Make sure you were turned abound and pointed down the canal! [laughs]
JD: Yall would catch shrimp, you say, in shrimp bushes? And y’all used boxes, too, those big box traps? For shrimp?
Neg: Aw yeah. Some people did. Boxes, put bait in there, the shrimp would go in there.
JD: Come up in the box, huh? Didn’t y’all used to dip shrimp in willow roots, too?
Neg: Aw yeah. Used to have a lot on this side.
JD: You would catch a few, or a lot like that?
Neg: Catch a lot. Catch em like that, handfuls.
JD: Double handfulls, in those willow roots?
Neg: Aw yeah.
JD: When the water was dirty?
Neg: In that Red River rise? Aw yeah!
JD: Do you remember how you set a bent line, when you first set a bent line, how you did it?
Neg: Oh yeah, I remember. Used to drive poles. With a mall. Had a mall about that long.
JD: About two feet long on a handle. Oak, or ash, or something like that.
Neg: I used oak. And drove your poles, and after you drive your poles, you put your lines. We used to twist em on top of the poles.
JD: Oh. You tied your main line on top of the pols, and then you tie your bridle afterwards. That way you didn’t have to have floats on your bridles, huh?! Oh, I see.
Neg: That was the best way to put it on. That way you could set your line like you want, you see? Slack like you want, tight like you want.
JD: When I first learned to fish with y’all, y’all were still talking about that, twenty years ago. Yall would set your lines on top of your poles. I believe Joe might have been doing that.
Neg: I believe so, cause [he saw some poles like that on the lake] Well, that’s all we know in them days, and then somebody come up with the stob.
JD: The stob, eh?
Neg: It’s a good thing, with all them sports [fisherman] they got out there right now.
JD: You must have been tired, using that mall.
Neg: Ask Joseph. I hit him on the head!
JD: I heard about that! What’s your side of that story? How did that happen.
Neg: I told him, I said Joseph, “Sit down on that seat there, and stay there” I’m gone be driving them poles, and I’m gone hit you over the head!” And that lil sucker snuck behind me. When I raised that thing…
JD: You hit him in the back?
Neg: I hit him on the head! We had to come back home. Thought I had killed him!
JD: Knocked him out?
Neg: Oh yeah.
JD: He was lying in the bottom of the boat?
Neg: It was a hard lick…and when he come up like that…[laughs]. I didn’t bring him back after that when I would go and drive poles! He got a good lick, I tell you!
JD: Well, things were dangerous!
Neg: Weighed 12 pounds, I guess.
[he talks about silting in the Basin]
JD: Does she [Marie, his daughter] fish now, by herself?
Neg: Yeah. She goes out there by herself.
Continued on Chapter 32
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