Riverlogue

Wildlife and Windy Rain

2011-09-01T19:10:00.001-05:00

Once again there is something weather- related to note. I often wonder about the birds and other animals that find themselves exposed to weather events. We humans see rain coming and we find a way to acquire shelter if we can. I’m sure the birds do the same thing but whatever they find to hide under will not be complete protection most of the time. Of interest today is the fact that we pretty much always have some advance notice of impending seriously bad weather. Right now there is a system out in the Gulf of Mexico that is getting its act together for an assault on the Louisiana coast. Right now it doesn’t seem to be a big windy storm, but more of a smaller, rainy one. Really rainy, they say. Does the wildlife know this too? Adding a few things to the usual accounts of the unusual prestorm doings of ants, chickens, horses, etc, will not hurt the universe I believe. So here is what I see along the river today.

Sunset tonight

Sitting here at home on the Atchafalaya River and looking at the conditions in the back yard will bring thoughts of the kind of observation that might be possible due to the advance notice of bad weather. The observations in this case would be the kind that notices behavior in the animals normally doing what they do and the behaviors that might not be so normal. All this is purely speculative, of course, what the scientists call unreliable data. First of all, the birds. This is the easiest thing to note because the birds are so clearly visible. But what birds are they and what are they doing this afternoon? Down at the dock I see cattle egrets across the river. There are about 30 of them and they are all standing on the riverbank just kind of passing time. Once in a while there is a disagreement of some kind and a couple of them jump up in the air and then settle back down, standing calmly. I don’t recall ever seeing a big flock of cattle egrets doing this along the river. A few yes, but a flock, no. There doesn’t seem to be any feeding behavior either. They just stand there, looking around. I wonder, are they preparing for surviving wind and constant wetness for several days in a row? There is no escape except leaving the area, and is this what they are preparing to do? It’s as though they are using a group meeting, or a big committee, to make a decision. After about an hour, the whole flock took to the air and flew away low along the river. Oddly, they flew toward the east, which is where this storm will probably come from. Perhaps the committee needs a new chairman.

Some birds are more susceptible to the bad weather in that they probably cannot fly away from the places to be hit by the, mostly because they are either too small or just don’t fly long distances. I’m thinking of the resident species that just never leave home, such as the mockingbirds and some woodpeckers. Looking out at the back yard there is a different behavior going on among and between these species. The mockingbirds are chasing each other all over the place, and the red-bellied woodpeckers. It is not the chasing that is unusual, but the extent of it, going on non-stop all over the back yard. The cardinals join in it too. Chickadees and titmice are just on the edges watching all the commotion. These are birds that will all be wet probably beginning tomorrow and then perhaps for the next four or five days. Are there behaviors that we can see that the birds might be doing in advance of the bad weather? Surely the chasing is not a practice that will keep them dry, but might it not indicate a heightened state of nervous tension? Or maybe the abnormal amount of activity signals something else not easily described.

There is a speckled kingsnake in the garage, in a container. The snake is usually very docile and quiet, but today the snake is crawling all over the environment available to her. Could be coincidence, probably is.

The river is at 4.6 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. Left alone it would probably remain there without much change for the next week or so. The Ohio and Mississippi are not supporting any immediate changes. But if this weather, with “historic rainfall” predicted, does come in the next couple days , the river will notice and raise an eyebrow. It could rise several feet and we would have to be ready to retie the dock each day. Unlike the rivers in Vermont, etc., the Atchafalaya is a big river with a relatively small collecting basin. So we will get the rain effect, but not a flash flood. I know this because my magic crystal ball says so.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Back to Normal

2011-07-31T10:38:00.004-05:00

At least that’s what it feels like. It’s hot and the grass is growing, and mosquitoes let us know they like the rain too. We are seeing the first major hatch of mosquitoes in over two years, kind of unusual for our part of the swamp to go that long without them.

Back- to- normal things include new grass. Where the May high water left four to six inches of new soil in our yard, there is now an equivalent amount of new, very green, grass. Mostly the new growth seems to be blue grass but the centipede variety will come in and outcompete it next year. The barely noticeable burning ring will have to be dug up and reset, but the new soil is a modest gift from the river and moving the ring won’t take much effort.

That's our girl!

I spent some time shoveling away the several feet (not so modest a gift) of mud/sand that annually covers the bottom several feet of the steps leading to the dock, and out popped a snake. Our granddaughter is back in the river swimming as often as she gets the chance and today she got to spend some quality time with the snake. It is a glossy crawfish snake, harmless unless you are a crustacean, and the bluish eyes say it’s about to shed its skin, which made it even more docile than normal.

Remember all that mud that was on the deck? It is gone of course and in its place there are three new benches made from recovered lumber originally part of a Cajun swamper’s house in the Basin. The wife was part of the Burns family saga in the Atchafalaya during the last century. So, the benches are sort of a recalling of a real swamp life, lived by real swamp people.

And the water is low enough now to begin fishing with a rod and reel. Today I caught some catfish, an eel, two garfish, a buffalo and some gaspergou. The gaspergou and catfish will probably end up in a courtboullion next weekend, and the buffalo will be turned loose since I have no use for cut bait before I get the trotline out. The eel was cut up to bait the shrimp traps and the garfish were too small to do anything with.

If you spend enough time looking out over water you see things come up and make the break from that environment to ours. Logs rise to the top and sink again, nutria appear and swim and then disappear for their own reasons. Fish do the same thing as the nutria, except in reverse, sort of. They come up into the air and then go back. You can look out over water and you will see evidence of fish doing this but usually it is too late to see them, you hear the disturbance and see the splash but not the fish. Except occasionally. The river is filled with gar and buffalo right now and most of the time they cause the splash and swirl of waves. Often I have thought that you would have little chance to actually see one of these fish as it breaks the surface, I mean, you would have to have your eyes on the exact spot when the fish came up. But today it happened. I was fishing and looking at the river and right in front of my eyes there arose this huge garfish. I saw its head, and torso and tail as it came up - broke the surface, breathed, rolled and then brought its tail up and slapped the water just like on the whale shows. Wow and wow. A person who believed in such things might have thought there was some communication intended, but nah........…nah.

The river is at 8.0 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling to 7.5 by the end of next week. Remember when it was at 23 feet just a little while ago? The Ohio and the Mississippi both show some rises up north, so they are not ready to give up their influence yet. I can put in my trotline at 8.0 feet so it’s time to consider that.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Nineteen

2011-06-15T08:03:00.005-05:00

Well, we are settling in, or resettling in, I guess. The water is down off of the deck and the six inches of mud on it has been brushed away. The river is becoming more calm by the day. Throughout this whole thing there has been a remarkable lack of debris in the channel. Commercial fishermen noted this to me yesterday, and I certainly agree. After predicting the huge amount of accumulated litter that would come down once the Morganza gates were opened, it didn’t happen. What did come down was much smaller than anticipated, the individual pieces I mean. Not the huge trees and floating islands of logs and tangled masses of smaller vegetation that I thought would come.

There is a strange item that came up yesterday during a visit to the southern end of Grand Lake. Talking with Edward Couvillier and Kevin, his son, is always an enlightening experience. Both commercial catfishermen, they use lines and hooks and fish the hard way, at least that's how it seems to me. The odd thing was that they caught a stingray yesterday out in the lake. The water is still high by anybody’s reckoning, and the stingrays should (my word) not be up in the freshwater yet, not until the water is very low and allowing some salt water to sneak into the usually fresh lower Atchafalaya Basin and Grand Lake. But they are coming up nevertheless. I wonder if the sharks will be early this year also, giving the fishermen headaches much earlier than usual. The closeup of the sting from the ray shows why it’s not a good idea to get punctured by one. Not only does it not come out easily, the mucous on it hurts, a LOT.

The river is at 17.8 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, continuing to fall slowly for the foreseeable future. The Missouri is flexing some muscle, but that shouldn’t affect us down here. The Mississippi and Ohio are both falling slowly all the way up, as they should be doing right now. At this slow rate of fall we may not get to the low water period for this cycle until August. Crawfishermen are not complaining, or at least not more than they usually do. Passing on the levee yesterday, I saw literally hundreds of trucks parked at the six or seven landings being used by the wild-crawfish fishermen right now. Looks good for them.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Eighteen

2011-06-09T22:32:00.005-05:00

Night Visitors. There are night visitors in the back yard. Today Flurry the Cat and I discovered the evidence. Beings with cloven hooves are walking up and down the riverbank in the darkness. The water is still high in the swamp that extends out to Henderson and I guess some of the animals who live there prefer a drier place. I don’t mind the deer, but now I will be looking for the foliage in the yard to show signs of nibbling.

The river is at 19.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, continuing to fall slowly. The Ohio and Mississippi are both falling all the way up. No more water coming from them soon.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water - Seventeen

2011-06-07T16:54:00.005-05:00

So the excitement begins to fade. We are no longer looking at a charging wild animal. Facing us now is something resembling a sleeping cat, calm and relaxed, becoming more and more relaxed as each day passes. Soon it will just be the river we knew before.

The markers we kept track of as the water rose are the same ones we now watch as the water recedes. It is easy to see the outside rail on the deck, at least it is easy to see now. It sits at about the 21 foot level, and the water is about ½ foot below it. At the river’s crest, the rail was under about two feet of water. The oak and cherry tree had water up past their trunks, and now it is retreating out toward the channel.

A thick coat of mud covers the ground where the water stood for several days. Grass will grow well there, the mud is rich in those things which cause plants to grow. But that richness does no good for the walkway and the deck floor, and I am clearing it off as the water reveals the mud. It is sobering to think that that same mud might have been covering the floor of our house instead of being harmlessly covering outside structures. Yes, a lot to be thankful for.

It is also sobering to hear of drastic responses to the near-miss that we had here in Butte La Rose. I say drastic because some of the reactions people have don’t seem to be merited by the degree of danger we actually suffered. We had a near-miss, not a full blown catastrophe, but some people are leaving the community forever because of an emotional response to the threat. One family has been here for 37 years, and they are now looking for a house to buy elsewhere, where the water cannot come. These are people who have been at the heart of the development of the community. They will be missed.

The river is at 20.4 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling slowly toward a summer low of perhaps four or five feet. The Ohio and Mississippi are not doing much. The Missouri will send some water to us, but not in the volume that caused the current crisis. It just doesn’t have the muscle that the Ohio does.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Sixteen

2011-06-02T23:30:00.005-05:00

Well, we are back. Our evacuation lasted all of eight days, and thanks for that. We came back to an empty house. No food, no anything. Except, that the house is here and it doesn’t need repairs, and no flood insurance claim needs to be made. Looks like we won’t get to test the FEMA waters this time around. We even thought of one of those little white trailers as a potential long-term place to stay. But no, not this time. Hopefully not ever.

There was a snake in one of my shrimp traps when we got back, a water snake, no problem. It was very anxious to get out of the trap but I want to take a few pictures of it so it lives on with the shrimp and small fish as neighbors until tomorrow. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good place for a fish-eating snake to live.

The cats are back. They boarded with friends while we were gone. More generous people!

A call from a friend asked if I would like to fly over Butte La Rose and see what the water looked like from the air. Yes, I surely would. His name is Ken (no last names on the blog unless cleared first, my rule) and he has a two-seater that he built himself – literally. Nearly every, bolt, screw and instrument was done by him, from a kit. He has been building it for several years and recently finished. A bit disconcerting was the note on the dashboard from the FAA. It said passengers should be aware that the plane you were in was built by an amateur and you were basically on your own. But it went up, and it went down, and it did everything a plane is supposed to do, I think. It was a fun trip!

What did we see flying over the Atchafalaya River and the levee following it, and the Butte La Rose area? Well, nothing heavily dramatic. There simply is no evidence of the serious consequences you see on the news reporting from the cities along the Mississippi. The Atchafalaya just didn’t get to the levels that it would have taken to do serious damage on a wide scale. Some houses got flooded, to be sure, but those are mostly on an elevation not much different from the forest floor. The river bank didn’t flood. At 29 feet it would have gone over the bank for the first time in recorded history, I believe, but not at 23.5 feet. Perhaps some places on the river got flooded in 1973 when the crest was 27 feet, but not many.
Anyway, here are a few pics to show basically that Butte La Rose was not seriously impacted by the high water of 2011. The view along the levee shows the extent of the water relative to the houses on the high river bank. It didn’t reach them. Some docks got flooded, and maybe a few other structures that were down near the water. Our house is right in the middle of one of the pics. There is a rectangular floating dock out in the river, and our house is behind it, basically covered by trees. I never realized that we had the most forested property along the river in our area. Our house is barely visible. Another picture shows the Butte La Rose boat landing, near the general store. It too was not flooded out. The water came pretty much to the top of it, but that’s all. In the middle background of that picture you can see water between the river and the levee top. That water is covering the driveways of several people who cannot return home yet. The houses are fine, except for the driveways.

One picture shows the so-called pontoon bridge at the far end of the Butte La Rose road, as some call it (Herman Dupuis Road, to others). The bridge was held open for the last couple weeks but is scheduled to become passable again in the next few days. No flooding is apparent in this area either, but farther up this road is where some houses did take on water.

And that’s about the extent of it. Everyone was well warned that there was potential for very serious consequences and Butte La Rose was about as ready for it as a community can be. But, we are happy that this was an adventure we did not need to have.

The river is at 21.4 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling to 20.5 feet by June 8, and falling more thereafter. I saw a lot of sacks of crawfish piled in front of a wholesaler today. Perhaps we will get a late season this year.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Fifteen

2011-05-27T10:16:00.002-05:00

Here is a picture of the Myette Point boat landing taken this week. The vast area covered by water is actually the parking lot. The previous picture taken while construction was going on was taken from the other end looking this way. This picture was shared to me by Larry Couvillier.
The river is at 23.3 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, holding steady for the next several days and beginning to fall by June 1, at least a little bit.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Fourteen

2011-05-25T21:59:00.006-05:00

Exodus from Butte La Rose. We are now somewhat established in the home of friends in Lafayette. I say somewhat not because we are somewhat welcome, far from it, but somewhat is the best we can do after leaving our house and coming to live in other people’s environment. We are very grateful, but it will take a little time to adjust.

I can’t say much about the river conditions from 25 miles away. But it is enough to know that it will not threaten our house and other buildings. When we can get back home, I will write a little about what we find there.

The picture is of the new Myette Point boat landing in St. Mary Parish under construction last fall near Franklin. The COE built the landing for water not to exceed 21 feet, I think. It is now complete and there is more than a foot of water over it. I wonder if they have flood insurance.

The river is at 23.0 feet today, cresting at 24 point something tomorrow. It will stay crested for a couple days and then gradually fall. The water that is coming around behind the protective guide levees will stay a nuisance for some undetermined time.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Thirteen

2011-05-23T21:17:00.004-05:00

Today is the last day we can stay here at home for some undetermined time. The mandatory evacuation notices were delivered to each house this morning by the sheriff’s personnel. I don’t think there can be more than six or seven houses still occupied now. It is strange to see so many vacant places where there is usually a bustling energy. Odd. I asked Carolyn tonight why she thought we were still here when almost everyone else has been gone for a week or more. She didn’t have an answer, except that it didn’t feel right to leave unless it was absolutely necessary. We thought we could stay until either the electricity was turned off or the water prevented access to our house. Neither of these things is the cause of our leaving. Instead, because there is part of the Butte La Rose road that is low and nearly at the same elevation as the swamp floor, that road is about to become submerged. Access to those houses along that road will become questionable soon, and because of that the whole road will be shut down, the high road where we live and the low too. It is a pity, but understandable in a way. How long we will be gone will depend on how long it takes the “back flooding” to come to a crest and then drain off so that the low portions of the road become passable again. At least that is the prediction that makes sense.

Starting to see a few snakes. Saw one water snake today, and one land snake (racer). Both were swimming. The racer’s being in the water would indicate that the habitat is becoming undesirable for it, and higher ground is being sought. Wish we could be here to see the rest of the adjustments that the fauna will be making. Those white ibises are having such a profitable time gleaning the things that come up out of the grass as the water slowly rises up the lawn. They are coming to terms with the high water in an easy way.

The water is coming up the yard more and more. Today it is filling the swale between the low hills that make up the river bank. It will cover the walkway before it is through rising. The shallow pool seems to appeal to the breeding frogs and toads. Gulf coast toads, green tree frogs and gray tree frogs lost no time in setting up territories in the pond and began calling for available females to come and enjoy the water. Little do the ladies suspect that they will be ambushed when they come within range, and little frogs will be made.

So we leave tomorrow. It is not a good feeling. But the house should be safe from the water, and hopefully the sheriff’s patrols will make sure that the property is safe from other kinds of intrusion.

The river is at 22.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 24.5 feet on the 27th, Friday. It will flatten out after that and begin to start considering a withdrawal back into its usual containment. How long that takes will determine how long we have to stay away. The Mississippi and the Ohio are falling hard all the way up, as though to admit exhaustion after such a display of strength.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Twelve

2011-05-21T19:48:00.007-05:00

And what is the mood of the river these days? The introduction to Riverlogue suggests that the mood of the river changes as the seasons pass, and so it does. Sometimes the mood is only slightly altered, sometimes the change is dramatic, like now. Actually, I believe how we perceive the mood is irrelevant. The river doesn’t care. It has no malice toward us, or no joy for that matter. It simply is. But for itself, only for itself, there is meaning in its stages. In the summer when the water is low and warm, and moves southward in a slow and lazy way, there is the possibility of imagining an old man in a rocking chair with a cup of black coffee in his hand. Rocking very slowly on the front porch, avoiding the cat lying on the floor, nervously asleep. Perhaps there is a pipe in his mouth and a can of Prince Albert giving a permanent shape to his hip pocket. He looks contented with his world and not too prone to making rapid moves. He is resting and satisfied for the moment.

It is also possible to see him as he is now, an athlete of supreme power running far and fast, spreading wide his body to cover his world in water filled with silt and nutrients. I can imagine his mood now as joyous and vibrant. He is a builder now, laying a covering of soil onto his banks, ironically making it harder to overflow every time an overflow takes place. He pulls into his current things that are finished with their purposes for the land, old trees and other loose items – including the manmade objects that are not secured. All this he gathers and distributes to other places. Should humans chance to come too close, he can be a merciless force, pushing back at them. Merciless but without malice. Wise people will know the river’s power and avoid an encounter, others calculate the odds and take their chances, building in places they know to be at risk.

But there is something about being on intimate terms with the river seasons, both the old man and the athlete, that draws us to take those chances. We know that a close encounter will not end well for us, but we build as close to the river as we can anyway. We, like the other people who live in Butte La Rose, know this and for some period of time we get away with it. But once in a while the old man gives rise to the powerful athlete, and we have to move out of his way if we can. What we can’t move, we sacrifice to the water. This is mainly why I have such admiration for the many houseboat people who lived in the Basin all those decades ago. They knew the river as a respected neighbor, not an adversary.

Anticipating that we would have to leave our property, I made a simple gauge that could tell us something about the river indirectly. The gauge that I made and tacked to our house was supposed to tell me how our house was faring in the rising water when we couldn’t be here to see it. We could see the river level on the internet and see where that would be on the gauge, and imagine water at that level. Not as good as being here, but better than knowing nothing at all. Perhaps we won’t need this tool after all, if we are allowed to stay.

The river is at 21.7 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising about six inches a day to reach 24.5 feet by the 27th. This might cause some disruptions, and some house flooding in low areas, but nowhere near what would have happened if we would have gotten 29 feet, as first predicted. The crest is not the end of it. The athlete is running a long distance race, and the water will be with us for quite a while.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Eleven

2011-05-20T22:04:00.003-05:00

The day got progressively more tense. We were packing the final suitcases and other stuff to go and live with others. It was hard not to be depressed about leaving. Then things sort of turned around. In mid afternoon I got a call that informed me that the crest elevation for the river had been reduced from 27 feet to 24.5 feet. That was really good news. That meant that water would not be under the house at the highest crest. It might not even damage the electrical outlets in the shop and garage. Better and better. And then we got the call that said the mandatory evacuation was postponed, to be reevaluated in 48 hours. We were on the verge of packing the car when that news was confirmed. Better and better.

Within one hour of that news being shown on television there were people driving trucks pulling trailers full of furniture and appliances back into Butte La Rose. Amazing. It did not take us long to call two good friends this afternoon, once we knew the evacuation was postponed, and they helped take all the furniture down from the blocks. The house looks so much better. And the little 12 inch TV is back doing auxiliary work instead of being the main set in the living room. Only thing, the remote controls for the TVs were packed and sent to storage by mistake. Now we get to see how well all those boxes were labeled.

Checking my shrimp traps this afternoon I discovered four eels in one of them. The trap had had a lot of shrimp in it prior to the eels finding it, but now there were few shrimp and most of those were dead. The eels had eaten many and the slime from the eels seems to kill shrimp that can’t get away from it. These were the shrimp I was going to use to bait a line I intend to stretch across our back yard, if we are allowed to stay here beyond the next few days. Now I will have to try to catch more shrimp. Two of the eels, coming down the walkway, make me think “Oh my, here come the eels!!” in mock horror.

The river is at 21.36 on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 24 feet on the 26th. That is still almost a week away. At least we may be able to stay here to see it rise.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Ten

2011-05-19T21:52:00.003-05:00

Today there was a mass meeting of emergency personnel at the Butte La Rose store, down near the boat landing. I parked a little way from it and just watched for a couple minutes. There must have been a hundred people spread out in small groups of four or five, all engaged in what appeared to be very serious conversations. Some carried clipboards and wrote things on them, checklists were checked and to-do items crossed off or completed as I watched. Some carried little notebook computers and fingers swept over keyboards or pecked the keys one at a time. One person who had to be a higher-up in the mix of agencies literally hurried from one small group to another, stopping only long enough to exchange a word or two and get a nod in return. The whole thing looked somewhat disorganized, but not chaotic. You could see that all these people had a part in the flood response, though some seemed to know their role well and others were looking for clarification.

I found some people from the Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality. They were here to pass the word to homeowners that any hazardous materials could be placed at the roadside and a contractor would pick them up. I think they were actually going from house to house putting notices on doors or speaking to the residents if they were at home. The timing might have been better if this had been done last week or the week before, since almost no one with a house in Butte La Rose is still here. We had the usual collection of old, partially filled paint cans and I gathered them and put them out as requested. There were some old gasoline containers too. They were gone an hour later – so fast! I had the feeling that the contractor who picked them up was watching me, knowing I was one of the few people who knew about the hazardous pickup, and when I appeared at the curb they pounced on the paint cans, thereby justifying the contract they had with the state. I am being cynical, but actually I’m glad somebody thought of doing this.

The water continued today to not rise. It has been about the same for the last four days. The media and the authorities continue to warn that even though the river is not rising as fast as predicted, it will rise to unprecedented levels in the next seven days. It surely is not a good time to let your guard down and become complacent. But you can see in the reports that there is concern that all of this might have been overhyped. Still, it is better to expect too much and not get it then to downplay the significance of high water and have people be unprepared. There certainly was sufficient warning this time.

The river is at 21.04 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 25 feet in the next five days. Hopefully it will begin to flatten out after that. I wish we could watch it when it is that high. But we will have to leave Saturday morning.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water - Nine

2011-05-18T21:58:00.003-05:00

Leaving the house, the timing for it, has been determined by the authorities. The notice came out this afternoon. Mandatory evacuation of Butte La Rose will be in effect as of Saturday May 21. No one will be allowed into the community after 8:00 AM. The water should be at 23 feet by then, two feet higher than it is now. This is well before the road access is threatened (at least the part of the road that we use), and well before the water comes near our house. It seems a little premature to me, but I believe some of the roadway toward the pontoon bridge is lower than our portion, so all things considered it’s probably time to leave. We will be gone either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning.

It is harder to leave than I thought. And for how long? It is the not knowing what is happening that bothers me, and I am sure there will not be an effort to keep the migrated residents informed about daily conditions back here on the river. Not to be expected, anyway.

Tomorrow I will take a good look around and tidy up the place. Silly, but it feels right. Like cutting the grass yesterday. Why? It feels right to leave it looking good, that’s all. If I know Carolyn, she will do the same thing to the inside of the house before we go.

The river is not quite at 21 feet today on the Butte La Rose gauge. It has not really moved up or down for three days. Some think that the strong north wind that we had blew the water out into the bay faster than it would have gone with our usual southeast wind. So the rate of rise that we have been having came to a standstill. The river will make up for this in the coming week, I guess, but it seems to have helped slow the rise.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water - Eight

2011-05-17T22:33:00.006-05:00

Things go slowly once you have done all you can do. We will not leave until we have to, either because the electricity has been turned off or the water has denied access in some way. In the meantime we took time to visit the people who have agreed to host us for the next few weeks. They possess a great depth of generosity.

The frogs and toads are anticipating having water for their spring cycle this year, and I would bet they're right. Some water will stay in small ditches and pockets long after most of this great volume has receded. Sensing this, Gulf coast toads, green treefrogs and gray treefrogs are singing in the early evening as we watch the water moving past the dock. And mosquitoes will like the small pockets of standing water too. As mentioned earlier, the big wading birds are very active along the riverbank: egrets and ibises, and even night herons are almost always in sight now, somewhere along the grassy edge of the waterline. Swamp rabbits and cotton rats are more and more displaced as the water rises. We have both in our yard, but not these individuals. Taken by Brad Moon last weekend.

The river has ways of teaching even those of us who think we have seen all that it can do. I let my attention be diverted late this afternoon while I was paddling the small bateau and I fell overboard, just like that. The boat zipped under the dock and there was no room for me to go with it. Splash. Camera, cell phone, wallet, keys (electronic) all went splash too. It was shallow so there was no issue with swimming, I just walked out, dripping. The cell phone and camera are now in a bag of desiccant. We’ll see how much good that does tomorrow.

The river is at 20.8 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. It has not risen more than two inches during the last 48 hours. Is there a “calm before the storm” adage that applies to water? I don’t know. But starting tomorrow there is a predicted rise of one foot a day for at least the next five days. Five feet of water in five days is a lot of water in a short time. I’m pretty sure we will be out of here by Saturday or Sunday. I wonder for how long.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Seven

2011-05-16T21:40:00.004-05:00

Sunrise this morning on a river in flood isn’t much different from a river in normal flow, at least on this river. If you don’t see the current racing south, it can look peaceful, even. Right now there is no debris in the channel, and I swear I don’t know why. It has been about 14 years since the water has been at the level it is now, about 20 feet. In all that time there should have been a lot of trees, etc., fallen and ready for a ride when the water reached them. Not so.

Why do I call it “high water” instead of flood? Because the old people who lived in this Atchafalaya Basin never saw water as a threat, they saw it as a source of income, of commerce and of communication. At least that is true for those I know. To them a high water was something that came around every ten years or so, and was an inconvenience to be sure, but not a serious threat to life and limb. The people I speak of all lived on houseboats and water was the thing you lived on, as we live on land today. When the water came, you loosened your ropes and rode high for a while, until the water subsided. Oddly enough, it was when the water began to fall that your house was in the greatest danger of sinking. If you didn’t tend the ropes frequently, the house could tilt to such a degree against a bank that water would come in over the side of the barge and fill it up. Of course you wouldn’t lose it, but it was an inconvenience.

The military has arrived in Butte La Rose. The National Guard has a presence now, and seems to be working in conjunction with the sheriff’s personnel. This morning as I drove toward the interstate on my way to Lafayette, there was a checkpoint at what you might call the entrance to Butte La Rose. Two soldiers stood there, weapons across chest, and monitored who could come into the community. If you had proof of residence, you could pass, if not, you were made to turn around. I must admit that the mere presence of those powerful rifles, held at ready, always gives me a feeling of wariness, even though I know they are there to protect me and my property. The men were very polite and respectful, and intent. I am glad they are here, and the weapons are necessary, I know.

Late this afternoon we, Carolyn and I, had to go to the far end of Butte La Rose. To those unfamiliar with the community, it is mostly a 14-mile stretch of asphalt highway with residential structures strung along it, sometimes on one side, sometimes on both. So, in traveling the 14 miles we saw pretty much the whole place. It is amazing how vacant it is. People have evacuated trailers, and lifted houses on blocks, and put plastic sheeting around the houses and anchored the sheets with sandbags. They have done all these things to protect property that means something to them, even though a lot of the structures would not be something you would buy. No doubt some of the efforts to save them exceed their monetary value. But to the owners they represent what living in Butte La Rose can do for you - provide solitude, and closeness to big water, and sunrises and birds singing at dawn. Most of all, I think, it is an awayness from the city, any city. It is understandable that people would want to be here. Children who come to this place know that frogs sing loudly, and fish are good to eat, even with bones in them, and outdoor odors are good to smell. In providing these things the sometimes run-down “camps” are worth the cost of saving them from the high water if possible.

The river is at 20. 8 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, having risen only a little since yesterday. The prediction is still for a great deal of water yet to come, but there are some new and encouraging numbers being published about how high the water might get. Maybe it won’t be as disruptive as we thought. But it’s really too early to tell. So we wait.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Six

2011-05-15T18:30:00.008-05:00

Now we wait. All the boxes have been packed and moved out of danger from flooding. All of the things in the yard have been picked up and placed high enough to avoid floating away, we hope. All the firewood for next winter is on the front porch. The house now looks like it has been furnished for people eight feet tall, with the furniture up on blocks. So now we wait. We are very lucky, and grateful to those keeping an eye on the river, for the extended warning we have had. I think we will be here until we are forced to leave.

The Morganza water should be getting to us as I write this. It will not come in a big wave, but more like a rise of about one foot a day for the next week or more. A stick marked in six-inch intervals will help keep at least a small feeling of participation in this otherwise passive role we humans have, at least it’s passive once you have done all you can do. So we wait.

We still do daily maintenance on the floating dock, loosening ropes and pulling away debris that floats down and jams against the front. Enough of that can eventually overstrain the ropes sending the dock on a ride downriver. Not much of a problem so far. Note the two white ibises flying upriver in the picture. There are ibises, herons and egrets scouring the banks all along the yards fronting the river. Where there was dry lawn last week, there is water-covered feeding grounds for them now.

There is a constant stream of trucks and trailers on Louisiana Highway 3177 today, even more than in the previous several days. I guess the word is out there that this water is really coming. Some of those big “motor homes” are being hauled away from Butte La Rose. A few of them actually sag at each end. The axels are in the middle, more or less, and the ends droop, but off they go down the highway toward some form of safety. Some don’t look like they will be doing much more of this, like an old horse that would prefer an nice pasture and a warm place to sleep, and less time on the road.

So far there has been very little evidence of wildlife disruptions. Already the water has flooded areas of our yard that housed underground facilities for possums, coons, armadillos, rabbits and several kinds of rats and mice. No evidence of them. Where might they have gone? I fully expect to see some evacuees on our porches at some point. They are all welcome, although I might discourage the water moccasins from feeling too secure.

The river is at 20.6 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. There has been a difference in what is predicted to be the top level of rise. But you don’t know whether the change is the most factual or the usual rumor. We hope the latest prediction is justified.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Five

2011-05-13T21:47:00.004-05:00

Blogger was not working last night so I skipped til now. Also, it temporarily lost the previous post. Odd. But that post is back now.

Tired. It has been a long day, made much shorter than it would have been had it not been for the fabulous group of friends that came here today and pitched in to help pack boxes and carry things to the attic. We ended with 126 boxes all packed, taped (and labeled!), and ready for the truck tomorrow morning. There were times when the energy of youth was very evident compared to the lack of same in those of us not so youthful anymore. One of our friends finished the day by photographing all the outbuilding and major features of the yard, and the house too, of course. We, the elders, sat and let the day wind down instead.

The river is getting serious out there today. It barrels down at a high rate of travel that I have not seen before. Now, there is an almost constant stream of debris down the middle of the current. It does seem to hold to the middle of the river rather than spreading out. In checking the floating dock this morning I noted that it will be necessary to let go the rope that brings the dock close to the bank. The angle that rope takes will cause the dock to be pulled underwater when the water comes up another eight to ten feet, which it seems to want to do. It is at 19.6 feet now and it might actually hit the 29 feet predicted for it. I have other ropes that tie the dock at a very long angle, and they should be all right.

Some of the friends who came today were people from Myette Point. They are catfishermen, now and past. They can no longer run their lines because the force of the current makes the lines so tight that it would be very dangerous to try to run them. It is probable that there are no lines left now anyway. One big tree drifting down and dragging the bottom will take all of the lines with it, and there are a lot of big trees in the water right now. One of my friends pulled a cartilage from a rib last week while trying to run lines that were too tight. Best to let it go, and start over when this statement by the river has been made.

The notice came by emergency phone message tonight. The St. Martin Parish emergency system called all of us and said that the Morganza gates will be opened some time in the next 24 hours. Once they open, we will begin to see a rapid rise in the river after a delay of about a day. If they open tomorrow at noon, we should see water coming up about midday on Sunday, and perhaps a rise of about a foot a day thereafter to the crest about the 24th. That is pretty much what was predicted two weeks ago. We won’t be here to see it. So, no real surprises, other than I will probably be surprised to see so much water even with all the intellectual foreknowledge of it. “I didn’t believe it would really happen” is a probability.

The ants are doing things. They're moving up and down ropes in a frenzied way. We always say that animals know about these big events, that they sense them somehow. Or do we just call attention to it when the behavior and the event coincide? I would like to believe the more mysterious, unexplained explanation, but that may be just the Cajun in my mother’s family looking for something fun and witchy in the world.

The river is at 19.6 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. The Ohio is not pushing from behind with more water and that is a good thing for those of us in the river’s extended path.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Four

2011-05-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

Coming home from Lafayette late this afternoon I saw them finishing a levee being built to fend off water that would threaten the Butte La Rose Visitor Center. I had no idea anyone could build a levee so fast, all in one day. Now, why couldn’t they come and do the same thing around our house? Come to think of it, I guess I didn’t ask.

There is so much material (refrigerators, etc.) being trailered and trucked away from Butte La Rose right now that the whole area should just rise up several feet pretty soon. Ironically, then it wouldn’t be necessary to haul the stuff off. Oh well.

Going down to the river tonight I took a few pics of the dock after dark. The water is up to 19 feet now, and what’s that I see down there on the railing? Is it the first refugee with a banded tail? Not this time, it’s only Flurry the cat taking an evening stroll with me. She and her sister will be boarding with friends soon.

So many people have called and emailed offering help! You just never know how people respond to a perceived need. One gave us 54 packing boxes, the fold-up kind. Another is renting a U-Haul truck to load Saturday, and he’s coming to help load it! I am truly humbled by the response we are seeing. Sometimes, like now, it’s really fine to be a member of the human race. Sometimes.

The river is at 19 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to at least 22 feet a week from now. I wonder if you can smell in it the cities where the water has been? Can you tell Memphis from Vicksburg?

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Three

2011-05-10T21:54:00.004-05:00

Put out (at the curb) a prodigious number of cans full of waste today. Garbage pickup tomorrow. Somehow getting rid of stuff makes you feel safer, or lighter in the sense of being buoyant, maybe.

Looking out of the bedroom window the view of the water rising in the yard is surreal. It just doesn’t seem possible for water to cover our whole yard. Those of you who have stood on our deck will note that you would be hip-deep if you stood there now, and the water will be about eight feet over your head by the time the crest reaches here around the 24th.

It was not a good day for seeing a brighter tomorrow. The authorities met with the Butte La Rose community at the firehouse this evening. At first there was the thing the politicians had to do, the thing they always do. And then the National Weather Service made some announcements dealing with the latest approximations for water levels. They increased the prediction to 29 feet, from a previous estimate of 27 feet. Twenty seven was bad enough, but possibly not reaching the floor of our house. The new forecast of 29 feet just kind of took all the stuffing out of us. It will very probably cover the floor of the house. This will mean we will definitely be out of the house for months.

The New Orleans COE District commander was there, Col. Ed Fleming. He tried his best to instill in the crowd a real understanding of how much water is coming, and what it means to people who live in Butte La Rose. He made the comment that he wouldn’t be surprised to see 15 feet of water where we stood at the firehouse. The crowd gasped. It was a very effective way to get across how serious the situation is. He said that he almost certainly will exercise his authority to open the Morganza spillway gates. The water will take one day to reach us here, one more day to reach Iberia Parish, and on the third day it will reach Morgan City. And he will give us a three day warning before he opens the gates. At least now we can see some events that will trigger actions like final packing. No, 29 is not a good number for us.

The contractor who built our house 11 years ago has said he is standing by if we need him to do repairs, and that makes us feel a little less anxious. And the electrician who wired the house originally called me tonight and said he will be ready to come out as well. We are grateful for knowing these things.

There is not much debris in the river yet, even though it is pretty high. When the Morganza water gets here it will carry 38 years of accumulated trees and everything else that has fallen to the ground in that vast area in that time. It should be quite a sight. I believe we won’t be able to see it, at least not from where we live.

The river is at 18.4 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. More will come.

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – Two

2011-05-09T22:04:00.003-05:00

More warnings and more approximations. It is hard to plan the rescue of your belongings based on approximations, but that is all there is. If not for that, I suppose there would be no warnings at all, like in the days before the Corps and the National Weather Service. But now we have those and we can just about picture the water overflowing Memphis, heading for Vicksburg and casting a frightful eye on us at Butte La Rose.

The water is rising. Today it is at the edge of our deck, overlooking the river. Well, not really overlooking now, more like looking out at it, at eye level. The deck is usually ten feet or so above the water at this time of year.

I found some disturbing news today, of a different sort. We know we will have to leave our property and evacuate to somewhere. Don’t know where yet, but it will probably be someplace that comes with a cost. We had been under the impression that the additional costs would be covered under the flood insurance we have, just as a homeowner’s policy usually covers them for other types of damage that requires you to vacate your home temporarily. Well, no. The flood insurance doesn’t. It used to, but now FEMA issues all flood insurance and the policy they sold us does not cover “living away” costs. How about that? Until now I had only heard of the reasons why so many people fussed about FEMA. Now we can fuss too.

Kind friends agreed to house our three cats today, should that become necessary. Kind people indeed, especially since there is no way of knowing for how long yet. The cats are trying to figure out the new decorations on the back porch since we piled all the decorative driftwood from the yard on it. I do wonder about those piles of wood and all the desperate creatures that will soon be looking for a dry place to rest, any dry place. I expect snakes and mice and mink and rats and who knows what else. Possums and coons would be too big, I think, hmm.

The river is at 18.26 feet today on the Butte La Rose gauge. The Ohio is falling, but it sends its greeting in the form of a message coming down the Mississippi. Hold on! They forecast 27 feet without the Morganza floodway being opened, and probably a good bit more if it is. How much more?

Rise and Shine, Jim

2011 High Water – One

2011-05-09T21:59:00.001-05:00

They say the water is coming. They say it will be very high this year because the rains in the Midwest have been unusually heavy, and frequent. They have exploded the levees in Missouri to save Cairo from drowning. They say for us to prepare for the worst flooding since 1973, or even 1927.

It is hard to look out over our back yard and imagine that what they predict will happen. It looks so peaceful, and usual, with the grass and the newly filled depressions. We should be heading into the time of falling water and hot summer days. You can see the water back there, well within the riverbed. But it has been rising, and for the last several days it has come up about six inches a day. It is now at 18 feet. At that rate of rise we might have 27 feet by the 25th, the day they say the crest will be here. Our yard will not look like it does now, then.

Today I went to visit some neighbors to just make sure that other people are having to think about the same things I am. It was comforting to hear them worry too. So today I and two friends began to do the preparations that you can do to get ready for the flood. You can only prepare for the conditions predicted by others, and in our case those conditions predict two or three feet of water over our whole yard, lasting for more than a week before it begins to recede. What can you do? The outbuildings we have, a shop and a garage and a boathouse, all of which are on slabs, are now free of any object resting on the ground. Everything is piled as high as possible and I’ll probably never find things I knew well before today. We filled my truck with all the power tools in the shop and moved them to a friends house, along with a freezer containing animals to be prepared for my bone collection. All the driftwood has been secured onto the back porch, and the firewood being collected for next winter is on the front porch. The cats are very confused.

The house will be dealt with next. I sure would like to believe the water won’t get high enough to flood the house, but I’m not sure I do.

Sometime in the next few days we will have to leave our property. We are told the road will flood and people will not be able to return home until the water recedes. Only then can we begin to deal with the damage the water will have done, whatever that is.

The river is at 18 feet now on the Butte La Rose gauge. It is rising and will continue to rise for some weeks, perhaps. The Mississippi is charging south with an energy that reminds us that there is a reason to pay attention, always.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Christmas Eve 2010

2010-12-24T21:50:00.004-06:00

Sunrise on Christmas Eve, 2010. And a red-shouldered hawk in our backyard. It was intently watching a fox squirrel. Perhaps that why I was able to get so close to it. Merry Christmas everybody!

The river is at 4.4 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, and holding at that for the next week or more. The Ohio and Mississippi are not showing much movement right now.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Birthday Present

2010-11-14T15:49:00.002-06:00

This will be just a short note to send notice of my birthday present to whoever cares. On Thursday morning, November 4, I walked down to the river onto our deck, down the 22 steps to the walkway and out to the floating dock. The sunrise that morning is pictured here. It was glorious, as is often true when there are clouds on the horizon at daybreak. If you can be on the river at that time you can take a special pleasure in just drawing a real deep breath, holding it for a moment and letting it go. Almost like you can breathe in the strength you need to go out into the day, and breathe out any residual drag from the day before.

Standing there looking out over the sunrise reflection on the water, there is a sound like a baby chicken, almost. We see ospreys here often enough to know what that sound is. Sure enough, there about 50 yards across the river is an osprey in the middle of a plunge toward the water. It hits the water and up it comes with a large shad in its claws. It shakes the water off, rearranges the fish to point head first forward, and flies a few yards upriver before a bald eagle appears and challenges the osprey. There is not much of a contest. The osprey drops the fish and moves away, while the eagle retrieves the fish from the water and flies off with it. It lands on a tree across the river, presumably to eat the fish, and the osprey dives on it – forcing the eagle to fly off into the swamp with the fish. The osprey doesn’t press ownership any further and both birds disappear from sight.

What a birthday present. There are still some things that you can’t get on the Internet. This is one of them, I believe.

The river is at 3.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. The Ohio and Mississippi are both in their fall low periods. As I look out at the water in the river it is hardly moving, and it has that greenish cast that we call “clear” and my west coast friends wonder how we can say that.

Rise and Shine,
Jim

Almost How It Was

2010-10-05T11:47:00.007-05:00

As you move around the Atchafalaya Basin these days you see many places where the sand has filled in what was open water 80 years ago. The forest you see on that newly created land is mostly made up of willow and cottonwood and a few other things. It is a short forest and new on those sandbars but it is the most that the species growing there can do. But if you stay near the east or west levees confining the Basin you can be where the old, original forest was and is no more, being replaced by new trees under new conditions. And once in a while among the second growth you see an old, thick, twisted, sometimes burned, cypress. It is all that is left of the trees that covered the Basin for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Oddly, it is what many people now consider the nominal cypress tree, but it is not. Not any more than an old, withered and crippled, three-legged dog is representative of dogs. Instead, they are trees the loggers left for us 130 years ago because they were considered unfit for harvesting for some reason; maybe they were hollow or lightning scarred or double trunked. My friends from the west coast tell me that there is a name for these surviving rare, massive trees – they call them wolf trees out there, and so the name fits and we use it too. Wolf trees, perhaps meaning coming from the “lone wolf” we meet in stories. Because these are truly lone trees. They are always much more massive than the second growth cypress that they oversee. They are usually hollow and charred from the frequent lightning strikes that they invite by standing taller than the surrounding forest – many no longer live. Yes, you can find these and marvel at them and wonder what they would be if they truly looked like the ancient cypress that once shared the soil they grow in today. I am always grateful when I can get close to one of the wolf trees, and touch it, and smell the resin that still bleeds out of it sometimes. And I had become resigned to taking that measure of satisfaction from the old wolf trees and thought to never experience the old forests, since they were gone. But I was wrong. You can still do it, and in Louisiana, but not in the Atchafalaya Basin.

There is a place called Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge just north of Baton Rouge, near St. Francisville. Treewise, it is known for having the most massive baldcypress still living, the so-called champion cypress, and it was the reason for my friend Brad and I to go there a few days ago. Cat Island is not on the way to anyplace. You don’t arrive there by accident. It has to be a destination all its own. Angola State Prison is the nearest location where there is an accumulation of human beings. So we went and drove the long gravel, bumpy roads to the place where the champion tree lives. You park near a gate that marks the trail leading ½ mile back into the forest. You begin the walk in an oak, hackberry, hickory forest and it is a pretty thing to see – big mature trees. About half way you begin to notice that the species are changing and evidence of flooding is visible from the cracks in the soil and the patches of drying duckweed that floated into the forest in this year’s high water. The duckweed looks out of place there on the bare, dry forest floor. As you look around you notice that the hardwoods have given way to the water trees. Cypress and tupelo gum now shades the path. You can’t help feel an excitement for what you anticipate lies at the end of the trail. And at the end of the walk you do find the tree for which the path was built, but there is a little bit of disappointment too. The base of the tree is huge, but not beautiful. It is a very large mass of living tree tissue, but not one that gives you the feeling of being in the presence of a tree that rises out of the earth to spread branches that soar. Perhaps it deserves the title of “champion” for its size alone, and we have to grant that it is in fact big, but for the rest of the things that a tree does for the human soul, it is lacking. I will not show a picture of it here.

But, looking to the right of the big tree you see among the trunks of cypress and tupelo something that is oversized compared to the surrounding forest. It draws you to it, and suddenly you know that something of great age and dignity is in front of you. It is a huge trunk that rises thirty feet before splitting into two massive trunks that rise upward for 100 feet. The base of the trunk alone is at least ten feet in diameter. “Wow!” comes to mind but doesn’t even touch the expression you need at that moment. Remembering those wolf trees in the Basin, I am again in the presence of a cypress tree that was growing here before Europeans stepped foot in North America, probably well before. Is it a replica of all that it could be? No. It too was bypassed by the loggers because it did not meet the needs of the lumber industry. It has that double trunk. For some reason that feature was enough to spare it while its more uniform kin were all cut down.

Admiring the tree, you see another one 50 steps away and you go there to find the same great trunk, this time dividing many feet above the ground. The forest floor is clear and easy to walk due to the annual flooding of eight feet or more. And another big tree is there a little farther into the forest. And another, and on until you realize there must have been a whole grove of these ancient trees that had split trunks or hollow bases, existing today because they were not perfect. There is a difference between the experience of seeing one wolf tree in the Basin, and seeing ten or more within easy walking distance of each other. The latter gives you the feeling of actually being in a forest of the old trees. It is a grand thing to be able to do. If that “champion” tree is publicized for no other reason than to quietly call attention to the magnificent neighbors that it has, it is worth all the publicity it gets.

One of the difficult things in photography is to take pictures of very large trees and have the pictures convey the real size in proportion to the surroundings. If you back away far enough to show the whole tree it reduces the whole thing in size so that you lose the emphasis of comparison. For that reason, the pics used here emphasize the base of the trees more than the upper trunks and limbs.

Another point to be made is that the surrounding forest is a mature forest in its own right. It may contain the truly ancient members, but the other trees are very large too. Many cypresses have trunks four feet in diameter at breast height. Many tupelos are at least three feet as well. Those are very large second growth trees, and seeing others that size is possible, but not easily done in Louisiana.

As though to point out the cycle of growth that builds a forest, we found seedlings beneath the big trees. Tiny trees six inches high, carrying the same capacity for a thousand years of growth within them. Will they get the chance to live out a millennial lifetime, no, probably not. Tree people say that in order for a cypress tree to survive it must be big enough to extend above the annual flooding. These trees cannot grow enough in one year to do that. Should the annual flooding skip a year or two, maybe, but not likely.

So, transpose the Cat Island grove of ancient cypresses to the Atchafalaya Basin, and spread it out to cover hundreds of square miles, and a small insight can be imagined into what it must have been like before the forests were cut. You would think that you could see pictures of the old trees and then successfully imagine this, but I don’t think so. For some reason you have to be there, in their presence. The imagining has to start there, not in the mind only, but in the mind and with the trees, touching them and turning around and around and seeing them all around you. Then you might take that feeling and combine it with the wolf trees and let them carry you to a place that is no more. It is as close as you can get to almost how it was.

The river is at 4.3 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. The Ohio and Mississippi are taking their fall siesta. Wake up time is probably at least a couple months away.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Setting a Bentline - A Day With E.J.

2010-06-27T12:04:00.006-05:00

I guess it takes all kinds of skills to make a living if that living is done in many different ways. Some of these skills are still being invented every day, as the need for them arises, and some of them are fading out, as the need for them diminishes. But that doesn’t mean that the older, practiced, skills are any less vital if they are what you use to make a living, even today. Such a set of skills is the subject of this posting.

Many years ago I was privileged to spend a lot of time learning how to make a living commercial linefishing for catfish. The people who taught me everything I could learn about this were the families who lived in the community of Myette Point. These families have since dispersed to various locations around the Bayou Teche region, but many of them still retain the set of skills that it takes to practice linefishing, and a few still use the techniques. One of these men is E.J. Daigle, of Franklin, Louisiana. E.J. and I have been friends for about 38 years and he recently agreed to allow me to accompany him on a day when he was going to set out a new rig of lines in Grand Lake. I don’t believe this has ever been documented fully, and I was happy to take him up on it. The idea was to video the use of the tools that are part of this practice, and also to take as many still pics as I could. The video will be assembled from 32 segments that I now have, but perhaps a few of the still pics can illustrate the topic in this posting.

It is a pleasure to go out into the Atchafalaya Basin with someone who has inherited knowledge from a long line of Basin people. E.J.’s linefishing pedigree stretches back to his great grandfather Claiborne Mayon (born in 1859). It is easy to feel overwhelmed just thinking about that. How many volumes would it take to discuss all of that accumulated knowledge? I don’t know, but sadly I do know that it will never be done. E.J. is one of the last of his line to have this information and still use some of it in his daily life. That’s why I say that experiencing and documenting even a little of these techniques is a privilege.

Today was about setting a bentline. This technique was developed by the people who came to live on the margins of Grand Lake, in St. Mary Parish, generations ago. The technique was defined by conditions found in the big lake, rather than being imposed upon it from the outside. The principle condition is that of a constant current of moderate to strong strength and a more-or-less uniform depth of six to ten feet at the low water stage. The channels are deeper, of course. The other factor, that of very long line length, was also a product of the miles-wide lake. Coming to live here was an opportunity for invention, and invent they did.

The primary requirement for a catfish line to be successful is that it must fish where the fish live, i.e. that part of the water column which is “home base” for the three species that are commercially marketable – blue, channel and flathead catfish. Home base in this case is near the bottom. So, the line must be presented to that location. The bentline set does this.

The second thing is for the line to be long enough to cover as much of the lake as possible, and still be within the physical limits of a fisherman to run, bait, repair, etc. This length is usually at least 6,000 feet. At this length there are about 1000 hooks to service every day and get bait for. Some people space the hooks eight feet apart, lengthening the line to 8,000 feet. This is usually enough to cover enough different conditions on the lake to provide success on at least part of the line every day. Which part catches fish will vary. Oddly, almost never does the whole line catch.

Perhaps the most important factor in managing a line that long is how to divide the line so that only part of it is subject to the power of the current. This is done by providing anchors at set distances. The anchors consist of short pieces of sapling, either willow or sycamore, called stobs that are hammered into the bottom using a long pole called a stob pole or jigger pole. To do this a stob is inserted into a two-foot long pipe at the end of a long pole. A piece of strong line is tied to the stob near where it emerges from the pipe. This line will become the bridle. The whole thing, pole, stob and bridle line are lifted, positioned properly according to where the line is to be placed, and plunged to the bottom. The stob is hammered into the bottom with the jigger pole. Once the stob is secure, the pole is lifted back into the boat with the fisherman still holding the bridle line tied to the stob now anchored securely. This will be done a number of times before line is attached to the bridles, so a float of some sort is tied to the bridle and released.

The distance between bridles varies somewhat with the fisherman, but most set the distance between 25 and 30 hooks long – about 150 feet for a six-foot spacing. This spacing is called a bent, though no one I have ever spoken with knows why. People will refer to a line ten bents long, or 15, or whatever.

Once all the stobs (anchors) with attached bridles are in place (E.J. puts in six for this piece of the line), in a straight line across the current, it is time to attach the business end of the bentline, the main line with hooks. This is done various ways. If it is a new line, some people choose to tie on just the main line and come along after to tie the hooks to it. If it is a line that has been fished before, several ways exist to put out line with hooks already on it. Each of these is a procedure requiring patience and much skill. The technique used by E.J. and others at Myette Point is to coil the line in a tub as it is taken up from a previous set, and then dispense it hook by careful hook as the line is paid out slowly during resetting. Other people have other methods for keeping 1000 hooks from becoming entangled, including hooking each hook on the side of the tub as the line is brought in. It probably just depends on how you learn and from whom.

After setting the stobs, E.J. will go to one end of the row of jugs and tie the main line to that bridle. Then, while keeping track of the current and the drift of the boat, with the engine running slowly, he begins to take the line out of the tub and pass it along behind him into the water, one hook at a time, counting out about 25 hooks. When he has what he thinks is enough line out, he holds the line securely in one hand, using the other hand on the engine to run slowly to the next jug. Reaching it, he evaluates the amount of tension on the line he has paid out, brings in some or lets a little out, and grabs the bridle near the jug and ties the main line to the bridle. He repeats this until the main line is connected to each bridle previously set. If this sounds easy, you have never tried to do it. A lot of people try to learn to keep track of the hooks coming out of the tub, the current, the engine and the wind , at the cost of hooks imbedded in a hand, or worse. If you make that mistake, you really have to want to learn to try it a second time.

Assuming you have acquired enough bait already that day to actually make the line begin to fish, you begin baiting at one end, left or right, and attach sinkers near each end of the line because there may be floats at each end and you don’t want the line to ride up because of them. Once all that is done, the line is in place and is fishing. Tomorrow you might harvest something you can sell. Actually, a six-bent line will only have 150 hooks on it, and if you want a rig of 1000 hooks, you have to start with the jigger pole and stobs again.

And that is how it went. It is such a pleasure to be out with someone like E.J. Daigle – to watch him move about in the boat and move from task to task with no wasted effort, to watch things come together from just an idea of something to the completion of a complicated fishing set. Earlier he visited some shrimp traps that yielded several hundred river shrimp, and that cannot be taken for granted either. It was a very good day.

The river is at 11 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, staying steady for the next week or so. The Ohio and Mississippi are not doing much to change that right now.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Pilgrimage to Bayou Chene_0004.wmv

2010-06-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

A Pilgrimage to Bayou Chene

2010-05-25T13:09:00.013-05:00

People do come up with good ideas. One such idea was that of making a pilgrimage to a place that has been empty of settlement for the last 60 years. Prior to the mid-1900s the location known as Bayou Chene was a vibrant, economically prosperous place deep in the Atchafalaya Basin, very deep. It housed farms and stores and churches and a post office. And to get there you had to go by boat, there was no other choice. At a certain period the boats that were popular, indeed almost universal, were the long, slim bateaux - a style still seen today powered by outboards. But in the last four or five decades of the life of Bayou Chene, there were no outboards. Instead, the boats had the first gasoline-powered marine inboard engines, most of them manufactured by Lockwood Ash in Michigan. These little engines (they were 2 ½, 4, 6 and 8 horsepower), provided the Basin residents with the first boats that did not have to rely on human power for propulsion. They were not fast but they were faster than a person with two oars, and that was more than enough for them to be immediately adopted by almost everyone needing to get around on the water in the Basin. You could always hear them coming. They either had one or two cylinders and every time the spark plug would fire and ignite the gasoline in a cylinder, you could clearly hear it. The resulting sound is reflected in the name that today adheres to these old boats: “put-put”.

So the trip was to be made using the old engines, not modern outboards, and this provided a sense of authenticity as well as making the time required to make the trip a realistic one. In keeping with the idea of pilgrimage, the boats were launched at a landing at Bayou Sorrel, on the east levee of the Atchafalaya Basin, a place that was once one of the primary entry points that led to Bayou Chene. Bayou Sorrel (the actual bayou) takes you about ten miles into the Basin until it joins the main channel of the Atchafalaya River. From there you turn upstream and go about five miles to the lower end of Bayou Chene on the left ascending bank of the river. It is once you enter “The Chene” as they call it, that imagination takes over to supply the scenery and human aspect of the long-ago occupation.

The idea for this trip was originated by a one-time resident (born there) of Bayou Chene, Mr. Ory Mendoza, who contacted the owners of the old motors and then organized a time and place. The time was May 22, 2010, and the gathering place for departure was to be his camp on the bayou across from the boat landing. On the morning of the trip, ten of the old boats showed up. The plan was to leave Bayou Sorrel and venture out to visit some of the old places on Bayou Chene. Three more boats came from across the Basin (the west side) to join the group on the Atchafalaya near Bayou Chene, also a trip of about 15 miles. This means that the interest in this trip (reenactment, if you will), spanned the Basin from side to side.

It took about two hours to travel the 15 miles, what with the faster boats (8 horsepower) keeping pace with the slower ones. Once the east and west groups met up, both proceeded to enter the lower end of what is left of Bayou Chene. It is now, at this point, that a little knowledge of the past and a willingness to allow your thoughts to drift in that direction, can build a vision that the current environment does not present. An awareness of what was once the main channel of the Atchafalaya River (for so Bayou Chene was before 1935), can put into perspective the Bayou Chene of today - a relatively small body of water that is being slowly crowded in from both sides by willow trees. Memory makes the bayou 80 feet deep, but current circumstances make its depth only nine feet even during moderately high water. In low water periods from June to December, most boats cannot enter the bayou from either its upper or lower ends. That is why we are doing this in May while there is still enough water to allow us in and out of the shallow bayou.

So you enter this emptied place. A practical mind will see a muddy bayou with willow trees on both sides, and human emptiness everywhere except for a few camps that some descendents of the original families still maintain. But a person who is willing to let the past overflow the present, that person might see a different scene along these banks. There (is) was a family living there, right there, perhaps 100 feet back from the bank. They have a farm nearby where they grow what we would call a truck garden today, and they have a pieux (picket) fence around the yard to keep the livestock from the kitchen garden. They have a porch and there is an old man in a rocking chair looking out at the bayou traffic, much as we would do now in a different scene. The woman comes out to the porch and yells to a neighbor across the bayou that the coffee is ready and to come over to do some quilting. A child chases a dog around the back of the house and out the back gate. The dog and the child have equal protection for their feet.

Down the bayou a little way there is a store where much of the commerce for the community takes place. Things that cannot be made by hand are available there, foodgoods and sewing supplies and gasoline for the little engines that almost always can be heard around you. Kerosene is what makes the days longer by holding back the night, and some of the people use it to cook with too. For baking, wood stoves are still used, and even for keeping premature babies alive until they can regulate their own body temperature. Sometimes the store might double as a place of casual ease if the items for sale include alcohol in some or all of its guises. And sometimes a local product would find its way into the store to compete with the fancy brands, and was usually preferred.

That lady will give birth soon but you can hardly tell, what with the layers of clothing intended to hide the situation. She knows of at least two midwives who will come over when called. She has eight other children and is not very concerned about the birth, though her husband is. As though to point out the other end of that cycle, the boat passing you pulls into the bank ahead and people get out of it carrying flowers. They walk over the bank and to a level place on the highest ground, where there are markers that have the names of those no longer here. Some of the markers are wooden, and some are made of concrete.

To memorialize the coming and goings of human souls, there are three churches on these banks. One is Catholic, ministered by Father Gobeil whose home parish is in Charenton, many miles away by boat. The Baptist mission is sponsored by Rev. Ira Marks. He chooses to build a school here too, and you can see it around the next bend. The Methodist mission is a good neighbor and helpful influence on The Chene. If not for our willingness to bring back the past, these things would be gone now.

It is morning, and over there people are getting into boats, some going up the bayou to where the timber is being cut, others with long coils of cotton line for the trotlines that feed their families or might produce fish to be offered for sale. As each engine starts with a turn of the flywheel, everyone knows who is going out because each boat makes a distinctive sound. A net fisherman looks toward the sounds as he stands on the bank beside a large tub of hot black tar that is steaming in the cool morning air. The fisherman lowers his net into it and then raises it, beating off the extra tar, before allowing the dipped net to cool. Without this the cotton net will rot very quickly, but with it he gets more time before he has to replace it. He and his wife knit new webbing almost every night by kerosene lamp, and the kids learn to do this too.

So, from Bayou Crook Chene, to Bayou Chene, to Bayou Jean Louis and Bayou de Plomb, the common factor is the sound of the little marine engines. You can hear it everywhere, daylight hours are seldom without it. And even though we have not moved away from these scenes we can relive with imagination, we have to come back to the present time, maybe a little reluctantly. But here too, and now, the sounds of the put-put boats are all around us thanks to the men and women who carry the tradition of the engines forward. We are floating on the narrowed waters of Bayou Chene but the boats and the sounds are still with us. And on this day, thanks to Ory Mendoza and his friends, there are 13 reminders of how it once was on Bayou Chene.

In addition to the boat belonging to Ory Mendoza, the other boat owners on this pilgrimage were: David Prejean, J.B. Castagnos, Tony Latiolais, Jerilyn Latiolais, Steve Allemand, Dana Mendoza, Jr., Wayne Morvant, Bob Legnon (+Dick Gibbens), Bill Garlington, John George, Tom Pierie, Tom Pierre, Jr. Riding herd in outboards were Justin Mendoza, Larry Larson and Gerald Clutre.

The Atchafalaya River stage is at 14.0 on the Butte La Rose gauge. It should remain there for about a week more. The Ohio and Mississippi are both pretty quiet. The crawfishermen get a little more time to bring in the bugs.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Keepers of the Flame - One Spark at a Time

2010-04-01T14:45:00.007-06:00

It was a very good day. I was invited to and did attend the annual get-together of the men and women who build and maintain the old putput technology – the boats and motors that provided the transportation for watermen in the first half of the last century. Mr. J.B. Castagnos, (on the right in the picture)from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, was the host of the gathering today, as he has been for years. I do not think there is a name for the group, they are not that formal. This is a point in favor of their sincerity and depth of dedication in my opinion. The other men in the picture are, left to right, Ory Mendoza, Tony Latiolais and Dick Gibbens.

The day began with an interesting twist. In order to get to the place (camp) where the meeting was to take place it was necessary to cross a bridge and then proceed down the bayou crossed by the bridge about ½ mile. When I approached the bridge there was a sheriff’s vehicle blocking traffic. When asked the problem, I was told that the bridge was out and would remain so for at least four hours. What to do? Well, while standing on the bank wondering if I had the appropriate phone number on my cell phone, I heard the distinctive “POP POP POP POP” of a small, antique, marine inboard engine. Each pop being the sound of the spark to, and firing of, a cylinder of the little six-horse Lockwood Ash engine. Sure enough, it was Dick Gibbens coming up the bayou in one of the very boats that was being celebrated this day. I waved him down, and over he came. He offered a ride to the meeting, via the bayou, and I thought what a perfect thing to happen – to arrive at a boat party by boat. And so began a wonderful afternoon among people who are keepers of the flame, one spark at a time.

There were probably fifteen of the old boats there, each with one of the truly antique engines in it, and maybe 75 of the people who carry the tradition forward. Some of them just build the boats, some primarily acquire and maintain the engines – whether they are in a boat or not and some both build the boats and place engines in them. In any combination these add up to keepers of the flame. And they will go long distances to show their pride in the old craft.

Each time you place yourself in an environment so rich with potential friendships, you always find it easy to allow good things to happen. And they do. Among the many people I met, some again, and some for the first time, I would like to mention a couple. First there was a pair of men who are heavily involved in the whole world of wooden boatbuilding – Keith Felder and Jules Lambert. They retired from careers in “The Plants” along the Mississippi River and began to find people, such as Raymond Sedatol in Pierre Part, who could teach them the various styles of small-boat building. By learning from such teachers, over the years they have become experts in dugouts, pirogues, skiffs, bateaux and Lafitte skiffs. They not only build the boats but they find, raise, and make lumber out of cypress “sinker” logs to do it. It is such a pleasure to meet such wonderful craftsmen.

Another man I would like to mention is E.J. Fournet. It was getting toward the end of the day and this man, about my age, was standing next to me. He had on a name tag and it noted that he was from Port Arthur, Texas. That seemed pretty far away to come to this gathering since I thought this group was pretty much a local thing. I asked him about that, and he said his family had originally been from St. Martinville and had moved to Texas long ago. I suppose to place himself in this arena of Louisiana boats he then mentioned that as a boy in St. Martinville his uncle used to take him out into the Atchafalaya Basin to a big old houseboat. Noting again his last name, the alertness factor went up to HIGH and the hairs on my neck did seem to move. It was one of those truly magical moments of anticipation. I said to him that I would ask him something that had very deep meaning to me. Had he known someone from St. Martinville named Elmer Fournet? Why, that was his uncle, he said. And then, did he know who Bill Thomas was? Yes, a bar owner from St. Martinville and friend of his uncle’s. And Pat Gary? Yes, that was his uncle too. I truly could not believe it. Anyone who is curious why this was such a huge thing to me should read the blog posting from 2007 entitled “Three Old Men”. It relates my memories of having spent much time with these old men in the Basin on their houseboat. So, this man, E.J. Fournet, was going out to the same houseboat with the same men as I was 60 years ago, and our paths never crossed! Both of us were around 12 years old. What astonishes me is that I was sure when I wrote the blog posting that all possible connections with that most significant part of my life were gone forever, and here I was speaking with a living connection to the men who had this big impact on my early experience in the Basin. What a wonderful thing to discover. He said that, for his part, also finding out that someone previously unknown could provide a link to his early life made the trip to Louisiana worthwhile regardless of the distance. I could tell him that I felt the same way. What a wonderful thing! Who said serendipity went out of style.

Another way of realizing why the effort being made to keep the flame alive is to note that younger people have no idea why those old boats and motors were important in their time. On returning to the dock to reclaim my truck, I saw a twenty-something young man looking down into the boat I was in. He leaned over the dock railing, beer in hand, and said that he bet the boat could really push through the mud. No, not this kind of boat. He was mistaking it for the modern mudboats that are built to push through marsh ditches that are mostly slush rather than water. Those boats have large engines with thick driveshafts and big, thick propellers. The boat I was in (J.B. Castagnos’ boat) had an engine rated at six horsepower. No, the times have changed and the twenty-somethings no longer have any reference to these old boats. But they always want a ride in one when they are told what they are and what they represent. You can hear the engines coming a long way off, one spark at a time.

The river is at 14 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge right now, rising slowly to 15 feet in the next few days. The Mississippi and Ohio are not doing much so not much change in our water is expected for the time being. Weather’s warming, water’s up, crawfish are growing. Just in time for Easter and Good Friday and a 50% price drop to the fishermen. They just can’t win. But maybe we will be able to afford to eat some.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Silhouette Spring

2010-03-20T16:58:00.005-06:00

Sunrise on the river this morning.

A silhouette, an outline of the real thing, but only an outline against a bright background. That’s kind of what this season, as it is right now, reminds me of. The osprey, squirrel, crow and Alcibiades all produced an image in silhouette on the river this morning. Real cold weather is probably gone and real warm weather isn’t here yet. There is a glimpse of green, renewal, in the trees and grass. There are flowers in the trees, both the kind that look like flowers and those others that resemble stringy things that droop from the ends of new twigs. The ditches are crawling with very small crawfish scurrying around catching the slower tadpoles that winter frogs deposited. In the fields and the lawns this flower, the groundsel, calls for notice. Everywhere there is moisture there is this violently yellow flower. Each of these things is an outline of things soon to come, like a silhouette of spring.

And all around in the sky and in the trees there are birds returning from far away on that always astonishing nonstop flight across the Gulf of Mexico. The ruby throated hummingbirds are perhaps the easiest to wonder at. How could something that small fly so far? But they do, and that’s that. The little blue herons are coming in now. It a week or two there will be large flocks of them morning and evening flying to and fro over the river going who knows where. And there were barn swallows investigating the floating dock this morning. They always try to nest under the tin roof but the intense summer sun on the tin discourages them before any eggs are wasted. Perhaps my favorite spring arrival, the one I look for every year, is the yellow crowned night heron. In the early morning they fly over the river in what seems like a not very purposeful way. They don’t seem to have any real destination. In a little while they will. When I hear the sound they make, that kind of whistle-squawk, I travel back to sixty years ago when the grosbecs still graced many a table in the swamp. You could whistle at them and sometimes they would turn and offer themselves as sustenance. They were never wasted. So they tell me.

The river is at 11.2 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge. It will rise to 13.2 feet by this time next week. And it will keep rising for a while. It is a good thing that it went down from the 17 feet it was in the winter. There would have been no room for the spring water. But it did, and all’s right with the world. The Mississippi and Ohio are both rising about a foot a day all the way up. The pending floods in the upper Mississippi are bad for those folks, but by the time that water gets to the confluence with the Ohio it gets swallowed up in the big river channels. It rarely if ever affects us. The Ohio is the one to watch.

Rise and shine, Jim

Eagle and Egret

2010-02-23T08:32:00.003-06:00

What a great thing it is to have friends who get excited about the same things you do. Makes you feel kind of attached to the world all over again - a renewal, in a way . A friend reminded me of this a couple days ago when he related a moment in his life in which he witnessed an event in nature that may happen more often than we know , but is seldom seen. His name is Steve Stone and he is a biologist working in the Atchafalaya Basin. When he told me of this event I asked him if I could post this in Riverlogue as a way of sharing it with others of like mind. Even though this happened a few miles outside of the Basin, I thought it appropriate to include it here. I have seen eagle/osprey/crow interactions often enough to not be too surprised by what Steve saw. The pictures are mine except for the big eagle, which is from a brochure published by the Eagle Expo event promoters. The crow chasing an immature bald eagle is not an uncommon sight, and this took place over the river. The cattle egrets sitting on cows is also a thing easy to find. So, here is the story as Steve wrote it.

“Bald Eagle Captures Cattle Egret 200 yds above Hwy 190!
On Thursday Feb 18, 2010 at approximately 4:30 p.m. right above Hwy 190 between Livonia and Erwinville (approx 1 mile West of the landfill) I saw one of the most amazing sights of nature occur. I was driving home from work and saw a large dark bird making small clockwise circles above 190. At first I through it was a vulture but noticed that the wings weren't tipping as a vulture does, so I kept one eye on the bird and the other on the road. As I drove nearer I saw a smaller white bird in front of the darker bird and the darker bird looked to be chasing it. It was then that I saw the white tail feathers and white head of the dark bird and realized it was a Bald Eagle and then realized that it was trying to catch a Cattle Egret. I watched them do approximately 8 circles, although the Egret was trying to fly straight away the Eagle kept coming at it from the Egret’s right side making it turn clockwise. I was just about to pass them at this point when I thought this was way too cool not to stop and watch this event taking shape about 200 yards above my head and quickly went from the left lane to the side of the road, I do believe I really ticked off the guy in the right lane but too bad, this was just to awesome to miss.
I jumped out of my car quickly and searched above me for the 2 birds but couldn't see them, they had gotten between me and the sun. I lost sight of them for approximately 45 seconds to 1 minute, while pulling over parking, getting out and trying to find them. By the time I did see them again they were joined together. The Eagle was on top and the Cattle Egret below him with the Eagles talons wrapped around the Egret. The Eagle then flew ESE from Hwy 190 with the Egret clenched in its claws. He was flying in a straight line over a green field about 80 yds above the ground, at one point the Eagle faltered a little bit but caught itself right away and flew over some trees and that was the last I saw of them.
Thanks for letting me relive this through words Jim. Take Care,
Stephen M. Stone Natural Resources Specialist (Ranger) Atchafalaya Basin Floodway System US Army Corps of Engineers”

The river reads 16.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge today, falling slowly to about 16.0 feet next week. The Ohio and Mississippi are both falling all the way up, and it’s a good thing too. There is not much room in the Basin for the spring rise right now. We’ll see.

Rise and shine, Jim

Snowbirds

2010-02-12T09:39:00.006-06:00

This morning there is snow on the river. It has happened before but each time there is something different about it – sometimes beautiful and sometimes threatening. It probably has to do with who we are and where we are at the time, so to speak. Today the snow seems only moderately alien and the birds are ravenously consuming all the sunflower seeds they can find. Even flocks of blackbirds are diving in en masse to pick up what is provided. They are not especially welcome. They seem gluttonous and greedy compared to the more sedate white-throated sparrows, goldfinches and cardinals. Because the blackbirds make a good gumbo, there is temptation.

I count at least 55 cardinals in the top picture.

The river is at 16.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, holding steady and then falling slowly toward the latter part of next week. The Mississippi and Ohio are behaving modestly and no big changes show up on the predictive scales. It is a very good thing that the river fell ten feet from its mid-winter high, allowing some room for the current and future expected high water.

Rise and shine, Jim

Almost Swimming

2009-11-18T13:32:00.003-06:00

I just ran across a piece I wrote prior to starting this blog. It was done in 2005 (November 3) as an email; sent to several people on a short list. In order to get it “into the record” so to speak, I would like to post it in Riverlogue.

“Once in a while something happens that is so impressive that you just have to tell someone. Yesterday afternoon late I was down at the river catching some small bream for the cats. I looked up and something was in the water coming toward the near bank. It was about 50 feet out and obviously swimming, but not like the usual otter or beaver or nutria. Binoculars made it out to be an armadillo. Now, folk wisdom has it the they can’t swim, but in fact walk across the bottom of a waterbody if they choose to cross it. Given their current distribution, that would include the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi – very dubious accomplishments. But still, I had never seen one swim, until yesterday. For those of you who have not seen it let me say that they don’t appear to be very good at it. They cut a rather ungraceful swath through the water, kind of a waddling side to side motion ( if you can waddle in the water). Their back never quite submerges, but their head does – it comes up for a breath and then submerges for a couple of feet, and then back up. When it came to the bank it just kept right on going like the whole thing had been a walk on dry land. One wonders what the incentive might be for such an ill-equipped animal to do this. The distance it swam was about 400 feet.”

The river is at 15.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling slowly for the next few days and then more quickly for the next several weeks. It finally looks like the Ohio and Mississippi have decided to act right for the season and quit setting high water fall records that have not been seen for a long time. Of course, a few big storms in Ohio could change all that.

Rise and Shine,
Jim

High Water Sunrise

2009-10-25T10:10:00.004-06:00

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and look to the east and it takes a moment to believe that you are truly awake. It was so on the morning of day before yesterday. You almost think that it cannot be real until you know that it is, and it really looks like that. These pics have not been retouched in any way. The cat, Alcibiades, enjoyed it too.

The river is at 14.2 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling a little to about 13.5 feet by the end of next week. We have come to expect low water in the fall and this is very high water for this time of year. How high is it, on a relative basis? Using USGS data, the average level for the month of October for the last 12 years is about 3.8 feet. This October the average is 9.0 feet, so far. Again, according to USGS, the highest water in any October for the past 12 years averaged 4.5 feet. This October we saw the 14.2 mark come and go. What does this mean? Who knows. It is very inconvenient for those of us trying to maintain docking facilities on the river. Because we move things closer to the bank in high water, those things are in danger of being left stranded on the bank when the water begins to fall. If we plan any time away from the river, it is always in the fall during the supposed low water period. Not this fall. Staying home is a necessity for the time being. The high water has more serious consequences for people making a living fishing in the Basin, although there are few of them left compared to the old days. My friend Kevin Couvillier runs lines commercially in Grand Lake near Franklin and he tells me that the swift current has his lines so tight that he can’t run them. He could, but if they break in his hands under severe pressure he could be badly hurt. And he is having trouble finding river shrimp to bait with. To him, this high water out of season is more than inconvenient. And the Ohio and upper Mississippi do not look like they are through with us yet, there is more water filling the channels up there and we might get even higher levels during this unusual fall season.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Soul Skiff

2009-09-03T09:53:00.009-05:00

The push skiff has a solid place in the history of transportation on the water. It has a beginning somewhere far back in time, before there were mechanical engines to supplement human energies. It was no doubt the recipient of earlier designs of European or Mediterranean origin, and it arrived on our Atchafalaya Basin doorstep as a sleek, pointed boat with a strangely narrowed stern. A boat that could be propelled through the water with deceptive ease, and so propelled over long distances. It was such an accepted piece of what it was to live and work on the water that a lot of people refused to give it up even after the gasoline engine became popular. Even so, progress was not hard to define if you were pushing the boat along at its slow pace and were passed by one of those newfangled putput bateaux going a sizzling four miles an hour. Progress was not as pretty, or as quiet, but it went faster and you could sit and watch the water go by without pushing your way through it. So, the skiff faded away until there are few left. A small number of men still have the skills and knowledge to make these boats, and you can see them on display (the boats) if you go to the regional fairs and festivals that feature traditional watercraft.

It is even more rare to find one of the original old boats. A few weeks ago we visited a man who lives on highway 182, west of Franklin, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. His name is Howard Freeman Sr. We went to see him because he was the person who most recently owned and used the old skiff pictured below. It came to him when he bought a camp on Fourmile Bayou in the early 1960s, and this boat came with the camp. He does not know more about its origin than that, which leaves us free to speculate (authority on traditional boats, Dr. Ray Brassieur, speculates that this boat may have been built by Pierre Part craftsmen). Mr. Freeman did use the skiff a lot for fishing around his camp, but over the years it passed from his possession to others, collecting the signs of age and disuse that it now shows, eventually coming to Bobby Hodnett (white shirt) in Baldwin. Bobby hoped to repair the boat but realized that by this time it was beyond salvation. He was on the verge of committing the old hull to the solid waste dump when his friend Edward Couvillier saw it and took an interest. Edward knew that the boat was past redemption, but he also saw the possibility of using it as a model to replicate it in cypress, as originally constructed. The rest of this piece records how that happened. We loaded the boat onto a flatbed trailer and delivered it to Edward’s workshop in Oxford, St. Mary Parish.

Edward is a boatbuilder/fisherman who has had space in this blog before. Several years ago he received an apprenticeship grant from the Folklife Division of the Louisiana Department Culture, Recreation and Tourism to build a cypress bateau and teach two of his sons how to do it. He did that and the boat he built has been featured locally as well as at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

The boat at note here has been variously called a push skiff and a pull skiff. The usual means of locomotion is to stand in it and push forward with a pair of oars loosely mounted on the sides of the boat. Thus it seems more appropriate to use the “push” term. Edward had never built a skiff like this, leaving that to his brother for all the years a push skiff was used in his family. He built bateaux and Abner built skiffs. Abner has been gone for many years and now, Edward thought, at age 80, that he would like to try to do a skiff. He would get a head start by using the old skiff as a model. His son Larry, one of the apprentices of the earlier boat building, decided to make it his project and assumed the responsibility of buying the wood and spearheading the construction. The apprenticeship project is carried forward by this.

Back to our visit with Mr. Freeman. In our conversations with him, he repeatedly used terms to describe the push skiffs in an emotional way. And perhaps the most striking thing he said, the most intuitive thing, was when he described the way the boat must be built. He said “If you build a push skiff, you have to put your soul into it. Yes, your soul”. Not sufficient to just put nails into the wood, it must have part of you too. Some things people say resonate and have a greater than literal meaning. If a college student heard Howard Freeman’s words from the front of the room, they would be underlined.

Edward took the old skiff apart, carefully preserving the wood that was not rotten. He laid the old wood aside to use as a pattern to build the new skiff. Larry in the meantime had located sinker cypress wood from the Anslem brothers in Morgan City. He would buy four boards from them. The boards were 21 inches tall by 18 feet long, and all of the new boat, excepting the ribs and timbers (forming the frame), was made from these four boards.

Over the next several weekends, each piece salvaged from the old boat was used to model the new pieces. Although you could copy the old pieces, you could not know how they were originally made to fit together, and each time things had to be bent to curve in the right way, without splitting, it was an exercise in using the skills the men had obtained from a lifetime of woodwork. The cypress eventually did allow itself to be shaped, and the boat took form. As it did, Larry and Edward, neither emotionally demonstrative men, frequently remarked at how pretty the shape was, and how good the curves looked. I have known them for a very long time, and it was a wonder to see them wonder like that.

This boat looks good because it is simple and curved and smooth, or appears to be simple anyway. The formulas that would describe the curves and lines and lengths of cut would not be so simple to most of us, but to Edward and Larry the fit of the pieces just made sense. The boat is pretty, that is all there is to it. What is left to do is to make the frame for attaching the nine-foot oars to the boat. The frame is called a “joug” or yoke and is elevated above the sides so that the oars rest at waist-level to someone standing in the boat. Larry made a model of this boat and it shows one way of making the joug and the oars that go with it.

Is the making of this seemingly useless boat a waste of time? Not if we can profit from feeling good about being in the presence of something beautiful. No, decidedly not. Not if making sure we remember where we came from is an important thing. If you think only in terms of efficient transportation, there is no practical purpose for this boat now. Compared to motorized craft, it is slow and uses a lot of muscular effort. So why do it? Well, for some people, those who feel a connection to the ways that things were done in the past, there is a satisfaction, almost a compelling need, to recreate the tools that accomplished those things. This skiff is one of those tools. And it is beautiful. Looking at it allows you to drift back in time to small bayous and quiet cypress forests. It feels good to look at it, and imagine where it could have taken you.

The river is at 4.3 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge today, falling slowly to about 3.5 feet over the next week. The Mississippi has a small rise coming but the Ohio has nothing to back it up at this time. Looks like we are in for the low water season for sure.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Five Candles

2009-08-17T22:16:00.003-05:00

Just a whim, this. A couple days ago I took pictures of water hyacinth flowers for my "Life at Butte La Rose" catalogue and was surprised to find candles burning in every flower. Had never noticed them before. How many times (hundreds) had I looked at these flowers? Apparently not enough times to see them.

The river is at 7.5 on the Butte La Rose gauge. It will be at about 2.8 feet in a week. That is a FAST drop. The Mississippi and Ohio are emptying out to the low end of the cycle.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Bedding

2009-08-14T15:04:00.008-05:00

When bedding was needed, what were the materials available to people in houseboats in the first half of the 1900s and before? The materials were feathers, corn shucks, moss and the fabrics to enclose these things.

Feathers were most often derived from wild ducks and geese, particularly the down and other soft feathers. Chickens were also used when available. Pillows were made of feathers and so were thin mattresses that were often placed on top of other, loftier, materials. Sheets were made out of yellow cotton, as described by Lena Mae Couvillier and her sister-in-law Margaret Neal. Pillow cases were also made with flour sacks, feed sacks or yellow cotton (unbleached muslin). The latter came on rolls or flat bolts.

JD: So, uh, flour sacks and cow feed sacks were mostly…and they had patterns on em, you said. Where would yall get the thread and needles and everything to sew with?

MN. We’d get em off those fishboats. Order em. They had all kinds, they had to be all kinds. They all in a pack, all five.

JD: How about sheets for the beds?

LC: You make em. Yellow cotton.

MN: You buy that by the yard, make your sheets with.

LC: Sheets and pillow cases.

JD: And…and the fishboat would have that too?

MN: You’d order it. They’d bring it to you.

In addition to sheets, quilts would be made using traditional quilting techniques and items from the fishboats. The other material needed for making the mattresses was the cloth that enclosed whatever the mattress was made of. This cloth was called ticking.

Corn shucks were one of the two materials that were routinely made into mattresses. The shucks were stuffed into mattress-sized bags. These were common enough, but were not the preferred mattresses. The primary objection to them seems to be that they were very loud when the person resting on them moved in any way. Just turning on them was enough to wake people up, even without the more rhythmic sounds that one might imagine.

“Make a lot of noise, it rattle a lot, when you roll…move on it? It rattled, you know” [Edward Couvillier; 1995]

By far the most often mentioned material for mattresses is dried, black moss. This is the same moss that had income potential when gathered alive (“green moss”) from trees in the swamp and processed to remove the soft, living outer coat, leaving only the very durable non-living inner core of the plant. This core was dark brown to black. While most of the moss was sold, some was retained for use in building mattresses to sleep on. Most of the time it was the women who created these essential items for the family.

To make the moss mattresses, the ticking was spread on the floor and the processed black moss was spread out to a thickness of about 24 inches on one-half of it. The ticking was then folded over “taco fashion” and the seams all around the three open sides were sewn together. A long needle, ten inches or so, was then taken and threaded through the bag of moss at intervals of about 12 inches, creating a network of bindings that tended to keep the enclosed moss from shifting inside the bag. If done expertly, the finished mattress was rectangular, about a foot thick, with sides that almost created 90-degree angles with the top and bottom. Achieving such a regular, well-defined shape was a matter of pride.

Apparently, after sleeping on a moss mattress for a while the moss would compress into clumps and, to remain comfortable to sleep on, these clumps had to be pulled apart and restored to the the springiness they originally had. In a large family, some women would require that every two weeks one of the family’s mattresses would be unsewn, washed, and the clumps pulled apart. Much of this work was done by the children, reluctantly. As they were being picked apart and fluffed up, the clumps were not to be treated so roughly that the individual moss fibers would be broken, but only gently pulled apart. In all the thirty-something people interviewed for this topic, not one remembered the de-clumping (“picking”) procedure with fondness.

Lena Mae’s brother Milton, who grew up to be one of the best fishermen at Myette Point, was not good at doing this chore, resorting to hiding the evidence when he did it inexpertly.

EC: Yeah. You didn’t break it, now, you didn’t want to break it loose, you just fluff it up, you know?

LC: [.. . .] Not Milton, he break it up and go throw it back…Go throw it back of a tree somewhere, where Momma and them couldn’t find it.

JD: Well, was that one of the harder parts of living on a houseboat, was keeping the mattress in good shape?

Lena Mae’s outlook on having to do unpleasant jobs is interesting.

LC: Aw, it wasn’t hard, it wasn’t really hard. It was just…like you do now, you know, you can make it what you want.

People say that this type of bedding was comfortable to recline on, but sleeping on it was easier in the winter than in the summer. Due to the nature of the material, and depending on whether the mattress was firmly stuffed or more soft, anyone lying on it could sink into the mattress and become almost enclosed by it. This was very warm in the winter, even when there was ice in the house in the mornings, and correspondingly uncomfortably hot in the summer.

The mattresses were either placed on the floor or used on top of an iron bed frame with a set of springs on it. Margaret Couvillier Neal and her husband Floyd Mayon had a small two-room houseboat (one kitchen, one everything else) and a big family to put to sleep at night. She talks with humor about this with sister-in-law Lena Mae Couvillier.

MN: I just had three beds, one room, with three beds in it. You couldn’t pass, hardly, between the beds. [laughs] I had six girls and uh, five boys.

JD: Well, with just two mattresses, could you split em up boys and girls?

MN: Yeah. It was rough, but, we made it. The good Lord was with us.

Neg Sauce has good memories of what life was like in the houseboats. After sleeping on the moss mattresses, he remembers what it was like to get up in the morning.

“The first thing that I start doing…you go to the edge of the camp and you wash your face with that nice cool water in the bayou. [. . .]…catch it with your hands, boy...wash your face with it and make you feel fresh [laughs]. Yeah, it was nice. I still would like to do that [laughs], catch you water out of the side…And then you get up and drink you coffee like we always do now.” [Neg Sauce; 1996]

Perhaps that ability to get up in the morning and feel good about the day and yourself was part of the reason these folks could keep going day after day, season after season, adapting to a life that had many challenges. A good night’s sleep was probably one of the reasons those challenges could be met successfully.

The river is at 7.4 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, high for this time of year. But the bottom is going to fall out this week coming. In five days the water is predicted to fall 3.5 feet. That is a fast drop at any time. Anyone with things floating along the bank of the river better pay attention or their things will be stuck until next year, probably.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Law and Order

2009-08-02T13:46:00.007-05:00

How would it work if we just decided one day to suspend the 911 service, including the calls to the fire department, the police or sheriff’s department? How would it be if our rights, or life, or property was being threatened and there was no institutional authority to call? It is what happened to the people who lived in the Atchafalaya Basin in the 1800s and early 1900s. It is interesting to wonder if they knew that they were giving up access to law enforcement when they decided to move farther and farther back into the Basin in pursuit of the swamp’s resources. Indeed, whether they cared? Today this would be one of the first issues we might consider, but oddly, it did not seem to deter them from voluntarily choosing isolation. Perhaps it is a case of not missing what you never had? When you ask the interview questions about law enforcement, people shrug their shoulders and respond with “there wasn’t any”. In pursuit of more detail you can push on with questions about sheriffs or their deputies, and the answer is the same. There just wasn’t any.

However, if you lived on the edges of the Basin instead of in the interior, things could be different with respect to the legal attention paid to situations. The landing at the foot of the Attakapas Canal on Lake Verret was close enough to Napoleonville (eight miles by road) to receive direction from the Assumption Parish sheriff’s department. One of the Myette Point ancestors was known to cause trouble when he came to town, and the sheriff chose to address the potential problem by banning the individual from using the landing at all. This would have been about 1850.

“They used to do all their business at Attakapas Landing. Yeah, that’s it. And he’s the one I was telling you that…uh, that grandpa Sead’s daddy, he was so…such a bad character, that the sheriff wouldn’t even let him land at Attakapas Landing anymore.” [EJ Daigle, 1995]

But even in the interior of the Basin, in some rare instances, particularly those involving murder, cases came to the attention of federal authorities. Why some criminal acts were addressed this vigorously and others not, is not known. This particular time, a man accused of murder was traced by federal marshals to Hog Island, about ten miles south of Bayou Chene. They showed up looking for him and a fishboat came in and docked about the same time. The fishboat operator saw what was happening and told the marshals that he needed to leave and continue on in his boat. Knowing the close association between the fishermen and the fishboat operators, the marshal suspected the murderer would get help from the fishboat. The names are masked in the following account by Edward Couvillier, who would have been a teenager at the time and living on Hog Island.

EC: I remember old [. . .] He killed a man. And he came down there between Hog Island and Keelboat. Marshal came down there to look for him, and they got everybody in one house, made everybody stay together, didn’t let nobody leave. [. . .] pulled up, [. . .] on his fishboat, and he was gonna leave and that marshal told him “No, you got to stay here” he says. He was afraid he would go pick him up and take him, you see. That’s what he didn’t want. “No” he say, “I’m gone”. He pulled out that big old gun, he put it in the back of his head, he say “You gone stay”.

JD: When was that Edward?

EC: Aw, that was in the ‘40s. Way back in the ‘40s. At Keelboat [Pass] and Hog Island. Got on that island between Keelboat and Hog Island. And they finally caught him, but it took about three or four days with bloodhounds. They got back in there with bloodhounds, got him out.

JD: And what…what was it that had happened? He had…

EC: He had killed a man, [. . .]

JD: And did he get taken off to jail, and everything?

EC: Oh yeah, they hauled him off.

Apparently insults were dealt with by direct confrontation. Fist fighting was the usual method of confrontation between men, with the parties afterward refraining from communication with the other family for a period of time. Most of the time affronts would be forgotten in a year or less, and communication would resume. Serious disagreements, such as the accusation of fish theft, might require longer than a year to subside. As a young man, Myon Bailey was involved in the question of fish theft and fought with his accuser, falling overboard and causing his wife to miscarry their first child. Five years later the parties reconciled their differences and became good friends, but it took that long.

“And he come and attack on me at my camp. When he hit me he knocked me overboard. When I got outta there we got hooked up [tangled fighting]. And Blaise come there and separate us, and then Blaise went to whip Alvin’s ass. It was a big coulou. We stayed about five years I guess. Caused her to lose her first baby. [Myon Bailey, 1995]

Generally, theft seems to have had a kind of sliding scale of degree vs. reaction. It was understood by just about everybody that there was a line between what the victim could be expected to shrug off with a verbal exchange and what required a direct physical response. The known temper and physical capability of a potential victim might have had an influence on what a thief planned to do.

According to interviews, the theft of timber was a common thing in the first half of the 1900s. There was so much timber, and the territory was so big, and the patrolling of it so sparse, that many people routinely made part of their living by cutting cypress and tupelo and hiding it for later removal to a sawmill. And you had to hide the trees you cut so that other people looking to do the same thing you were doing didn’t come along and steal the logs you had just “acquired”. Myon’s daughter, Lena Mae Couvillier, says “They had to, ‘cause they’d steal em. That’s why they’d hide em. “

Firearms for legal purposes were a common tool in the Basin. They were used for hunting game so much that no one thought anything of seeing people carrying rifles or shotguns. So it was that if a disagreement over something occurred there may have been a gun to settle it. It was this availability that could be dangerous at times. There are several well-known instances of arguments being settled by the death by gunshot of one of the people involved. Most of these cases, however not all, were the end result of longstanding disagreements not of issues that just flared up suddenly.

One such situation is well documented, and it occurred in Iberia Parish. It was near the place then called Grand Bayou. This is the waterway on the west side of the Basin that fed Lake Fausse Point from the Atchafalaya River system prior to the levee blocking Grand Bayou. There was a community there for a while. The story goes like this. One man was in the small store getting supplies and he looked through the front door and saw someone else about to enter the store. The first man told the store owner that he didn’t want to talk to the incoming second man and left the store. He walked to his pirogue and got in and began to paddle away down the bayou along the bank. The second man came up to the bank and began to walk along the bank harassing the first man in the pirogue. After a short time, the man in the pirogue lifted a shotgun loaded with buckshot and fired at the man on the bank, hitting him in the body with several of the pellets. As the man fell, he told a friend “He’s killed me”. And he died. The sheriff of Iberia Parish arrested the first man and took him to jail in New Iberia. A hearing was held during which an attempt was made to determine if self defense was involved. Eyewitnesses testified that the man on the bank was not threatening the man in the pirogue except verbally. It was shown he had no weapon but a very small pocketknife. No self defense was justified. However, the victim’s records were reviewed and it was found that there had been complaints filed against him for assault with a weapon, and other complaints involving intimidation, etc. The hearing officer ruled that the homicide had been justifiable based on the dead man’s antisocial character. End of case. Being that formal complaints had previously been filed, the incident must have been within reach of the New Iberia system of law. If this had happened farther out in the Basin it is doubtful if complaint records would have existed.

Running someone else’s fishing lines almost always brings about a potentially violent reaction from the wronged party. The most often mentioned weapon is the paddle kept in the boat. Ida Daigle (born in 1918) caught a man stealing fish from her lines once. She says.

“[. . .] He had all my fish in his boat. And I went right up to him, too. I put my paddle, though, by me. He’d a made a pass at me I’d’a hit him with my paddle. And uh, I went right up to him. [. . .] “I did good!” he say. I say “Where’s your lines?” “Oh, here and there”. I say “You know darn well you lyin” I say “You ain’t got a line in yuh.” I say “Them fish is mine” I say “Throw em in my boat”. [. . .] I say “I’m gone hit you in the…I’m gone hit you with this paddle”. And I had…Russell had made me a big, heavy paddle.
And I say “I’m goin bait my line and tomorrow” I say “ I’m gone be here earlier than what you is” and I say “Look” I say “if I see you on a line” I say “you gone stay there” But I didn’t have no gun with me [means she was bluffing]. [laughs]. I never brought no gun with me. But he got scared. The next day I went and filled up my wellbox. It was my fish.” [Ida Daigle, 1996]

Infidelity was as frequent as with any other group of individuals. Sometimes it happened. The unwritten law was that if a couple was discovered while so engaged, the consequences were up to the wronged man. If he chose, he could shoot the other man, and the woman too for that matter, and no law would punish him. Sometimes the offended person just didn’t think the issue was worth the trouble and just walked away, but sometimes not.

We wonder at the flexibility of what we think of as the system of crime and punishment in the Basin in the first half of the 1900s. But it is a difficult assessment to make. From our position in a much more monitored and regulated society, it is unrealistic to assess someone else’s reactions that took place in a time and place unfamiliar to us. People who lived 150 years ago in the Atchafalaya Basin lived by the codes they inherited from previous generations. If these progenitors lived in conditions far removed from organized law enforcement, they learned to function within a set of rules that had proven through time to work well enough to let people get on with life. Live and let live seems to be what evolved as a guide for most people. If this system at least allowed individuals to live their lives without the constant fear of threat to life or property, it seems to have been enough.

The river is playing tricks. It went down to five feet last week and I dug out the lower-level platforms that lead to the crib and dock when they are far away from the bank in low water. Now the river is coming back up to at least seven feet and maybe more due to rain in Ohio. Oh well. It ain’t boring.

The black and white picture is from the collection of Darlene Soule'.

The river is at 6.0 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 7.8 feet by next Friday. The Ohio and Mississippi are really rising up above. We could get some serious mid-summer water this year, not flooding, but higher than usual anyway.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Earnings and Prices

2009-07-05T10:22:00.007-05:00

Going far back into the last century, and beyond a little bit, it is interesting to see what kind of prices existed for things the Basin fishermen sold and bought. Some of the prices received for things like fish and moss were low, as expected, but then so were the prices of much of the material they needed to buy. Catfish in 1900 were bringing 5¢ to 8¢ a pound, while the other saleable item, dried moss, brought 1.5¢ a pound. This provided the primary income for families in the swamp that were harvesting Basin resources.

The other source of income was work in the timber industry. In the early 1920s and 19 teens, men cut timber for 50¢ a day. By 1932 the wage was up to $1.50 a day for deadening cypress, and presumably the other jobs that people did in that industry were similar.

The income from selling fish dropped for most people during the Depression (~ 1930 to 1942) from about 8¢ a pound to 3¢. There are occasional reports of eight and even 10¢ but not many. Moss seems to have increased in value somewhat before 1930, but following the trend in those years, seems to have dropped from 3¢ to 1¢ a pound during those economically stressful times.

When World War II began, it signaled the end of the Depression, and prices began to rise. In 1944, catfish were bringing pre-Depression prices of about 10¢ a pound in most docks, as dated from the statement that follows (using the memories of births in a family). EJ Daigle remembers his father fishing about that time.

“[. . .] my Daddy, before Leroy was born, when Momma was pregnant for Leroy [1945], Daddy said he made big money at 10¢ a pound. Those big blue cats in that current off of Myette Pt. [. . .] [EJ Daigle, 1995]

And by 1949, prices of fish had risen to an all-time high. Russell Daigle testifies to this.

“Them days, buffalo was worth 30¢ a pound, gous worth 30¢, 40¢ a pound. Catfish uh, they had a better price then than what they got now. They’d always average say from 45 to 65¢ a pound. The low point was about 45, the high point about 65 [cents a pound].” [Russell Daigle, 1996]

The fishboat added value to the fish they bought by assuming the responsibility for delivering the fish from the fishermen to the dock for processing and shipping. For this service they added a certain amount per pound to what they paid the fishermen. The amount they made per pound when the fish were delivered to the dock varied with the period discussed but seems to have been from 3¢ to 5¢ a pound.

An interesting anomaly took place somewhere around 1959 when the two species of catfish (the blue and channel, aka eel cat) were separated with respect to value. Instead of being considered together, for some reason blue catfish were valued at a higher rate than channel catfish. Overabundance of channel catfish may have been the answer to this, described as a glut by fishermen.

This artificial separation of the species soon ended, and the price of both species of catfish gradually settled at about 25¢ per pound. That’s rough fish, as caught, not filleted or collarbone cleaned, but as caught. That price remained until 1974, when the fishermen united in an attempt to form a buying and processing cooperative for fish caught in the Atchafalaya Basin. It was during the time that this venture was in the process of development that the docks doubled the price to the fishermen - from 25¢ to 50¢ a pound. This was the first time the price had been that high since 1949. That price remains to this day – 50¢ a pound. For unanticipated competitive reasons, the fishermen’s cooperative only progressed to the advanced planning stage.

Fish was the main source of income other than work in the lumber industry, and the latter petered out in the 1940s. But compared to today it didn’t take very much money to support a good life in the Basin. People talk about how much it took to produce a good living for line fishermen. Lena Mae Couvillier and her husband Edward:

LC: [. . .] We wasn’t in debt. Didn’t owe nobody.

EC: You could live on $25 a week. Live good too!

Even though it was a seasonal activity, trapping could be a big part of the income for Basin people. Muskrats were the foundation of trapping, especially along the coast, but the coming of nutria was a big boost, temporarily at least. It took only a few years for this artificially introduced mammal to reproduce into harvestable numbers, and by 1946 it had spread from coastal marshes to the Basin and was just then being harvested there for the first time. Russell Daigle was one of the first to catch nutria in the Basin and had these memories.

RD: On the end of the bars, when the end of the bars got about even with, uh, the lower end of Goat Island. They were trappin them bars out there. And uh, we caught a neutral [nutria]. And from then on it’s started showin up thick, they comin from up north, I guess.

JD: Yall didn’t know what to do with em?

RD: No, come to find out they were worth good money. We get about $7.00 a piece for em. They were worth real good money! Them days, look, $7.00 a lot of money. You go catch seven, eight a day? Made a big year there, with them neutrals. [laughs].

Some of the other items for which there is a record of prices paid or the cost of purchasing are also part of the interview material contributed by the Myette Point families. Freshwater crabs were sold to the processing factories in Morgan City for 3¢ a pound in 1945. Flour cost 40¢ a sack. Gasoline 20¢ a gallon.

In 1940 they sold a pair of mallard ducks for 50¢. They could handmake durable swivels out of a nail and a piece of wire to sell to other fishermen for $1.25 a hundred. They could make ½ inch-mesh shrimp dipnets for $1.50 each. Bullfrogs and pigfrogs were caught in the Basin in large numbers but there was no market for them in the 1930s.

“No, they wasn’t worth nothin then. And they didn’t really…you couldn’t hardly sell em…at that time.” [Lena Mae Couvillier, 1997]

Being able to live on houseboats and gain income from fishing, and also carry the responsibility for owning property was sometimes not possible, or desired. Taxes on property, often the property that had been settled by the same individuals who moved permanently onto houseboats, were not regarded as serious issues by many people, and so their lands were forfeited to the legal process. Myon Bailey and his wife Agnes talk about their relationship to taxes and property.

MB: [. . .] Fourmile Bayou, a lawyer come and see me one time, about taxes, said nobody ain’t payin taxes. Say if yall don’t pay the taxes …ain’t gone be yours. So I paid the taxes that year [~1950], and that’s it, I didn’t pay it no more. Years ago, when we first moved at Myette Pt. On the bank .

AB: Yeah.

MB: I never did pay it no more, and it was only $3.90 a year.

JD: How much property was involved?

MB: Nineteen acres. It’s a oil company come and see me. They want to lease it.

So, during the Basin houseboat years, from 1900 to about 1950, line fishermen didn’t have large incomes, but they didn’t have large expenses either. During the time when catfish brought 10¢ a pound to the fishermen, they could achieve the desired $5.00 a day with 50 pounds of catfish. Fishing for the big goujons could bring that with one fish. Earlier prices of 3¢ might bring less income, but that was at a time when expenses were less too. All in all, people could make a good living linefishing in the Atchafalaya Basin during the houseboat years and thereafter until the 1980s. After that, competition from farm-raised fish reduced the market for wild catfish to the extent that linefishing for them was no longer worthwhile in Grand Lake. Except for those caught by a few netfishermen, the docks have almost quit buying wild catfish from the Grand Lake area. For the most part, because of the competition with the more uniformly-sized pond catfish, only small fish are bought now and those in amounts insufficient to support a linefisherman and his family. And the price to the fisherman that was elevated to 50¢ a pound in 1974 is still that, or less, for wild catfish.

The river is at 11.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling slowly to 10.5 by next Friday, and probably falling after that. The Mississippi and Ohio are both falling all the way up.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Groceries and Tokens

2009-06-25T16:16:00.005-05:00

So, they abandoned life on the water for a land-based existence, these families that made up the Myette Point community. The transition came with gains and losses. One of the losses was the convenience of having all your supplies brought to you by the fishboats, so that one of the immediate needs that had to be met was finding a place to purchase provisions such as groceries, staples, fishing equipment, etc. – all of the things the fishboats had previously made available. The nearest source for this that they found was the plantation company stores and one privately owned store of a similar nature. There were two sugar plantations that were somewhat near to Myette Point - Oaklawn and Bellevue. Each of these had a company store that could provide the basic needs of the families, and the other one was a private establishment owned and operated by Medric Martin since 1935 and continuing today. Early on, the Martin store, known to all local people as “Medric’s”, became the primary location for the needs of the new community at Myette Point. It was about three miles away by dirt and gravel road, while the Bellevue store was about five miles from Myette Point. Interestingly, the Oaklawn plantation store was closer but does not seem to have cultivated business from the new community. They went, instead, to Medric’s. Mr. Medric is 95 years old as this is written, and he has many memories of the early days of Myette Point and its people. He speaks favorably of them with respect to their ability to function in a frontier environment, and of their honesty in commercial dealings. In the first few years he would deliver groceries to the levee when the road was dry, and he often hunted ducks with them.

“They came there [to Myette Point], and I met em. I used to go huntin…I started meeting em. They needed groceries and things, so, they came in. They had no way…they had to walk in and walk out, so I…. And uh, that’s how I start meetin em. Those were mighty good people, those days they fished and things and plenty times they didn’t have any money, and I advanced em. Oh yeah. I advanced em. People what needed something, I let em have it. And…and, all of em paid me. [. . .]” [Medric Martin, 1996]

As always in any fishing activity, not all fish were considered prime saleable items. The familiar catfish and buffalo were almost always marketable, but not so garfish and choupique (bowfin). Boys who caught such fish saw opportunity in a public not averse to eating them. This population was primarily the black workers of the plantation population. Whenever a garfish or choupique was caught, the boys would walk the two and a half miles to the plantation and sell their fish to enthusiastic buyers there. However, there was a catch to these sales that provides an opportunity to mention a part of the plantation economy not often discussed today. It is the token system.

On some plantations, such as Oaklawn, there was a double method of payment used. The more familiar one would be the one where cash was paid to employees at an agreed upon rate for work done. This was paid monthly. The other method used tokens. It seems that if an employee ran out of cash between pay periods, they could appeal to the plantation on a day called “order day” for an advance on the next pay day. This advance would be made to them in the form of tokens, metallic coin-like pieces that had monetary value assigned by the plantation. The tokens could only be used at the company store. Enter the Myette Point boys. When they sold their garfish and choupiques to the plantation workers, they often received tokens as payment, which in turn could only be used to buy things at the company store. They did accept this form of payment for their fish, not having much option. Edward Couvilleir and Bootsie Millet talk about this.

EC: I remember…I remember when we used to catch a gar, a choupique or somethin me and Bootsie took [off] and head to the front with that sucker to sell it.

BM: Aw yeah. [laughs]

EC: Yeah lord! They had a oak tree about…almost middle ways along the trail [in the fields] goin to the lake, and that’s where you stop and rest, under that oak tree.

BM: Umhm.

EC: Big old tree, man! There wasn’t no such thing as ridin…walk to the front, over here. And they had them tokens out here, that’s what they’d pay us for the fish with, tokens. [. . .] That’s what they had at Oaklawn.

BM: Oaklawn Store, that’s all they would handle…them, uh…

EC: Tokens. They had a triangle hole in the middle of em. Yeah. You had to buy from Oaklawn Store with that.

The token image is from the Exonumia website.

The river is at 13.2 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising just a little in the next few days. The Mississippi and Ohio will encourage falling stages on the Atchafalaya after that. The river shrimp are starting their migration 30 miles south of here. They should be here in two or three weeks. Fun to see at night.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Education

2009-06-12T20:40:00.003-05:00

Most of us assume that the word “education” means reading, writing and arithmetic, and in the restricted sense that would be true. In this restricted sense, these are learned skills that would be taught by paid teachers in some sort of dedicated building. But, of course, in so many ways the true education received by people in general includes much, much more than that. A definition of education in this more general sense might emphasize the need to learn those skills necessary to provide food, clothing and shelter for oneself. Perhaps the need for social skills might be added to this.

The Myette Point families had ample education in the general sense. They learned to convert energy into food and shelter at an early age. They learned the social skills needed to thrive in close living conditions. They learned how to apply established techniques to the problems of everyday life, and to discard those that were not workable – always substituting some variation that might work better. Government agencies have only recently learned this useful process; they call it adaptive management, as though it was a new thing.

If food, clothing and shelter are the primary criteria for life, and skills for achieving those things are available from mentors all around you, then the other skills are simply not essential. During a certain period of time, then, reading, writing and arithmetic were not necessary to living a successful life in the Basin, and the absence of schools for teaching these things was not a serious issue or a disadvantage.

However, even in the Basin some of the Myette Point families had opportunities to learn in the schoolroom. There were two of these schools; the first one in the central Basin on the island known as Hog Island and the other, later one, on the levee after the Myette Point community had been formed. Both of these were the results of efforts by Baptist missionaries to bring religion and learning to Basin inhabitants.

The most memorable religious influence, at least to people who lived there, began with the building of the Little Brown Church. This floating building was used all up and down the middle Atchafalaya region for Baptist missionary work. There were two of these. The first was dismantled and used to build the Hog Island school. Margaret Couvillier Neal was a student at the school.

“When we first started out there, it was the Little Brown Church on the water. And we’d go to church on that. And after that they got it moved on the bank and made us a schoolhouse out of it.” [Margaret Neal, 2005]

The teachers at these Baptist missionary schools were often members of the missionary community. Sometimes they were the wives of the missionary men.

“Now, the teachers at Keelboat Pass was, uh, Ophi Mae Price…and uh…well first off, started out at Hog Island Pass…[. . .] …the last one there was a Mrs. Miller, she was the last teacher. She stayed in that…like, one side had a school room and the other side was like an apartment, and she stayed in the apartment and taught one through the eighth grade. In one room, yeah. And so you…you learned quite a bit.” [Robert Vuillemont, 2006]

It should be mentioned that, prior to the Baptist activity, there was Catholic missionary work in the Basin also, in the person of a Father R.J. Gobeil. With his own boats, he moved himself around the Basin, ministering to the houseboat communities where he found them. Even though there was education offered, it tended toward progressing in stages through the Catholic religion, and there is no mention of interest in starting schools where secular learning could be had. On the other hand, the Baptist missionaries tended to promote schools within the larger framework of general education.

“Well, Keelboat and Hog Island, they had a lot of people on em. But you see, the Catholic had been out there for years, but they never…they never started no schools. When Brother Marks came out there, well, immediately he saw the need to put kids in school.” [Edward Couvillier, 1997]

Increasing pressure from government policies regarding compulsory education was one of the reasons why the Myette Point families decided to leave the Basin and the houseboats they had lived on for generations. Most people migrated to towns and could take advantage of school facilities existing there. The Myette Point families did their best to comply with the required school experience and still continue to live and function in close harmony with the Atchafalaya. They moved to Myette Point and then started sending their children to Franklin schools. This did not work due to the difficulty of getting the kids to a bus, about three miles over dirt/mud roads. After leaving the water permanently, all of them by 1950 or so, the requirement to send the children to school and the difficulties this still presented, attracted more effort from Ira Marks, the Baptist missionary who had been responsible for setting up the school and missionary church at Hog Island more than a decade earlier. The primary difficulty was in getting the school-age children living on the levee to a place where a school bus could pick them up. In the early years, this meant someone driving them to “the front” over questionably passable dirt/mud roads the distance of about three miles. In rainy/muddy weather, they had to walk. Noting this difficulty, and in collaboration with the Baptists, the community built a school on the skirt of the levee that functioned for three years. The school was finally closed when a road was shelled (the building continued to function as a church), improving it to the point where a school bus could reach the levee and transport the children. The children born after about 1945, then, were all schooled first in Franklin, then at Myette Point until the road was improved, and then most of them finished in Franklin.

So, education, formal education, has that kind of history in the four generations of people who make up the Myette Point community. Literacy was spread widely in people born around the Basin in the 1850s, it was not prevalent in those born from 1880 to 1940, and then it was again prominent. It is interesting that literacy, when not necessary to day-to-day life, can be so easily discontinued. Having been a factor in the first generation, it was not encouraged within the second and third generations, and then was reestablished as a functional tool by the fourth generation. Today, children born to the fourth generation are themselves teachers, lawyers, accountants, religious leaders, and many other professions that take formal education for granted.

The black and white pictures are from the collection of Darlene Soule and from Artie Buck.

The river is at 16.7 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling slowly to 15.0 feet by the 17th. Nothing in the Ohio or Mississippi wants to extend the high water this year. Looks like we have had what we are going to get.

Rise and Shine, Jim

The Levee

2009-06-05T14:05:00.005-05:00

Since this story is about the Atchafalaya Basin and the people who inhabited it, there can be only one levee to speak about – the one that fundamentally changed the Basin and the way the people related to it. It was built in the 1930s as a result of the flood of 1927, the latter having taken place at a time when the Mississippi floods could cause national rather than only local distress, and at a time when the federal government was ready to do something to prevent similar floods in the future, if possible. The new national outcry to “do something” was met with the Flood Protection Act, enabling the federal government to apply planning and funds toward effective flood prevention for the first time. It was this Act that mandated the levees in the Basin, changing it forever. Where there had previously been only a huge natural overflow basin for the Atchafalaya River, there was now a somewhat lesser basin with hundreds of miles of manmade levee totally defining the flowage hydrology in the swamp, and restricting it to the will of man, so far.

There are, of course, two levees around the Basin, the East and West Protection Levees. But using the term “levee” in singular form is desirable here. It is always referred to in singular in the interviews with the Myette Point families because the concept of what the levees meant is an overriding and all-inclusive idea. Consequently, “the levee” means more than a ridge of dirt extended for many miles. It means in aggregate all the adjustments that had to be made and all the environmental changes that took place. It was at one time a barrier to travel and a provider of a new means of travel. It brought an opportunity for changing lifestyles. It made life on land possible and life on the water harder. It gave life and it took life. “The levee” did these things, and more.

When it was built, did this new thing, this long dike, cause the Basin residents to rise up and create petitions, or march on someplace, or start campaigns citing potential environmental degradation? No, it did not. The people most affected by the levee were not activists in a broad sense; that kind of aggressive response is mostly for those who can view effects from outside a situation. The Basin people were on the inside in the strictest sense. They were the ones who were so intertwined with the environment that they were almost part of it, and so had to adjust to the changes around them, or succumb to them. Most people made the adjustment, for as long as the changes were not lethal to life, they could be absorbed. Old ways disappeared and new ways emerged.

The presence of the levee to the Myette Point families is so significant that their existence in the Basin can really be divided into the before and after levee construction. So, before the levee, what was the Basin like? It was a vast, open, unrestricted piece of semi-aquatic environment mostly unattractive to human beings. It had many characteristics that made it uncomfortable to people. It had mosquitoes, and snakes, and water and mud – all of which civilization tends to eliminate over time, if it can, by spraying the mosquitoes, killing the snakes, draining the water and drying up the mud, and so making living easier for some fraction of the human population. But for a long time the Basin defied attempts at those modifications, simply because it was so big. Modification was only possible on a grand scale, but the Basin met its match in that the building of the levee was just such a large-scale modification. In cutting through drainages, the levee restricted one of the Basin’s primary inherent features, its watercourses. Subsequent realignment and dredging applied to these watercourses was enough to initiate changes that would redefine the Basin environment forever.

People who lived in the Basin had different responses to the flood of 1927. If they lived on land, the water inundated their houses (to a depth of 12 feet on Hog Island, a previously thought to be safe place). It drowned their chickens, cows and other livestock. Gardens and fruit trees were killed by the flooding that lasted for many weeks. If people lived on houseboats, however, the obvious merits of rising with the water are apparent. The older generation (Blaise Sauce) of Myette Point people was already on houseboats and some of the succeeding generation too. These people tied their boats along upper Bayou Lafourche along with other houseboats. When the water receded, many people returned to the land they had relinquished to the high water and rebuilt their lives there. Others moved their houseboats back into the Basin. To these Basin residents, the political response to the 1927 flooding was not very apparent during the next few years, but the big changes had been put in place and the new resolve to prevent future catastrophes was effective in putting the money and people together. The levee was going to be built, and there would be big changes in the flow of water in the Basin.

The higher volumes of water every year, and the restricted flow in the deeper Basin channels, created swifter currents and more dangerous whirlpools. The small boats used by the people were not meant for these hazardous conditions, push skiffs being particularly susceptible to whirlpools, or eddies as they were sometimes called. Putt Couvillier had memories of someone who was still trying to fish in 1941 or 1942 with a push skiff. He notes how dangerous fishing in the strong currents generated subsequent to the building of the levee could be.

“ And used to have some great big old eddies, you know? Six foot deep, up to six and eight foot deep. Some worse, you had to watch em, you know? And he used to…they used to not have no boats [with motors] out here. And uh, used to have an old fella livin out there on that island [Goat Island] you know? So he’d go out there and run lines, you know, cold, cold, cold…ice sickles. [. . .] And uh, he used to fish out there in skiffs all the time. He didn’t have no such thing as boats [with motors], you know? And he set off down the bayou in that skiff and sometime he would get in one of them eddies, and he have to push about five minutes to get out of there, you know? Keep turnin, turnin, keep pushin, keep pushin! And boy, look, sometime that old back of that boat, you know, it would catch the back like that…sometime it would catch a lil water, and sometime it won’t….until that skiff cover that…in other words, it would hit it just right [and] it would cover that eddy, and kind of smother that eddy out a lil bit. And boy, he’ll take off! They had eddies that big, that current was so bad here. That’s how big them eddies was. [Putt Couvillier, 1974]

Just as was the case in the timber industry, work offered by the levee project was eagerly accepted by the Basin people. They were already good at the things needed to build the levee – the expertise with tools and machinery was highly valued. And truly, by engaging in these actions, the families helped shape the future of their own landscape. They helped build the conditions for the end of the Basin as they had known it for generations, and they built their own bridge to a future on land and all that that entailed.

It was a bridge in that it was the transition to living on land. Because that is so, it is important here to realize that the newly built levee was now functioning as a gathering place for people trying to leave, and in some ways trying to remain close and not to leave, the Basin. Eventually 15 houseboats would congregate in Myon’s Canal, live there for a few years, gradually getting used to the new conditions, and finally moving over the levee.

So, there was a before and after phase to the placement of the levee in the Atchafalaya Basin, with the construction of the levee as the central defining point. Before the levee there was unfettered access to anywhere in the Basin that there was water to take you. After, there was restricted access, the restrictions dictated by the levee itself. Before the levee there was an open Grand Lake, miles across and miles long. After the levee there were narrow bayous and land where before there had been only water. Before the levee there were people living their whole lives in the Basin. After the levee there were no longer people living in the Basin.

But the levee was a generous home to the Myette Point families for 25 years, beginning in about 1950 and ending abruptly in 1975. During that time, four generations of the families lived there. The last generation was the only one that did not experience houseboats as a way of life.

It was generous, and then, in a way the levee evicted them. The 1972 high water threatened to overtop it, which in turn caused the Corps of Engineers to have to do levee repair at Myette Point. The people were living along the levee such that they were in the way of the repairs, with no legal right to be there, and the Corps required them to move. As a group, most of them moved to a location on Bayou Teche, but that’s another story.

The picture of moving is from Edward Couvillier and the two black and white ones are from the Darlene Soule collection.

The River is at 18.6 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, heading down to 17 feet in the next five days. The Ohio and Mississippi are not sustaining any more high water at this time. Time to think about getting crawfish traps out of shallow swamps. Too bad, but it is June, after all.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Beginning Life

2009-05-31T13:11:00.007-05:00

Like people everywhere, the people of the Myette Point families were born, lived their lives, and died - that’s all. But perhaps there is a difference in that they did it while living on water most of the time and this provided some circumstances that people who lived on land did not have to deal with. Things like modes of travel and the distances between institutions like doctors and churches come to mind, and the isolation and smallness of the floating communities themselves was a factor too.

As in most other parts of this story, the span of time covered (about 100 years) dictates that circumstances changed over that long period. Opportunities came and went, technologies came and died out or were improved, and people adapted to the changes as necessary. The practical issue of safely giving birth was one of the things that changed over time, or perhaps it is better to say that the means of assistance at a birthing event changed.

There is a consensus among those interviewed that assistance at birth was always sought. From the earliest times people recognized that giving birth was a time filled with both great hope and at least moderate anxiety. Even though the great majority of births took place with no unforeseen negative consequences, there was enough potential for serious complications that the presence of someone with prior training was always engaged for the event. This person was the midwife of frequent mention in stories of the old days. Curiously, even though a medical doctor might have been within reach in Morgan City, he was not the first person to be called to assist at a birth. It was the midwife. From the early 1900s to the 1950s, and even beyond, people who lived on the water towed their houseboats and pregnant wives to Morgan City, a distance of about 15 miles. They tied up in a large excavated area adjacent to the Atchafalaya River called The Pit and a midwife was contacted to assist at the birth. The midwife would sometimes come to live with the family until the baby came. This process of towing to Morgan City continued for a long time, with some families having nine children born with this process, accounting for at least 18 years of continuous practice. Dot Bailey Couvillier, born in 1938, relates how and where her birth was brought about.

DC: Well, they had…just before I was born, they had moved to Morgan City from across the lake [at Blaise's Canal], you see? To wait, for my arrival. Yeah. And after I was born, they moved back. You see?

JD: Did they tow the houseboat down to Morgan City?

DC: Oh yeah. Towed everything.

JD: Now, what’s the reason why your momma would’ve wanted, you think, to move to Morgan City for you to be born? I mean, not all your brothers and sisters weren’t born in…in hospitals?

DC: No, most of em was born at home but they always towed…you know, towed to Morgan City. In case they need a doctor.

JD: So, oh, I see, all right…all right…all right. So they towed to Morgan City in case the doctor would be needed. But who delivered the children anyway, if the doctor wasn’t needed?

DC: Midwife.

JD: A midwife…black, white, old, young?

DC: No it was a white [woman]. I forgot what Momma used to call her, but uh, they’d go get her ahead of time, you know? She’d actually live with em until it was all over with.

The midwife’s name was Ms. Florence Duval. And Dot’s mother Agnes Sauce Bailey, was born in the same place under similar circumstances, but 26 years earlier. And her husband, Myon, adopted the practice from his father-in-law, towing his houseboat to Morgan City for his own children to be born. Dot, in the above quote, was one of his children.

Many of these midwives were older members of the Myette Point families, especially those who had taken up residence in Morgan City. It would seem that there was a large number of them, but maybe not. Midwives kept books on the births they administered, presumably for later recording in parish archives. One such document is in the possession of the Anslem family in Morgan City.

After 1950 the Myette Point families were mostly living on land, having hauled their houseboats up and over the levee to form a land-based community. This location was near enough to the town of Franklin for medical assistance to be within reach if called for. It came in the form of doctors who would come out to the families for a birth, or the families could come in to town and engage a doctor to help there. Joe Sauce was born in 1949 and he was delivered by a Dr. Horton who would come out to Myette Point to help when asked. Lena Mae Couvillier was one of the women who left Myette Point and went to nearby town of Franklin when birth was imminent. Sometimes the process didn’t quite turn out to be as smooth as it could be because the doctor mishandled the situation. She says this about the 1960 birth of her youngest son, Kevin:

LC: Kevin’s born…he come out, Dr. [. . .] dropped him in the garbage can. And I heard him. I say “You dropped my baby!”. “Ah no, no”. And he wouldn’t admit that for years and years and years. And not too long before he died, Kevin had got a kissing disease, or something, whatever…Yeah, I had to bring him to the doctor. “Ah” he say “Is that the one I dropped in the garbage can?” I say “You trash!” [laughs] I say “I knew you had dropped that baby”. [laughs] [Lena Mae Couvillier, 2005]

There were all the usual pregnancy-associated anomalies that you encounter in other populations. There were miscarriages and premature births, and stillborn babies too. Dot Couvillier, who carries the dark skin of her European Spanish blood, was one of the premature ones.

“ And the story they tell about Dot concerns why she’s so dark, in color. They say that she was born prematurely on a houseboat in the Atchafalaya Basin, and she was so small that she wasn’t able to keep her body temperature up, so what they did was they lit a fire in the wood stove…and in those days of course the wood stoves were the big ones they used to bake bread with, and everything else. So they wrapped her in towels, and put her inside the oven of the wood stove, and kept the oven warm to keep her warm. And they did this, apparently, for several weeks. And we always laughed that the reason she’d so dark is because they overcooked her…in the oven.” [Jim Delahoussaye, 1992]

Some examples of the size of some of the families would go like this. The family that Blaise Sauce was from had 14 children, Edward Couvillier had ten siblings and his sister Margaret had 11 children, Liza Henry had nine siblings. Edward sums it up with:

“All them people had a lot of kids, didn’t have no television.” [Edward Couvillier, 2007]

The pictures with people in them are courtesy of the Darlene Soule collection.

The river is at 18.8 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling very slowly over the next several days. And then it should fall pretty rapidly because there isn’t any water pushing down from the Ohio and Mississippi. Both are falling. Make your living while you can, boys.

Rise and Shine, Jim

A Night in the Life

2009-05-22T12:40:00.006-05:00

There is one big piece of the linefishing story that has not been brought out in the material previously presented. It is the practice of fishing the lines at night. It is a different experience and there is a different color to it. A night in the life of a linefisherman could go like this. First, it needn’t be a man. Many times the boats were “manned” by women. Sometimes the women would be with their husbands but in a separate boat, sometimes the woman would be out in the lake alone among the other boats out that night. Either way, they did the work like the men did. The boats in use were almost always 14-foot cypress bateaux with 20 or 25-horsepower motors. Most of the time the people fished five nights a week, Monday through Friday.

Beginning the cycle. Time to get up – about 3:00 pm. Eat Breakfast. Go outside and do whatever maintenance was necessary as a result of last night’s fishing. Make sure the battery to be used for the headlight is charged and extra bulbs are on the boat. Remember how to change a bulb at night when the light you need to do it is in your hand with a burned out bulb. Practice.

Hook the boat up to the truck at 4:30 pm. Drive five minutes to the Myette Point levee landing, get some ice in a small ice chest, and launch the boat. Start the motor and head out into the swamps around Grand Lake.

The night of work begins about 5:00 pm, although there is still three hours of light left in the day in midsummer. The three hours is devoted to getting enough bait to fish for the following seven or eight hours of darkness. Most of the bait obtained in the late afternoon is caught with a castnet. Certain places are known to have concentrations of shad, both large and small ones. Other places could be searched for mullet. Both of these cut baits are considered to be “hard” baits and can be relied on to stay on a hook longer than shrimp will. Getting 2000 or more shad, or pieces of larger shad and/or mullet, usually takes the full three hours prior to darkness. Shrimp bushes, if the fisherman has some set out, are not productive until after dark. If the cut bait runs out, the shrimp bushes can be run for additional bait.

Throwing a castnet for three hours is a lot of work in the late afternoon heat. Most of the commonly used nets are five feet long, giving them a ten foot spread when opened on the water in a good cast. Not all casts were perfect. Some nets used were seven footers. It took a good man to throw that net with good opening consistency. The big breakthrough in castnet ease of use came with the invention of monofilament, earlier ones all being nylon or, even earlier, cotton. This light, clear line made castnets easier to throw, primarily because they were so much lighter for their length when wet. Wet monofilament isn’t much heavier than dry, but the other filaments are a lot heavier wet.

So now it’s getting close to sundown, about 8:00 pm. Time to sit down, take off the bib overall rainsuit pants that were worn to repel some of the water from the castnet, change the dripping shirt, and eat the evening meal - usually sandwiches and/or leftovers of some meal based on rice and gravy and meat. Watching the sunset and eating good food is not a bad way to end/begin a day. Today the boat is tied to a tree overhanging the river on the right bank. The sun is setting directly over the river way, way up ahead. There is something the size of a seagull flying toward you directly ahead, coming down the river on your side, right at the water’s surface. It is a black skimmer, with its oversized lower beak cutting the water in a furrow as it flies along. Being partially hidden behind branches, it doesn’t see you and flies within three feet of the boat, zipping past. The most memorable thing is the sound that the bill cutting the water makes as it goes past. It goes sssssSSSSSsssss, and gone. What a wonder that was! But the sound of mosquitoes soon follows the bird and on goes the repellant.

Time to get to work. It is dark now, and you turn on your headlight. It is connected by long wires to a 12-volt battery in the back of the boat. Unlike earlier fishermen who did this before batteries were invented, you just switch the light on. Sixty years ago you would have been using a carbide light and the light from a small acetylene flame would have been your companion all night. But the light tonight is brighter than that, and right away there is a fluttering around your head, increasing as an annoying group of insects is attracted to the light. These are mayflies and you will have to contend with them most of the night. It is not bad unless the one-inch long, yellow insects get behind your glasses and flutter there making seeing difficult. Even though they cannot hurt you, this behavior has been known to drive some people to vacate Grand Lake at night for good.

There are three crosslines set to run this evening. Each has about 350 hooks on it. It is midsummer and the water is dead low, allowing all three to be set in the deep water of the channel – from 40 to 80 feet deep. At no other time of year could this be done. Most of the larger fish are in the channel right now, and fewest of the smallest ones. All of this is going on in the open part of Grand Lake between Goat Island in the north to Cypress Island in the south. Other people have lines in the channel and because of this your lines have to be separated so that no one feels crowded. From the top line to the bottom one (downstream) is about five miles. It is best to run the lower line first, working upcurrent to the upper one. When first reached, the lower line has a few fish left on it from last night. Some bait does survive to fish during the early daylight – pieces of mullet particularly. These fish are removed and fresh bait applied to the whole line, and so on up the river to the end of the upper line. To be able to see floating “drift”, running in the main channel of the Atchafalaya River is always done without a light. Most of the boats on the river are powered by 25 horsepower engines and these are run about half speed in the river at night so that it is possible to “see” and avoid something floating before you hit it, usually. It takes about three hours to run and bait the 1000 or so hooks, provided there are no hang-ups to take your time. Ice the fish.

It is now about midnight, and time for lunch. One of the reasons the lines were run upstream is that now the boat can be allowed to drift free down the channel while lunch is eaten and the scenery enjoyed. Lying on your back at midnight in a small boat in the middle of the Atchafalaya Basin, drifting down the river makes a lot of lifetime memories, and there is scenery. The stars are all they can be in Louisiana on a clear night, not Arizona, but nice. And you look up long enough and for the first time perceive that there is 3-dimensionality to the sky – a clear depth that you never noticed before. And all the sounds are all being made for you, it seems. The owls from the far off forests and the bullfrogs too seem to be facing you as they speak.

Because the river is a shared experience, after all, other fishermen are finished with their first run and see you and run over to you to pass some time. They tie their boats to yours, making a raft of five or six boats just floating along at midnight. Out comes the coffee and the cigarettes and the sharing of the night’s experiences. Seeming tall tales are borne out by visible evidence of fish caught. Laughter spreads out on the river. It is a very good time to be alive with friends. There is talk about how the docks, the middlemen in this business, are taking advantage of the fishermen. How all the money is made by those who do the least work – but they own the facilities to process and ship and that makes them commanders in the fishing story. Talk starts about calling the fishermen together from all over the Basin and getting them to unite and build their own dock, eliminating the middleman altogether. Can it be done? Sure, some say. Never, others say, fishermen are too independent to unite. It takes many nights to plan this, but it is a beginning.

It is about 1:00 am now, and time to start the second run – actually the first one of the night on a full baiting. A little more coffee and goodbyes and start the run down to the end of the lines downriver. It’s not so far now, having drifted part of it. Notice that there is a rumble to the west, more or less in front of you, and a dim lightning glow in the clouds down low in the sky. It is best to anticipate the direction of the thunderstorm’s drift if you can because getting caught out here is not a good thing. It will be an hour or so before the situation could be a problem, and it might not ever be but best to be watchful. On the second run, you catch a good number of fish as you progress up the channel toward the upper line. Nice fish, as they often are in the channel, mostly blue cats. But when you get to the upper line and start running it from the left side you can tell there is a problem. The line is much tighter than it should be, indicating that it is not coming up from the bottom as it should. It is hung. Either the line slipped under a stump on the bottom or a large fish has wrapped it around something. Either way, it isn’t coming up, and fixing it would mean the end of fishing tonight, so you drop the line and go to the other – the right – side and pick up the line there. It is tight here too, but you can run about 100 hooks before it gets too tight (too dangerous) to run. Maybe there is 100 pounds of fish in the wellbox of the boat now, not bad. Ice them and head back downriver for the first line. The thunderstorm has been forgotten but did not come this way.

4:00 am. Start the last run for tonight. Bait is getting short so you will have to get some more before finishing this last run. OK. No help for it, go for the shrimp bushes. This last run extends into daylight. Baiting the hooks and running the line has become so routine that it is a surprise when you realize you don’t have to have a headlight to see the hooks as you come to them. Switch the light off and continue the run. By 5:30 the birds are beginning to fly over the lake, mostly night herons going to roost somewhere to the east in the big swamp. They make that low whistling sound that so often signaled “get the shotgun” in past years. Around 7:00 am the last hook that can be baited is done and you see people coming up the channel and others coming down from upstream, all headed for the mouth of the little canal at Myette Point called Myon’s Canal. Most of them are those you had coffee with during the night. You ice the fish and prepare to make the twenty minute run to the landing too.

After loading the boat onto the trailer, around 7:30 am you reach the place, by truck, where Myon Bailey lives. He will buy your fish after weighing them. You have about 200 pounds for the night’s work. Not too bad. Most are catfish, but there is an extra 30 pounds or so of gaspergou. Myon won’t buy those. You will have to sell them in the quarters of Oaklawn Plantation if you want to take the time. You go into Myon’s house (a houseboat on land) and sit in his kitchen with several other fishermen who fished all night too, some of them drifted the channel with you. All drink coffee and tell stories about the night and Basin life. A tape recorder on that table would record wonderful things. Myon puts $50 in your hand, that’s 25 cents/pound for your catfish – the going rate in 1975.

Home about 8:30 am and eat supper. Sleep by 9:00 am, and then up again at 3:00 pm for another night of running lines.

The river is at 18.0 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 18.6 feet in a few days. There is not a lot of rise up above on the Mississippi and Ohio so not much more rise than that is expected at this time. Should be plenty of water for the crawfishermen to use. It is lapping over our deck surface. Something of an inconvenience, that’s all.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Timber Work

2009-05-15T17:00:00.005-05:00

The Myette Point families lived in a period of constantly increasing lumbering activity
in the Basin. It was always a part of everyday life, whether the individuals were actually working in the industry or just aware of it somewhere in the surrounding area. From the earliest members represented on the taped interviews (who were born around 1860), to the members of the fourth generation (born about 1930), there was always something to do relating to the forests of cypress in the Basin. The people witnessed the emerging technology for harvesting and processing cypress timber and each change in the technology made for more and more efficient removal of the trees. In keeping with this, there were lumber mills all around the Basin. From Plaquemine to Morgan City there were always places ready to convert timber to lumber.

Timber harvest in the Basin was an activity that utilized the skills the people already had – they were proficient with boats, knowledgeable about living in the swamp, and had considerable experience with the use of tools like axes and saws. All of this made them effective employees.
There is testimony that people who eventually settled Myette Point worked in timber from at least 1884 to 1943. Myon Bailey says this about his stepfather (Homer Daigle, born in 1882), who worked mostly on the machinery used to pull the logs out of the swamp much of his life.

“Oh yeah. …that old man, he worked a long time there. He worked hard, that old man. But he didn’t make much money. I mean, uh, him and her had to be careful, what they do. …..had a big family.” [Myon Bailey, 1989]

But the timber industry represented a seasonal, not a constant, livelihood to the families about whom this material is written, at least in the years prior to 1880. Trees could be felled, but then they could not be gathered and removed from the forest until high water came in the spring of the year. People who remember this older method of harvesting refer to the activity as “floating timber”.

There were two innovations that changed this reliance on high water to float logs – the skidder and the pullboat – both used cables and winches to pull logs out of the swamp over dry land. These two innovations, together with the use of railroads where possible, introduced both the beginning of the greatest harvest of cypress in the Basin, and the end of it. From the original introduction of the year-round harvesting, to the beginning of the end of the old-growth forests, was only 44 years – from 1883 to 1927, with a peak in about 1900. The industry continued to cut timber, but according to sources the harvesters coming across the Basin from the east met those coming across from the west in 1927, neither knowing the other was drawing near. When they met, most of the virgin forest had been cut. Work continued into the 1940s, but gradually dwindled to non-profitability.

Whether you “floated” timber or used machinery to extract logs, the harvest relied upon a technique for bringing the trees down and removing them that had been in use for over a hundred years - that of ringing the trees to kill them and then waiting some length of time (from several months to a year) before cutting them down. The purpose of this was to make the trees buoyant enough to float by allowing the sap to decrease. A live cypress, full of sap, will sink, and most of those that sank were lost forever. Ida Daigle was part of the cycle of killing the trees and then cutting them down later.

ID: Floatin timber. Deadin…not floatin em…but deadin em. [. . .] That’s for all the sap to go down to when you throw em, they’ll float.

JD: Now, how did they…how did they do that?

ID: They’d go all the way around the tree, and chop.

JD: Cut around the tree?

ID: Yeah, cut around the tree. Then when the water would come up, and then they’d knock em down, see, and they’d float like biscuits on the water.

Once the trees were killed and felled, the logs could be brought out to a place where they could be gathered into floating “booms” and conveyed by steamboat to a lumber mill. To make these booms the logs were aligned side-by-side to some width and then linked with a device called a chain dog. Edward Couvillier and his wife Lena Mae describe how the booms were constructed. It was this step in the process that could either deliver logs safely to a mill or allow them to break up and scatter, some sinking forever.

JD: What’s a chain dog?

LC: That’s…they put in them logs to hold them together. [laughs at my ignorance]

JD: What’d it look like?

EC: You have a boom of timber, you know?

JD: A boom of timber is just a raft of timber?

EC: You cut you a willow pole, maybe 30 feet, and go clean across the boom of timber. Well, a chain dog, you had a chain, a regular chain…Just a regular link, about a inch, two inches. And the dog, to drive into the log…it was about a inch and a half wide, about 3/8 of an inch thick. [two six-inch iron pins connected by about 16 inches of chain]: Made of iron. About six inches long. It was pointed on the end. They had a hole in it, your chain went into that dog. And you drive it on this side, and you cross over that willow tree, and you drive it on the other side.

JD: Why did you cross over the willow tree?

EC: That what it takes to hold the log, you see? Like if you have one right here, it’d be just like you had a clamp, would go across, tighten it down. Now, if your chain dog was too long for your pole, you just wrap it. You just turn it till it get tight enough so when you drove it down, and you had about that much of the head of the chain dog stickin out, well, it would be tight. And that’s how you held them logs. Every log, when you go across that boom, and every log was chain dogged. Some of em, you’d put two. Some of em maybe three chain dogs on one log, if it was a big log. And you had an old ax, to knock em out? And you’d want to knock em out just like you was gonna chop that wood. You hit that chain dog…[the ax blade cuts into the iron]

JD: With the blade of the ax?

EC: With the blade of the ax. [that’s why it was an OLD ax] And that’s the way you’d knock em out the log. Now, the big pullboats, what they had…they didn’t use a ax, they had a…a…like a crowbar, with a fork in it. And just like you’d run up there and catch that chain dog…catch the chain where that chain come around, and they had a hook here, and you could just…

JD: You could lift it up. So it had a foot on the crowbar, you talking about?

EC: But it was a heavy thing, and just didn’t pack that around. We didn’t pack it around, we just use a ax. I seen us take a brand new one, buy a brand new ax, just to have a dog ax. Just to knock them chain dogs out. It’d be dull as all hell, man.

The mills were almost all situated on a waterbody so that the booms of timber could be received at the mill site. As circumstances would have it, not all the logs boomed together were equally floatable, and the heavier ones were supported on either side by timber that floated higher. When something happened, heavy weather or accident, causing the boom of timber to break up, the previously supported logs would sink – giving us the modern term “sinker cypress”. These are the logs that are sought after today. When they are raised, some after being in the water over 100 years, the lumber is as though the immersion had never happened.

Another very important relationship with the cypress industry was that it supplied, although inadvertently, a source of much of the building material used by early houseboat dwellers. This was in the form of what the fishermen called pieux (pronounced “pew”), meaning “pickets” in French. It had long been known that one of the many attractions to using cypress as a building material was that it would split for long lengths in a predictable manner. These pieux came about when it was discovered that some of the cast-off pieces of cypress trees could be split this way to yield high quality boards for building anything from fish boxes to whole houses.

The wood was available because the lumber company would fell trees that sometimes had a hollow base. If the upper part of the tree could be salvaged, the hollow bottom ten or 20 feet might be cut off and discarded. The remaining cylindrical material could be four or eight feet in diameter, but with only the outside ten to 12 inches being solid wood. These cylinders could be sectioned with a saw and then split down the grain to yield boards as long as was desired and ½ to one inch thick, and eight to ten inches wide. The boards were rough but could be smoothed with a draw knife if desired.

So, in summary, then, there are a few things to wrap up in this piece of text about the relationship between the Myette Point families and the timber industry. First, the logging industry was always around them. There was not a time between 1850 and 1943 when there was not some form of logging going on in the Basin near enough to the families for them to be aware of it. Second, employment by the companies was valued, much as the emerging industry, oil, was to be. Third, fishing and the related activities was always there as a fallback. People took advantage of the money available in timber work, but they always returned to harvesting from the water when they needed to, and the culture they developed and practiced was always shaped by water.

The picture of the pieux fence is courtesy of the Darlene Soule collection.

The River is at 16.3 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, a healthy rise, growing to 17.1 feet in the next four days. The Ohio and Mississippi are both falling way up above so this rise will stall for at least a little while.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Steamboats

2009-05-07T13:28:00.006-05:00

In an age that many who read this cannot remember, there were steamboats in the Atchafalaya Basin. The smoke pouring from the smokestacks could be seen from long distances down Grand Lake, signaling yet another load of cypress logs being towed to a place where conversion to usable lumber was a final destination.

“Booms” was what they were called, these long rafts of cypress logs. Their transmutation from living tree to building material is part of another story, but the steamboat is the vehicle first associated with that journey. Since the logging industry offered employment to people who knew how to function in the swamp environment, those people knew and were familiar with steamboats as the “heavy haulers” of the Basin. People cut the trees, “floated timber” out of the swamp to bayous, and then formed up the logs into the booms. The booms were hooked up to the rear of steamboats and the boats pulled the rafts to a sawmill located on the edge of the Basin. Myon Bailey and his son-in-law Edward Couvillier were eye witnesses to the time when employment by the logging operations was very appreciated. However, it is worthwhile to remember that all the people interviewed here were fishermen first and last.

MB: When I first was livin at Williams Canal across there, them steamboat, Albert Anslem [Hanson?], them lumber company, big steamboats, goin cut timber across there. All the way down. Albert Anslem [steamboat] parked many times in the end of that canal where I was livin.

EC: I remember when that sucker [boat] used to go up to Catfish [bayou], hook on to that timber, and that steamboat would pass, then you could just see that timber goin for miles.

MB: Miles and miles. Oh yeah.

JD: Really? Those floats, those rafts would be that big?

EC: Miles and miles of that stuff.

That was how it was done. But the memories of the Myette Point families can be even more personal than that. They do remember steamboats for the work they offered, if indirectly, but also for the times the boats brought presents in the form of sweet things to eat or holiday presents for the children along the bayous. You also sense a feeling of wonder in their voices as they talk about the giant boats (on a relative scale) and the power they exhibited in doing the work they did. Neg Sauce was born in 1924 and was there for the last of the steamboat/logging operation. As fishermen, they sometimes got pieces of iron from the boats for trotline weights, and they could watch in rough weather to see the big log booms break up, many logs sinking never to be recovered.

NS: Yeah, a kid, I was a kid. I was little. Sometime we’d get some from them, you know? They had to have them big old boilers settin on the steamboat, to run the steamboat with. Steam engine.

JD: Umhm. So they had to have wood that they would throw in the boiler to boil…

NS: Yeah. They’d use wood. And they’d pile up wood on that boat. Throw a big old piece of wood in there, and they ready to take off, boy! That’s some powerful boats, them… yeah! Oh yeah! Pull seven, eight booms of logs like nothin.

JD: Is that right? They would pull em, too, they wouldn’t push em, eh?

NS: Uhuh. They’d pull em.

JD: Those booms never did get away from those boats sometimes?

NS: Oh yeah! They lost a lot of em. Big, bad weather would come up, you know, like we still get. And get so rough, it would break em up. Yeah, a lot of em was lost like that.

The memories belong to the early years of the Myette Point interviews. Those who remember the steamboats best were born before 1950, when the last boat to affect the families was seen. The recollections of Myon Bailey who was born in 1905 and worked in support of the steamboats are perhaps the richest. Myon was one of those who cut the trees and processed them for the booms. He speaks here with his son-in-law Putt Couvillier.

PC: But goin back to the olden days, what’s the name of that steamboat? That was the Albert Hanson, and the Captain, uh…

MB: Captain Clifton.

PC: Captain Clifton. And uh, Oscar Lange, what’s the one Oscar Lange had?

MB: He had uh, let’s see…

PC: Edmond Hughes, I believe, Edmond Hughes, or something like that. They had three steamboats. They had the Captain Clifton, the Albert Hanson and the other one…

MB: Suwanee. The Suwanee. Williams boat. The Suwanee, yeah, that was Williams, S.B. Williams boat. Yah. That’s the fastest steamboat they had around.

PC: We used to eat biscuits…they’d pull up in the channel there…

MB: That…that was the Captain Clifton …[or, remembering better] that was the Albert Hanson, they call it. The boat.

And he adds that he was stranded once, not quite a stowaway.

“Right out here in the lake. They’d get timber by the big old booms, you see. They were steamboats…the Albert Hanson, Cap’n…uh, I think it’s the Cap’t Ace. But uh, he used to come down with large tows of timber out of that lake…pass way out back of the island [Goat Island] out there, all that was lake. And go on down with his timber. And when he come back up, we used to live along there in them campboats, and they’d blow their horn. And they’d tie up in the Cut, there, and give us all some biscuits and treats, you know, something to eat. And then they’d blow the horn and we’d get off the boat, and they’d take off and go on up. Comin up light, you see, they’d pass through that Cut, there. [. . . ] We’d go on that boat, but one time they pushed off with me on there. They had to come back to the bank and let me off. You know, they blowed the whistle, had to get off. ” [Putt Couvillier, 1974]

Edward Couvillier, born in 1928 toward the end of the timber operations, was still able to work “floating timber” and then booming up the logs. And Putt Couvillier and his wife Dot, both born in 1938, were, as children, in on the final phase of steamboats in the Basin.

JD: Now, is that…at that time, was that the only big traffic there was on the rivers, was those steamboats?

PC: Well, you didn’t see too many tugboats or nothing. Most…mostly steamboats.

JD: Ok, when was the last time you can remember steamboats makin any use of that, uh, that water at all? When…?

PC: Well, that’s been many a year ago, I mean. That’s right after I was…I was just old enough to walk and get around and follow the gang, you see? When they used to pass. I was born in ’38, so that wasn’t… I believe early ‘40s. Somewhere around there, I wasn’t very old.

These timber-industry steamboats were not the truly giant floating palaces that moved commerce up and down the big rivers. Those giants carried people and tremendous volumes of goods on their decks. Most of the Basin stern-wheeled boats were much smaller than that because they had to be able to negotiate the twists and turns of the swamp bayous pulling the very long, multiple-segmented booms. And because the places they went were usually shallow, the boats were designed to work in shallow water. The Carrie B. Schwing shown here was first built as a larger boat that was probably confined to the larger bayous and lakes in the Basin. After the original burned down, the second version was shorter and could probably maneuver in smaller waterways. Information on these two boats is taken from a self-published (2006) book by James Hymel, entitled “A Human Interest Look at the Carrie B.” The model by Billy Pontiff is also of one of the shorter boats.

The period when steamboats traveled the Basin coincided with the existence of the big cypress forests. There was some employment for them in the newly emerging oil industry but the busy season was over, so to speak. When the cypress was finally logged out in the late 1930s, the steamboats began to appear less and less, so that in a few years there would be only a reduced number for the young Putt Couvillier to remember. As though to prolong a sense lingering usefulness, the final page in the story of some of the steamboats was written in a way that commemorates their structural features rather than their nautical functions. Some ended as fishdocks in Calumet.

PC: Yep. Oscar Lange bought one of em for a fish dock.

JD: Is that what Oscar Lange’s building is? An old riverboat?

PC: Old uh, old uh, steamboat. Used to haul timber.

Others were finally rested in places like New Iberia and served as floating casinos or dancehalls. The one there was called the Showboat. Still others had their top decks removed and rebuilt as residences in the Basin, such as was done to house Myrtle Burns Bigler and her husband Harold, along the Atchafalaya River.

With the close of the timber industry and the beginning of diesel engines as a preferred propulsion system, and the deepening of channels in the Basin, the steamboats faded away. They are commemorated today only in pictures, some housed in the archives of the timber industry and others in museums etc.

The River is at 14.3 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 16.3 by May 12 five days hence. At good rise. The Mississippi and Ohio are supporting significantly more water. We’ll see.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Recreation

2009-05-02T16:23:00.004-05:00

No matter how hard the work is, once sufficient means are found to support a family with adequate food, clothing and shelter, there is a time for relaxation. How this time is filled differs with each culture and individual personality but there are some things that seem to draw people as a means of gaining excitement and/or relaxation. The Myette Point families are no different in this regard. They sought the things that helped to make the days of hard work seem just a part of the day, not the totality of it. Simple things like the games of children are noted and the pastimes of adults like hunting and coffee-visits all fit into the life on the houseboats, and on land after that. Dancing and music attracted all ages. Sometimes the music was provided by “outside” talent, as when the families had opportunities to visit some dancehall on the edges of the swamp. Often it was up to family members who had instruments like fiddles and guitars and could play them. The gathering places for these small dances were small houses on the bank, in Little Bayou Pigeon for instance, or on board someone’s houseboat. Weddings sometimes had music for the reception. Dot Couvillier looks back on her life on houseboats in the Basin and finds memories of peacefulness in the midst of a rigorous life of self-sufficiency.

“Oh yeah, because, you know, we didn’t know what a movie house was. We didn’t know what school was until we moved across here and went to school. Just didn’t know. We thought that everybody lived that way. And, I look back now and remember those things, and that was the most peaceful time of my life. And we thought everything was fine. Now, of course, Daddy was out there bustin his butt to feed us, and clothe us.” [Dot Couvillier, 1995]

Charenton, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, is a place that figures prominently in the Myette Point story with respect to music. Charenton Beach, as the facility on the west side of Grand Lake was known, was a highly successful combination dancehall, restaurant, swimming pavilion and tourist cottage venture. For more than 20 years the dancehall featured many well-known bands – bands like Fats Domino and others of similar national reputation and style, as well as country western and French (Cajun) bands. It was the misfortune of the facility that it was located such that it did not fall within the protected land when the flood protection levee was built by the Corps of Engineers in the 1930s. Consequently, it suffered the same fate that the swamp community of Bayou Chene did, yearly flooding and eventually destruction of the quality of life there. The dancehall, etc., comes into the Myette Point story because people from all over Grand Lake knew it was there and would come across the lake in open boats to dance, swim and mix with other people. Putt Couvillier’s father would load up the bateau with wife and children and come all the way across Grand Lake from Bayou Pigeon or Blaise’s Canal to Charenton Beach. Like a beacon inviting respite for hard-working people, you could see the lights at Charenton Beach from miles and miles away across the water.

“They used to have walks, Jim, way out in the lake. They used to have walks, you know, the Old Man and them used to come dance out there. They could see the lights [at Charenton] blinking on the other side of the lake. They had wharfs way out there for you to tie your big boats. And the Old Man would take that old bateau and come across. We’d all come, dance and go to the beach, and uh, you could see em good at night. Get time to go back, come back across the lake.” [Putt Couvillier, 1974]

Charenton Beach returns to the story long after most of that whole commercial thing was closed. The water would come up every year and sometimes it would flood the elevated buildings, but most often it would not. Because the structures were built of cypress they had considerable resistance to deterioration. Consequently, when the Myette Point families were established on land in the early to mid 1950s, the buildings were still there even though most of them weren’t being used for commercial purposes anymore. But the big dancehall with its great floor was still open and was the last of the buildings to offer patrons a place to come together. Living only four miles south of Charenton along the newly built flood protection levee, the Myette Point community took full advantage of this opportunity to dance almost every weekend when weather allowed them to make the trip over the dirt road atop the levee. Having gone to considerable trouble to get there, should the music fail for some reason, someone would drive a car onto the dance floor, open the doors and turn on the radio, and keep dancing to Grand Ole Opry or Louisiana Hayride.

So, there was recreation in the swamp for people on houseboats and on land at Myette Point. Hard work was not the only thing that kept a family together, they played together too. There was social interaction in many different ways, often facilitated by the mobility of the houseboats and the bateaux with Lockwood Ash engines to move people around. People would travel miles by water to hear bands in Charenton or at The Canal in Lake Verret, or let it be known that a dance was to be had, and everyone came to a place on the bayou. They would walk from crib to crib and gather for an evening’s talk or radio entertainment, or they would gather around the wood stove on winter evenings and just pass the time within the family. There are many good memories of these things.

The river is at 14.1 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, staying steady for at least a week. No big changes in the Mississippi or Ohio are noted.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Myette Point Boats and Motors

2009-04-25T13:49:00.005-05:00

If you live on the water your total mode of transportation is going to be in a boat of some type. That said, there are three type of small boats that were used by the Myette Point people for daily chores. These were the pirogue, the simplest and most mobile, the skiff which was pointed at the bow, and third, the blunt-bowed bateau. Two of these, the pirogue and skiff could be powered by human energy; the bateau was designed to be propelled by an inboard engine. All of the early boats were made from cypress lumber, usually of high quality. Kept in the water, they could last more than a lifetime.

The Pirogue

The pirogue had no option for an engine and evolved from its earliest manufacture as the dugout canoe to the slim double-ended boats built of cypress planks. These latter pirogues were ubiquitous in the Atchafalaya Basin, used for everything from short commutes from houseboat to houseboat to longer trips into the flooded swamp to set or run bushlines and tightlines. They were often about 14 feet long with a rib structure defining the slope of the gunnels (sides) and their height, and uniting them with the bottom. Inside the boat there was a place to sit, usually a board, and one or two wellboxes defined by bulkheads creating box-like compartments that could be flooded with bayou water to keep fish alive.

The Skiff

The skiff is probably an older design than the bateau, having functions useful in earlier times by earlier peoples. The assumption is made here that the motorized bateau as we know it today had a purpose tied initially to netfishing, which demanded certain characteristics, and netfishing has been around a long time. The taped interviews make no mention of a beginning of netfishing and infer that its origin precedes living memory, as does the origin of linefishing, of course.

There is a beauty to the lines and shape of many of the push skiffs. It is as though there was a recognition of an opportunity to express grace and functionality at the same time. People who see them say that the form of the boats is pleasing to the eye (most eyes, anyway). Perhaps for this reason more than any other some of these push skiffs are still being built today by those few individuals who still command the skill to do it. Between the two, the skiff and the bateau, with its curves and graceful lines the skiff is the harder one to build. The lowly aluminum version of the skiff, today used for crawfishing mostly, is a poor thing compared to the beautiful wooden boats. And the aluminum versions, used as they sometimes are with big outboard engines, can be very dangerous.

To fishermen born in the latter quarter of the 1800s, other than the pirogue, there was no option for locomotion except the cypress push skiff. A 20-year old person in 1910 who wanted to travel to their lines out in Grand Lake, or go frogging all night with company, or go to Morgan City if they lived in Bayou Boutte, or had the need to carry more of a load than a pirogue could manage, did not have an option on their mode of travel. They had to use a push skiff. Sometimes a family was visited by disaster in the form of illness or accident to the primary provider. If this person was the husband, the wife would usually take over and continue to raise the family and become the main provider. In Ida Daigle’s family, her husband Jesse suffered a stroke when there were still small children to care for. A push skiff was all Ida had to work with to catch fish for the family. Her son Russell remembers this.

“Oh yeah. When Momma started fishing…when the old man had stroke, I was real young then…first stroke…and that’s how I was fishing, fish with her in a pulling skiff.
[….] We were living right at the mouth of where the lil canal comes out at Myette Point, there, right at the end. And uh, we’d go fish in the channel, and sometime we’d pull up to Bayou Grue…you know where Bayou Grue’s at? We’d pull up there to catch perch and stuff under the water lilies. That’s about as far as you’d go.” [Russell Daigle, 1996]

The Lockwood Ash Engine and the Bateau

A motorized option to using human power did not arrive on the market until 1904, and even then it took years, possibly until 1920, for the new thing, the Lockwood Ash inboard engine, to become widespread in the Atchafalaya Basin. Although there was popular acceptance of the early engines, there was resistance from the older members of the Myette Point families and some who were satisfied with the way they had always done it, continued to “push” the rest of their lives even when offered the use of motorized boats tied up right at their houseboats. Neg Sauce tells the story of his father-in-law C. Homer Daigle, who was born in 1882, before the advent of engines in small boats. A curious and interesting example of the use of the term “boat” is in the monologue below. Instead of meaning the broad use of the word, the term was used by several Myette Point people to only mean something motorized. Other examples of this exist in the interviews.

“Yeah, he didn’t hardly know how to run a…a motor, them old Lockwoods? He didn’t hardly know how to run that. All he did is push. Pushed all his life, never …never…I think he owned one boat in his life. He used to… he used to camp on the canal with us. Myon wanted him to use his lil boat [with a motor] all the time, he wouldn’t use Myon’s boat. He’d push instead. Push, push. [Neg Sauce, 1996]

The Lockwood Ash Engine

It is probably useful to talk about the “modern” bateau and the Lockwood Ash inboard engines at the same time. The engine was made available from its inception in 1904 by the Lockwood Ash Marine Motor Company in Jackson, Michigan. It was produced in several popular sizes, ranked by horsepower – 2 ½, 4, 6 and 8. The first two were one cylinder models and the others had two cylinders. One of these is pictured at left. They all produced the “poppoppoppop” sound so familiar to Basin people until the onset of the next big innovation, the outboard motor, in the 1950s.

On the other hand, even the 2 ½ horsepower engines were commonly used to pull houseboats all over the Basin. Limited to just the bateau, on a well-made boat the four sizes of engine could produce speeds of 5, 10, 12 and 15 miles per hour. Most people owned the smaller engines for everyday use, and perhaps a six horse for bigger boats. In the 1920s, one of the selling points for the Lockwood Ash was that it could take many of the engine parts for the Ford Model T (produced originally in 1909), making these parts very widely available. The company was sold to a Mr. Evinrude in 1929 and the rights to produce the well-known inboard engine were sold to Nadler Foundry in Plaquemine, Louisiana, sometime around 1947.

The Bateau

The bateaux that were made for use with the Lockwood Ash engines were long, narrow, heavy things possibly derived from the basic form of the chaland, a double blunt-ended, all purpose hull. But there was some grace to them even so. The stern was angled inward to facilitate the placement of the rudder shaft.
The bow was pulled in and rose in a graceful curve, and narrowed to the front and the gunnels (sides) sharply angled down and inward from the top. The bottom might be only three feet wide. This overall shape and length (they could be from 20 to 24 feet long) pushed through the water rather than rising on top of it. The rear quarter of the boat was taken by the engine, and the operator sat just in front of that, usually on the side of the boat.
The Lockwood Ash engines had another feature that made them the unquestioned tool to have for net fishermen. They could be operated in reverse even though there was no gear system to change the direction of the propeller. They did this by actually causing the engine itself to change its direction of rotation from one way to the other, making the propeller either turn in such a way to move the boat forward or to the rear. A skilled person learned how to do this by changing the timing while the engine was running slowly.

The Air-cooled Engines

The next innovation, then, was the application of air-cooled technology to small inboard marine engines. Whereas the Lockwood Ash engine was water-cooled, the air-cooled engine did not require water for cooling. Such manufacturers as Briggs and Stratton and Wisconsin produced these engines and they were adopted by the Myette Point people over the Lockwood Ash toward the end of the 1940s. This new type of engine had one disadvantage in that it ran at higher rpms than the slower water-cooled ones and tended to break down more frequently – not too frequently to allow acceptance as a good tool, however. These Briggs and Stratton and Wisconsin engines functioned in the bateaux about the same as did the earlier engines, and there were some design changes in the hulls to accommodate the new engines. The boats were shorter and wider.

The Outboard Engines

The biggest upheaval in the boat propulsion arena came with the introduction of good outboard engines. Perhaps this was as big a change as had been the marine engine in the first place. Oddly, outboard engines had been available from the late 1920s from such manufacturers as Lockwood Ash, but do not seem to have caught on. By 1950, however, outboard motors were becoming the mode of propulsion sought by all fishermen, if not all, at least the younger ones. Here was something that would make your boat get up on top and “plane”, removing the drag produced by having the hull underwater for most of its considerable length. Suddenly, your boat could go 30 or 35 miles per hour instead of the five or ten, opening completely unprecedented opportunities to fish places never reachable before. Not only that, but you could deliver your fish to docks instead of waiting for the fishboat, therefore removing the requirement for keeping the fish alive. Much changed when the outboard motor became popular. Not everything, however, some fishermen found it difficult to adopt the new technology, just as some had refused to accept the marine engine itself many years before.
One of the families that had retained the safety and reliability of the push skiff was still using that form of movement when the outboards were out. Even though they used the outboards, they kept the oars in the boat just in case they needed them to get back home.

In summary then, the primary discussions in this topic of Myette Point boats and motors include information on three primary types of personal-use boats – the pirogue, the skiff, and the bateau. These were powered respectively by paddles, oars, and inboard marine engines, and then later by outboards. The water-cooled marine engines were first introduced by Lockwood Ash in 1904 but did not become widespread in the Atchafalaya Basin until around 1920 or so, followed by Wisconsin, and Briggs and Stratton, with their air-cooled versions introduced about 1945. Lastly, the outboard engine became popular with Myette Point families in an explosion of technology in 1950.

It should be noted that there is a considerable on-going interest in the old Lockwood Ash engines and the big bateaux and skiffs they powered. A loosely-linked fraternity of men maintain the old boats and engines and travel to display and run them. They are truly gracious experts in a bygone technology. My contact for Lockwood Ash engine information and the old boats still in use was Mr. J.B. Castagnos, himself a leading member of that group.

The river is at around 14.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, staying about steady for the next several days. The Mississippi and Ohio seem satisfied to just support that right now, no big changes are imminent.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Night Time

2009-04-17T09:28:00.005-05:00

In our world, the setting of the sun means only that we switch from natural to artificial light. We carry on with our activities as though no real difference exists between night and day. It was similar in the houseboats even though there was no electricity to switch on and off. In the Basin, the only light for most people was the kerosene (coal oil) lamp. Even with only that light, however, life did continue past sunset.

“And you know you used to could see just as good with them uh, them lamplights [kerosene lamps]…[once] your eyes got adjusted to em...as a electric light. I know they was dim, but your eyes got adjusted to em, you could see just as good, you know?” [Putt Couvillier, 1974]

And there were other types of lanterns available if you could get them, and get the fuel. The type that burns white, high octane, gasoline was one of these. Today known almost generically as a “Coleman lamp”, these lamps burn with a mantle not a wick and they are very bright. Ida Daigle had some of these that they used for close work at night, and as warnings to steamboats that would come by at night in the bayous pulling long booms of cypress logs. To keep the booms of logs from sweeping by and damaging the houseboats, Ida and husband Jesse hung the lamps outside to make themselves known to the steamboats.

“And I was scared, me. I’d hang the light …believe me. Jesse say “I swear, if they hit me, they gone buy me another camp”. [Ida Daigle, 1996]

Most often there were things that needed to be done either in preparation for the next day or for maintenance of fishing equipment, etc. Yeast had to be made up to use the next day in making the bread that was so much a part of the daily meals.

But not all was work. One of the outstanding pleasures of life in those days was the drinking of fresh roasted and ground, and then hand-dripped coffee. The uncooked beans were brought, as was almost everything else, by the visits of the fishboats. Coffee was parched to be ready for grinding at night for making coffee the next morning. The parching, or roasting, was done in a skillet or black iron pot with a good lid. The raw, dried beans were heated and agitated until they would “pop” and change color from a light greenish beige to brown, the darker the brown the stronger the coffee flavor. The grinder Agnes speaks of would be a small appliance with a hopper, blades and a wheel or arm to turn the blades. Agnes and Myon Bailey are in the picture at left.

JD: Course you ground your own coffee all the time…

MB: Yeah.

AB: Aw yeah. Parch it and grind it.

MB: Had to parch it.

JD: Every day?

AB: No, you’d parch…my momma’d parch a big pot full, you know, and uh…

MB: You never did smell parched coffee?

JD: No, but I bet it smelled wonderful.

AB: Ooooh, you talk about! Haha.

MB: You can smell that half a mile, I believe. [laughter]

AB: Then at night we’d grind it.

JD: You’d grind it for the next morning?

AB: Our lil grinder, yeah.

The time was also used for knitting the webbing that was always in demand for a number of things like castnets, frognets, etc. A net-knitting needle, some line, and skill was combined to make a tool that could earn a living for a family.

But there were other things that were done that were more in the area of socializing, and this highlights the value of having the houseboats collected into small communities, even if these were always changing with people moving into and out of a place. People would eat the evening meal and then walk to someone else’s house for talking and drinking coffee. The floating cribs (rafts) that were often available between houseboats were a convenient way to get from one family to another. The kids would play while the adults talked of the events of the day, and news brought by the fishboats would be evaluated and compared with opinions offered in explanation. Mending of clothing was always around as a task to be combined with conversation. And sometimes people would just stay home and gather around the wood stove and talk.

“At night, we used to sit around the stove…at night, in the kitchen. And my daddy and my momma would talk about where they came from, and all that. How they got over here. My daddy’s family [Domingue], I think, was from the Canary Islands. And my momma, I think, was from around France.” [Liza Henry, 2007]

Some people purchased the early radios that could be operated with batteries. In the early days, the strongest radio stations available to receivers in the Atchafalaya Basin were the ones that were broadcasting country music from places like Shreveport, Louisiana, which hosted the Louisiana Hayride on Saturday nights. Many fishermen growing up in the 1940s in the Basin are practically experts in early country music because of this exposure. Hank Williams Sr. was their Beatles and Dylan all rolled into one. The batteries for the radio were hoarded carefully so that the radio would work when the Hayride was playing. It is interesting that because of this opportunity to hear what the Hayride was playing, you hear more about country music than you do about Cajun music from some of the older fishermen.

Once or twice a week the fishboats, particularly the one run by Allen Blanchard, would stop for the night at a location in Keelboat Pass. On these evenings people would gather to churn ice cream made possible with ice and salt from the fishboat. This was one of the big social events of the week.

“But he always…everybody wanted ice. Ice, and that’s something you couldn’t hardly get. But he always managed to have enough ice to make ice cream when he got to the house. Oh, we make ice cream…when Allen’s comin, that was ice cream. Twice a week. [laughs]. Make a big ole gallon…” [Edward Couvillier, 1997]

After the houseboats were out of the water and over the levee at Myette Point they were near enough to sugarcane fields for the temptation to get sweets that way to be too much to ignore. After dark, some of the boys would leave and procure some of the cane to bring back and chew on into the evening. Putt talks about the “German slaves”, meaning the German prisoners of war that were kept in a camp near Franklin. Apparently they were used as field workers in the sugarcane fields, and were feared by the children. The fact that there had to have been guards with guns overseeing the prisoners would have been scary too.

PC: We used to have some days, Jim when we was living out here…you take a good clear night in the wintertime? My brothers, they’d have to wait till after dark and they’d slip out in the field. They’d steal us some [sugar] cane. We’d stay up sometime till midnight chewing cane.

JD: Why did you have to wait till after dark? There were people guarding that cane?

PC: Well, it was against the law, you see? In other words, nobody’s supposed to go in the fields. Back then I believe they had the German slaves, you know what I mean? Chopin the cane by hand, and everything. And by grab, they wouldn’t let…let anybody go get their cane. They’d [his brothers] steal us a armload of cane, you see, and come back and sometime we’d set up till midnight.

Once the awake part of the evening was over, sleeping arrangements had to be tended to. Since the boats were of varied size, from one to three rooms, the arrangements were often considerably crowded to relatively ample. The ones with one room were as crowded as might be imagined, particularly since as many as four or five might be sleeping there. The larger boats with two or three rooms would usually have the parents and girls sleeping in one room, while the boys slept in the other room. Sometimes there was an additional small houseboat that the older boys slept in.

Often there was a single bedframe for the parents, and mattresses on the floor for the children. The mattresses were filled with either black moss or corn shucks. The moss mattresses are most remembered for their thickness, usually 12 inches or so, and how warm this was in the cold wintertime. They are also remembered for the warmth of them in the summertime, when warmth was not so appreciated.

In the winter, however, keeping the cabin warm at night was the main issue. To do this you had to know how to operate a wood stove so that it would stay warm and heat the house all night. Often this was just not possible, and there would be ice inside on very cold nights. But other times you would still have coals in the stove in the morning and then you had to be careful not to build up the fire in the stove too fast. It could do odd things. Putt Couvillier describes this potentially dangerous situation.

JD: … And was there any effort at all to keep the houseboat warm at night in wintertime? Or did you just have to throw blankets on top of you.

PC: No, we had a old common wood stove there, you would get it heated up and make some coals and shut the damper on it. Kind of close the damper off a lil…it would keep warm pretty much, you know, at night? And then, early in the morning it’s cold though, boy! You get there and throw that kindling in there, and if you don’t watch it, it’ll blow the stack off!

JD: Why?

PC: The damper you put on it, the hotter it will get. It come up…bounce up off the floor! It ignites, you see, the smokestack goes straight up through the top of the camp, and it got such a…a pull…oxygen pull through that kindling, it go to viberatin. You got to keep the damper down on it. It burn that pipe…it get that pipe cherry red!

There was another kind of mattress that was commonly used in the Basin, and that was the one made out of corn shucks. It seems to be remembered as comfortable enough, but it made so much noise every time the person moved that it was avoided when possible. It was particularly irritating when the persons involved were newlyweds spending the night with the in-laws, and all sleeping in the same room. Lena Mae Couvillier and her husband Edward had that experience when young.

EC: Momma used to have a [corn] shuck mattress.

LC: I couldn’t stand them shuck mattress. I hated them things! [laughs]

JD: Talk about that, why yall didn’t like that?

LC: You go get married, go spend the night at your mother-in-law! And that will tell you a story! [laughs]

JD: Did that happen to you?

LC: It happened to me. I tell him [Edward] “Don’t move!” [laughs]

EC: You move very slowly!! [laughs]

LC: Don’t move. Uhuh. And all was sleeping in one room! All in one room!

JD: Aw yeah, but if they [the in-laws] had a shuck mattress, that would go for them too.

LC: Aw yeah, they had some on both beds.

Unless you had to work at night at earning a living on the water, sundown was a time to slow down from the day’s activity, and people would get together to talk, or listen to the radio, or make ice cream. These were the things that people found to do in the evenings, winter and summer in the Basin as people living in houseboats or newly out on land after 1950. The nights were long but not unpleasant, and the day started early.

Images are courtesy of the Darlene Soule collection.

The river is at 13.6 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge and holding there for the time being. Shirmp have started to run in the river and my traps are catching several hundred every night. Good to see that, the water is warming up a little. The Ohio and Mississippi are both holding for the time being.

Rise and Shine, Jim

The Houseboat

2009-04-14T13:51:00.004-05:00

The mere presence of the houseboat, often called a campboat by the Myette Point families, as a prominent feature of living in the Atchafalaya Basin is testimony to its significance. It represents not just a place to live but also defines a whole way of life for people who chose it as a home place. It certainly was not the easiest way to acquire a roof, and yet there were things about it that were attractive to a family living in or near the swamp. What might have been the advantages of living on a houseboat rather than on the bank? First, and most obvious, mobility. You could always move it if you were in some way dissatisfied with a location. Perhaps the neighbors were loud, or otherwise intrusive. Perhaps there was a placement factor that was not favorable, i.e. too much south wind and high waves. Perhaps the fish were found to be biting somewhere up the lake – you could move and get to them. In the days when most of the small-boat movement was provided by manpower alone, it was necessary to take your house to the fish rather than push your skiff to them every day from varying distances. So, mobility was a big factor.

“By that time [~1910], uh, my momma and daddy had a campboat. They moved up the lake, and the fish was bitin in one place…they’d go there, if they’d quit bitin there and bitin in another place, they’d pick up and move, and…we lived all over in all them lil bayous and countries up there.” [Agnes Sauce Bailey, 1974]

And her husband, Myon Bailey, outlines how the situation was in the Basin. People would move to the fish. Here again the role of the fishboat is emphasized in that it was the medium of communication between the floating communities. This time it spreads the word about where the fish were biting. There was a built-in motive for this, of course, since the more fish caught the more they could buy. Myon and Agnes Bailey add their agreement.

MB: Right. Fish would go to bitin one place, like I be, let’s say I be tied up and I stop catchin fish, fishboat bring that news that them other fishermen [were catching fish somewhere else]…pretty soon you see a campboat, two or three campboats comin up, moving, to where the fish was bitin. And they’d fish. That’s the way it would go.

JD: Now, is it true that when one boat moved, most of the time most of the boats moved from one place? They all moved together?

AB: They all moved together.

JD: So, in other words, you might have one family, one group of families…let’s say five or six families, the Baileys the Couvilliers, this that and the other, that yall would kind of stay together like a group all the time?

AB: Yeah.

The fact that a houseboat occupied no land, and thus acquired no taxes was another big difference between land-living and houseboats. Many people either left land they owned on bayou banks and took to the water, subsequently losing their land to unpaid taxes, or sold their property to remove themselves from the yearly requirement to pay taxes. Either way, the “government” no longer had any interaction with most of the people on houseboats. To people to whom a government official was often not a good experience, this was a welcome relief. But there were other reasons to leave the land for the mobility of houseboats. The desire to be near family that had already “moved up the lake” was one of them. Agnes’ grandparents left a homesteaded place on land bordering Bayou Long to move to houseboats.

AB: … And uh, then when they children got all big enough, well they all left, so they left too. They got them a campboat and moved up the lake too. And that… that land, and everything, the oil people got it.

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

AB: Well, I guess, all they children was gone and uh, I guess they wanted to follow they kids. That’s the only thing I can see.

By definition the houseboats were small, at least small as compared to what you could build on the bank with enough lumber and a basic earth foundation. A houseboat’s foundation was the barge that it floated on. The houseboats could be a single room, or divided into two or three rooms. Many couples seem to have started married life in smaller houseboats, gradually upgrading the size as the family increased or income improved.

Almost all of the larger ones were three rooms, two being bedrooms and one the kitchen/living room/dining room. The floors were often bare and yellow from being scrubbed at least weekly.

Most often the kitchen was on the end. All construction known shows one story on the barge, never two. The roof was either rounded and covered with black tarpaper (it had a surface covered by rock chips), or it had a low ridge.

There were usually three windows on each side, at least on the larger boats, and a door on each end, and also two windows on each end on some of them. Some had an additional door on the side. Porches on each end were connected around the sides by narrow walkways about 14 inches wide.

There is almost no information about the barges the houseboats were built on, although the cabins of many of them can still be seen up on blocks on land - some are still occupied. There is one known exception. The most authentic set of measurements of larger houseboats comes from one that still exists in its original shape, and remarkably, still on the original barge. And still more remarkably, it has been placed on blocks on dry land rendering it accessible from all angles and levels. This structure now belongs to Dr. Chip Metz and his wife Patsy of Patterson, Louisiana, and it is to their credit that it has been preserved. It was originally built by a Mr. Anslem, who sold it to the Metzs. It was used as a bed and breakfast unit until recently. The skirt around it hides the barge from view. The barge is 33 feet long and 15 feet wide, and the dimensions of the cabin floor are the same. The ridge line of the roof is 42 feet due to the overhang over the porches on both ends. The barge gunnels are 30 inches high. To obtain these measurements, I was allowed to inspect and measure and photograph it inside and out. The gunnels (sides) are three inches thick. The cabin is 6 ½ feet high and above it there is a two-foot gable supporting a tin roof. Russell Daigle helped to build the barge under the houseboat described here at a time when mechanical equipment was not to be had in the middle of the swamp. When asked how the men handled a structure this big, taking into account that the barge had to be built upside down in order to nail the bottom planks on the frame, he gives some details.

RD: Yeah, well I build…I’ve helped build, uh, one for sure. I helped Burney Anslem build the last campboat he built…we built the barge.

JD: How did yall build a barge that big and work on…here’s my problem that I don’t understand…yall used those…those gunnels all one piece, if you could get em. Big tall 24 inch to 30 inch gunnels, and one piece all the way down each side. But you had to use planking for the bottom, didn’t you? How did you work on the bottom of that big old thing? Did you have it turned upside down?

RD: Upside down.

JD: Well, tell me how yall built the thing. I’m curious about how yall handled it to turn it over once the bottom was…was on it.

RD: Block and tackle and a big tree. It’s no big deal. Set it off from the side of a tree…you got a big tree, get your block and tackle and catch, like a bridle, you just pick up one side until she breaks over. And then you take a block and tackle and you pull the…

JD: You pull the bottom out the other way?

RD: Yeah. You hold it with this block so it don’t fall too fast, and you pull it with the other one.

JD: Ok, so you purposely build it next to a big tree where you can use the block and tackle to get on it?

RD: Yeah. That’s the way they turned em over.

The limit to a houseboat’s size seems to have been the size of the barge that could be built with the technology in use in the last part of the 19th century and the early 20th. And what set the upper limit to the size of the barge was probably the way the gunnels were made (the sides of the barge). Oddly, this limitation was caused by the presence of large cypress trees in the Basin. These trees enabled builders to make the gunnels from a single board. These were either sawn by a sawmill from a large log, or they were sometimes hewn by hand in a very long process, sometimes taking years. On one hand this was a good thing in that the single board was never going to leak, but on the other you could only get a board of limited maximum size even given the huge trees available to cut it from. Also, there was the concern of handling pieces of wood this size. The use of multiple boards to construct the sides of the barges never seems to have evolved as a building technique. However, if the gunnel pieces were tall enough and thick enough, but were too short, they could be spliced by adding a backing board nailed to both of the pieces.

Many of the houseboat families added another unit to the houseboat situation. There were times when the water would rise high enough, even back before 1940, to threaten livestock that normally was free to roam the bank and surrounding swamp floor. At times like these, the stock was rounded up and placed upon a floating raft called a crib. Children would use the crib as a playground during times like these as well. The crib was usually made of at least three large cottonwood logs strapped together and provided with a floor of some kind, either planks found floating in the river during high water, or pieux split out of hollow cypress stumps. The usual dimensions were at least 12 feet wide by 30 feet long, often bigger. In a real way, this structure provided a “backyard” to the houseboat in times of high water. Additionally, the crib was used to suspend the boxes (fishcars) that held fish alive until they could be sold. All in all, the crib was a very useful structure. Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier relate how a crib could be used for storage of livestock during high water.

LC: See, we had a big old dock built with logs.

JD: A floating dock?

LC: Yeah. And we always had grandmaw’s camp on one end and ours on the other. Well, when we’d move, we moved the whole thing.

JD: Dock and everything?

LC: Yeah.

EC: You didn’t move fast [laughs].

LC: One time we move to Lil Bayou Long, and uh, we pulled the two camps and the dock with us. Grandma had chickens and all on there. We stayed there a long time with no bank at all [due to high water].

JD: Where? Lil Bayou Long? The chickens, pigs and everything lived on the, lived on the dock?

EC: …had a log crib. Logs made…back in them days you could go, man you could go anywhere…find them big old cottonwood trees…suckers float half out the water, man, make you a big…

JD: Down? They were already down? Or you cut em down?

EC: They’d be down. Driftin down.

LC: Yeah, you look in the lake sometimes you see a big old cottonwood comin down…

EC: Umhm. Oh yeah, they had plenty of them for logs [to make cribs out of, rafts]…

During the years the Myette Point families spent in the Basin, there were many houseboats other than theirs in the bayous and canals. How many is hard to tell, but the number does not appear to be huge. There are estimates from the fishermen as well as the fishboat operators of from 40 to 50 houseboats located at the ten places known for congregation, and houseboats were there from the earliest memories of people born around 1900, which would be at least to 1880.

The houseboats were not just scattered randomly, but were concentrated in locations that provided protection from the weather as well as sufficient room to tie at least several barges near each other. Beginning in the south, there were collections at Morgan City in a long borrow pit called The Pit. People could come and tie up there and have access to the amenities offered by the town for periods of time. Families would come there so that women could give birth with assistance from midwives in Morgan City, and they would return to the swamp after the birth. Continuing northward, the next collection was in Bayou Boutte, a large body of water with plenty of width and a deep channel. From Bayou Boutte, the next site was Williams Canal (called Blaise’s Canal by the families), Myon’s Canal, and then Big Bayou Pigeon, Little Bayou Pigeon, Bayou Smith, Catfish Bayou and Keelboat and Hog Island Passes. Counting Morgan City, then, there were ten separate places where people congregated into mobile and ever changing communities. These were the places the fishboats stopped to collect the fish and sell their products, and they were the places visited by the Baptist and Catholic missionaries. The well-known village of Bayou Chene was about ten miles north of Hog Island and Keelboat Pass and the Myette Point families would visit but do not seem to have ever lived there.

So, in and around Grand Lake a total of about 50 houseboats were constantly occupied from Morgan City in the south to Hog Island in the north. The necessity for being in a house that could function independently of the level of waters around it was probably the reason why the number may have increased in the decades of the 1940s and 1950s. During that time the annual spring high water rose more each year and land-based housing became less and less secure, eventually resulting in the abandonment of the land community Bayou Chene, and the houses scattered along the bayou banks around Grand Lake as well.

As they fanned out to the perimeters on the swamp, now determined by a 30-foot high continuous levee, the people of the Basin established land-based communities, or joined existing ones. The families in question here formed the Myette Point community on the west side of Grand Lake. Between 1947 and 1952, all of the twenty or so houseboats associated with the Myette Point families had been pulled out of the water and over the levee and had begun the transition from a nomadic existence in floating houses to cars and towns and electricity.

The black and white pictures of houseboats are courtesy of the Darlene Soule collection.

The river is at 13.4 on the Butte La Rose gauge right now, rising slowly to 13.7 in the next few days, and continuing a slow rise thereafter for at least a week or so. The Mississippi and Ohio are slowing rising pretty much all the way up.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Food

2009-04-04T13:42:00.006-06:00

It does seem to be a common thing among humans that food satisfies more than a physical need. In some people food is mostly something that delays hunger for a while, in others it is appreciated for its quality of flavor, or texture. And in still others food is part of a larger ritual that encompasses the enjoyment of chewing and swallowing and feeling full. But there is a larger grouping that can be described that includes all of these, perhaps, and most people. These are people who combine all of these features of eating into the larger ritual of the meal, and all that that implies. For those who experience meals like this, the ritual of eating can be an exercise that sets up the environment for sharing ideas, emotions, the warmth of closeness with others and even with the natural world we live in. The fact that everyone in a family could contribute to the providing of a meal, from the small (with expected reluctance) to the oldest, was a significant feature in the eventual closeness of the gathering around food. Some would say there can be an areligious spiritual component to this also. Today we barely adhere to this practice during holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, but the observance still has meaning even when taking place so infrequently.

This bonding with other people and the natural environment while sharing food and space at the table (even when there isn’t one) is one of the prominent characteristics of the Myette Point community as it lived its time in the Atchafalaya Basin. No doubt this was partly due to the necessity of combining chores as much as possible. No mother wanted to string out feeding kids over half the day when there were so many other things that had claim on her time, so eating together had practical as well as other less tangible advantages. One of the best examples of this might come from an actual experience during the interviews that were done to collect information from the Myette Point families. I was sitting down in their kitchen with Agnes and Myon Bailey. They lived in a three-room houseboat that had been pulled over the top of the levee from the Basin to where it then resided outside of the levee. The rooms were small, about 10 feet by 10, with the kitchen in one of the end rooms. The kitchen table sat in the middle, surrounded by the other furniture – a stove, sink, refrigerator and several chairs. Overall it was a warm-feeling place - Myon and Agnes had been married at that time almost 50 years. We were starting to have a meal to which I had been invited. The presence of the food brings about easy conversation, and I had a tape recorder and was talking to them about why I wanted to tape our conversations. This was 1989. Just the three of us, sitting at the table, passing food around, eating and talking - it went like this.

JD: ….. the main reason I want to do that is there’s a lot of stuff that yall know that nobody knows anymore. Nobody is trying to remember anymore. And one of these days, if I ever get to it, I would like to be able to put all that down in one place.

AB: You gone write a book?

JD: Well, it may be. It may be. But I figure I come over here and we talk, and I forget half of what I hear. So I figured while I’m here, why not just get it on tape, just while we’re talking, and uh, if I can use it, good, if I don’t, well, I don’t, but at least that way I won’t forget it all.

JD: You want some hot sauce Myon?

MB: Yeah, I guess so Jim.

JD: White beans, boy that’s nice.

AB: Good ole white beans Jim. Myon and his onions, him.

JD: You like raw onions Myon?

MB: Mmmhm. They go with beans. … squirrels.

JD: Boy, that’s special. I didn’t expect squirrel!

AB: They might have one in there kind of tough.

[more sounds of passing food around and utensils on plates]

JD: So, Frank doesn’t hunt squirrels anymore, eh? Or he’s not bringing….

MB: Yeah, he hunts.

AB: He hunts all day, he’s been givin em away.

JD: Where’s he been getting the squirrels?

AB: Across the bayou there, Pearly told me.

MB: He ain’t been bring me none, but that don’t matter though. When he bring me some I give him shells. I buy him some shells.

JD: He hunt with a shotgun?

MB: Umhm.

JD: Twelve gauge?

MB: I believe he got a 20 gauge that Putt lend him. He had a 12 gauge pump, sold it to Putt last year. [after that] He didn’t have no gun, I believe Putt let him have his 20 gauge, this year.

JD: Boy, that squirrel is good Agnes!

AB: Yeah, it’s good. Been cookin it a long time to get it tender.

JD: You got some ice in the freezer?

AB: Yeah, umhm.

MB: Overloaded my plate today. You don’t like milk?

JD: Uh?

MB: You don’t like milk?

JD: Yeah I do, I like ice in it though.

MB: Yeah? Edward too, got to have ice.

JD: Yall don’t want some ice?

MB: Not me.

AB: I like water just as good, me.

JD: Well, I’ll tell you what I would like to do, if yall don’t mind, is, I would really like to hear the story about your family. We could start with one of you, and, if you could start as far back as you can remember in your family. And I imagine that’s your grandparents, you both remember your grandparents?

And the tape recorder kept rolling and they began to talk about their lives, and their parents and grandparents lives too. It is this feeling of closeness and trust, with or without blood ties, that makes sharing food so important.

There is a thought that food derived from close to its source is somehow not “pure” enough. That it hasn’t been through the sanitation procedures that FDA would require and therefore it isn’t quite trustworthy or clean enough. Some would say the meal above, featuring squirrel, would be such food. Hmph.

There is a story told by a friend (deceased) about a thing that happened in his childhood that deals with the idea of country food versus city food. The boy in the story is the son of one of the fishboat operators. He was born and raised in the Basin near Bayou Chene, where he went to the school there, but then his family moved to Morgan City (the big city) and he was put in school. His mother prepared his lunches as she had for a long time in the Basin, and as he ate with the city kids he noticed the difference between his lunch sandwiches and theirs. The city kid's name was Virgil Santos. My friend told it like this.

But anyways, we came to Morgan City and I went to Klingsville (school?), I was in the second grade. And, they had a Santos, lived on the corner and his dad owned a couple shrimp boats. And when he came to school, he always had a couple bologna sandwiches. You had to carry your own lunch... Well, I had catfish fried sandwich, I had duck breast sandwiches, I had chicken sandwiches, I had oyster sandwiches, but I always wanted a bologna sandwich.

So, Dad got to doin' pretty good, mother always made her bread, so when we got to doin' pretty good I said, "Mom?" I said, "Do you think we could get a loaf of store bought bread and maybe, uh, four, five slices of bologna?" She said, "Oh yeah son, we can do that." And so she went to the store and bought that -- next morning she made me two sandwiches. And I was so proud of them two sandwiches.

I got to school -- I couldn't hardly wait for the lunch time. We'd go out and sit on the side the school on a bench, we eat, and ol' Virgil -- he'd come up there, sit down, and you know what I said? "I don't want your sandwiches, I got my own!" I took two bites of that sandwich and throwed 'em both away and I haven't eaten bologna since! (big laugh) Yeah-- I hadn't eaten any more bologna -- that stuff is terrible!

JD: You went back to the trash like duck breast, and uh, squirrel and stuff like that....

Oh yeah. Oyster poboys, you know, shrimp poboys, homemade bread Yea I said no, no I don't need more of that bologna.

And that pretty well sums up the quality of the homemade foods that people were forced to eat on houseboats in the Basin. Even today, people will be attracted to more sophisticated foods and try them. After a while, most of them come back to the basic beans and rice, and squirrel, if they can.

The river is at 12.7 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 14.3 in a few days. Nice rise for the crawfishermen. The Ohio and Mississippi are rising a good bit too.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Accidents

2009-03-26T12:33:00.007-06:00

Someone has said that accidents are unpleasant things that happen suddenly. In this writing, accidents may or may not happen suddenly but they are always unpleasant. The nature of these things varies with the circumstances and the environment in which lives are lived. In the houseboats, it is easy to assume that many of the things that happened had a relationship to water and much of the time this assumption would be correct, but sometimes not. Drownings were not frequent, but even so were the foremost cause of accidental death in the houseboat communities, most other fatalities were related to diseases of some kind. You hear of no deaths due to snakebite, or alligator attack (unlikely in any event) or any other features of the natural environment that common expectations might predict.

It is a curious thing that people who spent their whole lives on or near the water did not put a high priority on learning to swim. While many will say that they could save themselves if suddenly placed in deep water, many will also admit that this is not the case. These are people who would get up in the morning and begin every day by approaching the water in some way. If on houseboats they would either get into a boat or walk a gangplank to the bank, if on land they would almost always begin the day with chores conducted in boats. It is also remarkable that so few boat-related accidents with serious consequences are known. If thrown from a boat, the difference between safety and a serious situation was how careful they were in retaining a connection to the boat. Ida Daigle was always a fisherwoman, and when young she experienced all that came with that. While running tightlines in the flooded swamp, she fell out of her pirogue on a cold day and tells it this way, including her husband’s reaction.

ID: Yeah. Tightlines. … But this here I had tied on a tree. And the tree broke. In the bayou I went headfirst.

JD: You couldn’t swim?

ID: No indeed. What happened - I held on [to] a lil bitty limb, way smaller than my finger. And uh, they had another one on the side, I reached over and I…I broke it and my boat…the wind was north, it was a cold day in July [figure of speech, it must have been in the winter], and my boat was goin away from me so I throwed that lil limb and it stayed caught…

JD: On your boat?

ID: Yeah, and I pulled the boat back to me and I got in it. But when I got in and I realized what could’a happened to me I got so weak…after I got in the boat, I wasn’t scared before. You know I was by myself in yuh, and I know they got 12 foot of water.
And I got back home, I was wet. Jesse started laughing at me, I say “If you’da been in my drawers, you woudn’ta laughed”. I say “Podna, I fell overboard in the…in the deep water”…I say “About 12 foot, maybe better” He went…he told me they didn’t have 12 foot, being that I had saved myself. I say “Oh yeah, they is”. He cut a…he cut a 15 foot pole and he went in there and they had…he barely touched the bottom with the pole he had. Well, he say “I believe you now”.

Life jackets do not feature in the early Myette Point story. Neg Sauce, who spent his entire life on the water as a fisherman, sums it up when asked if accidents occurred often and if they did, could the people swim?

Not really. Not really. Now and then you hear one of em fall overboard and drown, but not…not too many. Lot of people [couldn’t swim].

Many things could cause things to go from dry to wet if you were in a boat. If you were handling unfamiliar steering equipment there was a real potential for finding yourself overboard. Myon Bailey had broken the steering wheel in his bateau so he converted from a steering wheel to a stick that you pushed back and forth. Instead of turning a wheel to turn the motor, the stick controlled it. He pushed the stick the wrong way on a cold morning in the Basin during a deer hunt and nearly went overboard and then did it again and did go over after almost crashing into an oilfield platform. He could swim, but in his surprise he swam the wrong way, hip boots and all.

MB: I was fixing my boat. To rig the steerin. I didn’t have steering wheel, I fixed me a stick back there [forward and back instead of side to side]. I wasn’t used to that, no! I had three or four dogs in there and I had Elton - I had about three mens in my boat. And when I got in it I went in one of them pockets back there….right over the point [of land]

JD: The stick went the wrong way, or something, eh?

MB: Yeah, [pushed the stick the wrong way and turned the opposite of what he expected]. So, pushed it back overboard, went back there. So, Boy [Albert Jr.]….and, uh…put them boys out and they start taking their stands. I was gone leave there and go turn the dogs loose at the other [end?]. With that stick…and they had a oil well right in the middle of the pipeline [canal]. I had hip boots on and a big coat, it was cold! … And, when I turned like that, I push it like that [the wrong way] with that stick, and overboard I went! The boat went up on the bank, I had a brand new Evinrude on there. It went up on the bank and the motor was going prtprtprtprt. Boy yelled “You all right ?” I yelled at Boy, “Don’t worry about me, worry about my motor!!” [Laughter] [And on top of that] I was swimming back to the well. That’s stupid!

JD: Two times in one morning [laughs]

MB: I uh, I had to go put some warm clothes, it was cold!

JD: Well, did you learn to use the stick after that?

MB: Hunh, pulled it off!

Sometimes it could happen that the whole houseboat would sink for some reason. This most often happened when the dwelling was being transported from one place to another and was caught out in the open area of Grand Lake, where waves could come up suddenly. These waves would come up against the side of the barge supporting the house and the water would splash into it between the top of the side of the barge and the floor of the house. There is a six-inch ventilation gap all around the barge in that location. When this happened you could try to bail it out but this worked only if you had enough people to bail faster than the water was coming in. And then it was worse if a houseboat was placed sideways to the direction of the waves, the whole thing would often sink quickly.

When I was a baby [~1940], the old man was livin over there around Willow Cove somewhere. And he kept wantin to move, [but] everyday there was a norwester break out. Every day, you know? In other words, the north wind would pick up and the lake would get too rough. One night he got up, and he was gone come around that night before the north wind picked up. [but we] get out in the middle of the lake, here come a crackin norwester, sunk the camp and everything went down. Other words, I was a lil baby, you know, and they told us that often, you know? How we all got in that pirogue, and we had to go light a old oak tree on fire to dry everybody’s clothes and everything. But, in the middle of the night he was gone come around there to get out of that north wind every day, and when he got in the middle of that lake, a norwester cracked out, and sunk everything he had out there. [Putt Couvillier, 1974]

Many people fell overboard, including children. With the latter, this occurred mostly on the houseboats since the children spent most of their lives either inside or on the narrow porches and walkways. Sometimes a mother would get exasperated and chase an errant boy around and around the outside of the houseboat, she with a frying pan and he with the fear of getting a lesson of some kind. But even though they did fall overboard, you rarely hear of a child drowning near their home. Presumably this rarity is at least partly due to the large number of other children in the families, so that there was always one nearby to pull the child from the water, or the water was shallow enough not to be dangerous. Joe Sauce remembers this happening when he was about four years old and lucky his sister was there. He fell off of a gangplank connecting his houseboat to the levee it was tied up to and she pulled him out.
And Liza Henry lends credence to the observation that the walkways around the houseboats were narrow and were often the cause of near accidents.

I done that twice [fell overboard]. The other time, I was about eight years old, maybe, sitting in a chair and I pushed my chair too far back, and one leg ran off and over I went. So my brother…one of my brothers and a friend of his were sitting down right there too, he caught me. I say, I don’t see how we didn’t fall overboard more than that. We had a board about that wide…around the boat [houseboat] …about 15 inches wide, maybe. And we didn’t fall off of there! We’d run on it! [Liza Henry, 2007]

In the early part of the 20th century, the boats were powered by means that did not allow them to run with speed. The earliest boats were usually push skiffs that only went as fast as a person could row, and the early gasoline engines were not that much faster. The latter could run headlong into something and the person inside the boat might be shaken up but rarely would they be thrown overboard with enough force to prevent them from keeping contact with the boat. Modern boats with outboard engines are another matter. Collisions at high speed can and do throw the occupants away from the boat, often with injuries that make the situation even more dire. The older days of slow boats and the relative safety they ensured might be one of the things of value we sacrifice for greater speed and efficiency on the water. Consequently, most people who lived in the Basin in the last half of the 20th century have a story of some relative or acquaintance who drowned during that time. Many of these stories involve the use of the aluminum, or crawfish, skiff. This style of boat is locally manufactured for use in the harvesting of wild crawfish from the Basin. It has a pointed bow for easy maneuvering between trees, a tough bottom that resists puncturing by cypress knees, and a stern that can support a powerful motor for shoving the boat over, around and through obstacles in the flooded swamp. It is when this boat is operated at high speed in open water that it has been known to suddenly plunge beneath the water, bow first, and throw the occupants out and away from the boat. Damage to the occupant(s) often occurs in these circumstances. When an accident of this kind happens with this style of boat, the boat and motor are sometimes never located because there is no flotation built into most of them. They simply sink, and if the accident happens in deep water, such as the main channel of the Atchafalaya River, there could be 80 feet of water covering the boat and motor. Even with the known dangerous nature of this boat, it is still widely used since nothing else compares favorably with it for use in the flooded swamp.

All of the structures used for dwellings in the Basin were made of wood, and all of the means for cooking and heating involved the use of fire. There are stories of things getting out of hand and serious fires causing occasional loss of material things, but not causing death. Liza Henry describes a scene that could have been disastrous. Her brother and father were across the bayou dipping nets in a large vat of fire-heated tar when they noticed a problem at the houseboat. The stove in question was probably a multiple-burner kerosene model.

One day my daddy was tarrin nets, him and my brother, across the big bayou. And uh, my sister wanted to light the stove…to cook supper, I guess it was. Cause it was in the evening. Anyhow, [laughs] she put a skillet of grease on, and it caught on fire. It got too hot and it caught on fire, and we didn’t know what to do. She threw water in it, made the flame go higher. It just had a lil oil in it, a lil grease in the bottom, but that’s all it take to make a fire. Then it caught the roof on fire. From across the bayou, I think it was my brother that seen it, and they hurried up and jumped in the boat and came and put the fire out. And they go back, [to the net tarring operation across the bayou] then [the] tar was on fire! ‘Cause they had…they had to leave the tar. They didn’t think of covering up, they didn’t have time, so they just left it. So it was on fire. Had to put it out! Yeah. [laughs]. …but it was easy catch them wooden shingles, dry like…like paper. Caught on fire right away. If…if my daddy wouldn’t of seen it from across the bayou, it would’ve burned down, [if] they wouldn’t of seen it. ‘Cause nobody passed while it was burning. And then, my brother’s camp was right next to ours, right up against it almost. So it would of burned up too. [Liza Henry, 2007]

In their daily lives, people in the Basin routinely used tools that were potentially dangerous – saws, knives, etc. In any gathering of Myette Point people, it is usual to find several with less than ten complete fingers. The use of hatchets, axes, and later, power saws, were responsible for most of the amputations. . In the days after 1950, cutting up deer with band saws caused much of this, but any power saw could be responsible. Edward Couvillier has a saying about table saws “They ain’t got no friends” he says, meaning that if you make the slightest mistake or become a little careless, they will do serious damage quickly with no regrets - good thing to remember if you work daily with wood, as he does.

But hatchets and axes are just as dangerous. And you hear a good bit about axes slipping, or hitting the wrong thing, even on the back swing.

I got the mark [scar] just back of my ear, here. My momma cut me with an ax…I was uh…went haul pieces of kindling, when I got back I guess I got too close, you know, when she swing the ax…When she did that [swung the ax back], well, she didn’t do on purpose. When she did that to chop the kindlin [she hit her in the head]. [Ida Daigle, 1996]

People cut themselves, often as a result of being without foot protection, as a preference. Deep cuts on the feet resulted in incapacitation due to infection until healing took place, as Lena Mae relates, pointing to a large scar across the instep of her foot. And accidents causing puncturing of feet by nails were not uncommon. The popular cure for this kind of thing was a mixture of whisky and roaches used as a disinfectant.

We had a creosote board back of the house, at Myette Pt. and the kids was little, and they had a spike, bent, stickin up. And I was goin there and my foot slip and I stuck that between my big toe and my other toe. And I didn’t think it was too bad at the time, but infection set in there. I seen me, to do my work and to do for my kids, crawl on my knees to get to the pot to stir the pot, and stuff, and do their clothes and whatever I had to do. And that roach and whiskey did it. Got all that infection out of there. My foot was that big, swole. [Lena Mae Couvillier, 1996]

The use of knives was so common to the lifestyles of the Myette Point families that accidents with them were not unusual. Small cuts were dealt with by simply pouring kerosene on the damaged spot to stop the bleeding and then the cuts healed themselves, but more serious things happened too. The son of Myon and Agnes Bailey tripped and fell onto a knife he was using and plunged it deep into his throat. He was transported many miles by boat to Morgan City where a doctor could attend to the wound, and did. Transfusions were not that common in 1942 but they were administered and the boy lived.

Fatal accidents caused by gunshots are not common in the Myette Point story, but they did happen. Liza Henry relates the situation that resulted in the tragic death of her two-year old brother as he stood on the porch of the family houseboat – one of several tied up on both sides of the bayou the community was occupying. The shot came from across the bayou and the shooter was never identified.

Several other incidents of death by gunshot are related in the Basin stories, but these are not accidental. People mention that sometimes a person would be found shot to death still in his boat. Because the shooter usually preferred to remain unknown, the nature of the shooting, accidental or otherwise, went unresolved. The years spanning 1915 to 1920 are mentioned in several of these cases.

So, situations that involve water, fire, sharp objects and firearms are identified by the Myette Point families as causes of accidents with serious consequences. That these things happened with low frequency with respect to the number of opportunities is testimony to the skill and care employed daily by the houseboat families. For each time when a notable accident occurred, there were many times that they could have but did not.

The houseboat picture is courtesy of the Darlene Soule collection.

The river is at 11.1 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising slightly in the next few days. Local rain may put a few more inches into it, but the Ohio and Mississippi are kind of sedate where they are large bodies, more than sedate up near the Dakotas.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Religion

2009-03-14T07:39:00.009-06:00

Possibly somewhat misleading, this title deals only with the families that became the Myette Point community in and around the year 1950, ending by order of the Corps of Engineers in 1974. The community didn’t exactly just end; it dispersed geographically and no longer formed the cohesive group that it was before 1974. The community was composed of people whose Basin origins, in the latter half of the 19th century, stretched from Hog Island/Keelboat Pass in the north to Fourmile Bayou/Morgan City in the south. From the north the families were the Couvilliers and Langes and from the south the Sauces, Baileys and Daigles. There was a total of 12 surnames in the community but the five mentioned here provided the bulk of the information leading to this respectfully intended summary of religious practices.

Religion as experienced by the Myette Point families in the Atchafalaya Basin was guided primarily by Catholic and Baptist influences. When neither of these was available in the guise of formal leadership, some religious practices were carried forward, presumably from earlier formal situations. The older influence seems to have been Catholic. The Bailey, Sauce and Daigle families would have had Catholic churches within reasonable travel from their centers of origin, i.e. Fourmile Bayou and Stephensville, and the Couvilliers and Langes would have known about a facility 12 miles north at Bayou Chene. The Catholic church on the road (now Louisiana highway 401) known as “the Canal” leading from Napoleonville to Attakapas Landing on Lake Verret was the site of church attendance as well as burial observances. This is true particularly for the Bailey and Sauce families. Once these families moved permanently to houseboats and distributed themselves northward into the Basin, these Catholic facilities were no longer reachable and religious practices became limited to what could be continued by the leadership within the family.

When asked if the Bible was a significant feature of the houseboats among what would become the Myette Point families, the relationship between the isolation of the Basin and formal education becomes apparent. Myon Bailey says “No, nobody had no Bible. I believe we had a Bible, but we couldn’t read it, you know, then.” But there was observance whether there was literacy or a church to go to. His wife, Agnes, adds “Just like, we didn’t go to church, but my momma and my daddy always teach us that they had a God. We always knew, we all knew they had a God.” And her daughter, Dorothy Couvillier adds this “ But we were raised very religious. Every Sunday morning after we had breakfast, and all, we went and knelt down. We were Catholic, and said prayer beads. I mean, that was a ritual. That’s something we knew we had to do. The whole family did that. And many times, Uncle Jesse knew how to say the prayer beads in French, Jesse Daigle, and he’d come and he’d say it in French.”

At some point during the time that the family headed by Myon Bailey was located on the eastern side of Grand Lake in Williams Canal (Blaise’s Canal), he discovered that a priest lived across Grand Lake in Charenton and upon enquiry learned that this priest was agreeable to working out in the Basin as well as in the land-based Charenton location. This resulted in an arrangement whereby Myon Bailey would come across the width of Grand Lake from Blaise’s Canal to Charenton Beach (about 10 miles) in order to transport the priest (R.J.Gobeil) back to the houseboat community on Blaise’s Canal.

A mass (and other sacraments) would be offered for those gathered in one of the houseboats and the priest would be brought back to Charenton. Eventually the priest acquired a boat and the skills to roam the Basin on his own. The priest and Myon Bailey developed a friendly relationship that extended over a period of years within the span of 1938 to 1946. Father Gobeil conducted Catholic training among the houseboat communities, including administering Catechism and First Communion to the children.

Since this priest was oriented toward outdoor activities, his personality would have placed him in agreement with the overall lifestyle of the Basin families. He liked to fish and hunt, and eat, and he apparently could build his own boats – having apparently designed one of the first airboats for use in the Basin. This latter type of transport was necessary to traverse the Basin in low-water conditions. Myon Bailey continues:

“Every three weeks, he’d come. He used to say Mass right in my house. I was Catholic then, you see. And he’d leave my place, he’d go to Keelboat [Pass], go to Hog Island, Catfish [Bayou], he’d go, and… We used to call him Father Gobeil. …he was a outdoor man though! He liketed boats. He build boats, he tried to build boats. Oh yeah, he’d run across there…he had a boat, I don’t know if he hadn’t build that boat hisself. Or bought it. But he hooked it up [rigged it] hisself. And he come at the house, well he’d get there and go to the stove, see what the old lady cookin, and…. He was just a comical man… you could see!”

Other than this extension of a land-based Catholic church, there is no mention, by the Myette Point families, of attempts to originate either schools or permanent religious facilities away from Charenton. As the people in the Basin moved out during the 1940s due to the water and silting conditions, this Catholic missionary work came to an end. Like all the rest of the Basin population, the Myette Point families gathered at the edge of the Basin and then migrated over the levee to live permanently on the land for the first time in three generations. Catholic influence in the form of land-based churches was not within easy reach in these new circumstances.

During this same period, active Baptist missionary work was directed toward settlers within the Basin. This was headed by a missionary named Ira Marks. It came when the Catholic influence was waning and no conflict between the ideologies is noted. The zeal and practicality of this activity resulted in the Baptists making many conversions among the Basin people. The work spearheaded by Marks resulted in a school/church facility being erected first on Hog Island and then later at Myette Point. In both cases this was the first opportunity for children in these communities to attend formal schooling, a process reminiscent of the Catholic Jesuit missionary work in other parts of the world. During the week, school was conducted in the buildings and on the weekends church services were held. Hog Island was strongly populated by both houseboats and bank residences but when the Baptists first tried to set up a place to hold services they had a problem with the people they were trying to serve. It seems some of them didn’t get along and if one house was picked as a place for services, other people would not go to that house. Eventually this was solved by Ira Marks and his associates putting up a non-residential structure that could be used as both a school and a church.

One of the notable things the Baptists did was to literally put their message on the water. Much like the Catholics, the Baptists realized they had to go where the people were, and those places were reachable only by boat. So Ira Marks and others built a two-story building on a motorized barge and called it The Little Brown Church. With this very mobile facility they conducted services and revivals in all over the southern Basin. Since the barge had engines it also had a generator to provide electricity, resulting in the church being so brightly lit at night that it is still remembered for that by the Basin residents who attended it.

“It was self propelled; he had two V-8 motors in it. … He would go from place to place, and have revivals. On the lake. Yeah, it was real funny. Now, we didn’t have no lectricity, you see? When they’d come with that church…park it, and they had…they had a generator on it, and boy you’d go on there, boy that thing be lit up…! It was weird to us because everything [on the church] was so bright at night, you know? And we used to live by them coal oil lights. There was nuttin bright by that. And that Little Brown Church be lit up, boy, you could see that sucker for miles.” [Edward Couvillier, 1995]

As people moved out of the Basin and onto the levees or into nearby towns, the Hog Island school was abandoned. A new activity was begun at the newly formed community of Myette Point about that time, involving the Baptist Ira Marks working to set up a school there. The titular head of the community, Myon Bailey, was Catholic by tradition and a fisherman by lifelong occupation, but he knew that the future of the children now living on land was education, so he agreed to work with the Baptists to build the church/school.

After the building was built and the teacher was hired (Miss Claudia Hazen) the school/church functioned as the first formal education available to all of the school-age children belonging to the more than 20 families that lived in the community. Myon had good memories of this. “She used to give them boys here, them bigger boys, a nice school. For a while.” He eventually became a regular participant in the Baptist services held there. The church/school functioned for three years (or maybe four). After a time the roads became shelled and passable enough for the children to be transported to school in Franklin via buses, and the building’s function became solely a Baptist mission church, originally serviced by Ira Marks and later inherited by Bobby Hodnett who served as minister in that facility for many years, often doing full-immersion baptism, with the bayous being a ready source of water. Although officially retired, he continues to work with a congregation of people in the Myette Point/Charenton area. Today the church is served by another ordained minister, Joe Sauce, who grew up in the community and still practices his skills as a commercial fisherman as well as spiritual leader.

So, religion has long been a part of the Myette Point story. It has had a mixture of formal practice and informal observance over the decades of life in and around the Basin. It remains a part of the psychological landscape to this day in the form of the Myette Point Missionary Baptist Church at Oxford and the Little Pass Baptist Church in Charenton. A Catholic church has also long been a feature of religious activity in Charenton.

All pictures except the sunrise are courtesy of the Darlene Soule collection.

The Atchafalaya River is at 8.3 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling to 7.6 feet in a few days. A moderate rise is on the way from the Ohio. Ups and downs.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Basin Medicine

2009-03-06T09:34:00.005-06:00

For people who lived in the Atchafalaya Basin, medicine was delivered in one of two methods, either the issue was immediately life-threatening and some means to get to a doctor was employed, no matter how long it took, or the situation was thought to be treatable using local techniques. Health-related issues that required a long trip to a doctor were things like appendicitis, persistent toothache, bone felon, stroke and typhoid fever. In the early part of the 1900s, this involved long boat rides to Morgan City. After 1950, the Myette Point community was settled and doctors in Franklin were accessible over land. Many things did not seem to be strictly life threatening. These things that did not seem to be considered a trip-to-town emergency were sunstroke, pneumonia, boils, colds, fevers, tetanus, infections, bad cuts including near amputations, nail punctures, unknown serious bites, snakebites, and croup. Two of these, pneumonia and tetanus, will be discussed below.

Pneumonia, or what was considered pneumonia, was treated at home. The treatment is described this way by Agnes Bailey and her daughter Dorothy Couvillier. They talk about how Myon Bailey, Dorothy’s father, would treat his children for pneumonia symptoms.

DC: But you see, then, you couldn’t jump in the car and go to a doctor. You had to go to Morgan City. [when] We caught pneumonia and stuff, Momma used to keep what they call flannels. Yeah, and I remember them things.

JD: What was it like Dot?

AB: A piece of material.

DC: Yeah, and it used camphor.

JD: About a foot by a foot? Piece of material? Like a piece of carpet square?

AB: Yeah, you could buy it by the yard in them times. You can’t…you don’t see it no more, now.

DC: And they’d soak that in camphor. That’s what it was, eh Mom, camphor?

AB: Umhm. And turpentine.

DC: And they’d treat pneumonia with that.

JD: How?

DC: Put it…put it in that hot stuff…turpentine and camphor…

AB: Myon would put it in a skillet, and he’d put all his stuff in there. And he’d, Jim, I seen him get his hands so burnt, that he couldn’t hardly do nuttin with em, they were so burnt. Messin with those kids.

JD: Tell me about how he would treat with that, though…

AB: He’d put his, uh, cloth in the skillet, and he had two. He’d put one [on their backs] and he’d take one hot, hot, hot and then he’d stick it on em. It’d get cold, he’d come back and get that one, and put the other one.

JD: For pneumonia. That’s all he treated was pneumonia, not….

DC: Well, and bad cold, and things like that. Milton had pneumonia one time, and uh, we was, uh, at Blue Point. And he treated him all night. We kept that. We kept that medicine all the time. And, uh, next morning he told his daddy, “Daddy? What you did with those dirty rags you had?” He say, “Well, don’t worry about them dirty rags”. [chuckles] We saved those dirty rags.

JD: Why did you remember em so badly [strong memory].

DC: Because I had pneumonia several times, and they treated me like that.

JD: It wasn’t pleasant?

DC: It was hot! And it stink to high heaven. I can remember em treating me with that.

JD: Did it bring you any relief that you could tell, when they were doin it?

DC: Oh yeah! The next morning…if you…they could tell we had pneumonia by pressin…I could tell now if I have pneumonia now… by pressin on the back and the breathing. And they’d start that, all night maybe, and all day. But in a couple days you was up and around.

JD: Is that right? Well, did you have fever with that too?

AB: Sure.

Something else that would be of serious concern was tetanus. People doing fishing for a living will always stick things into themselves – hooks, fish fins, nails of various kinds, etc. A remedy for tetanus and other infections that was heavily used in the Bailey family was something called whiskey roaches. It was used as an antiseptic as well as taken internally for tetanus-like conditions like red streaks on the limbs extending from the infected site, and sometimes the clamped-jaw symptom defining the name “lockjaw” for the disease. In the memories of all the interviewees, no one could recall anyone dying of tetanus, but they could recall some who had the symptoms and were treated with whiskey roaches and got well. The preparation of the mixture is very simple. Just catch some of the large, outdoor mostly, roaches and drown them in a bottle of whiskey. Ten roaches in a pint of whiskey was typical. As they drown you can see a clear, viscous substance releasing from their bodies and dissolving into the alcohol. Whether there was some factor in the roaches that was an antimicrobial agent is unknown, but the treatment has strong advocates. Certainly the alcohol in the mixture would have been somewhat antiseptic. Sometimes a poultice of lard and roaches was prepared with whiskey and this was applied to infections to “draw the head”. It is also said to have been very effective on boils. The origin of this roaches and whiskey preparation is uncertain but it is known by the Canary Islanders in St. Bernard Parish. Myon Bailey was the first member of his family group to begin using it and urging others to do so. He may have learned of it from the Chitimacha Indians at Charenton, though this is speculation. Although no one would be advised to use this remedy in today’s world where tetanus prevention is just an injection away, his surviving children still maintain the preparation to be used as an antiseptic. His daughter Lena Mae and her husband Edward Couvillier give this information about treating tetanus-like symptoms, and other infections, with whiskey roaches.

LC: That roach and whiskey, that’s something we never run out of. And I still use it.

JD: But, for what?

EC: Infection.

LC: You infection yourself, or something…get blood poison…you can see the red streak comin up, you know, on your arm or anywheres You start rubbin with that roach and whiskey.

JD: …you don’t drink it?

LC: If it don’t stop you drink it too. Yeah, and uh, [Milton had an infection and] he couldn’t get a doctor, you know, so they had to go to Medric’s [Medric Martin’s store], call a doctor and wait for him there to come to the Point [Myette Pt.]. … Milton did, I guarantee you he had lockjaw. So Daddy went and got the roaches and whiskey… says “Son, I hate to make you take this”. He couldn’t open his mouth. So Daddy kind of pried his [jaw open] a lil bit…enough…and dropped two teaspoon [of the medicine in his mouth]. [by the] time the doctor got home, he didn’t have no more lockjaw. [the doctor] he say “I don’t know what yall done”.

JD: How long did it take the doctor to get there, after that, you think?

LC: I guess about an hour and a half, two hours.

JD: It would work that fast, eh?

LC: And uh, when he got home he say “He ain’t got no more lockjaw, what yall did?” And we told him what we did, he say “Well, yall did the right thing cause he don’t have no more lockjaw”.

JD: And you still make whiskey roaches for a disinfectant, like? Is that what you’re talking about, for a disinfectant? You get a cut or something, you spread…put in on there? [she nods]

LC: You take tallow, you get one of them roaches out of there? You want to put it on a wound, or something, you know? And you take that tallow and mix it good with that roach and keep dropping a lil whiskey as you mix it And make you a poult [a poultice?] with that, put that on a rag, put that on there. Next day you get up you ain’t got no more red streak, you ain’t got nothing.

EC: Honey is good too.#. Aw yeah. Good for a lot of things. #.

JD: Well, I’ve told the whiskey roaches to some people and nobody’s ever heard of that. That’s something that…

LC: Never heard of it? Who was it not too very long ago that…not too very long ago. And I told em about that, he didn’t believe me. I went and got the bottle… I say…Fanny [that’s who it was], she had a thing come up on her knuckle. It was red, and hard, hard, hard. And uh, she come here with that and boy one day it was bad. She had a red streak coming up her hand. “I got to get to the hospital” she says. I say “Wait”. I got my bottle of roaches and whiskey…we settin on the swing, in fact…I poured some on there…I say “Rub it in”. Started rubbin it in. A little while later I went and put her some more, she rubbed it some more. She got ready, she went home, I say “Here, take the bottle with you”. And I say “Do like we doin here” She took it with her, she did. And next morning she come, and she told Bonita [LC daughter], she say “Look at it”. Bonita looked at it, she tooked a needle, and she just touched it, and all that pus come out of there, got better, she ain’t had no more problems with it. I don’t know what it is about it, but something pullin infection out.

JD: …you always known about…about whiskey roaches? I mean, your momma did it, your daddy did it…

LC: Oh, Daddy believe in that! Ho man, he believed in that!

As to whether it was a widespread remedy, it appears that maybe it was not. People in the Blue Point/Myette Point area of Grand Lake seem to have used it but people like Edward Couvillier’s family from farther north in the Hog Island area did not.

In our time, when the treatment of a minor skin irritation requires the attention of someone with ten years of specific training, it is good to have a reminder of what we may do if left to our own inventiveness. Home remedies for serious things did have good results and the continued use of them resulted from beneficial outcomes most of the time. No doubt there were some disappointments too. Russell Daigle spent much of life, and all of his childhood, in the Basin on a houseboat, and he had these words to share with us.

“I guess, uh…aw hell, Jim, there ain’t nobody really got sick them days. When, uh, right now they get a cold, run to the doctor, or they get to feel bad they go to the doctor. Them days you just set and waited it out, let the body heal itself. That’s what we used to do. I caught the flu one time, uh, remember that time we brought that lumber, to that mill to have sawed to build that barge? I caught the flu right there. And I stayed in bed for about 10 days. And I didn’t go to no doctor. And uh, we didn’t run to the doctor for every lil thing that would…now they tell you eat this, don’t eat that, that ain’t no good for you! People lived just as long then, as they do now, if not longer. And now they tell you what you can eat, what’s good for you and what ain’t no good. They tell you you got high cholesterol, everybody got high cholesterol these days. They never had no such a thing like that them days! [laughs] I guess they had a few deaths that could have been avoided, but most people lived to be a ripe old age.” [Russell Daigle, 1996]

Amen.

The pictures here are all native plants that had some use in home therapies.

The river is at 9.2 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, staying there for a week or so. The Mississippi and Ohio are kind of morose.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Commerce – Moss and the Rest

2009-03-01T10:42:00.005-06:00

When you talk to the Myette Point people, both those born in the early 20th century and those born in the middle of that century, they always emphasize that fishing was the primary means of earning a living. In the constant effort to feed themselves and the always-growing number of children, the most frequent and reliable source of income was fish. But the fish didn’t always cooperate no matter how skilled and dedicated the fisherman was. Sometimes they just didn’t bite, and other harvestable products had to either supplement fish or completely substitute temporarily for them. These other things, in order of their economic impact on the lives of the people, were Spanish moss, fur, frogs, alligators, ducks, crabs and lastly and minimally, crawfish. Some of these had a greater importance in the early part of the century – mainly moss and fur and alligators. Others, like crabs, assumed significance in mid-century. Alligators were more readily available in the early 1900s, having been reduced to near-extinction by 1950. And oddly, wild crawfish were not considered commercially viable at all until after the 1960s. The oldest members of the Myette Point community available for interview in 1974 were Myon Bailey and his wife Agnes. They talked about how diversified their parents had to be to survive in the Basin in the early 1900s, and before.

MB: You know, Jack of all trades, just like we are. We don’t make it fishing, we do something else.

AB: Fish. We [her father’s family] fished, they picked moss, hunt frogs, alligators… Trap. Everything that, you know, that make a living. [laughs]

MB: …you didn’t make something at one thing, he’d go after the other one, you see? That’s the way it was. [if the] fish didn’t bite, well, he go hunt frogs, or [if they] didn’t have no frogs, he’d go…he’d trap sometime, a lil bit. It’s not all the time the fish would bite. It’s just like now, you see, at times you couldn’t catch no fish.

AB: In the wintertime he’d trap every winter. Boy, he’d make money then! Make good money.

MB: Lot of people, you tell em you hunt frogs, you fish, you do the things you done… doing that [each of those things] every day, but you don’t, you see?

Spanish moss was the great item of salvation to most of the Basin people during most of the first half of the 1900s. Whenever the fish didn’t bite, people picked moss. The older members of the Myette Point community all talk about collecting moss as a supplementary, or sometimes critically essential, means making enough money to buy food and supplies. And there was another more administrative reason for fish not being economically supportive. It comes as strange to most of us at this point in time to hear that there was a closed season on some fishing during the early 1900s, lasting several years. This was brought about by the powers that existed at that time to prevent alleged overfishing catfish and buffalo in the Basin. The period of prohibited fishing was during the months of May, June and July during which the water was perceived to be so warm that too many fish would die in the fish cars of the fishermen, in the opinions of the lawmakers. People remember their parents talking about this, and some had personal experiences with it, Myon and Agnes Bailey:

AB: …They had a closed season on fish. When I was small [born 1912].

MB: Aw yeah, you had two months closed season. Three months! That’s in May, when the fish would spawn. Catfish would spawn.

AB: Well, when he couldn’t fish, he’d pick moss. Pick moss, uh, almost all day, then at night he’d go hunt frogs. And he’d kill alligators and hunt frogs at, you know, at the same time.

The passing of this regulation was catastrophic to anyone making a living for a big family by selling fish, and some people found ways to circumvent it, but those and others looked for alternatives too. One such alternative was found in the harvesting of Spanish moss, as Agnes says above. Early in the 1900s, the Basin was still largely covered by forests of cypress trees, big trees. These trees harbored long, thick blankets of the gray/green epiphyte which apparently found existence suspended above the water and high in the air to be good for rapid growth.

But nothing is worth much monetarily unless there is a use for it and a buyer, and that use for moss was found to be stuffing for furniture and automobile seats. The buyers were either the fishboats that regularly visited the fishermen (like the Monarch) or sometimes a special effort was taken to collect the purchased moss in barges with cabins built over them to keep the moss dry.

“I remember they had…they had an old boy used come buy moss, and he had…it was like a campboat, that’s he’d tow…and bring, to put the moss in. ‘Cause once you dried it, that black moss, you couldn’t let it get wet no more. Because you would have to redry it, you had that stuff bailed. He’d bring that campboat. He’d put it in that campboat. And he’d weigh it and put it in there and he’d…he’d tow that back with him. “ [Edward Couvillier, 1997]

Two means of harvesting the moss existed. The most prevalent one was to go out into the forest with a boat and a long pole with a hook on the end. The pole would be extended up into the blankets of green moss and masses of it would be pulled down into the boat, or barge if one was used for greater capacity. People did build platforms or derricks in the barges sometimes to allow a higher reach with the poles. Once the capacity was reached, the moss would be returned to the household site where there was some bank exposed. Occasionally it was worthwhile to pick the moss from land and haul it to the boat. In order to be sold, the moss had to be treated in such a way to remove the living, outer growth, leaving only the black/brown inert inner core of the plant. The “green” moss was transformed by this process into “black” moss, which was of value to the furniture manufacturers. To do this it is necessary to kill the outer living plant material by submerging it in water, or thoroughly soaking it after piling it up on the bank. This begins the composting process, building up heat in the interior of the pile and killing, rotting, the live material. After turning the pile with a pitchfork for a period of time, all that is left is the sought-for inner black core. The black moss is then strung out on lines, or fences, to thoroughly dry. Once dry and ready for sale, the dry moss is forced into a wooden frame designed to allow the packing of the moss into a bale that is tied together with baling wire, or some other cordage. In their own words Edward and Lena Mae Couvillier describe it this way.

JD: Yeah, yeah. Did yall used to pick it and cure it too?

LC: I guess so!

EC: Yeah. Put it in the water and leave it soak in the water about a week or two. It soak in that water and it start turning…

LC: I got a scar on my knee where I can show where I stuck the pitch fork in it.

EC: ….turnin brown. You put it on the bank and it [?] dead. And then that sun get to it and get…talk about get hot! Every now and then you got to turn it over, you know, turn it over and keep, keep that moisture down in it. [Then] Hang it on a line. We had moss lines…just run a line out, just hang it on it and let it dry. Once it’s dry you pick it up and bail it. Had a box made that was 12, 14 inches wide…it might a been three foot long, maybe three foot deep. You put you wire…you had a wire, go down, like over here, one over here, all the way around. And you put one thisaway. And we used to put that moss in there and get in there and jump on it. Just jump on it.

JD: Jump on it, pack it down.

The result was a bale of black moss varying in weight from 30 to 70 pounds depending on the size of the frame used to bale it and how much was put in. This bale would sell for between one cent and three cents a pound. If times were really hard, sometimes the buyer would just exchange the moss for food items without the intervening need for money.

The river is at 10.2 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, falling to 9.2 feet by mid-week. The Mississippi and Ohio are rising some way up north so we could hold about 9 or 10 feet for the next couple weeks.

Rise and Shine, Jim

Fishboat Commerce

2009-02-22T14:50:00.004-06:00

Once the people of the Basin had learned to catch fish on a commercial scale, it was necessary to find a way to exchange the fish for money. This usually involved plugging into a system that had been in existence in the Basin for many years, probably since the early use of gasoline engines in boats. The central part of this commercial system was the part played by the fishboat – sometimes called a trade boat or grocery boat. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the fishboat to the life of the commercial fisherman in the Atchafalaya Basin. It provided a way to sell the fisherman’s product, but it also acted for many people as the only contact with the world outside the Basin. Whether living on houseboats or on the bayou banks, the farther people moved away from centers of population, the more isolated they became with regard to news, medical help and other needs that could only be provided in land-based communities. The link to these occasionally essential places was provided by the fishboats. The experience of the people who were to become the Myette Point community probably serves as well as any to describe the fishboat system and its significance. It is their experience that forms the basis for what is provided here.

In the early part of the 20th century the Basin was richly, and widely, populated with people living in houseboats and in more fixed structures on the bayou banks. Given the size of the vessels available to most of them (above right) and the limited range of these vessels, the need for some larger, more seaworthy, means of transporting fish and other goods around the Basin was mostly filled by the efforts of the fish docks that collected the Basin fish for processing and distribution. This amounted to the operation of one or more relatively large craft that could travel the distances necessary to procure a load of fish, ice it, and return to the home dock while the fish were still fresh. What this usually meant was the boat would leave a port like Morgan City and travel up the Atchafalaya Basin buying fish and selling supplies for the space of one day, spend the night at the end of that day, and return to Morgan City the next day non-stop, or nearly so. Given the size of the boats used at this time by fishermen for their daily transportation, it was very useful for the fishboat to come to the fisherman rather than him having to make the day-long trip to Morgan City. These smaller boats were dependable but desirable for long-distance travel only if necessary. So, the fishboat provided a natural solution to the problem of transportation of goods to and from the fishermen. Almost all the daily needs for food, ammunition, cloth, etc. were provided by the fishboat, including the PET milk that many babies were raised on.

The functional period for these boats ran from the early availability of automobile gasoline engines in 1908 (Ford Model T) to the time when people moved out of the Basin in the late 1940s. Two of the boats are pictured here: the Monarch, a gas-engine powered stern wheeler, and the more typical of the boats used, the Baby Dot. Some square-fronted bateaux were also made into fishboats. The late 1940s also coincides with the growing availability of outboard engines capable of powering small boats at high speeds to and from the places to sell fish and buy groceries.

The relationship between the families in the Basin and the fishboat operators could not help but be one of considerable intensity, either positively or otherwise. There was such a mutual dependence on each party to deliver his part of the arrangement that small traditions could easily arise and acquire significance. One operator who serviced the route ending each time in Keelboat Pass near Hog Island, on each trip would make some of his ice available to a family there, and some salt, to make hand-cranked ice cream. Everyone looked forward to this treat and that relationship still brings comments from the descendents of those families.

The existence of the fishboats lasted only so long as there were sufficient numbers of people living more or less permanently in the Basin and harvesting large amounts of fish. Once the levees were constructed in the 1930s and the people began to have to deal with higher and higher water in the spring of each year, more and more of them began to move to the edges of the Basin near the levees, or into the towns surrounding the swamp – towns like Morgan City, Charenton, Plaquemine, Bayou Sorrel and Pierre Part. The Myette Point people did not do this, at least not to a town. They moved to a place where they could still fish and deal with the fishboats for a little while longer, to the projection of land extending out into the western side of Grand Lake, called Myette Point. But once that happened the convenience and satisfaction derived from the fishboats gave way to more and more land-based amenities like electricity and roads and security from floods and such practical considerations drew them away from the old ways of houseboats and into houses on the bank. It became hard for the fishboats to service them and the services provided by them eventually died out, to be replaced by land-based communications and transportation. At first there were no roads along the levee where the houses were at Myette Point, and no electricity, but fish were still a valuable product and the docks in the area of Calumet and Charenton soon saw fit to connect with the fishermen by land and buy the fish, and now they could provide ice as well. Trucks would come when the weather allowed, picking up the fish and delivering the ice. Soon a middle man system arose similar to the fishboat system in that one of the people in the new community of Myette Point began to provide a place to buy fish and iceboxes to hold them until the trucks would arrive on a more or less predictable schedule. Like the fishboat operators, the local buyer would make a few cents per pound on the fish he in turn sold the dock. After this, the new commercial process took prominence and the fishboats were discontinued, but it had been a time of distinct significance to the fishermen of Grand Lake.

All of the pictures here are provided by Darlene Soule from her excellent collections. The text on them is added by me.

The river is at 9.5 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge today, rising to 10.2 feet in the next couple days. The Ohio and Mississippi are both falling now. More ups and downs it seems.

Rise and Shine, Jim