Memories Podcast

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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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December 25, 2025

49. Marie Smith

Transcript

Transcript

David Dollar (00:00): Hello again, in case you're just joining us, this is David Dollar. We're glad to have you on Memories with us this morning. We're going to visit with Ms. Marie Smith of Natchitoches, and we're going to start things off. Ms. Smith, you've visited once with us already on Memories, and we'd like to maybe pick up where we left off last time. Talking earlier, you mentioned some things about, you remember playing games and things you did as a child and in school. Why don't we start there?

Marie Smith (00:25): Well I was fortunate in one way, and another way, I wasn't. I had a brother, older, and one younger. And, actually, I was on the side with the boys, and I did what they did. And they'd play dolls with me at times, but the most of time our activities were outdoors. And especially in the summer, we didn't have any trouble finding something to do. There was horses to ride. And we didn't have any place to swim. That's one thing I regret. We didn't learn to swim. But we would go crawfishing, and we would go berry picking. Lots of times in the spring, my mother would come in and tell us, "Well, we got a bunch of little new chickens this morning." We'd go to the chicken house and see that hen with all the little-bitties. That was a pretty sight.

David Dollar (01:19): Where were you growing up at this time?

Marie Smith (01:19): Culbertson Lane. On the farm.

David Dollar (01:19): On the farm.

Marie Smith (01:28): And then maybe our daddy would come in and tell us, "Well, we got a new litter of pigs." Well, that was a pretty sight, too, a big old sow with about 10 or 15 little pigs. That was pretty too. And, when the chicken business came, when she went to sitting the hens, I always wanted to own something. So I said, "But why can't I have this one?" She says, "Well, you can have that one, when they hatch. But you got to feed it." They taught us responsibility. And, of course, I fed it until it got to where it eat corn off the yard. And I forgot about even owning the chickens.

David Dollar (02:02): You didn't want to take up that [crosstalk 00:02:06]

Marie Smith (02:06): No, no. So... But we had, in the wintertime, we had a good time. Because the days were short, we went to school, and there wasn't much you could do between that and dark. Because we went to school at four o'clock.

David Dollar (02:22): Four o'clock in the morning?

Marie Smith (02:22): Evening.

David Dollar (02:23): Oh, in the evening?

Marie Smith (02:24): Evening. Now, we got back home and everything. And at night we'd sit around, especially be the cold weather. We would sit around the fire and play Jack in the Bush. That was with pecans. Everybody had him a pan of pecans, and you'd cup your hand up and you'd have to guess whether I had five or whether I didn't have any. And if you didn't guess it right, you paid the difference. Well, we got a kick out that. In the meantime, we were watching birds. We had some robins. Then you could kill robins, and we dressed them. And my daddy had four, five little small legs on the fireplace where we could hang them and roast them. And mother put a big old iron griddle to catch the drippings, and we'd watched those birds cook. And they just tasted so good. And we didn't have too many games. And what we lacked in the home, then, with most people was music. We didn't have much music. And when you heard some music, oh, you just fell for it.

David Dollar (03:37): Where did you hear your first music that you remember?

Marie Smith (03:37): At school.

David Dollar (03:43): At school? Did the teacher have you all singing some songs?

Marie Smith (03:44): Songs. And then we rehearsed the Christmas programs, Maypole dances, that was twice in a year, and Thanksgiving. Now, the Christmas lasted quite a while because we helped hung everything that went on that tree. We made these paper chains. And we would thread the popcorn, and we'd bring in sweet gumballs, and she would dip those in something. But those chains, we just made oodles of those out of colored paper. And that was part of the occupational therapy in the school. When you didn't have a class, well, that would give you something to do. So we'd look forward to Christmas and I can just smell those apples now. I've never smelled the apples that smelled as good when we got them then. They were shipped in. You didn't have the apples, but once a year.

David Dollar (04:41): Oh, really?

Marie Smith (04:42): And that was Christmas?

David Dollar (04:42): Where'd they come from?

Marie Smith (04:44): Well, I don't know. I guess we got them from New Orleans, and fruit was shipped in just about once a year.

David Dollar (04:51): That was a big occasions when it got here, I bet.

Marie Smith (04:58): Ooh, apples and oranges in your stocking. Because we bought candy, and lots of times you could get a candy, but... And raisins, raisins were in a big wooden box, loose raisins. They were dried, and they were delicious. So that went into our Christmas stocking too. But we had a good time. We were never idle, and we would make... Now, the boys would make the traps to catch these birds, deadfall. We'd put them out, and we'd go out there and catch them, and they weren't dead. They were alive. And, in the spring of the year, we played tops and marbles. And they fixed the tops and they-

David Dollar (05:43): Your brothers made their own tops?

Marie Smith (05:45): No, you bought the tops, but that little thing it spin on, it wasn't very sharp. So they'd go and get a nail and sharpen it on this old wheel that we'd sharpen axes on and things and made it real sharp.

David Dollar (06:05): A grindstone or something.

Marie Smith (06:05): That's right. And when they spinned my top, I'm telling you now, I would really move, but we got another one.

David Dollar (06:15): So I tell you what. I want to hear about the tops and about the food and school and all that, in just a minute. We need to take a short commercial break. So let me interrupt you, and we'll pick right back up here. You're making me hungry. We'll be right back after this message from People's Bank, our sponsor. (06:34): Hello. Once again, in case you're just joining us, this is David Dollar visiting this morning on Memories with Ms. Marie Smith. She's got me right in the middle of a story about tops and baby chicks and some of the best fruit you ever had. And some of the things that kids were involved in when she was growing up, don't let me interrupt you again. Go right ahead. Let's start talking about the tops again and school.

Marie Smith (06:57): Well, that was our outdoor activities because there wasn't no place to play in the house. And you certainly didn't run through the house. There wasn't that much room to run through because... And you weren't sent to a room with a TV to look at. So that kind of punishment we didn't get, but we had swings. We had a lot of shade trees. And we would swing in those swings sometimes until nine o'clock at night, until our mother or father told us we had to come in and go to bed. Well, we had about three swings out there, and we would swing on those and play, and play hide and go seek.

David Dollar (07:31): Let me ask you this. While you're talking, you mentioned the types of punishment that you didn't get. What happens if one of the kids kind of stepped out of line? What sort of things did your parents do to you as punishment?

Marie Smith (07:44): Well, I don't remember many, any of us getting too many whippings.

David Dollar (07:49): Oh really? That was really severe then.

Marie Smith (07:49): Yes.

David Dollar (07:49): You really had to do something bad.

Marie Smith (07:51): The last one we got, I remember, was we were romping in the house and our father told us to quit, and we didn't quit when he said. And he gave us a whipping for that. That was the last whipping that I remember [inaudible 00:08:06]-

David Dollar (08:05): And probably the last time you romped in the house too.

Marie Smith (08:07): Yes. Well, we had to mind. It was too many of us, and they had to have some system. Now, my mother said the older children, see 13 of them, and I come along around eleven-

David Dollar (08:19): There were 13 children in your family?

Marie Smith (08:20): Yes.

David Dollar (08:21): My goodness.

Marie Smith (08:22): So some of the older ones were gone. And my brother used to say that he never saw a star unless he woke up and looked out the window. Because mama had them all in the bed by six o'clock.

David Dollar (08:34): My goodness.

Marie Smith (08:35): So you had to have routine, and children had to mind. My father used to say that we weren't as good as the first ones because he got tired of worrying with us.

David Dollar (08:47): I bet that is really true. [crosstalk 00:08:49]

Marie Smith (08:49): But we had a good home. We enjoyed our parents, and we did things that we thought they wanted us to do. Now, once a year, my father took us to see our grandmother, lived on the other side of Carencro. The little houses are still there. And we had to cross on the ferry. That was like going to Europe, as far as we were concerned.

David Dollar (08:49): I'd bet it was, kind of scary.

Marie Smith (09:13): The red river was bank to bank then. And when we got to the river, they put their wagon and team on the ferry boat. We all got out in case some animal would get unruly or something. And crossing that river, ooh, those big waves. And we spent about two or three days with our grandmother. And then ,once a year, she came to see us. That's all we saw of grandmas. And, to me, she was almost a stranger. I respected her, but I don't know as-

David Dollar (09:48): You didn't know who she was.

Marie Smith (09:53): ... who she was. And I feared her, in a way, because when she came to see us, we had to all be on our best behavior. I don't know, but boy, I wasn't glad when she's gone.

David Dollar (10:01): I bet so. Well, I tell you what that was... you have really brought back a lot of memories for me, even, same sorts of things, playing with brothers and sisters and sort of standing back in awe and, like you said, very much respect to grandparents.

Marie Smith (10:18): Oh, yes. We even respected the old negros on the place. We really had a respect for old age. And we weren't allowed to talk ugly to them or anything.

David Dollar (10:27): Let me take this and turn what we're talking about right now. We had talked a little bit about... We like to try to end our program with a closing memory. What do you think about that today in terms of tying what we've talked about today in our show. Do you think the children that are growing up today have got the same sort of respect for not only age but position, like grandparents, maybe age in general? What do you think about that?

Marie Smith (10:27): I don't think so-

David Dollar (10:55): And where have we gotten away from this practice?

Marie Smith (10:57): I have a lot of grandchildren, and I have 29 great grandchildren. And I kind of pal with my grandchildren. I played with them and played cards and things. And we argue, but they love me. They weren't afraid of me, and I didn't want them to be.

David Dollar (11:15): Do you think it's that, by all the newfangled things, we've got transportation and telephones and all that, you are much closer to them than you-

Marie Smith (11:15): I am closer.

David Dollar (11:26): You see them more often.

Marie Smith (11:28): And you weren't allowed to talk when there was company. You had to be quiet. And I always said, if I got old enough we could talk, I was going to do my share.

David Dollar (11:38): Well, I tell you what we're mighty glad you joined with us today, sharing with us on this Memories program, Ms. Smith. We're glad to have you. If you keep making tapes like this, I'm sure we'll have you back on this-

Marie Smith (11:38): Oh, I can tell you about more.

David Dollar (11:55): I bet so. We thank you for joining with us today. If any of you-

Marie Smith (11:58): Well, I enjoyed it.

David Dollar speaks with Marie Smith about growing up in Natchitoches, and her school-year memories.

Tags: podcast, oral history, school, christmas traditions

December 11, 2025

48. George Kirkland

Transcript

Transcript

David Dollar: Good morning. I'm David Dollar and we're glad you're joining us on Memories. We're visiting down Cane River this morning with Mr. George Kirkland, and we'll be back to start our program in just a second, right after this message from our sponsor, People's Bank and Trust Company. Hello. In case you're just joining us, this is David Dollar on Memories, visiting down Cane River again with Mr. George Kirkland. Mr. Kirkland, why don't we start things off by you just giving us a little background about yourself, some family history and things like that.

George Kirkland: I was born September the 19th, 1903, down Cane River, Melrose, Louisiana. And I first went to school one day in our own yard. Then after that I went to school, that same school house, old school house, with a lady by the name of Juanita Dupree.

David Dollar: How old were you when you started school?

George Kirkland: I imagine I was about nine years old.

David Dollar: What did you do before then? I know we were talking earlier, you mentioned that y'all didn't go to school quite as young when you were growing up, as most of the kids do now, like at age what? About five or six, they begin at kindergarten or school. What were you doing around the house right before you started school?

George Kirkland: Well, I was helping with the crop and...

David Dollar: So your dad was farming?

George Kirkland: Yeah, my daddy was farming and I'd help him on the farm until we got a certain age.

David Dollar: Okay. Right. All right, tell me this, how did it come about that you got to go to school in your own yard that you were talking about?

George Kirkland: Well, my daddy built that school house with some of the neighbor people. John Ian-

David Dollar: Just got your own school together?

George Kirkland: ... And built that school house.

David Dollar: And who was the teacher.

George Kirkland: [inaudible 00:02:06] private.

David Dollar: Who was the teacher?

George Kirkland: Juanita Dupree taught school in there. And I went to school I believe one time and then one year, I'd say. And then after that I started school at St. Augustine, 2 miles-

David Dollar: You mentioned, I think, that your dad and the neighbors again had a little trouble with the private school that they started. What was the hassle?

George Kirkland: Yes. The first day they started school, the teacher from New Orleans, they wanted a public school and it had to be 24 miles from Natchitoches and it wasn't.

David Dollar: That was just the law, huh?

George Kirkland: Yeah. That was the law.

David Dollar: Natchitoches had a school and they didn't want any competition around out here.

George Kirkland: That's right. It was the law-

David Dollar: And so-

George Kirkland: ... That it had to be 24 miles.

David Dollar: Did somebody come and shut the school down?

George Kirkland: Yes.

David Dollar: Who would be in charge of that? I guess the sheriff, huh?

George Kirkland: Yes, I think so.

David Dollar: My goodness.

George Kirkland: Yeah.

David Dollar: So they didn't want you going to school?

George Kirkland: Well, they-

David Dollar: At least, not where you wanted to go to school.

George Kirkland: That's right, yeah. And they wasn't allowed to have that public school, you see? The state was going to pay for the school, but after that.

David Dollar: But you had to be outside a certain limit?

George Kirkland: Yes, 24 miles.

David Dollar: When we were talking about it first, it didn't register. There's so much talk about busing these days and busing is so bad. When you were growing up, they wanted to send you into Natchitoches. They didn't want you to have a school here by your own house. They were going to make you get into Natchitoches somehow and go to school. Seems like they've turned the tables just a little bit.

George Kirkland: Well, you see, at that time, we all had to get to the Catholic school up here at the church house, St. Augustine Church. See, we was too small. Now, when I started school up here, my daddy had to build a boat.

David Dollar: Had to build a boat?

George Kirkland: For me to cross the river. He had to cross me and put me on this side of the river. See, I live on the other side of the river.

David Dollar: I take it there wasn't a bridge down here then?

George Kirkland: No, there wasn't no bridge. See, he built a boat, a little boat, for me to across the river. And then I walked from down there, which is about two miles to the school house.

David Dollar: To the school.

George Kirkland: Yeah.

David Dollar: Take a boat across there in the morning.

George Kirkland: We had to take our own lunch, you know? I had a little bucket, see. And-

David Dollar: I guess that could be pretty rough on cold, wet days. You have to paddle a boat across Cane River and then walk down there to the school house.

George Kirkland: My daddy bought me a raincoat and a rain hat and boots.

David Dollar: My goodness, you were all decked out, huh?

George Kirkland: Yeah, and we had to bring our own lunch, you see. Whatever we had, which that wasn't much.

David Dollar: But all the children were probably in just about the same shape. Everybody had to bring their lunch.

George Kirkland: Or a little bit worse, yeah. Yeah, some were all ...

David Dollar: Let me interrupt you just a second. We're going to take a short commercial and we'll be back and talk a little bit more in just a second. We'll be right back with Mr. Kirkland right after this message from our sponsor, People's Bank and Trust Company. Okay. Mr. Kirkland. David Dollar, visiting again down Cane River with Mr. George Kirkland. In case you've just joined us, we were talking about growing up down here on a farm on Cane River. Let's skip a few years and talk about some other work that you did. You said you had worked doing some chores around the farm, picking cotton and such, and as well as working in a store around-

George Kirkland: Yeah.

David Dollar: Why don't we talk about some of the things. Economics is big on everybody's mind now, why don't we talk about some of the things you mentioned that you carried in your store there and what they cost when you were working in the store there.

George Kirkland: Well, at one time I was waiting in the store, they were selling meat, dry salt meat for 3 cents a pound.

David Dollar: I can't believe that.

George Kirkland: And we was buying pecans for 3 cents, three and a half cents.

David Dollar: My goodness. And bologna costs about $2 a pound today. Think about it.

George Kirkland: And we picked pecans. We had a lot of pecans grow and we picked on the end of week, on a Saturday, we would haul the pecans down to the store and about maybe 2 or 3000 pounds of pecans, three and a half cents a pound.

David Dollar: You picked that many pecans?

George Kirkland: Yes. My brother, the family.

David Dollar: The whole family get together. I can understand that, but boy, that's a lot.

George Kirkland: And we'd get together and [inaudible 00:07:29] Severan, he would haul the pecans one Saturday and we would haul them one Saturday.

David Dollar: Taking turns.

George Kirkland: Yeah, taking turns.

David Dollar: How did you get them to town?

George Kirkland: We hauled them down to the store, to Nate's store, to the corner store, right below, about a quarter of a mile below where we lived. We didn't haul them to town.

David Dollar: Okay. So all the transactions took place down there at the store, huh?

George Kirkland: And he, in turn, he would haul them to Derry to the station, load them on boxcars. We had to haul all those pecans. We'd load 13 carloads-

David Dollar: Of pecans?

George Kirkland: One seat.

David Dollar: My goodness. I can't imagine. 13 boxcar loads of pecans.

George Kirkland: Yes.

David Dollar: That's a bunch.

George Kirkland: Yeah. By hand too. Load them on a truck.

David Dollar: Oh my goodness.

George Kirkland: Yeah.

David Dollar: That sounds like some sore fingers to me-

George Kirkland: So we had-

David Dollar: And tired backs.

George Kirkland: And we had sugarcane. We growed sugarcanes for the year and we'd pick pecan, and we stripped cane, sugarcane, cut them down, haul them to mill. We had our own mill, and we had our own furnace, and my brother used to cook the syrup and we'd make about 4 or 500 gallons of syrup. We'd sell the syrup. I used to haul syrup to Derry Sawmill and sell it. And vegetables.

David Dollar: So the family wasn't involved just in cotton, one thing?

George Kirkland: No.

David Dollar: They just had to do a little bit of everything all year round.

George Kirkland: Yeah.

David Dollar: Different seasons brought you different kinds of work.

George Kirkland: Yes, that's right. Yeah.

David Dollar: Tell me, before we run out of time, about one time that your dad caught you doing something you shouldn't have been doing. I got a kick out of this.

George Kirkland: Well, I was in the kitchen with my mother and I was smoking a cigarette and I heard my daddy coming, so I threw the cigarette out the window. And when he got to the door and I saw the motion he made, I know he was going to get a hold of me. And I jumped through the window and my mother got after him [inaudible 00:09:55] and said he oughtn't to do that because he could have caused me to break my arm on my leg, see? And that's the...

David Dollar: They got it on the package today that smoking can be hazardous to your health, but so can jumping out of windows if your daddy's after you.

George Kirkland: Yeah, I guess so.

David Dollar: We like to try to close the programs on Memories with what we call our closing memory. Why don't you share with us what your mom and dad told you about, about going to school and...

George Kirkland: Well, Mama, I had to get up early in the wintertime especially, to walk that about two miles across the river, you see. And Mama used to get up and fix my lunch and she'd fix well, whatever we had. I used to carry a lot of syrup to school, put the syrup in a bottle, see? And it served like, I say, a whiskey, put it in my back pocket.

David Dollar: You played like it was whiskey?

George Kirkland: Yeah. Yeah. And...

David Dollar: What did they tell you about going to school and church or something? Didn't they say that...

George Kirkland: Yes. My daddy told me for whatever I do, to learn arithmetic. He'd say, "When you know how to figure, you can keep people from beating you."

David Dollar: I guess you can. I guess you can.

George Kirkland: And my mother used to dress me up on Sunday morning. I dressed myself, but she'd see that my face and everything was all right-

David Dollar: Everything just right-

George Kirkland: ... And clean. Yeah, just right.

David Dollar: Just like mothers always do.

George Kirkland: Yeah, that's right. And so, I'd leave and she'd say, "Be careful when you cross that river." And my brother, the oldest brother, they would put me across the river and they would go to church too and see, we'd be a bunch going to church and a Sunday evening we went to Catechism. And Sunday evening we went to Catechism to perform.

David Dollar: Let me ask you this, just as one who used to be a little boy to another who used to be a little boy, did you ever try to get out of going to church and school? Did you ever try to play sick or something? Didn't your folks have a remedy for that though?

George Kirkland: Yes. I used to play sick and wouldn't want to go to school, but my daddy would give me some medicine.

David Dollar: What kind of medicine would he give you?

George Kirkland: Castor oil.

David Dollar: Castor oil? And so you stayed well all the time.

George Kirkland: I stayed well, pretty much all the time.

David Dollar: Because you didn't want to take it.

George Kirkland: I didn't want to take that castor oil.

David Dollar: Well, Mr. Kirkland, we thank you for having us in your home today. We appreciate you sharing these memories with us. If any of you folks at home have any memories you'd like to share, we would like for you to share them with us. We'd like for you to get in touch with the Retired Senior Volunteer Program office. Their number is 352-8647. The telephone is ringing and if you hear any other noises in the background, like a little crackling, we're in front of a nice warm fire down here and it's raining and cold outside. We are able to come in your house now. But right now, it's warm and nice and everything's fine. We thank you for joining us on Memories today down Cane River with Mr. George Kirkland. Y'all have a nice day.

David Dollar interviews George Kirkland about taking a boat to school, working in a store, shelling pecans, growing sugarcane and cotton, jumping through windows, and avoiding castor oil.

Tags: podcast, oral history, pecans, school

November 27, 2025

47. Fanner Rochelle

Transcript

Transcript

Hubert Laster: This morning on the Memories program we're going to be visiting with Mr. Fanner Rochelle. We'll be back in just a moment after a word from our sponsors. Bon matin, that's "Good morning." This morning we're going to be visiting with Mr. Fanner Rochelle. Well, tell me about when you were born and how you were raised.

Fanner Rochelle: Well, it was October the 4th, that was my birthday. The year was '80 or '81.

Hubert Laster: Well you go back a ways then, don't you? How was it like? What was it like when you were growing up as a boy?

Fanner Rochelle: Oh, planted pecan trees, lots of pecan trees. Lots of good crop, cotton and corn. And people wouldn't hardly never go to get a doctor, and bring [inaudible 00:01:12] people. They would make the medicine over at home themself. Take an ax and a sack and go along the hill and pick a little root, little stuff, and come and boil and put that in jar. Strain it good, put that in jar, for medicine.

Hubert Laster: What kind of root? Do you know how to make that medicine?

Fanner Rochelle: Well, my father used to. Plus me, I never was close to that, that I can tell you how was it start to make it. But my daddy could make it. He died young. Him died 62. 62 or 63, my daddy.

Hubert Laster: Now, y'all planted pecan trees, raised cotton, corn. Where were you brought up at, in Akedish Parish?

Fanner Rochelle: Uh-huh. Mr. Alphonse Prudem's plantation [inaudible 00:02:22]. There by Mr. Alcanon Eugene, on that bayou there, about a mile and a quarter, over on the right-hand side though.

Hubert Laster: So y'all worked for him?

Fanner Rochelle: We worked for ourselves, but we was given rents.

Hubert Laster: I see. Now, Mr. Prudem owned the land, and you rented from him?

Fanner Rochelle: Uh-huh.

Hubert Laster: So how much did you give Mr. Prudem of the crop?

Fanner Rochelle: Of the crop?

Hubert Laster: How much did you keep out of every bushel?

Fanner Rochelle: Oh, like corn and cotton?

Hubert Laster: Mm-hmm.

Fanner Rochelle: Every [inaudible 00:03:08] of corn, he got one, I got three. Every full bale of cotton, I got three, and there's one of them go to him.

Hubert Laster: I see.

Fanner Rochelle: That was, what you call it, a fort.

Hubert Laster: The fort? Share-cropping?

Fanner Rochelle: Yeah.

Hubert Laster: I never heard it called the fort before.

Fanner Rochelle: No sir? No?

Hubert Laster: No. Never have heard that before.

Fanner Rochelle: All my life.

Hubert Laster: And you lived out on the bayou.

Fanner Rochelle: Oh, yeah, I was living at Montrol by 23 years, right on Paul Johnson's place. Sometime we were sending rent from the company. Sometime we was giving, let's say $50, sending rent this year. Some year, it was $70. Some year, it might have been maybe $80. Some year, it's come pretty close to 100, $80, but come [inaudible 00:04:20] pretty close to 100 after a while.

Hubert Laster: I see. Now, when'd you quit sharecropping? How long ago?

Fanner Rochelle: 45.

Hubert Laster: 45 years? What'd you do after that, after you quit sharecropping?

Fanner Rochelle: Mama got on, a little bit on relief and I got a little bit on relief. And I had to [inaudible 00:04:57], if it wouldn't hurt me if I would get a little job, like to go cut some weeds for a living, for a man and pick it up, take it out the way for him. I'll go work on a little crib, on a little ranch home, on a little fence, piece of fence like that. She say, "No, go ahead." And I got that chance to make that little bit too. And I was on the relief and mama was on the relief, you see.

Hubert Laster: Okay. Now, you were talking about working in a sawmill, you used to do that.

Fanner Rochelle: And no money to it, no money to it. There was no money. I'd truck along by, me and my daddy, from 6:00 to 6:00, maybe for less than $1.40.

Hubert Laster: $1.40 what? A board foot or what?

Fanner Rochelle: A day.

Hubert Laster: A deal?

Fanner Rochelle: Chucking lumber from the mill. They wouldn't pay nothing in them time.

Hubert Laster: $1.40, what is it, a load or a day?

Fanner Rochelle: No, a day.

Hubert Laster: Oh, a day.

Fanner Rochelle: A day. They wouldn't hardly pay us nothing.

Hubert Laster: How many hours a day did you work?

Fanner Rochelle: About, let's see, from 6:00 to 6:00.

Hubert Laster: Five days a week?

Fanner Rochelle: Uh-uh. Oh, yeah, about five and a half.

Hubert Laster: Five and a half days a week.

Fanner Rochelle: Days a week. It was poor, poorly. And I had to buy my [inaudible 00:06:53], buy my soda, buy my salt, buy me a little piece of meat, buy my sugar, buy my coffee, buy my lard.

Hubert Laster: We need to take a break right now and we'll be back in just a moment. If you've just joined us, we're visiting with Mr. Fanner Rochelle, and right now, did you ever get married?

Fanner Rochelle: No, sir, raise my right hand to God. I never have got married.

Hubert Laster: Never have gotten married.

Fanner Rochelle: Uh-uh.

Hubert Laster: Why?

Fanner Rochelle: Well, I say, maybe I get married, it'd be a hard feeling between me and her, and I say, "I'm not going to do that." I don't want to have a hard feeling against you and you don't want to have no hard feeling against me to hurt me. I say, "I'm not going to marry."

Hubert Laster: So, you never did?

Fanner Rochelle: No.

Hubert Laster: Well, being an old confirmed bachelor then, I bet you have a lot of recipes in your head. Weren't you telling me something about blackbird gumbo?

Fanner Rochelle: Blackbird gumbo.

Hubert Laster: Blackbird gumbo. How do you make blackbird gumbo?

Fanner Rochelle: Well, after you've got them all cleaned and gut up and all clean, I kind of scotched them on the wire. I washed them good, good, good. Let them dry a little bit. Put a little lard in it, just so that it wouldn't burn. Let them sit with a little flour bread, flour bread. Till it gets kind of roast a little bit. Then I get me some water, about a half boil, I put it in there. Not no cold water. Water half boiled, in there, and let them boil till 12:00.

Hubert Laster: Now, what time did you start?

Fanner Rochelle: In the morning.

Hubert Laster: Okay. You let them boil till 12:00. All right, I've got all this. Now, keep going.

Fanner Rochelle: Then I have to have my good gumbo to make my filé, filé gumbo. It all worked in bottle, put in bottle from the hill. We do that and dry up to the [inaudible 00:09:35] them leaf and grind them up. We chop them down good, good, and fine, and put them in a bottle.

Hubert Laster: What kind of leaves?

Fanner Rochelle: Gumbo.

Hubert Laster: Gumbo leaves?

Fanner Rochelle: Gumbo leaves. You get them off of trees. Let's see. [foreign language 00:09:56] is a...

Hubert Laster: Little gumbo and big gumbo.

Fanner Rochelle: You got to dig to pick the little gumbo and you got to dig to pick the big gumbo, the large gumbo.

Hubert Laster: So, making a filé gumbo, and we got the blackbirds cooked, so what happens now?

Fanner Rochelle: Now, I cook me some rice and I cook me some sweet potato, bake some sweet potato, and make me some cornbread, and sit down at 12:00 and dig it out.

Hubert Laster: And that's how you cook it, huh? Okay, good enough. What is the best way to cook deer, bake it? How do you bake it?

Fanner Rochelle: Just cook it a long time in the stove.

Hubert Laster: That's after you butcher it.

Fanner Rochelle: Yeah.

Hubert Laster: For a minute there, I thought you were talking about you were going to cook the whole deer.

Fanner Rochelle: No.

Hubert Laster: How did you preserve your meat? You couldn't eat a whole deer by yourself, so how did-

Fanner Rochelle: Oh, we'd freeze them. Yeah, we bought a whole deer, me and my boss man. I don't know how much we had to pay.

Hubert Laster: But pork is your favorite.

Fanner Rochelle: Oh, yeah.

Hubert Laster: What's your favorite way to cook pork?

Fanner Rochelle: Roast.

Hubert Laster: Roast it?

Fanner Rochelle: Yes.

Hubert Laster: Over an open fire?

Fanner Rochelle: Yes. Kind of slow.

Hubert Laster: Hickory smoke?

Fanner Rochelle: No, on the stove, just slow. Slow cooked though.

Hubert Laster: Slow cook on the stove.

Fanner Rochelle: Slow cook on the stove.

Hubert Laster: Well, we've enjoyed visiting with you, but it's time to go, so I'll see you some other time, okay?

Fanner Rochelle: Uh-huh.

Hubert Laster: 352-8647 is the number to call if you have memories to share for us. That is a retired seniors volunteer program. This is Hubert Laster and Mr. Fanner Rochelle wishing you all a very pleasant good day.

Hubert Laster interviews Fanner Rochelle about growing up in Natchitoches, sharecropping, working in a sawmill, and his recipe for Blackbird Gumbo.

Tags: podcast, oral history interview, natchitoches, sharecropping, sawmill, gumbo

October 30, 2025

46. Freeborn Holland pt. 2

Transcript

Transcript

Hubert Laster: Good morning. This morning on the Memories program, we're going to have a follow-up visit with Mr. Freeborn Holland.

Freeborn Holland: Freeborn.

Hubert Laster: Freeborn Holland. We'll be back in just a moment. If you listened to the program last time, Mr. Freeborn Holland was recalling his World War I experiences. This morning, he's going to talk about hard times and growing up in Dry Creek, and it should be very interesting.

Freeborn Holland: Well, I was about six years old when my daddy moved off of Dry Creek up here in the South Mill Community. He bought 120 acres of land and traded the 40 acres that he had there on that land and raised cotton, five cents a pound, some of it sometimes three, to finish paying that place. But it didn't cost all that much like one would now. But, anyhow. He lived and raised cotton and a living on the farm and paid for that place, 120 acres. And I'm living on 40 acres of it at the time now.

But, anyhow. After we moved there, I had a hard time. All of us did. But we had plenty to eat, and we had a good time. We could play, play ball, swim, play bass, and ever such as that. [inaudible 00:01:56] all the playing we had back there then. We could dance, old country dancing, such as that. And we went on, and we had so long a time. Then one of my brothers got oxen up and broke them. My daddy would sell them to the railroad to haul logs with. And sometimes sell cattle to the cattle buyer who'd still come through once in a while. And cattle sold, as a general rule, for six and seven dollars a head at auction after they was broke. Best ones I [inaudible 00:02:51] to the railroad, got $14 a piece for them.

Hubert Laster: That was a good price?

Freeborn Holland: Oh, yeah. At that time. But I sure did hate to see them go, because me and my brother could ride them. We could set up on them sideways and go anywheres in the woods and haul out whatever we wanted to, whatever they could pull. And we didn't have to keep ropes on them. They drove good. We could drive that wagon thick through trees where the thimbles would sack the trees a little, go right along.

Hubert Laster: Now, how long did it take to train an oxen?

Freeborn Holland: Well, not too long. But we didn't try to train them the way the old nigger, Luce Mills, they called him, trained them. He didn't handle them like we did. We put the yolks on them and tied the tails together so they couldn't turn the yolk, put ropes on them, then went to working them. After a day or two, we had them minding us, doing what we wanted them to do. We fed them some with the yolk on. That old guy Luce Mills put the yolks on them and tied the tails together and turned them loose in his pasture a day or two. And whenever they'd get so aggravated with them yolks, they'd come up where they was put on them at. He'd feed them, feed them with a yolk on. And then after a day or two, he'd go working them. Wouldn't take him but a few days. They'd be broke.

Well, it went on, and just before I come grown, I told my daddy that I's going to hang on with him ‘til I was 21 years old and then I's going and getting me a job, and if I could make enough, I'd still help him. But I wanted to buy me a place and settle down and make my own living and he agreed. And we went that year to Robeline and sold two bales of cotton, and he finished paying his debt, what he owed them, and he had $5 left, and he forced me to take it, had never had nothing to give me. And I says I didn't want to. I wanted him to keep it for the others. But I took it. He told me to go buy me some better clothes than what I had. And I went down there to a store, dry goods store, and bought me a nice pair of pants and a coat and a pair of shoes and a hat, and I had six bits left out of that $5. Now, that's truth. [inaudible 00:05:58].

Hubert Laster: I believe you.

Freeborn Holland: And I want to know what it'd cost him now. If you go and buy clothes like that now, would you pay $150 or $200 for them. Which would it be?

Hubert Laster: It depends on what the quality of the merchandise is.

Freeborn Holland: But then, it wasn't a suit. Just the same color. But they was tailor-made clothes. It was a nice pair of pants and a nice coat.

Hubert Laster: Tailor-made?

Freeborn Holland: Yeah. But separate colors. The pants was a blue striped, and the coat was a solid blue.

Hubert Laster: I would imagine, for a tailor-made suit, a minimum of about $200.

Freeborn Holland: Yeah. Well, anyhow. Well, I was about 13 years old now. He was buying stuff on credit to make the crop, and he's buying from Stille and Yarbrough in Robeline. And this is another thing I'll never forget. He had all the rest of them, the oldest ones, he had them in the field at work. Had a lot of grass and a lot of work to do. And he yoked up the oxen one morning before daylight and told me to take that order to Robeline and have Stille and Yarbrough to fill it. And I went up there in the ox wagon 18 miles from home and give them that order. And he put on that order a piece of bacon and didn't say how much, nothing about it. Just a piece of bacon. And Stille and Yarbrough took me in the war room, and they had a table about four-foot wide and about 10-foot long. And it was piled way up about three or four foot high with big old cured middlins and hams and shoulders.

And he went and got him a big old piece of wrap paper and pulled a big old thick middlin that was about around close to three-foot long and over two-foot wide, about five or six inches thick, had two streaks of lean in it. And he rolled that up in that big paper and told me, he says, "Boy, can you put that on the wagon?" And I told him, "I guess so." And he said, "Well, go put it on the wagon." I said, "You ain't going to weigh it?" He says, "I know just about what it weighs. That's all right." And I took it and put it on the wagon, and it was heavy. And whenever I went in, he charged 10 percent interest, but he put it on the bill right there. There wasn't anything added to it. When you got ready to pay it, that's what you paid. The 10 percent is added right there on the dollar. And whenever we got that bill and looked at it, that piece of bacon, that middlin to bacon cost him $1.65, 10 percent interest. Now, I'm going to-

Hubert Laster: We need to take a break right now, and we'll be back in just a moment.

If you've just joined us, we're visiting with Mr. Freeborn Holland this morning, and he's going to finish off the program this morning with the way it used to be in the woods. How many wild things were you able to eat?

Freeborn Holland: We was able to eat turkeys and deer, rabbits, coons and possums and squirrels. And there was a lot of turkeys. Of course, I was the middle. They eventually thinned them out of clearing up the land and coming in farming, different homesteading places and such as that, and cleaned them up, and they eventually killed the turkey. Then there wasn't hardly wasn't very many. But I can remember when I was big enough to go hunting, going with my oldest brother one morning. He knowed where there was a bunch of them roosting in a big old tree. And that was on the place we called Rye Creek, that we'd done moved away from there, that we went back over there before daylight and got in the bushes and hid under that old tree. And it was black with turkeys all over up there. And he just had a single-barrel shotgun, and he loaded and shot it there shooting them turkey three times, and that ground was just loaded around there with turkeys falling.

And of course, we had a good dog with us, but he had just broke the wings or crippled them some. He didn't get a one. The other one got away from us. And they got away from that dog.

Hubert Laster: What about the ... You used to tell me about pawpaws that used be in the woods.

Freeborn Holland: Pawpaws was more like a banana. They growed on big bushes, had big wide, pretty leaves, more like a sycamore leaf. Not exactly but more like that. They wasn't a straight, long leave. They was wide. And them things growed ‘til they got five and six and seven and eight inches long. They'd get full grown, then they'd ripen. They got ripe, they turned yellow. They looked like a banana and peeled like a banana, and in fact, they'd just eat like one. But they wasn't called a banana. They was a wild pawpaw. And we'd eat lots of them, and they was good. And then the blackberries in the country then, some of them was right around two inches long. Just as big and pretty as you ever looked at, especially in Round Bottoms. And mayhaws, the Bottoms had them all about. And chinquapins, there's just a whole lot of them all up and down the side of the hills. Even on our place.

Hubert Laster: Now, what is a chinquapin?

Freeborn Holland: It's a little thing that makes, and it's got a big kernel in it. You'd take the hull off of it, and it's a great big kernel in there about so big. Don't take but two or three of them to get peeled before you got a mouthful. And they're good. They turn red when they get ripe, so you'd eat them, then they got a hull over them, like a pecan sort of. That hull spreads out, berry's out then, and it sheds off. And of course, they eventually fall. Then we'd take that hull back and pick them off the tree a whole lot. I picked as much as a five-pound bucket full right over here on this place that was mine, right over here on the butt of that big hill under just a few trees there. A time or two, I was fine just to pick me a bucket full of them.

And now them things, now there was a hickory nut. It was called a scaly bark hickory nut. And I can remember going down here in the Bottoms whenever I was a boy where there were five big scaly bark hickory nut trees in the summertime, and took me a stick, sat down betwixt two big roots there, and raked them up close to me. And I could bust them with my teeth. Just sat there and eat me a bit of hickory nuts. That's the best kernels I ever eat, scaly bark hickory nut. And there's big hogs walking around there. They'd pick up one and bust it and eat it once in a while and go on. And they's fat.

Hubert Laster: Well, we've enjoyed visiting with you, but now we have to go. If you have memories that you would like to share with us, would you please call the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program? That number is 352-8647. This is Hubert Laster wishing all of you a very pleasant good day.

In a follow up interview by Hubert Laster, Freeborn Holland discusses growing up in Dry Creek, raising cattle, training oxen, hunting, and harvesting food in the woods.

Tags: oxen, farming, cattle, hunting, dry creek, ncptt, memories, podcast

October 16, 2025

45. Freeborn Holland pt. 1

Transcript

Transcript

Hubert Laster: Good morning. This morning on the Memories program, going to be visiting with Mr. Freeborn Holland. We'll be back in just a moment after a word from our sponsor.

Good morning. If you've just joined us, we're visiting with Mr. Freeborn Holland in Vowells Mill. And Mr. Holland was telling me about his early childhood.

Freeborn Holland: Well, I got my first pair of shoes which was bought for me new when I was going on 13 years old, I think, the best I remember. And they was Bogans. They buckled around my foot. The kind of shoes that stayed with you. You could wear them a year or two, when you wore shoes, and they'd still be good. They was made perfect and made out of the best.

And then, going on long about that time then that I got them shoes, I went to plowing. Following that, later on, me and one of my oldest brothers went to going to the woods, and we had spare time and getting us up some yearling. Made us yokes and bows. We went to working yearly [inaudible 00:01:41] train them.

Hubert Laster: What did you make the oxbow out of? How did you ... What did you make that out of?

Freeborn Holland: Made oxbows out of hickory, and sometimes the yokes out of hickory. But we made most of the yokes out of a soft timber of some kind so we could hew them out and smoothen them up good so it wouldn't skin up our oxen's necks. It's just that. Our daddy helped us making them and showed us how. We made yokes and bows and broke oxen. From then on up, ‘til I was grown, I was the only one of the boys that stayed with my daddy and worked with him until I was 21 years old. And I told him just before I come 21 years old, and I meant it, I had it in my heart to go and get me a job and make money and get me a place of my own and raise a family on a farm just like he did.

And I become 21 years old, but the next thing happened, that little red card come. I went to Vowells Mill and registered. In just a few days, I got that call, go Natchitoches and stand that examination. And the day that I stood that examination in Natchitoches, I stayed there. I didn't come back home. There was a lieutenant there to take charge of every one of them. And there was 660-some-odd men put on that train the next morning in Natchitoches to go to Arkansas, Camp Pike, Arkansas, to be trained.

And that we went on there. Now, there was about 30 of them men walked out. I knowed Bill Payne well, and he knows me. And Bill asked me would I go out there and talk to them fellers, if they might come back and not to go in that kind of trouble and be maybe shot up and such as that. And I told him, "I will not." And I told him, "If them fellers mean, [inaudible 00:04:10] they might kill me." They might shoot me up.

Hubert Laster: Now, they were trying to get away from going into the armed service.

Freeborn Holland: Yeah. They was deserting men that wasn't running too much. Just backed off from the examination, you see, and everything. About 30 of them, 30-some-odd. And I never did know what become of them. But he wasn't going, said he didn't want to hurt nobody, but he had to go, he said, because it was his job. And I talked to him a little. Then I's called right on in to put through that room. And there was six, I believe it was six doctors. You stood one kind of medical examination with one, and then next to him was another one, and then next to him was another one. And they just run us through there like that. And if there was ever one of them men turned down, I don't know nothing about it. Every one of them went right on through.

Hubert Laster: Everybody passed.

Freeborn Holland: Yeah. [inaudible 00:05:15]-

Hubert Laster: Now, when was this? This was before World War I?

Freeborn Holland: Yeah, that was 1917. Now this year, there was a few boys in there that actually looked like dead boys. You could tell in the way they got around and looked, that they actually wasn't fitting to go in the Army. But they went. Now, a man had to weigh 130 pounds to qualify, and I just did weigh it, barely 130.

Hubert Laster: Just barely.

Freeborn Holland: Yeah. We went from there to Arkansas, and when we got to Arkansas, they went to training us And I could take a whole lot but I couldn't ... I couldn't take a bad cussing off a man shoving me around without fighting a little. I just had it to do. So, we had a big old sergeant there. He was called Seaver. He was a trained boxer, too. Come there to train us. And we didn't step right off and toast all of his bread, you know green people and how they'd be back there, knowing nothing about the Army or nothing. So, that old dust was just a-flying. It was just an old dust field that we was training on. And I hadn't trained but I believe the second day, he come around and kind of caught me and jerked me around a little called me a bad name. I twisted my left hand up in his collar and shook my fist in his face and I told him, well, I'd die fighting.

Well within my rights.

Hubert Laster: We need to take a break right now.

Freeborn Holland: Now, I-

Hubert Laster: We'll be back in just a moment.

If you've just joined us, we're visiting with Mr. Freeborn Holland in Vowells Mill. And you had just got threw shaking your fist in the sergeant's face.

Freeborn Holland: Mm-hmm.

Hubert Laster: And then what happened?

Freeborn Holland: The lieutenant come up then and took charge of it, and he pushed him off and told him he had disobeyed the law, he'd jerked a soldier around too much, and he wasn't supposed to do that. And he pushed him off, told him to get in the shade and cool off. They was all drilling a while, and he drilled us a while. Then that evening, whenever we got off and went in, we was in the bathroom taking showers. He come in and apologized and asked me to forgive him. And I told him, okay, I'd forgive him. Then that night, they was running the gambling game. I didn't gamble, but I just as well to just to done what I did do.

Hubert Laster: What did you do?

Freeborn Holland: He hired me to watch for him to keep the officers from catching him while they gambled. And he paid me $5 for it. Way later over in the night, I seen the officer coming, and I told. And they got shed of the cards and hid them and all came down. And he come in and told them it was time to go to bed, crawl in. So, we all went to bed. But I got my $5, and I wasn't broke then. I could buy me a little something at the canteen. Well, then went all night drill. I reckon they drilled us there for right at going on two months, and the people, the boys commenced taking the measles and the flu and stuff like that. I was taking them out to the hospitals.

And there was a boy well acquainted with me that come out of Sabine Parish. His name was Chris Riles, and he was put in the hospital with the measles, and he had some kind of backset and went out of his head. He got crazy in there, and they let him get away from them. And he didn't know nobody at the camp but me. And he come back there to the guard mine, and the guard held him up. He was hunting me. That's what he had in his mind. And the lieutenant run up there and woke me up and told me there was a man down there that was crazy or something a-calling for me, and the guard was holding him at the line.

And he had on a hospital robe. Didn't have on no clothes, nothing but that. And I got up and put on my clothes and went down there. And they said, "You can't get close to him, now. We'll just let you get up close enough to identify him, because we believe he's a boy they put in the hospital with the measles or flu, one." I got up there about 10 foot of him, I reckon, and they throwed the light on him, and I told them who it was. And I got exposed to the measles there, right there. Of course, he just cried and took on, trying to get to me, get across to me. But they'd loaded on to him and took him on back to the hospital. And just two or three days, I don't know just how long, but not long after that, they was moving us from Camp Pike, Arkansas, to Camp Beauregard. A bunch of us went there, and a bunch went to some other camps away from there. Some boys I know went the other way. Well, when they lined us up to take us away from there, I guess I must've had the measles then. I felt like I had a little fever, but anything for me besides that dust bed I was in. I wanted to get away from there so bad, I didn't know what to do. And they come around seeing the lines of them up and seeing if they was all right, and I told them, "I'm all right." Well, I had the measles when I got on the train. And if I didn't get a little fresh air, just seemed like I was just going to die with them. And I stuck my head out at the window to get fresh air on the train, and it wasn't no time before I just passed plumb out. And they took a bunch of us in out of them cars and put us back in one to ourself and closed it up air tight. We couldn't get no air in there. That there car box was closed up tight. And I passed out. And whenever I come to again, I was a-setting up laying under a tent in Camp Beauregard in the middle of a drill field, just a-laying up under a tent out there in that open field. And they had come in and doctored me, and they took me to the base hospital. And I could remember there.

Then them measles settled in my eardrums, and my eardrums busted and got to running. And they'd lanced each one of my eardrums seven times apiece, old Dr. Jackson. And, of course, got them spocked.

Hubert Laster: Well, did it get you out of the Army?

Freeborn Holland: Uh-uh.

Hubert Laster: Oh, that didn't get you out?

Freeborn Holland: Uh-uh.

Hubert Laster: Well, Mr. Holland, we've enjoyed visiting with you today. I'd like to make a follow-up tape with you, because I know you have a lot of memories to share with us. If you have memories that you also would like to share to our listeners, would you please call the Retired Citizens Volunteer Program? That number is 352-8647. This is Hubert Laster wishing you all a very pleasant good day.

Hubert Laster interviews Freeborn Holland about his first pair of shoes, farming, registering for the army, threatening his drill Sergeant, and his experiences at bootcamp.

Tags: shoes, farming, army, bootcamp, camp beauregard, ncptt, memories, podcast

November 13, 2025

44. Lucita Tyler

Transcript

Transcript

Jim Colley (00:00): This is Jim Colley, and we're talking on memories with Mrs. Tyler. We were talking just a minute ago about where you grew up? Where did you grow up?

Mrs. Tyler (00:10): On James William's plantation ... on Junior Williams'. James is his daddy. That's where I growed up at.

Jim Colley (00:15): Where was that?

Mrs. Tyler (00:18): That was down, right down on Red River. Between Red River and Little River.

Jim Colley (00:20): Were you around the town down there, anywhere?

Mrs. Tyler (00:24): Oh man, weren't no town down there. Nothing down there but woods. You had nothing to do but to farm, raise hogs, chickens, and things like that, and work. Cotton.

Jim Colley (00:34): You worked just about everything down there?

Mrs. Tyler (00:37): I done everything. I cut rail, I ride pickets. I got out boards to cover houses. I cut cordwood, to carry to the gin to gin cotton. (00:47): It was James Williams' daddy's gin. I would haul wood there and would gin my cotton. And it didn't have no such thing as [inaudible 00:00:58] to get it off the wagon. You put it in a basket and toted it up there.

Jim Colley (01:02): You did the whole thing yourself, from the beginning to the end?

Mrs. Tyler (01:05): I had help. My father helped me. (01:08): You see, after all the boys got grown and left, it just left two girls there ... and my daddy. And he was old. We had to take the place of it.

Jim Colley (01:16): Girls very often had to take the place of boys when they weren't any boys around.

Mrs. Tyler (01:19): When they grown up, sure did. That's right. And I had to split the rails, and build hogs lots, for the [inaudible 00:01:27], to keep my cows, and things in.

Jim Colley (01:30): So you lived down there, how long?

Mrs. Tyler (01:33): Oh man, from a year old. (01:34): Because when I moved on that place, they say I was one year old. You know, I can't tell nothing about that. I'm going by what my daddy said. (01:40): And when they moved off, I was 22. I never will forget that.

Jim Colley (01:45): What happened at 22, when you moved off?

Mrs. Tyler (01:48): Well, my daddy died, and after he died, then I moved with another man on the Hertzog farm.

Jim Colley (01:55): And you did the same kind of work there?

Mrs. Tyler (01:57): Well, I didn't have to get out on those boards, or ride pickets there, but I had to plow, hoe, and pick cotton, cut hay.

Jim Colley (02:06): You're going to have to tell me what ride pickets are.

Mrs. Tyler (02:06): Pickets?

Jim Colley (02:06): Uh-huh (affirmative).

Mrs. Tyler (02:06): You don't know what riding a picket is?

Jim Colley (02:06): I'm sorry.

Mrs. Tyler (02:09): [inaudible 00:02:09]. A picket's what you put around the yard and make a yard fence.

Jim Colley (02:18): And you cut those from ...

Mrs. Tyler (02:20): You have a [inaudible 00:02:23], and you cut that out and you [inaudible 00:02:24], that way. And we call it to peel pickets. Boards the same way. (02:31): Almost like splitting rails just that the rails be laying down.

Jim Colley (02:31): So, it's the same kind of thing?

Mrs. Tyler (02:31): Same kind of thing.

Jim Colley (02:31): Just a different kind of structure?

Mrs. Tyler (02:31): Just a different kind of structure.

Jim Colley (02:40): So, you lived on the Hertzog farm for awhile?

Mrs. Tyler (02:42): Yes, I lived there for awhile.

Jim Colley (02:44): What do you remember most about that?

Mrs. Tyler (02:45): Hertzog farm? It wasn't nothing but just work there because he didn't have no kind of business going on. Plowing and hoe-ing, picking cotton, picking up pecans, and hunting acorns. I picked up acorns.

Jim Colley (03:03): Who'd you sell those to?

Mrs. Tyler (03:04): I picked them acorns up to sell, for to get me something to eat with. That's it.

Jim Colley (03:10): No selling them? You needed it to eat, didn't you?

Mrs. Tyler (03:12): That's right.

Jim Colley (03:14): What are your best memories about growing up?

Mrs. Tyler (03:17): Well, I'll tell you. You want the truth? My best memories growing up since I got old enough ... can quit the farm, come to town. That's my best memories. Because all the other parts was rough. (03:30): My mother died when I was quite young, And my father, I wasn't grown when he died. But I just had to hit it, the best I could.

Jim Colley (03:37): What'd you do when you came to town?

Mrs. Tyler (03:44): Went on to working for white folks. Washing, ironing, cleaning up, cooking. I just cooked until I burnt out. I cooked [inaudible 00:03:54]. (03:55): I worked over here on this lawn here for years. I cooked at the dining hall.

Jim Colley (04:00): You worked up at the college?

Mrs. Tyler (04:00): Yeah.

Jim Colley (04:01): And cooked in the dining hall?

Mrs. Tyler (04:05): In the dining hall. Then they took me from there and put me in that bigger [inaudible 00:04:07], and put me and tied me up in there by myself. (04:09): And they had all those cadets, and soldiers when they had them over here. And then highwater come, had all them people here. And I had to cook and feed all of them. (04:18): And then after I do that cooking, I had to stand there serve that feed out, every evening and morning, to them people.

Jim Colley (04:18): That was a bunch of work.

Mrs. Tyler (04:29): That was a bunch of work, for $5 a week.

Jim Colley (04:29): $5 a week?

Mrs. Tyler (04:29): That's right. They said $10.00. (04:34): Now, the reason I said $5 because we worked a month before we'd get $20.00. And now, you figure that out, what it was? Wasn't it five dollars a week?

Jim Colley (04:34): That's right.

Mrs. Tyler (04:42): That's right.

Jim Colley (04:43): Ms. Tyler, we'll be right back with you. We're going to take a break so our sponsors from People's Bank and Trust can have a word.

Mrs. Tyler (04:50): Okay.

Jim Colley (04:53): This is Jim Colley and we're visiting with Mrs. Tyler on The Memories Program. Ms. Tyler, when were you born?

Mrs. Tyler (04:59): I was born 18 and 65, July the fourth.

Jim Colley (05:05): July the fourth 1865?

Mrs. Tyler (05:06): That's right.

Jim Colley (05:07): That means you're 90 years old.

Mrs. Tyler (05:08): 90 years old.

Jim Colley (05:10): I bet you've seen a lot of changes in your life.

Mrs. Tyler (05:12): I certainly have. You ain't going to get mad with me for telling you about the changes, is you?

Jim Colley (05:16): No ma'am.

Mrs. Tyler (05:18): I certainly have seen a lot of changes.

Jim Colley (05:19): What are the kind of changes you've seen?

Mrs. Tyler (05:21): I've seen changes in both sides, with the colored and with the white. I have.

Jim Colley (05:21): What kind?

Mrs. Tyler (05:26): I've noticed since this here Civil Rights come on ... I guess that's what they call it ... well, it's a big change with these white folks. They treat you much better than they did when I come along.

Jim Colley (05:37): So, that's one of the big changes you noticed?

Mrs. Tyler (05:39): That's one of the big changes made. (05:40): You can work now and get something, a little something out of your work. You don't get to be no millionaire, but you do get something to go by. (05:49): Because I have picked cotton for 30 cents a hundred. And I've hoe-ed by the day for 40 cents, and had to go from sun to sun. (06:01): I guess you know what I mean by sun to sun? Had to be there when the sun rise, and stay there until it go down.

Jim Colley (06:06): So, you think that's probably the biggest improvement you've seen?

Mrs. Tyler (06:09): That is a big improvement because we can go to work now, at least I don't do no work ... but when the people go to work now, they can make eight hours a day and stop. We couldn't do that. We had to continue work. (06:23): I worked as much at night as I did in the day, to tell you the truth about it. Because I've pick a many hundred pound of cotton at night.

Jim Colley (06:31): You just had to keep going because you needed the money?

Mrs. Tyler (06:33): You needed the money. And then all the time you wasn't getting money, you just had to do it. That's it. You just had to do it. We had a rough time coming through this world, but God brought us through safe.

Jim Colley (06:45): So, you feel pretty positive about the way things are now?

Mrs. Tyler (06:48): Yes. I feel much better now than I have felt, sure I do. Because I have something to feel for. (06:55): You take today: I can work if I want, I can stop if I want, lay down and get up when I get ready. And I'm in my own home. Now, I guess you want to know how I got that home. I got that home by working. (07:09): You know this Coca-Cola plant that's down here? I worked at that Coca-Cola plant. I'd go to work at 3:00 in the evening. I worked until 6:00 in the morning. (07:18): And I'd go home and change clothes and go down on Cypress and work for a lady they called Miss [Sarfield 00:07:22]. Annabelle Sarfield. (07:22): Worked there until 11:00, and come back. And go on down yonder.

Jim Colley (07:30): So, you spend a life of hard work?

Mrs. Tyler (07:33): All I've ever did was hard work.

Jim Colley (07:35): Ms. Tyler, what kind of home remedies did you all have back?

Mrs. Tyler (07:39): Nothing. Just go out and get bitterweeds, and bark, and make tea, and drink it. And they had another tea, they called it horehound. Get that and drink it. (07:48): And no sugar, so you couldn't sweeten it.

Jim Colley (07:50): What was bitterweed for?

Mrs. Tyler (07:50): Fever.

Jim Colley (07:55): Fever. What was horehound for?

Mrs. Tyler (07:55): Cold.

Jim Colley (07:58): You mentioned something else. What are the other kind of home remedies you had?

Mrs. Tyler (08:02): Well, I didn't mention 'nar' nothing. I said horehound and bitterweed. That's what we had to use. And yes, we'd go out in the woods and cut sassafras roots, and make tea for to have something to drink.

Jim Colley (08:15): Do you like sassafras roots?

Mrs. Tyler (08:16): I like it right today.

Jim Colley (08:17): Do you still go out in the woods?

Mrs. Tyler (08:20): No. I don't go now because I know here in town where to go find it, but then you could find those plants. And then when we get it in, certain time of year, we'd go and cut the limbs and dry them. And dry it up and make our [inaudible 00:08:35].

Jim Colley (08:36): I bet you were a good cook.

Mrs. Tyler (08:37): Oh, I've been cooking all my life. I cook.

Jim Colley (08:39): You make your own filet. Huh?

Mrs. Tyler (08:41): Yes ... No, but I used to make it.

Jim Colley (08:43): What was your favorite recipe for filet gumbo?

Mrs. Tyler (08:46): Sassafras.

Jim Colley (08:47): You put sassafras in it?

Mrs. Tyler (08:47): Yeah.

Jim Colley (08:48): That thickens it up real good?

Mrs. Tyler (08:50): Yes. You put a little flour, and you just thickens. But it roasted off all right. (09:00): Some people make it out of okra, but I don't make it out of okra because it be too slimy ... but I've made it of okra.

Jim Colley (09:06): Ms. Tyler. We do appreciate you being with us on this issue of Memories. We're glad you're here and we enjoyed visiting with you. (09:15): About this time we usually try to present a public service announcement for people who are living in our community. Many of our older citizens have arthritis.

Mrs. Tyler (09:26): Well, I have it bad.

Jim Colley (09:29): And so you might be interested in some of this. The arthritis foundation has a whole bunch of printed materials that are free on request. And sometimes there's a chapter in major communities across the country that offers free services to victims of arthritis. (09:44): If you're interested in more information on arthritis, you can write the Arthritis Foundation, 1212 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York. The zip code is 10036. (09:59): We appreciate visiting with you, Ms. Tyler. And we appreciate People's Bank and Trust for making this time available to us and to the community.

Mrs. Tyler (09:59): Well, I appreciate being here.

Jim Colley (10:08): Well, thank you. Ma'am.

Mrs. Tyler (10:09): I do.

Jim Colley speaks with Lucita Tyler about working on plantations growing up, moving into town, cooking at the college, and all the changes she's over her 90 years.

Tags: plantation, cotton picking, cooking, northwestern state university, red river, ncptt, podcast, memories

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

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