BH: No? Okay. Did. . . did you keep a garden there at the Zapata?
Chester: Yeah.
BH: What kinds of things did you grow?
Chester: I grew. . . I tried to grow. . . I planted watermelons and stuff, but they didn't make. . . but I planted corn, beans, peas, everything. I had a big garden right there where you come across the cattle guard coming in to go to the big house, you know. They was. . . the garden was right there. I had planted. . . I'd plant that, and after I'd get through eating supper, I'd go out there and work for a hour or two and. . .
BH: It's a pretty place to have a garden.
Chester: Yeah, it was. And I had my tomatoes—holy smoke!
BH: Now did you do the cooking at the ranch, pretty much?
Chester: Oh, yeah. I. . . well, whenever I started. . . when I. . . well I could cook before I even went out there. Cause I worked to the Stewarts—I cooked for them chuck wagons, and then I was a cookin'—I was helping a guy cook on, back in those days, they was havin' the horse and stuff, building up the highways, you know. Didn't have any tractors back in the thirties—or the twenties, or nothing. . . So. . . so. . . I cooked there. And then I went to. . . in ah. . . Mrs. Stewart, she'd make biscuits ever mornin', and I'd cook. . . I'd cook the ham or sausage or what we was going to eat. And. . . er a lot of times, we'd even eat steak for breakfast. And ah. . . so. . . and
Ah. . . I kept wanting her to make no (unintelligible). I'd say, "Let me make the biscuits for a little while." Cause I'd watched her for so long, ever mornin'. So I started makin' biscuits, and that's where I learned how to make biscuits.