Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 33

DATE:                        January 2, 1996 

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:              Cleo “Neg” Sauce’s house at Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.  And Edward Couvillier’s house at Oxford Loop.

COOPERATORS:   Cleo “Neg” Sauce; Edward Couvillier; Lena Mae Couvillier

Continued from Chapter 32

JD:      That’s interesting how times change…like you said earlier, you do…times change and you make do.  [phone rings]

 Neg:   People had good heads, them days, you know?  [phone rings]

 [stop recorder, and resume]

 JD:      You want to go with me and get something to eat somewhere?

 Neg:   Uhuh.  Aw no.  I’m gone fix em a lil bit something maybe, after while.  I’m kind of scared to eat, tell you the truth.  I been eatin a lil bit of stuff at the time. 

 JD:      You eating enough to keep yourself going…a lil bit like that, huh?   Cause, you don’t look bad Neg, you look pretty good. 

 Neg:   No, I was feeling good…I been feeling good, since that pain… I’m sure it’s that coconut.  I had made two cakes for Christmas and that evening, that was Saturday Marie came and she wanted to taste that cake, so, I say go over there and cut one.  And she cut that coconut cake and I ate a few bites of that stuff?  Podnuh, you talk about sick?  [whistles].

 JD:      Well, did Marie get sick too? 

 Neg:   No, uhuh.  That must of stayed on my stomach, I guess, you know, and it soured there.   And boy, you talk about sour! 

 JD:      You throw up?  Other end too?

 Neg:   Both ends!  Comin out both ends.  Man, I was sick.

 JD:      Do you usually take a nap in the afternoon?  After dinner, after you eat? 

 Neg:   Nap sometime, but not too often. 

 JD:      Well, what I thought I would do is I would go and get myself a bite to eat, and uh, come back when you…if you, if you would like to talk to me some more this afternoon, I would like to talk to you some more…if you don’t mind. 

 Neg:   It’s all right with me.

 JD:      It’s all right?

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 JD:      OK, uh, it’s 12:00 right now.  You want me to give you time to take a nap and come back around 2:00? 

 Neg:   Aw, probly you can come back around 2:00, I probably ain’t gone take a nap…depends how I feel. [laughs]

 JD:      Well, be honest with me now.  If you feel like taking a nap, I want you to tell me so…and I’ll leave. 

 Neg:   Oh no, uhuh, I don’t take no naps.  It’s very seldom I lay down…sometime I go to sleep in my rocker there, you know.  It’s so quite, you don’t hear nothing. Here by yourself, I sit on that rocker, and lot of time I go to sleep in that rocker.

 JD:      Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.   Well, all right, then.  I’m gon stop.JD: …I did, I enjoyed it too.  [to the tape] We’re at Edward and Lena Mae’s house now. 

 [Some of the kids in the neighborhood at Myette Pt. think I am Santa Claus and there is some back and forth conversation with them and about keeping track of them with the tape recorder]

 [pause the tape and resume]

 JD:      No!  Myrtle Burns died?  Myrtle Bigler?

 Edward:        Yeah. 

 JD:      No, I didn’t hear she died.  When was that?

 LC:     I think she died Friday.  Cause they called us Saturday. 

 Edward:        No, she died Saturday cause they buried her Sunday.  They buried her the next day.  That’s what I’m sayin, the following day.  They buried her Sunday, didn’t we go over there Sunday?   We were supposed to go over there Sunday, it rained…we didn’t go. 

 Lena Mae:     She died Thursday or Friday Daddy [Edward] cause she died and then, uh, Gloria Ann called me, and the next day, uh, Kay called the next morning.  She had just died… Gloria Ann called. 

 JD:      She uh, she died of natural causes or, she had an accident or something?

 Edward:        No.

 Lena Mae:     Lucy Lyle and them was up there spending some time with her.

 JD:      Who’s that? 

 Lena Mae:     Her nephew, Tucy Lyle, and uh, some guy from Lafayette, some doctor, they was out in the yard piddling around doing something.  When they went in the house to see Myrtle she was laying across her bed, dead. 

 JD:      Is that…heart attack or something like that?

 Lena Mae:     Something like that. 

 JD:      She was ninety something?

  Lena Mae:     Ninety-four, I believe. 

 JD:      Nenety-four!  She lived a long life out there, boy.

 Edward:        She died Friday.

 Lena Mae:     That’s what I said, Thursday or Friday. 

 JD:      She must have been the oldest…I know she got to been the oldest…

 Edward:        She was the oldest one. She was older than Doozie and them.

 JD:      It was her Daddy, Nick, that killed that man coming across the Channel…

 Edward:        Umhm, yeah. 

 JD:      Well, where did this fellow she married…where’d he come from? 

 Edward:        Morgan City.

 JD:      He was a fisherman too? 

 Edward:        Uh, I don’t believe Jim, uh, [?] he come up there with her.  I think he used to shrimp.  Personally, I don’t even know what he did, but I don’t think it was much of fishin. 

 JD:      But once he got up there….

 Edward:        …he was up there.  But he didn’t do much up there either.

 Lena Mae:     He didn’t do much of nothing.

 Edward:        Harold [Bigler] didn’t do much of anything. 

 JD:      Well, I guess they just made a living up there, huh?

 Edward:        Well, I… I don’t know how they made a living.  I think they did a lil fishing, you know, uh, but not a whole lot. 

 JD:      How could you fish in that spot, except in the Channel? 

 Edward:        That’s the only place you could fish up there, in the Channel.   [and] in them oil field locations and stuff around there.

 JD:      Local fish.

 Edward:        …but he didn’t fish nets.  He uh, he might a had a few nets after him and Myrtle got married up there, …as I can remember.  You know, fished a few hoopnets.  Cause that’s what Son Burns did, Pete Burns.  As far as fish lines, they never did fish lines that much.  None of them Burns’s, all of em had nets.  Take Doozie Burns and them, they’d raise…I think it was twice a week…fishboat would come up twice a week…and a lot of time they’d block the boat off when they get to his place.   That’s as far as he could go.

 JD:      Because he’d be full [of fish], you talking about?

 Edward: They’d catch them suckers by the boatload.  Gasp…mostly gasp …lot of gaspergous.

 JD:      Fishing in the Channel?

 Edward:        Uh, well they didn’t have no Channel then, you know? …fish them lil bayous, you know, and all…[bayous] Catfish, Cowan…well, in the lake too you know, fished in the lake.  But they’d raise [nets], like Monday, they’d get out there early…Doozie and them girls…they had them girls…them boys wasn’t big enough.  Them girls fish nets with em. 

 JD:      The girls would fish nets?

 Edward:        Aw yeah, they’d raise a hundred…a hundred and fifty nets a day.

 JD:      [whistles]…what?

 Edward:        Aw yeah. 

 JD:      You talking some time back…a long time ago?

 Edward:        Aw yeah.  That’s in the ‘40s.   Way back there, yeah.  That’s when you can fish a net and you could tie it out the water.  Nobody’d mess with it.  You know not…well, every now and then somebody run a few but you ain’t got not problem with em.   Either that, or they had em on bouys…they had lil bouys and stuff…cypress…they used to make they, uh, they didn’t have plastic floats like we got now.  Cut cypress knees…let em dry.  I seen Dan [Lange] cut em, dry em out and bore a hole in em…when he’d tar a net well, he’d throw em in the tar vat. 

 JD:      They’d almost disappear…I mean…in the water…[laughs].

 Edward:        Well, it was…it keep from rottin…see, put that tar and the water couldn’t get to em.  Yeah, they used to do that.  But I remember Dan, my brother-in-law, he had about 40 nets…well, he had more…but he had 40 overboard all the time.  He used to keep 40 on the bank.

 JD:      Dan Lange?

 Edward:        Yeah.  Keep em ready.   Every two, three weeks well he’d go out, change em out, and put the others on the bank, clean em and tar em and get em ready. 

 JD:      Neg was telling me this morning that when y’all used to fish line…fish cotton line…uh, no matter what you’d do with em they wouldn’t last more than two to three weeks.

  Edward:        That’s it.

 JD:      The cotton…the cotton line itself, even tarring it and everything, wouldn’t last.

 Edward:        In the summertime, in the wintertime they’d last longer.   Maybe they’d last a month and a half.

 JD:      Up to six weeks or so, in the winter?

 Edward:        Yeah. 

 JD:      Hmph.   And that must have gone for the net…the net twine too, then?  The cotton line on the net wouldn’t last but two to three weeks? 

 Edward:        No.  That’s why I tell you, that’s why they tar em.   They tar em, you see, they pull em up and tar em. 

 JD:      But even…even with regular lines, you could tar em and it still wouldn’t last more than two to three weeks.

 Edward:        Yeah, but what you gotta think about…when you put that net overboard, it just lay there.  You take a…a line…you run that sucker and up beating it with your hand, you knocking that tar off, and your tar gets out of it, you see?  And that’s why a line wouldn’t last like a net.   Your net…net…you put it overboard and only thing would get in there would be the fish and that hittin it, that wouldn’t knock the tar off.   I seen…even, that that plastic coat.  Man you tar a line, and put it out there…it’s pretty, you know, and you run it and knock the trash off and first thing you know that stuff’s all fallin off and you get white spots in your line.

 JD:      Even with the plastic?

 Edward:        Aw yeah, umhm. 

 JD:      Also, another thing I could understand, too, is when you put a net in the water, there’s no strain on the line.  I mean, and…and yet, when you put a main line in the water you got the current, you got fish, you got you beating on it, you got a boat pulling on it.   So, you got all of that, so it gets weak.  It’s gonna break faster since you only got one piece of line.

 Edward:        But…that’s the reason why a line wouldn’t last like a net…because it was treated rough, you know, uh…They used to put that tar on them…on them uh…on them nets and it was…it would get coated on there. 

 JD:      Thick, thick, thick.

 Edward:        Yeah, just like you’d put a…seal on something…

 JD:      So, it’s almost like you didn’t even have a line.  The line was just something to coat…put the tar on.

 Edward:        I used to take a ball of…of cotton line, you could hang it up in your house somewhere, it would last for years, you know?   Cause it wasn’t in the weather, that’s why it would get stiff and rot…you get it wet.

 JD:      Look, you know, I wonder, why didn’t everybody start fishing nets.  Why do some people fish nets and some people fish lines? 

 Edward:        Some people didn’t like to mess with nets.   I never did like to mess with nets. 

 JD:      It’s a lot of trouble, from what I hear.

 Edward:        I build nets, I had 40…40 something at one time.  Yeah, we used to be able to fish the Crevasse, and all that you know?

 JD:      Y’all had…you did…like I said, just…it just…it’s a wonder to me that certain people like you and Russell and Joe and EJ never did fish nets to amount to anything, and yet everything else y’all did indicates y’all are…I’m not trying to say…I’m trying to say this right.  You take people like you and Joe and Russell and EJ…y’all are…y’all are the best line fishermen that I know of, the most successful, and y’all are also the four people that, whenever y’all got an opportunity you went out and grabbed it.  You bought this property, Joe and them built their own shrimpboats, all that kind of stuff.  You see what I’m saying?  That it’s logical that when y’all got a chance to catch more catfish with nets than you could with lines, that y’all would have gone to net fishing and y’all didn’t do that.

 Edward:        Well, you can’t fish both.

 JD:      You can’t?

 Edward:        Uhuh.  You cannot…you might could fish eight or ten nets and line but you can’t say, “well, I’m gone build me 80 or 100 nets a fish 2000, 1500 hooks”.  You can’t do that.  That’s why you see a net fisherman, that’s mostly what he do is fish nets.  You see a line fisherman, that’s what he do, fish lines.  It’s not that we can’t fish nets. 

 JD:      No, I didn’t think it was because y’all couldn’t. 

 Edward:        And I’d rather fish lines than nets.

 JD:      You get more enjoyment out of it?

 Edward:        Yeah. 

 JD:      Well, you sure get enjoyment out of each fish.

 Edward:        Well, yeah.  When you pick up a net that’s got 60, 70 pounds of fish in it…that’s fun too, you know? 

 JD:      Well, but, you don’t get to appreciate that but once [each time].

 Edward:        Right. 

 JD:      With 60, 70 fish, you get to appreciate every fish [laughs].

 Edward:        You see like Putt [EC brother-in-law], he fished a few lines.  But it was mostly in between net fishing, you know, when he had his nets on the bank or something he fished lines.  You had them nets overboard, you gotta fish them nets.  It’s a lot of work to take care of that.  And when you…when you always got some at home needs working on.  Always gotta be patchin em, gotta be fixing the hoops, they break, stuff like that.  It’s…it’s…it’s not easy. 

 JD:      Why do they tar nets…the nylon nets.  Why do they keep dipping nylon nets in tar?

 Edward:        I don’t know why.  You wouldn’t need to tar em.  But, it makes em better to handle.

 Lena Mae:     The fish wouldn’t get in it, with that white [line].

 Edward:        Yeah, but the point is just like your tar for a line.  Make your knots hold, I mean, you take nylon, if you didn’t tar a net it wouldn’t be long…all your nets…all your knots would be untied.

 JD:      They’d slip?

 Edward:        Yeah, they slip.

 Lena Mae:     And a fish go for a darker spot. 

 JD:      They will huh?  Hmph.

 Edward:        I never did see…I never did see anybody fish a…a hoopnet raw.

 JD:      Just white?   And yet it’s not…like you say…it’s not because it needed preserving, because that nylon is good…

 Edward:        And the reason why I don’t fish nets is…you put some out today and might not never see em no more.  I went to an old boy’s house down in Morgan City yesterday.  Say he worked, he build him up some nets, and uh, …

 Lena Mae:     How many he build? 16?

 Edward:        He put twelve, he had twelve.  He went put out, baited em, put em out.  He went back and every one of em was gone.

 JD:      He never got any of em back?

 Edward:        He put 16, but I believe he got…they took 12 of em. 

 Lena Mae:     They took 12 out of 16.

 Edward:        Never got a…never got a chance to get even one fish out of em, brand new nets.

 JD:      Well, how did they find em?

 Edward:        Well, [laughs] that’s like I was telling him.  A lot of times I went back of town in Lafayette and I see hoopnets hanging in people’s yards.  That’s a sport fisherman, they go out there and throw that line and reel that…catch that net.  Got something, pull it up and there’s the net, say “Well, look a here, they ain’t got no [?] or nothing on it, I done found a net”.  He’ll pull it in his boat.  I tell you one thing… come at the boat landing one day, one of them big old bass boats.  I mean a beautiful bass boat, two hoops…brand new hoopnets in it. I didn’t ask him no questions, ‘cause I didn’t own no nets.  If I’d a got in there and start asking questions I might a got in an argument.  If I’d a had nets, well, I’d a told him “I want to look at your nets”, you know?   And, I didn’t have no nets, I didn’t see no use in me getting involved with it.  Let him do what he had to do.  But that’s where…there’s a lot of people steal em, but there’s a lot of sport fishermen take em too. 

 Lena Mae:     …take them 12 nets, somebody had to be watching that man when he put out.

 JD:      Well, that’s what you would think.  I mean, he didn’t have em…he didn’t have floats on em or anything like that…

 Edward:        No, he didn’t.  He had em hid. 

 JD:      Somebody had to be watching him then, like you say. 

 Edward:        Aw yeah, in Morgan City?, You put a crab trap out on a buoy, you can forget about that sucker. 

 JD:      Crab traps?  They take crab traps?

 Edward:        Aw yeah.  Anything they can get their hands on.  Crawfish traps. 

 JD:      Well, everybody fishes crab traps on buoys, don’t they?

 Edward:        Well, not down there you don’t.   You put you a line out, you put em on a line.  You see, it used to be against the law.

 JD:      To what?

 Edward:        Put em on a line.  Yeah, you couldn’t put em on a line.  You put em on a line…course, once they uh, they find that line, well whatever you got on there…if you got ten or twelve of em, they all gone. 

 JD:      Well, you say “put a line out”.  What you talking about? 

 Edward:        Just like you fish…just like you put a trotline out, you just hang em on that trotline. 

 JD:      Boy, that would be bad if the line breaks or something like that, you could lose everything. Lena Mae, when did you start fishing with Edward?

 Lena Mae:     Uuuhh.  Starting fishing with Edward when Kevin started school.  But I fished before [that].  You know, before I was married, and after I was married too. 

 JD:      You fished before you got married?

  Lena Mae:     Oh, Lord yeah!  I was fishing since I was 11 years old… I was fishing. 

 JD:      With…or… with somebody else, or by yourself, or what? 

 Lena Mae:    By myself.

 JD:      By yourself…by yourself!  How did you get set up to do that…I mean…you say since you were 11 years old, how did you get set up to fish?

 Lena Mae:     I was eleven years old, Jim, and, used to fish bushlines.

 JD:      You fished bushlines across the lake?

 Lena Mae:     …got her home with it, and I looked at Yank [Lena Mae’s aunt], I say “Uhuh”, I say “Yank we can’t do that” so boy, we jumped in the pirogue, paddled back there and hooked him real good, you know? [laughs]

 JD:      Put him back on the line?  

 Lena Mae:     Put him back on her line.  We couldn’t take her fish. [laughs]  But we was gonna take it, you know, and we felt so guilty…uhuh…weren’t gone take her fish…

 Edward:        I put out some line one time, water come up.  It was on a ridge.  About two foot of water.  And I got back there the next morning to run my line…that sucker stiff!  I say “Oh Lord”.  I took my paddle, [?] about a seven-foot alligator on it.  [laughs].  When he come out of that water he just kept a goin.  He never stopped!

 JD:      Broke the line and kept going?

 Edward:        Straighten the hook. 

 JD:      Were there a lot of alligators back then, in those days? 

 Edward:        Oh yeah.

 JD:      In the swamp?

 Edward:        Yeah.  Not as many as they got now, though.  They got alligators everywhere you look now.  Yep, that was the good old days, I guess. 

 [problems with the power in the house]

 JD:      So, basically, what y’all telling me is that people used to fish a lot of bushlines for big fish.  Did they fish bushlines instead of bentlines, or...or did bentlines come along afterwards…?

 Lena Mae:     Used to fish both.

 Edward:        Well, bentlines, back in them days…they used to fish them bayous. 

 JD:      With bentlines?

 Edward:        With lines across the bayou.  Just like I’d go in there and put a line across the bayou [Teche]. 

 JD:      Crossings…then.  Used crossings.

 Edward:        Might have 25, 30 hooks on em.  Some 50, whatever, depend on how wide the bayou is.

 JD:      Now that’s…you talking about up around Keelboat Pass where there was all the bayous…Catfish Bayou, and so on.  And it was when y’all got back down here, in the lake…

 Edward:        Started with them bentlines.  …Catfish…Bayou Catfish, most of em had 25, 30 feet of water in them bayous.   Before all that sand came down.  You take a lil bayou…a lil bayou be as wide as from here to Agnes’ house [80 feet], it had 35 feet of water in it.  And I mean it would go just like that [deep right off of the bank].  Now it’s like that [sloping shallow ].  Around that lakeshore down there, it would drop off…when it would drop off it would be straight down. 

 JD:      And so, you could fish right on the bank with drop lines, or bushlines right on the bank.

 Edward:        …had five foot of water right at the bank.  That was years and years ago, in the 40’s.  In the 30’s, really. 

 JD:      So, Myrtle Bigler died, huh?

 Edward:        Yeah, Dean Martin died.

 [talk about getting plastic buckets from the grocery stores]

 Edward:        It gone get cold, Jimmy.

 JD:      That’s what they talking about…possible snow tonight.

 Edward:        That be something, get up tomorrow morning…all white.

 JD:      Lena Mae, when y’all were young and you got interested in fishing…when you were a young age like that, uh, they didn’t try to discourage you?  Your daddy didn’t try to discourage you from fishing?  Did he do anything to help you to do it? 

 Lena Mae:     [shakes her head] No.

 JD:      He didn’t help you either? 

 Lena Mae:     …he give me some line and hooks.  About it.

 JD:      Give you some hooks?  How about a boat?

 Lena Mae:     I’d use his pirogue.

 JD:      So, he didn’t mind if you used his pirogue?

 Lena Mae:     Uhhum. 

 JD:      Now, could you swim?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, I could swim.  Momma didn’t want us to go swimming.  One time…the boys was swimming…I took off runnin, jumped in the bayou and I swim across.  [laughs].  I been swimming ever since.  She didn’t want me to go swimming…I couldn’t learn how to swim…she wouldn’t let me swim.

 [a child in the house talking][recorder shut off and resumes] [medicine]

 JD:      …he told me he remembered his mother making a tea out of willow leaves.  She would boil willow leaves and make a…make a tea out of that.  And then they would have to drink it… for fever.  Did y’all have any memory of anything like that?

 [child yelling for attention]

 Edward:        Momma used to make some…I don’t know what it was made out of.

 JD:      She made a tea?

 Edward:        Yeah. 

 Lena Mae:    I remember when they used to make quinine balls.   Make a lil ball with some quinine.

 JD:      Ball out of what, though?

 Lena Mae:     Eh?  With flour.  They mix that quinine with that flour and make a lil ball, like a pill, the size of a pill.  And they’d give you that for fever.  And they also give you, they fix that olive oil with honey and soda and Vicks salve.

 JD:      For what?

 Lena Mae:     For colds. 

 JD:      Olive oil, honey, soda and Vicks salve. 

 Lena Mae:     And, I still take that sometimes.  You fix it in a lil bowl and keep it on the stove.  Keep it warm, on the pilot light?   And uh, two, three times a day you take a sip of that.  A teaspoon of that. 

 Edward:        And Grover’s Chill Tonic, you remember that?

 Lena Mae:     And Grover’s Chill Tonic.  When I was raising my kids…

 Edward:        Scott’s Emulsion, all that stuff. 

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, you could still buy that.

 JD:      This was stuff you could get off of the fishboat? 

  Lena Mae:     Yeah.  And they had…eh…

 JD:      [talking about leftover meat]  That’s a shame, look at all that meat you gonna throw away. 

 Lena Mae:     Ain’t that a shame?  And Jim, it’s good yeah!  All it needs is warming, you want it? 

 JD:      What is it?

 Lena Mae:     Chicken, barbecue chicken, pork, sausage…

 JD:      Well, if y’all don’t mind I’ll take some of it home and put it in…sure, we can use that, with some beans, sure. 

 JD:      Sure, Carolyn and I will eat that for two or three days.  [talk about the leftover food]. Well, I’m interested in medicine a lot.  From uh…you know, what y’all did with medicine and…and…and more and more I’m hearing more things. 

 Lena Mae:     That roach and whiskey, that’s something we never run out of. 

 JD:      Well, now, tell me more about whiskey roaches.  I know what it is, and I know how to make it…

  Lena Mae:     And I still use it.

 JD:      But, for what? 

 Edward:        Infection.

 Lena Mae:     You infection yourself, or something…get blood poison…you can see the red streak comin up, you know, on your arm or anywheres.  You start rubbin with that roach and whiskey.

 JD:      On uh…on uh…you don’t drink it? 

 Lena Mae:     If it don’t stop you drink it too.  You see, Milton (LC brother), had the mumps, one time, and his mumps fell, when we first moved on this side the lake. 

 JD:      What you mean “they fell”?

 Lena Mae:     He climbed a tree…wouldn’t keep still…and they fell down.

 Edward:        They go in your testicles. 

 JD:      Oh, is that what happened?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, and he couldn’t get a doctor, you know, so they had to go to Medric’s [Medric Martin’s store], call a doctor and wait for him there to come to the Point [Myette Pt.].  But he [Milton] did, and he caught lockjaw.  Milton did, I guarantee you he had lockjaw.  So, Daddy went and got the roaches and whiskey… says “Son, I hate to make you take this”.  He couldn’t open his mouth.  So, Daddy kind of pried his [jaw open] a lil bit…enough…and dropped two teaspoon [of the medicine in his mouth].  [by the] time the doctor got home, he didn’t have no more lockjaw.  [the doctor] he say “I don’t know what y’all done”.

 JD:      How long did it take the doctor to get there, after that, you think?

 Lena Mae:     I guess about an hour and a half, two hours. 

 JD:      It would work that fast, eh? 

 Lena Mae:     And uh, when he got home he say “He ain’t got no more lockjaw, what y’all did?”  And we told him what we did, he say “Well, y’all did the right thing cause he don’t have no more lockjaw”. 

 JD:      And you still make whiskey roaches for a disinfectant, like?  Is that what you’re talking about, for a disinfectant?  You get a cut or something, you spread…put in on there?  [she nods]

 Lena Mae:     You take tallow, you get one of them roaches out of there?  You want to put it on a wound, or something, you know?  And you take that tallow and mix it good with that roach and keep dropping a lil whiskey as you mix it.  And make you a poult [a poultice?] with that, put that on a rag, put that on there.  Next day you get up you ain’t got no more red streak, you ain’t got nothing.

 Edward:        Honey is good too.  Aw yeah.  Good for a lot of things. 

 JD:      Well, I’ve told the whiskey roaches to some people and nobody’s ever heard of that.  That’s something that…

 Lena Mae:     Never heard of it?  Who was it not too very long ago that…not too very long ago.  And I told em about that, he didn’t believe me.  I went and got the bottle… I say…Fanny, she had a thing come up on her knuckle.  It was red, and hard, hard, hard. And uh, she come here with that and boy one day it was bad.  She had a red streak coming up her hand.  “I got to get to the hospital” she says.  I say “Wait”.  I got my bottle of roaches and whiskey…we settin on the swing, in fact…I poured some on there…I say “Rub it in”.  Started rubbin it in.  A little while later I went and put her some more, she rubbed it some more.  She got ready, she went home, I say “Here, take the bottle with you”.  And I say “Do like we doin here”  She took it with her, she did.  And next morning she come, and she told Bonita [LC daughter], she say “Look at it”.  Bonita looked at it, she tooked a needle, and she just touched it, and all that pus come out of there, got better, she ain’t had no more problems with it.  I don’t know what it is about it, but something pullin infection out. 

 JD:      …you always known about…about whiskey roaches?  I mean, your momma did it, your daddy did it…

 Lena Mae:     Oh, Daddy believe in that!  Ho man, he believed in that!

 JD:      Did you know if the old people…if they also used it? 

 Lena Mae:     [indicates yes] That was a home remedy, you know? 

 JD:      And…on all the campboats, everybody used it?

 Lena Mae:     Aw yeah.  We did, for sure.  I don’t know about everybody else. 

 Edward:        I don’t believe Momma had that.

 JD:      Y’all didn’t have it, Edward?

Edward:        Naw. 

LC:     But, you take, uh, for pneumonia.  I done had pneumonia two, three time and when I…before we moved across the lake…and I didn’t go to a doctor till after I got married.  [not sure if she meant whiskey roaches was used for pneumonia]

Edward:        Momma used to have a old wool rag, or wool cloth…

 JD:      I think they told me about it. It was flannel, I believe they call it.

 Lena Mae:     Used the pure flannel.

 Edward:        And uh, put Vick’s salve, and all that stuff, and heat that.  And somebody got pneumonia, just keep putting that stuff on it.

 Lena Mae:     With coal oil.

 JD:      On their back?

 Edward:        Over their lungs. [on their back].

 Lena Mae:     Daddy used to fix that in a big old iron skillet.  Pour coal oil, turpentine, put Vick’s salve in it. 

 JD:      Turpentine!

 Edward:        Oh yeah.

 Lena Mae:     Turpentine. 

 Edward:        It would burn.

 Lena Mae:     And I seen his hands blister...I seen his hands blister…

 JD:      Myon’s hands?

 Lena Mae:     Take that rag and soak it in there and ring it out as hot as you could, then he’d put it on you…hot hot.  You’d blister and he’d blister too, I promise you.  But it took the pneumonia out.  I remember after we were married, I believe it was after Gwen was born…

 Edward:        People didn’t go to the doctor.  See this finger right here [forefinger]?  It’s been cut right there [shows it] and right there.  Cut that bone clean off, right there. 

 JD:      Cut to the bone?

 Edward:        Aw, I cut the bone, it was hanging.  Old man, made a deal with a splane, like [splint?].

 JD:      Your finger was cut at the base right?  Right next to the big knuckle, and it was hanging?

 Edward:        Well, you could see the scar.  See right there?  I cut it twice, I got two scars right there. 

 JD:      What did you cut that with to cut all the way thru the bone?

 Edward:        A hatchet.

 JD:      All the way thru the bone?

 Edward:        Aw, yeah.  [I feel the place on his finger].  He put that…he put that thing. 

 [Lena Mae has a similar cut, done with an axe, but not all the way thru the bone]

 Edward:        Mine went thru the bone, and that’s what I can’t understand, he [somehow] put all them leaders back together there.  All he done was laid that sucker on a board and apparently they must have matched up right and they all growed back together cause I can move it and do what I want with it.

 JD:      Who did that for you?

 Edward:        Aw, it was a old man, used to call him old Nonc Mitch Pellerin.

 JD:      [but] he wasn’t a doctor?

 Edward:        No.  He was just an old man.

 JD:      This was across the lake, that this happened to you?

 Edward:        No, [but] didn’t go to the doctor. 

 JD:      You know the thing about it is, Edward, almost all those leaders and everything are underneath. 

 Edward:        That’s just how it was, you know?

 JD:      Yeah, so…yeah.

 Lena Mae:     Didn’t cut the leaders.

 JD:      Yeah, right, somehow you missed cutting those leaders…

 Edward:        It broke the bone, it was hanging…

 JD:      One leader…right in here…you could have cut…and it controls bringing your finger back up.  It’s pulling it back up.  But all these that give you strength to pull your finger down, they all down in here.  It’s not hard to figure out.  If you…to make a finger, that’s how you’d make it.  You pull it like this, pull it back, you pull it back over here, like that.  But you lucky you didn’t cut this one…

 Edward:        …back, it could’a growed back.

 JD:      Well, those things don’t grow back.  Especially those that’s got uh…got a strain on em, like that.  What happens is when you cut em, they draw up…they draw back.  And so, they can’t grow back. 

 Edward:        And then I cut this right here…

 Lena Mae:     See right here, I don’t know if you can see from over there…You see that scar right there? 

 JD:      On the bottom of your foot?  All the way across the instep of your foot. 

LC:     I had that cut from here to here [about three inches].  They had a…you could see the bone, it was a round ball in it….

JD:      How’d you cut that?

LC:     Jumped on a condensed milk can.  Put a splint on it, wrapped it up.  I stayed [with] my leg cocked up I don’t know how long.  Never went to the doctor. 

JD:      Well, what did y’all take for pain? 

 LC:     Aspirin.

 JD:      You had aspirin from the fishboat? 

 Edward:        Yeah.  I stepped on a nail one day, Jim, well, I was married…sixty penny nail, by my camp.  Jumped off it, had a pair of hip boots on.  It went clean thru my foot…thru the boot.  All the way clean thru that sucker.  Recked my boot.  [laughs].

 JD:      Now that’s the kind of stuff that usually gave people lockjaw.

 Edward:        Yeah.  See, what happened this here, it went all the way through.  It bled a lot, you know.  Nothin stayed in…you stick it in there and it don’t go all the way thru, well that’s [bad]…that cause you problems, right there.

 Lena Mae:     We had a creosote board back of the house, at Myette Pt. and the kids was little, and they had a spike, bent, stickin up.  And I was goin there and my foot slip and I stuck that between my big toe and my other toe.  And I didn’t think it was too bad at the time, but infection set in there.  I seen me, to do my work and to do for my kids, crawl on my knees to get to the pot to stir the pot, and stuff, and do their clothes and whatever I had to do.  And that roach and whiskey did it.  Got all that infection out of there.  My foot was that big, swole.

 Edward:        But…uh…you’d think that would hurt a lot, when you stick something like that…but it’s so fast, you know?  I just reached down and got my foot and pulled it off, pulled my boot off. 

 Lena Mae:     When it comes to stuff like that, I’ve had it.  My poor arms, looka there.  They all…all them scars, look.  That’s all cuts and scratches and bruises and…all kind of stuff.  Looka there.  [her arms are a spiderweb of scars from fingertips to elbow].

 Edward:        Yeah, people didn’t go to the doctor, sheee, had to be something real serious.  Pneumonia, stuff like that?  [not considered serious enough to go to doctor]

 JD:      Well, you talking about something real serious?  Cuttin your finger off to where it’s hanging…cut the bone and it’s hanging…or cut where you can see the inside of your foot…[that’s serious, it seemed to me].

 Lena Mae:     …that saw.  I cut this doing carpenter work.  I cut this and all this.  This one, I don’t feel the end of it [a finger].  Cut the leader to it.

 Edward:        Jim, when you live over there and you got a pair of push oars, and that’s how you get around, you don’t run to town, you know? [laughs]

 JD:      Well, they had…they had the Lockwoods, but I guess the Lockwoods came along…do you remember when there weren’t any Lockwoods Edward?  When there weren’t any inboards [engines] at all?  And it was all just the pushboats?

 Edward:        Yeah, umhm.

 JD:      I didn’t think you were old enough to remember that.

 Lena Mae:     I remember I had toothache.  Man, I stayed with toothache…

 Edward:        They might a had a few, Jim, but not around where we was at.

 JD:      Ok, so the people like us didn’t have em.

 Edward:        I think the…I think the Lockwoods first come out in about 1927.

 Lena Mae:     I wouldn’t sleep at night.  Cry with toothache all night.  Couldn’t do nothing all day.  Everything we tried didn’t do.  And it was cold.  Daddy say “Well, this has gone far enough” he say “We gotta do something.” Say “Wrap her up good and I’m on go bring her to Franklin”. 

 JD:      Across the lake.  Y’all were across the lake?

  Lena Mae:    Yeah.  So momma put a quilt in the bottom of the boat and I got in that quilt, and we took off.  Landed back of the…by the courthouse there somewheres, I don’t know how we got there from the lake to there, but … somewhere around there, and then we walked…

 Edward:        You could go thru the Verdunville Canal.

 Lena Mae:     We walked…

 JD:      Through Bayou Teche?

 Edward:        Umhm.

 LC:     …to old Doctor Aycock’s office, and it was abscessed, boy it was bad.  He say “Well, I hate to pull it with an abscess” but he say “I can’t let you go back home like that”.  He pulled that thing, it wouldn’t deaden.  You talk about some hurt. 

 JD:      It wouldn’t deaden…the shot wouldn’t work because it was abscessed?

 Lena Mae:     It wouldn’t work, he tried, but it was abscessed.  I stayed two weeks, like this [big swollen jaw].

 JD:      After he pulled it.

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  But it didn’t hurt no more after he pulled it.  It stopped hurtin.  I mean the swellin and all was there, but it wasn’t like a toothache.

 Edward:        I had one on this finger right here, and Momma took me to a doctor in Morgan City.

 JD:      What you had on the finger? 

 Edward:        They used to call em a bone felon, or whatever, I don’t know.  And boy he took a lil needle…he froze that sucker...some kind of way.  He took that knife and he split it…boy! I was goin thru the hospital.  They chased me all over that place.  I had blood all over.  [laughs]

 JD:      It hurt you, or you just got scared?

 Edward:        It didn’t hurt because it was froze, man you couldn’t feel nothing…soon as I saw that blood I took off!. [they all] chased me, putting blood all over [laughs].  Boy, I tell you what, we seen some rough times, you know, being sick and all and no doctor.

 JD:      Well, it’s a wonder that more of y’all didn’t get serious trouble, get in serious trouble or die, like that. 

 Lena Mae:     When Milton fell and cut his throat…he stuck that that knife in his throat.  And he come home, he took off runnin.  He run on the porch and he looked at Momma.  He say “Momma I cut myself”. Momma say “Where?” There was no blood.  He say “Right here”, and when he done that the blood just gushed.  Like a faucet on.  But Lord, I mean right there, you know, we figured it was real, real bad.   So, man, they untied the campboat, and they took off.  They forgot Dot [she] was a lil bitty girl.  Forgot her on the bank. [laughs] and they had to come back and pick her up and they took off and they met Pinkerman [Mendoza] goin down with a load of fish, and they got on the boat.  And it was rough, they got on the boat and they rode down there with, uh, Pinkerman.  And when we got over there with campboat, Tootsie was standing at the edge of the pit, waiting on us.  And we thought Milton was dead.  He say “No” he say “He’s all right”.  But he soaked a big quilt, a quilt, with blood. They had to give him blood transfusions, ‘cause he had bled. 

 JD:      I don’t know.  I don’t know how that happened.  When you break a…when you cut an artery like that, there’s so much pressure behind it, it can’t…it can’t seal by itself.

 Lena Mae:     Well, I don’t know what happened, but he…

 JD:      He had to cut something…if it came spurting out like that it was an artery. 

 Lena Mae:     I mean, there wasn’t a drop of blood when he run on that campboat, on that stage plank, and he got by the door, he say “Momma I cut myself”.  We was on the porch.  Momma say “Where?”.  He say “Right here”.  And when he done that, the blood just…just like a faucet.  And we figured he’d bleed to death before we’d get to Morgan City. 

 JD:      And you see, even that, even if y’all hadn’t gone to Morgan City he’d of been all right anyway, if y’all had stayed in at the campboat.  The way it turned out.

 Lena Mae:     He would’ve if we stopped the blood. 

 JD:      From the way it turned out, all y’all did was stop the blood pushing against it all the way to Morgan City.  And y’all said [from a previous version of the story], when he got there, the doctors looked at it and said “Well, we not gone operate until we see if he gets worse” and he got better instead of worse.  So even that, he would have been alright if y’all had stayed.  Course, nobody could have known that.

 Edward:        Didn’t have fast boats in those days.

 Lena Mae:     And grandma, at the time, they wasn’t living there at the time, no more.  They had done moved away.  Cause she could stop blood.  Yeah.

 JD:      OK, how would she do that?

 Lena Mae:     That’s one thing I regret ‘till today, she didn’t…that I didn’t ask for her to pass it on to me. 

 JD:      She didn’t pass it on to anybody? 

 Lena Mae:     The only thing she passed on to me was treatment for sun stroke.  And Nene changed it around, she didn’t do it, not like grandma did.   But grandma could treat for sun stroke, liver, stop the blood and all that stuff.

 JD:      Well, did she treat with something, or did she treat with prayer?

 Lena Mae:     No, just with prayers and her hands. 

 Edward:        Here come a man who could tell you some stories.

 JD:      Who’s that?

 Edward:        Perot.  You know Alex?

 [company comes in, turn off recorder, resume same day, back in Neg Sauce’s [NS] house]

  JD:      I know that when I first met you, you uh, you were playing a, uh, fiddle.  And I seem to remember that you had made it yourself. 

 Neg:   Uhuh. 

 JD:      You didn’t make it yourself?

 Neg:   No, I had bought that. 

 JD:      You bought it?  How did you learn [to play]?

 Neg:   Just…picked it up like that…and I still don’t know too much, but uh…

 JD:      Aww, but I heard you played…you played with uh, churches, and stuff like that? 

 Neg:   Yeah.

 JD:      But where did you hear…where did you hear fiddle music to…to learn to...?

 Neg:   My daddy used to play a lil bit, and my uncles.  My Uncle Phillip, Choukie…[his wife?]

 JD:      That’s his name, Phillip?  We didn’t know his name.  [laughs]

 Neg:   Phillip Aucoin.  And he used to play pretty good.  My daddy used to play a lil bit.

 JD:      [looking at chart of family relationships] Ok, I got to get this straight.  Apparently, I have some thing wrong here.  Choukie was uh, somebody told me Choukie was a woman.  Choukie was a woman, married to Phillip Aucoin.  What was her real name?  Do you know?

 Neg:   No, I sure don’t, that ‘s the only name I knowed her by.

 JD:      That’s the only name anybody else knows her by too.  Choukie.  Now, she used to play or he used to play?

 Neg:   Umhm.

 JD:      And your daddy used to play.   And you learned kind of…from…from being around them? 

 Neg:   Yeah, sort of my uncle mostly. 

 JD:      Your uncle by marriage.  Well, where did he have occasion to play?

 Neg:   They used to have lil dances and stuff in the houses. 

 JD:      In the houses…in the campboats?

 Neg:   Sometime the camp boat…they had like small houses on the bank, along the bayous.

 JD:      Before the water started rising so high, I guess.

 Neg:   Yeah.  And, they used to have lil dances, you know, they young people.  They’d get together and [laughs] dance around. 

 JD:      What kind of dances did they…did they dance?  What kind of music did you play? 

 Neg:   Aw, play like country music. 

 JD:      Waltzes?  One two three one two three?

 Neg:   Yeah.  Right.

 JD:      And two step…two-step music? 

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 JD:      You remember any of the names of any of the old songs? 

 Neg:   Not too good.  Not too much.

 JD:      Could you speak French? 

 Neg:   Aw yeah,   I couldn’t talk English till about 20.  [laughs].

 JD:      Is that right?

 Neg:   When we got married I could hardly talk English.  Hardly none.

 JD:      So, your momma and your daddy spoke French together all the time?

 Neg:   Umhm. 

 JD:      Could either of them speak English? 

 Neg:   Yeah, they could speak English a little.

 JD:      But they spoke French to each other and to y’all all the time. 

 Neg:   All the time.  We were both raised French, my wife too [Elmira Daigle]. But, she lived more amongst…she lived in Berwick for years, and went to school and all…and they learned…she learned in school and all.

 JD:      Learned English?

 Neg:   Learned English, yeah.

 JD:      Well, she was Myon’s half sister, huh? 

 Neg:   Yeah.

 JD:      She was a Daigle?

 Neg:   Right. 

 JD:      In case you’re wondering what this is, I’m trying to get all the people on here.  And, I’ve got…the main people I have on here so I could trace it back…all the way back…all the way back…is uh, uh,  your mother…no, it’s your sister [Agnes], and Myon.   I got them across here…[referring to the chart]…and then I’ve got all of Myon’s…his parents…and then I’ve got each one of…each one of his grandparents on here too…do you remember at all anything about Myon’s uh…Myon had a grand…Myon’s daddy was named Albert Bailey [no, Wilson Jean Bailey], just like he was.   Do you remember anything about Myon’s grandmother…grandmother’s name was Catherine…nobody remembers her last name…

 Neg:   I remember her, barely.  Her name…really, I don’t remember.

 JD:      His grandfather’s name was Victor.

 Neg:   Probly so, yeah. 

 JD:      Victor, and his mother…his wife’s name was Catherine, and nobody remembers what her last name was…you and nobody else seems to remember what her last name was. 

 Neg:   No, I can’t remember.  And I remember she used to come and spend some days at Myon’s.  His grandmomma.   But I don’t remember her name or nothing. 

 JD:      You remember…do you remember anything at all about Myon’s…Myon’s daddy, Myon’s mother, well…Myon’s mother was Ernestine Daigle, and his daddy was Albert Bailey…and they were married first, and then he died, and then she married…she…she married Nine’s father, Homer...Homer Daigle.  There’s a story somewhere in there…sometime people like to tell stories…sometime they make em up more than not, sometimes they true.  But there’s a story that uh, that Albert Bailey and Homer Daigle went out on a boat together and they were together when Albert Bailey died, and there was a question about how he died.

 Neg:   Umm, I never did hear that.

 JD:      Never did hear that?  That comes from um, Joe [Sauce, his son], Joe told me that there was some story in there somewhere about that…something might have happened but you didn’t hear anything about that?

 Neg:   No, uhuh.

 JD:      You see, that’s what I mean about people make up a story and…

 Neg:   Yeah, yeah, no, I don’t know.  Never did hear nothing about that. 

 JD:      Did you ever know how he died?  How Myon’s daddy died? 

 Neg:   I think he…I think he had pneumonia…I think I…I think he had pneumonia, something like that.  I believe that was.  I think so, I not sure on that no, Jim.  It seem like it. 

 JD:      Somebody said something about he was pulling on a motor that wouldn’t start for a long time and he was cranking and cranking on a motor and he got so tired that he got…he got …got cold or something, and he got pneumonia…somehow. 

 Neg:   Now that…that I don’t know either.  Them days..they…they ain’t had hardly…hardly had no motors, them days.  Do most of the…push.

 JD:      Pushing [push skiff]. 

 Neg:   Like momma’s daddy…

 JD:      Uh, Rosalie’s daddy?

 Neg:   Uh, no, when I call Momma, my wife I call her Momma.  [laughs]. 

 JD:      Homer Daigle.

 Neg:   Yeah, he didn’t hardly know how to run a…a motor, them old Lockwoods, he didn’t hardly know how to run that.  All he did is push [using oars instead of a motor].  Pushed all his life, never…never…I think he owned one boat in his life.

 JD:      One motor?

 Neg:   One motor.

 Neg:   He used to… he used to camp on the canal with us.  Myon wanted him to use his lil boat [with a motor] all the time, he wouldn’t use Myon’s boat.  He’d push instead.  Push, push. 

 JD:      Boy, compared to what you do right now, that’s slow. 

 Neg:   Hmph.  Talk about. 

 JD:      Think about the way me and you used to fish, where we’d leave the landing and we would go all the way down there to the Big Cut.  I mean, you couldn’t do that if you were pushing a…a skiff. 

 Neg:   Oh no.

 JD:      And to come back against that current? 

 Neg:   We didn’t go that far in our lil boat [with an inboard motor].  When we had them two and a halfs, we didn’t…I mean to fish, you know, we didn’t go that far.  We’d go below the point there, and up above the point here.  [Myette Point].  But we didn’t go, very seldom we’d go to Belleview Point, you know, put a line or something.  Take a good while, in those boats. 

 JD:      This morning we were talking about… what it was like when you were a boy, to get up and uh, to have a day on the campboat, and everything.  Uh, what was it like when y’all were…when you were courting?  You mind talking about that?  How it was when you met…when you met Nine, and… and how y’all courted and got married…do you mind talking about that? 

 Neg:   No.  They used to live when they was little…we’d live…they’d live at the canal with us.  [Blaise’s Canal]  We almost come up together almost, you know. 

 JD:      That’s across the lake, at Blaise’s Canal?

 Neg:   Yeah.  Right.  And they’d leave from there, back to Fourmile Bayou, every now and then they go back and forth in the Canal.  And then, the last time they moved, they lived in Berwick for years. 

 JD:      They did?  On a campboat or on the bank?

 Neg:   Uh, they was living in a house.  They was renting a house.  So, we almost growed up together.

 JD:      And where did y’all get married? 

 Neg:   Over here in Franklin.   At that big Catholic Church. 

 JD:      Now, when y’all set up housekeeping together, where did you…you were living…when you got married you were still living with Blaise?

 Neg:   Uh, living with my momma.

 JD:      With your mother...I mean, he was dead by then, of course.  But you were living with your mother on her campboat?  And Nene was living on the bank in Berwick?   And so y’all got married and y’all moved onto a campboat? 

 Neg:   Yeah, we had uh, when we first got married we stayed with Momma a while.  And my brother Preston. 

 JD:      With Rosalie and Preston?

 Neg:   Yeah.  In this houseboat right here [the house we’re in].  ‘Cause me and my brother…

 JD:      This one here? 

 Neg:   Yeah, me and my brother build this. 

 JD:      You and your brother built this houseboat right here?    Before you got married?

 Neg:   Right.  And we build this campboat in 1944, I think.   Matter of fact, she was…she had come to Myon’s at Myette Point, and me and her’s the one that put the first coat of paint on it.   And not too long after, we got married.  Twenty two years old.

 JD:      You were 22 when you got married?

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 Continued on Chapter 34