Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 47

 

DATE:                        January 2, 1997

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATIONS:           Edward Couvillier’s house, 148 Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS:   Edward Couvillier; Lena Mae Couvillier; Alvin Marcotte; Yank Millet;

Continued from Chapter46

 JD:      Yeah, it’s always been interesting to me that…I’ve talked to several of y’all about nylon…what happened when nylon came out, and nobody seems to bother very much about the difference it made in how y’all made a living and it had to make a BIG difference!

 EDWARD:     Well, it made a LOT of difference!  Cause your lines didn’t rot.

 JD:      I know, so you didn’t have all that trouble.

 EDWARD:     Right.  As far as remembering the difference in the price of the line, well I don’t remember that.  I don’t remember…it wasn’t that much difference.  You know?  Cause I, I sure…

 Lena Mae:     Well, in them days, I know you could buy that cotton line for about four or five dollars a five pounds.

 EDWARD:     Yeah, it wasn’t…it wasn’t expensive.  I remember you used to get it in five-pound bundles. 

 JD:      What they call a hank, or something like that?  Was it a bundle, y’all called it?

 EDWARD:     Square packs.  There would be five one-pound hanks in there. 

 JD:      And when you’d open it up, it was…it was like it wasn’t rolled tight, it was loose?

 EDWARD:     Yeah, just a hank.  It wasn’t a ball or nothin…I guess they had machines to do that [later when nylon came rolled in a tight ball].

 JD:      Was there a difference in using nylon to…to fish with?  Did y’all have to…did y’all have to make any changes in how you fished?

 EDWARD:     Oh no, uhuh.  No.  Only difference was, nylon lasts and cotton didn’t.  Same way with hoop nets.  You take a hoop net; in the summertime you put it overboard and you might fish it 14 to 21 days.  You had to pull it up and retar it, keep that tar on that line.  Once that water seeps through that tar, that sucker rots.  Well, it would rot anyhow, hoop nets wouldn’t last over a year…maybe a year and a half. 

 JD:      You couldn’t preserve it forever [no matter how much you tarred it]?

 EDWARD:     No, uhuh.  And then when nylon came out, well, it didn’t make no difference, you could tar em once a year, or whatever, you know?  And that was it, they wouldn’t rot.  You could throw em out there on a rack [a storage area on land] and then leave em and they wouldn’t rot. 

 Lena Mae:     Daddy [Edward], you remember when Harry [Lange] was in the hospital with typhoid fever, you took care of Dan’s [Lange] nets?  Was that nylon, or cotton?

 EDWARD:     Cotton.  That was all cotton.

 Lena Mae:     That was, years before…not too long before we moved back of the levee [over the levee]. 

 EDWARD:     That was in the ‘40s.  Back in the 40s.  That has before we got married, so it was around 1945.

 Lena Mae:     It must have been around’45, cause we got married in ’48.  Early ‘40s.

 JD:      Well, that brings me to something I want to bring up.  You see, here’s where I get in trouble, but I can’t…I can’t…I can’t avoid it [always departing from the interview matrix to ask about other interesting things].  What I want to ask y’all about, now, is…you bring to mind, how y’all met.  And uh, I’m interested in how people got together and how they learned about each other and how they developed courtship and eventually fell in love and they got married.  How did y’all meet?  The two of you?

 Lena Mae:     We knew of us [each other], all our lives.  And when we were living across the lake, I was real young, and he was too.  Well, he’d come down on the fishboat. 

 JD:      In the fishboat?  Edward came down on the fishboat? 

 EDWARD:     That’s how I would get back and forth to town [Morgan City]. 

 Lena Mae:     You see, his sister was livin at the canal [Blaise's Canal], with us at the time. 

 JD:      His sister was who?

 Lena Mae:     Vina [Elvina], Jack’s momma.  Jack Sauce’s momma.  And they used to come visit at Vina’s.  And I remember, I used to hide, cause he was so cute with his lil curly head, you know?  [laughs].  I used to hide, and he set on the side of the sideguard [railing], on the side of the house, the campboat.  And he’d look [over] on our side the bayou, cause one would live on one side and…

 JD:      So, he would visit on one side the bayou and sit and look across the bayou at the other side?

 Lena Mae: Yeah. And, really, nothin come out of it.  And then they [Edward’s family] moved, they moved from there [Catfish Bayou?] to Hog Island Pass, eh? 

 EDWARD:     They [we] moved so many places.

 JD:      But y’all were up there…y’all were up there around Keelboat, in Catfish Bayou?  When that was happening?

 EDWARD:     Yeah. 

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, and then…

 JD:      And how old were y’all when you were talking about when you would visit and y’all would watch…?

 Lena Mae:     Aw, I must’ve been, what, 10, 12 years old?

 Edward:        Yeah, early 40s.

 JD:      And you [Edward] were?  About what?  12 or 14.

 Lena Mae:     Ain’t but a year’s difference between us.  So, when they moved to Hog Island Pass, that’s by Bayou Boutte down there [JD still not sure about this sEdward:ond location for Hog Island Pass].

 JD:      Oh really?  I didn’t know that Hog Island Pass was by Bayou Boutte. 

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, you could see Morgan City bridge from they house.  And I remember one time, we went…the weather caught us.  We was in that putput boat. We was goin visit grandma. 

 JD:      In Morgan City?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, and we stopped at they house, cause it was rough!  He clambed an oak tree.  And he stayed in the oak tree the whole time we was there.  [laughs].  Until the weather cleared up, then we went on to grandma’s.

 EDWARD:     I can’t climb no more.

 JD:      Can’t get away?  [laughs]

 Lena Mae:     And from then on, there wasn’t too much communication between us.  So, at the time, I was goin out with with a boy, Irvin Stevens, and he was in the service.  But he come…they [Edward’s family] moved across here. 

 JD:      They moved to…?

 Lena Mae:     Myette Pt.  And here and there, well, he’d help Daddy patch nets, help Monug patch nets, and all this time…

 JD:      Y’all were at Myette Pt. by that time…

 Lena Mae:     They were at Myette Pt. but I was with his momma and them in Jeanerette.  They had a store.

 JD:      Ohhh!  With his mother and them?

 Lena Mae:     No, with Irvin’s mother. 

 JD:      Oh, the boyfriend, I see.

 Lena Mae:     They had a store in Olivier.  And they had two girls, and we was real, real close friends.  Well, I’d go over and stay maybe a month at the time.  And work in the store, help em out in the store, and all.  And they [Edward’s family] moved while I was over there, on this side the lake.  Well, after they moved, I found out that they had moved, well, I come home.  [laughs] ‘Cause he was there, he was messin around with Milton, Monug and all them, you know?  So, I come back home. 

 JD:      Well, how about your boyfriend Irvin?

 Lena Mae:     And then we started goin to the show together.  Daddy had a old car and we’d take off and they’d go to the show two, three times a week.  And me and Edward would go with em.   And in the meantime, we started talking about getting married.   So, I wrote to him a Dear John letter.

JD:      To who?

 Lena Mae:     To Irvin.  But come to find out, he had done got married!   He married a lil German girl.  And, he had a big deal, I had an engagement ring and all, and he wanted his ring back!  He wrote me a letter tellin me, and all, I had stabbed him in the back and this and that.  But later, I find out he had already got married!  I give Bootsie’s [Millet] momma the ring to give back to him.  And me and Edward got married in ’48.

 JD:      Where?  Where did y’all get married?

 Lena Mae:     We got married in Franklin.   What was that judge name, babe?

 EDWARD:     Ray Boudreaux.

 Lena Mae:     Ray Boudreaux.  He was an invalid in a wheel chair, and he married us.  And our rEdward:eption was at his momma’s house, at Myette Pt.

 JD:      Edward’s momma?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  By that time they had pulled they camp…you know where the old ramp’s at, down there? They had pulled they camp right there.  And we had our rEdward:eption right there.

 JD:      Aw.  In the camp?

 Lena Mae:     At the camp.

 JD:      Yall had any music or anything?  Dancing at the rEdward:eption, and all?

 Lena Mae:     No, nothin.  Just cake.  We had 21 cake I believe, that people had made and brought there.  They say that’s the most cake they had ever seen at a weddin.  And anyhow, that’s how we got tied up [married].

 JD:      And that’s how y’all got…eh?  And then y’all had a campboat to go live on right away?

 Lena Mae:     We had, uh, Neg and them had bought a lil campboat.  It was five foot wide, eh?  Six foot wide, maybe 15 foot long?  But it was settin on some cottonwood…on logs.  And that’s what we lived in when we first got married.  Well, I got pregnant for Justin livin in there.

 JD:      Well, that’s what I wanted to...I wanted to find out how that [courtship, etc] happened. Um, can we talk about castnets for a minute?  What y’all remember about castnets from when y’all first started fishing and how they changed, or what y’all used em for, up to now?

 EDWARD:     We always used em to catch shad.

 Lena Mae:     About the only thing you could catch with em.

 JD:      But y’all knitted em yourself? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah, [but] it wasn’t everybody could knit one.

 JD:      What y’all get for sinkers, for weights on em?

 EDWARD:     We had castnet balls. 

 JD:      So, you could buy em? 

 EDWARD:     Lead balls, oh yeah.  They had that ever since I can remember.  Castnets…castnet balls.  The old man had one. 

 JD:      Just like everything else, you bought those from the…from the fishboat, I guess, when they passed, eh?

 EDWARD:     Yeah, right.  They was round.  They was round balls…these days they got these long ones, you know?  Back in them days, they was all round balls. 

 JD:      And of course you’d keep those goin.  If the castnet would wear out, you just cut the balls off of it and put em on the new one?

 EDWARD:     Right.  They was all cotton, they’d wear out.  Course, they’d last longer than normal, cause you didn’t…you didn’t use em all the time.  You’d pick em up, keep em dry, they’d last, you know? 

 JD:      Did you tar those at all?  I mean, did you treat em at all?

 EDWARD:     No, uhuh. Just like you knit em, that’s the way you’d use em.  Cause you had to keep em soft.

 JD:      Russell [Daigle] was talking about in the old days they used to use somethin made from oak…oak bark, or something like that?  Some sort of stain, brown stain, they used to stain that cotton with?  Did y’all ever have any of that?

 EDWARD:     No.

 Lena Mae:     I don’t think Russell did either.  [laughs]  Fact, I know he didn’t. 

 EDWARD:     The only thing that would’a did was change the color.  But it wouldn’t’ve preserved em you know?  You would have to have some kind of oil to preserve stuff.

 JD:      Something to keep the water from getting in.

 EDWARD:     Right, if it wasn’t oil it wouldn’t preserve it.  Like ink, you could’a dipped em in ink.  You know?  It would change color but it wouldn’t preserve em.

 JD:      So y’all always used em [castnets], as far back as you can remember? 

 EDWARD:     Best I can remember.

 JD:      What size?  Would y’all, would you remember what size was popular?

 EDWARD:     About five foot.

 Lena Mae: Four and a half, five foot.  Depends how…how tall you was.  You made em according to your height. 

 JD:      How?  How according to your height? 

 Lena Mae:     Well, like me, I can…I gotta throw a four foot, cause I can’t swing a six foot wide enough for me to throw it. Like him, he could throw a six foot.  It would spread out.

 EDWARD: I could throw it, but I don’t like a six foot. 

 Lena Mae:     If you don’t go according to your height with it, you can’t spread it out right. 

 EDWARD:     That’s something else we used to have a lot, is shad nets.  The kind you dip. 

 JD:      Yeah, uh, you didn’t use the same net for your, uh…

 EDWARD:     Shrimp?  No, uhuh. 

 Lena Mae:     That was all different nets.

 EDWARD:     Your shad net, Jim, was uh…it was bigger, and it was made out of smaller twine.  And you…when the water was up…start comin up, and you get on a point and you dip shad. 

 JD:      And that was a spEdward:ial net you didn’t use for anything else?

 EDWARD:     That’s all you’d use it for. 

 JD:      Now, how was it made?  You say it’s…

 EDWARD:     Made just like a shrimp net, but it was bigger, but the net itself was made out of a lot of twine, lighter twine.  You make, uh…shrimp net’s made out of number 9, I believe.  Shad net was made out of number 6.  Small mesh, made just like a shrimp net.  But it was bigger, with a wider handle you’d make, wider handle so you’d dip with that sucker.  Sometime you’d dip four, five hours without getting enough bait. 

 JD:      And that’s dippin at points and stuff like that?

 EDWARD:     Points, or…wherever they had a good point you could always catch shad. 

 JD:      And why was a point important?

 EDWARD:     Cause the shads come around the point.  Everything…where they had a swift point, that’s where they’d…

 JD:      But it was swift, it took a current…

 EDWARD:     Right, it took a current. 

 JD:      And that was for small shad or big shad? 

 EDWARD:     Small, small and big both.

 JD:      But what were you after mostly?

 EDWARD:     Mostly small ones.

 JD:      That’s that little two inch and three inch shad? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah, just like you catch in a castnet. 

 JD:      And you just bait those whole through the eyes and back through the back? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah.  And years ago, we’d take them big ones, and they’d bait em live.  In the woods.

 JD:      Live?  Those big ones?  How’d you keep em alive [until you used them] in your boat? 

EDWARD:     Put water in your boat and you throw em in there and you go bait your lines and put em on the live.  Course you couldn’t…you couldn’t catch eight or nine hundred of em, but, you know…?

 JD:      You couldn’t keep that many alive. 

 EDWARD:     Right.  You just keep changing…in fact they didn’t change the water.  What they did, they used to drill a hole in the…some of it was through the bottom, some of em was in the side.  Make you a plug.  If you didn’t need the livewell, you just put the plug in it.  When you wanted fresh water, you just pull the plug and the water would just flow through back and forth.  You would always have that much water in there. 

 JD:      However deep the boat was in the water, that’s how much…and then would you…?

 EDWARD:     If you had it through the bottom, I remember they used to take a…a…like your plug.  They had one that would go down and it would stick out the bottom of the boat about that far. 

JD:      About an inch.

 DWARD:     And you had it hollow.  When your boat was runnin, well, the water would hit and come in up through that plug.  Used to run that bulkhead over.  It would force it in there, if you didn’t watch it it would just run slap over it.  Even over…over your bulkhead. 

 JD:      Cause the plug was facing forward when you’d run?

 EDWARD:     Right.  Just like…it was just like a pump.  Water just keep comin in. 

 JD:      And you did that to force the clean water in there…

 EDWARD:     Clean water…and when you’d get enough water, you just reach down and turn that sucker backwards.  And it would do the same thing, it would bail it out. Oh yeah. 

 JD:      Huh.  I don’t quite understand, it the hole was drilled in the bottom with the plug pointed forward…?

                              

EDWARD:     No. No. The hole was straight down.  But the plug was hollow, you see.  And the water would hit it, and when it would hit it it would come on in it.  It would just force it in. When you would turn it back, well it would just make a suction, you see? 

 JD:      And so the plug must have been slanted, then?  The end of the plug? 

 EDWARD:     Uhuh. No. straight down. 

 Lena Mae:     Just like drilling a hole through the floor and you put a plug in it. 

 EDWARD:     You see, on them boats, they used to have them Lockwoods, you used to have to run water through em.  Well, all you did with that, the only way you got your water, you run you a pipe through the bottom of your boat, behind your wheel.  And you come down with the pipe and you put a L.  A L, when your wheel starts, well it forces that water to come on and go through your motor.

 JD:      Ah, that was the cooling system for the motor?

 EDWARD:     Right, long as that wheel wasn’t turning, you didn’t get no water.  When that wheel would turn, you boat would go to moving, well it would force the water…you’d get water [into the engine]. That’s the way they keep…keep the water. 

 JD:      So, a shad net was a separate thing.  Do people still use that?  Do you still use that as a way to catch shad?

 EDWARD:     Jim, I ain’t seen one in…now, we use em to catch big shad.

 JD:      Alongside the boat when you runnin at night or something like that?

 EDWARD:     No, uh, like for crawfish [bait], when the water start up, you go down there and get on the point you can catch them big shad.  In fact, uh, I can show you one now.

 JD:      You have the net? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah.  Hold on a minute.  Come see.  See, it’s got the big mash, see it on the end of my shed over there?  Walk over there and look. 

 JD:      Oh yeah…oh yeah.  Look at the size of that thing!  That’s monofilament?

 EDWARD:     Right.  Well, the other nets are just like that, the only thing they have smaller mash in em…catch smaller fish. 

 JD:      So, the big mesh is for the big shad…

 EDWARD:     Big shad, right.

 JD:      Well, that’s gone add a tool here.  I didn’t remember that…

 EDWARD:     What I’m sayin, some people still use em, you know, I imagine.

 JD:      For crawfish bait, probly.  Yeah.

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, these days they use mostly with the big mash.  In our days we used the lil bitty mash.

 JD:      BEdward:ause you were after the small shad.

 EDWARD:     Like years ago, right there at the old landing [in Myon’s Canal], [?] well, right on the other end of that levee, well, they had a point.  You can go get to that…you didn’t need a boat; you could stand on the bank.  It had a swift current, you dip and you catch them lil shad.  Every now and then you catch a big one too, I mean. 

 Lena Mae:     You probly could still do it with the banks out.

 EDWARD:     And we used to bait…that’s where we would catch our bait. But now, most people just use shrimp or crawfish, you know?  In the spring of the year, people used to fish lots with shad.  Not too many people do that anymore. 

 JD:      Now that’s that levee you talking about…that’s that break in that levee that starts at the big levee and goes all the way out to the lake?

 Lena Mae:     No, don’t go to the lake.

 EDWARD:     Yes, it does.  It goes all the way to the lake, but it was just a…

 Lena Mae:     They had a break in it.

 EDWARD:     Right.   And you come up through the woods, and you come to that point. 

 JD:      Y’all still call that the shad point? I hear…

 Lena Mae:     Yeah. 

 JD:      How about dipnets?  Were dipnets always used in a boat to dip big fish, and so on, like that?

 EDWARD:     Aw yeah.  Aw yeah. 

 JD:      And they were always made the same way like they are now? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah, like they are.

 JD:      And…and…that was probly…

 EDWARD:     Different sizes now.  Uh, see years ago, that’s what you tried to catch, is big fish. 

 Lena Mae:     You could sell em then.

 EDWARD:     These days you want lil fish, you don’t want no big fish. I remember the old man had dipnets…them suckers was three feet.

 JD:      Three foot across the rim?

 EDWARD:     The bigger they are, they was deep.  You get a big fish, you want something you can go down and get im.  Now, I like a small net.  It’s not the idea [that] you can’t pull the small ones in, but a lot of em ain’t hooked good.  You got to have a net…if he’s not hooked you can dip him.  But a big fish, you just couldn’t take a big fish that weighed 40, 50 pounds…and just pull him in with the hook cause the hook would straighten.  You had to have a net every time cause you’d lose him, you know? 

 JD:      Did uh…did some people use gaffs, back then to hook those big fish, instead of dipnets?

 Lena Mae:     That’s all my grandpa ever used.  He wouldn’t carry a net. 

 JD:      Your grandpa…?

 Lena Mae:     Grandpa Daigle.  That’s all he ever used.  He had a gaff on a stick about that long.

 JD:      About two feet long, on a stick.

 Lena Mae:     About two, two and a half feet long.  And he’d fix that gaff on that pole, you know, like you wrap [line] around on a net, a dipnet. And that’s all he ever used.  He wouldn’t carry a..a dipnet, him

JD :      And what was the…what was the hook made out of?

 Lena Mae:     He’d just get a…a pile of thing [steel rim] that you make a…hoop nets with.  In them days, you’d get the kind, you know, that wouldn’t break or nothin. 

 JD:      Just…like a pile of steel rod?

 Lena Mae:     Right.  And he’d sharpen that, and bore him a hole in it for a eye, you know?  To tie it down?  With a screw. And he’d wrap that string around there [like wrapping the rim onto the handle of a dipnet].

 JD:      So, he must…would he beat the end flat, or something, in the heat and then bore a hole in the end that he had flat?  And curve it and bend it.

 Lena Mae:     Right.  He’d curve it and sharpen it, like a hook. 

 JD:      And that’s all he ever used?

 Lena Mae:     All he ever used, he wouldn’t use a dipnet.

 JD:      He didn’t use a dipnet.  That was your grandpa Blaise, you talking about?

 Lena Mae:     Grandpa Daigle.  Homer Daigle, Daddy’s uh…stepdaddy.  And he always fished…he never did own a motor.  Never did own a motor that I know of.  He always used a push skiff to fish in.

 EDWARD:     Homer Daigle?  I never knew that old man to fish too much. 

 Lena Mae:     Oh yeah!  He used to fish all the time.

 EDWARD:     See, fishing changed a lot, for me.  When we lived up the lake, well, we didn’t have a lake.  We had to fish in the bayous. You couldn’t say “I’m gone put 15 bents of line out” cause you didn’t have enough room…just across bayous.

 JD:      There were just bayous.  Yall fished all crossings up there?

 EDWARD:     Right.  Until we come down this way, where they had a lake.  Start fishing the lake.  Now, Myon and them had…they had across the lake over there where they used to fish in the lake…it was a big lake. 

 Lena Mae:     Used to have 15 bents of line, rows of line, comin [out into the lake].

 JD:      Out from the bank, eh?  So, they were fishing bentlines before y’all were. 

 EDWARD:     Right.

 JD:      Y’all lived in bayous.  So, different techniques for different places where you were.

 Lena Mae:     Right.  We always did fish bentlines. 

 JD:      We gone talk about bentlines and the other ways to catch fish after while.  Uh, so, don’t forget about it.  Uh, another tool that y’all always used back then when y’all lived on the houseboats was either fish cars, or fish boxes, or whatever you want to call em.  Uh, talk to me about those fish boxes, fish cars…why y’all had to have em, what…how they were built, how big they were…what y’all built em out of?

 EDWARD:     Used to build em out of pews.

 JD:      Pews.  Now, what’s a pew?

 Lena Mae:     Split, old cypress.

 EDWARD:     When you’d split an old cypress…you take a cypress stump, or whatever, and they had them…fact I got one in the shed back there…

 Lena Mae:     A wedge.

 EDWARD:     A splume [??].  Maybe make your boards about a half inch thick, or maybe a lil bit thicker.  Boards be about five, some of em six inches wide.  Four or five foot long, and when you start splittin the suckers they split just as pretty by layers, you know?

 Lena Mae:     Just like if you take a…

 JD:      Like you take a saw and cut it?

 EDWARD:     Yeah, only thing, it was rough, you know, it wasn’t smooth. 

 JD:      Now, this was these…if I can remember, if I understand what you’re talking about, that was old stumps that would be in the swamp.  Were they floating or were they loose? 

 Lena Mae:     Most of em would be hollow.

 EDWARD:     Most of em floatin.

 JD:      Hollow?  So, it would be like either a whole stump or a piece of a stump? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah, it be hollow.

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, yeah.

 JD:      Maybe a half around, or a fourth around?

 EDWARD:     Anything…anything that was cypress, would split.

 Lena Mae:     Some of em was that thick, some of em was a lil thicker.

 JD:      A foot, or half a foot [thick]. 

 Lena Mae:     Just the round of the cypress, no inside.

 JD:      And usually that was how long, were those pieces? 

 EDWARD:     Long as the length you want…you could get 10 feet, if you wanted.

 Lena Mae:     They had a …

 JD:      Oh, they’d split that clean, all the way, 10 foot?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah!  I remember they had a big cypress across the bayou where we lived, I mean that thing was huge.  I guess, maybe, eight, ten foot around.  And that thing was hollow from the bottom on up.  Well, you could’a sawed that, you know, and get chunks out of it.   And that’s how he use to get the, uh…

 JD:      And that’s what you call pews?  You could make lil boards out of it then.

 EDWARD:     You didn’t have no other way to get anything out there.  You had to make it yourself.  All of it was hand made.   Now [currently], you’d want to build that [a fish box] you’d go get you some wire…

 JD:      Some 2x2s, for corners…

 EDWARD:     You could even go buy lumber already made.

 JD:      Course it wouldn’t last like that old cypress did either.

 EDWARD:     Aw naw.  But, they even used that, like a roof?   Yeah, shingles, what they called shingles?  Well, they’d split that [the pews].  Make a roof out of it, wouldn’t leak. 

 JD:      The same way?  Out of those…out of those pews? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah.  You put one down, you just lap em.  You lap em, and it don’t rain in em. Looks weird, but that’s the way they done it.

 JD:      Cypress shingles. 

 Lena Mae:     Well, it’s fast.

 EDWARD:     And a fish car, you can make it any size you want.  If you was a big fisherman, you need a big car. 

 JD:      But how…what was the…what was the…from what-to-what [size]?

 EDWARD:     You mean the purpose?

 JD:      No, no.  How big, I mean, some people would make them small but…

 EDWARD:     Aw, the old man had one that was, uh, 4x8 [feet].  Yeah, you had some of em 4x4, 3x3, 3x2…anything you want.

 Lena Mae:     You had to build according to the size of your fish [big fish in big cars].  Some of em was built, I mean, maybe four foot wide…like he say…eight foot long.  That was for your big fish.  Then they had another’n, maybe a 4x4, in the next slot of the dock, to put smaller fish. Gous, and whatever, you know, we had boxes for all that.

 JD:      You had different boxes for sizes, and different kinds of fish?

 Lena Mae:     Exactly.

 EDWARD:     Me and Myon had one, and we was fishing, and we puttin our fish together.  And, I mean catchin them goujons, some nice goujons…30, 45, 30 pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds?  We was puttin in that big…it was the big fish car…for when the fishboat come.  Fishboat come and we went to dip our fish, and we didn’t have none.

 JD:      Why???

 EDWARD:     They busted one of the boards off, and they all got out.  I don’t know how many…they must have had three or four hundred pounds of fish in it.  Lost every one of em.

 JD:      Now, how did you build a…how did you build a fishcar?   You got the pews, you got the cypress pews, and then what? 

 EDWARD:     You just…you just took postes, and you build your sides, all four sides and different, and you nail em together.  You put your postes and you put your bottom in it. 

 JD:      Your posts were made from what?  The same…?

 EDWARD:     Cypress.

 JD:      Now, did you call it a pew only when you split out the lil half inch wide ones?

 EDWARD:     Yeah.  Umhm.   

 JD:      That’s what you called a pew, the lil half inch or ¾ inch slats, almost?

 EDWARD:     Right.

 JD:      And you just split out a bigger piece for a post, I guess?

 EDWARD:     Right.  Like a 2x4…but it wouldn’t be… but one of em might be a 2x3, one might be 2x4, one might be 2x5, you know?  Whatever…

 Lena Mae:     Long as they had somethin to hold the board on the corner.

 JD:      They weren’t uniform.

 EDWARD:     You didn’t have a saw to saw it with.  If youd’a had a saw, we’d a done all that on saws.

 JD:      What you…well, you didn’t have a power saw, but y’all had all the hand saws and everything. 

 EDWARD:     Handsaws.

 Lena Mae:     Handsaw, crosscut saw…

 JD:      And y’all had those big pas partout, they call that?  It crosscuts?  Big saws?  What you used for nails?

 EDWARD:     We had nails.

 Lena Mae: We had nails. 

 JD:      Galvanized nails?

 EDWARD:     Yeah.  You could get nails.

 Lena Mae:     Mostly galvanized, in them days they didn’t make iron nails. 

 JD:      They didn’t?  It was all galvanized nails?

 Lena Mae:     All galvanized.

 EDWARD:     That’s what you wanted, was galvanized, cause the rest of em would rust too much.  You could buy nails…in fact, you could buy nails ever since I can remember, you know?  Before…before they made them regular nails like we got now, used to be square nails. 

 JD:      Were those galvanized too?

 EDWARD:     Well, some of em was, you could buy either kind. 

 Lena Mae:     Some of em was iron. 

 JD:      Now, those nails that I showed you that come out of that boat that’s on the lake [shoreline] right now?  Those brass nails?  Were those available back then?  I never seen that.

 EDWARD:     Yeah.

 JD:      Brass nails? You could buy brass nails?  I knew you could buy brass screws…

 Lena Mae:     Brass nails, iron and galvanized.

 JD:      And the fish cars, you would use em to put all these different kinds of fish…and where would you put em?  Y’all talk about makin a crib?  Is that…would everybody do that?

 EDWARD:     No, some people did, but most of em…you just tie em to a tree or whatever…try to put em where they had a current, where fresh water passin [kept the fish alive better]. 

 Lena Mae:     Where, uh, where we were livin, grandpa and daddy got together and they built a big old fish dock.

 JD:      What you call a “dock”?

 EDWARD:     A crib. 

 Lena Mae:     A crib.  With logs.  Go get them high floatin cottonwoods.  In the lake.  And then they’d put a flooring on it.  We had flooring on ours. And just a hole to fit the fishcar in.  You know?  And we’d play on there and all.  And [if] the water was high, we didn’t have no bank, we’d play on the dock [crib].   Our camp was on one end…

 JD:      And how big was this?

 Lena Mae:     How big?  I guess our dock was about as wide as that wall to this one. And, I guess, about as long as momma’s house.  [40 feet, about].

 JD:      So, it was bigger than this room?  Longer than this room?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, it was longer than this room.  It was real long.

 JD:      So that would have been, what?  About 25 feet…about 25 feet wide by about…

 Lena Mae:     I’d say maybe 20 feet wide, by about 40, 50 feet long.

 JD:      As big as the campboat?

 Lena Mae:     Right.  Bigger than our campboat.  Oh yeah, our dock was bigger than the campboat. 

 EDWARD:     Like boards and stuff, creosote boards, you could go on the sandbars and find all you want. 

 Lena Mae:     And boards, nailed, to walk on, you know?

 JD:      Where’d y’all get the boards from?

 EDWARD:     Just drift…they’d come down the river and drift.

 JD:      No 4x8 sheets of plywood?  [laughs]

 Lena Mae:     No, nothin like that.

 EDWARD:     They didn’t have plywood back then.

 Lena Mae:     Just boards.  Find a board, you’d pick it up, nail it on the dock. 

 EDWARD:     Anytime you find a board, you picked it up. 

 JD:      I bet that was good to fish…to fish perch in, underneath that, uh, crib, eh?

 Lena Mae: Aw, we’d fish there…you get on the inside, between the bank and the crib, you catch perch. All you wanted.  Fish crabs on the deeper side.  Oh yeah, we’d fix us some bait and put lines along the walk…the dock… put us four or five crab lines and go there and pick it up…you had two, three of them big…of them blue-pawed crabs on there!  Then, we had a cage, you know, to fish crabs…put the crabs in there. 

 EDWARD:     Everybody had a fishcar. 

 JD:      Everybody had a fishcar…but, not everybody had a crib like you talking about, huh?

 EDWARD:     No, a lot of people didn’t take the time to make one.  I’d a had one, you know?  I didn’t have none because I didn’t live that much on a campboat till we was married.  Like Doozie Burns, and all them, they had all that…

 Lena Mae:     We always had one.

 EDWARD:     They [the Burns’s] [?] they had generators, and…

 JD:      And you talking about Doozie Burns, up the channel?

 EDWARD::    Right…the same bunch…Myrtle’s brother. 

 Lena Mae:     Jesse and Doozie.

 EDWARD:     He had a…he was rigged up, he had a generator…it was a batry charger, is what it was.  He had his batries set up there, and…the way it was rigged up, when his batries would get so low, well the generator would kick on by itself.  Charge em back up, and when it would get charged, it would kick off.

 JD:      Boy, pretty fancy!

 EDWARD:     You could see his house lit up like a city, man, with those…

 JD:      He had tugboat batteries, or 12-volt car batteries?

 EDWARD:     Just them regular batteries.  But he had a bank of em, you know?  That’s the way they did it.

 JD:      Umhm.  Well, he must have known a lot about electricity to be able to do all that?

 EDWARD:     Well, it wasn’t hard to figure out how to do that.  There wasn’t too many people rigged up like they was rigged up.   Oh no.

 JD:      Just to get away from what we’re talking about for a minute, but they had a pretty good settlement down there at Bayou Boutte also, uh, somebody was livin…they had a fish crib, I remember, they had a great big thing!  But the people lived on the bank. 

 EDWARD:     Bernie Anslum.

 JD:      Bernie?  They had a sawmill there at one time? 

 EDWARD:     That’s Bernie’s boys, had that sawmill.

 JD:      Is that the same Anslum that uh, married into EJs family? 

 EDWARD:     Yeah, Russell was married to one of em. 

 Lena Mae:     One of his daughters.  We lived on Bayou Boutte too, at one time. 

 JD:      You did?

 Lena Mae:     Aw yeah. 

 EDWARD:     We did too. We all lived over there.

 JD:      That was kind of the lower end settlement, wasn’t it?  You had Bayou Boutte, and Fisher Bayou?  Fisher Island?

 EDWARD:     There was just a lil island separating the two. 

 JD:      Y’all had that, and then y’all had Blue Point, and then y’all had all the way up to Pigeon. 

 EDWARD:     Pigeon, Lil Pigeon, and Hog Island, Catfish [Bayou]

 JD:      You see what confused me was, I knew that Hog Island was up there around Keelboat Pass, but then…but then Lena Mae talking about Hog Island Pass that’s below, then…that was a different Hog…Hog Island down below towards Bayou Boutte, huh?

 EDWARD:     No.  No, you talking about…I forget the name of that…where we lived down on the end of Bayou Boutte, uh…

 JD:      I heard her say Hog Island about somethin down there, that you could see…

 Lena Mae:     I might of said Hog Island [but didn’t mean it]…

 EDWARD:     Probly did, but that wasn’t…

 JD:      You say…you say you could see the Morgan City bridge from where y’all lived?

 Lena Mae:     I did say that.

 EDWARD:     Where we lived…where we lived down there, on the lower end of Bayou Boutte,

 JD:      But it wasn’t Hog Island Pass?

 EDWARD:     Oh no.  uhuh. 

 Lena Mae:     I think that was Bayou Fisher.  OK.

 EDWARD:     No, Bayou Fisher is on the other side of the island. 

 JD:      It’s just a bayou on the other side the island, right?

 EDWARD:     Right.

 JD:      All that’s gone, now.

 EDWARD:     Aw yeah.  Growed up. 

 JD:      It’s all…all growed up.  Well, so that’s the fish car and the fishboxes.  That’s what y’all mainly did, was you kept your fish in it.  You didn’t put stuff in it to keep it cool, or anything like that?  To drink?

 EDWARD:     Oh no, uhuh. 

 Lena Mae:     You had to have it in the current.

 EDWARD:     You had cracks in em, Jim. 

 JD:      How big a cracks?

 EDWARD:     About, that far.

 JD:      Half inch, to three quarter inch?

 EDWARD:     Yeah, so the water could filter in, filter out, that’s all it was for.  You didn’t put em…you didn’t make em and put em together [the boards]. They had cracks in em.

 JD:      And they lasted a long time?

 EDWARD:     Aw yeah.  Once you built a good solid one, you had one for a long time. 

 JD:      Now, how do you suppose those catfish broke that slat out…broke that pew.

 EDWARD:     Too many of em in it!   We was…the fishboat would come twice a week, mostly Monday and Thursdays. 

 Lena Mae:     And when you didn’t have fish in em, you’d pull em up and let em dry out.

 JD:      Oh, you would? 

 EDWARD:     With two of em puttin fish in there, we was catching…oh, we was catchin 80, 90 pounds a day apiEdward:e, I guess.  When you figure over three or four days, well you have a good mess of fish in that sucker.  We had some big goujons, 40, 50 pound goujons.  Sucker hit that, sometimes it wouldn’t take too much to make it loose. 

 JD:      They must of just broke the slat.  Broke it out.

 EDWARD:     Once they get one [slat] that was it, they all…lost every one of em.

 JD:      I’m surprised y’all would nail those things on the outside of the post instead of on the inside [that was they couldn’t be pushed out].

 EDWARD:     Well, if I would make one now, I would put it on the inside.  Back in them days, you wanted more room, you know?  That’s the way we’d do it. 

 JD:      Well, let me switch gears on you for a minute and let’s talk for a lil while about headlights.  Um, from the days when y’all can remember [that] you used to have to go out and do stuff at night, did y’all use headlights? 

 Lena Mae:     Carbide.

 EDWARD:     Carbide lights.  You didn’t have no battery lights. 

 JD:      Tell me about carbide lights, how did they work?

 EDWARD:     Carbide.

 JD:      I know, but how?  Tell me, you know, how…?

 EDWARD:     All it is, is you had a light and it had a…it had a reflector. Didn’t have no glass on it, and you had that lil deal come up, come up right in the center of it.  Carbide light was a gas, what it was, it would form a gas.  When you light that lil flame, it reflected off that light [reflector] and that’s what would give you the light. 

 JD:      So, it would just be like a fire, a lil flame that would…

 EDWARD:     It would make a lil flame, like a candle, and you had the reflection on that light.  You couldn’t see far with em.  It ain’t like a…it ain’t like a headlight, you could put that sucker on and if you got a good batry, you could see a long ways. 

 JD:      But you could see to fish with that at night, if you wanted to?

 EDWARD:     Oh yeah, you could hunt frogs…you could hunt frogs with it.  The old man used to use that to hunt frogs. 

 JD:      Dip shrimp bushes with it?

 EDWARD:     Oh yeah.

 JD:      What happened in the rain?

 EDWARD:     It would stay lit.

 JD:      You had a lil cover, like, on top of it?

 Lena Mae:     You had it like a regular…your flame was inside the light.

 EDWARD:     No, this…it didn’t have no glass on it, cause it wouldn’t of burned.

 Lena Mae:     I know, but it was made like a lil funnel…

 JD:      Like a cup with a tube and the fire came out of the lil tube…

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.

 JD:      Does anybody still own one of those, y’all know?

 EDWARD:     No, I wish I’d’a kept one. 

 JD:      Now, you put the carbide…was it powder?

 Lena Mae:     Some kind of powder, I imagine.

 EDWARD:     A lil, uh, it wasn’t powder, it was pebbles, like…lil chunks, like corn?  And you put that in a…in a deal, and you put water in it.  Long as you didn’t have water it didn’t do nothin, but when you put water in it, that’s what makes the gas.

 JD:      You would add a lil water to it and it would make the gas and you would light it?

 EDWARD:     Right. 

 JD:      And did it go out, after a while? 

 EDWARD:     Well, it would eventually burn out, you had to keep…course it would last a long time.

 Lena Mae:     Keep puttin your lil pebbles in it.  If you went frog huntin, you had to keep puttin lil pebbles in it.

 EDWARD:     It wouldn’t go out in 15 minutes, it would last hours, you know, before it would burn out. 

 JD:      Now what happened if you were through with it…I mean…you didn’t need it anymore and you still had water in it…?

 Lena Mae:     You dump it out.

 EDWARD:     Just dump it out, and put you some fresh ones [when you need the light again].

 JD:      So there’s a whole big thing about how you worked that, and maintain it?  Everybody had those?

 EDWARD:     Yeah. but another thing you got to think about, now, we didn’t have outboards in them days, and you’d push [push skiffs].  If we’d a had outboards, well naturally the wind would’a blowed that sucker out.  Back in them days, a lot of people would hunt with push oars, you know?  Didn’t have outboards.

 JD:      Frogs and so on, y’all would hunt with those push oars?

 EDWARD:     Yeah. 

 Lena Mae:     Hunt frogs, dip shrimp bushes, fish…

 JD:      Now you say dip shrimp bushes, you talking about dippin em at night?  Yall dipped em at night for some reason? 

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.

 EDWARD:     Certain times of the year they didn’t have no shrimp in daytime.

 Lena Mae:     Cause, when the water cleared up, you ain’t had no shrimp in daytime. 

 EDWARD:     You had to dip em at night.

 Lena Mae:     Then you had to wait till about 8:30, 9:00 at night.  It had to be good and dark, then you’d push out there along the lakeshore, we had our shrimp bushes tied to cypress.  And we’d push out there, and then we’d put our shrimps in a tub to keep em live.

 JD:      Keep em live with water? A tub of water?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah. And we’d go get our shrimp; we dip our shrimp bushes.  We’d get home we’d dump our tub in shrimp boxes.   And keep our shrimp alive for the next day. 

 EDWARD:     Them shrimp box just like a fish car. 

 JD:      Well, that’s the next thing.  Talk to me about…

 EDWARD:     I got one…I got one hanging off of that wharf back there.

 JD:      A real shrimp box? 

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.

 JD:      Really, is it old, or…?!

 EDWARD:     Mine’s old, but it’s got wire on it.  Back in them days you had to make it out of wood.

 JD:      I really want to take a picture of that.  So y’all would go get your shrimp at night in your shrimp bushes, and come back…you keep em live…you come back and put em in your box, but your box caught shrimp too, didn’t it? 

 EDWARD:     No, [it wasn’t a trap, just a holding box]

 Lena Mae:     And then another way we’d do that, we’d, uh, have a sack.  We’d put a ring…a rim around a sack…

 EDWARD:     A burlap sack.

 Lena Mae:     And you put a weight in the bottom and drop it down to the bottom.   Well, we’d fish that off the fish dock.

 EDWARD:     You put a bait.

 JD:      You put a bait in the sack?

 Lena Mae:     Sometimes we put a bait, sometime we didn’t. 

 EDWARD:     Some wheat shards, or whatever.

 Lena Mae:     Them days, it was mostly oil cake [cottonseed cake].  And you’d go there and every now and then you’d go raise your sack like you do a crab line, and you’d have maybe 8 or 10, maybe a dozen shrimp, maybe more. In the sack, and that’s how we’d catch our bait.

 JD:      So, you had a shrimp box hanging on the crib, or hanging on a tree or something just to keep the shrimp live?

 Lena Mae:     Right.

 JD:      And why didn’t you do it like we do it now?  The way you dip your shrimp and [right away] you go bait your lines [at night] and that’s that?  Why didn’t you do that?

 EDWARD:     Well, sometimes you did.

 Lena Mae:     [but] Sometimes we’d bait in daytime, then, you see [but the shrimp were only in the bushes at night]?

 JD:      You had no way to keep em cold, cold till the next…

 Lena Mae:     …on ice, like we do now, or nuttin.  Had to keep em live till the next day.

 JD:      Ahh, had to keep em live, umhm! 

 EDWARD: But they didn’t have, I dunno…shrimp…everything changed.  When the water was clear back in them days, you couldn’t hardly catch a shrimp in daytime.  Now if you had muddy water?  It was lousy with shrimp. 

 Lena Mae:     You could go anytime and get whatever you wanted. 

 EDWARD:     You see now, most of the time, year round you got shrimp on them shrimp bushes…daytime [too]. 

 JD:      Even clear water?

 EDWARD:     Even clear water.  Unless it’s clear, clear, clear…then, they got shrimp but you can’t get em cause they see [you] comin and they run. 

 Lena Mae:     We had a shrimp box, and then daddy put a box to put perch in…put perch in, keep perch live.  We used to…every day…we’d load up, run up the bayou…we’d go to first Diamond Slough we’d run up there in the boat.  Sometimes we’d tow a pirogue…well, I didn’t want to fish with the rest of em in the boat, so I tow me a pirogue.  Fish out of a pirogue, by myself.  Momma and them would fish out of the boat.

 JD:      Fishing what?

 Lena Mae:     Perch. ‘Till we’d get enough perch, keep em live, come home, put em in the box.  Next day, Daddy’d go bait his lines with that.

 JD:      Well, did y’all fish…what did y’all fish those lil perch with? 

 Lena Mae:     On a trotline, a bentline.

 JD:      No, but I mean to catch em.

 Lena Mae:     Oh, a lil perch line with a perch hook.  Any pole, you can find and cut you…them days you could cut lil poles anywheres.  Tie you a line to it and fish perch.

 EDWARD:     Cut you a lil ash pole, peel it and let it dry.  That’s what we used to have.

 JD:      Ash pole.  What kind of bait, for those lil perch?

 Lena Mae:     Shrimp. 

 JD:      Shrimp?  And they’d bite on that, eh?  You didn’t have any trouble catching em like that? 

 Lena Mae:     Uhuh.

 EDWARD:     I used to have some shrimp boxes.  I used to make shrimp boxes to catch shrimp, out of wood. 

 Lena Mae:     Every day, we used to run up the bayou and get our load of perch.

 JD:      Every day?  Yall would do that?

 Lena Mae:     Every day. 

 JD:      So, y’all’s job was to catch the perch and he would go and put em on the line?

 Lena Mae:     Bait with em.

 JD:      Yall would do that in the morning, afternoon, or middle of the day?

 Lena Mae:     After dinner.  We’d all take off after dinner and catch our perch.

 JD:      How many of y’all that would be?

 Lena Mae:     That was me and Momma, Daddy, Milton…four of us.

 JD:      So…so Myon would help, he would go and catch perch too?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  He’d come with us.  He wouldn’t let us go by ourself, so.  Momma couldn’t go with just me and Milton, we was little. 

 JD:      Y’all were little then?

 Lena Mae:     I guess I was about seven, eight years old.

 JD:      And Milton would have been about five?

 Lena Mae:     About.

 JD:      Good deal.  And then, from carbide, how did y’all go to regular headlights?

 EDWARD:     Well, they come out with batteries.

 Continued on Chapter 48