Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 02

DATE:                        1974

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

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

COOPERATORS:   Myon Bailey, Agnes: Bailey, Putt: Couvillier, Edward: Couvillier, Lena Mae Couvillier

Talking about the Little Brown Church]

 Putt: have revival and everything, people on the campboats and houseboats. 

 JD:      Revival on a houseboat?

 Putt:   Yeah, go to them neighborhoods and uh, them campboat s and have, uh, services, and things, you know?  …it’s a two story houseboat…I mean, not a houseboat, a churchboat.  The Lil Brown Church. 

 JD:      And it was that priest that’s in Patterson now that used to….?

 Agnes:           No, that was Brother Marks that was on there, and brother Cockran [?] came and…

 Putt:   Yeah, when we talk about the Lil Brown Church it was Brother Marks, the same man we telling you about.

 JD:      Well, then, the priest we talking about is the one who came across the lake every three weeks?

 Agnes:           Yeah.  He’d come…he’d come at our campboat.

 Edward:        He used to sleep with me at uh, Doozie Burns over there, when I…when I was staying over there. 

 Putt:   I wish old Doozie would be [here] to tell em about Peach Coulie, up there, Nunc [Uncle].

 JD:      Well, who would know best, who’s still livin today?...who would know best the stories about that Peach Coulie, you think?  Is anybody left who really lived there? 

 Agnes:           Uh, yeah, Ida could tell you some stories about that…her and her and Bernadette lived over there…

 Putt:   Bernadette?  Aunt Bernadette could tell you. 

 Agnes:           Bernadette died.

 Putt:   Oh, she did. 

 Edward:        Bernadette’s dead, [?] dead, Uncle Pete’s dead…

 Putt:   The old man’s dead.  The people who lived there…

 JD:      How old was Ida when she was livin there, you suppose?

 Agnes:           Ida was newly married.  She must have been about 16, I guess.

 JD:      And did she experience any of the things Putt: was telling me about last night? 

 Agnes:           I think she did.

 JD:      About havin the coffee, uh,…

 [showing a picture of the Lil Brown Church]

 JD:      Boy, that’s a big, big, thing.

 Myon: …that preacher build it, had that built. 

 Putt:   [Peach Coulee] they used to try to wash, and Jim, ., and uh, they’d throw…while they were trying to wash…brickbats would fall in their washtub and everything.  ..  And, uh, Lester, my brother, he uh, he said he told em they were full of bull and uh, they couldn’t make coffee or nuttin, you know?  It would take the coffee pot up and throw it in the room, or throw it on a bed, or you know?  He told me he say “Yall just full of bull” he say, “I’ll bet you I’ll make coffee”.  So he went up there and he tried it.  And they tell me it picked the coffee pot up and slung it way back in the room.    He told that many times!

 Agnes:           And my daddy, him, he always wanted to see something or hear something.  He even went and sat down at the foot of them oaks.  And spent the night there one night, and he never heard nothin! 

 Putt:   Just the [?] of some people.

 JD:      Where were y’all livin at the time?

 Agnes:           We was livin, uh, on Pigeon, I believe.

 JD:      He came all the way across [the lake to do that?].

 [multiple voices, confusing]

 Agnes:           I know he went and sit down there, and never heard nothin.

 Myon: I been back in there squirrel hunting, a few times, you know?  All over back up in there, but I never did…nothin bother me. 

 Putt:   I tell you what, I talked to some older people, the old man never did lie too much.  What he told me I believed in.

 Agnes:           When he said something…[it was true].j

 Myon: I heard a lot of wild stories, somethin got to be true, you know?

 JD:      What kind of things have you heard?

 Myon: All kind of stories like they telling you. 

 Putt:   The old man told us that, podnuh, says it’s true!

 Edward:        They couldn’t…they try to cook…they try to cook, you know, and it pulls the pot off the stove.

 Myon: Lot of people went try to dig money there.  They think they got money there, because they got ghostes [pronounced ghostez] there. .. 

 JD:      That’s off of [Lake] Fausse Pointe, huh? 

 Putt:   Peach Coulee, yeah. 

 Myon: Lake Fausse Pointe, Peach Coulee, yeah. 

 Edward:        That’s right off of Lil Pass, back in there. 

 Putt:   But podnah, look, he sat there and told us that many a night, that’s gospel.  He’s not lying, you know, in other words…and not only him told it, no, like old Doozie Burns, podnah, he can tell you.

 Myon: Them Anslums, and all them people…

 Putt:   You couldn’t live there!  They wouldn’t let you. 

 Edward:        They’d throw brickbats on the porch, and uh, and everything.  Where they come from [the brickbats], they didn’t know. 

 JD:      The brickbats weren’t there before and they just showed up?

 Putt:   They’d throw em, you could hear em hittin the house, they say.  You go outside and there wasn’t nobody in sight.  The old man even tell you he seen oak trees fall.

 Edward:        They’d throw em in the washtub while they were trying to wash. 

 JD:      Brickbats? ., Brickbats in the washtub.  ..

 Agnes:           And there weren’t no bricks around. 

 JD:      Did anybody ever see anything, or anybody…now Put told us about the story about…about this woman who came up dressed in white, and told him [Lester, Putt:’s father] that if he met…or, if he and his sister came…or he and this other woman came…

 Putt:   Yeah, Aunt…uh…Aunt Vivian. 

 JD:      That she would show em where there was some money, but she never came back.  So your father apparently saw something. 

 Putt:   Well, Momma did too.  Momma told us the same thing before she died. 

 Agnes:           Oh yeah, they couldn’t stay there.  They couldn’t stay there, they had to move.  A lot of em.  A lot of people said that.  They couldn’t stay there. They had to…they had to move. 

 Putt:   That might be all fairy tales, or something, but uh…

 JD:      Well, so many people have said it, though…

 Myon: No, there’s too many people said it…talked about it for it to not be true.  Some of it got to be true. 

 JD:      Something has to have happened, yeah.  Now is that the only place that y’all ever heard of…

 Agnes:           No.

 JD:      Where’s the other places where that kind of thing happened?

 Agnes:           They had Bayou Sorrel.  That mound on Bayou Sorrel.  They had things like that to happen.  Ulysse Carline was pickin moss…

 Putt:   That’s a graveyard on a mound.

 Agnes:           …they’d pick moss.  And he was pickin moss, and he say they had the prettiest white woman, all dressed in white, and he say where he was pickin moss they ain’t had a stump in sight.  And he picked up his moss and he went and brought it to his skiff, and when he was comin back, that woman was sittin on that stump.  And she say “Come here”.  And when he seen that, he got scared.  He was a coward.  And uh, he say she looked at him and he started to run.  She say “Don’t run” she say “Come here”.  She say “You come to talk to me” she say “you’ll never have to pick up another bunch of moss”.  But he got scared, and he started runnin.  She followed him to the edge of the bayou.  And she kept telling him “Come on, you’ll never have to pick no more moss if you come with me”.  But he wouldn’t go.  He was too coward.

 JD:      Now, who was this?

 Agnes:           Ulysse Carline [Carl Carline says this might have been his uncle, Eunice Carline].

 JD:      Ulysse Carline, now would he be the father or uncle or brother of people like, uh, like Carl Carline?  Who lives in uh, in Charenton?

 Agnes:           His uncle.  ..

 JD:      But it would be kin to those Carline boys in Franklin…in Bayou Sorrel now?

 Agnes:           Yeah, they was all kin.  All them boys.

 JD:      So, there’s a mound, you say?

 Agnes:           Yeah, a mound.  Yeah.  A graveyard.  They call it the mound.

 JD:      Now, who’s graveyard is it? 

 Agnes:           It’s just a graveyard that they…people just started buryin in, that’s the way it went…

 Myon: [something about Agnes:’ people buried there]  I brought one there, for sure.

 JD:      Did other things happen there in addition to that woman dressed in white?

 Agnes:           No.  That’s the only thing that, uh, that I heard about.  They say a lot of people…some of em, I just heard this [just hearsay from unknown sources], but him, he sat down and told us that hisself.  But a lot of people say they hear a baby cry, and everything, up there.  ..

 JD:      Well, that’s Bayou Sorrel and Peach Coulee.  ..  Did anything happen, that you know of, anywhere else?  Any other place where things like that happen? 

 Myon: No.

 Agnes:           That’s the only two places.

 JD:      I want to come back to you sometime, come back and talk to you about , uh…I want to break this down to …uh, we just talk about trappin, we just talk about alligator hunting, just about moss, just about fish, uh…and things like that.  But I want to…I want to break it down one piece at a time, so we can talk about one thing so we try to talk about as much as we can at any one time.  Like I want to come back and talk to you [Agnes:] about how did you keep house for instance, in those days.  You know, what did you have to do during the day in your house, uh, you had to fill your coal oil lamps, how did you clean your mantles on your lamps, uh, where did you get your wicks, how did you keep your wicks uh, clean, and how did you cook your food and what kind of food did you cook, and how much salt/seasoning did you use, and what did you use from the swamp that you could find that you could cook with.  Uh, sometimes people used herbs and stuff.  [?] All kinds of things like that.  And you [Myon], I want to talk to you a lot about lumber. About trees.  About what it was like back then, the kind of technique you used to cut the trees down, and…uh, you told me one time, somebody told me one time, that you had to girdle those trees.  You had to ring those big cypress trees and give em a year before you cut em down, somebody told me that.

 Myon: It don’t take that long.  Two months.

 JD:      You had to kill em first.

 Myon: You had to kill em, yeah, for em to float. .. 

 JD:      And uh, people have told me a l of things about a lot of stuff back in there and I want to talk to you about that…about the lumber, because nobody would ever know about that any more.  There are no trees like that anymore, left.  No trees like that, hardly, anywhere in the United States anywhere.  And uh, I want to talk to you about all kinds of things, like mosquitoes…like uh, like uh, like some of the animals that there used to be out there.  The bears, and uh, and panthers.

 Myon: Never had that in them times out there. 

 JD:      You didn’t have that in those times at all?

 Agnes:           Had bears back of Franklin, when we used to trap back there.

 Myon: Had bears back of Franklin yeah, but uh,

 Agnes:           But not across the lake.

 Myon: [not] in that lake there.  You got more bobcat there now than you ever had before. 

 JD:      Oh yeah?  Did y’all ever hear anything about wolves back in there?

 Myon: Uhuh.  Not that I know. 

 JD:      No packs of wild dogs or anything? 

 Myon: Uhuh. 

 Agnes:           The only things they had a good many of was coons…

 Myon: Plenty squirrels, plenty rabbits…

 Agnes:           Coons, rabbits, squirrels, ducks…

 JD:      Good stuff to eat.

 Myon: Yeah.  Squirrels, had plenty deer too. 

 JD:      You kill a deer pretty much anytime you wanted?

 Myon: No, I wouldn’t say that there.  You had to have… big swamps there across the lake, they didn’t have them sandbar like we got now…with all them big swamps you had to have pretty good dogs in there to get a deer out of it.  ..  Yeah, I used to hunt across the lake after I was moved over here, with my dogs, used to go make a few hunts over there.  Used to bring Medric [Martin] out there and he used to bring some shells…

 JD:      Medric used to hunt with y’all? 

 Myon: Yeah, Medric used to hunt plenty with us while his daddy was livin.

 Agnes:           Mr. Acair, Mr. Johnny Acair.  ..  Dale Anderson. 

 JD:      How long y’all suppose there were houseboats in…in…campboats in the Basin?  How far back you suppose that goes?

 Myon: How far back?  I dunno, far a I know myself they had campboats in here. 

 JD:      Well, that would be…now, you for instance, now, you can take it in your personal memory…you can take that back uh, what, 1915…when you were 10 years old.  You know there were houseboats…there were campboats in the Basin?

 Myon: Oh yeah.  Oh yeah.  Course I wasn’t fishin then, I used to live…I was raised on Lake Verret, you see.

 JD:      But you knew there were houseboats in the swamps?

 Myon: Oh yeah.  All the time.

 JD:      Now, if you take that back one step further, now, your daddy…uh, I think I heard you say that your daddy [Blaise Sauce] had moved onto a houseboat.  Is that right?  Yall did.

 Agnes:           Umhm.

 JD:      And uh, did they…no, you were born before…

 Agnes:           I was born before, but um, I guess a couple years after I was born, that’s when they left and uh, Bayou Long, and they moved up the lake.  And then we lived up there all…the rest of our life.  Till now. 

 JD:      Well, do you remember at all, then, them talking about whether there were houseboats up there a good bit before that? 

 Agnes:           Oh yeah! ..  You take, uh, Dave Aucoin, well they moved away from over there [Bayou Long] before we did.  You take Dan Lange, and them, they people, a lot of they people was livin up there.

 Myon: Yeah, most of em was livin on the bank, they had houses…

 Agnes:           Yeah, Dan and them had a house on the bank.

 JD:      That’s up by Keelboat [Pass]?

 Myon: Umhm.  Yeah, most of them people livin on the bank, there. 

 JD:      Most of em came from Morgan City, Stephensville area and went up by water, to go live around Keelboat?

 Myon: Yeah.

 JD:      So they started off around Morgan City.

 Agnes:           Yeah.

 Myon: Well, you take like Dan [Lange] and them, I don’t know where they come from. 

 Agnes:           Dan and them was uh…

 Myon: I believe they was raised there…was raised up there.

 Agnes:           Dan was raised up there, but his…his…uh, people, they come from up there around Bayou Chene, or Plaquemine, and they just…we come up, and they come down, you see.

 Myon: I tell you, Dan could tell you a lot of stories if he want to.  [laughs] Whew, he got a memory like a horse.

 JD:      It would be good to talk to him.  I want to talk to him about that.  Uh, well, can you ever remember anybody sayin if there was houseboats…there was campboats in the Basin in your grandfather’s time.  In your grandparents time.  Yall ever remember them talking about people who lived on campboats?

 Myon: No, Jim, I don’t think they had too much then, in them times. ..  I don’t think so, not my knowledge. 

 JD:      You think it was your father’s generation.  Well, for instance, now, neither one of y’all were born on a houseboat.

 Myon: No.

 JD:      Neither one of y’all.  Yall were both born on the bank.  ..  But do you know anybody your age that was born on a houseboat? 

 Agnes:           Yeah, a lot of em. 

 JD:      Ok, a lot of em were born on a houseboat [who] are your age now.

 Agnes:           Oh yeah.

 JD:      So, in other words, there were houseboats, a lot of houseboats in the swamp during your momma and you daddy’s time. 

 Agnes:           Oh yeah, umhm. ..  You take Arthur Sanders and them, that was all born on campboats.  ..  Take all Dave Sanders, that was all born on campboats.   And all my family was born on campboats.  And, a bunch of em, all my aunts and uncles and all, they all lived in campboats.  They all had their…their children in campboats.

 JD:      So, you could definitely say that people in your father’s time, your father and your mother’s time, people were livin in campboats already?

 Agnes:           Oh yeah!  Oh yeah!

 JD:      You see, what I’m tryin to do is bring it back as far as I can.  Now, I need to find somebody who can tell me…

 Agnes:           Further than we can?

 JD:      Right.  Now, you see, your great-grandparents, are the ones who came from Europe.

 Agnes:           Yeah. 

 JD:      Your great-grandparents.  So, I want to…first I have to find out about your grandparents…their time.  Where did the people live in that time.  And then if I can go one step further back, somebody who remembers, to find out where their parents lived, then I’ll be able to take it back all the way to your great-grandparents and find out.

 Agnes:           That’s the only time I remember, you know?

 JD:      Yeah, yeah.  You can take it…

 [Edward: Couvillier comes in]

 Edward:        What you got there, Jimbo?

 JD:      Hello Edward:.  We just talking.  We just finding out all kinds of good things. [laughs]

 Agnes:           If I had a good memory I could remember all that.

 JD:      Well, you never had any cause to remember all that.

 Agnes:           You take, uh, my daddy’s momma and daddy…they family, they lived on the bank.  But that was the most beautiful place, Jim, where they was!  ..  They had a nice home, it was just like…at the plantation, there, well, they had a big old place, you know?  And uh…well, all they children was born there. 

 Edward:        Hey Jim?  You in the wrong place to find out about…[?] I can tell you right now. . You need to go up there to Dan [Lange], he can tell you…

 JD:      But I don’t know if Dan wants to talk to me that much.

 Edward:        Well, lay a lil bit on him there, he probly will.  [laughs]

 Agnes:           But he’d remember a lot, from up the country, you know, where they come from.

 JD:      You talking about that place…where you were born?  Was that beautiful place…?

 Agnes:           It was beautiful?

 JD:      Where did they get the money, you parents [grandparents] to build a place like that you suppose?

 Agnes:           Well, everybody got…them old people, they’d homestead, Jim.  ..  Well, that’s what my…my grandpa done, you see, he homesteaded that place.  ..  It was along the bank.  ..  The lake was right by the…by the house. .. They had a great big house. 

 JD:      Now who uh…well, did he build that house himself?  Did you say he was a carpenter?

 Agnes:           My grandpa on my daddy’s side…I don’t know if they built it theyself, or what, but uh…I know that’s what they had, a nice place. 

 JD:      Now how did they…how did your parents support themselves mainly?  By fishing?

 Agnes:           Yeah, my parents, yeah. 

 JD:      Your parents…well, did they inherit that house from their parents?  Was that house already in the family?

 Agnes:           Yeah, but we didn’t…we didn’t get nothin.  Uh,

 JD:      No, but I mean your parents, uh, which side was it that…?

 Agnes:           On my daddy’s side.

 JD:      Your daddy’s side that that land was on? ..  Was he born in that house?

 Agnes:           Umhm.

 JD:      He was. 

 Agnes:           Had 14 children born in that house!

 JD:      Is that right?  So…so he was the boy that got the house when…when your parents [grandparents] died?  Your daddy…?

 Agnes:           No, we didn’t get it.  We left, you see, when we left… he [father, Blaise] got married and moved up here.  Well, then, it wasn’t long, oh I guess I remember goin there when I was 11 years old.  We’d go there every year, you see, we’d go over there.

 JD:      To your grandfather’s house?

 Agnes:           [yes] We’d go over and spend maybe a week over there with em.  And uh, then when they children got all big enough, well they all left, so they left too.  They got them a campboat and moved up the lake too. ..  And that…that, uh, and that land, and everything, the oil people got it.

 JD:      Well, why do you suppose they left so pretty a place to go live in a campboat?

 Agnes:           Well, I guess, all they children was gone and uh, I guess they wanted to follow they kids.  That’s the only thing I can see.  They was two brothers [her grandfather and his brother?]. 

 Edward:        Whose recorder Jim?  Yours?

 JD:      Yeah.  I want to talk to Dan, about, uh, about some of these things.  Now, Dan, Dan’s people now, they came from Pierre Part? 

 Agnes:           Uhuh.

 JD:      From Plaquemine or Morgan City?

 Agnes:           They must of come from Plaquemine.

 JD:      And they settled at Keelboat Pass?

 Agnes:           They settled at Hog Island.  ..  Hog Island Pass, that’s where they had they house. 

 JD:      It was on the bank?

 Agnes:           Umhm.

 JD:      So Dan’s stuff would be more, most of his stuff would be up above.

 Agnes:           Yeah.

 JD:      Where most of y’all’s would be down on this end, Morgan City.  What was Morgan City like in those days Myon?  When you were 10 years old?

 Myon: There wasn’t too much.

 JD:      No oil?

 Myon: They had a wholesale, a couple a bars, dock, and…that’s all they had in front.  Further back, didn’t amount to more than a few homes, you know?  But all, like along that highway, you didn’t have nothing there.  That all rebuilt [new]. 

 JD:      How did the fish get from Morgan City to anywhere else?  [transportation]

 Myon: Train.

 JD:      How did the fish get from Morgan City to, uh, anywhere else?  Train?  How did those big docks…how did those fish get away from Morgan City? 

 Myon: By train, all by train. 

 JD:      And at that time the tracks ran from Morgan City just like they do now?  By New Iberia, and…

 Myon: It was all by train then, they didn’t have nothing else but train. 

 JD:      Well, now, Oscar’s dock, when Oscar Lange had that dock, did he, uh…was that after the fishboats, or did he have his dock when they were still running fishboats?

 Myon: They still running fishboats.  [?]. Oh yeah. 

 JD:      What year would you say it was when outboard motors first started being used?  When did you get your first outboard motor? 

 Myon: Me?  Hm.  Long time ago!

 Putt:   Milton got his about…it was about uh…

 Edward:        First one was about ’49.  A six horse, Wizard. 

 JD:      That was your first one? 

 Myon: First one bought in the family, yeah. 

 JD:      You were still runnin, uh, inboards? 

 Lena Mae:     [?] still runnin 2-horse Lockwoods.

 Edward:        No, Justin was born Milton had the 6-horse, cause we went to Bayou Boutte in it.  About ’49 when he bought that.

 Lena Mae:     Justin born in 1949. 

 Myon: That motor there, it didn’t have no reverse on it.  You want to back up, you just turn it around. 

 JD:      Well, then, uh, you’d say it wasn’t till about what, 1952, ’53 maybe later than that, before outboard motors really got a lot of use?

 Myon: Yeah, yeah, I say that.

 Edward:        I bought mine [in] 1950.  That Mercury. 

 JD:      And uh, well, how many sport fishermen used em in those days?  A lot?

 Putt:   None.   ..  Very few.

 Agnes:           You didn’t see no sports fishermen.

 Myon: Now and then [but rarely].  Somebody wanted to go sport fishin out there, you had to go bring em.  They wanted to go huntin, you had to go bring em. 

 Edward:        That’s the way it ought to still be.  .. 

 Myon: They didn’t have no boat, you didn’t see nothing like that.  I remember the time when I first moved here on the campboat, I used to go bring them duck hunters out there, in them blinds, I had a Ford boat – and uh, a model A [Ford engine] in a bateau…a 24 foot bateau.  I take four or five men, go put em in that blind, come back and get some more, go put em in their blind, and I start go…around 9:00 o’clock I start pickin em up and bring em back in.  Fellas from Morgan City, Franklin…but, besides that, they didn’t have nobody out there…and that’s…that’s the year Elton went to war, and…Elton got killed. 

 Agnes:           1941.

 Myon: That’s World War Two. 

 JD:      That would be about 1942.  That’s when you were bringing those people in?

 Myon: Yeah.

 JD:      So, in 1942 there weren’t any sport fishermen out there?

 Agnes:           Uhuh. 

 JD:      All the way up to 1950 there weren’t any sport fishermen out there. 

 Myon: Hardly any.  Just beginning. 

 JD:      Well, then, uh, I guess, I would imagine the changeover from the Lockwoods and the Fords and those air cooleds…the changeover was, I suppose, real gradual. 

 Myon: Yeah, right, that’s what I’m talking about. 

 JD:      It didn’t just happen like that [fast].

 Myon: No.  No. 

 JD:      And I imagine it was a long time before you had as much faith in your outboard motors as you had in your…in your engines?

 Myon: I guess so!  In them times outboard motors, you didn’t have much faith in em cause, uh, they take you out there…they used to say…the outboards…they take you out and didn’t bring you back. [laughs].  I never forget, Dr. Kid used to have one, he tear it up here, one time.  I believe it was a 50-horse.  ..  Who got in there one day, like to kill theirself in that thing?  Some of them boys. 

 JD:      A fifty outboard? ..  A 50-horse outboard? 

 Myon: Yeah man!  It was a big motor then, you know?  ..  Got 115 [horsepower] now.  Then, it was a big motor!

 JD:      But I didn’t remember…

 Myon: Dr. Kid had that.  It [he] was a big sport, you know?  ..  And he tied it up here.

 Agnes:           I believe, I don’t know if it wasn’t Bootsie [Millet]. 

 Myon: Bootsie, or Clifton, some of them boys.  They got in there, thought they’d kill themselves back in them trees back there, with that thing.  They got it started, hard to start…when it did get started [it crashed through the trees] [laughs]!!  Lord have mercy!

 JD:      Well, in uh, actually you probably have to say that it was, what…?  I can remember in 1955, a 25-horsepower motor was a big motor!  In 1955.

 Myon: Umhm. 

 JD:      And I can remember that in 1960, they wouldn’t sell you a 35 [horsepower] with a handle on it.  The Mercury people wouldn’t sell you a 35 with a handle on it.  You had to buy it with steering.  They didn’t think it was safe to hold a 35 by hand.  And so, you probably have to go up to around 1960 before you can say outboard motors really got started to really be used, huh?

 Myon: I say that.  Umhm.  Yeah.  [now] everybody got a boat parked in they yard. [laughs].  ..  Everywhere you go!

 JD:      Yeah.  That’s right. And they can go the same places you can go.

 Myon: Yeah.  That’s what I mean, that’s why they…you ain’t got the stuff [game, fish] today you…you used to have, cause of that reason.  That…that…and them freezer, ruined the…

 JD:      Freezers?

 Myon: Yeah. 

 Agnes:           Outboard motors and freezers!

 Myon: [If] People wouldn’t have freezers, they wouldn’t kill stuff and pack it up in them freezers. ..  In them time, we didn’t have that.  ..  You go out there, you kill a mess of stuff…you wouldn’t kill too much, cause you couldn’t save it. .. 

 JD:      Uh, would you say, from what you remember that, uh, an inboard was as dependable, more dependable, or less dependable than an outboard, as they are today?  Outboard motors like they are right now, would you say the old inboards were as good as those outboards? 

 Myon: Uh, in a way you could say that, yeah.  It depends…it’s just…because you could depend on them, cause it wasn’t that fast, and uh, you know…I say it was all right.  Today, with the outboards, you can make twice the work…you could do twice the work you was doing out there with one of them Lockwoods, one of them air cooleds.  It was so slow, your time…it took your time… to do the same thing in two hours today, it would take you a half a day to do it then, in one of them boats, you see?  [inboard boat].  That’s the difference they got in [between] them outboards, and them. 

 JD:      Well, outboards course, now, things happen to outboards, uh, you might get out in the lake and you might uh, oh, I don’t know, there’s a hundred things , I guess, that you could do to an outboard that the motor [would break down and] would leave you there. ..  Now, did you have that same trouble with those inboards…you’d go out with em, and they’d break down?

 Myon: Yeah, yeah.  Oh yeah.  We had plenty trouble with bearings, especially on them Lockwoods.  And uh…., them shaft bearings.  Burn…burn bearings in em, and everything else.  I used to make my own…

 JD:      How? 

 Agnes:           Babbit.

 Myon: Pour Babbit.  ..

 JD:      Huh?  What’s Babbit?

 Myon: Uh, that’s what the bearings is made around the crank [shaft] with.  You never seen Babbit?

 JD:      No.  Is it like iron, or what? 

 Myon: No, it’s like lead.  Lil bit stouter than lead. 

 Agnes:           After it’s cold, it’s [hard].

 JD:      Do you pour that in there and…?

 Myon: You measure it.  You fix your frame, I used to fix that with mud, make my collar down each side [with] that mud, there, and pour it in there…

 Agnes:           Come out just as smooth, and pretty…

 Myon: Used to make a wooden peg, you see, to make it on…

 JD:      To…to make the hole for the crank [shaft]?

 Myon: The hole for the crank, the same size as the crank.  You take the measure of your crank and make that peg the same size as the measure of your crank. 

 JD:      Well, I’ll be!  And that would hold up as good as the one you got [the original]…?

 Myon: Oh yeah.  As good as the one you’d buy.  Sure.

 JD:      [laughs]  That must have been something in those days, though, let’s say you cross the lake in…11 miles [not really], you got over here on this side, and your motor broke.  You couldn’t fix it in the boat.  Not like it is now, all you got to do is tie up to a tree and wait a few minutes and somebody gone come along and pull you…

 Myon: Somebody would come after you.

 JD:      Somebody would come after you?

 Myon: Umhm.  I mean, [if] you were later than you should be, they would come.

 Agnes:           I seen uh, a norwester break out one time, [and] Myon was across the lake, over here [they lived at Blaise's Canal then], and uh, that weather got ugly, that day…

 JD:      And you were on the other side?

 Agnes:           And we was on the other side.  [At Blaise's Canal].  And my daddy kept waitin, kept waitin, he say Myon must be broke down.  So after the norwester broke out, it… it started blowin, you know, regular, so…he took off.  And when he got over here Myon had broke… I believe he had broke a crankshaft that time.

 Myon: Umhm.

 Agnes:           So he had to tow him back. 

 Myon: One time I come across here and I had a lil skiff…fella in Morgan City used to make them lil skiff…