Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 06

  

 

DATE:                        1974

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:              Albert (Myon) Bailey’s house and Albert (Putt) Couvillier’s house at Myette Pt., St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS:   Myon Bailey, Agnes Bailey, Putt Couvillier, Dorothy (Dot) Couvillier

[RELOCATE BACK TO MYON BAILEY’S HOUSE ON THE MYETTE PT. LEVEE]

 JD: Where did those fishboats…where did they start from?    Where did they leave from when they went to pick up…[fish]

 Myon: Morgan City.  

 JD: All of em?   That came…

 Myon: Morgan City, yeah.  

 JD: And uh, what kind of man was it that ran those fishboats?   I mean, like, explain to me…what did he have in Morgan City?   What did he have back where he lived in town?   What…did he have big dock, or…?

 Myon: A fish dock.   Just like they got in Calumet, a fish dock.   Sanders had a dock for a long time, there, too.  

 JD: Henry?

 Myon: Henry Sanders, yeah.

 JD: Now is that Arthur’s daddy’s brother?

 Myon: Yeah.  

 JD: It is.   That’s, uh, Aunt Tee Nug’s brother.     

 Myon: Well, I don’t know.   Maybe Arthur can tell you a lil better, but he run a fishboat too already.

 JD: Arthur ran a fishboat? #.   Well, now, where did they get their groceries, these boats that came up?

 Myon: Wholesale in [Morgan] City.  

 JD: They didn’t have grocery stores [didn’t own them] where they lived?

 Myon: No.   They picked up from the wholesale.   Everything they’d buy…like a man would by…they’d put it in the boat.

 JD: So, their only grocery store was right on the boat?   That’s where they stocked up.

 Myon: Right.  

 JD: And you could buy everything that you needed…

 Myon: Everything you needed in a house, yeah.   What they didn’t give you [have on hand], you had to order from em.  

 JD: Line and hooks and dip?   All that?

 Myon: Yeah.

 JD: Putt was telling me some really interesting stuff about…about those boats last night.   He was telling me…he couldn’t remember too well, because I guess those boats must have stopped runnin when he was just a lil boy.  

 Myon: Yeah, most of em.   Yeah, right.  

 JD: But he said that those boats, most of em, looked like a lugger.   Is that right?

 Myon: Most of em, yah.   Henry Sanders had a bateau, a big bateau.   Mertile Theriot had a big lugger, other people had that boat…Norman had that boat.   Make a shrimp boat out of it.  

 JD: So, it’s the same kind of lugger like Joseph has got?  

 Myon: Yeah, but bigger though.      Yeah, oh yeah, the one Mertile had, there, was 48 feet long, I believe, and near 14 feet wide.   It was a big boat.   In other words, I hauled the lumber to build that boat.   I was livin in Morgan City and, Pete Voisin was runnin fish then.   He had a small boat, wanted to build him a big boat.   And I was livin in Morgan City.   I was there, if I remember right I was there for her [Agnes] daddy, her daddy was sick. And Pete Voisin come in there sick with typhoid fever.   And he had that boat loaded down with good cypress lumber he bought at Wilbert’s in…in Plaquemine.  

 JD: That was a rough cut mill?

 Myon: Yeah, so, they had planers there too.  Oh yeah.   It was a big mill.   So, I took that lumber and brought it to Bayou Milhomme [from 2002 ABP map], Harlan Byram [sp?], he’s the one build the boat.

 JD: To where?

 Myon: Harlan Byram [sp.???].      Right next to Stephensville.   Bayou Milhomme leads to Stephensville, [to] Bayou Long. And I brought that lumber there to start that boat.   I didn’t need to work on the boat, he was working on it, but I brought the boat [with the] lumber so he could keep workin on it.   The man couldn’t get out of bed, I had to bring him…his lumber across.       Brought his boat back.   He build that boat, and then uh, Pete Voisin he sold that boat to Mertile Theriot.   Mertile Theriot run fish a long time.   And one time, long before that, Mertile Theriot used to run a stern wheel boat out here.      Yeah, we used to call it the Monarch [probable spelling].   That thing was about 70 feet long, maybe 80 foot long…about 16 foot wide, maybe 18 foot wide!  

 JD: It was a steamboat?

 Myon: No, it was a gas engine, but it was a stern wheeler.   And for years, he run up here.   He had a store just like…you could buy anything off it, and…

 JD: It was a fishboat?

 Myon: Fishboat.   Buy fish, anything you want.

 JD: Put a year on that if you can, Myon.   Put a year on that.

 Myon: Well, the last time that boat was run, I guess it was about ’28…eh Momma?   When that Monarch quit runnin?   About ’28, or the 30s?   No…later than that, too.   It must have been, let’s see, Lena Mae was born then.   Lena Mae…let’s see…must have been in about ’30, 33’, 34, something like that.

 Agnes: [?]

 Myon: Lena Mae born in ’32?

 Agnes: No, Milton was born in ’32.   [?]

 JD: How many boats, would you say, fishboats, ran out of Morgan City…that collected all the fish all up and down this, this swamp?   How many boats?

 Myon: You had Pinkerman Mendoza, you had Henry Sanders, you Mertile Theriot, you Bergeron’s boat, we used to call him Oliver – he used to run the boat.   And let’s see who else, come on, I’d don’t know.   But Pete Voisin used to run for some…Pete Voisin used to run too, but he used to buy fish for [?a dock?].  

 JD: That’s five so far, I think you talking about.   Five separate boats.   There was enough fish to take care of five separate boats to come up here?

 Myon: Oh yeah, lot of fish up in this country then.   Lot of fishermen.   Man, I guess so!   They had fishermen all along the lake…up there at Keelboat [Pass], Hog Island, Catfish [bayou]…they had campboats all along there with fishermen.   They used to have fish in them times.   They made one run a week, you know?   [the fishboats]. They made one run a week.   If the fish would run heavy, well they would kind of double up, more.   [More than one run a week].   The Monarch would go about three days sometimes, out there.  

 JD: Could they make a pass all the way up and back and back in one day?   [all the way up north as far as they would go?].

 Myon: Oh no, never make it in one day, couldn’t do it.   Not sell groceries and buy fish…couldn’t do it.   ‘Bout the quickest they could do it was about three days, I guess.      Go up there to Bayou Chene and back to Morgan City.   But that Monarch would go about three days sometimes, up there [Bayou Chene area].   Mertile Theriot, you remember, that Monarch [earlier talk]?      Sometime, he’d buy moss and everything, put on that boat.   He buy everything, fur, anything they had to sell, that man would buy.  

 JD: It was like a tradin boat, then…?

 Myon: That’s what you could call it, a tradin boat.  

 Agnes: They had Ken Verret…

 Myon: Yeah, Ken Verret run boats for a long time.

 JD: So, that’s six?      Uh, so that goes for Morgan City.   Now, how about…was there runnin from anywhere else?

 Myon: Uh, Plaquemine…they had a fellow John [Noonan ??? Sp.] in there, and another old fella, I forget his name.   Ma [Agnes], what’s that other fella from Plaquemine?   They had John Noonan and that other fella.   How you call that other fella?

 Agnes: Uh, Parnell?  

 Myon: Parnell, Parnell .

 JD: So, you had two from Plaquemine.   They were runnin the same route.   Now, these boats all ran the same route?  

 Myon: Well, most of them Plaquemine boats wouldn’t come down the lake, here, you see?   They come…far as they’d come would be Keelboat, Catfish, turn around and go back up.   Morgan City boats go all the way up there and all the way back down.   Bayou Boutte, they pick up fish all along…

 JD: Now, if there was, say, six boats out of Morgan City, how did you know what boat you were sellin your fish to…I mean…how did you know which boat…?

 Myon: They come at your place.

 JD: You mean you sold your fish to the first boat that came?

 Myon: No, not…[?]…most of the time I deal with one boat.   Another fisherman would deal with one boat, and it was…separated, you know?   Most of them six boats didn’t run at the same time.   Let’s get that straight.   Take like when Pinkerman was runnin, let’s see, Theriot…Mertile Theriot was runnin, and Henry Sanders.   About three boats was pretty regular.   And also, Bergeron’s boat, that was four boats, pretty regular.   You could depend on them fellas.   And that’s the kind of fellas we’d look for.   Them other fellas, they’d run when the fish business was, uh, slow, you see…looking for fish all the time.   Then if it get plentiful [the fish]…they get fish,   get a lil bit load of fish, go back in, they didn’t worry about you.   But these fellas, you could depend [on].   Bergeron’s boat, Pinkerman Mendoza, and   [names another boat but ?].   They were pretty well all dependable, but some of them fellas come in there with fishboats and they wasn’t dependable, you couldn’t depend on em.   And it’s not all fishermen [that the boats could depend on, as well]…in other words, you…like you like to sell me fish, another man sell fish to another fella?   Well, that’s the way this here was workin, in other words.   You see, most of the time I had Pinkerman Mendoza run [by] my place, and Bergeron’s boat…sometime he’d stop and [I’d] sell him some fish.   And when Mertile Theriot was sellin [buyin], I had Mertile Theriot to stop too…pick up my fish, buy groceries with him.  

 Putt: What happened when yall needed some groceries from a fishboat, if it’s passin, you had to sell you fish [to be able to buy groceries]?

 Myon: Aw, I had that happen many times.  

 Putt: You sell em a few fish to get a few groceries, eh?

 Myon: Yeah.

 JD: You had to sell some fish to get your groceries?

 Myon: No, you didn’t have to, but it didn’t look right, you see?   And, I had them fishboat to pass me up many times.   I had to run em down sometimes.   I remember I used to live across the lake [Blaise’s Canal] there, old Pinkerman come up, he say “How about killin me some ducks?”   He give me 50 cents a pair for ducks.   “All right, now,” I say, “Make sure you stop back on your way down”.   Sometime they didn’t stop back on their way down…pick up a load and didn’t stop back.   “Yeah, oh yeah” [laughs] he’s a big bullshitter.   So, I go out there…and I kill, I dunno, I believe I had about 20 pair of ducks hanging up on the line, gutted, waiting for him.   I believe he had a lil diesel.   He was passin WAY out there [in the lake, could hear him] goin popopopopopo.   I say “Oh no, now bud, me and you now!”   I took behind him.   I had a six-horse Lockwood.   I took behind him, I could outrun him. [laughs].   I say “What the damn hell you think you gone do now?!”   “Old Man, I …forgot about you!”   I say “Don’t you come here with that, I’m gone hit you over the head with that goldurn paddle here!   What you think I’m gone do with them ducks over there?”   He turn around, come got them ducks.   Another time he pass me up, I didn’t know he had passed.   He left me with a bunch of ducks, I had to cook up somethin.   [laughs] [and use up the ducks himself]. Now, that’s somethin.   He used to make me mad, yeah, sometimes.   It wasn’t easy, I’m gone tell you!

 Putt: Then the best part about it today, Jim, these people just want to check on licenses.

 JD: Check licenses?   Who would show up and want to check on licenses?

 Putt: Game warden.   He want to check you license, your box license…after all this looting going on, they got enough nerve to come up here and want to know if you got your fishing equipment…your license and everything.   Check your box license, your retail license…

 Myon: They had a game warden there this mornin…

 Putt: But they don’t say anything about all them dead fish we been havin here in the last,  so and so…

 JD: You mean there was a game warden here this morning wanting to check your box license…it takes a license to buy fish like this…?

 Myon: Yeah, aw yeah.  

 Putt: Yeah, they got nerve…it takes a bad nerve to do that.

 Myon: The first time I ever had a game warden, he checked me for my box license.   I always did have a license, yeah?  

 JD: Well, who was that?   Who…what game warden?

 Putt: It was uh…uh, Wayne…uh, Romaine.

 JD: From where?

 Putt: Morgan City.  

 Myon: Pontiff, you said, eh?  

 Putt: Uh, no, it’s Wayne uh, Vidal, from Morgan City.  

 JD: Well, I thought that fella Leblanc had this territory.  

 Myon: Yeah, but he just checkin for license.   He come notify the people what gone happen.   In March, they gone make a big check…if them net fishermen got nets overboard, they gone have to have this tag on them nets.   They catch you with a net with no tag on, they gone fine you.  

 JD: You mean you have to put tags on the nets?  

 Myon: You gone have to.

 JD: What do they have to say, the tags?  

 Putt: You got to have your net license [number].

 Myon: Like this here.   [shows license].   I buy my license every year.  

 Putt: What’s bad about that now, is they let all this pollution go, and destroy everything we got, but we got to have tags on nets [to catch] dead fish.   That’s got to be one on every net.  

 JD: Why, so they can…?

 Myon: When they get there and you raisin that net, they ask if you got you license…yeah, they gone want to see your tag.   You got to…[if] you got it on that net, they gone find it.   You supposed…you supposed [to do it].   When they come out…that’s why they give you them tags.   But we never…it never was enforced.   We never did put em on.   [a name] used to put em on, but I never did put em on.   But you see, doing that…a fella fishin 100 nets buy $10 worth of license. That’s thirty tags.   You see, I got 17…16 nets, well, I buy $5 worth…you get 15 tags for $5.   Well, I’m short one [tag].   If I happen to raise that one net [the one without a tag], you know, [laughs]…he has me.  

 Putt: But, what’s all so bad though, if you got 100 tags on your nets and you got out there and run all your nets full of dead fish, and the game warden, if you ain’t got no tags, he come there and pick up your dead fish and…

 JD: Charge you for it?   Well, you say this fella came this mornin to warn…to…?

 Myon: He wanted to know if I had a license.  

 JD: No, but you said just now that…

 Myon: He told me that the…the…to tell the fishermen that in March they gone make a run, gone make a check.   [it would be] better for em to have the tags on the nets.

 Putt: I’d rather do that too.   I’d rather have my tags on my nets, but I’d like to have the money, when I raise my nets…I’d rather [find the fish alive in his nets].

 Myon: And uh, in other words, he asked to see my license…I didn’t get my license this year yet [something about a delay].   I buy my license every year.   Net license and also box license.   But I hadn’t got my license…I thought I had got it, though, but I got a paper to get it.   [looking for the notice].   I did get a paper in the mail.   They send you a paper and all, every year they send you a paper, you see?

 JD: You have to fill this out and send it back?

 Myon: Yeah.

 Putt: But goin back to the olden days, what’s the name of that steamboat?   That was the Albert Hanson, and the Captain, uh…

 Myon: Captain Clifton.  

 Putt: Captain Clifton.   And uh, Oscar Lange, what’s the one Oscar Lange had?  

 Myon: He had uh, let’s see…

 Putt: Edmond Hughes, I believe, Edmond Hughes, or something like that.  

 Myon: Yeah, I think it’s…

 Putt: They had three steamboats.   They had the Captain Clifton, the Albert Hanson and the other one…

 Myon: Suwanee.

 Putt: Uh?

 Myon: The Suwanee.   Williams boat.  

 JD: The Suwanee too?

 Myon: The Suwanee, yeah, that was Williams, S.B. Williams boat.

 Putt: Yeah, but the Suwanee, wasn’t that a steamboat?

 Myon: Yah.   That’s the fastest steamboat they had around.   [?]

 Putt: We used to eat biscuits…they’d pull up in the channel there…

 Myon: That…that was the Captain Clifton [was this a person or a boat?]…that was the Albert Hanson, they call it.   The boat.

 Putt: Yeah.   They used to pull up in The Cut, there, and we’d go on there and eat biscuits on his way up.   We’d go on that boat, but one time they pushed off with me on there.   They had to come back to the bank and let me off.   You know, they blowed the whistle, had to get off.

 Myon: In that canal over there where I was livin [Blaise's Canal] over there, some time eight days at the time before they could pull out of there with a boom of timber.   [being Williams Canal, they used it to float timber]

 JD: Why?

 Myon: Weather, it was rough. [?]

 JD: Rough?   Well, talking about the timber, I want to talk to you about something that we asked Putt about last night.   When people started moving out of the lake, onto the land, first of all they moved right up against the land, didn’t they?

 Myon: Right.

 JD: They moved out of the lake and into places like this [Myette Pt. community].   Like in the canal right here.

 Myon: Most of em, yeah.  

 JD: And then they sent the kids to school while they still lived on the houseboats.   Right?

 Myon: Most people, the majority of the people, yeah.

 JD: But eventually what happened was they pulled…either pulled their boats up…or they built houses…now, the question I wanted to ask you was why do you think…why do you think people decided to get off houseboats and come live on land?   What do you think was…[the reason]?

 Myon: That…that…that water.   You see, they put that spillway through there, and it got plenty bad with that high water in there.   They asked the people to get out of the Atchafalaya Basin.      Yeah, they…they tried to get the people out of there.   Most of em was livin [kind of permanently]…four of five years before they moved out of there.   [you could ]Still live in campboat, but that’s most of the trouble [the frequent high water].   The people left them places…cause of them high waters, you see?   It wasn’t safe out there no more, for families.  

 JD: Well, how come?   How could it hurt you if you were in a houseboat?  

 Myon: Jim, you got too much current, you got plenty water out there.    The thing is, when we used to live in houseboats, very seldom we’d get a high water [that] would cover the land.   When you did get two or three foot water on the land, that was a big high water!   When the water would go out, everything go dry, you had ridges…like back here, nothing but ridges…and this would all go dry.   But it don’t do that no more, since the Atchafalaya [levees were built].

 JD: So, when they built this levee, is that when they started telling people they ought to get out?

 Myon: Yeah, yeah.   Yeah.

 JD: That was after the ’27 flood, you talking about?

 Myon: Correct.  

 Putt: Well, uh, I think the Old Man was about the last one to pull off the barge, eh, Myon?

 Myon: Yeah, but yall had move in Bayou Teche…

 Putt: Yeah, but I’m talking about all that time we was on houseboats…I think we were about the last ones to pull offen barge.

 Myon: Yeah, about the last ones.   Umhm.  

 JD: Well, could you still get, uh, enough timber to build barges with in those days?  

 Myon: Yeah, we could scrap up enough.   Yeah.  

 JD: But it wasn’t as easy as in the old time?

 Myon: No, no.   No.

 JD: And I’m gonna ask your opinion of this too.   I asked Putt last night.   How long, in your opinion, your knowledge, how long would a good barge last…under a houseboat?

 Myon: Good lumber?      Well, I’d say you could…if it’s real good lumber, I’d say it would last 20 years, 25 years, maybe more.      If you take care of it, paint it, every now and then pull it up and put copper paint, put somethin on it…it last longer than that, good cypress don’t rot.   And wear…I seen them barge wear, you see the head of the nail stick out that much…water…water eaten?

 JD: Yeah.

 Myon: I seen that.  

 Putt: But if you don’t pull em up, Mr. Myon, about 10 years, you think?   Because…

 Myon: Oh, more than that.  

 Putt: I was tryin to figure when the Old Man built that camp…

 Myon: Oh, more than that.   See, that hull was as old as this camp.  

 Putt: Yeah, but you pulled yours up and painted it.

 Myon: Right.   But that camp there, might have been 15 years old when I got it.   Cause the…the weatherboard and all was all   [worn].   You know, the cabin could tell you that.      I don’t know how old it was, I say 15, maybe older.   When I pulled that barge up, to paint it, like you say, it wasn’t too bad shape underneath.   I could kind of see where the water ate a lil bit, but not much.   But that was built by the best cypress, I could see that, nobody had to tell me.   When I got in the hull, before I traded my lil camp for that’n there, I got in the hull and look at it.   I had to see the kind of lumber it was built out of.   That’s why I traded.   ‘Cause I knew it was good…good lumber.   When I pulled the barge…the cabin off of the barge, hell, that barge didn’t leak a drop.   Didn’t have a drop of water.   I sold the barge…I don’t remember who I sold that barge to.

 Agnes: I don’t either, but I know it stayed tied up there for a while.  

 Myon: I don’t know if it ain’t Arthur Sanders?   Somebody from up the country.   I just don’t…I ain’t got no memory for nothin.  

 Putt: But, I can’t remember when that Old Man built that camp in [?] Canal.   Was that a new barge or a secondhand barge.   That’s what I told Jim, I think that was a secondhand barge he built a camp on it…at the mouth of the canal, here.   But I think it was a secondhand barge.

 Myon: I believe it was a secondhand…

 Putt: We was livin on grandma’s camp, I believe, and he built a…building on that houseboat.   But we never did pull it up, cause I remember after that, after we built it…back in them days, from the time it started leaking [then tore the barge apart?] he traded that lumber for a lot of good lumber after that.   The lumber was still good, like the gunnels, but the bottom was gone.   The bottom would go bad…

 Myon: Old Lester sunk one one time, a campboat, in…in the lake.  

 JD: Putt told us about that last night.   He waited till nighttime to try to get around a norther, and it caught him in the middle of the lake…sunk it.  

 Myon: Ah, yeah.

 Putt:   I don’t know just how it go, I was a baby, but I was told so many times by…look like I can [see it].

 Myon: He was crossin Willow Cove when he sunk.   He was between Willow Cove and Blue Point.  

 Putt: Them northers come out every day.   Every day.   And he wanted to move.   He was packed up to move, and he was gone leave one night.   That’s what he told me.   He got out there, norther broke out that night, the wind picked up and the camp sunk.  

 JD: Now there was a hole between the…between the porch on the side…there was a hole…

 Myon: Yeah, you see, you got 2x4s, you see, you got 2x4s…

 JD: Across.

 Myon: Across.   Across the top of the barge.   Of course, I cut these here off, but they stickin two foot outside, I put a guard…a porch on there, you see?      Two foot porch on each side of the camp that they had.  

 But the same 2x4s your floors nailed on, stickin out on that so your porch could nail on.      And that, that was all open under there.   You couldn’t close that cause it would rot the inside of your barge; it would get mildew and stay wet.      Leave that open, the air under…it would stay dry, you see?   And that’s why it was on purpose to leave that like that.   You could a had it closed, but you’d rather have it like that cause it save our barge.      And, when it got real rough, that’s what sunk his camp, you see, the waves [got in between the barge gunnel and the camp floor].  

 Putt: I tell you what.   That make one of the best cellars you ever seen, for stackin, storin groceries that need coolin.      In the water, settin in the water, the barge stay cool.  

 JD: I bet it did.   Well, that’s mainly what I wanted to talk to you about.   I wanted to talk to you about those fishboats.   That’s somethin I wanted to get wrapped up.  

 Myon: Yeah, I seen that boat, that Monarch, he could bring…

 Putt: That’s the big one, Mr. Myon, the Monarch?

 Myon: Yeah.   The sternwheel.  

 Putt: You remember I was telling you about one big one there?   I didn’t know the name of it.

 Myon: He could bring 20,000 pounds of fish on that boat.      And I seen fish on top of that icebox cover [overfull].  

 Putt: I believe I mentioned the fact that it was the Monarch, I wasn’t sure.  

 Myon: That man made a…two fortunes!  

 JD: And what was his name?

 Myon: And when he died…Mertile Theriot…and when he died, he died a poor man uh…on old age pension.

 JD: For what reason, Myon?

 Myon: His kids, his wife, women…

 JD: Spent it all?

 Myon: Good a man as you could on the road!   And she wouldn’t trouble [to] go see Theriot [when he was dying?].   Hunnh, and [when] her daddy [Blaise Sauce] died, and I can tell you I can thank him [Mertile Theriot], I’d a been in a helluva shape.      Man, that man [Blaise] stayed three months in there in the hospital in that bed in Morgan City and I didn’t have no job.   I wasn’t fishin, [because] I couldn’t leave him.   He didn’t want me to leave him.   He had his oldest boy, Monug and Robert there.   They work a lil bit…you know how young boys…half the time they didn’t work, and…and the Old Man didn’t want me to leave him, he wanted me to stay with him, he was crippled.   [I think he says here that] mosquitoes poisoned his system, and his legs was like this here [??]   And the doctor claimed that it was caused by something inside…a operation would have settled…I brought him to the hospital one time and uh, and he run away [?] from the hospital on his own.   Cause I had left, I had left.   I had left his daddy and his

 stayin there.   His momma was there.   And they didn’t listen to him, they took him out of that hospital and left.   I called that doctor when I got back home, I got surprised.   I got back home and called that doctor, he told me what he had to have.   He had to be operated, but I couldn’t stay over there with him, I figure I had to come back and do something [earn some money somehow], make money, you know?   So I was runnin my lines, I come back from my lines, he was layin in bed.   I say “What in the hell you doin in here?”.   I used to get him mad.   [laughs].   And he says, uh, “The doctor says, uh, there ain’t nothin wrong with me”, says, “You gone get better”.    Say, [to himself] “I don’t believe that”.   And uh…

 JD: You say you called the doctor.   How did you call the doctor?

 Myon: I walked…I was livin in Morgan City, I had to live in Morgan City.    I had my campboat tied there, in Morgan City.   So, I went there, to Boudreaux [?] and I called the doctor.   Dr.   Crouf [?] from Bayou Boeuf.   He used to be our doctor.   He come up there.   He [Blaise] say, [to the doctor] “What you doin here?” He say “Don’t come here with your lies”.   He say, “I told you I wasn’t gone come back here” but he say “I come back here because of Myon”.   He say “He axed me to come back”.   And he says “I’m gone examine you again, and if you got to be operated on, there’s no use you call me back here, because I’m NOT comin!”   And he examined him, and he [found] the same thing.   But he say “I’m gone find out what happened”.   He [Blaise] wouldn’t tell me what happened [at the hospital].   And he [the doctor] called New Orleans, the hospital.   So they told him he had dissolved [that’s what it sounds like] the hospital, you know?   He called me back…he had…matter of fact he come back, and he told me, he told him too.   He had run away from there.   [the doctor]He say “Don’t yall call me back any more!” cause he say “I don’t want your money” and he says “I can’t do you no good”.   And he say “If you don’t want to be operated, just lay there and die, it don’t make me no difference!”   Even the doctor [was irritated]…

 JD: He was mad by that time.

 Myon: He…he…that doctor had tell you the whole story, he didn’t hide you nothin.   He said to me “What you think?”.   I say “I think you shoulda stayed over there” and I say “You goin back”.   He start to cry.   I say “No use to cry, you ain’t no baby”.   I had to be a lil bit rough with him, you know?   So I got a holt of him…I ain’t had no car in them times.   I had to borrow somebody…get somebody to have a car…Mertile Theriot, there, call him up, there, for him to send his boy…bring me back to New Orleans.  

 JD: To New Orleans?

 Myon: Oh yeah.   That New Orleans hospital.   They ain’t had no hospital in Morgan City then.  

 JD: Yall were goin back and forth to New Orleans?!

 Myon: Yeah!   And, money was short.   We had a lil bit money, me and him, when he got sick. But, uh, it just took it all.   So I brought him back over there, and uh, I stayed with him.   But he didn’t live long after that.

 JD: It was too late.

 Myon: They wouldn’t even operate on him.  

 JD: Well, what kind of roads…what year was that, Myon, about?

 Myon: Uh, 1932…let’s see, uh, ’35 eh?   That’s when Alberta is born, how old is Alberta?

 Agnes: Alberta’s uh, 39 I believe…

 Myon: How much?

 Agnes: 39, I believe.  

 Myon: After he was buried, she [Agnes] had Alberta.  

 JD: Boy, that was right after Huey Long got started with his highway…

 Myon: RIGHT…RIGHT!   Huey Long got killed then.   I believe Huey Long…no, not Huey Long.    Yeah!

JD: Yeah, it would have been Huey Long.

Myon: Well, he got killed!.   That’s why they delayed…they operate on him …that’s why he [Blaise] died,   cause them doctors all excited the day I brought him in there.   Huey Long had got killed, that’s what the thing, right there.      And that’s why they stayed two or three days before they tend to him because they didn’t think it was nothin too important [to operate on Blaise].   It wasn’t no big operation, in other words.      And that’s why he didn’t think they was gone work on him.   He was decided [to let them] when I brought him there, but he stayed four or five days there and they didn’t no nothin.   They was all excited with Huey Long, that’s correct.   Right.  

 JD: Hmm.   What were the roads like between Morgan City and New Orleans?  

 Myon: Oh, it was pretty good.   It was paved roads.  But the thing is I didn’t have no car.   And I didn’t have many friends in Morgan City I knew, you know? #.   We didn’t live there.   Of course I had Mertile Theriot, Oliver Bergeron and them fishdock men.   I knew them, and well, Mertile [was] buyin fish for Oliver Bergeron [dock owner].    So, uh, I called Mertile when I brought him back over there.   He sent his boy, come back over there.   And when he died, he had axed me…the last word he axed me before he died…if I would bring him back.   When I brought him there he axed me if I’d bring him back [if] he died over there.   I say “Yeah, I’ll bring you back, [if] I got to pack you on my back, I’ll bring you back”.   Come over there [to New Orleans] and I stayed about eight days with him over there…night and day I was with him.  

 [Blaise Sauce died in the New Orleans [Charity?] Hospital at the age of 42 and was buried in the Morgan City cemetery]

 

 

Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 05

 DATE:                        1974

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION:  Albert (Myon) Bailey’s house and Albert (Putt) Couvillier’s house at Myette Pt., St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS:   Myon Bailey, Agnes Bailey, Putt Couvillier, Dorothy (Dot) Couvillier

 JD: Peach Coulee, you talking about?

Putt: First bayou on the right hand side when you go up there.   They got a canal.

JD: There wasn’t no levees in those days.

Putt: Well, they got some big shell hills where people been digging for money up in there.   They supposed to have money buried there.  

 JD: And what…what did they say about it?   What kind of things they had goin on?

 Putt: Well, the Old Man told me you couldn’t make coffee, or nothing.   You put a coffee pot on the stove?   Something would slap it plumb off the stove, you know?   You wasn’t watchin, first thing you [?].   You try…Mother try to raise bread, anything, they say they go back they got a fingerprints push the bread down.   And she’d be washin clothes or something, she go inside, come back something dump all her clothes overboard.   Dump the tub and everything.   They say throw shells and stuff on the rooftops.   You set your hat down there, it walk off.   

 JD: And that was just in that one place?

 Putt: That was up in Peach Coulee.   Today, people still go there with [?], lookin for money.   The Old Man told us one night they had a strange woman…momma and them used to sleep in mosquito bars, you see?   In other words, a bar over the bed to keep the mosquitoes off when you sleep at night.   And a woman, a white…white robe, you know, come there one night, veil and everything, you know…to talk to her on the side [of the bed].   And, uh, the Old Man was deaf.   Told the Old Man, when you [he] come back they had some money for him there and for my Aunt Guilbert, lived in uh, she lived in Calumet, you know?   Now, they had that money there for em, for em to be together on a certain night when she come back.   If they wasn’t together, she wouldn’t come back.  

JD: This was your father and his sister?

 Putt: No, it’s, I don’t know what kin it is to the Old Man, but…

 Dot: They just call her aunt [?].

 Putt: It was some kind of relationship…other words, said for em both to be there and she [the “aunt”] wouldn’t come.   Ain’t never seen no more of that woman, they ain’t never did see no more of that woman.   She never showed, never knew who she was.   She just came and she disappeared.

 JD: She stood outside the mosquito bar, you see?

 Putt: In the house.   And, never know where she come from.   And the Old Man told me that, now I don’t know, now.   And he was pretty…pretty straight.   But, maybe that’s just a mirage, you know, I don’t know.   But, they claim, all them old people that used to live back then, they tell you about it.   Even old man Steve Stevens, out there, they tell you about it.  

 JD: Stevens, where is he?

 Putt: He live over there in Charenton.   I think he used to live…the Carlines for sure.   The old Carlines, you know?   Up on the levee.   They know something about that; they can tell you.   Mr. Doozie Burns used to be good at telling that. Other words, back in them days, it was…it was…people…got so bad they had to move they camps out of there.   They couldn’t live there.   They couldn’t keep nothing.   They [the “ghosts”] didn’t want nobody there.      Well, they got people diggin money, and everything, but as far as livin there, I don’t think they ain’t nobody never went back and lived with houseboats there.   Lot of people went there in camps, you know.   But I haven’t heard any stories about that, but I tell you what, you can walk them hills and see where people dug for money all over in them hills?

 JD: Now, what did you say about…about walkin off the stageplank?   And …

 Putt: They claim they had a spot there, every time you walk off the stageplank you could hear money rattle.   Just like a pile of change, you know?   And, when you’d step over that place.   So, they drove a shaft down there one time, they say, and sound like they hit a chest.   Other words, like it just spilled.   And they’d go to digging, you know?   They’d dig, that’s how they start digging for money.   They could hear the money rattlin.   They never could find it.   I wish you could talk to some of them old people, I’m just goin by what the Old Man told me.  

 JD: Yeah, you say the Carlines would know something about that?

 Putt: I think they would.   Some of them old people around Charenton.   Some of them old heads, you know?

 JD: Well, I wonder if Willis would know some of those old people over there.  

 Putt: Willis Broussard, he come down from St. Martinville.   He most probly know some of them old people, you know?   But, I don’t think he heard some of them stories about what used to happen here.  

 JD: Yeah, but he would know the old people, I was wondering.   Maybe he could tell me who they were.

 Dot: I guarantee you Aunt Tee Nug could tell him somethin!

 JD: Now she’s one we ought to talk to.   How old is she?   Is she 90 yet?

 Dot: No, she’s 88, I believe.

 JD: Now, what’s her history?   Was she born and raised in this area?

 Putt: Aw, she’s been all over the Bayou, podnah.  

 Dot: She worked like a man.   She raised her kids.

 JD: I mean who…who are her kids?  

 Dot: Arthur Sanders, Annie, Mike Sanders, Pete Sanders…

 JD: So, all the Sanders who live here are Aunt Tee Nug’s…Tee Nug’s kids?

 Putt: Yeah.  

 JD: Now, who was her husband?   Sanders…but who was he?

 Dot: That was Joe Sanders, he died, in ’56, I believe, or ’55.

 JD: He was a fisherman?

 Putt: Yeah, he used to fish, and he used to spray this canal for water lilies.   He got a job, he used to run a barge through here that…killin lilies.  

 JD: That must have been late though, that wasn’t early in his life?   That must have been late in his life.

 Putt: He used to fish for a livin, that’s all he used to do.   You see, Henry Sanders, he used to be…I don’t know if that was Joe Sanders’ brother or not, Henry Sanders.   He used to be one of em that run the fishboats.   They had Henry Sanders, and I think he’s still livin, eh?

 Dot: Yeah.

 Putt: Henry Sanders still livin.   That’s the man you want to see about fishboats!  

 Dot: He’s a tremendous fisherman.

 JD: And he lives in Morgan City?   Who would know him well?  

 Dot: Edward [Couvillier] knows him well.   Arthur Sanders, they go see him.

 JD: Now, Arthur Sanders, you say it might be his uncle?

 Putt: Yeah, I think it is his uncle.  

 JD: So that would be…his father’s brother.   That would be Joe Sanders’ brother we talking about. And…and he would be one of the ones who ran the fishboats?  

 Putt: Yeah. He used to run a…run a…fishboat.   They had about three of em at different times, you know…that I can recall.   But they used to have Mertile Theriot, they used to have Henry Sanders, Jesse Higgins.   And they used to have one run old [?]…Jew [later told it was “Dieu”] Robert!  

 JD: Jew?   Jew Robert?   That was his name?   He used to have a…

 Dot: He’s dead.

 Putt: I don’t recall Jew Robert’s dead!

 Dot: Yeah, he’s dead.

 Putt: Well, he used to run a fishboat.  

 JD: Well, you would say then, from what you can remember about the life back in those times, that…let’s say you had to pick out, for instance, in life today…if people had to pick out…you told em, “Alright, now, pick out the three…three most important things that you think of right away, when you think about living today.   Things that affect your life, the greatest, living today.   People would probably say first of all automobiles, cars.   Cars, you agree?   It’s part of our way of life.   We all got a truck or car or something, it’s the way we make our livin, bring our fish, whatever.   Electricity, you heat your house, you do your cooking most of the time, you…your refrigerator, your lights, everything is around electricity.   Alright, now, back then in those days, you switch that same idea back to the old days we been talking about, you would probably have to say that one of the most important things in your life back then was a fishboat, wasn’t it?  

 Dot: That’s right.

 Putt: Bring all your groceries.   That’s the only means you had!

 Dot: Bring your groceries…

 JD: It made your living for you, ‘cause it bought your fish…

 Putt: You sold your fish.

 Dot: And it also brought news, you see?   News of things happenin other places.  

 JD: It would bring the news.   Now would it…would they…would they stop and visit for a while when the fishboat stopped?

 Putt: No, they never leave that fishboat.   They’ll stop, and they’ll blow [whistle ?].   Everybody come out and sell they fish, and you go visit them, on the boat, to buy your groceries.  

 JD: Why? How come they wouldn’t tie up to your houseboat for you to unload your fish?

 Putt: Well, he wouldn’t have time for all that…to stop and visit everybody.   What he’d do, he come pick up a load of fish and ice em, and take off.   Cause he was a busy man, sellin groceries and buying fish at the same time.  

 JD: Well how…would he just throw a anchor overboard, or something like that?  

 Putt: Throw a anchor, or tie to a tree.  

 JD: Like across the canal from the houseboats, right?   And everybody’d have to put their fish in their skiffs and, and paddle…row em over to the fishboat, maybe 30 feet, maybe 100 feet, that kind of thing?

 Putt: Yeah.   He had them old cotton scales hanging up there, you know?   And he had a old round thing [like a big scoop hanging from the scales to put the fish in], he swing em over your boat and you’d put your fish in it.   He’d swing it back with that cotton scales and dump em in his icebox.      [There are pictures of this in Malcolm Comeaux’s book on Atchafalaya folk life]

 Dot: And not only that…Momma used to order material to make our clothes.   They used to buy feed, you know, for hogs or something…called feed sacks.   They were made…they were cotton…it was cotton, but they had all kind of prints, you know?   Like lil flowers, checks.   Well, they’d buy it like that and they made one of us a dress, out of that feed sack.   And she’d order some yellow cotton and make all our underclothes.  

 JD: All your underclothes were made out of yellow cotton?

 Dot: Well, sure, I didn’t have …

 JD: Did she make your bras for you too?

 Dot: Right.   Right.

 JD: Boy, I would like to see a bra that was handmade like that.   No, but really, there’s no such thing as elastic, was there?

 Dot: No, it was all cotton.  

 JD: So, the thing had to fit!   It really had to fit.   Son-of-a-gun!

 Putt: Old Jesse Higgins, the onlyest man…he had a slot machine on the boat.  

 JD: A slot machine!   Now you don’t mean the same Jesse Higgins that’s right here, right now, sellin…buying fish?

Putt: No, the Old Man.

JD: His father.

 Putt: The one that died.   He died about a year ago.   But he had a slot machine.   When he was up there in front [of the boat], my brother, the one that got drownded in 1959, well, he used to get back there and leaned on that slot machine some kind of way it’d pour the nickels out. [laughs].   Right on the boat!   He used to rob that slot machine every time he get around [it].  

 JD: Well, how big were these fishboats, Putt?   Put a size on one, and what kind of engine did it have?   What kind of cabin did it have?   What kind of space?   How was it built?  

 Putt: Jim, it’s built just like, a…a…they had gasoline boats.   I was so small, you know, I didn’t know too much about boats.   I believe they had gasoline motors.

 JD: You mean like a old Ford motor they would pull out of a car and…

 Putt: Yeah.   Buick or Model…old Model A’s is what they used to use.   Old Model A motors.   In other words, it’s a flat six, or something like that.   You know, them old time.   Far as the boat, they had the wooden hurl, and now the most weird boat…

 JD: Yeah, but how were they shaped?   You say there’s a wooden hull, but were they bateau shaped?   Or…?

 Putt:  No, they was…they was lugger style.  

 JD: Lugger style?   Like a   Lafitte skiff?

 Putt: Well, they had…they’r round to take the waves, like.   They wasn’t no flat bottom boat.  

 JD: OK, so it was built more or less like a small shrimp boat, you might say?

 Putt: Yeah.   I think the one had the most…biggest boat, I’m not sure…I couldn’t even give you a size one it, you know?    In other words, they had all their groceries stacked up around the motor.   They had shelves you know, inside the cab they had all the candies…

 JD: They had a nice long cabin on it, and everything?   To put their groceries?  

 Putt: Cabin to put, you know…right in front the cabin they had they iceboxes.   And you used to…I can remember where the candy was stacked, right there at the wheelhouse.   [laughs] he stacked that close [to himself because of] the kids.   By grab, you had to watch em.   They would get their nickel’s worth.   You know a kid, you know, he seen that candy there he go grab one…try to snitch some of it.  

 JD: Would you say that those boats were probably 30, 35 feet long?  

 Putt: Hmmm.   Yeah.  

 JD: And they were built more or less like a small shrimp boat?   Like a lugger shrimpboat.   Like Joseph’s shrimpboat that he’s got right now?   Or like Arthur Sanders, the one he brought right here?

 Putt: Yeah.   Now, they say they had one weird one.   I ain’t never see it, one of the biggest ones.   They call it the Monopoly [Monarch] , I believer, the Monople, or something like that.   I think, I don’t know if it wasn’t Mertile Theriot, had that one.   I don’t know.   I don’t remember.   But it…the only one I can remember is old Jew Robert, and Jesse Higgins.   And sometime them fishboats, I think, would try to run a race to try to get one another’s business. 

[CHANGED LOCATION, SITTING DOWN TO EAT AT DOT’S AND PUTT’S HOUSE at Myette Pt.]

 Putt: Boy, uh, Momma used to make deep pan biscuits pretty near every morning for breakfast for us.   For dinner she made pancakes, for supper…

 JD: Now was that the usual bread you ate?  

 Putt: Biscuits and white bread.   [home made]

 Dot: Momma made white bread.   Every other day she’d made enough for the next day.   But she cut em about this wide [one inch], put lard on it.   And black pepper.

 JD: Black pepper? On it?

 Dot: And that was good!   Or she’d put syrup on it.   But we always had our white bread in the evening, either syrup or lard…

 Putt: We used to have some days, Jim when we was living out here…you take a good clear night in the wintertime?   My brothers, they’d have to wait till after dark and they’d slip out in the field.   They’d steal us some [sugar] cane.   We’d stay up sometime ‘till midnight chewing cane.  

 JD: Why did you have to wait till after dark?   There were people guarding that cane?  

 Putt: Well, it was against the law, you see?   In other words, nobody’s supposed to go in the fields.   Back then I believe they had the German slaves [German prisoners of war?], you know what I mean?   Chopin the cane by hand, and everything.      And by grab, they wouldn’t let…let anybody go get their cane.    They’d steal us a armload of cane, you see, and come back and sometime we’d set up till midnight.

 JD: That was big fancy thing, eh?

 Putt: Oh man!   You talk about something.   We had us a us a cane party!   [laughs]

 Dot: We used to chew tar.

 JD: Where did you get the tar?

 Dot: Well, they all had some…always had, see, they always did have some tar.   Either for lines, or…

 JD: That’s right, you had to tar all that cotton that you used for your lines.  

 Dot: And we used to chew tar.

 JD: Boy, I bet it kept your teeth clean, too, didn’t it?

 Dot: It did.   I think that’s why I still…my teeth are still good.      I told the dentist that, and he agreed with me…my teeth are so strong.

 JD: Well, uh, that’s another thing I want to ask you.   There’s so many things I would like to know.   And so many things that can be used on that tape.   Because it’s things like…that people would like to know about, that there ain’t but one place to get it, and that’s right here, with the people who lived it.   Now think about teeth, for instance, now, it’s true that a lot of kids living on this levee, in this community, did have bad teeth.   Now, was that also true when you used do…in your family when you were growing up on a houseboat?   Did they have bad teeth?

 Dot: Not necessarily, no. But, Jim, we never did go to a dentist.   When we had a tooth needed pullin, Daddy’d pull it.  

 JD: Are you serious?!   Myon pulled teeth?

 Putt: He done pulled some of mine.   He can tell you about it.   He done had some pulled, too.  

JD: Myon pulled teeth?   Reach up there with a pair of pliers and pull em out?  

 Dot: Right.

 JD: While they were infected, and big and hurtin, and everything?

 Dot: Yeah!   That’s when they had to come out.  

 JD: Is that right?!   No anesthetic?   Just reach up and pull it?!  

 DOT: Up until the time my brother [Milton] got killed Daddy [did a lot]   He was tough.   He’d take things in stride.   And I guess this…this [the accident] was a little too much.   To us he seemed like a boss, you know…we [consulted] him with everything, you see?   And not just us, I mean that’s everybody [everybody along the levee, 20 families].   They looked to him like the boss, you know.   But that’s the way everybody looked to him, you know?

 JD: Myon is just kind of…some men, and Putt…Putt and I can say that about…I’m not a leader, I don’t know if Putt is or not, but some men are simply born in a certain way, that they have good judgment.   You want to do something, you ask their advice.  

 Putt: Jim, I seen the Old Man…you seen these big blue point crabs, over here?   [?] …a crab line, a fly line.   Go over there and come back next morning loaded down with crabs, high as 30 crates…25 – 30 crates.   And get three cents a pound, big crabs!   And now, today, you get 30 cents and still you ain’t makin enough money.

 Dot: That’s the difference, you see, you could buy your supplies so much cheaper.   Now, 30 cents a pound ain’t nothing according to what the uh…what you have to pay for your everyday needs.

 Putt: You know I was thinking about the day we moved over the levee, was the day Russell and them was gettin married.   We just had pulled our camp off the barge.   Russell Daigle?

 JD: Yeah.  

 Putt: Same day, his weddin day, we just finished [taking] that camp off the barge.   The day before that.   And we was settin there, waiting for [?] truck to pull [?].   That’s how long we stayed on the water…[?].  

 Dot: That’s when we got in trouble.

 JD: When what?   When you got in trouble?   When Putt moved over this side?   No, you [Dot] were on this side before you [Putt] got here.

 Dot: I know, that’s when he started noticing [her]. [laughs]

 Putt: Know what the Old Man would do us sometimes?   Cooking a chicken on Sunday…close the chickens up at night, all go in a coop.   Sunday morning, want to eat a chicken, had to get out there and run it down.   To catch a chicken you got to run it down.     

 JD: What kind of cooking?   What did you used to make out of it?  

 Putt: Chicken stew, gumbo.   Fried.

 JD: You didn’t do roosters too often?

 Putt: Well, depend on how many roosters you had.   Sometime you use a hen if you ain’t got enough roosters to cook.   And uh, Momma’s steady hatchin them eggs out all the time, you know?

 When I was goin to school, I had to have eight eggs for breakfast.   Evrery morning.      Momma would pick up three and four dozen eggs a day.      Lot of chickens, nice chickens.  

 JD: Did you feed em or leave em wild?

 Putt: Turn em wild, they always come back in uh, in the chicken house in them nests.   They come back.   You give em a lil corn, just to keep em around the house, you see?  

 Dot: You know Jim, it was hard doin that [living like that], but I wish many times I could go back.  

 JD: Why?

 DOT: Cause kids today don’t know the value of nothin.   They get too much.

And we were raised, when you did have a nickel, you hold onto the nickel until you had something [important to spend it on].   And today, you give a child a nickel and he’s insulted.

 JD: I think we agreed that a nickel then…a nickel then was worth at least 25 cents today.   At least.   So, if the same thing…you give a child a quarter today, what do they do with it?

 Dot: used to take us to the movie show on weekends.   We bought our ticket, we bought candy.   Come back.    But I take mine to the movie today, I got to go buy a bag full, you know? [of candy] and popcorn besides.  

 Putt: When the Charenton Beach was open.   …on Saturdays, sometimes…we’d pass a collection here on the Point [Myette Pt.].   Everybody livin on the Point would put up two dollars.   Buy beer and pop and ice it down in a washtub, and we’d get [?] a jukebox, and put it in a fence.

 JD: In a fence?  

 Putt: Yeah, you know, where nobody…you put a nickel in there and you’d press a button, you see?   Nobody could tear it up.   And they was every Saturday night, we’d go dance.   Sometimes four and five [o’clock, come back in the morning]…come there and…In other words after the place closed [the Beach concessions?], we bring out our stuff, you see?   We had it all marked, you see?

 JD: Who?

 Putt: Everybody!

 JD: What did Myon and Agnes say about these girls comin back at five o’clock

 in the morning?!

 Dot: They was with us!

 Putt: Even the babies, we bring the babies, and everybody!

 JD: You mean yall all…everybody?!  

 Putt: The whole caboodle.   We’d go up there and dance all night.  

 JD: Well, would Myon and Agnes dance?

 Putt:   Yeah, one of the best.   Everybody’d go together.  

 JD: Everybody’d go and have a good time at the same time!

 Putt: Everbody’d go together.  

 Dot: Not a bit of trouble.

 Putt: Leave there, almost all the lights be out.   You know, everybody dance till daylight.   Then when we come back, they all come back together.  

 JD: Every Saturday night?  

 Putt: I tell you what, very few Saturdays we missed.  

 Dot: If it was raining too much, then we couldn’t get up there.  

 Putt: Those times we go around [by Bayou Teche]…go around that way [instead of going directly down the levee].

 JD: And then, Sunday, of course, you went to church and rested up?

 Dot: Not necessarily, ‘cause it was a good while before we got a church.  

 JD: But at least you rested up on Sunday, and the men all went back to work Monday morning.   Boy, I tell you, that’s a clean way of doing things, like that, you know?

 Dot: That’s the way we courted.  

 Putt: Them old…[when] them old jukeboxs break down, you’d run one of them cars in the middle of the dance floor, open the doors, and catch Grand Ole Opry.

 JD: Run one of those cars into the dance hall?!

 Putt: Yeah.   Right up into the dance hall.   You see, it was open.   It was a great big old [room, roof ?] on the beach.  

 Dot: Is it still there?

 Putt: They got piles [pilings].   They just got a lil piece… [of it left]

 JD: It’s fallen down and collapsed now.   What did…my daddy used to go there when he was courtin.   This is ’74 [1974 presently], and his memory is like what you talked about.   Charenton dances on Saturday night.  

 Putt: Yeah, drive that old car up in the middle of that floor and turn that…catch a brand new [?] you know?   …run out of money, dance by the radio.  

 Dot: And that was fun!   We had a good time.   And we’d all dance with each other, you know?   Edward…Daddy…Daddy would dance with us young girls.     

[talking about dances elsewhere and kids today]

 JD: They don’t have anything to do, Dot.

 Putt: Well, they sure ruined this, Charenton Beach, by letting that go down.  

 JD: Well, Putt, I don’t know if they ruined it by letting it go down, or whether it just would never have been the same again.   Because when you got television, and you got fast cars, and you got night clubs opening up…

 Putt: I guess the drugs is what ate that up, you see, dope?  

 JD: I’m sorry that Charenton Beach is not there anymore, but I’ll tell you the truth, [?], it served its purpose.   It was there for a long time…

 Dot: Yeah.   Momma would go there when she was…

 Putt: They used to have walks [warfs?], Jim, way out in the lake.   They used to have walks, you know, the Old Man and them used to come dance out there.   They could see the lights [at Charenton] blinking on the other side of the lake.  

 JD: They could see the lights on the other side of the lake?!   [from Blaise's Canal].

 Putt: They had wharfs way out there for you to tie your big boats.   And the Old Man would take that old bateau and come across.   We’d all come, dance and go to the beach, and, you could see em good at night.  [When it] Get time to go back, come back across the lake.

 But he couldn’t fish out of that big boat, you know?   That was just like a automobile.   [?]

 JD: It was like, your transportation…that’s what it was.   Well, you say “when the weather wasn’t too bad” [to get to Charenton]; didn’t anybody have horse and buggies or anything like that?

 Putt: Well, Oaklawn was the only place had some horses.   Like when Momma and them had some bad sickness, or something, [they would come out with a wagon from Oaklawn plantation].