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Katheryne Dollar, director of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program in association with the Natchitoches Area Action Association arranged interviews with senior citizens around the parish. The interviews were conducted between 1971 and 1974 by David Dollar. Recordings were originally aired on KNOC Radio.

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October 2, 2025

43. Francois Mignon pt. 3

Transcript

Transcript

Donald McKenzie: [inaudible 00:00:00] doing quite well.

Clive Miller: But also, one thing that I'm fascinated in, first of all, I'd like to know... I'd just like to hear about your first meeting with Miss Cammie. How you met her, and-

Francois Mignon: Oh, that might've been [inaudible 00:00:23].

Clive Miller: Yes, that was right. Because [inaudible 00:00:40]-

Francois Mignon: [inaudible 00:00:40] as one would expect [inaudible 00:00:40].

Clive Miller: Well, did you meet her in New Orleans? Or did you come down-

Francois Mignon: No.

Clive Miller: You came-

Francois Mignon: No, it was curious [inaudible 00:00:49].

Clive Miller: I'm Clive Miller.

Donald McKenzie: And I'm Donald McKenzie. And we are interviewing Francois Mignon at Melrose. And Francois was going to tell us about his first meeting with Miss Cammie.

Francois Mignon: My first meeting with Miss Cammie was as distinctly Cane River general arrangement as one could imagine. I had spent the summer in the South, primarily coming down from New York, primarily to be in the region when it was less densely populated with tourists. And it was in 1938, before the main highway ran around New Orleans, Natchez, to make Natchez rather remote.

We arrived in New Orleans and, after a few days, went to Natchez to rest after a series of [inaudible 00:02:14]. And on arriving in Natchez, we were discovered. We discovered that Natchez was in the social and pilgrimage [inaudible 00:02:24]. And accordingly, Christian Bell and I were received with more cordiality and greater hospitality, perhaps, that we would been when we had more competition. And so, within a few days we were forced to leave Natchez Traces for the Crescent City to catch our breath and rest again. While there, we met Lyle Saxon at a dinner party [inaudible 00:03:00]. And although Lyle and I had lived for a year in the same block, we'd never chanced to meet. At the dinner party, Lyle said, "You two gentlemen must go up the country this weekend with me." Well, I [inaudible 00:03:22] Melrose Plantation. We said no, that was impossible, we had already promised Miss Edith Wyatt Moore, the Natchez historian, that we would return to Natchez and pick her up and go someplace in the country in Louisiana for the weekend.

Lyle persisted that we should cancel that engagement but were adamant about carrying through our appointment. Finally, Lyle said, "Well, I'd like to know where that place is that's so important. What is the name?" And we said, "Well, we don't know where it is, but the name of the place is Melrose." Whereupon, Lyle nearly fell out, and said, "I'll see you there."

So, back to Natchez we went, and picked up Miss Moore the next morning and headed to Melrose. When we arrived at about noon, we stopped at the front gate, and there were two people, one of whom we recognized in Mr. Saxon, and the other was his hostess [inaudible 00:04:40] Henry. Miss Henry, on greeting us, said, "Now, you all go to the big house there [inaudible 00:04:48] place to stay, although there are several guests." And Lyle said, "Why, what do you mean, Aunt Cammie? These are not your guests, they are mine." And she said, "It's not so at all. I invited them first," and he said, "But I saw them." And so, they compromised, and we went to Yucca where Lyle lived. That was my first meeting with Miss Henry.

Clive Miller:

She wasn't wearing a sunbonnet.

Francois Mignon: [inaudible 00:05:18].

Clive Miller: She wasn't wearing a sunbonnet then.

Francois Mignon: No.

Clive Miller: No.

Francois Mignon: She was not wearing a sunbonnet on that occasion. We stayed a weekend at Melrose and celebrated Lyle's birthday on the 4th of September. And because there were many guests [inaudible 00:05:38] scarcely saw Miss. Henry, except at dinner. But when I returned to New York, I found a letter awaiting me from her, which was in the usual crisp style that she employed. It merely said, "Dear Francois, somehow I got the impression you had more sense than to waste your life in a big city. Why don't you leave New York and come down and live in the country?"

Well, I responded by saying that there was the pressure of business and whatnot, can't be done. But a year later, [inaudible 00:06:24] Adolf Hitler upset the apple cart in Europe, and foreign trade, in which I was engaged, came to a temporary halt. Accordingly, I wrote to Mrs. Henry, with whom I'd been in constant correspondence, a note saying... and this showed how smart I was, "I know the war will last six weeks [inaudible 00:06:50]."

And so, I came down to Melrose, prepared to stay six weeks, and it's not been some 27 years, I guess. And it's a long [inaudible 00:07:02] but nevertheless short in many respects. [inaudible 00:07:08] people [inaudible 00:07:10] because she [inaudible 00:07:15] spirit. Oh, no. And [inaudible 00:07:19] made about Miss Cammie, she'd made some reference to her white sunbonnet. I had the good fortune to see Miss Cammie several times in her sunbonnet, and the impression given [inaudible 00:07:42] by others who had seen it, that she resembled a Duchess.

Miss Cammie impressed me, and not so much as a Duchess, as a Greek goddess in the sunbonnet. She was [inaudible 00:07:54] white shirtwaist and sunbonnet, put your mother, this [inaudible 00:08:05] Garret had made for her. On one occasion, a Cane River hostess who had long made an effort to entice Miss Cammie to her house succeeded. When a guest at Melrose wanted to do a thesis on some aspect of the river, told Miss Cammie that she would like to go to the lady's house to get some impression of the establishment.

So, Miss Cammie, on behalf of art, I think, surely not through any impulse towards society, consented to go. And the three of us went. An extraordinary meeting, because Miss Cammie was so fundamental, so solidly white marble without a flaw, whereas her hostess, who for years had angled to get Miss Cammie, was something of [inaudible 00:09:09] now that she suddenly had celebrated Cane River guest at her party.

I recall the tea, it was unusual, it was in August and very warm. And to give it the proper antebellum feeling, the hostess had turned off all the electric light and lighted the dining room with candles that were ablaze, and everyone was sweltering. Obviously, the server, who was probably [inaudible 00:09:48], what do you call that? A maid of all work, had been pressed into service as the housemaid for that particular occasion. And she had not been trained very well to respond to calls from the mistress during the tea party.

And accordingly, when the lady, who had retained self-control up to that moment, tinkled the bell, a little silver bell on her table, the maid did not hear. She picked up the bell a second time and rang with a little more vigor and still, and much to her obvious distress, embarrassment, nothing occurred. Finally, in desperation, she picked up the bell and rang it mightily. And a second later, the door opened and a frightened, frazzled [inaudible 00:11:06] person put her head into the door and said, "Ma'am, I hear a bell ringing, I believe there's a cow loose in the house, but I can't find it." The dinner party went into a sham.

Clive Miller: Francois, there are so many, many things [inaudible 00:11:10] that I wanted to ask you about Miss Cammie. First of all, I feel so deprived, I've heard about Miss Cammie practically all of my life, and it was too late to meet the lady. And one thing I wanted to know about her was this. How, the Cane River country, she obviously loved it and was fascinated by it. And what did she hope that the writers she knew and was friendly with, what would she want them to do for the region? Did she want it to be interpreted by them? Or was there ever any of that conscious literary reaction to the region [inaudible 00:12:17] just pure love for the place to begin with?

Donald McKenzie: [inaudible 00:12:21]-

Francois Mignon: Well, I should note there were a combination of circumstances that gave a trend to Miss Cammie's amateurs that might not have developed along the same lines had she lived somewhere else.

Clive Miller: I hear-

Francois Mignon: Miss Cammie never tired of telling me that I am sugar, not cotton. I was born [inaudible 00:12:49] and I know nothing but that is sugar country. I knew the people there, they were all Episcopalian, they were all families that my family had known since the 1800s. But when I had married and came to the Cane River country, it was all strange to me. There was comparatively little sugar, it was all cotton. The nearest neighbors were miles away, and everyone I saw were of color, either negro or mulatto. And because I was so far [inaudible 00:13:33] and out of the [inaudible 00:13:36] our connections, the usual social gatherings that I knew in South Louisiana. I took up my pen because I discovered in a very short time that corresponding for a person living in a remote situation was the house and the [inaudible 00:14:03] by which an individual who was really interested in the outside world lived.

Clive Miller: Well, in my opinion, Lyle Saxon's novel Children of Strangers was the finest thing that's been produced about this area. And I don't think that Lyle Saxon would've written the book unless Miss Cammie had gotten him down here.

Francois Mignon: [inaudible 00:14:30] Lyle would never have written the book had it not been for Miss Cammie. Because when he told Miss Cammie that he thought he could write a book when he was here on assignment in the Natchitoches area [inaudible 00:14:44]. Lyle was doing newspaper work [inaudible 00:14:49] continued-

Clive Miller: To do nothing but journalism, instead of the creative work [inaudible 00:14:55]-

Francois Mignon: Because of her inspiration. And because he had the courage to [inaudible 00:15:03] If there had not been a place for him [inaudible 00:15:10]. And you see his first books, Father Mississippi, [inaudible 00:15:14] Old Louisiana, were all books about Louisiana or New Orleans.

Clive Miller: But they're the kind of thing that you write because tourists are interested in the region. But tell me this, Francois, what kind of reaction did Children of Strangers get when it was published? And what was Lyle's feeling about the press for the book?

Francois Mignon: Well, Children of Strangers was extremely well received by the press. As soon as it appeared the first review was in The New York Times, and it made the front page of The New York Times book review, with Lyle's pictures in it. And for a number of years after it appeared, it was hailed as perhaps the outstanding regional novel of the South.

Clive Miller: [inaudible 00:16:16]-

Francois Mignon: Yes. I had a very interesting experience one day. It was our custom in 1939 to have coffee every afternoon at 3:00. I was busy in Yucca house where I lived, where Lyle came to New York from New Orleans on weekends, I was busy and I did not join the other people at 3:00 coffee.

And so, as the hour approached, I stopped my work at my typewriter and sat down and turned on the radio to get the 3:00 news. And it chanced that the program was on devoted to reviewing a book. And I don't recall the person who was giving the review, but I remember it was out of Washington DC. And the man said, "Now, this afternoon, I should like to discuss the South's best regional novel, Children of Strangers by Lyle Saxon." And first of all, I [inaudible 00:17:37] particularly, and at that moment came a knock on the door. And the person bearing the tray of coffee was the very person that the man out of Washington DC was discussing.

Clive Miller: Oh [inaudible 00:17:54] so we know that Lyle, first of all, absolutely... He used living models for the book [inaudible 00:18:01].

Francois Mignon: Yeah, it is interesting, although, and it may have been forgotten, I don't know. But when Lyle first came here, before he came to live, when we made his first visit here, in the living room of the Yucca house, lived Uncle Israel and Aunt Jane, the last two surviving slaves. And in what is now the bathroom of the Yucca house lived a girl by the name of Josephine Monette with her four or five children. And it was Josephine Monette, Lyle used as Famie for his heroine of Children of Strangers.

Clive Miller: Was she as strong and as beautiful and as tragic a figure as Lyle [inaudible 00:19:02]-

Francois Mignon: She was a wonderful personality. She had that rarest of gifts possessed by women, in that there was some healing power about her. That all this-

Clive Miller: [inaudible 00:19:18]-

Francois Mignon: Yes, it radiated kindness. And after she left Melrose and went to [inaudible 00:19:26], her services were always greatly [inaudible 00:19:31] who needed just that quality. Which one sometimes finds [inaudible 00:19:39] doctor, but which is sufficiently rare [inaudible 00:19:45].

Clive Miller: [inaudible 00:19:46] Miss Cammie did not confine her [inaudible 00:19:51] friendships [inaudible 00:19:52] Southern writers at all. [inaudible 00:20:00]-

Donald McKenzie: [inaudible 00:20:00].

Clive Miller: ... Rachel Carson [inaudible 00:20:06]-

Donald McKenzie: Rachel Ray [inaudible 00:20:07].

Francois Mignon: [inaudible 00:20:09].

Clive Miller: [inaudible 00:20:12].

Francois Mignon: [inaudible 00:20:14] Miss Cammie was perfectly enchanted one day when Rachel showed her a doll, a Heidi doll that she had insured for ten thousand dollars. No, Miss Cammie was-

Clive Miller: First of all, what [inaudible 00:20:21]-

Francois Mignon: ... not at all [inaudible 00:20:21]. She could never be described as an [inaudible 00:20:21] a Southerner. Although her father had been a soldier in the Civil War, and her mother had been the daughter of a great sugar planter, had been ruined by the war. But she never accepted the somewhat stilted theory of many people that we were living the best of all kinds of [inaudible 00:20:21] if the Civil War had not [inaudible 00:20:21].

Miss Cammie always said how horrible it must've been to live during the slavery time, which is indicative of-

Clive Miller: [inaudible 00:21:30].

Francois Mignon: Even in as late a day as this, when people still dream, I suppose, of how delightful it would be to have slavery, just so long as the person believing it didn't have to be-

Clive Miller: But Francois, Miss Cammie is so remarkable a figure that one wonders, what turned her into the great human being she was? By the time everyone, Lyle, and you, and the other people who met Miss Cammie, she was already a great human being. And the loneliness of living at Cane River and rioting, and breeding, and she-

Francois Mignon: Was one of the most remarkable [inaudible 00:22:21].

Clive Miller: That's [inaudible 00:22:22]-

Francois Mignon: [inaudible 00:22:22]-

Clive Miller: She had a range [inaudible 00:22:23] interest that's just incredible for a woman living in the backwoods [inaudible 00:22:27]-

Donald McKenzie: [inaudible 00:22:28].

Clive Miller: No.

Francois Mignon: But she had a strong personality, but she was unlike nearly every other person one can think of a strong personality, in that she did the opposite of what strong personalities usually do. Usually, a strong personality is like a [inaudible 00:22:51] that absorbs and draws and drains all of the energy out of the people with come in contact. Miss Cammie, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite. She was the dynamo which supplied the energy for people who, having a potential gift, could draw on and be inspired. And it didn't matter [inaudible 00:23:19] writing. It might be making a quilt, it might be [inaudible 00:23:25]. It might be doing any one of a hundred different things. But people always felt enriched and inspired and possessed of the physical stamina to go on ahead and do what they could because of that energy that always flowed from their hostess to her guests.

Clive Miller and Donald McKinsey interview Francois Mignon about some more of his memories at and around Melrose Plantation, how WW2 disrupted his work in foreign trade, author Lyle Saxon’s work, and other topics.

January 16, 2025

42. Francois Mignon pt. 2

Transcript

Transcript

Jim Colley: Good morning. This is Jim Colley on The Memory Show, and this morning we're at New Haven House in Natchitoches, visiting with Mr. Francois Mignon. We'll be back with Mr. Mignon in just a few minutes after this word from People's Bank and Trust, our sponsors.

Welcome to The Memory Show again, Mr. Mignon.

Mignon: Thank you, sir.

Jim Colley: We're so glad to have you back.

Francois Mignon: Thank you. It's a great pleasure.

The Memories of Cane River for me stem from the 1930s. It was then that Mrs. Cammie G. Henry, the mistress of Melrose, invited me to become a member of her household and to join with her in cultivating the arts and the gardens. It was during this time that a great many people of genuine worth in the world of art came by Melrose.

I think, however, there were so many that it would be merely a recitation of listings in Who's Who in the Art World if I were to enumerate even the more widely known ones. Perhaps today it would be better to mention some of those who are perhaps better known to the people in the Natchitoches area. And for that reason, I suggest that we undertake that field. It is an interesting fact that they all seem to fall into certain categories such as the writers of books, the delvers into research, the cultivators of flowers, the bibliophiles and workers in papers and so on.

I think in any history of Melrose and the arts, Lyle Saxon would be one of those who would appear large in such a listing. Lyle and Mrs. Henry, as it happened, had both invited me to come to Melrose. So when I arrived, I felt as though I were the guest, not of one, but of both of them. Lyle very kindly invited me to accompany him on some of his walks about the countryside and to introduce me to many of his friends whom he had incorporated as characters in his Children of Strangers.

Now, in another branch of endeavor, there is painting, for example, take the name of perhaps the best-known name in the Natchitoches area, Irma Sompayrac Willard. She was a visitor at Melrose many a time and all, and I think did some of her finest work in and about the Melrose plantation. I recall especially a particularly fine etching she did and presented to Mrs. Henry as a design for Mrs. Henry's stationery. It was a sketch of the big house at Melrose and Mrs. Henry was always praising the work that Irma had done in that field.

As for myself in my favorite [inaudible 00:04:03] at Yucca House where I lived, there was a painting by Irma Sompayrac Willard of the country house of Madame Aubin Roque, and her old-fashioned garden. Some of you may recall that that house was moved to Natchitoches a few years ago and today occupies the West Bank of Cane River in the heart of Natchitoches on the East Bank, of which stands the home of Irma Sompayrac Willard herself.

Another writer of extreme worth who came to the Melrose coterie was James Register. He had already published a book called Zeba, brought out by the University of Oklahoma Press. While in Melrose, he did a great deal of research, which was to blossom forth in book form in the years that followed.

And while he was at Melrose, he also made the most of cultivating a painter by the name of Clementine Hunter, of whom some of you may have heard. Mrs. Hunter, I think, received more inspiration and more assistance from James Register than any other individual at Melrose at the time.

And I'm glad to know that Mr. Register has continued to live in the Natchitoches area and today is assisting in a greater development of the art, particularly in his encouragement of Billie Stroud. He has felt that her paintings have captured what is dying out in this section now, and that is the old way of life on the plantation. And thanks to Mr. Register and to Miss Stroud, the old aspects of plantation life in Louisiana will thus be preserved.

Jim Colley: Thank you very much. We're going to take a break at this point and have a word from People's Bank and Trust, and we'll be back with you in just a moment.

This is Jim Colley, and we're visiting on the Memories Program this morning with Mr. Francois Mignon. We've been talking about the kind of personages who you encountered at Melrose. What other kinds of folks did you meet there?

Francois Mignon: Well, we were speaking of people that seem naturally to fall in certain categories. There is the category of the bibliophile, people who really appreciate fine books and who assisted Mrs. Henry and many of her enterprises in collecting, preserving, cataloging those. Outstanding in this field where people like Mrs. Irene Wagner and Lucille Carnahan, who were frequent guests and who spent long hours assisting Mrs. Henry, not only in cataloging, many of her fine scrapbooks, but also in annotating them to great advantage for those students who would come later.

Then, too, in another group, there was the people who cultivated the arts through the camera. Perhaps one of the best known of these were Doris Ullmann, the Corticelli silk heiress, who photographed at Melrose one of her best-knowns, being the portrait she did of Mrs. Henry's mother, Ms. Leudivine Erwin Garrett.

Another photographer of note, aside from Richard Avedon and Carolyn Ramsey of Marshall, Texas and New Orleans, was Frances Benjamin Johnson. Miss Johnson was an extraordinary personality, very strong, very demanding, but very capable. She was famous for having scooped Admiral Dewey after the Battle of Manila Bay.

Another distinction she held was that she was the first person ever to get a camera inside the White House in Washington, D.C. That was during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. The children of Theodore Roosevelt were very rambunctious, as everyone knows, and they quite swept Frances Benjamin off her feet when they got her and her camera and their pony into the White House elevator, and they all went for a free ride, which nearly wrecked both camera and Miss Benjamin herself.

One day, Lyle telephoned from New Orleans and said, "I'm bringing Frances Benjamin Johnson up today. We are driving up and we'll probably stop at Weeks Hall's place on the way at the Shadows-on- the-Teche at New Iberia and we'll arrive around five o'clock."

It was Mrs. Henry's custom in those days to retire early. So when it became seven, she said, "If you don't mind, I'm going to retire. If you're not going to bed so early, would you mind taking care of Mrs. Johnson and Lyle when they arrive?"

In due time, they did arrive, although I must say I had rested my eyes occasionally before the two o'clock hour struck and their horn sounded. Miss Johnson, however, was very adamant. Lyle was not feeling well, and accordingly had gone to Yucca, and I assisted Miss Johnson to the big house where an apartment had been prepared for her. With the poor totter of the luggage however, she took her stand and said, "Now, before I take one step up these stairs, I demand to know what position you hold in this household."

I said, "Oh, Ms. Johnson, if you don't mind, the hour does advance so great. If you could wait until morning, I myself have never found out exactly what my title is. If you'll wait, we'll to settle it all over a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning." I had to persuade her with some difficulty, but I did succeed, and she went on eventually to greater glory.

Another field in which artists and artisans combined their work was weaving people like Ora Williams and the weaving boys from Texas University, Kenneth Hunt and Rudolf Fach and no end of local enthusiasts, who loved to see Mrs. Henry at work on her looms and were inspired by her I believe, in the work that they undertook in handcrafts.

In the field of flowers, there was Joachim from Little River. Mr. Bashly, we always termed him affectionately. He had come from Nantes town down near the mouth of the Loire in France, and he and I had a great deal of pleasure in comparing notes with the Melrose plants of great interest to us and those that flourished in Europe.

Of course, perhaps the best known of the local horticulturists were or was Ms. Caroline Dorman of Briarwood. She frequently came to Melrose and frequently unannounced, would arrive after Ms. Cammie had retired, would suddenly descend on Mrs. Henry, and on occasion, has been known to jump into bed with such fearlessness as to land right over the top of the counterpane and land and break Mrs. Henry's radio on the other side of the bed. Caroline was always filled with gusto.

Her sister Virginia was sometimes a visitor with her. It has always interested me that Miss Virginia, after having reached full maturity, finally decided that she was going to try matrimony. And she accepted an invitation to marriage from a Mr. Miller who was studying chiropractory at Davenport, Iowa. The Dormans at that moment, while rich in lands that were planted to wildflowers, did not have very much affluence so far as travel was concerned. And so to conserve money, it was decided that Virginia and her husband, Mr. Miller, would take Carrie, a mature lady in her own right, on the honeymoon. A fact, which always enchanted all of us as we thought it was a new type of endeavor and perhaps included an element of education that few young ladies are so fortunate as to receive.

It was Caroline and Virginia who used to sleep on the upper gallery at Melrose that looked down over the old cistern close by the African house. It was there that one evening when Dr. George had come back from his nightly walk that he mounted the old cistern and with Ms. Cammie, Carrie and Virginia listening above, he serenaded them in a somewhat quavering voice, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny. And so tunes such as that frequently carry me back in memory to old days in the Cane River Country.

Jim Colley: Thank you very much, sir.

Jim Colley interviews Francois Mignon again, this time they discuss more about Mignon’s time at Melrose Plantation and his work in cultivating the arts there, his time with author Lyle Saxon, and his interactions with local artists and artisans.

Tags: melrose plantation, lyle saxon, podcast, natchitoches, ncptt, memories, artists

January 2, 2025

41. Francois Mignon pt. 1

Transcript

Transcript

Jim Colley: Good morning. This is Jim Colley, and we're visiting on our Memories program with Mr. Francois Mignon. We'll be back in just a few moments after this word from Peoples Bank and Trust. This is the Memories program. I'm Jim Colley, and we're visiting with longtime resident of this area, a historian by trade and profession and vocation, Mr. Francois Mignon. Welcome to the program. We're very glad you're here. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Francois Mignon: Thank you, sir. It's a great pleasure to be a member of your group in disseminating memories of the past, and I like to join the parade, trusting that I may have something of interest to some of our listeners. I was engaged in foreign trade between New York and Paris prior to 1938. In that summer, I made my initial visit to the Lower Mississippi Valley on a vacation, and was invited through my friend, Mrs. Edith Wyatt Moore, the Natchez Mississippi historian, to come as a guest of hers and of Ms. Cammie G. Henry to Melrose Plantation. I had met Lyle Saxon in New Orleans at a dinner party, and he had invited me to visit his cabin someplace in North Louisiana. I wasn't sure just where it was and he didn't know, but I was going in North Louisiana when he invited me, and I had declined his invitation.

But we all finally converged at one magical point, which turned out to be in Natchitoches Parish at a little turn in the river, called Melrose Plantation. There we met Mrs. Henry and Mr. Saxon, and life on the plantation began to take form. I had read Mr. Saxon's Children of Strangers before visiting Melrose, and so was delighted the very first day I was there to visit in some of the cabins where dwelt people in Mr. Saxon's books, and of course my interest immediately began to deepen as I recognized how well Lyle had portrayed these characters who already seemed to be familiar. In a short time they proved to be old friends, of course.

One of these was a plantation field hand and sometimes house servant named Clementine Hunter. It was the same Clementine Hunter a few years later who brought to me one evening some paint tubes which she had gathered together when a New Orleans artist, Alberta Kinsey, had left for home and turned over whatever she was not taking to Clementine Hunter.

Mrs. Hunter said to me, "Mr. Francois, you know what?" and I said, "No, what?" and she said, "I'll bet you I could mark a picture if I sought my mind to it."

"Knowing you as I do," I responded, "I'll bet you could do anything you sought your mind to," whereupon I went over to a casement window which had a roller linen shade on it, took it down and handed it to her together with some paint brushes on my desk and some turpentine. "Bring it back in a couple of weeks and show me how you're getting on," I said.

The next morning at five o'clock someone tapped on my door. It was Clementine Hunter. She said, "I'd done brung you my first picture." I stepped out on the gallery to get a better light, and I was astonished when I saw what she had brought, and I said, "But you don't know it, but you haven't started yet." She said, "You mean it ain't no good?," and I said, "No, I mean, it's wonderful, and once now that you're started, you're going to keep on painting for just as long as you live."

Jim Colley: Clementine Hunter has had a great career from that beginning.

Francois Mignon: It's really marvelous, culminating in this December's account of her in Reader's Digest, which you may have read.

Jim Colley: Yes.

Francois Mignon: Of course, Clementine Hunter of course has astonished everyone. Her success before the camera in her documentaries has been so good, and then the ever-widening appeal of her primitive paintings seems to have spread. I know that I myself have been impressed by the number of people from Europe who have contacted me to obtain Hunter paintings, and I'm sure now that her fame has spread so much widely that she will continue to enjoy an ever-increasing popularity from here on out.

Jim Colley: I'm sure she will. Mr. Mignon. We're going to take a break just for a moment and give our sponsors, Peoples Bank and Trust, a chance for a commercial message. Good morning again. This is Jim Colley on the Memories program, and we're visiting with Francois Mignon. We were just talking about Clementine Hunter. I understand that you and Clementine Hunter collaborated on a recipe book.

Francois Mignon: Yes. Clementine Hunter and I decided a few years ago at a time when Alabama was having most unhappy difficulties over educational pursuits, when a student at the University of Alabama, named Autherine Lucy, had some difficulty in matriculating because of some racial difficulties, and so recalling that perhaps the best kind of propaganda in any form is that which doesn't seem to be propaganda at all, I suggested to Clementine that we write a cookbook. Not that the world needed any more cookbooks, there are too many now of course, but what it needs is more cooks with imagination, and Clementine Hunter of course had it.

And so every day Clementine would come to my house and we would sit, and as she would recall recipes that she was especially fond of, I would jot them down on my typewriter. I should explain perhaps at this point that my vision is very poor, and I cannot read, but I could operate a typewriter all right. And so Mrs. Hunter and I got along famously on our undertaking.

The work was progressing nicely one day when Dr. Rand, Dr. King Rand of Alexandria, tapped at the door. We called for him to enter, as my fingers flew along over the keys until I'd finished the line, and he said, "I see you're all writing a letter or something," and Clementine said, "No sir, Dr. Rand. Us is writing a book. We's going to have a cookbook?" And he said, "Well, that's fine." He said, "How you get along together?" She said, "We get along fine. You see, me and him," pointing to me, "we just alike in one way. Can't neither of us read, but he can work that machine pretty good there, and if I tells him what to say, we get along just fine."

So the book went through to its final consummation, and when it appeared in print, it enjoyed a certain circulation. I never did know how it got to Europe so fast as it did, but a very short time after it had been released in United States, I had a letter from Alice B. Toklas, an old friend of mine in Paris. Some of you may have read the Gertrude Stein autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Alice herself was very much interested in cooking and cookbooks, and she had written to tell me that our cookbook, the Melrose Plantation Cookbook, contained a recipe that had never been registered by the Académie Gastronomique of France, and since that organization confers a blue ribbon upon any author who submits a recipe which heretofore has not been recorded, she asked me if she might present the case to the Académie. I hastily wrote back and said, "For heaven's sake, don't."

Jim Colley: Oh no.

Francois Mignon: "My own vanishing hairline would never support a ribbon, and Mrs. Hunter has such an attractive wig for every occasion that I'm sure ribbons would only confuse her," so we let the whole thing go, but I'm happy to say that the book did circulate, and I hope it did serve to make Clementine Hunter better known and to bring about the happy Christmas, which I'm sure must be hers this season of the year.

Jim Colley: We have just a few minutes left, and since this is Christmas Day, I wonder if you could mention some memories you might have of what Christmas was like.

Francois Mignon: Christmas on the plantation was very interesting, as every place, of course. The children, rather young or grown, look forward to the great day when there would be presents. Usually the plantation workers went to the store, and sometimes their families and friends would come to the Yucca House where Lyle Saxon and I made our home, and it was always a great pleasure to see our guests.

And I'm afraid we were not too bountiful in Santa Claus business, and yet somehow or other we always managed to have a fine time. And I know I myself was deeply touched on one occasion when some of my friends among the students from St. Matthew's School where I sometimes would go and speak to the children, got together and gathered the pecans for one special purpose that season, and it was a secret. And they came to me because some of them knew me rather well, serving me sometimes as my secretary to read my mail for me, and so they appeared as a group one Christmas morning and they presented me with a purse that contained a sizable amount of earnings from their pecan gatherings, and they said, "Mr. Francois, you done helped us out with all those things we was trying to do at school. Now we know you probably didn't have much money, and so we thought we'd all pick some pecans and give you the money, then you could take it to town and you could buy yourself a fine pair of glasses, and after that you all will be able to read."

Naturally it touched my heart. The disposal of that money, how it was dispersed, will form another conversation I hope, when we may meet before another Christmas time has come. In the meantime, may yours this year be ever so pleasant.

Jim Colley: Thank you. And a Merry Christmas to you.

Francois Mignon: Thank you, sir.

Jim Colley: And we thank, especially on this day, Peoples Bank and Trust and the fine folks there for providing us with this opportunity to visit with you. Thank you again.

Jim Colley interviews Francois Mignon about his time at Melrose Plantation, working with folk artist Clementine Hunter on a cookbook, stumbling upon a forgotten recipe, and Christmastime at Melrose.

Tags: melrose plantation, clementine hunter, ncptt, national center for preservation technology and training, podcast, oral history interview, christmas, natchtioches, memories

December 19, 2024

40. William Schelette

Transcript

Transcript

David Dollar: Hello again. In case you're just joining us, this is David Dollar on Memories. Visiting this morning with Mr. William Schelette down Cane River. Mr. Schelette, we thank you for letting us come into your home this morning, and why don't you start things off by telling us a little bit about yourself, where you were born and some things like that.

Mr. William: I was born in Melrose, down Cane River.

Speaker 3: [inaudible 00:00:21] You can call it Melville. [inaudible 00:00:22]

Mr. William: Well, there's Melrose, that's my post office. All these roads must be post office, you see, I was born down there. And from there, we moved, over the river, over here next to where this Kirkland boy living at there now what you was talking about there a while ago. We moved on over there and we left from there and we went out on what they used to call Bravel by Bravel out here.

David Dollar: When was this? About what time? What year were you born?

Mr. William: Oh, I was born in eighteen ninety-two.

David Dollar: Eighteen ninety-two.

Mr. William: Eighteen ninety-two. The 31st day of December in eighteen ninety-two, that's the time I was born.

David Dollar: Had a New Year's party the next day, I guess?

Mr. William: That's right, right there. Balancing that.

David Dollar: What were some of the things that you and your folks, your brothers and sisters and parents did? What kind of stuff was your dad doing? Was he farming?

Mr. William: Farming. And I remember I had a brother that... my mother was sewing and she was cutting out some, what we used to call it them time, Guinea blue, cloth.

David Dollar: What's that?

Mr. William: Guinea blue.

David Dollar: Guinea blue cloth?

Mr. William: Cloth. She was cutting that out and my brother took one of the string. He was small and he chewed the string, he swallowed it.

David Dollar: Oh goodness.

Mr. William: He had spells after that. Just one after another.

Speaker 3: Spasm.

Mr. William: Just spasm what they called them times. And after that well, when he vomited the thing up, that pass.

David Dollar: It was okay then?

Mr. William: He had no more spells.

Speaker 3: It was long string of-

Mr. William: Long string, just chew, you know how a child would do. He was a little bit of trouble. I remember that like that was yesterday.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Mr. William: And that must have been, he must've been about four years old already, something like that.

David Dollar: He was your older or younger brother?

Mr. William: Next to me. Next to me. Yeah. See we ten children.

David Dollar: Oh my goodness.

Mr. William: Seven boys and three girls.

David Dollar: What kind of things did y'all do around the house when you were growing up?

Mr. William: Well when I was growing up, we had wood to get in and had to get your cows up, milk the cows, and well food with horses. After I got up a little size, I started riding wild horses.

David Dollar: Oh, you rode horses?

Mr. William: Yeah. Wild horses. Break horses for different people.

David Dollar: You mentioned to that this might've inspired you to do a little something in your later life. Didn't you say you raced some horses at [inaudible 00:02:50]?

Mr. William: Oh yeah. That's later on. I started riding races. See I used to break horses and later on I started riding races. I was a race rider. I rode Shreveport, rode in Natchitoches. I rode down to Apple Ville.

Speaker 3: [inaudible 00:03:03]

David Dollar: How old were you when you first started riding for the races?

Mr. William: I must have been about, oh in the 18 or 20, I imagine between 18 and 20 something like that.

David Dollar: A young daring man.

Mr. William: That's right.

David Dollar: Didn't mind racing a little bit.

Mr. William: Yeah.

David Dollar: You say you raced in Natchitoches?

Mr. William: Natchitoches. Yes.

David Dollar: Where where was this in Natchitoches that you raced?

Mr. William: The old fairground was over in East Natchitoches.

David Dollar: Oh, in East Natchitoches.

Mr. William: In East Natchitoches.

David Dollar: Not where the fairgrounds is now?

Mr. William: No, no, no, no, no. That was over in East. I rode over on this side in the other one.

David Dollar: And they had a racetrack over there and everything?

Mr. William: They had a racetrack then, I was riding there for Mr. Willie Cunningham. And I remember good and the horse jumped the rail. There used to be a rail all around. When the horse jumped the rail its aimed to jump it, his knee struck the rail and he fell and of course it told me and I struck his ankle after the pulse and broke my ankle.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Mr. William: They take me to the doctor, to this old doctor, [inaudible 00:04:05].

Speaker 4: Dr. Bath.

Mr. William: Dr. Bath and Dr. Bath said, put me to sleep. He said, I was hollering, ''Don't twist him, doctor. Don't twist him, doctor.'' I went to sleep and he kept that on me until he died. Every time he'd see me. ''Don't twist him. Doctor'' and Mr. Benny Himes was there with him at the time.

David Dollar: Was there any kind of betting going on on the horses or was it just between the horse owners or did all the folks turn out for the racing?

Mr. William: No, everybody goes to the fair, to the racing. They bet, bet their money.

David Dollar: Oh my goodness. As much Dickens as folks raise all around here you know about horse racing now. Probably their grandparents was doing it a few years back. I surely didn't know about that. Let me interrupt you right here just for a second. We're going to take a commercial and we'll be back to talk a little bit more in just a second. We'll be back with memories with Mr. Schelette right after this message from People's Bank, our sponsor.

Hello once again. This is David Dollar on Memory, is visiting down Cane River with Mr. William Schelette. Mr. Schelette, let's pick up kind of where we left off. We were talking about horse racing around here and how you used to ride horses. Tell us about the race over in Coushatta you went to that you had told me about earlier.

Mr. William: I went to Coushatta. I can't remember what year that was. I've been trying to think when it was, but I know I was a young man. I must have been about, oh, I'd say about 21 or 22 years old, somewhere along there. I rode over there in Coushatta. I went, I won every race that I ran. I won every one and of course the boys got after me.

David Dollar: Well, the guys you beat, huh? Didn't like that?

Mr. William: Yeah. Some of them was riding with me, but I beat them. So I came back after I ran the race, I came back and I saluted the judge and I come on out. The gate was open. I came out, they must have thought I'd gone to the barn with the horse, but I was heading home. So I came to Red River Bank. It was them town. There wasn't no bridge. He had to cross by ferry.

David Dollar: And the guys were chasing you now?

Mr. William: They was chasing me through the town.

David Dollar: They're going to get you.

Mr. William: And the fellow that done got good ways out in the river, and I asked him, I said, let me ride with you, please. He said, ''I'll get you when I come back.” I said, I'll give you 50 cents. Take me over to district. He pulled back in just about the time we got almost the same distance back in Red River where he was, God bless it, the Rose Hill. I said, if that man don't go back to that side where y'all is, y'all will never get me because there was no bridge them times.

David Dollar: Had to ride that ferry.

Mr. William: So when the man landed the boat, good morning. I didn't stop till I got to Hammer.

David Dollar: Bet not.

Mr. William: And I was living that. There was Mr. Charlie Terry. I think that was Mr. Willie's brother-in-law, I'm not too sure of that, but any-how, that's where the horses were.

David Dollar: Mr. Willie Cunningham's brother-in-law. Sounds like you had some exciting times when you were growing up.

Mr. William: Then I went down to Lafayette, only in Apple Ville. I got down there. I was riding for a fellow by the name of Anderson Black. He was living in [inaudible 00:07:27] we was at the side of him. I went on down there to ride a horse for him. He had a horse by the name of Conjugal, black male. So we went on down there, came for him down there and he lost every race we started. He lost them and he got broke and I didn't have nothing. He didn't have nothing. So, he called Alexandria and they let him put his horse in a cart. They had sugarcane on one end and the horse on the other end and they had a plank mail between the horse and the sugarcane. Well, I got behind that plank and he put the bracket there. He said, ''Now don't move.'' He said, ''Because if they come in here and catch you'', he said, ''They're going to put both of us out of here.” So I stayed there until I got to Alexandria.

David Dollar: That's the way you got back home.

Mr. William: I made it two days the night on sugarcane, chewing sugarcane.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Mr. William: From that day until this, I said I'll never leave home broke. I just knew I was going.

David Dollar: Thought you were going to clean up down there?

Mr. William: I was going to do something, but I didn't do.

David Dollar: Oh, baby. Mr. Schelette we try to end our program every time with what we call a closing memory. Why don't you share with us some of the mischief you got into as a child that we were talking about earlier as your closing memory today?

Mr. William: Well...

Speaker 3: Fighting about marbles.

Mr. William: I used to be a great fighter about a marble, I'd fight.

David Dollar: What about playing marbles?

Mr. William: Playing marble. You know. The children, them time used to shoot marbles. We didn't have no automobiles to run up and down the road like they have now.

David Dollar: Right, right.

Mr. William: You either walk or ride a horse and we used to shoot marbles all the time and we'd fight about the marbles. We used to play at night in the house.

David Dollar: Oh goodness.

Mr. William: And fight just like me, my brothers. I was just a mischievous boy. I'd just pick at the other children all the time.

David Dollar: Did you ever get in trouble about it or?

Mr. William: No.

David Dollar: Just kind of, luckily stayed, just on the other side of trouble.

Mr. William: On the other side. Yeah, that's right.

David Dollar: I know that feeling.

Speaker 3: Tell him about you and your cousin fighting.

Mr. William: The fight we had down at the dairy.

Speaker 3: They'd put a stick on the shoulder and the one would throw that stick off, they'd fight.

David Dollar: They'd fight. I heard about knocking a block off the shoulder.

Mr. William: Yeah. The best man to knock the stick off. We used to do that all the time. It was the first cousin of mine and every time we'd meet up somewhere, we'd fight.

David Dollar: Seems like that'd get old. I don't know. Unless you just like to fight. Well, Mr. Schelette we thank you for being on our program today. Ms. Schelette. We thank you for jogging our memory when we would lag behind here.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

David Dollar: Help us out and we thank you folks for joining us today.

David Dollar speaks with William Shelette about horse racing around Natchitoches.

December 5, 2024

39. Lucille M. Denton

Transcript

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00): Good morning. If you're just joining us, we're visiting with Mrs. Denton this morning. She's been in Natchitoches most of her life.

Mrs. Denton (00:00): All my life.

Speaker 1 (00:07): All of her life. And she's going to start talking about how she remembers her girlhood.

Mrs. Denton (00:13): That's right. Must I hold this? No, you [crosstalk 00:00:17]-

Speaker 1 (00:16): No, you go ahead. I'll hold it.

Mrs. Denton (00:18): Like you said, I was born and raised right here in town, right where John [Eicher 00:00:23] has his stores. His boys, now, has the store. But two houses from where his store is, that's my old aunt used to live in there. And she was my godmother. She's dead. She died long, long years ago. (00:36): And I remember when my friend and I would go visit one another, it was right across Cane Road, but at that time, they did not have ... Cane Road was dammed at both ends. And we had a little old footbridge, we'd just go across the road, walk on the footbridge.

Speaker 1 (00:50): Was that narrow?

Mrs. Denton (00:52): Right across the street. See we would go down the hill, cross a field, and Melrose Pond, and your back of Melrose Pond, just go across there, and go across the river, you see. And then she would come back with me, and we'd go horseback riding at her place. Because her brothers from in the country would come with horses, and he would take us riding on Sundays. And that was quite a treat.

Speaker 1 (01:20): That was a big thing, huh?

Mrs. Denton (01:20): And then we were, after that, on Sundays, we would sit on the porch, mama, and my aunt, and I, we would all three of us sit on the porch. People, at that time, the T&P used to pass through Natchitoches, pass through here at 6:30 in the evenings. Go as far as Alexandria. And they would lay over in Alexandria, wouldn't go any further. (01:47): And people walked down Sundays to see, meet the train, people would get off. And then would get on, the train was going to Alexandria, go to catch the train to go to New Orleans. (01:59): And the big days were when Labor Day was. And everybody would go. At that time, it was five hours to go to New Orleans for Labor Day. And the train would be always packed. And then go back to Shreveport. We would come through. And then go back to Shreveport. And they would see you when the train would come through going to ... T&P would go back to Alexandria and pick up people that had to be picked up. (02:25): And then I just remember that. And then they had the old lady, her husband.

Speaker 1 (02:29): What would you do in New Orleans on Labor Day?

Mrs. Denton (02:32): I never did go, because I was too small. I wasn't too small, but I never did go. I could have gone, too, but I had some friends, and I had an old aunt, too, in New Orleans. But I never did go, because the trains were always packed. And mama wouldn't let go, just, I was the only child. (02:54): See, my father died when I was 10. And I don't know much about him. And after that, I remember again, this old man, Manual Slayton, his wife, she was 117 years old when she died.

Speaker 1 (03:09): My goodness.

Mrs. Denton (03:11): And we would go fishing down at [inaudible 00:03:16] Mill. They had an old pond down there, and we would go fishing down there. And that's where [inaudible 00:03:21] back to school clothes, because mama was always working. (03:27): And then when I come from school I would stay with this lady. And we would have a good time together. We would go fishing, and go ... We call them mushroom now, but we used to call them frog toads, frog stools, or whatever you call them.

Speaker 1 (03:27): Frog stools.

Mrs. Denton (03:27): Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Speaker 1 (03:27): Toadstools.

Mrs. Denton (03:27): Toadstool.

Speaker 1 (03:27): Oh yeah.

Mrs. Denton (03:27): And we're would go hunt that. And we just had a good time.

Speaker 1 (03:50): What did you do when you found them?

Mrs. Denton (03:51): I wouldn't do anything, but she would do, she would come to soak in milk, and water them in saltwater, and she'd make a chicken stew, and put them in there. And they were good. I've eaten them. It's just like you would still have mushrooms, you know?

Speaker 1 (03:51): Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mrs. Denton (04:10): Fresh mushrooms. They were just made just like mushrooms. And so then we just had a good time like that. And then my aunt had a garden in the back of the place, in the back, where the [inaudible 00:04:23] is now. She had a garden. And we'd go in the garden, and pick just whatever had to picked.

Speaker 1 (04:30): Now, did you grow everything that y'all ate in just that little bitty garden?

Mrs. Denton (04:35): That's right. That's right. Everything-

Speaker 1 (04:45): But you didn't sell anything?

Mrs. Denton (04:45): No. People then didn't sell like they do now. With those what didn't have, we would give one another, you see? We would raise different kinds of tea, sage tea, and have some of these little seeds, what you put on cakes. You know? [inaudible 00:04:57]-

Speaker 1 (04:57): Sesame seeds, or something like that?

Mrs. Denton (05:02): Yes. And we did that. And then we would have a good time doing those things. We just grew up, and the boys, and children, and all of us would be downtown, and you'd play marbles. I was regular tomboy. If they would climb, I could too.

Speaker 1 (05:02): Guess so.

Mrs. Denton (05:22): And we played marbles. I loved to play marbles. And-

Speaker 1 (05:22): We need to take a break right now, and we'll be back in just a moment.

(05:29): Good morning. We're visiting with Mrs. Denton today, if you've just joined us. And she was telling me about baptizing in Chaplin's Lake. Tell me about it.

Mrs. Denton (05:39): When they did have it, we would be on Sunday mornings. And that's mostly everybody. A lot of people would go fishing there, when they didn't have the baptizing. And on Sunday's they would have the baptizing, and everybody was collecting, go down there, and make a big gathering. (05:58): And it was nice. And then just like I say on the evenings, 6:30 the train would come through and go to Alexandria. And wouldn't come back until the next day. But you could catch the train, and go to Alexandria if you wanted to even. (06:14): And if I'm not mistaken, I think there was another train, come through, but not the same one that went down. But you could always go at 6:30 in the evenings. And then on Sunday that was a big pleasure for everybody, because people would come way up this way, go down walking, just to see the train come in, and see people get on and get off. But it was a lot of fun. (06:37): And so I just happened, mom and I left there, we moved up here, and we lived in the priest's for ten years. Mama was housekeeper there. And then we just did first one thing, then another. And I went to school, and when I'd get off from school, I would go to this old lady's house, and ride the oxen. After school, he had, had his oxen team, and I would ride oxens. Just had a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (06:37): How many months a year did you go to school there?

Mrs. Denton (07:08): I went until I was in the 9th grade.

Speaker 1 (07:10): Did you go three months or did you ...

Mrs. Denton (07:10): No, I went every day. Every day until school closed, you know? We had nine months. We went to the colored Catholic school. We had nine months school. And we was just ... I would call it good times. But the girls and the boys now they wouldn't call that a good time. But I did. (07:34): And old man, Manual Slayton, he would go out and would lose something. He would all cattle and horses. But he would be out, and he'll find them. And when we hauled things like that, he had an ox wagon. And he put me on the ox wagon, on the oxes. And then the wagon, he would pull it. Wherever we'd go, I'd be on the oxen. I thought it was a good time.

Speaker 1 (08:06): You were saying that you went to Catholic school.

Mrs. Denton (08:06): That's right. That's the only school I went to.

Speaker 1 (08:07): A Catholic school, I've always heard, is very rigorous in its training.

Mrs. Denton (08:21): It is. And I think, in a way, it's better than school is now. The children, when you did learn, you learned. And the teachers, we had nun general teachers. And they had nuns up here too. But I never did go to the public school. (08:33): Professor [inaudible 00:08:34] had a school that, he was the head of the school, but I never did go. But I always went to the Catholic. And then actually, during the time, summertime, when school was closed, I would work, and nurse children. And buy all my school clothes. My shoes. And when school started, I had my clothes by myself. Mama would buy it for me, because I would make my money, and give it to her. At that time, we wasn't getting very much. But things weren't as high as they are now. (08:46): So we would have ... I thought it was a good life.

Speaker 1 (09:05): How much would school clothes cost you back then?

Mrs. Denton (09:18): At the time, you see, we didn't have to wear our uniforms like they do now. But we would get gingham. You could get gingham 25 cents a yard, a good piece of gingham. And some was 10 cents a yard, just because the material was. (09:35): And shoes, if you get a pair of shoes for four dollars you had a good pair of shoes. Now you've got to pay $24 for them.

Speaker 1 (09:41): And they tear up on you, too.

Mrs. Denton (09:41): Yes, they do. But those were shoes, good shoes. Buster Brown shoes. But I had a good life, in a way. Everybody had not too good a life, but just take life like it is. That's the way I always believe in. Take life just like it-

Speaker 1 (10:04): Did you like it back then more, or do you like it now?

Mrs. Denton (10:09): I did, because I don't know, it was just a good life for those that take it for a good life.

Speaker 1 (10:15): Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. Denton (10:16): Now, some people don't think it was, but I did. I thought it was a good life, because we all, the children, would get off from school, colored and white, we would all play together. If we had to fight, we'd fight. Because I used to fight a lot, because I used to play marbles. I could play marbles good. (10:34): So I won the boy's, all his marbles, one day. He told his dad, "Papa, she took all my marbles." I said, "I did not." I said, "I won them." (10:45): And he said, "I'll go whip you." I says, "Okay, whip me." So we started a fight. But still, I won the marbles.

Speaker 1 (10:56): Did you keep them?

Mrs. Denton (10:57): Sure, I keep them.

Speaker 1 (10:58): All right.

Mrs. Denton (10:59): Sure, I keep them.

Speaker 1 (11:00): We've certainly enjoyed visiting with you. Our time is up.

Mrs. Denton (11:03): Yeah, good.

Speaker 1 (11:04): I'll see you later.

Mrs. Denton (11:06): And anyway, I was glad I was able to. And the story I would tell would be a little bit different from what it had been, I heard over the stations, you know?

Speaker 1 (11:15): That's true. We've never visited with anybody that lived in downtown Natchitoches.

Mrs. Denton (11:22): Yes. I lived there. It was all my life. I was born down there. And I stayed down there, until I got ... Had some size big enough that I went to ... I always go to school. And I had friends out the country, and they would pass my home, and we'd all go to school together. And we'd come back home-

Speaker 1 (11:32): We'll see you later, okay?

Mrs. Denton (11:32): Come back home-

Speaker 1 (11:38): Bye-bye.

Lucille M. Denton talks about growing up in downtown Natchitoches and attending Catholic school.

Tags: memories, podcast, oral history interview, ncptt, national center for preservation technology and training, natchitoches, catholic school

November 21, 2024

38. James M. Lee

Transcript

Transcript

Hubert Lassiter (00:01): This is Hubert Lassiter, and this morning we're visiting with Mr. James Lee. We're pleased to welcome you to the show, sir. And we're going to be talking about mills, which Mr. Lee is a expert on. Tell us about Vals Mill, sir.

James Lee (00:17): Well, I wouldn't know hardly how to start it.

Hubert Lassiter (00:22): Who started Vals Mill?

James Lee (00:23): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (00:27): How did it get its name?

James Lee (00:28): Well, the name, it was an old fellow by the name of Vals.

Hubert Lassiter (00:30): And he started it back when? Do you remember?

James Lee (00:32): Oh, no. I don't, no.

Hubert Lassiter (00:36): How does a mill work?

James Lee (00:38): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (00:38): Tell me how a mill works.

James Lee (00:40): It was run by water.

Hubert Lassiter (00:42): Yeah?

James Lee (00:43): Yeah. They had a big, clear-running stream dammed up in there, and they'd had what they call a floodgate on it. And whenever they got ready to get that mill running, they'd raise that floodgate and it'd come in there and hit a big wheel that was down in the water, and that's what was whirling the mill.

Hubert Lassiter (01:06): Is that right? And the water worked it, with the wheel?

James Lee (01:10): Yeah. Yeah, the water. See, they had a long shaft that went up into the mill house, went up to the grist mill and all that. That's what pulled it.

Hubert Lassiter (01:22): There was two round stones, or one?

James Lee (01:24): Huh? There was two of them.

Hubert Lassiter (01:25): Two stones?

James Lee (01:26): Yeah. Two big, round stones, and they're running together, and this mill had what they call a hopper on it. And they'd pull up a whole bushel of corn in there at once, and just feeding through. That mill, as it run, well, that shaft was hitting a little thing there and shaking that, and that corn was just dropping in there the whole time and it was ground out.

Hubert Lassiter (01:58): Just kind of pour out into a little trench?

James Lee (02:00): Yeah. Yeah, and they'd pour it down in there, the top wheel had a big round hole it, and that corn was pouring and going through down on that other rock there, and then that bottom rock was the one doing the running there. And then-

Hubert Lassiter (02:19): Now, what is a hopper?

James Lee (02:20): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (02:20): What is a hopper?

James Lee (02:20): Well, that's the thing that held the corn. That's what they called it, the hopper.

Hubert Lassiter (02:27): Mm-hmm (affirmative)?

James Lee (02:27): Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hubert Lassiter (02:30): Was there a man holding that, just to trigger the corn to fall in there?

James Lee (02:34): Oh, no, no, no. It was the shaft running, and it was hitting the little thing and shaking it.

Hubert Lassiter (02:39): Oh, I see.

James Lee (02:40): Yeah, and shaking that corn in there.

Hubert Lassiter (02:44): What about-

James Lee (02:44): And they had it to where they engage it, and all, and they can just make it shake just as much as they wanted to in there.

Hubert Lassiter (02:58): How many pounds of corn a day could they grind out?

James Lee (03:02): Well, I wouldn't hardly know what they did. They'd grind several bushels.

Hubert Lassiter (03:08): Several bushels?

James Lee (03:09): Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (03:11): Now, what was the working day?

James Lee (03:13): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (03:13): How many hours was that?

James Lee (03:15): Well, I figure it was around about six or seven hours.

Hubert Lassiter (03:21): Is that right?

James Lee (03:21): Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (03:21): Well, the corn wasn't the only thing they ground in it, was it?

James Lee (03:24): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (03:25): They didn't grind just corn?

James Lee (03:27): No. Some of them had gins hooked to them. They'd gin cotton on them.

Hubert Lassiter (03:33): They did that in Vals Mill?

James Lee (03:34): Yeah, they did. They'd gin cotton.

Hubert Lassiter (03:38): Now, this was different from the stones. So they'd take off the stones or what?

James Lee (03:42): No, no. They just had... I don't know, but I imagine they had belts, that they'd just belt up the cotton gin, you see, and it would run it, you see?

Hubert Lassiter (04:01): I see.

James Lee (04:02): Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (04:02): Well, what about other mills in this area? There were other mills around here, weren't there?

James Lee (04:09): No, no. Just, that was the kind of mills they had. They had water mills.

Hubert Lassiter (04:15): Yes, sir. What about Mill Creek?

James Lee (04:16): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (04:17): Mill Creek.

James Lee (04:18): Well, yeah. They had one on Mill Creek, that's right.

Hubert Lassiter (04:25): Is that right?

James Lee (04:25): Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (04:26): They were just dotted around the area?

James Lee (04:29): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (04:29): Were there just a lot of mills around the area?

James Lee (04:32): Well, there were several on the streams, where they could get plenty of water to run them.

Hubert Lassiter (04:39): Just plenty of water is all it took?

James Lee (04:41): Yeah. Yeah. They couldn't basically run it, in other words, if they didn't have a stream that was furnishing plenty of water coming in there all the time. If they didn't have that, they'd soon let all of the water out of the lake if they had it dammed up, and they'd have had nothing then to run the mill.

Hubert Lassiter (05:02): But they don't do that anymore?

James Lee (05:04): No, no, not as I know. I don't know when they were running on water.

Hubert Lassiter (05:09): Is there a fellow that you know that still grinds meal?

James Lee (05:14): What, on a water mill?

Hubert Lassiter (05:15): Well, no. Gasoline engine, or whatever.

James Lee (05:17): Yeah, yeah. Little Ben Jones up here, between here and [inaudible 00:05:22].

Hubert Lassiter (05:23): Do you know how much two pounds of ground cornmeal would cost you now, stone ground?

James Lee (05:34): No, because I've never bought it or nothing.

Hubert Lassiter (05:35): Oh, it'd cost you about 87 cents.

James Lee (05:37): Yeah, because I've never bought any of it like that. I always go right ahead and grind the meal. I just buy me a sack of corn. They put up this shelled corn, and then you take it down and he'll measure it and put it in that mill, and in just a very few minutes he's done and got it ground.

Hubert Lassiter (06:02): And this is better than what you buy in the store?

James Lee (06:04): Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (06:07): Is that right?

James Lee (06:07): It's [inaudible 00:06:08], it sure is.

Hubert Lassiter (06:10): We need to take a break right now for our sponsor, and we'll be right back. In case you've just joined us, this is Hubert Lassiter visiting with Mr. James Lee on The Memory Show. Mr. Lee was talking about his early recollections of longleaf pine. What about the beams, Mr. Lee?

James Lee (06:36): The beams? Well, the beams at the heart of it, they wouldn't run.

Hubert Lassiter (06:39): Why?

James Lee (06:40): Well, because it was rich lighter.

Hubert Lassiter (06:45): What does rich lighter mean?

James Lee (06:46): Well, that's just... Rich lighter?

Hubert Lassiter (06:50): Yes.

James Lee (06:50): It's just, rich lighter pine is, it'll burn. It'll just burn, you split it up into splinters and take your match to it and it's just going to burn right then.

Hubert Lassiter (07:05): Well, when they were making the railroad through here did they lay track with that?

James Lee (07:09): Oh, yeah. They did. When they was building these railroads, yeah. If they come upon a heart they'd make it a, what do they call it? A crosstie.

Hubert Lassiter (07:21): Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Lee (07:24): And, well, they'd make it, yeah, and put it on that track to hold that train up.

Hubert Lassiter (07:30): This is all virgin longleaf?

James Lee (07:32): Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is, all around here. Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (07:35): Did you ever cut it?

James Lee (07:35): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (07:36): Did you ever help cut it?

James Lee (07:36): What?

Hubert Lassiter (07:37): The longleaf.

James Lee (07:38): No, I never had to saw it, but there was lots of them that did.

Hubert Lassiter (07:45): Well, what do you remember about it most?

James Lee (07:47): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (07:47): What do you remember about the forest around here most, with making turpentine and everything? Did you ever make turpentine?

James Lee (07:54): No, no, no.

Hubert Lassiter (07:55): Do you remember how they did it?

James Lee (07:56): Yeah, yeah. They had this longleaf pine, they had what they called a chipper, and it had a sharp blade. It was built in that shape, and the finest of steel was what it was made out of. And this chipper was facing on the handle, and in this handle it had a heavy ball of iron on it that would help pull that chipper through that wood. And they used colored men there to do that. And they would [inaudible 00:08:38] and-

Hubert Lassiter (08:41): Cut it?

James Lee (08:42): Yeah, cut it on the side, and they cut it in that shape. In a V shape.

Hubert Lassiter (08:47): Cut it in a V shape?

James Lee (08:47): Yeah. And I mean, that thing would cut it just like a... Well, just, man, you could hear them way outside when they was cutting with that thing. And just about one week, them niggers, that's about all they get to a side, and they'd change it anything and cut it the other way.

Hubert Lassiter (09:08): What, did they put a tin cup under it or something?

James Lee (09:11): Yeah, they had a tin cup that they'd get down when they first started. Well, they drove a couple of big nails in, and they set this cup on there, and then when they chipped it, they first just started making just one little chip or mark down through that wood there, and then in just a few days that turpentine would be running. And then when it'd get to where it wasn't running like they wanted it, well, they'd just move up and take another chip on it.

Hubert Lassiter (09:47): Is that right?

James Lee (09:48): Yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (09:48): Well, what'd they do with the turpentine after they it in the cup?

James Lee (09:50): Well, they'd take it to the mill and boil it down and make turpentine out of it. They'd empty barrels of that in there and put it to boiling, and let it boil a while, and melt that turpentine and boil it down in there and then switched it. It worked somewhat like a whisky distill, and that turpentine would go running out, and they'd take it in them barrels and ship it.

Hubert Lassiter (10:24): Talking about whisky stills, do you know anything about whisky stills?

James Lee (10:28): Well, yeah, I do.

Hubert Lassiter (10:32): Did you ever make whisky?

James Lee (10:34): No, I don't know as I ever have made that. I'd say that's going a little too far.

Hubert Lassiter (10:39): Well, tell me about making whisky, even though you don't know anything about it.

James Lee (10:42): Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I don't know.

Hubert Lassiter (10:46): How do you make it?

James Lee (10:47): Huh?

Hubert Lassiter (10:47): How do you make whisky?

James Lee (10:50): Well, you take sugar and meal.

Hubert Lassiter (10:54): Mm-hmm (affirmative)?

James Lee (10:55): Yeah. If you're going to put up a whole big barrel, you put about 50 pounds of sugar in there and about 25, 30 pounds of meal in there, and then let it ferment and it'll sour. And it's souring in there, and when it never gets fermented, well, then whenever it's making that meal and stuff just boiling in there, and it never gets made, well, it'll quit moving, quit working.

Hubert Lassiter (11:37): How long does it take it to ferment?

James Lee (11:39): Well, it depends on the weather. With the warm, hot weather it'll take about six or seven days for you to have a whole barrel, and they called that buck.

Hubert Lassiter (11:55): Buck?

James Lee (11:56): Yeah. That's what they run in them, and they'd pour this in the whisky, the still. They had a cup of coal, and then it went through a barrel of water and went on out and come out down at the lower side. And of course it'd always come out with [inaudible 00:12:13] because it wouldn't get the water out, and then... They had things that was boring then. Back then it was steam, which when you'd hit that water, it'd condense it down and bring it down to alcohol.

Hubert Lassiter (12:29): How much corn does it take to make a gallon of whisky?

James Lee (12:32): Well, I just wouldn't know. It wouldn't take over 10 or 15 pounds of meal to make it, I don't expect.

Hubert Lassiter (12:46): So you take equal parts of sugar and corn?

James Lee (12:49): Yeah. Of meal, yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (12:54): But you don't know anything else about it, because you never did it.

James Lee (12:55): No, I never did do it. But I know how it went, yeah.

Hubert Lassiter (13:01): Mr. Lee, I want to thank you for visiting with us on The Memory Show.

James Lee (13:06): Yeah. Well, thank you for putting me on it.

Hubert Lassiter (13:10): Any time, sir.

Hubert Lassiter speaks with James Lee about milling corn, ginning cotton, making turpentine, and how whiskey stills worked.

Tags: memories, podcast, ncptt, national center for preservation technology and training, oral history interview, cotton gin, grist mill, whiskey still, turpentine

November 7, 2024

37. Irene Sowell

Transcript

Transcript

David Dollar (00:00): Good morning. Once again, David [Dollar 00:00:02]. Today on Memories, we're going to be visiting with Ms. Irene [Sowell 00:00:05]. Miss Sowell, we thank you for being with us today. Why don't we begin things by you giving us a little family background? When and where you were born and some things like that, okay?

Irene Sowell (00:17): Well I was born in Natchitoches Parish, in [Read 00:00:19], Natchitoches Parish.

David Dollar (00:18): Okay.

Irene Sowell (00:19): And we lived on a little farm. And my mother and father was a farmer. They farmed. Raised cotton, corn, peanuts, sweet potatoes-

David Dollar (00:35): Peanuts. [crosstalk 00:00:35]. I've never heard anybody raising peanuts around here.

Irene Sowell (00:37): Oh...

David Dollar (00:38): Did y'all have a pretty good spread of peanuts.

Irene Sowell (00:40): Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative).

David Dollar (00:40): Well, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

Irene Sowell (00:45): Yes. We raised peanuts, and we raised gardens and just all kind vegetables, and...

David Dollar (00:51): One more question. I'm a little overcome by the peanut thing. What did y'all do with the peanuts? Eat them, or-

Irene Sowell (00:56): Well, we ate them and fed the mule cow with it.

David Dollar (01:01): Oh yeah, yeah. [crosstalk 00:01:02]. I guess that would be a good supplement, especially for feed.

Irene Sowell (01:11): That's right. Well, we had pretty good [inaudible 00:01:12] farm [crosstalk 00:01:12].

David Dollar (01:12): Yeah, I'm guessing [crosstalk 00:01:12]. Uh-huh (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). The folks you sold them to, would it be for peanut oil or mostly for eating and for feed for animals and all?

Irene Sowell (01:20): That's right. [crosstalk 00:01:21]. For feed.

David Dollar (01:21): Okay.

Irene Sowell (01:21): And feeding.

David Dollar (01:24): Uh-huh (affirmative). Well, I'll be. Okay, I'm sorry I interrupted. Go, go ahead and get back to just... you were farming and-

Irene Sowell (01:30): Yeah, farming.

David Dollar (01:31): How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Irene Sowell (01:32): Oh, I had four brothers and there was eight sisters of us.

David Dollar (01:32): Eight sisters?

Irene Sowell (01:36): Eight sisters.

David Dollar (01:38): That's gracious. Y'all got some big families around this area? Don't you?

Irene Sowell (01:41): That's right. Lived on farm. I was born in Natchitoches Parish, and I was born 1899.

David Dollar (01:41): 1899, okay.

Irene Sowell (01:54): On July the 5th, 1899. And so my father farmed. And their brothers, they would plow. And we would hoe. Girls would hoe.

David Dollar (02:08): You didn't get into much plowing, huh?

Irene Sowell (02:10): And I never did learn to plow.

David Dollar (02:11): Are you glad about that?

Irene Sowell (02:12): I am. Well, sometime I wish I could, that I could have plowed. See, I could made gardens after that. [crosstalk 00:02:20].

David Dollar (02:20): Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Could have used that.

Irene Sowell (02:20): But I never did learn. I had two sisters to learn how to plow.

David Dollar (02:27): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, what were you doing when you weren't hoeing? Did you learn a lot of things in the house?

Irene Sowell (02:31): Oh yes. I learned how to do the wash, yarn, cooking-

David Dollar (02:38): Cooking and sewing [crosstalk 00:02:38] and all the things that little girls do.

Irene Sowell (02:39): Yeah, that's right, learned how to sew.

David Dollar (02:42): Do you remember the first thing you ever got to cook by yourself?

Irene Sowell (02:46): Well, first thing I learned, I made coffee.

David Dollar (02:49): Made coffee.

Irene Sowell (02:51): I get up every morning made coffee.

David Dollar (02:53): Right.

Irene Sowell (02:54): And so [inaudible 00:02:56]. My father, mother drank coffee, so that I learned to drink [crosstalk 00:03:01] by making it.

David Dollar (03:01): Okay. Did y'all buy the coffee, like in Natchitoches, or were there folks... I'm interested. How did coffee get in around here? Do you remember?

Irene Sowell (03:15): Well...

David Dollar (03:15): I know it had been here for a long time before 1899.

Irene Sowell (03:18): Oh, yeah.

David Dollar (03:18): That just kind of intrigued... Did you have to buy it at the store?

Irene Sowell (03:21): Yeah, that's right.

David Dollar (03:21): Like other things?

Irene Sowell (03:24): Yes, buy it from the store.

David Dollar (03:24): Uh-huh (affirmative).

Irene Sowell (03:25): We buy it and... See it'd be green, and we'd [parch 00:03:33] it. But then the skillet put on- [crosstalk 00:03:33].

David Dollar (03:33): No, wait, I hadn't heard about this. Tell me.

Irene Sowell (03:33): And we put in the skillet.

David Dollar (03:34): The coffee would be green?

Irene Sowell (03:36): The grains would be green.

David Dollar (03:38): Okay.

Irene Sowell (03:39): And we'd parch it. [crosstalk 00:03:39].

David Dollar (03:39): Grains and like beans.

Irene Sowell (03:41): Yeah. [crosstalk 00:03:41]. Like beans.

David Dollar (03:41): You would grind, okay.

Irene Sowell (03:41): They would parch it and then would grind it and drip it.

David Dollar (03:47): So you weren't just buying little package of instant coffee [crosstalk 00:03:51].

Irene Sowell (03:50): No, no, no, no. [crosstalk 00:03:51].

David Dollar (03:50): When you bought the coffee, you still had some work to do on the top.

Irene Sowell (03:54): Yeah, yeah. That's right, right. See [crosstalk 00:03:56] wasn't no instant coffee in our place. [crosstalk 00:03:59].

David Dollar (03:59): And would it depend on how much you cooked it? The strength of it...

Irene Sowell (04:01): Uh-huh (affirmative).

David Dollar (04:03): I guess I'm thinking about the medium and in between roast and all that.

Irene Sowell (04:03): Yeah.

David Dollar (04:07): You could [crosstalk 00:04:08] cook them a little bit or cook them real hard and black.

Irene Sowell (04:10): That's right. That's right.

David Dollar (04:10): Yeah.

Irene Sowell (04:10): It was that. Always would [crosstalk 00:04:14] like the dark roast.

David Dollar (04:15): Right? [crosstalk 00:04:16]. That's what you cook. I guess Louisiana folks are known for that dark roast.

Irene Sowell (04:15): Yeah, that's right.

David Dollar (04:20): Yeah, that strong coffee. [crosstalk 00:04:22].

Irene Sowell (04:21): Strong coffee.

David Dollar (04:23): And you did all that yourself [crosstalk 00:04:24], huh?

Irene Sowell (04:23): I did that.

David Dollar (04:26): Well, I'll be, [crosstalk 00:04:26] that is really something. Wow. What about sewing and things that you did like that? I know I've been around a lot of people. Did you ever learn to quilt?

Irene Sowell (04:38): Yes, I did. I quilted [inaudible 00:04:41]. My eyes got bad, and I couldn't use a needle so good and stick. My finger made a little sores around that, so I stopped quilting. So I don't quilt anymore-

David Dollar (04:54): But you, but you learned that from your mother?

Irene Sowell (04:55): I learned that from my mother. My mother, yeah, she would always quilt. Every fall, we'd make new quilts. We started and make new quilts every fall-

David Dollar (05:06): Let's talk about quilting. I love quilts. I'm a quilt nut. I'd like to learn to make them myself. How do you go about beginning to make a quilt?

Irene Sowell (05:16): Well, sometime we'd piece the blocks and sometime we'd just strip it and sew it up, make it-

David Dollar (05:21): Where do the blocks come from? [crosstalk 00:05:24]. See, let's start at the bare edge. I don't know anything about it.

Irene Sowell (05:27): We buy material, [crosstalk 00:05:28] like with make dresses. We have material scrap-

David Dollar (05:34): Have some scraps [crosstalk 00:05:35] left over.

Irene Sowell (05:35): And we'd just them up until we got enough to make a top.

David Dollar (05:37): Okay.

Irene Sowell (05:38): And we make the tops and then we would buy some kind of material for the lining. And then we make it [crosstalk 00:05:46]. So we raised our cotton.

David Dollar (05:46): You put cotton in between the two, huh? [crosstalk 00:05:46].

Irene Sowell (05:45): In there too. We had cards. We'd take this cotton, take those cards, and we'd put that cotton on there... on this one. And then we'd come down and make [bats 00:06:08].

David Dollar (05:45): Okay. Make mats.

Irene Sowell (06:07): And then we'd make the bats, and then we'd lay the bats and then get the quilt enough for the [inaudible 00:06:16]... we'd lay the bats. And then we'll put the top on it, and then we'll base it in and we'll quilt it.

David Dollar (06:22): Right.

Irene Sowell (06:23): Make shares.

David Dollar (06:24): Okay. Well, I'll be. That's mighty good. Tell you what, let me interrupt you right here. We need to take a brief commercial. Okay?

Irene Sowell (06:24): Mm-hmm (affirmative).

David Dollar (06:30): We'll be back and finish our visit with Ms. Irene Sowell down in Shady Grove, right after this message from our sponsor, Peoples Bank and Trust Company. (06:47): Hello. Once again, in case you've just joined us today, David Dollar visiting down in Shady Grove with Ms. Irene Sowell. (06:53): We learned about quilting and something I was mighty amazed with... cooking the coffee beans, making your own coffee, other than having the beans. You had to cook them and prepare them and grind them and do everything yourself. That's mighty interesting. I like to hear about that. (07:12): Why don't we talk about some more things around the house? What about going to school? Did you ever get to go to school around here much?

Irene Sowell (07:20): Yes, I did. I went to school and, well, we had three months school. And I- [crosstalk 00:07:27].

David Dollar (07:20): And worked in the fields the rest of the time?

Irene Sowell (07:20): Worked in the fields the rest of the time. During the summer months, we had school.

David Dollar (07:26): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Had school in the summer, huh?

Irene Sowell (07:34): In the summer. [crosstalk 00:07:34].

David Dollar (07:34): That's the only time we don't have school.

Irene Sowell (07:34): Yeah. Oh that's the only time we had school, or public school, was in the summer. Because [inaudible 00:07:46] was time to hoe and break in the fields. But we didn't have any school.

David Dollar (07:52): Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Irene Sowell (07:54): But when we lay by the crop, then the school opened. Maybe we had three months school and we get to go to school sometimes two months. But when the cotton begin to open, well, we had stopped- [crosstalk 00:08:06].

David Dollar (08:06): That's when school stopped, huh?

Irene Sowell (08:07): That's when school stopped. That's right.

David Dollar (08:10): Well I'll be. What were your favorite subjects in school?

Irene Sowell (08:13): Well, reading was my favorite- [crosstalk 00:08:15].

David Dollar (08:16): Reading. You remember any stories that you especially liked about? Did you get to read history about the United States and the world? Or did you read from the Bible? Or what kind of reading and stories do you remember? [crosstalk 00:08:32].

Irene Sowell (08:31): No, we didn't read many stories. Just had the books, so we just read from the books.

David Dollar (08:39): Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk 00:08:39].

Irene Sowell (08:39): School lessons. And we had arithmetic, and spelling was... I could do very good in spelling.

David Dollar (08:48): You were a good speller, huh?

Irene Sowell (08:50): But it was nothing [inaudible 00:08:51].

David Dollar (08:50): I know the problem, believe me, I do.

Irene Sowell (08:56): I could do very much in that. But I did my best. And I didn't have too long school. We had school. Our schools and the little church house.

David Dollar (09:05): Oh yeah?

Irene Sowell (09:06): Yeah. And [inaudible 00:09:07] time we didn't have a school building and a church house. We have a school now.

David Dollar (09:12): Were you able to have the smaller kids at a different time or was everybody whatever age in the same little room?

Irene Sowell (09:19): All the same in the same room.

David Dollar (09:23): And one teacher, huh?

Irene Sowell (09:23): One teacher.

David Dollar (09:23): That must have been a real challenge for the teachers back then [crosstalk 00:09:28]. But I hear a lot of them talking about it today being a challenge.

Irene Sowell (09:23): Yeah, its right.

David Dollar (09:33): Having to teach all ages-

Irene Sowell (09:34): All ages in the same room. [crosstalk 00:09:38].

David Dollar (09:42): All the different things...

Irene Sowell (09:42): Same room.

David Dollar (09:42): Same room.

Irene Sowell (09:42): But sometimes there are high grades still would teach the lower grades.

David Dollar (09:44): Mm-hmm (affirmative) was able to help out.

Irene Sowell (09:46): Help out. [crosstalk 00:09:48].

David Dollar (09:47): I'm sure that had to go on [crosstalk 00:09:50].

Irene Sowell (09:49): Had good many students.

David Dollar (09:51): Mm-hmm (affirmative). I see. What about going to church? Did y'all have one specific church that you went to or was there a community church? Did you go into Natchitoches?

Irene Sowell (10:02): No, we all went to the community. I mean in the communities. Well, we had two churches. We visited Shady Grove and St. Luke, but Shady Grove was our home church. And we all would visit that.

David Dollar (10:02): I see.

Irene Sowell (10:17): And we went to school, and St. Luke community. And we lived between St. Luke and Shady Grove. It's four mile each way.

David Dollar (10:26): Each way. So it didn't really matter, huh [crosstalk 00:10:28] whichever way you went.

Irene Sowell (10:29): Yeah, that's right.

David Dollar (10:29): I see.

Irene Sowell (10:35): We went to school there. Had to get up early in the morning. We had walk four miles.

David Dollar (10:39): Either way you went, you had to walk. [crosstalk 00:10:42].

Irene Sowell (10:44): Boy, that's right. [crosstalk 00:10:44].

David Dollar (10:44): I'll be. That's pretty good walk-

Irene Sowell (10:44): It was.

David Dollar (10:44): There in the morning.

Irene Sowell (10:47): So we get there for 9:30. We turn out at 2:30. So, at times like that get home.

David Dollar (10:55): Okay. Well Ms. Sowell, we're just about out of time. I might catch you off guard here, but I want to know if you might have, in closing today, some words of wisdom that maybe your mother or father or grandmother or grandfather might have passed on to you, that you found out that makes a lot of sense that you might be able to share with either the young people or with the folks listening today. Do you have anything right off hand that you could tell people about. Oh, living or going to school or the best way to raise cotton or anything like that?

Irene Sowell (11:35): Cotton, at that time, was a good way to raise because it didn't have no kind of [inaudible 00:11:45] or worm to bother [inaudible 00:11:48]. I remember when those first began, in cotton... boll weevil.

David Dollar (11:54): That was the boll weevil. Do you remember that, huh?

Irene Sowell (11:59): Yeah. I remember that. I remember my father didn't... it got into his field. He came back and brought some [square 00:12:02] where they had boards had fell on the ground, and he opened it up and there was a little worm in that.

David Dollar (12:09): Uh-huh (affirmative). Oh, goodness.

Irene Sowell (12:10): Yeah.

David Dollar (12:10): What did they have to do at that time? [crosstalk 00:12:15]. Is that when they started the insecticides and all that spraying in business?

Irene Sowell (12:18): Well, that's that time they didn't bother them. It wasn't too bad.

David Dollar (12:22): Uh-huh (affirmative).

Irene Sowell (12:22): But later up in the years... later years they got bad and they had to poison thorough [inaudible 00:12:31]. Yeah, and they had little worms called caterpillars.

David Dollar (12:22): Yeah.

Irene Sowell (12:33): And they would get in there. If it rain... rain is summer like. [crosstalk 00:12:39].

David Dollar (12:39): They'd be there.

Irene Sowell (12:41): Be there. And they would eat up the leaves all the time before the boll would [tear 00:12:45] of cotton. So when they started eating, we had that parsnip. It was [pash 00:12:51] green and go make it out. (12:55): But them bags on a horse, and have a pole tied one bag on each end, so you carry two rows at that point.

David Dollar (13:05): Right. [crosstalk 00:13:05]. So that was the... you remember the early spraying machine, huh?

Irene Sowell (13:12): Yeah, that's right. [crosstalk 00:13:13].

David Dollar (13:13): Which was a horse with bags thrown over on each side.

Irene Sowell (13:15): That's right.

David Dollar (13:15): Well, that is really is something. Ms. Sowell, we want to thank you for joining us today on Memories and for sharing all these memories with us.

Irene Sowell (13:15): Thank you.

David Dollar (13:23): Thank you very much. If any of you folks... [crosstalk 00:13:26. Ma'am?

Irene Sowell (13:29): [inaudible 00:13:29].

David Dollar (13:28): Oh, you sounded great. No problem. Don't worry.

David Dollar speaks with Irene Sowell about the range of chores she had growing up, including making coffee, working the fields, and quilting.

Tags: memories, podcast, oral history interview, ncptt, national center for preservation technology and training, farming, peanuts, quilting, coffee

October 24, 2024

36. Essidee Kirkland

Transcript

Transcript

David Dollar: Hello once again in case you're just joining us. This is David Dollar. We're down in Cane River visiting with Miss Essidee Kirkland today. Ms. Kirkland, why don't we start things off by just talking a little bit about your childhood, when you were born, where you were born, and some stuff about your family. Is that okay?

Essidee Kirkland: Right.

David Dollar: All right, tell us about it.

Essidee Kirkland: I was born at the Chopin. I was Christian conservative church and we lived down there quite a while before we come up on the upper part of Cane River.

David Dollar: When were you born?

Essidee Kirkland: 1894. David Dollar: Okay.

Essidee Kirkland: I'm just about coming 82 now. I'll be 82. I was born on Easter Sunday.

David Dollar: On Easter Sunday. My goodness.

Essidee Kirkland: And I was a spoiled kind of child. I hanged to my daddy more.

David Dollar: What made you spoiled?

Essidee Kirkland: Papa. My daddy spoiled me.

David Dollar: How was that? What did your mama want you to do then?

Essidee Kirkland: Wait. She wanted me to wait. She wanted me to churn and she wanted me to sweep the yard and she wanted me to wash dishes and I was dodging all that.

David Dollar: You had better things on your mind, didn't you?

Essidee Kirkland: I'd get in the boat with Papa and go. I paddled a boat for Papa for him to fish and he would catch big long fishes. Big fishes. Gulf fishes about that long.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Essidee Kirkland: And I was about six to seven years old then. I didn't want to wait.

David Dollar: So you didn't like work much?

Essidee Kirkland: No, sir.

David Dollar: What what else did... You told me that one time when you were getting away from work, you used to be able to walk across the river. Didn't you say that? You could walk out there?

Essidee Kirkland: I used to rolled up my clothes up above my knees and wade the river. I'd wade the river.

David Dollar: All the way across?

Essidee Kirkland: All the way across. And I'd find fishing canes, fishing poles, and bow and arrows and those other things.

David Dollar: Spears and arrowheads? And things like that?

Essidee Kirkland: Spears. And arrowheads and all like that.

David Dollar: From Indians that used to live around here.

Essidee Kirkland: That's just belonged to the Indians.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Essidee Kirkland: I didn't know that. All of this belonged to the Indians. I remember them. And Natchitoches, don't you know that's an Indian name?

David Dollar: I, that's what I've heard. I never have seen too many Indians around here. You actually found some of the things.

Essidee Kirkland: I found many of the things that they used.

David Dollar: Did you bring them home with you when you found them?

Essidee Kirkland: Yes, I swear. I'd bring them to Papa. He'd put them in his workshop.

David Dollar: You wouldn't bring them to your mama though, why? Because she'd know you hadn't been working.

Essidee Kirkland: She'd knew I'd been in the water.

David Dollar: Okay. All right. Tell me about your dad a little bit more. You mentioned that he wasn't just the average run-of-the-mill farmer down here. What, what was he doing when you were growing up? What do you remember about your dad?

Essidee Kirkland: Papa, he was overseeing for Chopin down below. He run that red place. I remember when the George L. Bass was coming from New Orleans with his groceries-

David Dollar: What is the George L. Bass now?

Essidee Kirkland: That's a boat.

David Dollar: Steamboat? Riverboat?

Essidee Kirkland: Steam... Riverboat.

David Dollar: Okay.

Essidee Kirkland: I don’t know. It run by a wheel on the back.

David Dollar: Big old paddle wheel.

Essidee Kirkland: Pack.

David Dollar: All right.

Essidee Kirkland: And sometimes it would be freezing and Papa had to come out there and check those... They called it, those days, provisions. And they had hogs of the stuff. And sometimes my mother would come hunting me because it was so cold and I'd hide behind those big closets. I'd hide with Steela until she'd leave and I'd get to go under Papa's muck and his... oh, I called it Mackintosh. A big old slipper coat.

David Dollar: Right. Big coat. Right. And where was he before he came down here? Didn't you tell me he attended school up north somewhere?

Essidee Kirkland: He attended school in at the Highland Military Academy in Boston, Massachusetts. That's right. He finished school.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Essidee Kirkland: He attended school there. And he come here and he married my mother there here. He met her at the courthouse. She would bring money on a horseback and changed horses at the river stable because her parents lived in Rapides and they would, she would have to change horses on the lake because it was too far-

David Dollar: And she changed at the courthouse?

Essidee Kirkland: She was going to the courthouse paying for all this land. That's who bought it, her father. He couldn't sign his name and she had a very little education herself, but she could sign her name. She paid those bills and keep up with the receipts. And she would bring saddlebags of money to Natchitoches, paying for these. Her father used to run races. He was an Indian himself. He was an old Indian.

David Dollar: I didn't know that.

Essidee Kirkland: And he would-

David Dollar: What was his name or her maiden name?

Essidee Kirkland: Jones.

David Dollar: Jones. Took on some of the... I guess the English names of the people that had settled around.

Essidee Kirkland: Yes, sir. She was, her name was Mariah L. Jones.

David Dollar: Mariah.

Essidee Kirkland: Right. And she paid for this land for her father. He bought from way up around the [inaudible 00:05:23] until way down to the dam. And the younger ones just pick it all, getting rid of it. I had to work hard to save this. Worked like the devil.

David Dollar: Well, we're going to have to take a short break right now. We'll be right back visiting with Ms. Essidee Kirkland right after this message from People's Bank, our sponsor.

Hello once again in case you're just joining us, David Dollar on Memories this morning, visiting down Cane River with Ms. Essidee Kirkland. Ms. Kirkland, we've talked about a little bit of your childhood, about you not liking to work a whole lot when you weren't working. You told me a little bit before you were singing and dancing. Why don't we talk about that just a little bit? Tell me about enjoying singing and dancing around here.

Essidee Kirkland: Well, I really enjoyed cakewalking. My dress would be short and wide.

David Dollar: How old were you when you remember your first cakewalk?

Essidee Kirkland: My first cakewalk, I was about seven years old. My first cakewalk.

David Dollar: You better tell me a little bit about these exactly.

Essidee Kirkland: I cakewalked until I was later... until I married. And I just enjoyed it to do. Oh, wonderful.

David Dollar: What was the song about the cakewalk again?

Essidee Kirkland: (Singing).

David Dollar: That's it. Did you win a lot of cakes?

Essidee Kirkland: I won a plenty of cakes. (Singing). I walked in.

David Dollar: That's when you had to walk and get that cake.

Essidee Kirkland: That's the song that we had to sing.

David Dollar: You were saying that you sang another time. You had a friend of yours that played the violin. Tell us about that.

Essidee Kirkland: Austin [inaudible 00:07:24].

David Dollar: Tell me a little about it.

Essidee Kirkland: He used to serenade with a bunch. He would play the violin.

David Dollar: Played with the choir you said?

Essidee Kirkland: With the choir. And played for our entertainment quite a lot. And sometimes I'd get up here by myself to keep from thinking about my drudgery. I get [inaudible 00:07:44] all good times I used to have.

David Dollar: You mentioned another thing that used to go on down the river a lot. You called them the concerts.

Essidee Kirkland: Yes sir. We had concerts.

David Dollar: I wish you'd tell the folks about the one that you mentioned to me about the snow and the play that you had to put on.

Essidee Kirkland: Well, I remember I wore an old dirty sleazy dress and nothing on me. Just a thin dress. It was so sleazy. It always was dirty-

David Dollar: Real thin. Okay.

Essidee Kirkland: Had never been washed. Worn for years and years. We got it from Old Spencer Mitchell, they didn't wash. And I wore that dress. And that was the night I had to sing (singing). I had to sing that that night at the concert.

David Dollar: And didn't they have a stage all set up for you? Describe the stage and everything-

Essidee Kirkland: The stage was covered with flour.

David Dollar: With flour?

Essidee Kirkland: [inaudible 00:09:17] emptied sacks of flour down there. And I was standing up in flour almost to my knees and they called it snow.

David Dollar: That was the snow. And you said they opened the door on the north side.

Essidee Kirkland: They opened the north side and let the wind-

David Dollar: Let wind blow the flour around and there you were-

Essidee Kirkland: Out in the snow.

David Dollar: Standing knee-deep in flour, doing a play about a girl from the south up north and all that snow wanting to come home. I can imagine that you would remember that a pretty good while.

Essidee Kirkland: I will. I enjoyed that play. I sing that, I was so dirty and they had my hair all loose and looked like a stray child. I-

David Dollar: Looked kind of like a beggar, like she was having to do. Huh?

Essidee Kirkland: A beggar. And I was a beggar.

David Dollar: But you had a good time doing it though.

Essidee Kirkland: Having a good time. That was on the back porch in that old house what they torn down, down here at the jungle place.

David Dollar: So y'all used to do this kind of stuff quite often. You had plays and things like that?

Essidee Kirkland: Often.

David Dollar: You and your sisters?

Essidee Kirkland: My sisters. We were in plays all the time.

David Dollar: We are just about out of time and I've asked you to remember to tell the folks your closing memory that we talked about a little bit earlier, that your father had told you. I thought it was really nice. Why don't you share that with us now?

Essidee Kirkland: Do unto others as you would love for others to do unto you. That was his word. That was his word all the time.

David Dollar: The golden rule of living.

Essidee Kirkland: The golden rule.

David Dollar: And he shared that with you and you shared it with the folks that you grew up with.

Essidee Kirkland: Yes, I did it. I do unto others. When I was able to make a garden... Marie can tell you that... I would go in the garden and gather vegetables and send to my neighbors all around.

David Dollar: Wouldn't it be nice if everybody around here did that? Not just in Cane River I'm talking about. They probably do do that. But everybody all over the state and the United States and the world.

Essidee Kirkland: I love to do that.

David Dollar: It'd be nice.

Essidee Kirkland: And that very night was the night and Uncle Matt's wife had recently died and he wanted his daughters to sing Hello Central. That very night we had that same song to sing, Hello Central. Down on the back porch at Uncle Matt's.

David Dollar: On another play over there.

Essidee Kirkland: Large audience. It was a big, big audience.

David Dollar: And they had a good time too?

Essidee Kirkland: They had a good time too.

David Dollar: Well, we certainly thank you Ms. Kirkland for having us into your home this morning, visiting. You've shared some memories that that some I had vaguely remembered and heard about, but you've really made it come alive for us.

Essidee Kirkland: Come alive.

David Dollar: And we thank you for visiting with us.

Essidee Kirkland: Well, I thank you all too. Excuse me a minute, can I go around?

David Dollar: You go right ahead and I'll close up the program. Okay?

Essidee Kirkland: No, no, don't go too soon-

David Collar speaks with Essidee Kirkland about growing up in Chopin and loving to sing and dance.

Tags: memories, podcast, oral history, oral history interview, cane river, dance, cakewalk, performances

July 25, 2024

35. Ike Bradley

Transcript

Transcript

David Dollar (00:01): Good morning. This is David Dollar. I'm sitting in for Dan Benacus today on Memories. Today, we're going to travel back in time with Mr. Ike Bradley, right after this message from People's Bank, our sponsor. (00:17): Mr. Bradley, it's good to have your Memories this morning. Why don't you begin our little trip this morning by telling us a little bit about yourself. Ike Bradley (00:25): I'm Ike Bradley, born in [inaudible 00:00:28] in 1901. And a farm boy from early life, best I can remember. I was flying picking cotton, putting in the cattle full day and after dark and such as that. So it was a very good life when you know nothing else to do, making a living. So we made a good living at it and was wide in the woods. And one at a time around a bull, kill him, tell the neighbor about it. They'd come in and help get rid of them and get the cows, milk them, mop them, whatever to be done. And each year from that time, we'd go out and pick out the one, keep one to destroy it for the benefit of the others to put away. So we never did have no real good breed cattle, but we always had enough to get milk and butter to do with David Dollar (01:32): How many, how many children did you say were in your family? Ike Bradley (01:35): Or just all the three, two girl and one boy. David Dollar (01:39): Did you find that because you were the only son that most of the work fell on your shoulders Ike Bradley (01:44): And what it really did one of the sisters was raised with me and the other wasn't, so that's the mother and myself and the sister. So I was the man. She used to tell me why don't you be telling others that this is my, my little man. And I remember that when I got a little bigger, I would tell us I'm going to buy you some dresses mama when I get to be a man, when she would tell them I was a little man. So I grew up to do just what I said. And it just made me feel like I was a man that doing the thing that she reminded people that I was a little man. So when I got to be big enough to go out and get a job, what made per-day it for her and my sister, which one younger than I. (02:27): So from then on, we would always managed to get by. We moved away from here, the river bottom, and went into hill where I, got up to about 17, 18 year old. So it wasn't done within the farm. Then I went out public way, railroad and for at one point or another cut ties and one blade to make a dollar. So I would send a little money home, come home every two or three weeks or maybe a month sometime for I come in, but I always managed to bring a little money for them to, to do it. So from then on, I got into family merit. So I didn't see them too much, but I'd always have something to send mother from time to time. (03:12): And the biggest thrill of all she would remind me of a turnout they would have in Easton stars was turning out, had to have a white dress. She'd go pick the dress out. And I paid for it. And I'd always slipped a little money in the box, long way, a couple of dollars to make out, to pay the dues. So we moved away from a cattle patch and the Red River patch and still I was waiting for the railroad then. So as I go along, things got a little better, little better. I don't have any children, but I raised two sets of twins, married them all off. David Dollar (03:49): Wait a minute, if you don't have any children, how did you go about raising two sets of twins? Ike Bradley (03:52): Well, it was hers, it wasn't mine. [Laughs] So I raised two sets of twins from two different women. David Dollar (03:59): I see. Ike Bradley (03:59): That was the second marriage was a twin. The first marriage was a twin, but the kid wasn't mine. So I raised them and you know, they married off under me. So that was what they called the step-Benacus know? David Dollar (04:10): Yes. Ike Bradley (04:10): So that ended that life is coming up to being well. I was full grown, but what I mean in my own family life, then from my side for my mothers raising or the daddy part, I never knew her daddy. He passed before I was old enough to know. I was only two years old, my daddy passed, so I was raised without a daddy. And I was proud of something that I had to go through because it enabled me to, to make it. You know, I think sometime it's too easy and it doesn't put enough emphasis on some kids. Now it's too easy. I don't mean to slave them, but I think it's a little too easy. If they would just remember a little better to do with a little harder shift, it would be more better for them. And that's what I always figured in. The kids I read where they all had done good to make the only live in now. And I was a little hard with them and did so at the end, but they glad I did it because it is able to do their own. David Dollar (05:07): Let me interrupt you right here. We need to break. We'll be right back after this commercial message. (05:16): Once again, this is David Dollar. We're talking with Mr. Ike Bradley this morning on memories, Mr. Bradley, you were talking about growing up. You were the man in the family as your dad had passed away when you were quite young. I heard from, from a last interview that we had had another man, Reverend Michigan, talk to you. He told me something about some of the things you used to do while you weren't working all the time. A little mischief you got into when you were young. Ike Bradley (05:46): Yeah. David Dollar (05:47): So it's about some string or something. Why don't you tell us that story? Ike Bradley (05:50): Well, we had a neck. You could take a string and tie it on a building and it could go. I guess, what, at 50 yards away. They use a piece of soap, bees wax, and rub on it. You got to be pretty brave to stay in the house. It made a peculiar noise. It just sounded awful to you. Your head telling you they're ghosts. You never see them, but you'd get out of that because you thought the ghost was moving in. David Dollar (06:14): And you couldn't see anything because -- Ike Bradley (06:14): Couldn't see anything. David Dollar (06:18): You did that often or? Ike Bradley (06:20): Well, the main time we would do it is this guy he had three boys and a bunch of girls, and I would scare them out of the house. This way we'd get to him and see the old man would come out and they'd be all hunting there. The girls, you know, we'd go up and have money. We'd want to be down the road, still rolling. (06:36): So they get all settled out. Well, back then, they wouldn't know what had happened. So the next time out they had a feeling officer, Jack Molina. I don't know if you heard of him or not, but this is somebody with a light, I guess I never to catch up with him. You see going up and down like that. So that would keep us in check. We wouldn't get out of the line because we're scared of Jack Molina, but that leaves her with that string on the house right now, you, it, you would come out and hurt the boogie man, but it sounds awful. You'd have at least out of that sound that you had somebody rubbing on that string to your house. It sounded just like somebody creeping up on you and you ain't going to find anything, so you guys ain't going to rest good until they quit. David Dollar (07:22): You thought it was someone creeping up on ya. Ike Bradley (07:25): You wouldn't sleep that night. If he kept rubbing, you'd keep awake. It would just sound awful. David Dollar (07:31): You asked me to remind you about one other thing and I'd like to. We like to close our programs with what we call a closing memory. Why don't you tell us about that memory that sticks out in your mind and tell us a little bit about it. Ike Bradley (07:43): Well, the most thing, and that was doing the high water, unless it's 19'8 high water there. Where I first you could see, you could see water and building, animals floating, trying to survive, but they had no way because it didn't swim for long. And that's it. Cows, hogs, chicken. David Dollar (08:02): In Natchitoches Parish in 1908. Ike Bradley (08:02): Natchitoches Parish. That's right. All Along the water. Now we stayed up. But yeah, I out on the [inaudible 00:08:12] . I don't know if you heard tell heed or not. While we was on the [inaudible 00:08:14] there off of 71 highway going back north of it now the way, I mean, yeah, way northeast of it, the way it would be laid out, but now the water was over everything. Then most trees, you could see a water had 'em covered and eggs and chickens and horses, cows, all that logs and the timber where they just swims along and went out. So in the meantime, me and the boy we put a raft together. You know what a raft is? David Dollar (08:44): Yes sir. Ike Bradley (08:45): Well, we put one together while you're waiting to start with. David Dollar (08:47): Right. Ike Bradley (08:50): So each one I was on alone gathering eggs in a tub, maybe a log kind or something, but we gathered eggs after the log come apart, we couldn't survive with the eggs on the log. So we lost all the eggs back in the water. David Dollar (09:05): My goodness. Ike Bradley (09:06): And we dead lucky to get out of there. See the water was chaos We didn't have the knowledge. They had an old 11. We had the long stick push along that got out of their way. You couldn't reach no bottom. So we just drift with the logs. So there's an old man, he was out there and he managed to get us back to shore because we couldn't guide the log over it was going the way it want to. It was going to finally get in the drift. So we wound up being saved by him giving us a hand to get out of there. Whatever. David Dollar (09:36): The water was from what? The Red River? Just rain? Ike Bradley (09:40): No from the river. Get out. No, it wasn't no rain water.That's just a, just a flood from the river. See this river up here. Can river. Well, forty, fifty years ago, it was way back, you go back up again and you just walk from miles. Well, that's been cut back in the Red River in later years. But that was a whole bit big farm back up in there. And the other side, of course it healed her. She going to camping off, no cave around there. It just overflowed. She asked going back into here, but the water was, was cover. You couldn't see anything that's coming all the way. David Dollar (10:17): Well, Mr. Bradley, we sure thank you for joining us this morning on Memories

David Dollar speaks with Ike Bradley about growing up in a farming family, working on the railroad, and raising children.

Tags: natchitoches, louisiana, farming, railroad workers, ncptt, national center for preservation technology and training, podcast, podcasts

July 11, 2024

34. Hodding Center

Transcript

Transcript

Hodding Carter (00:00:00): ... are states in which I've lived, two states, Louisiana, Mississippi over these years. I'm reminded of a story about a little monkey on the day when the bombs finally started raining down. He discovered himself behind a molten mass of steel [inaudible 00:00:24] part of New York City. He kept saying over and over again, "I'm so scared. I'm so hungry. I'm so hungry." Around the corner of this molten [inaudible 00:00:37] walked in a feral monkey. She said, "Have an apple. Have an apple." He said, "What? And start that mess over again?" (00:00:48): Well, I disagree with the little monkey. All of my adult life, in particular all of my life as a newspaper man, has been spent in abnormal... If there's such a thing as normal living, but in an abnormal series of circumstances. We started at the very bottom, the Depression, six months. We married and started a little daily paper in Hammond, Louisiana. That of course was the bottom of the Depression, 1932. I'll never forget that. You rarely got any cash, but everybody would be willing to trade anything with you for advertising. They'd give you anything, razor blades or an automobile for the equivalent amount in cash. (00:01:34): Those first years up to about 1940, almost 1940, there was an abnormality of all newspaper men... All people were enduring it... of trying to survive economically in those extremely depressed times. Next after that of course, after a small, short hiatus, we went a new newspaper up in Mississippi. Three years later, four years later, we were at war. Except for that four years, perhaps two years since 1955, we have never known... This country has never known what it was not to be at war with somebody, even though sometimes we didn't describe those conditions as war. Of course, they were war. (00:02:29): I don't know what it is to live as a publisher under normal circumstances. I'm sure I'd feel more peaceful and calm if I was, but not as much excitement. That's sort of the reason we go into this business of ours. I would like to use one example of what I'm going to talk about after these 35 years with my son as editor. We live in this time just short of total war, and we don't know when that might change. I know my son, short of that total war, as the editor of our paper, won't have the excitement or the problems or many other things which we sometimes enjoyed and the rest of the time put up with. (00:03:24): He won't have those things to face short of war because I don't think we'll ever see the kind of depression this country endured and which the newspapers had to cover and denounce, find a scapegoat for Herbert Hoover and the like. I don't think he'll ever know that, and I don't believe my grandchildren are going to know that again short of war, but he too will have his problems. I wish him well on it. It's quite something to have a son grow up and stay in the business with you and want to stay at home instead of going to greener pastures and act as editor of the paper. I was very happy last week, rather than unhappy, when he said he would like to do it. (00:04:11): Now, I want to talk about some of the problems that confront editors, publishers in the South in some respects even today. Common to all of us in this business... This is not in the realm of ideas now. We'll get to that in a minute, but common to all of us in this business, the communications media, I think more than any other occupation or profession, but communications media are having to fight continually rising prices. Prices on news print, for instance, when I went in the army was $50 a ton. News print is about $300 a ton now in like. (00:04:51): We have to meet the competition, who was not present at the beginning of World War II, of a competing medium, television, which does an excellent job and does a lot of things that we can't do. Of course, we can do a lot of things that television can't do today. Another problem that particularly concerns our area, newspaper in the area, is that being still the poorest section of the country economically... Mississippi I'm speaking particularly of now... we find it difficult sometimes to survive financially. Little papers like mine have an easier time by far than the great big papers as we're seeing with the merger or the proposed merger of the New York papers. (00:05:42): There's papers smaller than ours have had a even more difficult time, the little weeklies. You've seen them one after another dry up all over the South. That is another problem. Both of these are as the germane [inaudible 00:05:54] the business office into the editor's chair and another problem that confronts us is how to keep people believing, as we hope they do believe, that we are a hometown paper devoted to the hometown, which my paper is. It's an independent. More and more American newspapers, more and more Southern newspapers are parts of change, are the results of mergers. It's very difficult to maintain that personal contact, which was such a joy even 35 years ago to me with your readers, with your friends and neighbors. (00:06:29): We've become too impersonal these days in many respects and none more so than in the relationship of a reader to a newspaper which is owned in New York. Or both newspapers in many cases in many cases in any given town are owned by people who live elsewhere. Something has gone out of American newspaper life, Southern newspaper life because of these continuing mergers and closures of some papers. It is also today difficult... I'll get to one of the... This is in the realm of the mind... to survive against pressures by people, organized and unorganized, to make you either goosestep in line with them in their thinking. I refer particularly to organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, the Citizens Council... There's any number of it, John Birch Society... who demand that you go along with them or the alternative will be destruction naturally. (00:07:31): Sometimes you get actual threats against your life too. Going back again to the non-journalistic aspect of what's happening to papers. You overlooked one. Along with the difficulty of surviving in small towns and large, and the mergers and the opposition of these people of ill will, another difficulty, and I don't know how this is going to be solved for most little papers, is the difficulty arising from the necessity to replace outmoded obsolescent equipment. Most newspapers, including my own, will use the equipment until it's fallen to pieces and then go out and buy... or try to buy if you can get the credit... other equipment. (00:08:24): Now, let's take the problems in the realm of the mind and of the spirit that confront papers. I'd say that the most difficult problem today is how to survive the economic... again the pressures from these people particularly in the realm of racial adjustments in the South, especially in Mississippi itself. They use strange devices in the North and the South too, bribing. Newspapers are bribed, have been bribed in this state and I guess in every other state. (00:09:07): The second day we put our little Hammond paper, the police raided a gambling joint in a hotel there. We went over and got the story. Within 10 minutes, one of the local really tough boys was in my office and said that Mr. [Syke 00:09:27] didn't want that story in the paper. I said, "Well, I'm sorry. It happened, didn't it?" He said, "Yes, but he doesn't want it in the paper." I'd known him all my life. He was from the same town. I said, "Gabriel, I'm not going to pay any attention to you about this, but I'm just... (00:09:39): He said, "Mr. Syke will make it worth your while." I said, "I ought to throw you out of the office, but before I do, tell me how much he's going to offer me." He said, "He's willing to go to as high as $25," which is about as good a depression story as I know. Later on, it got to be a good deal more than that, but $25 was my first offer. Then a little bit later, from Dudley LeBlanc, $100 to support him. I was in the money from the very beginning of starting out the paper in Hammond. (00:10:10): Now, against that background, in those days, as you all know, Huey Long ruled Louisiana absolutely. The people who were with him... The overwhelming majority of Louisianans were with Huey Long. The reason they were with him is because he was a psychologist as well as anything else, many other things, and he knew what the people of Louisiana wanted in material terms. He promised to give these things to them, and he lived up to those promises. I don't think had he not been killed would he ever have been defeated as long as he remained in public life. (00:10:55): My handwriting in this thing is kind of poor. [inaudible 00:10:56] notes. Huey, knowing what the people wanted, good roads, free school lunches, better hospitals and the like, he gave these things to these people despite... This is interesting in journalism today. It's sort of frightening... despite the opposition of I suppose at least 90% of the newspapers of Louisiana, whom he'd go down on pretty hard himself. In one way, he made the Louisiana newspapers a laughing stock because he proved how far away they were from the average citizen. (00:11:40): Louisiana, in those days, was almost a barony controlled by exceedingly big interests who were not interested in the common man. Huey was in the tradition of the populist movement that swept through the South like wildfire right after the Reconstruction Period. He believed in giving the common man more than he'd ever had before, and he did it. I repeat, he could not have been defeated at all. This is another of the problems that confront the press, how to be convincing and effective when you take out against somebody who needs taking out against, but who is believed in by many, many people. (00:12:27): We did it the wrong way, the anti-Long papers. We would not concede that any idea he ever had was worth anything. Of course, looking back after all these years, I know that we should have supported any number of his proposals. We didn't, and that's the weakness of the newspaper profession. The newspaper publisher would have to be so partisan that he will let partisanship enter the news column, where they have no fair. They don't belong. Newspapers which editorialize, as too many do, on the front page, in the news story itself are not living up to what is ours by virtue of the 5th Amendment. (00:13:11): You asked what were the preoccupations and problems of that time. [inaudible 00:13:19] faced Longism, trying to restore the state to a democratic system. A second and longer lasting one of those preoccupations and problems was the depression itself. I can remember back in those days down in Hammond, Louisiana, seeing farmers break into warehouses in broad daylight and cart out food because their families were hungry. I've seen men with college degrees in those days out with a sickle cutting down grass along the ditches and in the public parks and all that for something like $12 a week. (00:13:56): Huey Long saw this too and he promised these people against that background. We were constantly on the defensive or sometimes on the offensive against Huey Long and constantly aware of these terrific odds against survival, newspaper survival. In those days, we didn't write about Europe, editorials. We didn't write about race problems because people had not yet either become aware of them or organized to change things. It was not until the war that I became almost obsessed with the notion that through the leadership of the press and the man in the pulpit and the man in the teacher's desk, that unless we could assume some kind of leadership that these hungry men who broke into the warehouses would get hungrier and hungrier and more and more violent and we could have, and did have in a portion of this country, anarchy because of hunger, because of the depression. (00:15:03): That won't happen again. Our government is off on a different tack now and we are committed, as we should be... Even if most of the newspapers in the South and elsewhere don't support this notion of a great society, I do. We can do it. Going back to Huey Long, though, when I hear these serious propositions being made that every American adult should be given $3,000 a year, I think when Huey Long proposed is Share The Wealth Plan, which was much more modest than that, we all thought he was crazy. Today, indirectly, you're having lesser subsidies... Not subsidies, compensation to people who no longer can work or are too old to work, have no skills. (00:15:48): That was unthinkable. I don't know of a single newspaper, except possibly the New York World... I exclude the Daily Mirror, the Communist paper... who hammered away at ideas like that. There must be a floor below which no human being should be allowed to drop. That's part of our tradition now, but... And it's not a tradition that was broken by most newspapers, but the change came, I would say, in spite of the newspapers of the South and of America. 95% of them again the president, against every president since then except General Eisenhower. They clobbered... The people who believed, Huey Long and a handful of others, they clobbered us partly, in great part I would say, because of this depression, which was our second preoccupation. (00:16:39): I made a footnote here that no other state leader... This is getting away from generalities, but no other state leader in the history of our country ever paid as much attention to the needs of the common man, and no man ever received in return the devoted following that Huey had in the rank and file of his fellow citizens. I'm sorry about these notes. I wrote them very [inaudible 00:17:15] and very hardly, and I [inaudible 00:17:19] stuck. (00:17:20): Now, the reason the newspapers in Louisiana and elsewhere oppose men like Huey Long is because unfortunately ownership of most of the newspapers... I'm speaking of the dailies. Most of the newspapers of the country are owned by men who are ultra conservative. They object to change. They're afraid of change. They think that change costs money. Change does cost money. I'm afraid too many of them have their hearts and their minds in the counting house rather than in the editor's office. (00:17:57): These people [inaudible 00:17:59] Mississippi. These people were sitting ducks for the bigot who came by. Huey Long was not a bigot in a racial sense. He was, of course, a tyrannical, overbearing, unforgetting boss, but he also was visionary. He saw what was ahead. He was brilliant and he had unbounded energy. Single handed, that man, whom I never supported and whose son I like, but that man single handed beat the newspapers of Louisiana to the ground. That's another problem, another danger that newspapers, particularly small town newspapers, have to face is the economic pressure that politicians can bring on you and [inaudible 00:18:49]. Your reward is that if you go along that the same political leaders are going to give to you. I don't believe one American newspaper today in 100, in 500 would accept bribery, however well it was concealed, but back in the depression, there were a good many all over the country who did that. (00:19:08): Then in the late '40s, we had other preoccupations, particularly one that we could do nothing about. That was the symbolic appearance in the European skies of a small dark object that got bigger and bigger. This was of course Adolf Hitler. So the preoccupation of the newspapers turned to the problem of survival of ourselves as a democratic nation, the problem of defeating an enemy and to let the people know why this was happening and what they could all do about it together. I think the highest service that newspapers of America have ever given to the government was what they did in concert, universally, during World War II. (00:20:04): When the war ended, we thought maybe things would quiet down, get better. Of course, that lasted for approximately four years, and we became journalists which were reporting wars rather than other matters that would have been more happy had we been able to do it to the exclusion of the war. Then the second preoccupation... The first and second preoccupation in these later years was with the rise of the negro militant especially in the South, but increasingly everywhere else. The antagonism of most of the South's press to this change and their shrill denouncement of the federal government for entering the picture didn't help the people who were leaving the status quo. (00:21:06): In fact, I think the opposition from some of the newspapers in this country sped the process of not yet equality of opportunity for first-class citizenship, but at least this nation has turned its head towards the sun and this is happening. I wish I could say that the South's newspapers played a part in this change, but with very few exceptions, the Southern press has done one of two things, remain quiet, don't write anything, don't say anything about what's happening here. "Maybe if we just keep our heads in the sands long enough, this boogie boogie will go away." Of course, it didn't happen that way. (00:21:53): Then the handful that did try to explain and allay fears about what equality for all Americans would do, we played a role, and it was a good role. I'm proud that my newspaper was one of the relative handful in the Deep South which ever had a good word to say about the Supreme Court's decision of what has happened since then or about the presidents who have served this country since then. It's not a pleasant thing to think about one's own profession in those terms. (00:22:37): Again, in the later years, there was a problem that all newspapers, all mass media had to deal with and that was how to meet this threat of loyal communism, not on the field of battle, but in the alleys and behind the scenes, where the communists operate. Just as they operated during the depression among the poverty stricken, they're busy at it again today. It's no exaggeration to say that underground, there's as much communist activity going on in the United States, and especially in the South, as there ever has been. (00:23:17): We've had to cope with that too. One other... I perhaps shouldn't even bring this up, but one other problem we've had to deal with is how to interpret or tell the American people of the lasting menace of the bomb. If you were going to New Orleans or New York or Shreveport anywhere else, from the behavior of the crowd and the people you saw and talked to, you wouldn't think that we were at war. This is the great and very difficult task of newspapers today to try to arouse people to the fact that we are in the gravest peril in our own history. (00:24:13): I think my wife... I'm going to blame it on her... put these notes together here. I can't figure what comes up next. Now, I would like as a newspaper man, who's been interested in his community and his state's and nation's affairs, to take a good deal of the credit of what happened in one little town, what has happened against the background of these problems, the little town in which I live, which I came to 30 years ago in September. It was a good little town. Even then it was an oasis, but then the leaders of that town and I discovered what could be done in concert if the newspaper and the leaders were to get together. (00:24:56): We were blessed I think the highest quality of leadership in Greenville, Mississippi, of any town in the South. So just in random and passing, this is the way one Southern newspaper, my own, tried to help in solving these problems that are national local, regional, as well as those of a newspaper man either through suggestions editorially or meeting with groups to decide these things. All of this I'm going to tell you now has been attained in Greenville long before the Supreme Court intervened or the federal government intervened and the rest. (00:25:34): We were the first town in the Deep South to have negro policemen with the power to arrest anybody. We were the first newspaper that gave a courtesy title to negro men and women. Very few ever do that now, and that was a very radical step to call a negro man mister and print a negro woman missus. This wife of a negro physician came in and told me one day that she was so pleased that this thing had happened, that, "After all, missus only meant married woman and wasn't marriage our right?" (00:26:15): We did that for both. We were the first in Mississippi to meet the specifications for continued federal aid to the schools by abolishing segregation and the like. We were the first town in Mississippi ever to have a negro on a governing board. There never has been... The investigators for the Civil Rights Commission came down and tried to find, disprove that what I told him was true, namely that there'd never been in the 30 years I'd been in Greenville any interference with a negro's right to vote. Up until three years ago, more than half the niggers who voted in Mississippi voted in our single county and town and did not and do not interfere with that right, which is practically the only one that separates the citizens of a democracy from the citizens of a dictatorship. (00:27:20): That, I think, is the challenge, the problem, the responsibility and the duty of every Southern newspaper is to try to keep these changing times peaceful times, to interpret, to tell the frightened leadership that the world's not going to drop to end just because of several hundred negro school children in Greenville High School [inaudible 00:27:48]. We did it, and nothing's happened. We were the first town in Mississippi to voluntarily desegregate the airport, the waiting room that little passenger trains came through and the bus station, all without incident. We are the only town of any consequence in Mississippi that has not had racial violence, men hurting each other. Every other town of any other size in Mississippi has had that, but we haven't had it in Greenville. (00:28:25): I repeat if this particular comment is on responsibility and the problem of those responsibilities can do. Our town is an oasis, a peaceful oasis, and I think it's going the stay that way from all indications and the reason, but, I repeat... And this is not self compliment. It was the action together of the press and the business and professional character leadership of our town that has done that. I know that I couldn't have accomplished any of these things by simply writing an editorial about them and not having the leadership back me up. (00:29:06): On the other hand, I know that the leadership in our town couldn't have stood up, as they do, for right and law-abiding behavior, had they not know that they had the full support of the newspaper. It's a beautiful example of teamwork when it happens. When it doesn't happen, one side or the other won't live up to the responsibility, you have Selma, for instance. You have for a long time a Jackson, Mississippi, where the press was indifferent to human rights or else didn't want to participate in anything because they were afraid of economic retaliation. That, to me, is the greatest problem domestically of our Southern newspapers, how to adjust themselves, or how the publisher adjusts himself and his thinking to these changing times. (00:30:04): I've told many of them time after time, it's like going in cold water. It's going to be miserable at first, but once you get acclimated to that water, you feel a lot better. I certainly think that my fellow citizens in Greenville, the great majority of them feel better because we have got behind us what most of the rest of Mississippi has yet to still face, these adjustments to civil rights legislation and the like. We can go fishing on Saturdays instead of worrying about whether there's going to be picket lines and a mob action and all that in our town. (00:30:42): For no other reason than I don't want to leave that town because we have learned how to live together and the white man has learned that the nigger is as deserving of equal treatment, of equal access to anything. By the way, we're the first town by a long way to integrate our public library and playground. I would say most other Mississippians think Greenville's crazy, but we think it's the other way around. (silence). (00:31:07): [inaudible 00:31:07] then the problems, the basic problems that affect newspapers, and in some instances, only Southern newspapers, the increasing cost of newspapers, the merger of newspapers, the replacement of heavy equipment, the survival against pressures by bigoted groups who want to destroy those papers, which will not go along. They're not going to be able to do it. They haven't even been able to put the very courageous Mississippi weekly newspaper owner, who has fought the Klan, the councils and everything else alone in her town, Lexington, Mississippi, for 12 years. She is still there and I pray God that she'll be there as long as she lives. (00:32:09): She's been an encouragement... I'm sure many of you read about it... to newspaper men everywhere. She proved that... A lot of us were afraid she couldn't prove... that a little poor weekly newspaper can survive despite the pressures brought by the town's leadership, which is not a good leadership. Now, because I realize I'm talking to English teachers and not to novelists, I want to bring in something that does fit in with what I said yesterday and what is happening, writing. Good writing and the stimulus to good writing comes almost always in time of stress turmoil, tragedy and self examination. (00:33:08): We've been going through just that today. The task of a newspaper is over and above racial matters... is to make the people understand better. As I said, the writer comes into his own in these times. I'd like to point out that out of the depression years came Grapes of Wrath. Out of those political years in Louisiana came All The King's Men, Robert Penn Warren's very thinly disguised novel, written about and around the character of Huey Long. Then these latter years, we've had come out of the post-war period novels of writing based on racial consideration. On the one hand, the beautiful novel and others to come by Harper Lee, that young woman in... Alabama isn't it? (00:34:11): That book, To Kill A Mockingbird, is as real, but it's looking at reality from a more pleasant side. It's as real as anything that has ever been written concerning the relationship of white man to black man. On the other hand, come out of these years is the writing of a man I think is pretty vile and bigoted himself, James... Yes, James Baldwin, of course, but those are two examples, one on one side of the street and one on the other, where people are working together. Writers are working with those people too to tell the story of what is happening and what should happen. (00:34:54): Significantly, the other preoccupation I have mentioned, atomic energy has produced no novel or any very significant books at all. It's not likely that we will see people writing against the atomic background unless were to become a survival novel for whoever's left after the bomb did fall, but except for that, except for this area of nuclear fiction, atomic energy and the like, each of these periods that I've mentioned has produced sometimes great literature and many times good literature. That indicates to me that, as we said yesterday, again, that the volcanoes, the earthquakes of life do have as one decent result, and the only decent result that I know of, is better writing a preoccupation with human values and with the need for change in our relationship with each other. (00:36:19): Now, finally, I'd like to tell you all of what I think is the responsibility and the problem because it is so difficult to meet that responsibility that a newspaper editor should think about his profession and himself as the editor. It's one to make men curious, to make men think, to make men ashamed, to make men proud and, lastly, to make men free... to help make them free. We can't do it all my ourselves. In that sense, it makes me think of my profession as almost a holy one. It can't rank with the men in the pulpit, but we certainly can rank with the teacher in the classroom. These are three great forces for change to the good in our nation, the editor's uneasy chair, the classroom and the novel. (00:37:38): I've got a cold coming on. Lastly, [inaudible 00:37:40] quoting one of the noblest men the South has ever produced, William Alexander Percy, who was a poet, philanthropist, had been a hero in World War I and a writer. He wrote this magnificent book that I referred to yesterday and I'd do it again because it is a classic. It is a spiritual classic and sheer poetry besides. William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the Levee. He was my very dear friend. He brought us to Greenville or rather he sponsored us. The paper is ours, but he sponsored and backed us in every kind of way. He died the first year of the war. (00:38:23): I went to tell him goodbye. I was going to service with the Mississippi National Guard. That was about 13 months before Pearl Harbor. I went to tell him goodbye, and both of us were very unhappy over what was ahead. It was obvious by then that the world was going to set about again to try to destroy itself. I said just almost despairingly, "Well, what can we do? What can I do when I get back from the war?" He said, "You and I can't do anything on a grand scale. We can only try to live as men of good will in the community in which we do live because the sum total of the accomplishment in our community and the community like it, which will determine the nature of our government, the survival of democracy itself and a spiritual rebirth." (00:39:24): Because in the little towns, such as ours, you can reach people. I've seen this happen. You can live as a man of good will and help others live as men of good will under the stimulus of men like this... He was one of our great leaders... under the stimulus of the paper, the papers which work hand in glove with men like Will Percy and people who follow him. You get a sense of achievement that I don't believe any newspaper whose owners are thinking only in terms of the cash register or who are bigoted themselves or who are unconcerned or pretend to be unconcerned about social change and who only become dynamic when they're ready to denounce a proposal that a president has made or a senator has made or, back in the old days, Huey Long would have made. (00:40:16): We've got to change. The Southern newspapers have to change these attitudes, and they're doing it. I've seen a good many come around to reality and I'll say again that I'm proud that a newspaper, a small newspaper like mine has contributed to change and thus gone a few steps toward an eventual solution or if not solution, an amelioration of these terrible domestic clashes, differences that beset us today, fascist, differences, hatred that you may well be sure that the over two billion people in the world who are not watching very closely. (00:41:02): You all teach... I was a teacher once for a short time. You teach. Ordinarily, the English classroom is not a place to set people thinking about what's going on today. It makes people think and marvel at what man can do with his mind when we reach as far up as the first course in English literature, but the papers, the classroom, the pulpit, we three, have this responsibility, which cannot be assumed by the newspaper men alone. We have this responsibility to act as men of good will, to persuade others to do it, to endorse every decision, proposal made by a leadership for the public good. (00:41:55): Not enough newspapers do this today. I mentioned the financial instability of so many small papers, the overwhelming threat in small towns of organized antagonists to social change, who walk in and tell a small town merchant, "If you say something good about Medicare, about whatever it may be, we'll stop the advertising. You won't have any advertisement from us. That's that." (00:42:28): I'll end this and then I would like to have some discussion if we can. I apologize for my sore throat that's working up very nicely. But I'd rather live in a little town and try to be a man of good will than to live anywhere else. I'm doing that. I'm proud that my sons became newspaper men too. I'm proud that one of them is a Mississippi newspaper man who is trying to do his dead level best to help. (00:42:59): I think if we would use that slogan for if it's in the classroom or on the roster room or on my newspaper desk... If we try to do that, we can not only be happy, but we can very well change the moral face, the spiritual face of our country. I think newspapers are going to do that. Sorry about my voice. If anybody would like to ask something related to... Speaker 2 (00:43:30): Would you care to comment on your work with PM, the newspaper PM? Hodding Carter (00:43:38): Oh yeah. PM was the result of the meeting of two men at the suggestion of the psychiatrist they were both going to see, Marshall Field III, who was a multi, multimillionaire, and Ralph Ingersoll, a brilliant, fuzzy-thinking, but very persuasive journalist, who had been editor of the New Yorker and also of Life. He talked Marshall Field into putting about $9 million... You could probably take all the newspapers in Mississippi for that $9 million... to put $9 million up for the organization of a new newspaper that would be entirely different. (00:44:19): It would in fact be a daily magazine, no continuations, everything departmentalized, pictures more than text. The gimmick... He thought he was going to succeed. Of course, this broke him. It didn't break Marshall Field, but he'd invested $9 million, for which he got nothing back. The key to this whole thing is this newspaper would be free because it was not going to take advertising. I used to argue with that with him. I went to it after hearing him at Harvard one night... This was way back in 1940... tell about this plan. It entranced every newspaper man. Most of them are pretty romantic anyhow. (00:45:00): We said, "Work on a paper like that that's not fettered by advertisers." I'm glad the Democratic Times is fettered by advertisers. I wish we had more fetters than we do, but he said, "We can do it without advertising. We can be a crusading paper," and all that. In two years, that $9 million was gone, and PM had made no effect on the people of New York or the nation. The reason being... This is the thing if this happens to any newspaper man, that newspaper and himself is nearly dead in the eyes of the profession and in the eyes of democracy. (00:45:44): No newspaper should be allowed to continue to exist as a newspaper, to be allowed to be designated as a newspaper, if the kind of paper PM, which Marshall Fields spent $9 million on because a newspaper which just accepts money, money, money from outside sources, from whichever way it gets it, is a kept newspaper and has no value, has no place in this country. Yet, there's still some newspapers in Mississippi... I don't know about Louisiana anymore... who don't mind being kept. (00:46:22): That is an inner, inside the lodge problem of newspapers today, who try to clean out, weed out some way, through purchase or what not, those newspapers which do not live up to the responsibility of the press men, which does give us a special consideration among all of the enterprises in our nation. The freedom of the press shall not be abridged. You see these people distorting news, accepting subsidies or being influenced without people realizing it by other interests. Those kind of newspapers and the kind of men who edit them are a disgrace to American journalism. I only rejoice that there's so few of them. Speaker 3 (00:47:24): Mr. Carter, is this a [inaudible 00:47:24] of degree, a matter of degree- Hodding Carter (00:47:27): Just a minute. Speaker 3 (00:47:27): If it's a matter of degree, this doesn't stand. By virtue of the fact that both newspapers and magazines are a commercial operation, aren't they a necessity to that extent, depending upon the character of the people with whom they do business? [crosstalk 00:47:49] inhibited. Hodding Carter (00:47:50): Mrs. Roosevelt came up to Harvard when I was up there on this fellowship a long time ago, 25 years ago. I was the only one of the group... They pick 12 each year for a year's study there, whatever you want to do. I was the only one of the group that happened to own a newspaper. She found out very quickly. We had war talk. We had dinner at the house of the president. Of course, she was ribbing me in a way. She said to us all, "And especially you, Mr. Carter, because you're a publisher yourself, aren't you at the mercy of your advertising? Don't they help you out when you need help and aren't you indebted to them in return? Aren't you controlled by the advertisers?" (00:48:37): I said, "Mrs. Roosevelt, I respectfully want to tell you that I've been in this business... By that time it was 16 years. No, 10 years. I said, "I've never had a merchant [inaudible 00:48:53] a line of advertising for my paper. I've never had any of them try to influence me except in casual conversation, "This is what we think." I've never had a merchant come to me with an idea to which I was antagonistic. I've never either had the editorial written in his behalf or who took away his advertising because we didn't go along with him. No, I don't think... (00:49:20): After, on a practical matter, newspapers is three things. The editorial page is one thing that reflects opinion and may have influence on the body politic or whatever. Of course, news, but the third is a medium to bring the buyer and the seller together. Almost never in a large town... I know Greenville's a large town, but Mississippi, I've never had anybody try to pressure me. I've had politicians, but not merchants. I don't think they're going to do it because the merchant is simply looking for a way to offer his ware, you see. That's because we put out a good newspaper and have the circulation that he wants to reach whether he disagrees with every editorial that I write as long as we can bring results to him through our advertising column, he's not going to call that harsh, he couldn't afford to be. Speaker 3 (00:50:27): Isn't this in part, though, the character of Greenville? Isn't it in your knowledge, as it is within mine, somewhat different in many, many others [crosstalk 00:50:35]? Hodding Carter (00:50:35): Oh yeah, sure. Speaker 3 (00:50:35): You were talking about the character of the community. [inaudible 00:50:41] reputation for being different in this respect. Hodding Carter (00:50:46): It is different, but I don't think that in Columbus, Mississippi... Maybe not just Mississippi, a boycott against the paper would work, but I don't think of any other town in Mississippi larger than 35, 40,000 population, where the merchants are really going to try that. That's too patent. One man suggested to me he might take his ads away. I'd forgotten that. My first year in Greenville. He had a competing newspaper then that he took over. [inaudible 00:51:24]. He said he didn't like what I'd written. He said, "Put it this way, but I don't have to advertise with you. I just might do something about it." (00:51:34): It was only threats. I said, "I'll tell you what I will do for you. I'm not going to change this editorial policy in this matter, but I'm willing to give you one more helping hand. I'll give you a front-page space for the last request and threat to me. I'll write a free ad for you denouncing that threat and saying you're sorry." At the end of it, nobody else has ever tried to do it. Speaker 4 (00:51:34): Mr. Carter? Hodding Carter (00:51:34): Yes. Speaker 4 (00:52:15): In the Atlanta Constitution and in the New Orleans Tribune, and I suppose some other newspapers that I read, you occasionally come across the advertisements, [inaudible 00:52:19] in New Orleans and Mr. Maddox in Atlanta, which are editorials in an advertising section. What's your attitude on the ethics of this type of advertising? Hodding Carter (00:52:35): I think you see a lot of it, both supporting ideas that we don't like and others are supporting ideas or concepts that we do like. As long as it's made clear that this is an advertisement, then that advertiser can put anything in his ad he wants within the limits of decency, libel. He could put anything, so if this man wants to come out in an ad in my paper, let's say in favor of John Birch Society, as much as I dislike John Birch Society, I'd say I'd have to give him this space because otherwise, I'd be... For one reason, I would be in effect supporting the wrong kind of monopoly. We're a monopoly in Greenville, and the merchant has no other place to go. To tell him I will or I won't take his advertising on the basis that I do or do not like the copy, the story that you're trying to bring to the public yourself, if I did that, I think it'd be greatly unfair not to accept it. Speaker 5 (00:53:39): [inaudible 00:53:39]. Hodding Carter (00:53:39): Yes. Speaker 5 (00:53:54): What is the [inaudible 00:54:04] as a newspaper? What is the [inaudible 00:54:11] newspaper man that places them above the record [inaudible 00:54:16] leaving out preachers and doctors? Why should they be on the same level as a preacher, a doctor and a lawyer [inaudible 00:54:22]? Hodding Carter (00:54:28): I don't think we're on the same level with most of these. I think we're really above the level of a couple of them. I don't really know how to answer that though. A lot of this stuff we have to play by ear all the time. Somebody else? Yeah. Speaker 6 (00:54:50): How do your compare your particular concerns with those of P.D. East [inaudible 00:54:54] Mississippi? Hodding Carter (00:54:56): Yes. I know P.D. The principle indifference between us, professionally speaking, is PB never has shown a concern with putting out a newspaper. This little tract he would put actually with no ads, no local stories, no nothing. It was just what P.D. East thinks about everything, and he had some very fine thoughts. He was a brilliant writer, but he just didn't put out a newspaper. He could have gotten a great many subscribers scattered all over Mississippi, not in Petal, had he chosen another route, but he didn't. Now, he no longer has the Petal paper. It's closed down I think. Maybe somebody else has bought it. (00:55:37): He is a very brave man and though [inaudible 00:55:43]. I don't see how he survived as long as he did over there before he went to Texas. Sorry about this thing in my throat. It's really tripped me up this morning. I knew it was going to happen when I woke up. I enjoyed being with you again. Tonight, you might be interested to know that my wife is going to attend with me because she does the reading of small-print text. I lost the sight of one eye during the war, and then I had two retinal attachments two years ago. The doctors didn't think I'd ever be able to even get around with a seeing eye dog or a pole. (00:56:32): I can read, but not fine print or small print, so she'll be up there reading some of the letters that William Faulkner in his guise as Citizen wrote to the Oxford Eagle. [inaudible 00:56:47] delightful. It's so much more fascinating to hear what he had to say in respect to these issues that he dwelt on, to see how he wrote them than how an ordinary newspaper man would write them. It's like finding a diamond in 10 tons of slag or something. She will be doing, in case you wonder why before we get up with the... She will be with me. That's the only part of the talk I enjoy because I like to hear her reading. She does it to [inaudible 00:57:17] since I've had this eye difficulty. Speaker 7 (00:57:37): Are there any other questions? Speaker 8 (00:57:38): [inaudible 00:57:38] interpreting [inaudible 00:57:38]? Hodding Carter (00:57:37): Interpreting what he sees? It's a very difficult issue. Newspaper men are talking about it all the time. The news magazines, Time, Life, World Report, they do their own interpreting. Time is especially vulnerable, it seems to me, because Luce, the publisher, owner says very frankly, "This is my newspaper. Wherever it can be done, it's going to reflect my thinking. It's not going to be an objective... Time is something short of being objective in a good many fields. (00:58:12): It's very hard. One device if you have a large enough staff... You get your story about the Geneva Conference. What you get, that it was held, it was a failure and [inaudible 00:58:27]. Then the New York Times will have what they call a side bar. That's just newspaper slang. It'll be an interpretive story. "This is what's going on behind the scenes," or, "This is what it's really all about." I think it was a perfectly legitimate way to handle controversial matters, play them straight in the news column. [inaudible 00:58:49] people want to know what's going on. What's the reason for this? You write then in the side bar to the best of your ability, or to the best of the ability of whatever staff member is doing it, you try to tell the truth. (00:59:08): Huey Long used to call... Once he had a tax pass to get Louisiana newspapers, he called it a sinner lie tax, which would in fact license American newspapers. It wouldn't have stood up in court in any event. In fact, it didn't. It was thrown out by the United States Supreme Court, but that was licensed on the first side and Huey, furious because of [inaudible 00:59:36] articles that were written about him. (00:59:39): I wanted to tell you all one newspaper. Sorry, I'm trying to remember the details of it. Oh, have you got a few minutes just to listen to this story? It's a true one and it's funny in a way. I was editor of Stars and Stripes in Cairo. There's a headquarters in Tel Aviv. I hadn't gotten the staff together because they had to be all military. I hadn't the staff together and almost no place to print it, but a broken down shop in Cairo owned by an Italian, who had leased it to me. I guess we confiscated it. The military did. (01:00:30): The General Command of the American Force was there, General Brereton. Generals are very jealous of each other. He knew that over in North West Africa, General Eisenhower and his men had a Stars and Stripes because they had five times as many men as we had in the Middle East. He said, "I want a Stars and Stripes," just like a little baby asking for some candy or something. He said, "I want a Stars and Stripes. They've got one over in the North African theater." He says, "Put it out." (01:00:59): I said, "It'll take a few days." We did not have a news services, nowhere to get Associated Press, United Press or anything. We had combat correspondents on the staff wandering around on the various fronts, but the soldiers knew all about that and they were sick of war because they were in one. What they want is some news from home, and we didn't have any. The day before we were to go to press, it was going to be a pretty bad newspaper because there was no news. (01:01:28): The Egyptian Daily Mail, which is an English-language newspaper in Cairo, had a front-page story about four lines that said, "San Francisco, Floyd Hamilton, America's public enemy number one, was shot to death in San Francisco Bay in an escape attempt. Two companions were recaptured." I said, "This is what we need. This is what these GIs want to hear." I had two of my yank staffers, who'd just come in from somewhere, whip me... They were both newspaper men in civilian life. I said, "Let's put out a real killer [inaudible 01:02:03] of a news story because it's the only local story we'll have from the United States." (01:02:09): One of the newspaper men had mean... They looked like tiger eyes, and I can snarl like anything you ever saw. So we took his eyes and my snarl, and we put them together. Underneath it... We didn't say this was Floyd Hamilton, but we said... The eyes and the snarl...

Hodding Center speaks with Memories about Newspaper and publishing work.

Tags: newspaper

June 27, 2024

33. Heardie Rivers

Transcript

Transcript

Jim Collie (00:01): In case you've just joined us, this is the Memories program. Today we're going to be visiting with Mrs. Heardie Rivers. I'm Jim Collie. Mrs. Rivers welcome to the program. We're glad you're here. Heardie Rivers (00:01): You are so welcome. Jim Collie (00:15): You were born where Ms. Rivers? Heardie Rivers (00:17): Clarence. Jim Collie (00:17): About when was that? Do you remember? Heardie Rivers (00:22): I don't remember the year. Jim Collie (00:22): Well how old are you? Heardie Rivers (00:22): 72. Jim Collie (00:24): 72 years old. Well, you were probably born in 1904. Sounds about right. Heardie Rivers (00:33): Yeah. Jim Collie (00:33): Your family lived in Clarence? Heardie Rivers (00:35): We lived in Clarence, and from Clarence to Campton. From Campton to Alexandria, too. From Alexandria, my Papa want to go back way home on the farm. And my mother didn't want to. So she come on and [inaudible 00:00:52] she had started working for Ms. Royston. So she bought the place in Grady Town. And Papa seen, finally he come. And he stayed and he went on to Campton got his old job where he had left. And he worked in Campton and come every two weeks home. Jim Collie (01:13): So you moved around a lot? Heardie Rivers (01:15): Yes sir. Jim Collie (01:15): And your mother lived in town cause she liked city life and didn't like farming and [crosstalk 00:01:20]. Heardie Rivers (01:20): She got tired of farming. Jim Collie (01:23): Farming was pretty hard work. Heardie Rivers (01:24): Yes sir. Jim Collie (01:25): It sure was. We were talking just a few minutes ago about the kind of home medicine people used to have. Heardie Rivers (01:33): And... Sassafrass tea, pine tea, and bitterweed tea. Jim Collie (01:46): What was bitterweed tea for? Heardie Rivers (01:49): Fever. Jim Collie (01:50): How did you make it? Heardie Rivers (01:51): We'd boil it. Jim Collie (01:52): Just get some bitterweed leaves? Heardie Rivers (01:54): No, the flower. Jim Collie (01:55): The flower? Heardie Rivers (01:56): Yeah, the flower. Jim Collie (01:58): And you boil that? Heardie Rivers (01:58): Boil that for tea, for fever. Jim Collie (02:02): What was pine tea for? Heardie Rivers (02:03): Purify your lungs. Jim Collie (02:07): Purifies your lungs? Heardie Rivers (02:08): Yes sir. You know when you had TB they'd take you to the pine dome. Jim Collie (02:08): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Heardie Rivers (02:08): Yes sir. Jim Collie (02:13): How would you make pine tea? Heardie Rivers (02:15): Boil it. Jim Collie (02:16): Boil the pine needles? Heardie Rivers (02:18): Tea leaf, the needles. Jim Collie (02:19): Uh huh. (02:21): What is? You were mentioning, horehound candy. What's that your mother used to make? Heardie Rivers (02:26): It's something's weed is gray. I wouldn't know it now if I would see it. I've been looking for it, but I wouldn't know it. And that's what's for cold tea. Jim Collie (02:35): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Was it a sweet candy? Heardie Rivers (02:38): Well, she put a little... Make it up with honey and stuff, you see. Jim Collie (02:42): So children liked it when they were sick? Heardie Rivers (02:42): Oh yeah. They liked it. Jim Collie (02:45): What is blue maize? Heardie Rivers (02:49): That's for babies with colic and worms. Jim Collie (02:55): How would you make that? I take it that some kind of... Heardie Rivers (03:00): Yes. It come in a little block, like a thick piece of gum. You know, little square, four corners. Something like that. And you just take a little piece over and put in a little water if you had the stomach ache and drink it. Jim Collie (03:16): That helps, huh? Heardie Rivers (03:17): That helps. Jim Collie (03:17): What's calimer? Heardie Rivers (03:20): Oh, that's medicine that clean you out, too. But you can't get it now. And I used to take it twice a year, in the spring and in fall. Jim Collie (03:31): Getting ready for the warm weather and getting ready for the cold. Heardie Rivers (03:34): You have to keep your inside cleaned out, just like the out. Jim Collie (03:38): You have to do that? Heardie Rivers (03:39): You can't... You'll kill yourself with too much in medicine. Jim Collie (03:43): So you don't try to take very much? You were telling me about the time when you went to work. Heardie Rivers (03:51): Yes sir. That was in 1942. I was sitting at the table. We was at the table eating dinner and my heart got full. You always feels trouble, but you don't know what it is. And I start to cry. And Papa asked me what was the trouble, which I told him the truth. I didn't know what this... What I seen. I say, Papa, tomorrow I'm going to seek, go out and seek for me a job. And he told me, no, you're not healthy and neither strong. And I told him these words. I say, Papa, if you and mama would die, both of y'all are died. I say, I would have to work health to know health. And so he consent for me to go. (04:51): So I went. Ms. Carrie obliged. Y'all, I hate it. I didn't visit like I should. She had old frightened cat. That's what kept me from going. The girl, forgive me that, though. She was nice to me. And she fixed me nice little lunch. I take it to school. Yeah, I wouldn't take time to fixing it. Wasn't a need to fix a lunch for school age and working. And she'd fix me a nice lunch. I'd taken it to school, and all my little school mates, when lunchtime, here would be all around. I had to divide. I'd give them a little tease. And so after my mother fell sick in the mind. (05:40): And so she stayed away a little while and she come back. And one day I've come from work, she was gone. And that was it. And my little sister was left next door. So I take my little sister and brother home. All three of us to eat in the house. Three months, not afraid. Jim Collie (06:05): Ms. Rivers. We're going to have to stop right now and hear this word from People's Bank and Trust. But we'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. (06:15): This is Jim Collie on Memories. And we're visiting with Mrs. Heardie Rivers. Ms. Rivers, when was the first time you ever left Natchitoches? Do you remember? Heardie Rivers (06:15): 1953. Jim Collie (06:29): Where did you go then? Heardie Rivers (06:30): I went to Monroe, to a church concert. Jim Collie (06:33): Uh huh. Heardie Rivers (06:37): And 1957 flew from Shreveport to Houston on the airplane. That was my first trip. Jim Collie (06:47): What was that first airplane trip like? Heardie Rivers (06:48): Oh, that first airplane trip was wonderful. I thought I was going to heaven. Jim Collie (06:54): It didn't scare you at all? Heardie Rivers (06:55): No sir. It didn't scare me. Jim Collie (06:58): You just went out on that plane. Heardie Rivers (07:00): I went out on that plane. I enjoyed it. Jim Collie (07:02): Did they serve you a meal? Heardie Rivers (07:03): Yes sir. Jim Collie (07:04): So you've been traveling ever since? Heardie Rivers (07:06): Ever since. Jim Collie (07:08): How many places have you been to now? Heardie Rivers (07:10): The last place is Cleveland and I hope someday I can get enough money to go across before I get too young. Jim Collie (07:23): You're not growing old. You're growing young. Heardie Rivers (07:23): Yeah. Jim Collie (07:24): Is that what you're trying to tell me? Heardie Rivers (07:27): I'm growing young on my second foot. Jim Collie (07:29): I see. Well, we sure appreciated visiting with you on our show today and we're glad you're here.

Jim Collie speaks with Mrs. Heardie Rivers about growing up in Natchitoches Parish and her experience with home remedies.

Tags: home remedy, natchitoches, louisiana, medicine, oral history, oral history interview, ncptt, national center for preservation technology and training, podcast, podcasts

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