13. Carmen Roberts
Transcript
David Dollar: Good morning. This morning we're going to be visiting with Mr. Carmen Roberts. You'll remember that our last program we visited with his lovely wife and we're still in Provencal, Louisiana, having a wonderful time. Good morning, Mr. Robert. Carmen Roberts: Good morning. How you doing, sir? David Dollar: Tell me about when you were a boy, what it was like growing up here? Carmen Roberts: Well, I was raised about seven miles Southeast of the city of Provencal here, just beyond the army community, what you know as an army community. And as a child, I was the oldest of three children. I had two sisters and no brothers. And during my early years, I remember especially going through, started to school. Well, we had to walk about a mile, to a one room school, one teacher and the way we kept it warm, in the winter time, we had an old heater that we used pine knots in. And we got our drinking water with a couple of buckets. Us boys would go get it about a quarter of a mile there from the spring. So that's the way got our water. So we had this one room school I said, and we had a nine month school back in the those times. And I attended this school known as Blue Spring, which has long been gone. And then in the meantime, on other side of the, what would you call it the bottom out there in the army community. We had another school, about four miles from that known as Harmony School. So they decided that they would build a school in between there and, which they did, and named it White Star. And we all, all of us, they consolidated them and we went to White Star School. And I went, the best I can remember, about the fourth or fifth grade at Blue Spring. And naturally we went and started at White Star, why I went there until, through the seventh grade, and then started going to Provencal. I stayed here in Provencal with the Voight family and went to school there for a year or so. A couple of three years. And I believe I went through to the 10th grade and decided I had enough education and just quit. David Dollar: Just dropped out. Carmen Roberts: Just dropped out for no apparent reason. I thought I would change the world. I've regretted it many times that I didn't finish. But that's the way it was, I just dropped out. David Dollar: We were talking earlier that your family has been in this area since at least before the civil war. Carmen Roberts: That is right. I've heard my father tell me about it several times. And his grandfather was handed on down at, they been in this Natchez Parish here fo a great number of years there. And the place I was raised in, it was a... The house, it was a six room house with a front porch and a hall and a back porch. It had three large fireplaces in it. And we could burn a four-foot wood in each one of the fireplaces. And we also had one, at the time what we would cook on the fireplace back there I've seen my mother, my grandmother, who lived with us, but they would do some cooking on this third fireplace back in the kitchen that way. Of course we had no electricity, no gas, no modern day conveniences, but we was, we liked that real good, that life because we, that's all we knew. And so we liked it, this is a great deal. So we farmed. My father did all his all life. He was farmer all of his life. And so we farmed 30 to 40 acres and we raised everything that could be raised. You just name it, and then we raised it. And so we didn't go to town very often, probably every two weeks. And sometime it would be a month before he would come to town to Provencal here. And we'd get necessary supplies, flour, and a little fuel oil, and things that we didn't have at home that way, which was in the wagon. My father never owned an automobile in his life. Never drove one, as far as I know. David Dollar: Did y'all raise sugarcane? Carmen Roberts: Oh yes. We raised a sugarcane and as far back as I can remember my father, he had a syrup mill. We made our own syrup and he also would make it for the neighbors all around. And he'd start about the last week in October and wind up sometime the latter part of November, which would last from two weeks to sometimes a month or better. And we'd get up early in the morning and the mill that we ground the juice with, and the power that we use to dry it out, were pulled by mules and horses. David Dollar: Y'all owned this mill? Carmen Roberts: We owned it. My father owned it himself that way. And we'd get up around four o'clock in the morning to get a supply of juice. So we'd have a good day's cooking. With a good day, why we'd cook from, anywhere from 75 to a hundred gallons of syrup a day. David Dollar: You didn't do this for free did you? Carmen Roberts: Oh no. The neighbors, why he would charge them every 4th gallon [inaudible 00:05:44] . And that was his pay for cooking his neighbors all around him there. And so, I believe, if I remember right one of the problems he did have he did have [inaudible 00:05:57] That they would furnish their own pine. We used pine as fuel to cook the syrup with. And so I always enjoyed it very much. And another thing that I really enjoyed too, was when I was a child, is hog killing time. There's something about it that always thrilled me. And we had to always kill them down at the back of the house on a little creek. David Dollar: We have to take a break right now and we'll come back to hog killing right after this word from our sponsors. We're visiting with Mr. Carmen Roberts this morning in Provencal. And before we were talking about hog killing. We're going to talk about it some more. Carmen Roberts: Especially want to talk about the hog killing and cooking out the lard. We'd cooked out in a large wash pot and we'd make several, 45, 48 pound cans. Enough to do us all a year. And especially why, what was so good was the sausage that my mother would make. And later me and my wife, we would make it. We would take it, grind it with a hand mill. My mother would put seasoning in it, and then she would get the inner part of a shuck and sprinkle it with a ... David Dollar: This is a corn shuck? Carmen Roberts: Corn shuck, to make it pliable and soft, then she would wrap those sausages in netting and tie each end of them, two together and put them over a hole in a large smoke house that we had. And we'd smoke them with a Hickory smoke, anywhere from three to seven days. They was the most delicious a sausage that's not going to be bought. That none would compare with the flavor of these sausage that way. I can almost taste them right now. David Dollar: Back when you first started hog killing, were there any fences around here? Carmen Roberts: The owner, it was open range. All the hogs and the cows while they run outside, but the fields where we raised our corn and cotton and all our crops, they had to be fenced. But back in those days, why we used rail fences. And I helped my father split out many a rail that way, and we would use 10 foot rails around most all of it. And so I was quite a large boy before I knew anything but a rail fence. And so they would last anywhere from, a rail would from five to 15 years, depending on the quality of it, whether it was oak or pine or whatever like that. David Dollar: Did you ever hunt when you were a boy? Carmen Roberts: Oh, yes. Quite a bit. And it was anything I liked to hunt, my most favorite hunting was squirrel. And of course I liked to hunt ducks. Back when I started out hunting, they were just, you could just kill any amount of squirrels that you wanted to. Just, I was raised on the little bottom out there. Why you could go out and just kill a limit just in a short while that way. And we would rabbit hunt and then at night, me and my father, in the winter time, we would hunt the opossum and coons, and we didn't eat those, but we sold fur off of them. And doing during the winter we'd make a quite few dollars, hunting those opossum at night. David Dollar: Did you ever deer hunt? Carmen Roberts: No. That's one of the hunting that I never got into was deer hunting, but I never did. David Dollar: Well, back in those days, there weren't any limits on how many you could kill where there? Carmen Roberts: Well, yes sir, there was a limit, but back out there was sometime not all of us stopped at the limit. Not every time. David Dollar: Well you weren't a farmer all your life. Carmen Roberts: No, sir. I farmed, I was about 29 years old. Then I went to work for the Texas Pacific Railway Company and spent 34 years with them before retirement. And during those years with the railroad, I worked anywhere from East Texas, around Overton, Killgore, all the way into New Orleans, including all the branches that PB had that way. And there was some of those days, when it was cold out there and snow covered the ground, why we didn't know whether we was going to make it or not. But anyhow, well we just buckle up a little tighter. The weather got cold and we just stayed with it for 34 years out there. David Dollar: Well, by the time you were in the railroad business, everything was, well it wasn't steam anymore. It was just a, was it a diesel engine? Carmen Roberts: No, sir. When I first started, we had nothing but a steam engine. The diesel come along several years after. David Dollar: When was that now? Carmen Roberts: Well, if I were to, it would have to be a guess, is when the diesel would come along, I would say it was... The diesel come along in the late forties or early fifties. David Dollar: That late? Carmen Roberts: Right. David Dollar: We're just about out of time. When did you retire? Carmen Roberts: November the first, 1974, like I said before, I had spent 34 years out in the railroad. David Dollar: How do you like retirement? Carmen Roberts: Well, I'll tell you, like I've told most everyone else that has asked me about how like retirement, if it was any better, I just don't think I could stand it. David Dollar: Mr. Roberts, we've enjoyed visiting with you. Carmen Roberts: And thank you. And it's been a pleasure, you folks being in our home and we really enjoyed it.
Mr. Carmen Roberts: He and Mr. Dollar recalls memories of growing up and living in Provencal.