DATE: 1989
INTERVIEWER: Jim Delahoussaye
LOCATION: Albert
(Myon) Bailey’s house at Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.
COOPERATORS: Myon
Bailey, Agnes Bailey, Lena Mae Couvillier
JD: Were you the oldest one?
Agnes: Uhhuh.
JD: You were the oldest one.
Myon: No, Monug was older
than you?.
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: And you had two sisters, Ophelia
[Yank?] and Ida?
Agnes: Uhhuh.
JD: [talking about how Myon and Agnes met, etc.] Well, that’s really
something. And then, you say that you
were campin out with your friend in his cabin boat…..
Myon: Yeah
JD: …… at Lil Pigeon, and
she was livin with Blaise [Sauce, her father] in a campboat, and y’all got married. What did y’all go live in when you
got married?
Myon: I bought me a lil camp, [but] the hull was so
bad I put it on the bank.
JD: The hull was so bad you put it on the
bank?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Now this was before there were [big]
levees, so the water wouldn’t raise as high as it did……
Agnes: They had a levee, when they built the
canal, they made a levee.
Myon: [background] They did’n have no big water
[annual flooding, like now]
Agnes: Well, we put the camp on that lil
levee.
JD: But today, the water would come up high
enough to go over that land, but in
those days….
Agnes: Oh yeah!
Myon: In those days, it didn’t come up. It just over the bank there at Lil Pigeon
maybe a foot, foot and a half, two
foot.
JD: That’s all it would come up?
Myon: About all.
JD: It [would] spread out.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: It would go in all the fields, and everything.
Myon: [jumbled, something about “caulk”?], Never
forget that….too. [?]
JD: Well, you remember, y’all got caught in
’27 [1927], in the high water , before they had levees. They built the levees after that. Do you remember how long after that tey
built those levees? Things must have
changed pretty much when they built those levees.
Myon: Yeah. I
tell you, I couldn’t tell you exactly Jim.
Agnes: I don’t remember when they built the
levees.
JD: But like, was it a long time after you got
married? Was it after Milton [their
oldest child] was born?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: After Lena Mae was born?
Agnes: Yeah.
Oh yeah.
JD: It was after all that.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: So, it was in the middle of your children,
somewhere?
Agnes: Uhhhh, just about, I guess.
JD: But when they built the levees now, you
couldn’t go any more from Lil Pigeon to Fourmile Bayou.
Myon: No.
JD: You couldn’t get across [the levee just
above Morgan City],
could you? What did y’all think about
that…….[interrupted by Myon]
Myon: Yeah.
JD: You could, you could?
Myon: You could, you could go through Lake
Palourde. Yeah.
Agnes: Followin, those, those bayous.
Myon: Them lakes.
JD: I guess I’m not thinking of the map very
good.
Myon: Would go down, uh, through, uh, Grand Lake and
then catch Sixmile Lake and go
through…..in that time they didn’t have a levee, before they build a levee you
could …. they had some passes there, other side of Morgan City. Go through Lake Palourde.
JD: But that’s what I’m thinking, you see,
right now the levee cuts you off, you can’t get to Lake Palourde
from this side.
Myon: Naw, naw, that’s right, correct.
JD: And that’s what I’m wonderin about, when
they, when they built those levees, it must have made a big difference to y’all.
Myon: It did make a big difference.
JD: You couldn’t travel anymore…
Agnes: Uhunh.
JD: It cut you off.
Myon: Not by boat, no. Only way you could have done it was all the
way around through Bayou Boeuf and
come back through Lake
Palourde.
JD: Yeah
Myon: It was a long way.
JD: That must have been a big change, when
they built the levees.
Myon: Yeah. It
was. You can believe that.
JD: Well, let me ask y’all this, goin back a
little bit. You told me that, uh, Blaise
Sauce, and uh, at least Blaise
Sauce, was livin in a campboat with his family.
And his father and mother,
Laurent [Larnce] and Ophelia, they
didn’t. They had a… a farm.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: They were farmers. They were dry land
people. Now somewhere along the line…..
Myon: They live in Morgan City a long time, too.
Agnes: They moved….When they left…..
Myon: When they left Lake
Verret they moved to Morgan City.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: But they, but they lived on land. They
didn’t go …houseboat.
Myon: They didn’t have no camp.
JD: Alright, so sometime between your grandparents, well, let’s see, is it your grandparents?
Yeah. But sometime after your grandparents is when people took to the swamp in
houseboats.
Agnes: Yeah.
Well, then, after that, after, when they left Morgan
City….they left Morgan
City after Lena Mae was born.
JD: Who?
Laurent?
Agnes: Yeah.
And then they moved….in uh, they had bought a, a, like a bateau. It was a campboat but it was built like a big
bateau. They bought that from Nonc
[Uncle Jule?], and that’s what they
lived in at the Canal, they lived at the Canal, with us [Blaise’s
Canal/Williams Canal].
JD: So, they moved, though, uh,….you see what
I’m tryin to do is understand is
when this livin in houseboats in the swamp got started. That’s what I’m tryin to figure out
Myon: [exclaims] ….back….
Agnes: That was a long time [ago].
Myon: That’s way back.
JD: That’s before them?
Myon: Oh yeah!
Agnes: Oh yeah!
Myon: You take them Burns and
[?] and them, before I ever thought
about movin in camp boats, they had camp boats.
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: They did?
Myon: Oh yeah.
Agnes: The Burns, there, they lived in camp boats…
Myon: All their lives.
Agnes: All their lives. When they left they place, there, where Ms.
Myrtle’s [Burns/Bigler] at, there……
JD: Burns Point?
Agnes: That’s where Ms. Myrtle’s at, that’s,
uh…..
Myon: Big Pigeon, Lil Pigeon, that’s where they used
to live, mostly…
Agnes: No, they lived over there….
Myon: …..in the camp boats….
Agnes: Yah, camp boats, and then when they left they place over there where
Ms. Myrtle and them livin now…
JD: I don’t know where that is, is that on the
levee?
Myon: Nah, up the channel up there by Amarada
[oil field]
Agnes: Along the channel, by Amarada
JD: Ohhh, I heard about her!
Agnes: On that side, yeah.
JD: What’s her name?
Agnes: Myrtle.
JD: Myrtle?
Myrtle Burns?
Agnes: Myrtle Burns. When they left from there, well they built
camp boats. And they took off.
JD: Now, they lived on the land there, on the bank?
Agnes: Yah, they lived on the land.
JD: Well, that must have been like those
people who lived on Bayou Chene…..dry land…like
a little settlement, kind of town almost.
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: OK, uh, so it goes back then [history of
houseboat living]
Agnes: A long ways.
JD: Were these people as old, the Burns, as
old as your grandparents, Laurent and Ophelia?
Agnes Oh yeah!
JD: They were?
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: Do you think it went past…., back past them? Too?
Further back, even, that they lived on houseboats?
Agnes: No, I don’t believe, I don’t believe
they ever lived in a campboat, them [the older Burns people]. But they lived on the bank. They had a big house on the bank
Myon: [background] ….house on that point.
JD: OK, they lived in the Basin….
Agnes: And then when all they kids, they
started getting married well then
they….[started on the houseboats]
Myon: He kill a man there.
JD: Who did?
Agnes: Old man Nick Burns.
Myon: Nick Burns.
JD: He killed somebody, Nick Burns killed
somebody?
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Why?
Myon: Him and
a man had confusion, the man was livin across the channel from em. And they had some kind of confusion, didn’t
get along. And the man was comin across
in a pirogue to shoot him. Shoot Nick,
but he didn’t let him get to the bank.
He shot him. In the pirogue.
JD: He shot him in his pirogue in the channel.
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: A Charpentier.
Agnes: Uhuh.
Chauvin!
JD: Chauvin.
Agnes: It was a Chauvin that was killed.
Myon: A Chauvin?
I thought it was a Chapentier.
JD: And his name was Nick Burns.
Agnes: Yah, that was Ms. Myrtle and thems daddy, Nick Burns.
JD: Ohh,……her Daddy….Ok, uh, does anybody,
Myon, remember what the argument was about?
Why they were….
Myon: No, no I wouldn’t know. I know they had the argument…..Agnes: He was a funny old man.
JD: Which one was?
Agnes: Nick Burns.
JD: He was?
Agnes: Ohh yeah, he was funny and he was mean.
He told him not to come on that side and
Chauvin had a hard head too. He was
comin in his pirogue.
JD: What’d he shoot him with?
Myon: Rifle.
JD: A rifle?
Agnes: Probably a rifle, I don’t
remember.
Myon: Rifle.
JD: Not a shotgun, a rifle?
Myon: A rifle.
JD: And did the law do anything about it? What, uh,…..
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: The man was comin to kill him, he killed…self defense. He had witness.
JD: Do you remember what….did y’all hear about
this, or did you know about ….
Myon: Most likely………
Agnes: I was small when that happened.
Myon: I wasn’t there, around there when that
happened, I was around Fourmile Bayou somewhere.
JD: Ok, ok, ok
Agnes: But we was there.
Myon: Y’all was up there.
Agnes: Umhm.
JD: You were small but ……
Agnes: I was small, but I remember.
JD: You were up there, y’all were living up
there?
Agnes: Umhm.
JD: Up the channel, by Amarada when that
happened?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Son of a gun. And nothing ever happened to him, he never
went to jail, or….?
Myon: Uhuh.
JD: Do you remember if the law ever came
there?
Agnes: No.
Myon: I don’t know if the law ever went up there
Agnes: They never, they never reported that
or nuttin.
JD: They never reported it.
Agnes: Uhuh.
They took that man and buried
him. I believe they buried him in
Charenton.
JD: Is that right? Never reported it.
Agnes: Uhuh.
Never done him nuttin. But people
used to kill, there, Jim, they wouldn’t say nuttin.
JD: But you would think his family. If he had somebody, people livin on the other
side of the channel you would think there would be a ……
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Was there ever anything like that
started….like there is in a lot of places, you get something happen like that
….bad blood that caused between two families.
Like for instance in this case the Chauvins on one side and the Burns on the other side. And they start to fight among the families.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Did anything like that ever happen in the
Basin? That yall remember? Families that didn’t like each other?
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: It didn’t?
Agnes: No, wherever we went to live, Jim, we
got along with people.
JD: I didn’t think y’all, maybe you’d hear about other people.
Agnes: Yeah, but everybody’d get along. It was just them.
JD: Just the Burns.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Son of a gun. This, uh, this lady who lives there now, it
was her father. Nick Burns was her
father, and they lived on the
bank. Didn’t live in houseboats.
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: But he would have been about the same age probably
as your grandfather.
Agnes: Yeah, just about.
JD: As Laurent.
Myon: Yeah.
Yeah.
JD: Bout the same as your grandfather.
And that would have probably happened before 1900, before the turn of
the century…
Agnes: Oh yeah.
JD: I imagine, still in the 1800s. I don’t imagine a date meant much to yall,
did they?
Myon: No.
Agnes: No. It didn’t.
JD: Did y’all celebrate New Year or anything
like that?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
Myon: Christmas, yeah.
JD: Yall did Christmas?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
JD: And New Years too?
Agnes: …..Easter, Christmas, New Years…
Myon: Thanksgivin…
Agnes: Thanksgivin, we always did….
Myon: Aw we knew it, we knew the date [?] . Holidays come there…..?
Agnes: Just like, we didn’t go to church,
but my momma and my daddy always
teach us that they had a God. We always
knew, we all knew they had a God.
JD: You say you didn’t go to church. There wasn’t, uh, there’s some places in the
Basin you hear about they had priests that would go around ….
Myon: Well, a….
Agnes: That was after, oh long time after
that. The priest would come at the canal
there with us…
Myon: Every three weeks he come and say Mass at my camp.
JD: Every three weeks?
Agnes: Yeah.
Come have Mass. Mass at the
house.
Myon: Gobeil.
JD: Father Gobeil. He was a Catholic?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
We were Catholic then.
Myon: Every three week he come to my camp, then he go
to Keelboat.
JD: Keelboat
Pass?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: He had a boat.
He go all the way around and
go back to Charenton. He was in
Charenton church, there.
JD: That was his route, huh?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: From Charenton. Gobeil. I wish I could figure out how long
people had been living in that swamp, on houseboats. We take it back now to, to your grandfather’s age.
I didn’t mean yall didn’t know the date, y’all didn’t care about the
date, what I meant was the year didn’t matter very much.
Myon: No, we, well, we don’t remember Jim, that’s the
big thing.
JD: I don’t imagine it made much difference if
it was 1888 or 1889. I mean….
Agnes: But, yeah, it was in the 1880s, I
guess. You know when my daddy and all, that was before my time.
JD: You were born, you said, in 1912?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: If you were born in 1912…?
Myon: She was born on a camp boat…
JD: You were born on a camp boat?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: In Blaise’s Canal?
Myon: No.
Agnes: No.
Whenever time Momma would have a baby, well they tow the camp to Morgan
City, you see
JD: Ooook.
Myon: [That’s what] I used to do when we used to live
at Blaise’s Canal.
Agnes: Anytime we had a baby, we’d tow the
camp to Morgan City where we…..[doctor?]
JD: Everybody make it every time?
Agnes: ……get a doctor. Oh yeah.
JD: They did?
Myon: Mmhm.
JD: Well, how far ahead of time would you
leave, I mean…
Agnes: About a month, month and a half…
Myon: Three weeks
JD: Oh, you give it plenty of time.
Agnes: Oh yeah, you couldn’t stay with my
daddy because he was too scared. We had
to go.
JD: He was, hunh? What about?
Agnes: Bout us, you know, [in case] somthin
woulda happened to us.
JD: He insisted y’all go for a doctor.
Agnes: Oh yeah!
JD: Who were the treaters where y’all
lived? Who could treat for things like
blood, and…
Agnes: Well that would be his momma
[Myon’s].
JD: Your momma?
Myon: My momma.
Agnes: His momma would treat…..
JD: Ernestine?
What kind of treating did she do?
Did she do just prayers?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Did anybody do anything with plants? Roots, and
stuff like that?
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: With what?
JD: Plants, sometimes some people would take
bark off of willow trees….
Myon: Naw, the Indians used a whole lot a that, but
a….
Agnes: We never did.
JD: Yall used prayers.
Agnes: Ahhah, used prayers.
JD: Umhm.
That’s what my grandmother
did. She used prayers. [pause]
Well, that’s great, that’s great.
That’s nice. Well, if Felix, Blaise, was a fisherman he’s a, I
guess he fished for a living, hunh?
Myon: Most….all the time.
Agnes: He fished, and
then they had a closed season on the fish, he’d pick moss.
JD: Ok.
But, of all the, his brothers and
sisters, did any of them fish too?
Agnes: Some of em, some of em would ….
Myon: …….fished.
Agnes: A lot of em went to work on boats, and….on dredge boats, and
whatever they could do.
JD: But he was full time fisherman.
Agnes: Yeah.
He fished, he’d fish, the closed season he’d hunt alligators, he’d
hunt frogs, he’d pick moss.
JD: So, he made his livin in the swamp all the
time.
Agnes: Yeah.
All the time. We never suffered
for nuttin.
JD: No?
Agnes: Uhuh.
We always had plenty.
JD: You don’t remember bein hungry…
Agnes: Uhuh.
Never did. Well, things was
cheap, you’d buy everyting by the fifty pound, by the hundred pound. I’d like to see now, buy a hundred pound of
coffee. [laughs] see how much you’d pay
for it.
JD: You would buy things by the hundred
pounds?
Agnes: Oh yeah. That’s the way they buy they groceries, buy
the case and buy the sack.
JD: What would you put something like a
hundred pounds of coffee in?
Myon: Cans.
Agnes: Buy them fifty-pound cans, with the
lids.
JD: What…were they tin cans?
Agnes: Uhmh.
JD: And the lids were tight?
Agnes: And the lids was tight, they’d put
that in there .
JD: Course you ground your own coffee all the
time…
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Aw yeah. Parch it and
grind it.
Myon: Had to parch it.
JD: Every day?
Agnes: No, you’d parch…my momma’d parch a
big pot full, you know, and uh…
Myon: You never did smell parched coffee?
JD: No, but I bet it smelled wonderful.
Agnes: Ooooh, you talk about! Haha.
Myon: You can smell that half a mile, I believe. [laughter]
Agnes: Then at night we’d grind it.
JD: You’d grind it for the next morning?
Agnes: Our lil grinder, yeah.
JD: Gaalee.
Myon: We used to do that too.
Agnes: Yeah, when [after] we was married we
used to do that too.
Myon: Buy green coffee and
parch it and grind it.
JD: That’s all there was, I guess.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: And those fishboats would provide all
those groceries yall needed?
Myon: Most of the time, yeah.
JD: Would you give em an order and they’d come back with what you wanted?
Myon: Right.
…..like, like you had a store, unless you wanted something extra…
JD: Yeah.
Myon: Like a lil store in that boat. Everything you wanted, they had it in there
by sacks and by boxes, and everything, just like a lil store. Now, if you wanted something like meat, you
had to order that.
Agnes: Yeah, because you can’t have no
freezers, or nuttin to save that.
JD: Where was most of your meat coming from,
that you would eat?
Agnes: Wild meat. Deer meat.
Squirrels. Ducks. Rabbits.
We had meat.
JD: That’s what [meat] yall would eat most of
the time.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: So, beef was not something yall had very
often?
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: Very, very seldom. ….that preacher, that priest come there in
my, in my place one time and we was
eatin dinner. [and]
I had some questions. I says, uh, I
always did hear you didn’t eat meat on Friday.
He looked, he say “When you get meat out yuh, you eat it!” It ain’t what you put in your mouth,
understand, it’s what come out of
it. He say “That just a penance for the
people got it all the time”. That’s to
make a penance….
JD: Like a sacrifice.
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah. My daddy smoked [meat]. Turtles…… Everywhere we went he built a smokehouse.
JD: And how was that built, can you
describe it?
Agnes: Just a lil old… lil old house.
Myon: I built one back here with drums[barrels].
JD: Oh, just small like a drum, not big like
this room.
Agnes: Uhuh.
Like from that corner there square, like six by six, or eight by eight
or something like that. And he’d put
strips, and he’d hang that meat on
there [the strips]. Pork meat, deer
meat, smoked rabbits.
JD: And then what?
Agnes: And then it would keep.
JD: And I mean, he’d build a house but where
did he….he’d just build a fire down in the…on the floor?
Agnes: Yeah.
On the ground.
Myon: Use ashwood…
JD: Use ash?
Agnes: Ashwood, hickory, and pecan tree, hard wood, you know.
JD: And that meat would cure with just that
smoke? Did it have to have salt,
didn’t have to have anything else.
Myon: Jim, you got to season it, yeah.
JD: You do season it?
Agnes: You season your meat good before you
hang it up.
JD: Before you hang it.
Agnes: Them big ole loggerheads? He’d smoke them legs, you talk about
somthin good! He’d
slice it kind of, so the smoke would go in.
JD: Oh, open it up, kind of. No kidding, hunh? Smoked meat, now how would y’all care for
that after it came out of the smokehouse?
Agnes: Momma’d take it….
Myon: ….didn’t do anything with it.
JD: But I mean how did you care for it…..
Myon: Can make a gumbo if you want.
JD: It was preserved, I mean,…..?
Myon: Oh yeah.
After it smoked, it keep like that!
Agnes: Oh, for a couple weeks, three
weeks.
JD: No kidding, huhn? Could you tell if it would start to get a
little bit “phesante” [sp? Meaning slightly spoiled]?
Agnes: Oh yeah, yeah.
JD You could tell that, I guess, eh? But that smoke would mainly keep that
…[?]
Agnes: Oh yeah, just like a ham, Jim,
….
JD: Yeah, yeah.
Agnes: That’s what they’d do.
JD: I’ll be doggone, and
that’s when you had those little safes [screened shelves] in those days, didn’t
you?, with the screen in the front to keep the flies out, but you could keep
your stuff like that inside.
Myon: Yeah, I made one back there with a drum. I never did use it.
Agnes: No.
JD: A smoker?
Myon: Yeah, I made the…..dig a hole in the ground and face it with brick, put a drum on there. Put some strip of wire on top. Never did use that thing.
Agnes: Just rusted out. All the bottom.
Myon: I was gone smoke some catfish and never did do it.
Agnes: That’s good smoked, Jim!
JD: Catfish?
Agnes: Them lil catfish.
Myon: Garfish.
JD: Well, how long does it take, lets say,
from the time you start to build your fire, get your smoke goin?
Myon: Well, it takes a good while.
Agnes: It take about three, four hours I
magine.
JD: That’s all?
Myon: Longer than that.
Agnes: For the lil fish, daddy, it wouldn’t
take too long. Little fish. But my daddy’d smoke that there, sometime
two days, three days.
JD: And it never got hot in that house did
it? Real hot?
Agnes: Uhuh.
Myon: No. You
don’t make no big fire.
Agnes: The smoke would come out ….
JD: Now how did he have it vented so the smoke
would leave? Did the smoke get out at
all?
Myon: Oh yeah
JD: He had to get…the fire to have some
air. So, it would get out. Well, what did he…how did he make the thing smoke
a lot?
Agnes: Green wood.
JD: Green wood. And it would burn green wood ok?
Agnes: Oh yeah.
Myon: ….start it with good wood, you know? Dry wood, and
then, he’d put green wood on…make the smoke.
Agnes: Put his green wood, oak and all, something that would last, you know?
JD: Somebody must have had to stay and take care of that.
Agnes: Aw yeah, take care of it,
yeah.
Myon: Look at it, now and
then…..take care of it…
Agnes: All you had to do was just look at
it, ….if they had too much fire…something like that.
JD: And your daddy, he had the smokehouse
everywhere he went?
Agnes: Everywhere he went he built him a
smokehouse. Pork? He’s smoke that pork, them hind legs,
there, he’d hang that up and smoke
that.
JD: You mean that smoke would go all the
way thru those big old hind legs on pigs and
cure that?
Agnes: Yeah, sure, just like a ham.
JD: But I would have thought the thing would
rot before it would cure, something that thick.
Agnes: Uhuhm.
JD: That must have been what he went for two
or three days, so thick.
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Well, it was a ham.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Pork leg would be a ham [of course]. Son of a gun.
Agnes: [?]…they had them big ole crock
jars…
Myon: Jim, you want some coffee?
JD: No, thank you, Myon.
Agnes: He’d cut up, like a deer, he’d cut
that up by lil steaks, and momma’s
cook dat. She’d cook it ready to eat, and then she’d take the fat and
dump it [the cooked meat] grease and
all in there. When she’d get thru it
would be covered with grease.
That would last from one year to the next.
JD: No kidding, it would last that long?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
Myon: Put it in lard, yeah, stay….
JD: As long as it was covered with that lard…
Agnes: Long as it was covered with that
lard…
JD: You know, I always thought lard would get
rancid after a while, and start to
get bad…
Myon: Yeah, if you keep it too long, yeah.
Agnes: But it would keep. Ducks, keep ducks like that…
Myon: …..way to keep stuff, didn’t have no
refrigerator, or nothing.
Agnes: Keep ducks like that.
JD: That must have been something. So, most of what yall ate was game.
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: Aw yeah.
Go out there, I would have to limit my shells when I go
hunt.
JD: Is that right?
Myon: Aw yeah!
Shells was hard to get. Times was
kinda hard.
JD: Was it pretty easy to kill deer?
Myon: Yeah, [pause] it was easy enough. Mostly duck, and
squirrels, rabbits, and
squirrels. I limit my shells when I
go hunt squirrels. Cause I couldn’t
afford to buy em, you know. I kill what
we could eat.
Agnes: That’s all, you couldn’t kill more
because ……
Myon: Ducks!
Jim! I never seen so many ducks
in my life! [I] Seen that, at Blue
Point.
JD: No kiddin.
Myon: Sheee, you go…they had a point back there….we’d
go in there, two three guns. Start
shootin them ducks. It get black [so
many ducks], they want to come and
light in there, you know. It get black
overhead, there. You ought to see
that.
JD: Well to make your shells go further
though, it probably be better if you shot em on the water, eh?
Myon: Well, we did do that, yeah, when we wanted to
save the shells. But sometime it was fun
to go out there and shoot em on the
wing too.
JD: Uhunh.
Mostly big.. mostly French ducks[mallards].
Myon: All French.
JD: All French ducks.
Myon: All French.
Agnes: He’d sell that fifty cents a pair,
Jim.
Myon: And geese they had in the woods.
JD: Geese?!
Myon: Geese.
JD: In the woods?
Agnes: Aw yeah.
Myon: They had them lil onions, Jim, about that big
[end of thumb] in there. That’s what
they’d feed on in there. It was nutin
but a, but a slough, you know, but a...[?]. And they’d come in there and they’d feed in there.
JD: The ducks and
geese both would eat those lil onions?
Myon: Right.
JD: Hm.
That must have been….
Myon: I have seen em hollerin so much there you
could……[?]. You could hardly sleep, hear
em hollerin all night.
JD: So you didn’t have to go far to kill….
Myon: Uhuh.
You could go make a pot shot [shoot many ducks at one time on the
water], but, hm, we couldn’t do that, we had no way to save em.
JD: Yeah.
Myon: Sometime I’d go out there and kill bunch of em, and
big boat [the fish boat] would come down, he’d stop. He’d tell me he’d stop and
pick some up, fifty cents a piece. Fifty
cent’s a pair!
JD: Pair?
Agnes: Yeah.
Myon: French ducks!
Agnes: Two French ducks for fifty
cents. Boy,…what I could….I could eat
that now! [laughter]
JD: So, how would you prepare em for the fish
boats?
Agnes: Gut em.
Myon: Just gut em.
JD: Course, that would be in the wintertime,
it would be cold.
Myon: Yeah, yeah.
That’s when you got the ducks, is in the wintertime. ….in the summertime...
Agnes: He would come back with a tub
full!
JD: A tub full of ducks.
Agnes: We’d get there, and we’d gut em and
hang em up. And when the fish boat would
come, well, he’d pick em up.
Myon: Some time he’d try to pass me up, but I’d
get in my boat and I’d run him down.
JD: Why did he try to pass you up?
Myon: I don’t know, Jim, you know [laughs] never tell
what they gone do you.
Agnes: Kind of rough [the fishboat
operators]. They didn’t want to come in
the canal.
Myon: They done that a couple time wit me, I had to
run em down.
JD: He didn’t want to come in the canal?
Agnes: Yeah, so he’d go on by, but Myon
[would] catch up wit im. “You ordered
the ducks, you take em!”
JD: Ohhhhhok.
[pause] Hey yi, looks like it’s getting brighter out there now.
Agnes: Yeah, it is. Shifted [the wind] I guess.
JD: Gone be cool when we go outside. Well, we got some stuff done today, boy. I got all my circles filled up. So, Joe Sauce and
Felix Sauce are the only two yall remember that fished. [Agnes’ uncles] Gayon and
Milton and Bill …
Agnes: They worked, them. [didn’t fish] But Joe Sauce, eh,
fished.
JD: Did any of them stay with a job most of
their lives? One job, where they worked
somewhere?
Agnes: They’d work on them pullboats, and all, I guess they….
JD: But was still connected with the swamp,
most of the work they did?
Agnes: Right.
JD: Lumber…..well, were they doin much lumber
in those days?
Agnes: Sure.
Oh yeah. Plenty, yeah.
JD: They were, they were, when your uncles
were….
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: So, they were doin a lot of lumber before
you got big enough to get into it?
Myon: Yeah, oh yeah! Yeah.
JD: Hmm.
So, both the lumber and
the…oh, when’s your birthday Myon?
Myon: Me? On
the seventh.
Agnes: March the seventh.
JD: What year?
Agnes: He’s gon be 85.
JD: So that’s 1904?
Agnes: 1905, he was born.
JD: March seventh, 1905.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: [Sneezes]
Scuse me, scuse me. And you [were
born in] 1912?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: And you’re December 12, 1912.
Agnes: Fourth
JD: December 4, 1912. Right.
December 12, that’s my daughter Holly’s birthday.
Agnes: Yeah [laughs].
JD: I need to talk…we need to talk to Ike
at some time, and try to get….
Myon: …getting pretty sick, there, lately.
JD: Yeah?
You heard more about it?
Agnes: Yeah, he’s pretty sick.
JD: Cancer?
Myon: Yeah, he got a cancer.
Agnes: He got cancer, and
sometime he bleed so much he think he gonna die.
Myon: I wouldn’t like to bother him now.
JD: You wouldn’t? Well…..
Agnes: Aw, he could tell you some …….
Myon: If he had the time, he coulda told you some
stories, but….
JD: Well, you know, maybe he’d still like
to. Maybe it would give him something
that he would feel like he was doin.
Agnes: Maybe so, I don’t know.
JD: I don’t want to bother him if yall say
it’s not a good idea. But…
Agnes: Well, if he’s sick it would be
better….
JD: It depends on how sick he is, I mean…if
he’s ….
Myon: ….I ain’t heard lately from em, but, uh,
usually his son calls, [?] wife, and
told him if there’s any news he gets from his daddy, to call cause she
….[?]. cause he’s pretty sick. And that’s the news I got.
Agnes: And we didn’t get no more news, I
don’t know.
Myon: I been want to call him, but I hate to call
him. Cause of that.
JD: Yeah.
Agnes, you have a middle name?
Myon: Aurelia.
Agnes: Aurelia.
JD: Anybody else have that name [looks at
family chart]? No. Nobody else has that name.
Myon: ….had that name, Rudolph’s wife.
JD: That’s right. Aurelia Vining, hunh?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: See, I’m learning who all these people are
[laughs]. Of the, uh, Myon of your
brothers and sisters and half sisters, I know your brother and sister are both not living any more. But, uh, your half brothers and sisters, Jesse died…
Myon: Yeah.
JD: How about the rest of em, are all the rest
of em still living?
Myon: Yeah.
JD: Marie, and
Odelia, and…
Agnes: Odelia died. Eula died.
Myon: Azima, Eula died, that’s right.
JD: Eula died too?
Agnes: Eula died, Odelia died, Norman died…
JD: But Marie is still alive?
Agnes: Marie is livin, and Azima is livin…
JD: Who?
Agnes: Azima, we call her “Petite”, but it’s
Azima, her name.
JD: I don’t have that; I don’t have that
person on here.
Agnes: You don’t? Well, that’s his half sister.
JD: Azima.
Agnes: Azima. There’s three of em livin. There’s four of em livin. Ike, and
and Petite, and,
uh, Marie and Nine [Elmira
Sauce].
JD: Ok, see, we didn’t remember to get her on
the list. And who… do yall know who she
married?
Myon: Fabre [sp?].
JD: Fabre?
Myon: Morris Fabre.
JD: What’s his first name?
Myon: Morris.
Agnes: He’s dead too.
JD: He’s dead?
Myon: He’s dead.
JD: He’s dead.
She?
Myon: She’s livin.
JD: She’s livin?
Myon: Yeah.
Agnes: Yeah, she’s livin.
JD: Ok, and
of course both Ike and Norman are
both livin.
Myon: Not Ike, no.
Norman died.
JD: I didn’t know that!
Agnes: Norman
died, yeah.
JD: Not too long ago, though?Myon: Quite a while.
Agnes: About a year and
a half, been dead. Yeah.
JD: How about that. Well, Myon, you gotta hang on, [laughs] you
gotta hang on Myon.
Myon: Odelia’s gone, Norman’s gone, and..
JD: Jesse?
Myon: Jesse…
Agnes: Jesse, Eula..
JD: Eula, Angelina and
Rudolph
Agnes: Rudolph, Angelina ….
JD: How about Homer Daigle?
AB:
He’s dead.
JD: Uhun.
I can imagine. The reason I
would have liked to talk to Ike, if he gets to feeling better, is because I
would sure like to have some, just a few dates from these real old people
[older than Myon and Agnes’
generation] if he can remember any of em.
Like your great, like you grandmother
and grandfather
on your mother’s side – Leah Hebert and
Joe Daigle. I’d really like to be able
to get some sort of date around those people.
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Do yall know where they’re buried?
Agnes: Uhuh.
I don’t know.
Myon: Yeah, on The Canal. By Napoleonville.
Agnes: By Napoleonville. Probly.
Myon: And probly that’s
where they’re buried.
Agnes: That’s where they buried.
JD: Is there a lil cemetery there?
Myon: Yeah.
They have a church right on the road goin to Napoleonville, on the Canal
from the lake. On the right hand side.
JD: There are, there are markers on the graves
that have….
Myon: I guess they have, Jim, I’m pretty sure they
have.
JD: And how about….
Myon: I don’t believe there’s no more church there no
more. It might be just [a]
cemetery.
JD: How about Victorain and his wife [?].
Myon: Aaah, that I don’t know what they….they must be
in The Canal too.
JD: Same place, you think?
Myon: I imagine.
JD: They all lived right there around
Napoleonville?
Myon: ….about the same time.
Agnes: They ought to be, they ought to be buried there.
Myon: Yeah.
JD: You see, that would be a possible place
where we could go and read the…if
there’s stones on em we could find out when they were born…
Myon: Probly have, I don’t know.
JD: How about Fanny Mae Mason and Claiborne Mayon, and
Laurent Sauce and Ophelia
Simoneaux?
Agnes: They must be buried at
Napoleonville, I guess.
JD: Same place?
Agnes: Must be.
Myon: Naw, I don’t believe.
Agnes: Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Cause them people, that’s where they’d go all
the time. They’d go to church there, and all.
JD: You don’t remember going to the
funeral? For your grandparents?
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: And, since you were the oldest, you
probably would be the one mostly to remember.
Where’s your [Agnes] brother Robert?
Agnes: Calumet. He lives in Calumet.
JD: He have a nick name?
Agnes: Yeah, we call him Tootse [toot
say].
JD: Tootse, ok. He lives right on the levee, doesn’t he?
Myon: No, he live right at the landing.
Agnes: Right at the landing. In, in, uh, you know where that landins at?
Well, that’s where he live, that house …
JD: I believe I went….
Myon: The only house they got there.
JD: I went and
talked to him when we were tryin to start the co-op. That’s why I remembered, I think, where he
lives. Do you think he would remember
anything like that?
Agnes: Uhuh.
JD: You would be the only one?
Agnes: Just about, I guess.
JD: If anybody would have gone to a funeral,
you would have been….old enough. You
would have been the oldest one.
Agnes: Yeah.
I remember goin, to the funeral, but I don’t remember where. But it must be around Napoleonville.
JD: Boy that thing is hard to see [where the
tape is on the recorder].
Myon: [sighs] ……
JD: That could be, could be interesting to try
to find…some of the dates on some of those people. There might even ….have some information…
Agnes: I know where my granma and grandpa
buried on my Daddy’s side.
JD: Well, that’s what I was asking, is that…..Laurent
and Ophelia.
Agnes: Pierre Part, they buried in Pierre
Part.
JD: They are?
Agnes: Uhhunh. Bill’s buried in Pierre Part, I remember
that.
JD:
Bill, who’s Bill?
Agnes: That was my Daddy’s brother.
JD: Oh. One of your fourteen [aunts and uncles].
He’s buried in Pierre Part?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: Bill is dead….are all those people dead,
Agnes?
Agnes: Yeah.
JD: The whole….all of em?
Agnes: Yeah.
I know they buried in Pierre Part, them. My Momma’s [parents]…I don’t know where they
buried. But it must be at the Canal,
because, I think….
JD: Now if you can place that, where you’re
talking about so I can get it on tape we can go back and
figure it out later. Where is this “Canal”
yall talking about? And Napoleonville and this cemetery.