Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 48

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

 Continued from Chapter 47

 JD:      Well, I’ll just turn this thing on again, if y’all don’t mind. We talked about head lights and started off with, uh, carbide and ended up with batteries.  How about hand axes? 

 Edward:        What? 

 JD:      Hand ax.  Lil ax?  As a tool?  What about the small ax?  Did y’all use em?

 Lena Mae:     I don’t believe Daddy owned a small ax. 

 Edward:        Most people owned a big ax back in them days. 

 JD:      They didn’t use, the little hand ax around in a boat, or…in the woods?

 Edward:        I don’t remember the old man ever had one of them.

 JD:      Well, how did they cut down something like a small tree, or a pole?

 Edward:        With a ax.

 JD:      A big ax? 

 Edward:        Umhm. 

 JD:      Cut stobs with a big ax?

 Edward:        Umhm.  People didn’t use stobs back in them days.  They use poles. 

 JD:      And you used the big ax to cut those poles with?

 Edward:        Umhm. 

 JD:      Ok.  Believe it or not, all the time that we’ve talked, I don’t have anything on tape from y’all about hooks.  Starting from…I mean, a hook…I guess there were two things you had to have to fish, and that’s a hook and a line.  And so, hooks are kind of important about…how that came about.  What was it like when y’all got started, with hooks?

 Lena Mae:     Just about like the line.

 Edward:        They had hooks just like they have now, except they didn’t have stainless steel. They would rust and they would rot just like the line would. 

 Lena Mae:     The only thing you’d save, some of em, was your swivels.

 Edward:        Well, most of those was handmade swivels. 

 JD:      Umhm.  Did Ida [Daigle] make all the swivels y’all used?  Or you made em yourself?

 Edward:        I made my own.  I didn’t like their swivels.

 JD:      You didn’t like Ida’s?  You made your own. And were they the double…the double swivels?

 Edward:        Mine was a single. 

 JD:      It was a single.  So, you had a…you had a nail with a…a bend in it, [making] a hole, and you had the head of the second nail dropped through that hole, and then you uh, then you had another loop [ring] at the bottom.  And your line was tied to the top…to the head of the top nail?  Is that the way it turned out?

Edward:        No.  Yeah, my nail was the top, because the way mine was made [if] you put the nail on the bottom…if you swing over the line would get caught in the swivel…and if you had it the other way when it flipped like that it wouldn’t get caught in the swivel.

JD:      You gonna have to show me. 

Edward:        It was different made, and it was size of wire I used than Ida and them.  They used a smaller wire with a double swivel, than we used with the single swivel. 

JD:      Can you draw that?  How yours was made?  Why don’t you draw on this cover for me?  [he draws on the manila folder the ms in in].

 Edward:        I was gonna draw it on here.

 JD:      Oh, well, if you don’t mind, if you could draw it on here, for me.  Edward’s gonna draw it on the, uh, that manila folder that I have the manuscript in. 

 Edward:        [he draws and explains].

 JD:      OK.  So, you had wire at the top…

 Edward:        Yeah.  NO.  I had it upside down.  When I’d put my hook, you see, my hook would be here, so when the fish would flip, it couldn’t come back and hang.  If you put your hook thisaway, if he flip around, well it come around and get on this, this here, and it wouldn’t swivel [the stageon would hang up].  And the way Ida and them’s was made, theirs was made…it was double, just like this, here.  It would come down and it had a…

 JD:      A double loop.

 Edward:        A double loop. 

 Lena Mae:     Make two loop on they wire.

 JD:      And put em together.

 Edward:        That was your nail that would come through there.

 JD:      Now, how come you didn’t like that?

 Edward:        I just never did like their swivels.  I didn’t like that kind of swivel. 

 JD:      So, with yours, you say you got [drew] it upside down.  Uh, the top of it would be the nail loop, is that what you’re sayin? 

 Edward:        Yeah, the nail would be on the top.  You could put it either way, now, but the most of the time it would hang up [if you put in the wrong way].

 JD:      The top would be the nail, and you would have the nail’s head, like that.  And you would have the loop comin round like that, and that would be the wire.

 Edward:        Right.

 JD:      So, that would be the nail on top.   And the wire would be on the bottom.

 Edward:        And Ida and them’s you could do it either way, cause it didn’t make no difference.

 JD:      And this was, uh…ok, and these were handmade swivels.  Um, how about hooks themselves?  What kind of hooks did y’all buy back in those days?

 Lena Mae:     Used to call em Yellow Tags. 

 Edward:        Or Limerick?  You could buy a Limerick. 

 JD:      That’s what…what…what size?

 Edward:        3/0, 2/0, 4/0…depends…most of the time you fished the big hooks when you had bigger fish. 

 JD:      Big…big hooks?

 dward:        Yeah. 

 JD:      Now, that’s for y’all up in the bayous and stuff, how about in the lake, Lena Mae?

 Lena Mae:     Number 2 [2/0], number 3 [3/0].   Unless you fish a bushline.  You fished a bushline, you wanted a bigger hook.  Big, big fish. 

 JD:      And your hooks didn’t last either. 

 Edward:        Uhuh.  They last longer…they last longer than the line. 

 JD:      Where did they rust out?  The hooks?

 Edward:        The eye.

 JD:      The eye, where you had the line tied.

 Lena Mae:     The eye would break.  The hook would break right at the eye. 

 Edward:        And the beard [barb], the beard would rust off.

 JD:      But y’all still used that loop…that technique where you put the line through the hook, come down, make a turn and come back?  So, you had a lil cinch, like, right blow the eye.  That’s where it would rust.

 Edward:        That’s where it would rust. 

 Lena Mae:     Then, we’d make one loop.  [not going down and coming back].  On account of that hook would…that line would rust the hook. 

 JD:      So, you didn’t put more line there than you had to.  You say one loop, you go through and come down, and that’s all.  You didn’t go down and turn it like we do now?  You didn’t do that, you had just the one…?

 Edward:        Umhm.

 Lena Mae:     That’s how we did it. 

 [eating and talking about the food on the table]

 JD:      How about a drag?  You know, the…[to find lines, etc.]

 Edward:        That’s been around ever since I can remember. 

 Lena Mae:     We never did use a drag, us. 

 JD:      Lena Mae, y’all never used it?

 Lena Mae:     Used it mostly for nets, but not for lines.  ‘Cause we had our lines tied on poles. 

 JD:      You didn’t have to worry about finding em, or…how about broken…

 Lena Mae:     You broke a line, you’d go to the other pole and catch it. 

 JD:      Um.  That’s right, you didn’t need to…yeah, you didn’t need to have a drag to catch it on the other side.  They were all on poles so you didn’t need to drag.  But now, [how about] y’all [EC] for lines?  Yall didn’t use drags?

 Edward:        No, we usually tied from bank to bank.  Just go across the bayou if it was broke.

 JD:      So, the main purpose of a drag always was to catch a broken line, or a line you had to tie underwater.

 Edward:        Right.

 Lena Mae:     Or for nets.

 JD:      And what was it like?  What were the old drags like?

 Edward:        Just like they are now.

 JD:      They were welded?  They had welding machines back in those days?

 Edward:        Yeah, you had people who had welding machines…would make em for you, you know? 

Lena Mae:     I’ll tell you how else they’d make em, too.  Daddy made some…you get a big nail, one of them big galvanized nails?  And he bent the end of it, and then he tied the nails to the…with string, or whatever. 

 JD:      So, it wasn’t a heavy, heavy drag.  It was just a…a light little drag?

 Lena Mae:     Well, he’d do it on a pipe, you know?

 JD:      Oh!  Do it on pipe! Oh.

 Edward:        Homemade.

 JD:      Alright.  We already talked about shrimp boxes somewhat.  Uh, I have y’all talking on two tapes already about shrimp boxes.  How about jiggerpoles, stob poles?  How did that come about? 

 Edward:        Aw, they always had them too. 

 JD:      They did.  Well, now, I understand that for line fishing…

Edward:        Not always.  I meant…they used to drive poles for nets to.

 JD:      For nets too?

 Edward:        Yeah.

 ena Mae:     Jim, it’s not like it is today.

 Edward:        You could drive a pole and nobody’d mess with it.  And now…

 Lena Mae:     You could drive a pole, you can put a…a cypress knee, in them days it was mostly cypress knees, on your headlines, and just drop it overboard.  Go to raise your net, your thing was floatin, you pick it up, raise your net.  It’s not like these days, you can’t have nothin like that these days, you gotta hide it under the water or you don’t get it [back].

 Edward:        I remember drivin down a bayou you could see floats…floats all over. 

 JD:      Cypress floats…cypress knees?

 Edward:        It be hoop nets.  People fish their nets, and that’s the way they fished em, nobody’d mess with em.

 Lena Mae:     And nobody never bothered em. 

 Edward:        Very, very seldom you had somebody would run em.  Course they always had thieves, you know?  Every now and then…they wouldn’t steal em, they’d run em.   I seen Arthur Sanders, I was nothin but a kid, and…with his daddy, they used to buy fish.  Uncle Joe used to buy fish.  So, we went…we left the Catfish [bayou] ands we went all the way down the lake to Myon and them’s canal, and he was gone buy fish, you see?  Pick up the fish on the way back. 

 JD:      Who was that?  Who was it?

 Edward:        Uncle Joe [Sanders] and Arthur.  And Mike Sanders, and me.  There was four of us.  So, we went…we was just kids, me and Mike.  But Arthur and Uncle Joe, they was grown.  We went down there, and he didn’t buy no fish.  But comin back up, Doozie Burns and them had nets in Bayou Cowan, and all them places.  So, he stopped, and he run Doozie Burns nets to get some fish to pay for his trip.  I seen that when I was a kid.  And that was my uncle did that. 

 JD:      Umm.  That wasn’t any better then than it is now, is it?

 Lena Mae:     Uhuh.

 Edward:        Well, it wasn’t everybody did it.  But you take Pinkerman Mendoza, Robert Vuillmont [Jew Robert], that’s the biggest crooks in the world. 

 JD:      Is that right?

 Edward:        Aw, yeah.

 Lena Mae:     Was it your uncle got shot and killed for runnin somebody’s line.  Yeah, your momma’s brother.

 Edward:        John,  John Sanders?  I dunno, that was before my time. 

 JD:      That a story you heard?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, but I seen his picture.  That was his momma’s brother.  Somebody killed him for runnin somebody else’s line. 

 Edward:        You take Jew Robert?  Jew Robert had that scale…

 JD:      Jew Robert Vuillmont [the fishboat operator]?

 Edward:        Yeah.  He had a deal…he had net, a big net you put your fish in.  And he’d set there and it’d hang close to the floor, on his boat.  And he put his foot underneath that net, and hold it up with his [foot], and he’d give you the weight.  He might get five or six pounds on you like that.  He did that.

 JD:      And you know, the bad thing about it is, y’all depended on those guys [the fishboats] to bring you almost everything you used.

 Lena Mae:     Exactly!

JD:      So, they had you.

Edward:        But everybody knew they were crooked.  They knew Pinkerman was crooked…and all them.

JD:      But you couldn’t do anything about it.

Edward:        Naw, I mean, if you told em somethin, you didn’t have no place to sell your fish because they didn’t have ten fishboats, they might of had one comin to your place, at a time.

Lena Mae:     They had thieves in them days too.

Edward:        But, uh, you take Allen Blanchard, he was as honest as the day is long.  He wouldn’t beat you out of nothin. 

JD:      He had a fishboat?

Edward:        He’d buy…he used to buy fish for, for Bergeron there in Morgan City.  He’d run the boat for them.  They’d come up twice a week, Monday and Thursday.  They’d come all the way up from Morgan City up to Keelboat [Pass], spend the night, go back the next day.

JD:      So, it was a two day trip?  One day up and one day back?

Edward: Right.Thursday he come up…he’d come up Thursday, he always spend the night at the house…

JD:      Whose house?  Your house? 

Edward:        The Old Man [EC’s father].  And he…

 JD:      On the bank?

 Edward:        No, we was on a campboat.  But he slept on his boat, you see?  He had a…he had his bed, and everything.  But he’d always come up there and we’d make ice cream and he’d set up 10, 11, 12 o’clock at night, just shootin the bull every…every night when he was there. 

 JD:      Which one is this?

 Edward:        Allen Blanchard.  And uh, if we wanted to go to Morgan City… Momma’d want to go to Morgan City…well, we’d get on the boat with him the next day, ride to Morgan City, and then next trip back up, be over there at the dock.   Get on the boat and ride all the way back up with him.  Leave Morgan City early in the morning.  He’d always get up there [Keelboat Pass] just about dark, when he get to the house. 

 JD:      It took him that long to make his run?

 Edward:        Well, when he’d stop, if they had plenty fish, it would take longer.  ‘Cause weighing fish, and…people would buy groceries and uh, everything was done off that boat.  You want a piece of clothing?  You told him what you wanted for size, when he go to town he go pick all that up.  When he come back up he had it for you…shoes, anything. 

 JD:      I imagine, if they weren’t honest, they could make money on you too.  They would buy the shoes and charge you more for it.  Well, I guess they had to charge something for delivering it to you though.

 Edward:        Well, he wouldn’t.  Allen…Allen wouldn’t charge you nothin.  But Pinkerman?  They’d crook you every way they could.

 JD:      And yet, wasn’t it Pinkerman Mendoza, if I recall, that took Milton [Bailey] to the hospital that time he cut his throat with that knife?

 Edward:        It might a been, I wasn’t there at that time.  Lena Mae ought to know that.

 JD:      But y’all did…y’all depended on em, no matter what.

 Edward:        Oh yeah.  Right. Umhm.  But uh, Allen Blanchard was a…was real honest, I mean, uh, he was an honest man. 

 JD:      Well, let’s talk about when the jigger poles…when the stob poles did come in.  When they did come in, how did that happen?  When y’all started usin the stob poles?

 Lena Mae:     I don’t remember havin…ownin one, till we moved on this side the lake.

 Edward:        Well, it was a long time after we was on this side.  We used to put a line out, and you had a pole…and your bridle was tied thisaway.

 JD:      Your bridle was tied on top the pole.

 Edward:        On top the water.  And you had to have a sinker here, a sinker here, a sinker there.  [all along the line to get it to the bottom].  Every bent of line had to have at least three sinkers to get that sucker down.  Then we started with jigger poles, with that your line was down here, and with that when your line falls, it’s naturally on the bottom.

 JD:      On the bottom to start with. 

 Edward:        And that was one reason why you used jigger poles, you didn’t have to pack a boatload of sinkers with you all the time. 

 JD:      And that was a problem, getting enough sinkers?

 Edward:        Right.  You take…you take 30, 40 bents of line with three sinkers…and in the spring of the year you had to have more than that.  I seen us put em every three hooks, four hooks…you had to have a sinker.

 JD:      The stronger the current or the more the trash, the more sinkers you had to have. 

 Edward:        Right.

 JD:      Well, what did y’all do for sinkers?  That’s on my list [matrix].

 Edward:        Oh, they had plenty sinkers.  You could go anywheres and get that. Nuts, and bolts and pieces of iron, or whatever, you know?

 Lena Mae:     You see, across the lake where me and Edward came from…

 Edward:        Chain dogs, chain dogs?

 JD:      You see, that’s what I wonder about.  Because with them across the lake, how…where did you get the iron?

 Lena Mae:     You see, they used to have them pullboat roads, and they’d pullboat lumber out of them out of them pullboats into the bayous.  Well, I guess the same thing at Hog Island and Keelboat, I don’t know.  But they used to have a lot of chain dogs.

 JD:      What’s a chain dog?

 Lena Mae:     That’s…they put in them logs to hold them together.  [laughs at my ignorance]

 JD:      What’d it look like?

 Edward:        You have a boom of timber, you know?

 JD:      A boom of timber is just a raft of timber?

 Edward:        You cut you a willow pole, maybe 30 feet, and go clean across the boom of timber.  Well, a chain dog, you had a chain, a regular chain…

 JD:      How big?

 Edward:        Just a regular link, about a inch, two inches.  And the dog, to drive into the log…it was about a inch and a half wide, about 3/8 of an inch thick.

 JD:      Made of steel?

 Edward:        Made of iron.  About six inches long.  It was pointed on the end.  They had a hole in it, your chain went into that dog.  And you drive it on this side, and you cross over that willow tree, and you drive it on the other side.

 JD:      Why did you cross over the willow tree?

 Edward:        That what it takes to hold the log, you see?  Like if you have one right here, it’d be just like you had a clamp, would go across, tighten it down.  Now, if your chain dog was too long for your pole, you just wrap it.  You just turn it till it get tight enough so when you drove it down, and you had about that much of the head of the chain dog stickin out, well, it would be tight.  And that’s how you held them logs.  Every log, when you go across that boom, and every log was chain dogged.  Some of em, you’d put two.  Some of em maybe three chain dogs on one log, if it was a big log.   And you had an old ax, to knock em out?  And you’d want to knock em out just like you was gonna chop that wood.  You hit that chain dog…[the ax blade cuts into the iron]

 JD:      With the blade of the ax?

 Edward:        With the they blade of the ax. [that’s why it was an OLD ax] And that’s the way you’d knock em out the log. 

 JD:      So, you sayin that those chain dogs were one of the big things y’all used for sinkers.

 Edward:        Right.

 Lena Mae:     Aw yeah!  That’s mostly what we had…

 Edward:        Now, the big pullboats, what they had…they didn’t use a ax, they had a…a…like a crowbar, with a fork in it.    And just like you’d run up there and catch that chain dog…catch the chain where that chain come around, and they had a hook here, and you could just…

 JD:      You could lift it up.  So, it had a foot on the crowbar, you talking about?

 Edward:        But it was a heavy thing, and just didn’t pack that around.  We didn’t pack it around, we just use a ax.  I seen us take a brand new one, buy a brand new ax, just to have a dog ax.  Just to knock them chain dogs out.  It’d be dull as all hell, man.  But that’s mostly what they’d use, but you could find scrap iron, you know, nuts, sometime you find bolts…

 JD:  But you see that’s why I was asking about that.  Because if you lived on a houseboat across the lake, or something like that, you wouldn’t be around any place that’s got a lot of that old iron.

 Edward:        No.  [but] you accumulate that, Jim.  You accumulate it and save it, you know? 

 Lena Mae:     You accumulate all kind of stuff.

 JD:      And…and once you had it, it was worth something to you.  You didn’t just throw it away or anything, I guess.

 Edward:        But, that’s the way it was.  Chain dogs, I used to have some chain dogs, I dunno…

 JD:      Well, if you could find one, remember what I was talking about?  You remember I was talking about how I would like to collect some of those old things, so that we could have em all in one place.  I want to take pictures of em, so that maybe we could publish that…and so on?  But what I’d like to do is collect all that stuff in one place, at my house and make it kind of like a…something that people could go and see, if they wanted to.  All in one place.  Something like the chain dogs.  It’s not to say any one thing, it’s just if y’all come across stuff that you…you think that I could use. 

 Edward:        That’s just like them old cotton scales that we used to weigh them fish.  I used to have all that.  I got rid of it all.  I should’a kept that, you see?

 JD:      That was that…that bar thing. 

 Edward:        Cotton scale, that’s what it was…cotton scale.  Crosscut saw, had one of them.  I let it get away from me. 

 JD:      You don’t have any reason to save those things, usually.

 Edward:        Naw, you…you wouldn’t think you would, but now I know I would’ve, you see?  There’s a lot of…I could have a whole museum here, with stuff like that. 

 JD:      You could.  You sure could.

 Edward:        In fact, a lot of that stuff, you could sell it.  Just like coins, back in them 1930’s…  You could’ve saved some from the 1800s, now you don’t see no more.

 JD:      Well, what could you be savin right now that would be worth something in 20 years?  Think about that.  [laughs]

 Edward:        Yeah, I’ll be gone then.

 JD:      No, you won’t.

 Edward:        Well, if the younger generation would be…I’m gone have all that. 

 JD:      All the stuff you got now?

 Edward:        I’m gone have…I’m gone have coins and stuff…

 Lena Mae:     He’s got a lot of antique…like, uh, to make paddles.  They used to make their own paddles.   They’d split one of them pews.   A lil thicker, and they had a deal…a blade on it.  Set down and …

 JD:      I believe that’s what they call a draw knife.  Wasn’t it?  With two handles?  With a blade in the middle?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  You’d pull it, and that’s how you’d, uh….  Well, he’s got one of them. 

 Edward:        I’m gone show you one in just a minute. 

 Lena Mae:     I don’t know what they call it, but I remember they used to make paddles with that. 

 JD:      But when they started, uh…when they started with the stob poles, with jigger poles, do y’all remember how y’all got started with that…made the first ones, how they were put together?

 Edward:        Yeah, you just have pipe, and you take a pipe and uh, and you cut you a willow pole, or cypress…straight, straight pole.  And peel it and let it dry.  Put up a pipe, any ole pipe would make a jigger pole.  Not fancy like they are now, aluminum and stuff like that, you know?

 JD:      But that’s how the first ones were always made, is a pipe and a pole?

 Edward:        Yeah.  Right.

 Lena Mae:     I remember one time daddy lost his, when we first moved over here.  Had lost his jigger pole.  We were still makin em then.  And, he needed a straight cypress, you know, a long, straight cypress?  To make him another pole.

 JD:      About 15 feet long, something like that?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  So, I was fishin at the time, paddling a pirogue along the Cut, by Oaklawn Canal, you know?  I had lines up in there.  Well, I run across a cypress, right at the head of Oaklawn Canal.  They had a grove of cypress in there, and I looked at one, and I say “That’ll make Daddy a good pole”.  So, I got there and I cut that pole down.  I took all the limbs off, and everything, and I cut it as long as I could?  And I brought it to him.  And he got there, he had to whittle some of it down, you know, but he made him another jigger pole.

 JD:      How old were you?

 Lena Mae:     Hmph.  I guess about…when we moved here I was 14 years old.  Around that time, it wasn’t too long after that.

 JD:      You were fishing on your own when you were 14?

 Lena Mae:     Jim, I was fihin on my own when I seven years old. 

 JD:      By yourself, or with…with…?

 Lena Mae:     In a pirogue, by myself.

 JD:      Fishin tightlines?

 Lena Mae:     Bushlines.  I’d fish in the woods and fish…

 JD:      [EC comes in with a drawknife]  Aw yeah.  Is that an old one Edward? 

 Edward:        That’s an old one.

 Lena Mae:     That was daddies. 

 JD:      Is that right?  That was Myon’s?!

 Edward:        I think it was.  Now you see this here…

 JD:      What we lookin at is a couple of drawknives that have, uh, I’d never seen em with the butterfly nuts holding the handles on.

 Edward:        Yeah.  You see, there used to be one…split that lumber?   You had a handle on it like this.  And this was sharp, and you hit it.  Hold that sucker…

 JD:      Oh, I see.  It was sharp on the edge…[?]

 Edward:        Right.  To make them uh, pews.

 Lena Mae:     It just had one side on it.

 JD:      It had a blade on one edge, and you hit on this side.  But you could hit on the outside of the pew, I imagine, like this.  It was long enough to go all the way through?

 Edward:        Yeah.  Once you get on the inside you could hit over here.

 JD:      Yeah, on the outside edge.  To bring it down.

 Edward:        And that’s the way…

 JD:      This is important, you going to hold onto this?

 Edward:        Aw yeah, I got that.

 JD:      You can’t see that anymore.  That’s a drawknife, the old style.  Boy, that’s really something.  It’s in good shape too.  Don’t let the kids take that out of the shed, for some reason.

 Edward:        They ain’t gone get it.  Well, Justin got a lot of old antique stuff.  I’m gone fix a place in my shed, and he’s gone bring all his stuff over here.

 JD:      And I need to photograph.  When y’all get all that, like this?  I need to photograph it.  I don’t need the actual thing, what I need is a good picture of it. 

 Edward:        Well, I ain’t getting rid of this.

 Lena Mae:     No, I ain’t gettin rid of that.  Just like we got the tools to…to fix a crosscut saw. 

 JD:      To fix…to sharpen it and everything, you do?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, that was daddy’s.  Years ago.

 JD:      Myon talks on tape about how you could tell if a crosscut saw was sharp by how long the “spaghettis” were when it came out.  You know…you know what he’s talking about?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  That’s the shaving…

 JD:      Umhm.  That’s right, he said if you had spaghettis about 8, 10, 15 inches long, you knew your saw was sharp. 

 Lena Mae:     I used them things.  [crosscut saw]

 JD:      You did too?

 Lena Mae:     Huh!  Did I use em! 

 JD:      Two person, you talking about?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.  It take two [people].  Me and Daddy, or Milton and Daddy. 

 Edward:        Jim, that’s another antique.  You set the [roads?] on your saw.  You set that on the saw, and your teeth would stick out just a lil bit.  And all you do is hit em with a lil hammer, makes your [road?], make em cut.

 Lena Mae:     You got the spider too, to set it with.  You had that in your closet. 

 JD:      What… what Edward just brought out here is a tool that’s used to sharpen, eh, crosscut saws.  It’s hard to describe, but I’ll take a picture of it later on, and use that.  But they have these things, I need to remember to come and take pictures of em.  Yall don’t mind takin pictures of em?

 Lena Mae:     No, I don’t mind.  But I don’t want to get rid of it, cause that belonged to daddy.

 JD:      How about landing nets, Lena Mae, did y’all always use lil landing nets, for your fish?  I know I talked about dipnets before, but now I’m talking about…

 Lena Mae:     Landing nets, what’s landing nets?

 JD:      That’s the lil nets you use to dip you fish with.  You always used that for your…for your bushlines? 

 Lena Mae:     Yeah. 

 JD:      You kept a small net in the boat for that?

 Lena Mae:     Yeah.

 JD:      Uh.  Did y’all ever dip that cotton line in anything when y’all were using it?  [she shakes her head].  You just used it raw, eh?  [nods yes].  OK.  I thought I had heard somebody talking about how sometimes y’all dipped that line in tar to keep it from, from jamming.

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, sometime they did.  That’s true too.  Daddy used to tar it.   To try to preserve it.  I remember one time he put out a brand new row a line.  He had just bought, I believe it was ten pounds [of line].  And uh, we drove a row of poles from across the lake and we come almost on this side with it.  Fifteen bents of line, long bents of line.  And them poles go straight as an arrow, hoss.  You look down there and you couldn’t see the end of the poles, it was so long.   And uh, I remember they teased daddy “Why don’t you keep on and go across the lake with it” you know?  And the further out you’d get, the better the fish would bite.  I mean, straight as an arrow.  And it was cold, in the wintertime.  And we got a…He had just bought that [line] and put them lines out.  And, a freeze come.   Stayed three days, we couldn’t get to his lines.  And we went out there and that ice had cut that line offa them poles just like you take a knife!   Didn’t have a line left! 

 Edward:        [showing a piece of equipment to work on crosscut saw teeth] that’s what sets your [rows?].

 Lena Mae:     But you got the spider too, Daddy [her husband], what you…?

 Edward:        But I don’t…

 Lena Mae:     Yeah, you did, you painted it blue. 

 Edward:        Oh no.  I don’t have the spider.

 JD:      That’s another tool that I’m gone to come and take a picture of, when I get a chance.

 Edward:        You set that on your saw.  The blade goes up in there, and this right here sets your, uh…

 JD:      So, it’s different than this, or for the same purpose?

 Edward:        No, it’s a different deal. 

 JD:      Different deal for the same thing?

 Edward:        Different tool for the same saw.  You had to have three of em.  They had a spider too.   That went…made just like a spider…and you set it up there and that tooth had to meet that spider ...to get your right angle.   And all of em would be the same.  If you didn’t have a wide enough [road?], if you didn’t, it would jam on you.   You cut a wide enough cut, so when you cuttin, so your saw wouldn’t jam.   find a spider…

 Lena Mae:     You got that spider, you painted it light blue!  I remember.

 Edward:        No, I ain’t got no spider.  This is the only…only…

 Lena Mae:     You remember you found it…[and] Putt wanted it so bad? 

 Edward:        This…this was it, right here.  That’s what Hencock was lookin for.  He was looking for that thing and I found it and I picked it up and painted it.  I never would tell him I had it.

 JD:      Is there a name for either one of these, that y’all remember?

 Edward:        They got a name, but I don’t know what they are Jim.  The only one I know is the spider.  This is…I guess it’s a [road?] setter. 

 Lena Mae:     They ain’t go no writing on it?

 Edward:        Yeah.  They got writin on it…

 Lena Mae:     Can’t read it?

 Edward:        “Made in USA”, and “E.C. Atkins and Company”.  They had one at the flea market like this the other day. 

 JD:      Did they know what they had?

 Edward:        No, they didn’t know what they had, but I knew what it was for.  I had one so I didn’t have to buy it.  I woulda bought it.  When I go back to the flea market, I’m gone look for one.  I need…I need to go to that one in New Orleans.  They are [open] Saturday and Sunday. 

 JD:      Well, uh, to move on here, did y’all…Lena Mae said that they didn’t use much in the way of…of line preservative or anything like that…tar. 

 Edward:        Tar.   Yeah. 

 JD:      Now what was the different between a line that was…say you’re fishing lines…a line that you could dip with tar…how much longer would it last than a lien that was raw?

 Edward:        Longer.  Well, the main part about usin the tar was so your hooks wouldn’t slide on the line. 

 JD:      The hooks [stageons] would slide on a raw line?  Worse than nylon?

 Edward:        Aw yeah.  Aw yeah.

 JD:      Really?  Cotton was as bad as nylon for the hooks to slide?

 Edward:        Yeah.  If you didn’t have somethin to hold it there.  But as far as makin it last, like I say, it wouldn’t last that much longer with tar.

 JD:      And there wasn’t anything else y’all used out there…?

 Edward:        You could uh…they used to use red lead. 

 JD:      Red lead too?  And this is with cotton line?

 Edward:        Yeah.  You could mix red lead…mix it with uh, I think they used to use coal oil.  I don’t know what they used to use to mix it with.

 JD:      Or turpentine, or gasoline, or something…?

 Edward:        Whatever would cut it, you know, and make it…make it thin enough to dip line in. 

 JD:      And that would help?

 Edward:        Yeah, well, it would help keep your…keep your hooks from slidin. 

 JD:      Now, that’s your main line you talking about?  You didn’t dip swivels…I mean, stageons?

 Edward:        Yeah.  You dipped…umhm.  You could dip em.  Lot of fishermen didn’t dip nothin, just fish em like that [because] they didn’t last long enough to take the time [to make it worthwhile]. 

 JD:      The only thing you saved [when the line rotted] was the swivels, I guess.  The hook itself, and the hook and everything else would rot and go away.

 Edward:        But all this [saw tools], I’m gone keep all that.  Justin gone probly wind up with all this anyhow.  I’m gone try to fix it so he get it, if something happen to him it go down to the next one and go down.

 JD:      Um, how about motors.  Yall talked about how in the old days it was just pushboats, but by the time y’all…by the time y’all were old enough to be fishin, there were Lockwoods and uh…

 ED:     Lockwoods and air-cooleds. 

 JD:      The Lockwood wasn’t air-cooled?  The Lockwood was water-cooled, you talking about?

 Edward:        Right.  You had a air-cooled and then you had a…had a…what we used to call a…a motor with a…it had a reservoir on it, keep the water?   It was…it was like a air-cooled motor.   But it had a reservoir on top of it, and that’s how you kept it cool, you kept that full of water. 

 JD:      You kept pouring water in it?

 Edward:        No, when it would get hot, you had to keep changing water.  It…it would run a long time before it would get hot. 

 JD:      What kind of motor was that?  You remember the name? 

 Edward:        Like a Briggs and Stratton.  I had one like that.

 JD:      Briggs and Stratton.  You cooled it with water? 

 Edward:        Umhm.  I had one like that one time. 

 JD:      Uh, how about other kinds of inboards?  When they first…you remember when inboards first came out? 

 Edward:        Yeah.  Model As, Model As and Model Ts.  Fords.

 JD:      But when y’all got old enough to start fishin, there were already inboard motors being used?

 Edward:        You mean outboards?

 JD:      No, inboards.  The little put-puts were already being used by the time y’all were old enough to start fishin?

 Edward:        Yeah, oh yeah.  The first outboard that came to Myette Pt., uh, I forget what year…

 Lena Mae:     [Edward’s father] was fishin with two-horse Lockwoods, and eight-horse…

 Edward:        But the first outboard that was out here…Milton [Bailey]…Milton had bought a Wizard, from Western Auto.  And, uh, it didn’t have no reverse.  You turn it all the way around, that’s the way you would do it.

 JD:      You could turn it all the way around to go backwards?

 Edward:        Umhm.  A lil six-horse Wizard.  And boy, I mean it was…it was nice, boy, you talk about fine, it was somethin, you know?!

 JD:      It was somethin new.

 Edward:        Aw yeah!  And, uh, the first outboard…

 Lena Mae:     It was that Johnson got stolen…

 Edward:        No, the first outboard after that we had, I owned it.  It was that Mercury…that Hurricane Super Ten Mercury.  Ten horsepower.  That was a fine motor too.  It had a lot of power, cheap on gas.  And, that was the one we turned over, with me and Medric and Jack [? his name mentioned in the same story elsewhere on these tapes] and Tom Carr.  But Milton had the first outboard, and I had the first Mercury.

 JD:      And the motors worked good?  So they were reliable?

 Edward:        Umhm.  And people start buyin em after that.  Jesse bought one, and first thing you know, everybody had one. 

 JD:      Did they…did they make a boat go much faster than a inboard would?

 Edward:        Aw yeah!  You talk about!

 JD:      They would get up on the top…on plane?

 Edward:        I had that lil, Super Ten and me and Milton, we built a lil…a lil boat.  It wasn’t wide, about three foot wide, and about ten foot long.  And it was pointed.  And we entered it in a race in Franklin, and Shine Fouquet runned it.  It outrun everything out there.  But the only thing was bad, in Bayou Teche, old Shine would take it…all take off…and when he’d get to the turn, it was a flat bottom and that sucker would [skid and not turn].  And the rest of em would come around that bend, and by the time old Shine would get straightened out, they was way ahead.  Boy, he’d take off again, and he’d catch em before they’d get to they other turn, and that’s how we lost.  But if that sucker would’a turned?  Shit, we’d a won that sucker with flyin colors!

 JD:      What was his name, who ran it?

 Edward:        Shine Fouquet [sp?].

 JD:      Shine Fouquet.  He was a friend of y’alls?

 Edward:        Aw yeah.  He used to be, uh…

 Lena Mae:     He used to be a game warden.

 Edward:        He used to be a game warden, and he was a police juror for years, he run for sheriff a couple times.

 JD:      The ten horse Mercury outrun everything?

 Edward:        Outrun everything out there.  That was a fast lil sucker.  I was comin up the Crevasse one day…in it…and in them days they had sandbars and [growing on them] they had lil willas [willows] about that high [three feet], three or four hundred feet up there.  I come around a bend one day and I was comin too fast and I couldn’t turn, that sucker went sideways and hit them lil willas and when it hit them lil willas it was like you put some grease under that sucker!  And I stopped about 100 feet back there.  It’s a good thing it was a small boat, I had to pull it off by myself.  But it was a fast lil boat, that sucker’d run, hoss!  [laughs].

 JD:      And, I guess that made the big difference between where you could put lines, eh?

 Edward:        Aw yeah!  We could run a long way…at the Crevasse in a lil while.  In a Lockwood it would take you…it would take you an hour to run to the Crevasse, cause they wasn’t fast…run about four or five miles an hour.   But a lil outboard, the one I had, that sucker’d go about 30, 35 miles an hour

 JD:      What a difference!

 Edward:        Aw yeah.  Then me and Russell [Daigle] bought the first two,  35-horse Mercury that come out. 

 JD:      Thirty-five!  Can you imagine?  All the way from an 8-horse Lockwood to a 35-horsepower in just…how many…four or five years it took?  Or five years?

 Edward:        Aw, it didn’t take that long.  Once them outboards start comin out, it didn’t take long.  And, me and Russell was fishing, we went up…way up around uh, Gravenburg.  We’d go up there and fish with them boats.  We go up there with a…it wouldn’t take a gallon of gas to run up there.

 JD:      Why would y’all go all the way up there to fish?

 Edward:        Well, we had a fast boat!   You’d go anywhere, then. 

 JD:      So y’all took advantage.

 Edward:        Aw yeah. 

 JD:      Well, I imagine some of those people came down here too?  To fish once they had outboards?

 Edward:        Aw yeah.  Well everybody, once they start getting outboards, you seen them suckers all over! 

 Lena Mae:     That was the abomination of the world.

 JD:      Oh yeah?

 Lena Mae:     That and deep freezer.

 Edward:        Then I had Evinrude, I had Johnsons and… Mercury was the best.  Mercury was cheap on gas.

 JD:      Weren’t they kind of high tempered?  I mean, uh, kind of delicate tempered…those early Mercury?  I understood they turned over so fast, so many RPMs that they’d go bad…they’d…they’d mess up.

 Edward:        Well, if you run em wide open all the time, but I never did run a motor wide open, in my life.  The only way I run that sucker wide open is if it was necessary.  Like when we was fishin crawfish and I had that 50-horse Mercury, and it wouldn’t get up with but about 26 sacks, and I was catchin 30, 40 sacks of crawfish.   Well, I had to run it wide open…to get in, you know?  And uh, that’s the only reason why, but otherwise, I never did run a boat wide open.  I don’t never run my motor wide open.

 JD:      Yall talked a while back about oars, uh, in pushboats.  Both of y’all remember those pushboats…with the oars.

 Edward:        Oh yeah.

 JD:      What did they make the oars out of?

 Edward:        Same thing, cypress. 

 Lena Mae:     Jim, that’s what we was fishin in when we got married.

 JD:      Both of y’all were fishin with those pushboats when y’all got married?

 Edward:        Aw yeah.

 JD:      Now, you [Edward] had to learn how to put bentlines in the water when you came down here, I guess, eh? 

 Edward:        Well, it kind of growed on me.  Me and Milton [Bailey] used to do it, you know? 

 Lena Mae:     Milton, him and Milton all the time together.  Milton fished all his life.

 Edward:        Me and Milton fished together all the time.

 JD:      You were pretty close to Milton, eh?

 Lena Mae:     That’s why he married me, to be close to Milton.  [laughs]

 Edward:        I still miss him.

 JD:      Is that right?

 Lena Mae:     Oh Lord, I guess so!  Jim, how long it’s been [since he was killed in an oil field accident]?  Twenty some odd years.   Twenty five years.  Still, you get there and think, you know, what could have been. 

 JD:      And he was married to Hester [Lange] at the time, eh?  I didn’t realize that Hester was part of that Lange family? 

 Edward:        Hester’s my niece.

 JD:      I didn’t know that.  There’s a lot of connections y’all have here [that] y’all take for granted, yeah, that somebody like me, you don’t see it as clearly as y’all do.

 Lena Mae:     You see Milton and Hester, when Hester and them moved over here, they were little.  Milton was real young.  And they almost, you could say they growed together.  And then they ended up got married.

 Edward:        You know, if I could ever find a…if I ever could find me a piece of cypress I would make a oar.  I used to make em.   Aw yeah.

 JD:      Those oars were how long? 

 Edward:        Six foot.

 Lena Mae:     Eight.

 Edward:        Six foot or eight, or whatever.  Depend on how wide your boat was.  If you get a wide boat you had to have a…to make em meet in the middle…you had to have a…

 JD:      Longer.

 Edward:        Yeah.  You’d be surprised at the people right now that wouldn’t even know how to use a set of oars.

 JD:      And how did you make those…how did you rig it out a boat?  Well, start off with the boat.  What kind of boat was it?

 Lena Mae:     Skiff.

 Edward:        You took a…a board, about 8-inch board, whatever…will go clean across your boat.   And it would stick out just a little bit on each side of your boat.   And you took a block, like a block of wood.  And you nail that on that yoke. 

 JD:      Like a six-inch block of wood?

 Edward:        A 2x4, or something like that.   And you took a, like a net hoop, 3/8 inch steel, and you bore a hole [in the block] and you suck that in there.  And you put you a rope around…that, that oar had a lip, like, on it.  And you tied your frame there and that frame went over that pin that you had there, and that sucker would hold your oar.  And you could just move sucker back and forth, you see.  That’s what held your oars. 

 JD:      Yall built those boats yourselves?

 Edward:        Well, I didn’t, but uh, my brother used to build em all the time.

 JD:      Which brother?

 Edward:        Son.   The one used to live in Morgan City.

 Lena Mae:     The way daddy did that, on them blocks…like that block you talking about that you put on that board to hold your oars?  Daddy would dig that out, a lil bit, for your oar to kind of sit down in there. 

 Edward:        You see, right now, what you could do you could bore you a hole through the block and put your oar through it.   And that way you would just work it like that, you know?  Back in them days you didn’t have no way to bore a hole that big in a block, you know?   But there’s a lot of ways now that you could do it differently, you know?

 JD:      Well, nobody uses those pushboats any more do they?

 Edward:        Uhuh.  No.  But I tell you what, you get a good skiff, you set back there and, boy, you talk about could make some time hoss!

 [Lena Mae shows some boat models]

 Continued on Chapter 49