[start by giving your name and when you were born · web viewtape # 151 [start by giving your name...

Amay Marie CHAUVIN THERIOT Oral History Tape

Recorded May 3, 1983 by Glen PITRE. Transcribed January 30, 2009 by Phil CHAUVIN Jr.Tape # 151[Start by giving your name and when you were born.]I was born Amay “Amy” Marie CHAUVIN {d/o Emile Adam CHAUVIN & Adele TOUPS} and at age 16,

{29 July 1920} I married John THERIOT {s/o Levy Joseph THERIOT & Adele Marie CHAMPAGNE]. I was born in Vermillion Parish. When I was one and one-half years old, my father moved the family to Bayou Dularge, he had bought a small farm. Six years later my mother died {Adele Marie TOUOS, d/o Taylor Joseph TOUPS & Marie Adele CHAVUIN, b. 7 Nov 1866, d. 3 Aug 1910}. I had to move to my grandfather and grandmother’s house, {Leufroy CHAUVIN b. 18 Sep 1843, d. 28 Dec 1930. bur. St. Eloi Cem. m. Amelina “Malvina” BLANCHARD, b. 11 Feb 1842, d. 5 Oct 1927, bur. St. Eloi Cem.} which, I am now living in the house. Later on, we bought the place. My grandfather, at that time farmed, you would now call it a truck farm. With a horse and buggy, he would go sell his vegetables. He would kill a pig every week and go to St. Eloi Plantation, up the bayou and sell on the plantation his vegetables and meat. He had cows, we would milk the cows and lot of chickens and eggs. We would make a living. At that time he owned a good bit of property and when he got too old, he had other people working it and giving him a share. They would plant sugar cane, corn and make their own syrup with the sugar cane. They would bring it to the Frederick sugarhouse, up the bayou. We would cut our own wood. We had wood burning stoves and fireplaces. Grandmother used to take -----(pause). The peddlers would come from town, a pack on their back. The Italian people would come and would sleep and eat here. Grandmother would charge 25 cents for a meal and 25 cents for a bed, to sleep. I remember some got to be good friends with the old people. Steven, George and Mr. HADDAD, we used to call him “T George” HADDAD {the only George HADDAD listed in 1920 census was born 1857 in Syria, his occupation is listed as a peddler}. That was some really nice people. They got to be good friends.

[Where was HADDAD from?]They were all from Sicily.[They spoke French?}No. When they came to this country, all they could speak was Italian. Later on they learned English, but

they didn’t speak French.[Most of them were Italian?]Most were Italian. They had a pack on their back. They had material, scissors, thimble and thread,

cosmetics and pots and soap in there. Lace. That is how they make a living. They would walk with their pack.

[It was stuff you could not get at the general store?]The general store would come on Monday. They had everything in their covered cart. They would take

orders for things like meat, rice and flour and come back and deliver on Thursday., every week, with horse and cart.

[Where was the store?]The store was way up the bayou, on this side of St. Eloi Church, about six miles from here. They would

go to the end of the road. This is a dead end. They would sleep and eat here, once a week.[Did the road used to go further?]Down the bayou? No, it never did go any further.[Were there people living further down than the end of the road?]Yes, there were people living up to Grand Pass. When they get to the end of the road, they take a boat

and they lived way down the bayou. They had a family of {Manuel} LACOSTE living there and they still own the property.

[They were from around here?]No they were from England, they could speak nothing but English. I don’t know where they came from.

They would do their living on the sea. They would seine and dry shrimp and stuff like that. Trap.

[Glen PITRE] {Added information by transcriber Phil CHAUVIN Jr.}

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[The people here were mostly foreigner?]The was all farmers here.[Not fishermen?]No. At that time when I was a little girl, we had a mud road. We did not have any shells. The road was

not very wide, everybody had a fence. They had cattle at large on the road. I had to walk three miles to school, in a little one-room schoolhouse.

[Where was this school?]The school was above Falgout Canal. One teacher had to teach from first grade to eighth grade. She

would teach everybody.[A child would walk to there?]I had to be 10 years old before I could walk that far. I went for two years in that one room school house,

then they built the present Elementary School way up the bayou, above the Church, they I went two years there, then by that time the bayou wasn’t dredged, they had about a foot and a half of water. It was nothing but cut grass and willow trees. They had dredged a piece from about a mile from where I live and they put a boat, to transfer us to the school. I still had to walk a mile to go catch the boat. I went to school for two semesters at the Dularge School. I was promoted to 6 th

grade. My grandmother fell and hurt her back, I had to quit school and take care of my grandmother.

[What kind of boat was the school boat?]The school boat was a boat that had a cabin all the way along. You could go at the School Board office

and get the picture of the boat.[Was it paddle wheel or propeller?It was a gas motor, that they had.[What year was that?]It was 1914 when I started school, it must have been around 1917.[Do you remember the flu epidemic?]The big flu, I had it. Talk about sick. I was delirious and didn’t know where I was when I woke up. I

had the fever so high. No doctors, nothing.[Did a lot of people die?]When it started, there was a man that had come to St. Eloi sugar refinery, to dry the sugar, he died. And

the peddler that used to sleep here, slept here, in the morning when he got up, he caught the flu and went home. He sent word to my mother, he caught the flu, to watch out. My grandmother had an old aunt, that was not married and lived with my grandparents, and another of my first cousins that was an orphan, so there were two orphans, we caught it and the old aunt. They put us in a room and would not come in. They treated us with “Vick Salve”, and they never caught it. They just took care of us.

[They put Vick Salve?]In their nose, when they come, and be careful not to touch anything, and washed their hands when they

would get out. All the glasses and dishes we used, they would boil that and they never caught it. It was just us three that had caught it. It was bad.

[Did your grandfather tell of the yellow fever?]That was before my time, but I heard some of the stories. My grandfather had one of his brothers that

died of yellow fever.[There used to be a lot of orange trees around here?]We had 120 around the house. The road used to be where the bayou is. The bayou ate up the road. All

in front of the house and on both sides was full of orange trees. Louisiana Sweets.[You would sell the oranges?]Yes we would sell them.[What happened to the orange trees?]They cut them and replaced them with “satsumas”. Grandfather had over 50, all in bloom, when they

came and destroyed them. They planted satsumas. They cut them and burned them.


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[You had to pay for them?]No, they would give them to you.[Why did they say they did that?]Because the trees had a sickness, it was like a cancer in the oranges. I do not know what the name of the

sickness. They wanted to destroy it.[Did it sicken you all?]No, it didn’t. It was a skin disease they had.[Did the people feel bad about that?]Yes, when you have 50 trees all in bloom, and they come and cut them, they took it hard, especially when

grandpa was old, and depended on them for his living. He really did not like it, but later on, he had some good trees, but they froze. Then we had to replace our own, when the ice came and froze them. We still have a few orange trees, we keep replanting.

[Is it a lot harder to grow them now?]At times, they grow beautiful, but they freeze every five or six years. They lose them and then you have a

couple of good years.[Did you all lose much land to the salt water?]We have a drainage canal in the back now. Every since they dredge that ship channel, in the back.

Before that we did not have salt water. That ship channel is bringing up the water, that destroyed everything.

[About how far back is the levee?]I say about 10 acres.[Can you remember, did crops grow further back than that?]Oh yes.[Did they have sugar cane there?]Yes they had sugar cane on the place we own, they had a high ridge that used to go back about a mile.

The cattle could go in. Right now, all the trees are dead, that salt water killed every thing. We used to have beautiful trees in the back.

[Oaks?]They had oaks, willow and ash trees, maple, gum, all kind of beautiful trees.[Was there any cypress swamps there?]Way in the back, they had them, but not on the Dularge ridge.[Do you remember when they cut them?]They all died now. You can go back there and see that they are all dead, since they dug that ship channel.

Salt water came and destroyed them all.[When they dug the ship channel, were the people down here for or against it?]They did not ask you, they just did it. You had no voice in it.[Were the people down here worried about it?]Yes, they did, but could not make them believe that. The corps of engineers, they know it all in books,

they are smart people, but the don’t come here and see what it did to us. They don’t believe that. You can’t make them believe that, that the ship channel did it. It had to be, because we never had that much water before. I have lived here since I was six years old. We never had that, until it was dug. When we had storms, we never had water in this house. Never. The day after the storm, we would have a little backwater, in the back. Since then I have had 18 inches of water in my house here, since that ship channel, for a storm. That is the difference.

[You were born what year?]1904.[You don’t remember the storm of 1909?]Yes I do. My mother was still living and I will never forget it.[It was bad?]


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It was pretty bad. The chimney in the house where my mother was living, I was living a mile above here, the roof was coming off of our house. I can remember when papa took us across the bayou to a neighbor.

[During the storm?]During the storm. He had to wrap us, because our roof had gone off, the chimney fell. He knew this

neighbor across from us, it was about 6 or 7 acres from our house, that they had just redid the house, and I remember when he told my mother that this was a strong house, so we would go there. It was a full house when we got there. I do remember.

[When the roof came off, was it one shingle at a time?]Shingles? It was palmetto at that time. People were poor. My daddy had just finished paying off the

farm, they were going to build the year that my mother died. They had a palmetto roof then. It took one by one, and we had to leave the house. I can remember that. My daddy had to bring me and my two brothers {Claude and Lucius}. Then he came and get my mother, to help her in the wind. We had a blanket on our backs so we wouldn’t get wet. I could see them coming and the wind was so hard. I was but five years old, but I can remember that scene, of us going.

[How did you cross the bayou?]Everybody had a little bridge to cross the bayou, they all had a bridge.[The road was on this side?]On this side. It was a dirt road on this side. Everybody had their own little bridge, but they only had a

foot and a half of water, so they need to have a little bridge to cross.[Was there any boat traffic then?]Oh, no.[Not even a pirogue?]No. From the end of the road, they could have boats. Later on, they dredged it from Ashland Plantation.

They had a big sugar refinery. When they come to buy the sugar cane, they came and dredged the bayou, so they could come and get the cane in barges, to bring to Ashland over there.

[How about the storm of 1926?]That was pretty bad. We had a big kitchen in the back that was blown off. The house had two brick

chimneys, one in the front and one in the back, they both fell. The porch in the front fell, and the house went off the blocks. From here to the end of the road, they did not have one house, that was still on the blocks, or blown to pieces. That was a bad storm.

[Was it wind or water that did that?]Wind, the wind. We never had water until after the next day. It was very calm and you could see the

water coming.[How high did it get?]We still had a little ridge by the road that it did not cover.[It wasn’t in the house?]No. We never had that in the house. It came about a foot and a half, in the back, where it was low.[Was it salt water, did it kill the crops?]Mostly fresh, it might have had a little salt in it, but with the rain, it wasn’t too salty. It wouldn’t kill the

trees and all.[It killed the fields?]The fields were pretty bad. The storm had cut that to pieces, the wind, they had nothing left in the fields.[Before the water ever got here?]Before the water, yes. Right there we had 20 pecan trees and two rows of eating pears, that all went

down, but one pear tree that stayed. The big pecan trees uprooted, for that storm. It was a bad storm. We lost a lot.

[Some shingles that time?]No, the roof stayed, but the kitchen was a separate kitchen, it was an old house, and the kitchen went

down, but the house and roof stayed, but it went off the blocks.. Everything was wet.[Describe the house to me.]


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This house was the frame, we remodeled it. The frame might be 150 years old. It was made out of cypress that they went and cut themselves in the swamp. It was all big cypress, all big lumber. We remodeled, this used to be all in one, when I moved here, with my grandfather, all in one. See that piece right there, it was a post that was in the front, but later on my grandfather had broke this petition, and made it all in one room. They used to give dances here. They even had wedding dances here. So later on when we came, we bought the place from my grandfather, and we petitioned it.

[So the whole house was one room?]Right here was one room. Where the bathroom is, was a bedroom and another bedroom there. They did

not have a bathroom. They had an outside toilet.[So you had two bedrooms and a big front room?]That was what it was. That was all they had. The kitchen was a separate kitchen. Everybody had that in

the olden days, in those old houses.[You had the porch against the kitchen?]No, we had it against the house. It was like two buildings, together,[They had other houses like that?]Almost everybody had it like that.[There was no covered porch between them?]They had one like that up the bayou, the {Louis} FREDERICKS had one like that, that’s a breeze way, in

between. This one didn’t have that.[The kitchen had a separate roof?]A separate roof. The roof was this way, and the kitchen was this way. They had a big gutter, and when it

would rain hard, the gutter couldn’t take all the water. When we bought it, he broke that and made the roof going the same way, to stop that rain.

[So originally the roof sloped to the front and to the back?And the kitchen too. We needed the water for drinking water. You had a great big gutter and they had

the mosquitoes. When it would rain, you had the crawfish in the yard. You could pick them up by the barrel. You could pick up all you wanted. They would come out from the marsh in the back. They would come on high land, when it would rain, the water would drain, and they would always come against the current. We would pick up all we wanted.

[People liked the crawfish?]Oh yeah, I guess so. We would have crawfish boils and peel them.[You would just pick them up by hand?]By hand. We used to make a pincher to catch them, and we would pick them up by hand.[You made the pincher out of wood?]Out of palmetto. You would cut them and put a block in between.[You didn’t have to bait traps?]No. Later on my husband was a trapper, but not my grandfather.[I mean the crawfish?]Oh no, they would come on the ground. You would get all you wanted.[You said your husband farmed?]He farmed, he trapped and later on he had a boat and he fished.[When did he start trapping?]He started before I got married. He was very young and he trapped with his father.[Did he ever give it up?]When he got too old, he had to give it up.[When did he start fishing?]I say about in 1940. He got a boat, and started trawling.[You said you came from Vermillion?]


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I was born over there, but my parents came from here. Both my parents were born here. My mother’s parents moved away, over there. My daddy went over there and got married, and settled over there, until I was a year and a half, and they moved back.

[His parents were still living here?His parents, {Leufroy CHAUVIN & Melina BLANCHARD} yes. After my mother died, I lived with his

parents.[Your mother’s parents stayed over there?My grandfather was a chemist. Every year he would come to Ashland and dry sugar.[That is what he did over there?]Yes.[What made him move?]He did not like the mosquitoes down here, and when he moved over there, he found out he was in another

mosquito nest. (laughing), so it didn’t help.. That is why he had moved away, he thought he would get out of the mosquitoes. (laughing)

[That was a mosquito nest over there?]Yeah.[Not much better there?]Not any better there. He met a friend who told him the mosquitoes weren’t bad over there. He believed it

, sold his place and moved over there. Then my daddy decided to work over there.[Falgout’s Canal, when was it dug?]It was dug, when I was very young. It was dug to come pick up the cane. They hadn’t made the road.

They decided to come from Ashland to come and dig the bayou, so people could bring their cane. They put up a hoist to load the cane. It was much easier for them.

[The hoist was on the bayou side or on the boat?]On the bayou side? Every distance, they would put a hoist to load the cane on the boats. It was easier for

the farmers. It was much easier for the farmers.[It was tall?]It had to be tall, they come with a wagonload of cane, and it had to be tall enough to put in the barges, in

the bayou.[What was Falgout’s Canal like back then?]It wasn’t much, it wasn’t wide at all. It was just big enough for the {sugar} barge. The bayou right here,

they dug it 40 feet wide, go look at it now. The boats and waves are eating up the banks. For the big storm we had 12 or 15 years ago, it ate about 16 feet of the bank. When you have a curve, the water would rush and eat it away. They had to bulkhead the bayou, it was close to eating out the road. They had to bulkhead so it wouldn’t keep on.

[Did it eat a lot?]In some places, the road would be gone if they had not bulkhead it. They had to build another road in

some places. We had a big yard in front, but had to give more land for the road.[You had a bigger front yard?]Oh yeah. You see the middle of the pave in front of my house, was the ditch on this side of the road,

when they enlarged the road the first time, then they had to come back in the yard when they came this last time.

[Back then what did the people’s front yard look like?]Everybody had ---(End of tape# 151 – begin tape # 152)--- a flower garden in front.[You had a picket fence?]Yes, we had a picket fence.[What kind of flowers did you have?]


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They had a sidewalk to walk to the road, with a row of Narcissus, when they would bloom, they were most beautiful and they had rose bushes. My grandmother loved rose bushes. She had St. Joseph Lilies, mostly things that would come up every year. They had crept myrtles.

[They had two gates]They only had a gate for the walk, the gate for the wagons was a little further. Where they had the stable,

they had a big gate. In front, it was just a small gate for the walk.[You said they held dances here?]yes.[Was it pretty much a commercial deal?]It was the biggest house around and they like for grandmother to make a gumbo, ice cream, lemonade and

cake, which she would sell. The people would play a violin, guitar and later on one got a saxophone. The boys would all play. Those who had talent would play.

[Did they have an accordion?]Yes.[People would come and dance?]Come and dance, and have fun. They would come from way up the bayou.[Young kids?]In those days, the mamas would not let the girls go by themselves. The girls always had chaperones, for

the daughters. Either the daddy or mama would come with the daughter.[Was it any special day of the week?]It always was a Saturday, always on Saturday night.[How long would it last?]It would last to midnight. At midnight, they would play “Home Sweet Home” or “After the Ball is

Over”, and then they would quit. When they play that, everybody would go home.[Would it start before dark?]It would start about six or seven. It wasn’t too exciting for me. I was still pretty young. Later on when I

got bigger, grandma and grandpa were too old and they had stopped. People would go further up, where they had a dance hall.

[Would they have stuff to drink, beer?]No. They had Lemonade and pop, they did not have no liquor.[Did people make wine around here?]Not in my family.[Other families?]Very seldom,[Did people have grape vines?]Yes, the people would eat the grapes, but not to make wine. They had a lot of fruit like pears and

peaches, and they would can that in jars. My grandmother had a lot of jars and she would jar a lot of peaches and pears. We had all the fruits and figs, and make preserves.

[Would they sell that?]No just for the family. We had all kinds of fruits.[When the figs were in season, they would sell them at the plantation?]No, he wouldn’t bother with that, just his vegetables and meat. He would sell Pears, he would, and

potatoes. He wouldn’t fool with the figs. He would sell the oranges.[Did you have the Japan plums?]We did not have the Japan plums. I was married before I ever saw one. They did not have that here.[How about the water lilies?]The water lilies weren’t too bad at first, but later on it got where it would plug the bayou.[When did they start getting them?]Not too many years ago.[After you were married?]Yes.


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[Do you remember in the 1930, it would have been a couple of years before your husband started shrimping, did they have a shrimp war?]

I do not remember that. I do not know about that.[The sugarcane barges were pushed by a paddlewheel?]Yes. Sometimes they had a string of twenty barges, to bring them to Ashland.[Ashland is on Grand Caillou?]On Grand Caillou.[Would they go backwards, was the paddlewheel in front?]The paddlewheel was in front.[It must have been hard to make the curves in the canal?]I don’t know how he did it.[Unloose the barges?]I don, t know, he did it, it was way up the bayou, he would take it above the school house at the church

over there, that canal, he would take to go to Ashland, to go to Grand Caillou. I never did see him do that. He would go way up the bayou and get some too.

[Were the barges painted?]They ware all covered with tar, so it wouldn’t rot. It was all wooden barges.[Were they big?]They were about 20 feet wide.[Were they high out of the water?]Not too high, maybe two and a half feet.[When your husband would trap, would he trap around here?]He would trap on the family property.[So he didn’t go out in the marsh?]He went later on. When this place did not have enough for the family, we had 10 children, you know.[Was it after the war?]Yes. He trapped for the mink and coons and rats around here. He would catch the otters. Later on he

went outside and trapped for muskrats. We would go out camping for three months. When the children were in high school, he was getting old too, we couldn’t let the children miss school, to go out camping.

[Do you remember when the depression came?]Yes I do. We never suffered for food, us, but we did not have money. My husband trapped that year, and

he got seven cents a piece for his rats. He was not making much money, but you could buy 25 pounds of flour for forty-five cents.. He would farm, and we always had a big garden. We had our cow, we had our milk, we had our chickens, we had our eggs, and he would make a lot of Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes. We never suffered for food. They had families that we had to help. Those that did not have any land to farm, they had it pretty bad. We helped a lot. My husband put potatoes and onions and other vegetables to them. In those days you had to poach you own coffee, he would buy it for five cents a pound. He would buy everything, when he had money. He would buy it big, it was cheaper, so he could help his mama and daddy, by bringing them their coffee and sugar, he would buy it by hundred pounds, not like five pounds, as we do now. Every year when they ground sugar, we bought a barrel of sugar.

[Regular white sugar?]White sugar, yes.[Would the ants get in it?]We had it fixed, we had a platform with four legs, and you would put water in the saucers, so ants could

not get in. You had to do it.[There was other stuff you had to put on little platforms like that?]That was the only thing that the ants loved.[How about roaches. Were they bad?]


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Oh yeah, we used to put boric acid with sugar in it, for the roaches. We did not have those little bitty roaches in those days, just those great big cockroaches. Later on they came, I don’t know how they got here. In the commodities, I guess, is how we got them.

[Were there any other bugs that bothered you?]Those fire ants, we had to fight them, we had some all over the yard. You can’t get rid of those. They

keep coming.[That is recently?]Yes. A couple of years, recently, they started.[There are some bugs you used to see a lot, but don/t see anymore?]Mosquito hawks are getting very rare, you used to see a lot. There were a lot of them.[Do you think there are less mosquitoes than they used to?]Yes. It is not as bad as it used to be. When I used to go to school, they were bad. We have some, but it

used to be a lot worse.[What did you eat when you were growing up?]We had our vegetables and grandpa would kill his own meat. They would salt the meat, mostly pork. We

had meat on the table most every day, but fresh meat. We only had fresh meat twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. The butcher would pass and sell the fresh meat. We had no electricity and no refrigerators, in those days. We used kerosene lamps. We had to buy meat fresh and cook it that day. Later on, my husband and I would kill a bull and put it in the freezer.

[In the old days, it was salt meat?]Yes.[Did you eat much shrimp or fish?]When I was a kid they were kind of rare. We had a man that would pass and sell oysters every week. We

would buy a bushel of oysters. We had shrimp and fish by season. When they would catch fish, they would peddle it fresh. It was the only time we would see it. My grandpa and my husband did not like to go fish with a pole. They wanted to catch them fast.

[You never had any shrimp?]Not until my husband fished them.[Did the people around here eat dry shrimp?]Yes. We would have to buy the dry shrimp.[You usually had some around the house?]Yes, we would buy some.[How would you cook them?]Grandma would make an okra gumbo. We would cook it, with eggplants, make jambalaya, it was good.

A potato stew was good with dry shrimp.[Did you eat a lot of potatoes?]yes and rice, that was something you had on the table every day. We would make our own bread.[Was rice grown around here?]Yes. My daddy used to grow some rice, when he was young. Everybody around here would plant rice.[It was not like sugarcane, to see?]No, just for their use.[Did they have to flood the field?]No they would go in the back where it was low, and when it would rain, they had to work it and pull the

grass. It was moist enough for the rice. They wouldn’t have to flood it.[It would supply all the rice?]Yes, all the rice we needed. Some time we had more than we need, and they would feed it to the

chickens.[Instead of corn?]Instead of corn.[How would they keep the rice?]


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They would keep it in big stacks, like a haystack. They would tie it by big bunches, they would make a platform and put all the grain to the inside and keep going pointed, and when they got to the top, they would make a hat with palmettos. It would not rain on them at all. They could keep it for two years like that. That was how they would keep it.

[When they were ready to use it?]They would break one of the stacks and shred the seeds.[How would they get the hull off?]They had a big cypress tree, with a big hollow on one side, and they had a “Pe-lon” they used to call it,

and they would pound the rice in the hollowed out place. They had two “pounders” and they would go up and down.

[It would not break up the rice?]Not enough to break up the rice at all. It was just enough to knock down the husks.[What were the other crops?]Potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, it was stuff you could keep. My husband, when he was

farming, would plant watermelon and cantaloupe, that he would sell. Grandpa too, would sell that to the plantations. Watermelons and cantaloupes. I still have my garden with watermelon and cantaloupes.

[Did you have French melon?]Yes, the French melon was a bigger melon and honeydew melons.[Cucumbers?]Yes. Tomatoes, snap beans, mostly pole beans, the little white beans too, lima beans, peas, and even dry

peas in the field, and sell them at the plantation.[Onions?]Yes, garlic, peppers, the hot and the green, my grandmother was very fond of the hot peppers. They

would make their own file. They had sassafras trees, and pound their own file, to make file gumbo. They plant a lot of okra. We had all we wanted to eat, always had. Like in winter, grandpa would plant the turnips, carrots, beets, cabbage and mustard greens. We always had a garden.

[You would make your own mustard?]Prepared mustard, no, we would buy that. We did not use too much of that.[You made pickles?]Yes, from cucumbers. Grandma used to make relish, with different kinds of vegetables.[The “pe-lon”, you called that?]The peeler, in French, it was cut into a cypress tree, like a bowl.[She would use the same one for everything or she had several of them?]They had two that I knew of and they were both alike. Two people could work at the same time.[Two people at the same time?]Yes two people at the same time, you had to know how to do it, so you would not hit each other.[It was the same for everything?]Yes, the same.[The hot peppers?]Grandma had a corn grinder that they used to grind corn for the feed for the little chickens, she would

grind the peppers with that. You could set it for fine or course, however you wanted it. That was what she would put her hot pepper in. Grandpa would plant some popcorn. He would make about two barrels of popcorn. It was dried, so we had popcorn all year round. We had it whenever we needed it.

[You ate a lot of popcorn?]Yes, every time it would rain or something, that was popcorn time. That was our pass time, to be eating

popcorn, when it was cold and could not go outside.[How would you make the popcorn?]With sugar or syrup.


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[You would fry it in a pan?]Yes. A pan or iron pot. We popped it and put it in a big pan. Then boil your sugar or syrup, whatever

you want to do, and if syrup, you could make popcorn balls. You can’t make no balls with sugar. The seed stay separate. It depended how we wanted it.

[Would you eat it plain or salted?]No, we did not care for that. We liked it sweet.[Where did he keep his barrels and stuff?]He had his place, in the corncrib. He had a big corncrib and each side had a stable for the horses and

cows. He had another place for the hay.[What buildings beside the house were there?]We had this big corn shed, hay shed, stable and two chicken houses.[What was that like? It was off the ground?]It was on the ground, it was about 10 feet square, place for them to sleep and places to lay. Grandma had

one place to put eggs to set for little chickens. She put as many as 500 little chicks every year. She set a lot.

[Why was she doing that?]They would sell them. We would raise them, we would sell them and we would eat some.[Sell them alive?]Yes. The feet tied together. The Peddler would have a cage, in the back of his wagon and he would put

them in there. He would sell them live. You could buy them live, on Main Street in Houma. That was the only way you could get a chicken, buy it live, kill it and clean it your self. Grandma would keep one hundred hens, for the eggs. She would sell the eggs. Everybody would sell the eggs. In the spring and in September, they would hatch a few again. You would have your chicken to eat all year.

[Was there something you would put, when you wanted the chickens to lay?]You mean the porcelain eggs in the nest.[What was the name of that?]I don’t know.[A yok?]Yes, that was what they called them.[Where did you get the porcelain egg?]From the peddler, maybe. They had that to sell. They had a lot of them chicken snakes. They would

come and swallow them, so you had to buy some more. How many times my grandma went to pick up her eggs, and there was a chicken snake in the box where the chicken would lay. She always had a cane knife, to kill the snake.

[Would they bite?]I guess they would bite, but they are not a poisonous snake.[If they found one with a yok, they would get it?]I don’t know what they would do. I would not bother with that, me. I can remember my husband finding

some porcelain eggs when he trapped on the hills where the snake would die after eating that egg. I can remember him bringing some home.

[Did they bite the chicken?]They could swallow a little chicken. I have seen it, when they tried to swallow a chicken and it was too

big, the snake would try another. The little chicken would die. Sometimes there would find a dozen in a pile, before the snake could swallow one. The snake would kill them.

[What else would kill the chickens?]The opossums would come and kill the big chickens. Sometimes the mink would get in there and kill the

chickens. The mink would only suck the blood, and then go for another one. By the time you would hear the noise and go see, they had made a good pass. What you had to do was fix a trap outside the chicken house, with a bait, to catch them.

[I guess you always had to keep watch?]


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Yes you had to. You had to go before you let your chicken out, or you would catch your chicken or your cat.

[The cat never did get caught in there?]No, once probably they did. I remember my grandfather made a wooden box. I don’t know if you ever

saw that, they used to catch rabbits. Grandma said a possum had gone in her little chickens, so they went and put some meat inside for bait, so the next morning, our neighbor that used to live next door, my grandmother’s nephew, he told grandma, they thought it was a mink, but the mink was in the rabbit trap, to come help him. What they do, is put a sack on the mouth of the trap, then they would raise the cover, Mr. {Abel} BLANCHARD, had a stick and he hit the sack---

(End of tap # 152 – begin tape # 153)

[What animals did you have?]We had cattle and the horses. We had pigs..[The cattle were?]Milk cattle. We did kill the young beef to eat. Mostly for the milk, we had them for our milk, our butter

and cream cheese.[How do you make cream cheese?]You just let the milk clabber, and you put it to drain. They used to put it in cheese cloth.[What do you mean by clabber?]You don’t know how milk clabbers? When it gets sour. In those days, you did not have any ice. If you

milked your cow this morning, the next morning, the milk was clabbered. When they put it in a cheese clothe, hang it over a pan the liquid would all drain and it would get hard. You put that for one night and the next morning you get some fresh cream and sugar, put that on, you could cut the cheese with a knife. It was like a white cheese. With cream and sugar, talk about good.

[You would eat that every morning?]No not every morning. Mostly, when she picked up the cream, if she had too much milk, she would feed

it to the pigs and the chickens. We didn’t eat that every day, but we had some whenever we needed.

[What would you eat for breakfast, usually?]Grandma always had smothered potatoes and eggs. Sometimes she would make us a hot chocolate milk.[And coffee?]And coffee. The children would not drink coffee, only grandfather. Grandma would not drink coffee. I

learned to drink coffee, when I got married, from my husband. I still drink it.[You said they would bake their own bread. Did they have a “cou-no”?]No we had a wooden stove. It would cook some good bread.[Did you remember anyone around here that had one?]No, they all had wood stoves.[Do you know what I am talking about?]Yes, I know what you talking about, I have seen them.[Not here?]Not in this neighbor hood.[When you saw them, was they usually covered with palmettos?]They was a mud oven. I don’t know if they made it with mortar or brick. It was like a round oven. It

was covered and it had a door, from an old wooden stove. They had a cast iron door.[Would you make corn bread?]Yes. When grandma would crack corn for the little chicken, she would keep the clean corn meal. That

would make good cornbread. She used to make some biscuit and cornbread in the fireplace, in a little Dutch oven. That was good.

[Corn bread more often or flour bread?]Most flour bread.


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[Did you ever eat “cush-cush”?]Not here, no. I ate some once when we went to Iberville to visit some of the relatives and they had some.

I did not know what it was. My grandmother never did make that.[Did they bring that over here?]No, I had to go back over there to eat some. I was too little, when I came from over there. They were

fond of that over there, and they teased me, about it, I did not know what it was. All it is corn meal with water, and they just fry it. That’s all it was.

[Did you eat your main meal at noon or suppertime?]At noon time. We had a good meal at supper too.[What kind of stuff would you have?]Jambalaya, gumbo or vegetable soup, with pork. We always had a gumbo or a soup every day. Then you

had your meat and vegetables, with rice.[Would you eat one thing at a time, or was everything served at once?]Everything was on the table. You would eat your gumbo, then serve yourself rice and whatever

vegetables. Whatever you wanted to eat. We seemed to always have baked sweet potatoes. The wooden stove always was burning, so the oven was always hot. Every morning, we would wash the sweet potatoes and put them in the oven., and when grandma would cook her dinner, they would bake. It was good.

[Did you wrap them in something?]No, just wash them good and put them in there.[You said gumbo or soup, did she make a fresh one every day?]Oh yes.[A new one every day?]Every day. You couldn’t keep anything. You did not have a refrigerator or ice box. You had to cook

every day.[You would get a lot of game?]Grandpa was too old, when I came to live here, he would not go hunting. He had friends that would bring

it to him, in the winter season. I remember one night, a Mr. {Evince } CALLAHAN gave grandma a pair of French ducks. Grandma fix that clean, we did not have a ice box, so grandma put them on the porch near the kitchen. She had a nail, that she would hang them on. It was cold outside. That night, they used to play cards, people would visit and that was their pleasure. Eleven o’clock Mr. CALLAHAN said, grandma, how about a good jambalaya, he had killed a lot of ducks. Grandma said, I am in for it. Eleven o’clock, so he goes. He had come riding on a horse, he got on his horse, went a way up the bayou, came back and stole my grandmother’s two ducks, he had given her earlier, off the nail and they had the jambalaya that night with grandmother’s two ducks. The next morning, grandma goes for her ducks and they were gone. She thought the cat had gotten them. She wanted to kill the cat. Here come Mr. CALLAHAN with a pair of ducks, and he told grandma, what is the matter, you are mad at your cat? She said “yeah, he ate my ducks”. (laughing) That is how people would enjoy themselves in those days. It was a big laugh. He was good at that, Mr. CALLAHAN.

[Was he from here?]He lived about a quarter of a mile from here. They were good friends. They would play cards every

week. Ether he would come here or they would go his mama’s {Mrs. Sylvin (Virginie BUQUET) CALLAHAN} house.

[What games would they play?]They would play Pedro and Euchre.[How do you play Euchre?]This what I forgot. I know you had to take off some of the cards, and you would play with {32 cards} the

six on up, I know if you made trumps, hearts, the two red jacks were the highest cards, you would pass out 5 cards and your 5th one you would flip it over, say if you flipped a diamond, that would be the trump. If the next one had a good hand, they could say pick it up or pass, and it came to


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you, if you couldn’t pick it up, it would go one more round. One day my grandma and grandpa was playing, partners, he had a diamond, and he had the jack of hearts and the ace of diamonds, he was sure to make the points, he passes, everybody want him to pick it up, and he passes, so it went around again and nobody could make it, so it come back to him and he had to make it. Grandma said, you must be crazy, how did you know we would make you pick it up. Those old people really had fun.

(Spoken in French, interpretation by Jess BERGERON)

[Do you speak French?”]Yes[You always spoke Frencn?]My grandfather and grandmother always spoke French. My grandfather read the newspaper in French.

He would tell us what was happening in the world. A newspaper from France.[From France?]All the time, during World War I, he read the paper from France.[How did he get it?]In the mail.[What was the name of the paper?]I do not remember the name of the paper.[Where was your family from?From Bayou Lafourche. The older ones came form France, my grandfather was from Bayou Lafourche.[Your Grandmother?]Grandmother was from Houma. Her parents had lived on Bayou Black. She was a BLANCHARD

{Amelina d/o Sylvere BLANCHARD & Celeste LEBLANC}.[Everybody around here was from France?]Yes the CHAMPAGNES, THERIOT’S, THIBODAUX’S and FALGOUTS.[The man on the sugar barges, that picked up the sugar cane spoke French.]It was the CAILLOUET’S, they spoke only English, they lived at Ashland. Maybe his older family spoke

French., but he did not speak French., only English.[your children spoke French?]Yes, they learned English when they went to school. They were punished if they spoke French in school.[Your grandchildren]They did not learn French, only English. The teacher could speak French, but only spoke English while

at school. After school, she would speak French with the parents, but only spoke English at school. Grandmother only spoke French, grandfather spoke French and English. All of my oldest children started speaking French. They youngest was only taught English, it was no use to teach them French, so they would be punished in school. At home, we were speaking French, the youngest ones also understood what we were saying. All my children received their high school diplomas.

[Do your children live in the area?]Three live by the water tower, up the bayou {Herbert, Carroll, John Roy}, one next door {Cecile}. The

two boys have brick homes and the girl has a wood house. One lives in Gonzales {Patrick} and three in Houma {Elton, Madge, Lydia}. My son-in-law had a stroke and is unable to work. Three sons work for “Macobar” and the one in Gonzales works in a chemical plant near the Sun Shine Bridge.

[Did they drill for oil around her?]Yes. The first time they hit the sand, and the oil only lasted a year, and the salt water came in. Another

time another company came and tried to hit the sand, but they missed. Another company came and hit the sand but salt water in it.

[Do you remember the first oil well drilled in the area.]


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Yes and it is still producing. It produces gas.[When was that?]That was about the time I got married, about 1920. They came and leased the land for twenty-fire cents

an acre. The next time, they leased the land for five dollars an acre, the next time ten dollars. When the lease expired, they werer paying twenty-five dollars an acre. My son say, “mom don’t give up, you bankrupt four companies”. (Laughing). Everybody around here lease their land, but one man. He didn’t understand, and he thought the oil companies were going to steal his land. He only had a small piece of land. We had one hundred acres.

[Who was the companies?]Kellis Petroleum was one, the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company. When one give up, another

would come. We always had a good lease.[Were there any shrimp drying platforms around here?]Yes there was a big one at Grand Pass. There were four houses there.[The men working for the oil companies were from around here?]They were from Texas. The men from around here had no experience working in the oil field. At first

they came from Texas. Later they hired local men. They found that men from Lafourche and Terrebonne were better workers. One day my son was working for an exploration company and he was running a line across some land. One old lady came out and fussing at him in French shaking a stick. He didn’t know that they didn’t have permission to cross the land. The old lady thought he was a Texan and did not know he understood every thing she said.. She was really cussing him out. (laughing).

[Was there any trouble with the Texans?]Not at first. There was no alcohol down here. Later they would bring their own. The Texans lived in

Houma. Some of the boys, resented them. Their girls were attracted to them, they had cars, they were making big money. They were afraid of losing their sweethearts, cause the girls were attracted to men with cars and money. Sometimes they had fights in Houma. I heard a Texan was killed after being hit over the head with a chair, during one those fights. One of my daughters married a Texan. During the war she was working as a nurse at Charity Hospital with one of her brothers, helping the doctors taking care of the patients, and she met him, and later she married him.

[The first people living on the platforms, were they from here?]No they were not from here, they were from somewhere else, they were not called Texans, they were

called Americans. They had an Episcopal minister from Houma come down here and was talking to an old couple, who did not have any religion. He converted them and tried to research how they got here., but had no luck. Some say they settled below Morgan City and later moved into the area.

[Did the people have cattle?]The LINERS did - Oliver LINER.

(Begin Tape # 154)

[How did they move the cattle?]By truck. A long time ago they would put the cattle on the islands by barge, there was no road then.[When your husband was trawling shrimp, who did he sell his shrimp to?]At first he was seining shrimp. When he began trawling, the smaller ones he sold to the nearest platform.

They were not worth much. The larger ones he would ice and sell to the factory on Grand Caillou. Dularge did not have a shrimp factory.

[Who owned the platforms down here?]LACOSTE and DEHART, C.X HENRY, Cyprien VOISIN and Henry MARMANDE at Grand Pass[No chinamen?]The chinamen were on Grand Caillou. There were none on Dularge.


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[Were the platforms big?]They were very big. And had camps for the workers. They had a lot of camps then. Today the camps are

for sport fishermen.[You eat fish, crabs and shrimp?].Oh yes. Every Wednesday, my husband’s brother would come in the afternoon. He would roast corn

meal and scatter it in the bayou that night. The next morning, he would go out and catch all the shrimp we could eat, with a couple of throws of the cast net. This was after the bayou was dredged, and the water was clean. You could catch all the beautiful crabs you wanted. I would not eat anything out of that bayou now. There was a man that would pass and you could buy crabs and oysters from him.

[Why won’t you eat anything from the bayou now?]People use it for a garbage pile. They just throw their garbage in the bayou, instead of burning it like we

do. Some people are like pigs. [Were people superstitious?]Some people used to believe in the “gris-gris”. When ever some one was sick or things did not go right,

they believed someone had put a hex on them, with the “gri-gri”, like a curse, on them. I never did believe in that. A family down the road got sick, and they contacted a black woman who was a “treater”. She would come and say, “oh yeah, someone put a “gris-gris” on you, you have to kill two white chickens, but you cannot eat the chickens”. After they killed the chickens, she would take them with her. She said she would come back the next week, to see if the curse was gone. Meanwhile she had eaten the chickens (laughing). One time, she told one family, they had to kill a pig. They had to skin the pig they had killed and put the fat side of the skin on their body and wear that for a week. She took the pig meat with her. After wearing that pigskin for a week, they must have really smelled bad (laughing). She told them there was a curse on it.(laughing)

[The treater was a black woman?]Yes, they had an Indian woman down the bayou, but this was a black woman.[You used to wash clothes in the bayou?]Yes, later my grandfather dug a well in the back yard. He put some boards around it to keep people from

falling in. He built a platform there and that was where we washed the clothes. That was the clearest water I ever saw. We would wash them on the rub board and hang them on the clothesline to dry. My son-in-law, {Hulett E. EVANS} that lives next door, had a stroke and my daughter {Cecile} uses the clothesline today. When you have to pay a two hundred dollar electric bill, you try to save all you can. I went back to drying on the line, but I gave up and went back to the clothes dryer. He can only work a little bit. Many is the time I had to wash eight pairs of blue jeans on the washboard, I had five boys and 4 girls. In my day, there were no permanent press clothes. All the clothes had to be starched and ironed.

[The alligators were around during your grandmother’s time?]Oh yes the “Coodmont” were around., some people call the “cocodrie”, crocodile, but they are really

alligators. The noses are different. One day, when my husband was a young boy, his mother {Nellie CHAMPAGNE} washed clothes on the bayou side. There was a wharf and bench built there for her to wash clothes. One day she went out to wash and an alligator was sunning itself. on her wharf. John said he picked up a stick and went toward the alligator, while his mother ran into the house and told her husband “Get your shotgun and kill that gator on my wharf”. By the time he got his gun and came out the gator had left, so he went back inside, and she went out and washed the clothes. The next time she went out to wash clothes, the alligator was back, so she went in and told her husband to go shoot the gator. He said, “I don’t have time for that”. She went out and looked for something to run the gator off. She found a sickle that was used for cutting grass. She eased up on the gator, swung the sickle and stabbed, the gator with the blade. The gator took off and so did the sickle. She went ahead and washed her clothes. Later, when her husband looked for his sickle and could not find it, he said, “them boys done lost my sickle”. She did not say anything.


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Family number 199 in Ward 10 Terrebonne Paruis U. S. Census 1910.THERIOT, Levy 50 M. 28 FarmerTHERIOT, Nellie 45 M. 28THERIOT, Paul 20 S. LaborerTHERIOT, Pauline 18 S. THERIOT, Franciene 16 S. THERIOT, Adele Nellie 12 S.THERIOT, Jean (John) 14 S.THERIOT, Levy Jr. 6 S.THERIOT, Marie Sophie 5 S.THERIOT, Medric 4 S.THERIOT, Theogene 2 S.

Two years later, her husband looked out and saw his cows grazing in the pasture across the bayou. All the water had gone out of the bayou. This was before the bayou was dredged, and the cows broke the fence and walked across the bayou to eat. He told her, I am going to walk across the bayou and drive the cattle back into the fence. He did, and when he came back, he “look what I found in the bones of a dead alligator” and showed her the sickle. She told him, you blamed the boys for losing your sickle, I used it to get rid of the alligator, it stuck in him, and he went into the water with it. I did not tell you, because you would fuss me. (laughing). In two years time, all the meat was gone from the gator, but that sickle was still stuck in the bones. (laughing)

[Was it a big gator?]Yes it was a big one, over six feet long. It could have taken a small child.[Have you ever eaten alligator?]No, some people do, and also the Nutras, but I never have eaten that. When I was asked to eat some, I

said you go ahead, but that is not for me.[Do you eat turtles?]Oh yes the big turtles, the loggerheads. Oh yes[You said your grandparents were from Bayou Lafourche?]Yes, above Raceland. Grandmother’s family came from Houma and Bayou Black.[When your husband was trawling, how would he get to Grand Caillou?]He would pass by Falgout’s Canal. Before the deepwater channel was dug, there was a road, up by the

water tower, Bayou Guillaume Road that would go to Grand Caillou. That channel cut the road, and today you have to pass on the road along Falgout’s Canal. It has a barge, like a pontoon bridge to cross the deepwater channel. They would haul the shrimp by trucks to the shrimp factory on Grand Caillou. The road followed the ridges to reach Grand Caillou.

[Is the road still there today?]Yes, but they had to put a gate across the road to keep people from going back there and causing trouble. [Anything else down here happened to cause hardships?]Yes, the anthrax, “charbon”, came one year and killed a lot of the mules and cattle. Without the mules,

you could not work your land. Grandfather had a beautiful white mule, the “charbon” came and it was dead in two days. You had to burn and bury the animal, to keep the disease from spreading.

[Do you remember when the banks failed?]Oh yes, I remember when our money were either gold or silver certificates. Everybody had to turn them

in and get regular money. The government picked them up and after a while, they were no good. I heard stories that even people who were abroad, had to come back and exchange their money. For some it was a real inconvenience. We never had too much money, so it was not much of a problem for us. The backside of the gold certificate was yellow, not gray like the silver certificates.

[What?]


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You know like you have the one-dollar bill, well, you had the silver certificate and the gold certificate. It was yellow, and it was bigger than the regular bills. You had to go bring them to the bank and they killed them. They paid 10 for one, for the gold certificates, two for one for the silver certificates. Grandfather had to go to the bank and change them. That was about the time of the depression. They had a bank holiday. The millionaires had all the money. They killed the gold.

[What were the banks in Houma?]They had the Bourg Bank and the Houma Bank {Bank of Terrebonne}. Mr. FUNDERBURK had the first

national {Citizens Bank}, he was buying land for very little money. He could see the future, and he would buy the peoples’ land for little or nothing, and he got rich. People could not get much for the shrimp and could not keep up their notes and the banks got it. No body had money to buy the fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters that the people depended on to make a living. The South Coast and Louisiana Land were companies that bought out the small farmers. Nobody could find a job. One of my sons and his sisters worked in the operating room for a doctor and they made pretty good. My son would push the patients in and out of the operating room, and his sister was a nurse at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. That is where she met her future husband. He was a patient there. My husband was able to get a job at a CCC camp, to make money. I think it paid fifty cents a day.

[Were many people from the bayou killed in World War II?]Yes, five young men from the bayou were killed. One they never did find his body, he was killed in the

big battle to cross the Rhine River, and he never was found. There were four white boys and one black boy, that died, during the war.

[Did you ever see the “prisoners of war” during World War II?]Yes, they would pass in trucks, whenever they would pick up metal for the war. They would pick up tin

cans and anything made of metal. I would see them pass in trucks and wave at them. They seemed like nice boys. Some people would yell and cuss at them, but they had mothers too, that were worried about them. I am sure that it was like it was over here, our boys did not want to go to war, but they had to, because they were drafted. It was the same over there. When they waved, we would wave back at them. They was some good looking boys.

End of recording.

Notes: Amay Marie CHAUVIN THERITO died January 1, 2001 at age 96. She was buried in St. Eloi Cemetery, Theriot, LA. Her husband, John THERIOT, born December 27, 1893, died April 28, 1977 at age 83, he is buried in St. Eloi Cemetery, Theriot, LA. Her son Clinton Peter died June 20, 1988 at age 39, he is buried in St. Eloi Cemetery in Theriot, LA. His obituary lists two siblings that died young, Francis and John THERIOT.


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