Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 35

DATE:                        January 2, 1996 

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATIONeg:         Cleo “Neg” Sauce’s house at Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. 

COOPERATORS:   Cleo “Neg” Sauce

 Continued from Chapter 34

 JD:      Yeah, doesn’t take much.  I sure appreciate you talking to me Neg, there’s so many things about all this stuff that, uh…You were telling me this morning that, that even if y’all…y’all had a pair of shoes y’all kept em for something special…y’all always went barefooted.  Um, that’s ok in the summertime, but what happened in the wintertime?  Sometime it would get cold like it is right now, and you say y’all fished a lot…this was good weather for fishing goujons along the lake you told me, with…with uh, those bush lines.  Did yall not wear shoes in the wintertime either? 

 Neg:   Oh, in the wintertime we’d wear shoes.

 JD:      I mean, that gets awfully cold. 

 Neg:   We’d wear shoes in the winter.

 JD:      Did y’all have boots? 

 Neg:   Yeah, by time we had boots.  I seen me have leaky boots too.  Tete used to say to Ida she couldn’t see how I could stand, I walk in that ice…with shoes on.  Go in the water…I have water up to my knees like that. 

 JD:      You talking about Edward’s sister? [Tete]

 Neg:   And, in water…I dip lil crawfish.  In ice water.  Ice water, like you mix today…cold! 

 JD:      You didn’t have any boots, or they’d leak, or…? 

 Neg:   They’d leak, or sometime I ain’t had none.  But I’d go anyway.

 JD:      It’s a wonder yall all didn’t die of pneumonia. 

 Neg:   [laughs] We was just tough, Jim!  We was just tough and the good Lord up above was with us.  The only thing, God had to be with us. 

 JD:      And if y’all had rain…rain…did yall have raincoats that were any good?

 Neg:   Sometime we did, sometime we didn’t.  Lot of time I caught the rain out there [with] no raincoat. 

 JD:      And cold?

 Neg:   And cold. 

 JD:      Like you say, it’s a wonder any of yall lived long enough to be around now.

 Neg:   Had to be the Good Lord. Had to be the Good Lord takin care of us.  Had to be.  Just like a fisherman, I heard a preacher tell us one time [that] you had to have faith to be a fisherman.  Which is the truth, cause you don’t know what you gonna catch on that line, you know?  You had to have enough that God would help you put fish on that line.

 JD:      Now y’all also…with God’s help, y’all also still had to know what you were doin.  You had to put the lines in the right place and put the right bait…

 Neg:   Right, that’s right. 

 JD:      Like you say, sometimes it’s almost a miracle y’all made it. 

 Neg:   It is.  You know if you got enough faith, the Bible say if you got enough faith, you can move a mountain.  Bible say you can tell that mountain to be removed and be cast into the sea, and it gone be removed and cast into the sea cause God can do it.  By faith…

 JD:      That carried you through, huh?

 Neg:   Right.  He’s the only one, I guess.  Besides God, these days you have nothing.  Him and Him alone, God is great.  By faith, it through Him that I’m still living.  Who else would have five, six heart attacks and still be livin? 

 JD:      Right.  Or your sister, Agnes.

 Neg:   Right.  The Good Lord, any way you take it, He’s the one. 

 JD:      You have a church you go to on Sundays now?

 Neg:   No, I ain’t been…We had went a time or two in town.  [with?] Jesse Victor, in town.  They got a station on TV.  They got preachers and all 24 hours a day. 

 JD:      You get it…you get it here, that station?

 Neg:   And that’s what I watch.  Very seldom I gone watch anything else. 

 JD:      That’s good you have that.

 Neg:   Oh yeah, and they got some good preachers in there.  Real good.

 JD:      What about religion, back on the campboats, Neg?  What was it like back there from the time you were a lil boy in Blaise's…Blaise’s campboat to when you…when you were living by your self and…and on Blaise's Canal and then here.  What was religion like?

 Neg:   Them days it was all Catholic.  All Catholic.  We even had…they used to have a priest used to come across the lake, over there, by boat.  Teach people, you know, and teach catechism, and all. 

 JD:      How often would he come?

 Neg:   I think once a week he used to come, I think so.

 JD:      I hear people talk about a fellow named Father Gobeil, is that the one you’re talking about? 

 Neg:   That’s the one.  And then, over here, after we move on this side, that’s the first preaching I ever heard.

 JD:      Father Gobeil?

 Neg:   No.  Brother Marks.  The Lil Brown Church.  Right.

 JD:      On a boat?  On a barge, he was.  And that was across the lake?

 Neg:   No, that was on this side.  But he used to go over there too, but he’d come from the other end, cause that’s where uh, he build schools, you know, in places.

 JD:      The other end, you mean, Bayou Sorrel, Keelboat?

 Neg:   Keelboat.  He had a… a schoolhouse there.  That’s where Edward [Couvillier] learned how to read.  And, he had build one over here too, at Myette Pt., after he started over here, build a schoolhouse there.

 JD:      When y’all were living on…on the levee, or…

 Neg:   On the levee.

 JD:      I hear they had another schoolhouse there for a while, the government put there for three, four years, on the levee.

 Neg:   Well, that be same one.  Brother Marks started it, he’s the one build it. And after that, I think, the teacher was paid by the government.  Right, but the schoolhouse and all was Brother Marks.

 JD:      So, for religion on Sundays, when y’all were out in the canal, across the lake and whatever, for religion on Sundays, y’all didn’t have anything to…any place to go to get together on Sunday mornings? 

 Neg:   Uhuh.  No.  After Brother Marks build the schoolhouse, well, they had a place for church, you know.

 JD:      Church on Sunday.

 Neg:   Right.  And uh, schoolhouse too.  That’s where Dot [Couvillier] and all of em started school.

 JD:      Well, that leads me to another question then.  On Sunday, we talking about, y’all didn’t fish on Sunday, I imagine?

 Neg:   Not all the time.  Some time we fish on Sunday. 

 JD:      All…every day of the week?  Seven days?   Sometime y’all fished every day?

 Neg:   Sometime we fish every day. 

 JD:      And if y’all took a day off on Sunday, what was your day off like, when y’all would not fish on Sunday?  What would yall do?

 Neg:   We didn’t do too much but loaf around. [laughs]

 JD:      Well, that’s plenty if you work hard all the rest of the week. 

 Neg:   Sit down and rest. [laughs] 

 JD:      Yall would sometimes…you say play cards, or play marbles?

 Neg:   Yeah.  Me and Momma [his wife Nine] play [cards] at night.  And after that the kids, you know, come along, and they keep you busy.

 JD:      Well, at night, would y’all play with the kids, play cards, or…or something with the kids at night after supper? 

 Neg:   Not too much with the kids.  Didn’t play cards too much with the kids, we’d get on the floor, though, and roll around.  Sometime I’d lay down, they climb all over my back [laughs].  That was a lot of fun though, when the kids was little. Yeah, enjoyed that.  That’s right.

 JD:      And then they get big and they get to be trouble.  [laughs]

 Neg:   Trouble.  Mine never was that much trouble.  Uhhh, they knew better.  [laughs] They knew better. …kids go like today, there, you know?  Go here, go there and go sleep, and all?  First thing you know the young girls there, bringing you a kid.  Aw, not mine. No indeed.  They wouldn’t go sleep nowhere, umuh!.  [laughs].

 JD:      You must’ve given em trouble, when those young girls wanted to go out, go out on dates…and…

 Neg:   I didn’t give em no troubles.  Tell what was what and that was it!

 JD:      The first one to get married was Sandra? 

 Neg:   Uh, Amanda.

 JD:      And she married Egbert [Mayon].

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 JD:      And then Sandra married Howard [Tabb].

 Neg:   Yeah.  Sandra, then Marie.

 JD:      Joe was the oldest? 

 Neg:   Yeah.  He was the first one…well, we had lost one.  Born dead.

 JD:      Yall did?  The first one? 

 Neg:   Yeah.  First one.

 JD:      She carried to…she carried it to term, all the way? 

 Neg:   All the way to the end, he was born…he was dead. 

 JD:      That must have been a terrible disappointment.

 Neg:   Whoooo, talk about!  And he lookted just like me, too.  Just like me.  Like my hair over here, you see how my hair…, you see his hair was just like mine.  Had long hair too. 

 JD:      And he was born where? 

 Neg:   Morgan City.

 JD:      In a hospital?

 Neg:   No. In a campboat.

 JD:      In The Pit?

 Neg:   Yeah.

 JD:      Yall went down there for him to be born? 

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 JD:      From the…from the canal across the lake? 

 Neg:   From uh, from Myette Pt.

 JD:      Yall took the campboat down to Morgan City to The Pit?

 Neg:   Right.

 JD:      Yall had a midwife come, or a doctor?

 Neg:   It was a midwife.  Yeah.

 JD:      Did y’all have any midwives in, in the community…Blaise's Canal, Myette Pt.?

 Neg:   No.  Her momma, Momma’s [his wife, Nine] momma did everything, but she didn’t llve there. 

 JD:      Your mother’s mother?

 Neg:   No…

 JD:      Nine’s mother?

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 JD:      OK, so that was Ernestine Daigle. She delivered babies sometimes? 

 Neg:   Sometimes, yeah.  When Russell [Daigle]…when Russell was born, he was born here at Oaklawn Canal, Jesse had rented a lil campboat.  Here at Oaklawn Canal they had a old midwife.

 JD:      So, Jesse had an old midwife come…where?...from Franklin, you think?

 Neg:   No, Oaklawn.  Canal.

 JD:      A black woman?

 Neg:   Yeah, I think she was, right.

 JD:      Delivered Russell in Oaklawn Canal on a campboat.

 Neg:   Right.  I remember, I wasn’t that big when Russell was born.  Getting old yeah.

 JD:      Russell is?

 Neg:   Yeah.  I wasn’t that old when Russell was born.  [laughs]

 JD:      Russell must be in his late sixties, then, I guess, eh?

 Neg:   Around 60, for sure. 

 JD:      Oh, I bet he’s older than that cause I’m 57.  Russell is a good bit older than me, I believe. 

 Neg:   I don’t know exactly, but I heard Ida say the other day…around 60.

 JD:      Um, back to who was on the campboats. 

 JD:      Myon’s daddy and mother.  His mother’s first wife [husband], Myon’s daddy…uh, Albert Bailey.  Were they both on campboats?

 Neg:   No.  I think they were living in a house.  I think so, I’m not sure. 

 JD:      On Fourmile Bayou? 

 Neg:   Yeah, I think so.  I think so. 

 JD:      And they were married…I guess, Ernestine Daigle and them were…she was with him on Fourmile Bayou.  The Daigles…I heard you mention that…something about Homer Daigle…when he married Ernestine, and I heard you mention Fourmile Bayou and a house…did he move in with Ernestine in a house that she and Albert Bailey had?  On Fourmile Bayou? 

 Neg:   I don’t know, Jim.  I really don’t know.

JD:      I hear you say that Homer Daigle was on Fourmile Bayou.  I believe.

 Neg:   Yeah.  He was live…they was all living almost together…probly like we was living in the campboats over here.

 JD:      But on land.

 Neg:   Yeah, different place along the bayou.

 JD:      Cause Jesse and them, Jesse Daigle, EJ and Russell’s daddy, that was, that was from Homer Daigle, and they were allon Fourmile Bayou, so…

 Neg:   Yeah. 

 JD:      That had to be where it was.  Well, I believe I wore you out, huh?  

 Neg:   Not really, I get a lil hoarse when I talk a lot [laughs].

 JD:      Do you mind if I call you and come back sometime?

 Neg:   No.

 JD:      Just for company if nothing else. 

 Neg:   Sure, come back any time you…you want.

 JD:      I sure have enjoyed it, Neg. 

 Fini