Memories (U.S. National Park Service)

August 20, 2026

82. Ollie Bates

Transcript

David Dollar: Good morning, this is David Dollar. We're glad you've joined us for Memories this morning. We're going to visit with Mrs. Ollie Bates of Natchitoches, and we'll start our program right after this message from Peoples Bank, our sponsor.

Hello again, in case you're just joining our program this morning, we're visiting on Memories with Mrs. Ollie Bates of Natchitoches. Ms. Bates, why don't you start things off this morning by telling us just a little bit about yourself, where you were born, and some of your family stuff and all.

Ollie Bates: Well, I was born in Winn Parish, but my parents died when I was young, and so one of my sisters take me and brought me up to Red River Parish, Coushatta, and she raised me. And I had a good home up there, and everything was just fine and lovely.

David Dollar: What were some of the things that you did as a little girl around Coushatta?

Ollie Bates: Oh, I helped take care of the chickens, and ducks, and turkeys, and every evening I'd have to go out and feed them. An, oh, they'd just swarm around you. We had to have that feed ready every evening for them because that's the time they fed them.

David Dollar: How old were you when you were doing these kind of things?

Ollie Bates: Well, I was about nine years old.

David Dollar: Was that pretty big responsibilities for a little girl then, or were you very much expected to do things?

Ollie Bates: No, I think I was born with the responsibility and knew how to handle it.

David Dollar: Just kind of had to do it, huh?

Ollie Bates: Yeah.

David Dollar: We were talking a little bit earlier and you mentioned some things about being around Hannah there and right on Red River, some of the things that went on.

Ollie Bates: Yeah, and the Steamboat used to come by and pick up the cotton, and they'd just come all the time of the night or day anytime, but way up the river they would be blowing the whistle, and people would know to get out there at the landing to get the grocers. They had whiskey, and corn, and-

David Dollar: Where, the steamboat was coming from what, like north from Shreveport?

Ollie Bates: It was coming from Shreveport, and they had a freight, and they would unload that. The crew, they had a big old gang plank they'd put out from the boat up on the bank, and they'd song and sang along, roll that stuff up there, and then just carry them bales or cotton back down like it was nothing-

David Dollar: My goodness.

Ollie Bates: -and stack them up. And sometimes they looked like they'd have about 100 bales on. And I'd love to meet it down there, but I never did go on the boat, I was afraid to, and I don't know why, I wish now that I had.

David Dollar: I guess so. What you were just talking about made me remember things like reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn about the big river boats and the lake on the rivers.

Ollie Bates: Yes.

David Dollar: The river boats would take the groceries off and then take the cotton from the farmers around there, take it down what I guess to-

Ollie Bates: Down to New Orleans.

David Dollar: Down to New Orleans and send it out West.

Ollie Bates: They'd take it down there. And there'd be a lot of stops along. They had to up to Coushatta and then they'd come on down. This is where that Hanna wasn't very far, but the river has changed so much now. The river's on the other side.

David Dollar: That's right, it's eaten all the land.

Ollie Bates: Yeah, it's taking on the land. And then it'd go on down and the Grand Ecore would stop down here the same way and on down to Alexandria. And every place like that. And plantations that had cotton for sale, they would have a landing and they wouldn't have to be at a town. This wasn't no town there where I lived, it was just a plantation. And they had a landing there and got the groceries and shipped the cotton from there.

David Dollar: It sounds like the river there was a pretty important to their way of life then, both as transportation and-

Ollie Bates: Yes, there wasn't no trains to there, then.

David Dollar: All they had was the river.

Ollie Bates: That's all they had was the river.

David Dollar: To get the grocers and to send the cotton out.

Ollie Bates: And send the cotton out, that's right.

David Dollar: I'll be. That's really something.

Ollie Bates: Yeah, they had the gin, but they didn't have no way to, wasn't no trucks in them days, and there wasn't no railroad there.

David Dollar: Yeah. We were talking too, you mentioned something about your husband also grew up there in town with you?

Ollie Bates: Yes.

David Dollar: What were we talking about there? You said he worked on one of these plantations?

Ollie Bates: Yes, he worked on the plantation with my brother-in-law. And of course I think he was a fine man, and he did too. And he always met the boat for him. And I'd be there too after I got older, old enough to go down there.

David Dollar: So he had some responsibility around the plantation too.

Ollie Bates: Yeah. And they tried to get me to go on the boat though, several people did, but I was afraid to go on there, but I'm sorry now that I didn't go on that because I'd have that to think about.

David Dollar: Well, I'll tell you, let me interrupt you just this one second. We need to take a little commercial break right here. We'll be right back after this message from Peoples Bank, our sponsor.

Hello once again. In case you're just joining us, this is David Dollar on Memories. This morning we're visiting with Mrs. Ollie Bates. Ms. Bates, we were talking about life right around Coushatta and Hanna, and you were telling us about the riverboats. About what time was this, what year were you growing up around there?

Ollie Bates: Well, I was growing up there in 1903, and I lived there until I moved down here in 1937. My husband had passed away. We had our home up there, but whenever he passed away, I decided I better come down here where I could send my children to college and school.

David Dollar: I see.

Ollie Bates: And I met all the fine folks down here and they're wonderful. And, I like living here and the community is so good.

David Dollar: Did you have any relatives here or friends at the time in Natchitoches?

Ollie Bates: Well, yes I had a sister-in-law here, Mrs. Wilson. Mrs. Bates Wilson.

David Dollar: But it was mainly the school that influenced you to move here.

Ollie Bates: Yeah, that was it mainly.

David Dollar: How many children did you have and what did they do? Did they go on to school like you wanted them to?

Ollie Bates: Well, I had one married son, and then one son was working in the oil field. And then I had three daughters and two more sons that come down here with me. Well, my daughter, oldest daughter, well, she married pretty soon after I got here, and so I sent the other children to school. But my youngest son, he didn't want to go to school, so he left home and he went back up there with one of our friends. And then he got after me, he wanted to go in the Army, and I had to sign for him. At first I would not sign for him, but then I decided I thought it over and I said, "Well, I'll know where he is at."

David Dollar: That's true.

Ollie Bates: Yeah.

David Dollar: At least you knew where he was.

Ollie Bates: And he stayed in 20 years, and he retired on a pension. And so he done good after all.

David Dollar: It worked out fine.

Ollie Bates: But he finished high school in the Army.

David Dollar: That's good.

Ollie Bates: And then the other son, Charles Bates, well he's a minister of the Gospel now, if you didn't know it. He was ordained last summer sometime. And he's preaching out at this little mission church on Wind West, out that Black Lake.

David Dollar: I know where that is.

Ollie Bates: Yeah.

David Dollar: I sure do.

Ollie Bates: And one of my daughters married a Lavishpen, and one of them married a Dykes, so that ended me. The oldest, second-oldest boy, he's still here with me. I never could marry him off.

David Dollar: So he stayed around here?

Ollie Bates: Yeah, he just stays around here.

David Dollar: Taking care of home and mama, huh?

Ollie Bates: Yeah, I've been taking care of him, but he's got to take care of me from now on.

David Dollar: Let me ask you one thing, Ms. Bates, and this is kind of a personal privilege question. You said you were born in 1892?

Ollie Bates: Yes, sir.

David Dollar: And here we are in 1976. Is there any one or maybe a couple of things you can think of that stand out in your mind as the biggest change you can imagine? Would it be in transportation or-

Ollie Bates: Oh, yeah.

David Dollar: -the airplane, or would it be in television?

Ollie Bates: Yeah. Yeah.

David Dollar: You've lived over such a great span of time, I just wonder. It must be-

Ollie Bates: Yeah, we got news in by the grapevine. We didn't get so much news and if it was bad, we didn't know anything about it.

David Dollar: That's right.

Ollie Bates: But I'll tell you one thing that happened, though, when I was a young girl. They made me real proud. My brother-in-law went to Coushatta, was at Coushatta, and he bought me a pair of shoes with brass toes on them. And I thought that was the wonderfullest thing, I was the only one had any. And I strutted around like a peacock with those shoes on.

David Dollar: They were made out of brass on the toes?

Ollie Bates: They were made out of leather. You've heard of this old course, they called them Brogan. Well, it was something sort of like that with just that brass on the toe.

David Dollar: The toe was brass.

Ollie Bates: Yeah, so you couldn't kick them out.

David Dollar: Scuff them all up, huh?

Ollie Bates: Afraid he thought I was going out kicking.

David Dollar: My goodness, I've never heard of anything like that.

Ollie Bates: Well, that's the only pair that I ever saw. None of the other girls never did get any.

David Dollar: Well I'll be. I think I'd like to see a pair of those. You don't happen to have them around still, do you?

Ollie Bates: No, I don't have nothing around. I'm the only antique thing of the family that's left.

David Dollar: My goodness. Well, I tell you what, Ms. Bates, our time is just about up. We like to try to close our program with a closing memory every time. And I wonder if there is anything in particular that you would like to close the program with?

Ollie Bates: Yes sir, there's one particular memory. It was the day that I married.

David Dollar: Okay.

Ollie Bates: It was the day I married. It was the 31st of January. Bright, cold, sunshiny day. And my brother-in-law, he fixed the room and we were married in there, and all the neighborhood was there. I had a nice wedding. That's one thing that's-

David Dollar: Well, I think that is a fitting memory and a fine one.

Ollie Bates: That's a good memory.

David Dollar: We thank you for sharing it with us and for the others you did. This has been David Dollar visiting with Mrs. Ollie Bates on Memories. If any of you folks listening at home have memories you'd like to share, we'd like to have you on the program, and we'd like for you to get in touch with either me, and you can reach me through KNOC, or you can call the Retired Senior Volunteer Program Office, and their number is 352-8647. We'd like to thank you for listening this morning. David Dollar visiting with Mrs. Ollie Bates. Join us again. Tell the folks at Peoples Bank thanks from me and from you for bringing us this program, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us.

David Dollar interviews Ollie Bates about watching the river boats, growing up in Coushatta, her husband’s work on a plantation, moving to Natchitoches, her children, and memories of her wedding.

August 13, 2026

81. Nodee Scarborough pt. 2

Transcript

Jim Colley: Good morning. This is Jim Colley and this is The Memories Program. This morning in just a few minutes, we'll be visiting with Mrs. Nodee Scarborough. We'll be back with you, Ms. Scarborough, right after this word from Peoples Bank and Trust, our sponsors.

Good morning again. This is Jim Colley on the Memories Program, and we're visiting with Mrs. Scarborough. Mrs. Scarborough, welcome to the Memories Program.

Nodee Scarborough: I'm glad to be on it.

Jim Colley: We're glad to have you here. You're a long-term resident of this area.

Nodee Scarborough: Oh yeah, I've been here since 1921.

Jim Colley: When were you born? Can I ask that?

Nodee Scarborough: I was born 1899. I was not quite 22 when I married in June the 30th, 1921.

Jim Colley: And so when you got married, you moved out here?

Nodee Scarborough: Yeah, I came to... Well, I'd been to school down here and I finished college down here. And I went home and then my husband came up to visit me one summer. And we just rode off in the car and decided to get married on the way. We were going with my best friend and her husband who'd been married that morning at 8:30. We were going take them to Shreveport and they were catching the train to Galveston. They were going to spend their honeymoon in Galveston, and we got started the Shreveport. My husband said, "Oh, let's go buy a home. I want to go by that way." And I said, "Oh, no, it's way out of the way. We are not going to buy that." I said, "Rob, go on. Don't go buy that." And he says, "No, we are going to get married." And I thought he was joking because we had have a first [inaudible 00:01:39].

Jim Colley: And he wasn't joking?

Nodee Scarborough: No, he wasn't joking. He went on, got a license, we got married and went on and spent our honeymoon in Shreveport with this other couple who were married at 8:30. And we had a wonderful time and we got that night about 8:30. I said, "Lonnie, we better call mama. She's going to kill me." And so we called them. Lonnie called them. No, Bob Davison. He was the man that driving the car. He called them and said, Ernest answers the telephone. And I said, "Ernest, Nodee and Lonnie are married." He said, "Married? You tell her mama's going to tear her up."

Jim Colley: I bet that came as quite a surprise to your parents.

Nodee Scarborough: Oh, it did. Mama said though, she told me and Ruby that we were the youngest girls in the family. There was 12 of us and I was the 10th and Ruby was the 12th. And so she said after my three older sisters married, they all married at home, she said, "I don't want any more daughters to be married. I just can't stand it giving up a daughter every day." I said, "Why some of you boys don't get married?"

Jim Colley: I guess marriage was a pretty big deal.

Nodee Scarborough: Oh, well, it was. Like nowadays, the girls and boys get married and they say, "Well, if I don't like it, I can get a divorce."

Jim Colley: But you never thought about that back then?

Nodee Scarborough: No, no. You didn't think about getting a divorce. You didn't even consider it. Anybody that was divorced was just a bad person. That was the way-

Jim Colley: Things may have changed for the better with that. What was it like growing up back then?

Nodee Scarborough: Well, it was a terrible thing in a way. I had the most wonderful time in my life from the time I was about 5 to 16. But when I got 16, I was so miserably shy that I didn't know what to do. My mother had always... There was an unfortunate girl in the community who had had children out of wedlock and she'd say, I'd get an argument with her and she'd say, "All right, if you want to be like so-and-so, you just go ahead." And Lord, I'd take off my clothes and put on an undershirt under my [inaudible 00:03:49] blouse. She thought it would look terrible to see the flesh. You go, oh, I'm [inaudible 00:03:56]. That's just been about 65 years ago, 60 years ago.

Jim Colley: And I bet your dress went the way, almost all the way to the floor too.

Nodee Scarborough: Oh, it did. And you didn't dare cross your legs at the knees. You could put one foot on the other, but you couldn't cross your legs at the knees. That was terrible. I came down to college here and Mr. Roy, president V.L. Roy was the president of the college. And he made us take, he'd take a tape measure and measure how long the skirts were from the floor. If they were over 14 to 15 inches, you'd have to go take it off and put on one longer.

Jim Colley: Would Mr. Roy stop you in the hall and measure your dress?

Nodee Scarborough: Yeah, we go in to let them see how we look and he'd get down on the floor and measure to see. Yeah, Mr. Roy was very, very careful about that. He was a sweet old thing, though. He wanted me to go and advertise the Red Cross, you know, during the First World War. Now this is before the first World War. And he called me in a hall, I mean in an auditorium where we had our general assembly. And I wasn't there.

Esther Heck, a girlfriend of mine who stood up said, "Mr. Roy, Ms. Goree is so sorry, but she just had some work she just had to do." And she told me, and I went to Mr. Roy and I was so scared. I knew he was going to ball me out, but he said, "Come on in and don't be so afraid. I'm not going to ball you out." But said, "Listen, if you stay after to write your penmanship lesson, everybody in the class will want to do that too."

It made me think of the little joke. A man was in the restaurant and he was dipping up in his soup and he picked up a rat and he held it up to the waiter and he says, "Look here what I found in my soup." The waiter said, "Put it down. Don't make all that noise. Everybody else in the house will be wanting that same thing."

Jim Colley: That's right. I guess you were kind of a teacher's pet with Dr. Roy.

Nodee Scarborough: Well, no. He liked me though. He knew I was just a little country girl that didn't know anything. I didn't know beans about anything.

Jim Colley: Ms. Scarborough, we're going to take a break right now for an announcement from Peoples Bank and Trust, but we'll be back with you in just a moment.

Nodee Scarborough: I know Peoples Bank and Trust Company.

Jim Colley: All right, we'll take a break for them. Welcome back to The Memories Program. We're visiting this morning with Mrs. Nodee Scarborough. Ms. Scarborough, we were talking about dates we remember. What kind of dates do you remember best of all?

Nodee Scarborough: The dates that I remember most was 1908. That was most wonderful thing that ever happened. 1908, I was eight years old. At this 1908, May of 1908, just the most wonderful things happened on our place. We had a flood that just came down from way up in the northeast, Allegheny Mountain valleys, I guess. Appalachian Mountains somewhere. Anyway, the water just overflowed two or three feet higher than the level land and just stood there for a long time. And after the water, oh we had one accident. We were all on the front porch, the front gallery. We called them galleries then, and they call them porches now. We were on the front gallery and we looked up there, just pouring down and lightning and thunder and everything. And we saw four of our big Jersey cows standing under a pine tree. And after a while, everybody was quit looking so my daddy said, "I guess those cows are getting under that tree for protection from the rain." And we looked away after a little bit and looked back and they're all four of the cows were stretched out, dead around the foot of that tree. And they went up there and the lightning had struck them. They had their heads close to the pine tree.

And another time we were on the back kitchen gallery and it was just raining, just sheets of rain. It wasn't drops. It was just sheets of rain. And there's a great big fish about I guess 8 or 10 inches long, big, I'd call it a white perch, just flopped down out there in the middle of the yard. And mama says, "Well look at that fish." And Papa says, "Well go get it." And she said, No, you don't. It might be poisoned from lightning." But anyway, after the water went down, that was a wonderful time.

Oh, another time was it hailed, just terribly big hail, big as chicken eggs. And they fell off of the house and piled up by the porch of a yard high. It was high as the porch. And I decided I'd walked down the wall of hail and I took one foot and instead, I went shooting down. Liked to of killed me. And my mother said, "Well, you don't know you can't walk down that." But anyway, they put me to bed and put a cold press on my head. I hit the back of my head on the edge of the porch when I went.

Oh, what did I start tell you about? Oh yeah, in a few days the water was all, a lot of the water was gone and the creeks were back in the banks then. And Lord, I had the best time. I'd take a great big syrup bucket, a three-pound bucket, I guess it was. No, it was an eight-pound bucket. And I went down to the creeks, and the creeks were just working alive with fish, big fish. I had this great eight-pound, a lard bucket, and I found a place where I could see a lot of fish in there. I dammed up the little stream up above and dipped the water and picked up that bucket full of fish and went home. And the boy, my brother saw me coming and they just ran out and began to yell, "Mama, come and look what Nodee’s got." And it just tickled me to death because they never did want me to go with them anywhere. And I-

Jim Colley: So you had really put one over on them?

Nodee Scarborough: Yeah, I got that. They said, "Well, how'd you do?" I said, "Well, you can come along and find out." And they didn't want to go along with me because I was a little girl and little too. And so they always tell mama not to let Nodee go. She says, we have a fight with the boys every time we come because they always teasing and picking at her and making her cry. And said, "We don't want her along anyway." But after I found the fish and showed them how I did it, why they just were willing for me to go there until... Well, something they thought was terribly exciting and they didn't want me to go. Like one day we were out in the field, we'd been picking up acorn nuts. In the fall when the cotton began to be picked, the acorn nuts and just wonderful in the pasture.

And we were picking those up and Josh and Ulyss was standing there looking and whistling and Josh says, "Ulyss, we ought take Nodee out and let us see that bear track." And I said, "Where's the bear track?" And they said, "Just wait, we'll show you." And they carried me through creeks and rob bushes and everything you could think of just to show me the bear track. And when we got up to the old house, we had an old house on the place where during the war, the Civil War, a federal soldier was being chased by some dogs and men. And anyway, he was shot and he went in this old building to rest and he died there on the stairs. And every winter, the blood would come out fresh on the wall of the stairs.

Jim Colley: And right by that house was where the bear track was?

Nodee Scarborough: Yeah. Right in front of that house, there was a road, but by the side of the road there was a great, big piece of bark from a tree. It just fallen off and fell down there. And he picked it up. He says, "Now Nodee, be ready for the surprise. You're going to see the biggest bear track." And he picked up the piece of bark and there was something funny it looked like, it might have been. If you use your imagination, you see a bear track. But I went home and I was so excited I couldn't stand it. I was just talking at the table and mama says, "Nodee, now just wait and don't get so excited. We will hear it all." And I told them how Josh and Ulyss found that. Josh and Ulyss were my two brothers, and therefore, he didn't know anything about it [inaudible 00:13:09].

Jim Colley: But they had played a trick on you with that bear track.

Nodee Scarborough: And they carried me through the most miserable torture to get to see it.

Jim Colley: Brothers always did that, didn't they?

Nodee Scarborough: You know, they just did me terrible. And they hated to have me go along. If I'd been a little older...

Jim Colley: Okay, Ms. Scarborough, we appreciate visiting with you. Our time's up, but it's been good hearing from you. We will tape another one of these shows with you.

Nodee Scarborough: All right. All right.

Jim Colley: Thank you for being with us and thanks to Peoples Bank and Trust for making this time for the Memories Show.

Nodee Scarborough: I enjoyed it.

Jim Colley talks with Nodee Scarborough about

August 6, 2026

80. Nodee Scorborough pt. 1

Transcript

David Dollar: In case you're just joining us, this is David Dollar this morning, on Memories, visiting with Mrs. Nodee Goree Scarborough. Ms. Scarborough, why don't you start things off this morning. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And then, we'll talk about some schooling that you went through.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Well, I was born in Haynesville, Louisiana, in 19, 1899. I'm 76 years old. And I grew up in a family of 12. And I was the 10th, after six boys. And I had three older sisters, so glad to see me, a little girl. And I had a turned up nose and freckles all over my face. And they spoiled me, of course, because they were so glad to have me. And my sister used to curl my hair, it was curly, and carry me down to one of the neighbors' houses and compare me with their little girl. She had lighter hair than I had. Mine was kind of honey-colored and hers was a real blonde and light. And she'd laugh and say, "Jimmy, your little sister's got really kinky hair."

David Dollar: But your sisters were sure that you were the prettiest one, huh?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Oh, yeah, they was. Uh-huh. And mama said I was so ugly, when I was born, that she used to cover my face to keep from anybody from seeing the whole thing. But, anyway, I grew up that way, in Florida, and I had my way. And I used to grab my books on Saturday, when mama wanted me to sweep the yards, and go down to the fodder loft and climb up in the loft and dig a deep hole in the fodder and pull my books in there with me, in the hole, and they couldn't find me. And I'd hear mama say, "Boys, go find Nodee. I know she's around here." And they couldn't find me anywhere.

Anyway, I went to school and I started at seven years old. And my little brothers were six. And so, we'd go to school and come back. And on the way to school, we'd stop and pick these beautiful Indian pipes that grew out on the side of a pond. Oh, goodness.

David Dollar: Indian pipes?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Yeah.

David Dollar: What are, you're going to have to tell me about those.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Indian pipes are little... What do you call it? That grows off of another plant?

David Dollar: Parasites?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Parasites.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Parasites. They're these little parasites. And it was a little waxy stem, about four or five inches long, with a little cup, white cup, just like a pipe.

David Dollar: Like a little pipe, huh?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Yes. And I'd catch the teacher and I'd give her some. And they'd just make the room smell so wonderful. And I'd keep some in my desk and I used the smell of them, all during the day.

David Dollar: Smell nice.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: And came home in the evening. I just couldn't wait until I'd get there. But on the way through the orchard, past the orchard, was the plowed ground. And I'd run out in the plowed ground with my little bare feet and the sand in between my toes and I'd throw up big handful of sand and run under it and let it come down on my head and toes. And mama would see me out the back door, and she said, "Little lady, I see you. Come right in and wash your hair, now. And wash your dresses. You have to wash your dress yourself, you did it."

David Dollar: Seems like mothers never quite remember how good it feels to have dirt all over you, huh?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Oh. I loved to get dirty and I loved to smell the plowed ground.

David Dollar: Yeah.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Well, anyway, we went to school. And in this school I had a good friend, Blanche Lewis, she's Mrs. Lester Parker now, lives in Mobile. And she and I started school together. And she was smarter than I was in spelling, but I could beat her in reading and arithmetic. I wasn't very good in arithmetic, as I got older, but I could learn multiplication and things, and addition. And after, after a while, we finished. I finished high school and we were going to the college, to Northwestern State. It was an NAMA college. And, just as I-

David Dollar: When did you start NAMA?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: 19... December 3rd, 1916. And we started then, because I never had had to bought a suit. Mama made.

David Dollar: Everything was homemade clothes?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Mama made all my clothes. And all my five, four sisters and I, she made all our clothes and made them. She made all our clothes.

David Dollar: My goodness.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: And so, when the cotton was all brought in and we had money to buy a suit, I bought a little green suit, this beautiful suit, lovely material, and had a little muskrat collar. It was a green suit with kind of muted tones in the collar. And my friend, Blanche, bought a brown one with a tan collar.

David Dollar: And that was your off-to-school suit?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Yeah.

David Dollar: The first one you bought?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: And I had a coat, a little plaid coat, in something like a flannelette, but it was a coat that was bought in the store. Mama didn't make it.

David Dollar: And those things were hard to come by.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Oh, yeah. Those suits cost $15.00 a piece. Blanche paid $15.00 for hers and I paid $15.00.

David Dollar: I bet you just shocked some people that are listening right now, a suit costing $15.00. That's a long time-

Nodee Goree Scarborough: $15.00, well when cotton was $.05 and $.06 and $.08 a pound-

David Dollar: ... That's right, I guess that's a lot of money.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: ... that was... Because we were raised on the farm, where we raised that could be raised. And things that we couldn't raise, we raised enough that we could raise, to buy what we couldn't raise.

David Dollar: Right. Let me interrupt you, right here, just a second. We're going to need to take another short commercial.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Uh-huh.

David Dollar: We'll be right back, visiting with Ms. Nodee Goree Scarborough, right after this message with our sponsor, People's Bank & Trust Company.

Hello, once again. In case you've just joined us this is David Dollar, visiting this morning with Ms. Nodee Goree Scarborough. Ms. Scarborough, why don't we pick up where we left off. You were talking about growing up and going to school. Tell us about your home, I think you were going to tell us about, where you and all those kids grew up.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Well, there was 12 of us. And my father and mother bought the place when they first married, before even marrying. And it was just two huge rooms, 20 x 20 feet, and a big hall between them, about 14 to 15 feet wide. That's all it was, at first. But, as the children came, they'd add another big 20 x 20 room, until we had about seven or eight rooms. And the dining room and kitchen was a 20 x 20, but they had a wall through it and cut it off and made 10 x 20 dining room and 10 x 20 kitchen. And there was a big fireplace that I could stand up in, at nine years old. It was a great big wide thing, 8 feet wide, I guess it was. And they'd burn great long logs in there and put it in the kitchen. And in mama's bedroom, too, they had another one.

David Dollar: Seems like, if y'all had many more kids, that would've been about as big as The White House, it sounds like. That would've had to be a pretty good-sized place.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Well, we had two attic rooms. Over there one over mama's room and one over the big boys' room. And we had a parlor. And then, we had hallway that run north and south and one east and west. And we had the parlor, across the hall, at the south end. It was south end of the house, but was the front.

David Dollar: Let me ask you this. This is a very selfish question. I've seen it on movies a lot. I just want to know, did very many boys come court you and y'all have to sit in the parlor there?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Oh. Yeah.

David Dollar: Is that where your brothers brought their girlfriends?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Yeah. Well, they didn't bring their girls. Well, they did, sometimes, but not often. The boys always came home though. We usually, when I was growing up, we used to walk around in the country and to parties and dance and things. My momma and poppa, usually, they said they'd rather have us at home and they'd give parties at home. And we'd have one of these old cranky phonographs that you listen to music, momma and poppa would sit and play the phonograph for us to dance by.

David Dollar: Do you remember any of the songs or records you listened to?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Yeah. Red River Valley and-

David Dollar: Red River Valley.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: ... Now, let's see. What was that? What was the name of that? I can't think.

David Dollar: But y'all just danced?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: Oh, yeah, we danced. And, oh, we square danced. Not square danced. My older sisters square danced, but my younger sisters and I, we didn't know anything about square dancing and some things.

David Dollar: Y'all were part of the new generation then? Didn't like to square dance, I guess?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: We did the other kind of dancing, foxtrots.

David Dollar: Oh my goodness.

Nodee Goree Scarborough: One-steps and two-steps and things like that. And I remember the turkey trot, when I was just a little bitty six-year-old girl.

David Dollar: Oh, yeah?

Nodee Goree Scarborough: But we danced to it. The little kids at school, we had a room out. When it was raining, we'd have a room out in the yard, that just a big room out there, where it used to be the music room, but we used it to play in, in the school time, in the rainy times. And we'd dance the turkey trot. I don't remember how it goes. It was funny.

David Dollar: Well, Ms. Scarborough, we're just about out of time. We thank you for having us in your home today. We thank you for sharing these memories with us. I had forgotten how much fun, really, it was to do things like get dirty and go to school, even.

David Dollar interviews Nodee Scarborough about growing up as one of twelve siblings and going to school.

July 30, 2026

79. Verlon Larkin

Transcript

Hubert Laster: Good morning. This is Hubert Laster and this morning on the Memories Program, we're going to be visiting with Mrs. Verlon Larkin. We'll be back in just a moment after a word from our sponsors.

Hello. We're back again. We're visiting along Shady Grove with Mrs. Verlon Larkin. And she's been on the program once before, eight months back, and she was going to tell us about when she got married. Now your father and you worked a year as a blacksmith now. What did you do?

Verlon Larkin: After we left the farm, he moved to this job working for a lumber company. He kept the corral. He did the blacksmithing, kept up the teams, the harness, and he had to keep the mules shod all the time and did the feeding for 52 head mules, kept the harness up. So when he would work at the shop some days he would need us to help him. They had eight wheel log wagons and four mules pulled each wagon. So I've helped him build on those log wagons, worked all day with him, tightening bolts, holding things, turning the blowers for him to do the iron work. And some days the mule would be too bad to hold that had a chute that build to put him in that chute to put shoes on him.

Hubert Laster: Okay.

Verlon Larkin: But when he had ones that wasn't too bad, he would put a twist on the nose. It had a short rope like and on one end a long handle light, and he would put that twist on that mule's nose and tell us to hold him and we'd hold him.

Hubert Laster: The mule wouldn't move.

Verlon Larkin: He didn't go nowhere. It hurt him too bad.

Hubert Laster: I guess so. If somebody twisted my nose, I wouldn't move either.

Verlon Larkin: So that was for a year, we worked in taking care of this corral.

Hubert Laster: Now did he build wagons also?

Verlon Larkin: Well, he would build the wheels, put rims, new spokes, and any part of the wagon had to be rebuilt, he could put in the new parts.

Hubert Laster: How do you build a wheel, a wagon wheel?

Verlon Larkin: Well, he had a way, they built the wheels. They would have new spokes and then they would put these spokes all in this hub and then he would have a fire built hot enough to heat that rim real hot because when he'd get all that woodwork on there, you see that rim, it'd be just a little bit larger than the rim would be. So he'd heat that rim to where it would expand and then he would get it on that wheel then and then he would cool that in water when he got it done, and it was there to stay.

Hubert Laster: What kind of wood is a wagon wheel made out of?

Verlon Larkin: It was mostly made out of oak timber, something, you know, sturdy that would last.

Hubert Laster: Now did he cut the spokes himself or did-

Verlon Larkin: No, the spokes is factory made. They would order them from the factory, just big supply them at the time. And they kept up a lot of leather and different brands and different things where he'd have to redo the harness the same way, keep that up.

Hubert Laster: And after that you met your husband?

Verlon Larkin: While we were there, he running the shop, caring for the corral. I met my husband, he was swamping. They called it swamping.

Hubert Laster: What is it?

Verlon Larkin: Our cutting banking ground. It was cutting off, clearing a right-of-way for the log wagons to haul the logs in and bank them up close to the railroad track. They hauled those logs on trains. They would back those cars in there and load them and haul that out of the woods and pile them and bank them.

Hubert Laster: I see.

Verlon Larkin: So they call that cutting the banking ground. And then in the woods, the swamping part was out in the woods where the teams had to go and get the logs. See they'd go in there with the wagons. He'd have to cut roads and they called that swamping.

Hubert Laster: And you and your husband met each other-

Verlon Larkin: And he was working there for $3 a day. And my daddy run the blacksmith shop and his salary was $120 a month.

Hubert Laster: That was good pay.

Verlon Larkin: It was good pay for him because it was much better than what we were doing on the farm. And it didn't take as much labor for all of us on the farm. And there he could handle it about the help of us helping him some. And we'd go feed in the afternoon, we'd go and we'd pull down those sacks of oats and chops and drag them to the door for him. We, of course, wasn't very big. We'd crawl up in the cars easier. We'd throw a hook in that hay and drag it to the door.

Hubert Laster: I see. And you were 14 when you married your husband?

Verlon Larkin: I was 14 there and then... When we first moved there, I was 13 and we moved there in October of '26. I was 13. And then in November of '27, I married my husband.

Hubert Laster: What did you and him do afterwards?

Verlon Larkin: Well, he stayed on there a while from November until March, still swamping.

Hubert Laster: Okay.

Verlon Larkin: So we finally come down here on the farm and that's where I've been, well farm most of the time, farming down in here. And he'd go back to that job, you know, and farm again. And not farming, but do some more swamping.

Hubert Laster: He liked it.

Verlon Larkin: Well, when you don't have a home, you just go here and yonder and just no jobs and no pay. He's worked there for a salary of $1.72 cents a day.

Hubert Laster: Those must have been hard times.

Verlon Larkin: They were real hard times. I've lived through some thick and thin spots. Sure have.

Hubert Laster: You were talking about a little bit earlier that you'd done almost everything and you had, was it shucked cane? What is-

Verlon Larkin: After I married him, we come to the farm down here. We had cane. We growed our cane and had our own syrup. And I shucked cane. I sure did.

Hubert Laster: What's a shucked cane?

Verlon Larkin: Stripped cane. Stripped it with a knife. Sure did. They have, it's a knife that has a hook on the end, and you just get right down that cane, just go all around it and it'll just strip it off and you just... Oh, you know it grows in big bunches. So you just leave it that way until you get ready to cut it to grind, then they go in to top it.

Hubert Laster: I see.

Verlon Larkin: And then they cut it off at the ground and load it [inaudible 00:07:27] and carry it to the mill.

Hubert Laster: We need to take a break right now. We'll be back in just a moment. If you've just joined us, we're visiting with Mrs. Verlon Larkin out in Shady Grove area. You were talking about s

Verlon Larkin: That was what my husband's father told me when he was a boy. He said it was a real shoot-em-up town at times because they'd come through Robeline with their stuff going to Grand Ecore, to ship it on the boat and there was a little livery stable there. And when they got there, well they always put the teams, but it was nice. They left them there and they had the watering troughs and the well was in the street.

Hubert Laster: In the middle of the street?

Verlon Larkin: In the street because when they built this highway 10 years ago, one of the dozers got in that place and it was that ground had never a field settled like it would in the other place. And they got in that place and my husband's sister, she's 83 and she told me that it was a well had two water troughs and her daddy told me the same thing. That's where they watered the stock. They said come through town. And they get drunk, they had the saloon there. And so usually that whole bunch of them get drunk and get into little spats and he said sometimes it was rough. They called it “Scuffleville” he said because it was rough. It wasn't called Robeline then.

Hubert Laster: I wonder if the founding fathers of Robeline know that their town used to be “Scuffleville”.

Verlon Larkin: “Scuffleville”. That's right and he was 85 when he died. And he died in 1953. So he said when he was a boy, it must've been a pretty rough little town. There wasn't too much of nothing but just trails.

Hubert Laster: I guess so.

Verlon Larkin: That was what he told me.

Hubert Laster: Mrs. Larkin, tell me about broad axes off the wall and everything, but they're used to-

Verlon Larkin: Hue cross ties.

Hubert Laster: Yes ma'am.

Verlon Larkin: That's what they're used for.

Hubert Laster: They give a perfect depth each time they cut.

Verlon Larkin: Each time they cut and they can just cut that so thin and you can go hack and then you go back with that broad ax and it'll just cut that tie just almost like it's sawed with a saw. And there is a left hand broad ax and a right hand, sure is.

Hubert Laster: By the bevel or something?

Verlon Larkin: Yeah, the bevel. Go by the bevel because if you hue right-handed, use the ax right handed, the bevels made on the right outside. If you hue left-handed, it'll be on the left-hand side.

Hubert Laster: So it's not double bevel in other words?

Verlon Larkin: No, no.

Hubert Laster: I see. You're telling me about your father had a broad ax. No, your husband had-

Verlon Larkin: My husband had one. He had one he bought before me and him was married and he had let his daddy use it and his daddy was hewing ties over in the woods when these two men come walking by through the woods that day. And so that night he just pitched his axes up under a log and raked some leaves on it and next morning when he got back they were gone. Well, he had an idea who got them, but he couldn't do anything about it.

So here just a few years ago, a man bought a place over here and my husband and my daughter and myself was walking around there. Because the lady that bought it was a sister to her husband and she said, "Let's just see what we can find daddy." So he walked up to this shed and there was his ax. He said, "Look here Geraldine, here's my broad ax." It had his initials on it. He cut them with a file when he bought it so he would know it, there it lay. The very man that his daddy said he thought got the ax, must have been the one who got it because it was at his house.

Hubert Laster: Still in good condition.

Verlon Larkin: It was in good condition, didn't have any handle in it. But he'd taken it home and we was going to keep it and we kept it to seven years and then we moved here. I put it out here in the shed when we moved here, went fishing one weekend, and when come back someone had stolen it.

Hubert Laster: That broad ax just wasn't supposed to be y'alls-

Verlon Larkin: It wasn't supposed to be ours.

Hubert Laster: I guess not.

Verlon Larkin: It sure wasn't.

Hubert Laster: A lot of our listeners know that you quilt, and locally you're pretty famous as a quilter.

Verlon Larkin: I guess I am. Lots of people says I am.

Hubert Laster: What about the first time you ever quilted?

Verlon Larkin: Well, that was the first time I quilted was the night when my mother asked us to quilt. I quilted without a thimble and I can't make a stitch without a thimble now. I learned to quilt though, that night and from then on when she quilted, we'd quilt. When I married, I just kept it up. I had a lot of children, so I quilted lots of quilts for myself.

Hubert Laster: You were telling me about the first time, that that first time when you didn't have a thimble and where was your father?

Verlon Larkin: He had gone to carry two men some supper that was making moonshine whiskey.

Hubert Laster: And he made you go to bed at night?

Verlon Larkin: Always made us go to bed earlier, but that night he went to carry the supper, or we went and set up that night and quilted.

Hubert Laster: I see. That learned you to quilt.

Verlon Larkin: I learned to quilt that night and after that I would always quilt, help mama quilt.

Hubert Laster: Well, Mrs. Larkin, we've enjoyed visiting with you very much.

Verlon Larkin: Well, I enjoyed this and I thank you all much, but I can't give you too much information, I don't guess.

Hubert Laster: Oh, you've given us quite a lot, ma'am. If you have memories that you would like to share, would you please call the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program? That number is 352-8647. They're lovely people and I would like to have your memories myself. This is Hubert Laster wishing you all a very pleasant, good day.

In a follow up discussion, Hubert Laster interviews Verlon Larkin about helping her father with blacksmithing, making a wagon wheel, “swamping”, getting married, growing sugar cane, the history of Robeline, broadaxes, and quilting.

July 23, 2026

78. Mrs. Vernon C. Cloutier

Transcript

Jim Colley: Good morning. This morning, we're bringing you The Memories Program from Beaufort, the home of Mrs. Vernon C. Cloutier. And we'll be back in just a few minutes after this word from Peoples Bank and Trust, our sponsors.

Ms. Cloutier, we're glad to be visiting with you on The Memories Program. I'm Jim Colley. This is a beautiful home.

Mrs. Cloutier: Thank you so much, Mr. Colley. I am glad to be here. Glad to have you with me.

Jim Colley: Thank you, ma'am. We were talking before the show began. You said that you were the eighth generation to live in this area.

Mrs. Cloutier: I am. I am. And I've only lived in two houses in this area.

Jim Colley: Which two houses are those?

Mrs. Cloutier: The present home of Beaufort and the present home, which was my home where J.H., my brother lives. J.H. Williams lives up on Williams Avenue.

Jim Colley: You probably remember a lot about growing up in Natchitoches Parish since you were born and reared here. What was it like growing up in Natchitoches?

Mrs. Cloutier: It was small, country and wonderful. We knew everybody and we did everything in a wonderful way, in an innocent way, and we had a great rearing.

Jim Colley: I'll bet it was. What was school like? Did you go to school?

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh, yes. I went to school at St. Mary's Academy from the first grade through the 12th grade. There were only about 36 to 38 in the four grades, and we were all in one room. And it was like a big family, we had a wonderful time. When I graduated, there were only 12 in the class. It was a big class in those days.

Jim Colley: Can I ask you what year you graduated in?

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes. I finished St. Mary's Academy in 1922, and college in 1926.

Jim Colley: Where did you go to college?

Mrs. Cloutier: Right here in Natchitoches, four years.

Jim Colley: At the Normal School?

Mrs. Cloutier: Louisiana State Normal. And we had to sign before we entered that when we got our two-year certificate that we would promise to teach not less than one year in the state.

Jim Colley: They wanted all those people to teach.

Mrs. Cloutier: That's right.

Jim Colley: Who was the president of the school when you were there?

Mrs. Cloutier: Mr. V.L. Roy, and he was hard as tacks, one of the few men in the world that I was afraid of.

Jim Colley: I can't imagine you being afraid of anybody.

Mrs. Cloutier: Well, I was scared of him and the devil.

Jim Colley: And that's about all.

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes.

Jim Colley: You were saying that while you were in public school you had tutoring in the afternoons.

Mrs. Cloutier: At private school.

Jim Colley: At private school, right.

Mrs. Cloutier: I was tutored by my grandmother's sister, Mrs. Edwina Sutter, the first postmistress of Natchitoches. And she lived across the river from my home. But I had to walk up there carrying my books in a book satchel every day. Then coming back down front street where I meandered and maundered, looking in the windows and having fun talking to everybody until I got home. It was generally around five o'clock when I reached home.

Jim Colley: Now when you told it this time, you left out an important detail. Do you remember what that was?

Mrs. Cloutier: Walking across the bridge.

Jim Colley: And all the boys that were on the bridge.

Mrs. Cloutier: Seeing the boys on the bridge. But I happened to be tutored about 10 years so the boys wasn't interested to me at first, but there were towards the end.

Jim Colley: I see. You said that you used to wear a hat all the time.

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh yes, and sometimes the boys would take my hats off and throw them in the river and I'd come home hatless.

Jim Colley: I see. What was dating like in those days? Could you go out and date a lot?

Mrs. Cloutier: Well, we didn't know much about dating until we were finishing high school. We were just about ready to start dating. But having a half-sister who lived in Colfax, I visited her two weeks every summer, and that was where I made my debut and started going with boys when I was about 15, a very early age to date.

Jim Colley: That was very early in those days.

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes, indeed.

Jim Colley: Did they let you go out with boys who had cars?

Mrs. Cloutier: I was not allowed to ride in a car after dark until I was 21, and you know who he was?

Jim Colley: Who was the first one?

Mrs. Cloutier: A gentleman named Reverend Tenney, named Baptist minister, a very charming man. And he asked me for my first date when I was 21 years old, and I liked him very much. He lived with us at that time.

Jim Colley: And you got to go riding in the car with him at night.

Mrs. Cloutier: With a man, a Baptist preacher.

Jim Colley: That was something else.

Mrs. Cloutier: It really was.

Jim Colley: The events that happened and living in the country, you used to go up to Shreveport to the fair. What was the fair like?

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh, we had certain events like the Shreveport Fair all during high school. We thought that was great, that was something. And the Paul English shows that came, and tent shows, that was really something for us country girls. We had a great time.

Jim Colley: What was the fair like?

Mrs. Cloutier: Very similar to what it is today and even though we were juniors and seniors in high school, we didn't miss riding on one thing.

Jim Colley: That was quite an exciting thing to do.

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Jim Colley: I want to talk to you about, did you call them the Paul English shows?

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes, they were the tent shows. Vaudevilles and minstrels.

Jim Colley: Let's talk about those shows in just a few minutes, but we'll take a break right now and let our sponsors, Peoples Bank and Trust have this commercial word.

In case you've just joined us, this is The Memories Program. I'm Jim Colley and we're visiting with Mrs. Vernon Cloutier. We were just talking about the Paul English Show. What was that?

Mrs. Cloutier: Well, they were mainly vaudevilles, and I just thought acting on the stage was great, and sometimes minstrels. And we heard that Paul English was coming to town, it was exciting days for us.

Jim Colley: I'll bet it was. Did they come in a tent?

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes, they did. And the tents, well sometimes they would come annually and then sometimes every other year. And they would pitch a tent either up at West Natchitoches, where the old ballpark was, I think now stands the present of federal project. Or, sometimes in that very bad section below the main bridge of town they call Lower East Natchitoches, very de fondue, where the present shopping center is at.

Jim Colley: So the Broadmoor Shopping Center used to be where-

Mrs. Cloutier: Was a woodland, and wasn't a road anywhere near there.

Jim Colley: And wasn't a very nice place to go.

Mrs. Cloutier: That's right.

Jim Colley: And that's where they had put the tent for the minstrel show and the vaudeville.

Mrs. Cloutier: It was a vacant slot there you see, and it had been cleared off and we could go there.

Jim Colley: Someone was telling me one time about the circuses that used to come to Natchitoches and the trains that would pull up and-

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh, yes. The circuses were held and sometimes they'd let us off from school to go see them unload the elephants. And that would be in the afternoon and we'd all be excited and watch and sometimes go walk down the parade with all the animals. It was a big to-do in Natchitoches.

Jim Colley: Where would they water the elephants? They'd get off at the rail yard and walk the elephants down, to what, the Cane River to water them?

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes, yes, yes.

Jim Colley: And that I'm sure was pretty exciting.

Mrs. Cloutier: Yes, it was, for all of us children.

Jim Colley: We were talking about your four years at the Normal School. What was life like living at the Normal School?

Mrs. Cloutier: Well, it was rather tough. The girls on Northwestern campus were, I would say 80% and the boys 20, sometimes maybe 10. And the girls were not allowed to come to town except on Saturday mornings. And oh, it was a to-do for the girls to come walking two-by-two, four-by-four, to do their shopping in Natchitoches once a week. We town girls would ride up and watch them because they couldn't ride in cars, they had to walk.

But the rules at Northwestern was something terrific. I don't think the present generation could stand it. There were many deans, whereas today the deans are not needed because the boys and girls stay in the same dormitories. But Mr. Roy, our president, was so strict and I was so afraid of him. I guess I wasn't afraid of anyone in those days, but Mr. Roy and the devil.

Jim Colley: Did you ever get into any trouble while you were in school?

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh, I stayed in trouble. I stayed in trouble. I got shipped, which it means, being sent home indefinitely, about five times.

Jim Colley: Ms. Cloutier, five times?

Mrs. Cloutier: About five times.

Jim Colley: What did you do?

Mrs. Cloutier: Well, the first time two other girls and I were talking on the wrong side. The boys were supposed to be on one side and the girls on the other side. The second time I was walking in front of Caldwell Hall, and she'd always liked the boys. And I had my arm hanging around two boys, our arms were clasped. These two boys were cute too and real lifelong friends, Jack Ducadeaux and Raymond Whitehead. Well, my underskirt happened to be passing. We wore underskirts in those days and my underskirt happened to be passing, so I was caught on two offenses. My underskirt passed and walking, talking with two boys.

Jim Colley: Now that means your underskirt was just showing out?

Mrs. Cloutier: Yeah, just a little bit. Then the third offense, in my junior year, I got shipped because I didn't wear a hairnet and my practice teacher knew. Then the fourth offense, I was also in my junior year or senior year. My senior year I was staying at the practice college on the campus. I had made a fruit cake for Christmas. Well, I come in with my bloomers on which were very wide-legged bloomers, hanging from my knee to my ankle halfway. And of course, we had not only deans but spies, they called them, that always were out to catch the other fellow doing something wrong, and I was caught going across the campus. I had gone to get a little cup of whiskey to put on my fruit cake, so I was called for two offenses there.

Then my last offense, I was a senior. I was dancing at noon in the main room as you entered Caldwell Hall with a very nice boy, Tommy Pearson. And the two people who were playing the jazz it up piano were Mr. Kenny Keegan, who was the Baptist minister later on, and our dear friend, Mimi Judd, they'd take turns. Well, one of the spies passed by and I was the only one seen, so I was the only one that shipped.

So I went home and my father didn't know what to expect and my mother went, "Now he says, well, we'll just go back and see, what is the trouble? What has happened to Roy again?" Well, my father and Mr. Roy happened to be at the same church and at that time they were having a terrific drive for the church. We walked in the office, he says, "Well, come in Mr. Henry, we going talk about the drive, best you go on back to school," and that was the end of my fifth shipping.

Jim Colley: It's a wonder to me that you ever got through school at all with being shipped that often?

Mrs. Cloutier: Well, I was by far from being an honor student.

Jim Colley: Ms. Cloutier, have so much enjoyed visiting with you this morning. We appreciate you sharing some of your memories with us about Natchitoches and what it was like growing up around here.

Mrs. Cloutier: Thank you. I think Natchitoches is a wonderful town and I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Jim Colley: Thank you, ma'am. On behalf of myself and Peoples Bank and Trust, we thank you for being with us.

Mrs. Cloutier: Oh.

Jim Colley interviews Mrs. Vernon Cloutier about growing up as the 8th generation of her family in Natchitoches, early school and tutoring, dating, fairs and shows, watching circus animals come in by train, and her university infractions.

July 16, 2026

77. Reba Wheat

Transcript

Jim Colley: This is Jim Colley and this is The Memory Show. This morning, we're visiting with Mrs. Reba Wheat. Welcome to the Memories Program.

Reba Wheat: Thank you.

Jim Colley: We're glad you're here. We were talking about where you grew up. You're an old kind of Natchitoches Parish person, aren't you?

Reba Wheat: Yes. I grew up out at Clarence. I was born there and spent most of my life until I married at Clarence.

Jim Colley: Is it fair to ask you when you were born?

Reba Wheat: Now that's personal.

Jim Colley: But over 50 years ago?

Reba Wheat: Over 50.

Jim Colley: All right. We'll leave-

Reba Wheat: ... Over 60, I'll leave it like that.

Jim Colley: That's fair game. What was it like growing up at Clarence over 60 years ago?

Reba Wheat: Well, as I remember it, it was a very good experience. We were happy. We were not rich, or in fact, we were among the poor people. Everybody was. Everybody took it for granted you were going to be. We were not property owners. My dad was a machinist, a blacksmith, worked whatever, well, any kind of machinery. He eventually ran the gin. He built the gin, he ran the gin. And so we lived in the country. We had all the advantages of country life and few of the disadvantages.

Jim Colley: What were some of those advantages to country life?

Reba Wheat: Plenty of room to run around, plenty of room to wander and to walk. A friendly, friendly people, just a happy experience. That's all I can say about it.

Jim Colley: Good for a kid to grow up in.

Reba Wheat: Ideal for a kid to grow up in.

Jim Colley: What were some of the disadvantages to country life?

Reba Wheat: One was school. We at times had a bit of a problem of keeping teachers. At that time, the parish organization was not what it is today, and school was apt to be cut short. That was one of the worst things that I can realize.

Jim Colley: The teacher would leave and that was that?

Reba Wheat: That was that. So actually, that's the only disadvantage I can think of because we had a doctor living in the community. We had our churches, we had two churches in that community when I was growing up, and I don't know what else we would've needed.

Jim Colley: So you had just about all there was to have a good community life and a good family life.

Reba Wheat: That's right, that's right.

Jim Colley: You said your dad was a blacksmith,

Reba Wheat: Right.

Jim Colley: Do you remember much about his old blacksmith shop?

Reba Wheat: I remember playing around in that shop the biggest portion of my growing up years. It was fun, it was dangerous, but he watched over us very carefully and taught us how to manage anything we were big enough to manage and of course it was a gathering place in the community. Everybody loved him, and he liked people very much. So it was just a good experience all around.

Jim Colley: What was his name, Mrs. Wheat?

Reba Wheat: Petey Span.

Jim Colley: I bet you some people will remember that name.

Reba Wheat: I know people will remember him. He died a couple of years ago at the age of 93.

Jim Colley: So he had a good long life?

Reba Wheat: A good long, full life.

Jim Colley: That's great.

Reba Wheat: Now there are a few things about my family of which I've been particularly proud. We always had reading material at home. We always had music of some kind. The good things, we had. Now, there were times when we had to do some scrapping to get the proper amount of food. There was never any money to throw away, but the good things we had.

Jim Colley: So you really feel good about growing up?

Reba Wheat: I really feel good about it.

Jim Colley: What was school like for a little girl?

Reba Wheat: Well, school was fun. You met your friends, you studied because you were interested. You were expected to study, that's the purpose in going. There was no such thing as somebody giving a grade, you learned because you wanted to know. In this little school, I have realized since that we were fortunate. We had, it was a very small library, but a very rich library, and we had some teachers who had sense enough to say, read if you want to. So I grew up reading.

Jim Colley: And they gave you the time to read?

Reba Wheat: And they gave us the time to read.

Jim Colley: Time and encouragement really helps.

Reba Wheat: That's right.

Jim Colley: How large was that school?

Reba Wheat: Well, couldn't have had more than 30 students in it.

Jim Colley: Two rooms.

Reba Wheat: Two rooms. Seven, and sometimes eight grades, but mostly seven. It was a school to which my mother had gone when she was about that age. I mean at the finishing age, seventh grade. Of course, to her, they had taught up the McGuffey readers, which gave you a liberal education. We didn't have the advantage of those readers, but we had the advantage of knowing the people who knew those readers.

Jim Colley: Now you're going to have to tell me about a McGuffey reader. Why do you call a McGuffey reader a liberal education?

Reba Wheat: Because McGuffey wrote them. Because they wrote them, they included all kinds of literature, good literature. They were moral teachings for kids. They had the fables in them in which a story or a moral was taught. But all the literature was what we really termed good literature. A basic moral foundation, a knowledge of words, a knowledge of meanings. They included writers from all sections back.

Jim Colley: So you said you didn't have the McGuffey reader.

Reba Wheat: No.

Jim Colley: But that you knew the people who did.

Reba Wheat: That's right.

Jim Colley: Now, how did they pass that along to you?

Reba Wheat: Because they expected something good out of us. We can't give you an education, but we can give you the opportunity to earn an education. I grew up knowing that nobody can be given anything like that, you have to work for it. Which so many of our kids today don't realize that we cannot give it to them.

Jim Colley: Have to work at it?

Reba Wheat: You have to work at it. Well, I grew up knowing that.

Jim Colley: The McGuffey Reader, it seems to me, if I remember what other people have told me, had a lot of poems in it.

Reba Wheat: Oh yes. And you memorized them. And I grew up memorizing poetry.

Jim Colley: What's your favorite poem that you memorized out of it?

Reba Wheat: The Time Solance Law.

Jim Colley: How does that begin?

Reba Wheat: I haven't [inaudible 00:07:06].

Jim Colley: Couldn't remember it now?

Reba Wheat: No. I could remember lines, but I couldn't remember.

Jim Colley: I had to remember Evangeline, to memorize Evangeline.

Reba Wheat: Oh, well, we did parts of it.

Jim Colley: And I could always do the first two lines and then I quit.

Reba Wheat: Oh, I could probably do that.

Jim Colley: This is the forest-

Reba Wheat: Primeval.

Jim Colley: The Murmuring Pines, and the hemlocks stand like druids of eld, whatever. I wish I could remember that.

We'll be back in just a moment to visit with you, Mrs. Wheat, after this word from People's Bank and Trust our sponsors.

This is Jim Colley and this morning on the Memory Show, we're visiting with Mrs. Reba Wheat in her home here in Natchitoches. Ms. Wheat, we were talking about the McGuffey Reader just a few minutes ago. You said that the school you went to in Clarence finished with you about the eighth grade.

Reba Wheat: That's right.

Jim Colley: What happened then?

Reba Wheat: We moved over here to town. I went into Natchitoches High School, finished there, went on into the college.

Jim Colley: Did you go straight into college after high school?

Reba Wheat: Yes. I went in the summer after we had finished in May and went straight on through.

Jim Colley: That just amazes me.

Reba Wheat: Not anybody who loved to study like I did.

Jim Colley: Okay. What was the normal school at that time?

Reba Wheat: Well, as I realize now, it wasn't very large. I don't know, the population must've been around a thousand, more or less.

Jim Colley: Which was a big school for you then.

Reba Wheat: Which was a pretty good-sized school, but it was not so large, but that there was a friendly communication between faculty and students. Now, of course, there were students at that time who rebelled just as there are students today.

Jim Colley: How did they rebel?

Reba Wheat: Slipping out of the dormitory, getting into trouble, cutting classes, all that kind of thing.

Jim Colley: Just like what goes on now.

Reba Wheat: Just like what goes on now, same type thing. Refusing to study because they didn't like such and such thing. It's hard to say.

Jim Colley: Who was the president when you were there?

Reba Wheat: V.L Roy.

Jim Colley: Did you ever have any contact with Dr. Roy?

Reba Wheat: Twice.

Jim Colley: Twice.

Reba Wheat: Twice.

Jim Colley: You remember those vividly, I take it?

Reba Wheat: First time I was late to class on January 1. Now we were actually in classes and I had been out the night before to watch a night service, and I was 10 minutes late. Well, he kind of got a little bit irate about it and wanted to know where I'd been out dancing, and I told him I hadn't and told him where I had been. He said, well go on to class, then. Gave me a note.

Jim Colley: Okay. That was the first one.

Reba Wheat: The next time I'm standing up in the hall talking to a friend of mine, a boy, a student, and Mr. Roy sent us in separate directions. He didn't like that one bit.

Jim Colley: Didn't like those boys talking with the girls?

Reba Wheat: No siree, at that time you didn't. And if you dared walk down the hall with one and Mr. Roy or one or two of the other teachers saw, you got called in about it and talked to pretty firmly.

Jim Colley: You saw quite a few of the teachers while you were there.

Reba Wheat: Right.

Jim Colley: Do you have any favorites who were professors?

Reba Wheat: Mr. Forinay, first.

Jim Colley: What did he teach?

Reba Wheat: Physics.

Jim Colley: Oh, my. How could anybody have a favorite physics teacher?

Reba Wheat: Oh, that man. He really knew what he was doing. He knew how to put it across and we had fun in his classes. So long as you did your work, he was not rigid. He was not unreasonable. Now, if you didn't make any effort, he could really ring you out about it. But if you were trying and were interested, he would go to any length whatever to help.

Jim Colley: Well, that sounds like a good teacher.

Reba Wheat: Well, he was a very good teacher.

Jim Colley: Did you have other favorites?

Reba Wheat: Well, Ms. Winters, Katherine Winters, was one of the best history teachers I ever ran into. Mr. Killen, Mr. Sparks and Mr. Maddox and my math classes. I was very fond of all of them. Some of the names of some of the others, I don't remember.

Jim Colley: Did all the faculty kind of live in one part of town?

Reba Wheat: Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that on our street, which is Cypress Lane, there were more faculty there. We called it Faculty Row because almost every other house, at least. Now, I can-

Jim Colley: So that's right over here on Cypress next-

Reba Wheat: Cypress Lane, that's right. Would you like for me to give you some of the names?

Jim Colley: I'd like to.

Reba Wheat: All right. Beginning at the end of the street, away from the college was Mr. Good, who taught sociology and who wrote the textbook that they used for a long time. Mr. Alama, who taught education, I believe. I'm not sure, but I think so. Then our house was next. Now there was two or three other houses, two other houses. I don't remember who lived in them, they were not faculty. Then a Mr. McAfee who taught education, and another one I don't remember. Then, by the way, was Mr. Limley, who was the Presbyterian minister, and Dr. Reed next to him. Now, I don't remember about the next house, whether that was Mr. Wagner or whether Mr. Wagner lived in the next one. There was a vacant lot of two on there. Now I'm going down just one side of the street. And then Mr. Asselt's home. Now going back up the other end again, there was a Mr. Prudem or maybe two houses with people named Prudem. I'm not sure about that. Then Mr. Prather, then a vacant lot, then a Ms. Taylor, I believe, and a Mr. Smith. Then a Ms. Prudem. Now in there is where they built, I don't remember who lives there now. Then Mr. Williamson, Mr. Guardia. Mr. Guardia taught geography. Mr. Williamson was, well, the museum's named after him, I don't know what he taught. And someone else on the corner, I don't remember who. Not too many houses in there, but a good representation.

Jim Colley: And you lived in the midst of Faculty Row and all those people around you. And you didn't have any choice but to be a good student, I think.

Reba Wheat: Well, I loved to study. That's was the, that’s the advantage that I had over so many others. It appealed to me. And these people were friendly. Oh, they are lovely people. I just enjoyed living with them very much. Now, Ms. Prather and Ms. Alama, and I believe Ms. Good had decided when I finished high school that I did too much studying and I was going to miss something out of college if I didn't.

Jim Colley: So did they see after your social life?

Reba Wheat: Well, they advised me, not to spend all my time studying.

Jim Colley: Mrs. Wheat, I've enjoyed visiting with you. I'm sorry our time is up.

Reba Wheat: Well...

Jim Colley: But it's been good for us and I've enjoyed sharing your memories.

Reba Wheat: Well, thank you. It's been nice.

Jim Colley: We hope that if you know someone who ought to be sharing their memories with us, you'll call either Roger Williams at People's Bank and Trust or Catherine Dollar with a retired senior volunteer program, and we'll get that word and go and have a good talk with them. Thank you again.

Reba Wheat: Thank you.

Jim Colley interviews Reba Wheat about growing up in Natchitoches Parish, and her experiences at school in Clarence and at the Normal School in Natchitoches.

July 9, 2026

76. Marie Dupre

Transcript

Jim Colley (00:04): Hello again. This is Jim Colley and we're visiting On Memories with Mrs. Marie Dupre. Ms. Dupre, welcome to the show. We're awful glad you're here. I understand you've been in teaching and working in education around here most of your life.

Marie Dupre (00:19): Yes, I have.

Jim Colley (00:21): How long did you teach in Natchitoches Parish?

Marie Dupre (00:24): I taught 47 years in Natchitoches Parish.

Jim Colley (00:26): Gosh, when did you begin?

Marie Dupre (00:27): I started teaching in 1927 and retired in 1952.

Jim Colley (00:34): Well you're still a spring chicken then, aren't you?

Marie Dupre (00:36): I certainly am.

Jim Colley (00:38): I'll bet you are. Did you go to school here yourself?

Marie Dupre (00:41): I went to school at... it was called St. Joseph Elementary School at the time. Then I went to a public school in Montrose, Louisiana. Professor Thomas was the principal. The dear Professor Thomas that stayed at Natchitoches Central so long.

Jim Colley (00:59): He came up to Natchitoches Central after teaching in Montrose?

Marie Dupre (01:02): After teaching in Montrose.

Jim Colley (01:05): He was the principal at that school then?

Marie Dupre (01:05): Yes, he was.

Jim Colley (01:06): Well, did you live real close to the school?

Marie Dupre (01:07): No, I didn't. I had to walk sometimes. Sometime I had to ride. I had a little horse was named Nell, and I rode the horse to school. And some days I walked to school.

Jim Colley (01:18): How long a walk was that?

Marie Dupre (01:20): Oh that must've been six miles or longer.

Jim Colley (01:23): You know now, I always hear folks saying, "Back when I was young, I had to walk six miles to go to school," but that's true, huh?

Marie Dupre (01:31): That's really true. Then when I was teaching in Chopin, I taught at Springhill School in Chopin, I had to walk there. I walked many a Sundays from Chopin to Cloutierville to the St. John's Catholic Church to mass and back.

Jim Colley (01:48): Hmm. People traveled on their feet most of the time back then, didn't they?

Marie Dupre (01:52): They certainly did.

Jim Colley (01:53): I don't guess many people had ponies they could use.

Marie Dupre (01:56): Well, quite a number of people had ponies, but of course, children went to school walking. Maybe some of the boys sometime rode the ponies.

Jim Colley (02:04): But you were lucky, you had a horse named Nell?

Marie Dupre (02:07): Yes, I was.

Jim Colley (02:09): After you got through at the St Joseph's School, where did you go?

Marie Dupre (02:12): After I finished from St. Joseph's School, in the elementary school, for eighth grade, I went to New Orleans in the public school one year. Then I went to Xavier Prep Catholic School. Then from Xavier Prep to Xavier College, the university now. I also went to Wiley College and took extension [inaudible 00:02:33]... from Southern University.

Jim Colley (02:34): Boy, you've had a lot of educational experiences. Saint Xavier was... where was that?

Marie Dupre (02:39): Xavier is in New Orleans, Louisiana. I caught a many foals trying to learn to skate since skating was the fad then. Roller skates.

Jim Colley (02:49): Oh, is that what you did for recreation?

Marie Dupre (02:50): Yes, I did quite a bit of that for recreation.

Jim Colley (02:53): And if you didn't know how to skate?

Marie Dupre (02:55): You just fell.

Jim Colley (02:55): That's right. What was dating like when you were in New Orleans? Could you go out with a boy?

Marie Dupre (03:04): Well, I went out once or twice. Of course, I had an old aunt that didn't like... Quite like old people do, when you were dating, they want to know who it was, where were you going, here, there and the other. It wasn't like the students of today, walk out the door and say I'm gone. Or maybe don't say that and go ahead anyway. But, I enjoyed it. I had quite a number of friends. Of course, I went to a number of football and basketball games, because I had one little friend that was all tied up in basketball and football, and he got all the tickets for me, so I went to the games.

Jim Colley (03:40): That was pretty handy. You were talking before we began taping about going to school in the Isle, now what was the Isle?

Marie Dupre (03:51): The Isle is this little settlement in Melrose just on this side of the river from the Melrose Plantation. It was called the Isle. And this is where St. Augustine's Catholic Church is located. This St. Augustine Catholic Church, this land was donated... the church was donated by Saint Augustus, Saint Augustine. It was known as Grand-pere Augustine.

Jim Colley (04:16): Grand-pere Augustine. When was that?

Marie Dupre (04:19): [foreign language 00:04:19]. Oh, that was way back centuries ago I'd say. I don't remember the exact date, so I won't try to.

Jim Colley (04:28): I bet there was a lot of stories about him.

Marie Dupre (04:30): There was a lot of stories about him. He's buried in this cemetery. So is his wife.

Jim Colley (04:36): What kind of man was grand-pere?

Marie Dupre (04:39): Well, grand-pere was, I think from what I read about him, he came from a... He's Spanish descent, Spanish and American descent. He came from Santo Domingo, from the islands.

Jim Colley (04:58): So that whole part of Melrose and the Cane River country is interesting to me. You were talking about the Isle and the Isle got its name from a little piece of land that looked like an island down there. And now that's called the Iberville. How did that get its name?

Marie Dupre (05:19): More or less, much as I know about it, I think this portion of this cemetery and this land in there is between a bayou. There was a Bayou Brevelle. So it gets this Isle Brevelle from this bayou, from this Brevelle between Cain River, which is where the church is located on Cane River, between this and Highway 1 out at Montrose, there's a bayou. This bayou goes all the way down and falls into Cane River, down below the Isle. And then it comes all the way up and somewhere around Cypress or further than that, this bayou.

Jim Colley (06:01): So what we know is Isle Brevelle is actually the combination of two names, the name for the Isle and the name for Bayou Brevelle. That's real interesting. Ms. Dupre, we're going to take a minute for People's Bank and Trust to give us a good word. We're grateful to them for sponsoring this. We hope you'll stay listening and come back to us after this word from our sponsor.

(06:26): This is Jim Colley, and we're back visiting On Memories with Mrs. Marie Dupre. Ms. Dupre, when you grow up in families and you have parents. They always give you a lot of advice. What kind of advice do you remember getting?

Marie Dupre (06:42): Well, I remember getting advice from my father. He always said to us, "I'll send you to school, for you to be independent, for you to help yourself. And of course, I don't want you to let this land get away from you. That's yours, keep it until you die." And that we have tried to do. We still have our home place.

Jim Colley (07:06): That's quite a thing. I guess I remember my parents by the kind of advice they give, and your dad said, get that education and hold onto the land. And you did both. That's quite a thing. Education was pretty important for folks growing up then. You've been around and in education in Natchitoches Parish for a long time. And you've seen a lot of changes, I'm sure. What kind of changes have you seen that strike you as is most important?

Marie Dupre (07:38): Well, I would say that the youth of today seem to not realize that an education that will help you more than just going along without one. Course they usually say, "Oh, this person didn't have an education. He has a better job than I have." But that doesn't always hold water. I think the youth of today should try to elevate himself as high as he can and continue to do a better job after he gets an education.

Jim Colley (08:21): What do you think of all these Women's Lib movements? Describing when you went off to college and came back and started teaching you were involved in some liberated women's activities way back then.

Marie Dupre (08:35): Well, I think to a certain extent Women Lib is in its place. But I wouldn't say that in every phase of life that a woman should be taking the lead.

Jim Colley (08:54): A lot of women have kind of held the South together. When people rewrite Southern history, they talk about the women who got out, and plowed the fields, and taught the children, and cooked the meals. That was pretty much a part of life, wasn't it?

Marie Dupre (09:09): Yes.

Jim Colley (09:10): Mr. Dupre, do you ever remember seeing a car for the first time or getting to own a car? What was your earliest memory about cars?

Marie Dupre (09:20): My earliest memory about cars might've been before the 30s. I think I had a car of my own, which was a Ford. And of course, they were a lot different from the cars of today. They moved much slower. They weren't such beautiful...

Jim Colley (09:50): Didn't have all those-

Marie Dupre (09:50): Didn't have all those gadgets on them as the cars of today.

Jim Colley (09:54): Not quite as comfortable I'd guess.

Marie Dupre (09:56): No, not quite as comfortable because I'm sure they didn't have any air conditioning in it. Didn't have any heat.

Jim Colley (10:03): The air conditioning wasn't... didn't have any windows.

Marie Dupre (10:06): Didn't have any windows in [inaudible 00:10:08]...

Jim Colley (10:09): But that was quite an improvement, wasn't it?

Marie Dupre (10:11): It certainly was.

Jim Colley (10:11): Everybody needed cars if they could get them. Ms. Dupre as we finish up this time, let me ask you about the church you're a member of. Which church is that?

Marie Dupre (10:21): I said it was then called St. Joseph's Catholic Church, but the name changed after all of this transposing of the picture and all of that. Well, this changed the St. Augustine Catholic Church. And this Saint Augustine Catholic Church, I was christened there or baptized if you want to say. I made my first communion there. I was confirmed there. I was married there and on August the 16, I celebrated my 25th anniversary there.

Jim Colley (10:56): My goodness. Little parish churches like that are just kind of at the heart of everybody's life that lives around them.

Marie Dupre (11:03): And you ask about remembering how we went about funerals. In those days, the bodies were carried to the church, and they will wait at the home. Then they were carried to the church in a wagon probably drawn by mules or horses or what have you.

Jim Colley (11:23): And then the funeral service was held there in the church.

Marie Dupre (11:27): The funeral services were held in the church.

Jim Colley (11:29): And then you just walked out the door and you're right in the cemetery.

Marie Dupre (11:30): You walked out the door and you walked in a cemetery. Then probably after, after the funeral, the family went to the home and had dinner or whatever it was.

Jim Colley (11:44): But little old parish churches were real important to folks. And a lot of life got lived there.

Marie Dupre (11:50): Yes.

Jim Colley (11:50): Ms. Dupre, we're so glad we visited with you today.

Marie Dupre (11:54): Maybe I told some tales. Some of those people be calling me.

Jim Colley (11:58): Oh, they won't mind hearing those tales.

Jim Colley interviews Mrs. Marie Dupre about growing up in Natchitoches Parish, getting an education, and becoming a teacher.

July 2, 2026

75. Monroe Roberts

Transcript

Hubert Laster (00:01): This is Hubert Laster. And this morning we're visiting with Mr. Monroe Roberts. We're pleased to welcome you to the show, sir.

(00:10): Good morning.

Monroe Roberts (00:11): Oh.

Hubert Laster (00:12): You're supposed to talk.

Monroe Roberts (00:13): Yeah. Hello.

Hubert Laster (00:17): Mr. Roberts has been a minister for 55 years.

Monroe Roberts (00:23): That's right.

Hubert Laster (00:23): He's 92 years old now.

Monroe Roberts (00:25): That's right, next Saturday.

Hubert Laster (00:28): Fixing to have a birthday.

Monroe Roberts (00:29): Yeah.

Hubert Laster (00:30): We were talking earlier about your boyhood and you were going to talk to us about the way it was on the farm.

Monroe Roberts (00:40): Yeah. Well, I grew up on a farm. My father was a farmer and we thought we had a good time, but I suppose as the generation now look upon it as a hard time.

Hubert Laster (00:55): How's that?

Monroe Roberts (00:56): We knew no better. We made our own bread, syrup, produced our own milk and butter, and most everything had to come from the ground, farming. There were no money in circulation much, very little money when I grew up. We just had to make it for our own selves.

Hubert Laster (01:19): What kind of good times did you make?

Monroe Roberts (01:21): Well, the good times when we were all well, and that isn't most of the time. We didn't hardly know what a doctor was in our home. We grew up, 11 children, father and mother were pretty good doctors themselves. [inaudible 00:01:40] medicines [crosstalk 00:01:41].

Hubert Laster (01:40): Did they make their own medicines?

Monroe Roberts (01:42): No, they'd buy it in the store. Sometimes they'd make a remedy for malaria, something.

Hubert Laster (01:49): Do you remember what they made?

Monroe Roberts (01:51): Kind of a tonic, they called it. Made of a bark. Bitter bark with a little, what we call liver regulator. Or black draw.

Hubert Laster (02:00): Black draw, okay.

Monroe Roberts (02:04): Yeah.

Hubert Laster (02:04): What about school?

Monroe Roberts (02:06): Well, I remember the first day I entered school. I was five years old. That morning, that Monday morning, there's a hundred pupils there. They ran from 25 age down to five. One teacher, one auditorium. They were building near homemade, except the flooring was lumber.

Hubert Laster (02:29): Now, where was this near?

Monroe Roberts (02:31): That was Harmony community below [Provencal 00:02:33], three miles. In Ward Seven, [Natolish 00:02:37] Parish.

Hubert Laster (02:38): And what did they teach you, just the three R's?

Monroe Roberts (02:40): Well, I had different, we called it classes. They call it grades now, of course. Wanted to ask me what grade I was in, I wouldn't know what they're talking about. We called it classes. Different classes.

Hubert Laster (02:55): How far did you go? In education?

Monroe Roberts (02:58): Three months of the year is all we ever.

Hubert Laster (03:00): Three months out of the year?

Monroe Roberts (03:01): Three month of out the year. And some years, no funds, there was no school. Went sometimes two year without any school.

Hubert Laster (03:01): My goodness.

Monroe Roberts (03:10): But when we did, we got three months. And we'd get over so far in the books we had the speller, the reader, the geography, and the history. And other books and writing, and we'd get so far in the book about half, maybe the three months. They'd shove us along pretty fast and make us study them days and measure off the ball game and played at home and then home ground, but couldn't leave home for a game, but we studied and hard lessons. We took our books home with us, teacher made us take our books home, learn a lesson at home, and then the school would be out. And of course, we'd forget a lot and we'd have to come way back here. But the next three months we'd go a little further. And the next three months, the next year we could go a little further. We finally got through what we call the first history and geography and speller. And then we'd get a higher one.

Hubert Laster (04:12): Yes, sir. Well, the other nine months out of the year, you just farmed or what?

Monroe Roberts (04:16): Yes. We farmed for a living, that's right. And me and my brother walked six miles to a school the year we didn't have any. Our father, quick as we got through with our crop, we had to walk until led by the crop, we had a little gentle horse. We both rode that horse six miles when we didn't walk to school in the other community that had a school and we didn't. Yeah.

Hubert Laster (04:44): Now where was the big town then that you went to for supplies?

Monroe Roberts (04:48): Provencal.

Hubert Laster (04:48): Provencal.

Monroe Roberts (04:51): Four miles.

Hubert Laster (04:52): You went by horse and wagon?

Monroe Roberts (04:55): No. You couldn't buy a wagon there. They didn't sell wagons. We had a little nack to get our wagons, [Capon 00:05:00] Brothers wagons.

Hubert Laster (05:01): Capon Brothers?

Monroe Roberts (05:02): Yeah, my father both bought a few brand new wagons and my first recollection as long as he was able to work, drive a team of wagons.

Hubert Laster (05:14): You come from rather large family.

Monroe Roberts (05:16): Yes. 11 children of us.

Hubert Laster (05:19): But you had a bigger one, right?

Monroe Roberts (05:24): Yeah.

Hubert Laster (05:25): How many do you have?

Monroe Roberts (05:25): 12 in all.

Hubert Laster (05:28): 12 children. How'd you support them all?

Monroe Roberts (05:32): I don't know. The Lord just helped me some way, I guess. I guess something provided. Sometimes I didn't see where was the next ration was coming from, but it would be there. We wouldn't starve. We might near lived on bread and syrup or getting out of debt, getting my mortgage paid off on my place. I bought land, put it under a mortgage, till I paid for it at 10 percent interest and I had a pretty hard time getting through it. But I got us all through and we didn't starve, we done pretty good.

Hubert Laster (06:09): How much did you pay an acre for it then?

Monroe Roberts (06:11): I paid a dollar and a quarter.

Hubert Laster (06:14): Dollar and a quarter.

Monroe Roberts (06:15): For 160 acres. And I paid $500 for an improved 40 acres with virgin timber on it and a little house, a little homestead house, which is here.

Hubert Laster (06:28): Yes, sir. You were talking about in the wintertime and you had all your children around you and how y'all kept warm at night.

Monroe Roberts (06:37): Well, we kept, we had Chamblin fireplace in both ends of the house and tell you the truth, we worked most of the time to keep warm. But when we didn't and it rained and we couldn't get out at work, we'd just keep them old fires going.

Hubert Laster (06:53): Just keep those old fires going.

Monroe Roberts (06:54): Find pine knots all over the woods here and we'd cut our hardwood, billets of wood, help keep the house warm. Keep the doors closed, you keep a warm house. We didn't freeze.

Hubert Laster (07:04): I don't guess so. A lot of love, [crosstalk 00:07:06] lots of love. We need to take a break right now for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back in just a moment. In case you've just joined us, this is Hubert Laster visiting with Mr. Monroe Roberts on the Memories program. And we were just talking about your smokehouse out in the back that you don't use anymore, but how it used to be.

Monroe Roberts (07:31): Yeah, used smoke my meat in it. Kill my hogs, salt it down, hang it up back there and smoke it. Green Hickory. Give it a good flavor. Usually putting now just boxes and barrels and things in, about all I use it for now. The old smokehouse, still have it though. Wouldn't tear it down for nothing.

Hubert Laster (07:55): You talking about those old wooden barrels?

Monroe Roberts (07:57): Yeah.

Hubert Laster (07:57): They got flour in them?

Monroe Roberts (07:59): Yeah. Flour come in them. Yeah. I have one yet.

Hubert Laster (08:04): How much flour?

Monroe Roberts (08:05): Well, there's 196 pound in a barrel.

Hubert Laster (08:08): And how much did you pay for it?

Monroe Roberts (08:12): I bought two barrels once for $3 and 75 cents a barrel, 196 to the barrel. Pound.

Hubert Laster (08:21): Prices have changed, I think.

Monroe Roberts (08:22): Yeah. So.

Hubert Laster (08:24): You saw the first roads in this parish, didn't you?

Monroe Roberts (08:28): Saw what?

Hubert Laster (08:28): The first black top roads?

Monroe Roberts (08:30): Oh yeah, yes. Not too long ago in this community.

Hubert Laster (08:34): How was it before then?

Monroe Roberts (08:35): Well, it was a gravel road before that, then before that a graded road. And then first of all, my first recollection, just an old road without a grader on it or anything else.

Hubert Laster (08:46): Who did the repairs on it?

Monroe Roberts (08:48): The citizens, community worked their own road. The old system with no pay. Had an oversharer party, some of his hands, you got them out there, spade and access to other things, cross cut saws, and we worked the roads so wagons could get over.

Hubert Laster (09:08): What about when you hit a bayou or something like that?

Monroe Roberts (09:11): Well, if there was no bridge at all, we tried to make the ford as good as we could on both sides so that sometimes they had to swim in, if they had a horseback, even with a wagon [crosstalk 00:09:26] swimming across it before there was no bridge.

Hubert Laster (09:30): Did you cut the wood and make a bridge if possible?

Monroe Roberts (09:34): The parish would build a bridge. Even my first recollection, if it was extreme in its size, contract it out to somebody that knew how to make a bridge across the streams and the parish would pay for that.

Hubert Laster (09:50): What about holes in the road? How'd you repair them?

Monroe Roberts (09:52): [crosstalk 00:09:52] fill them up with spades, pine tops, and dirt on them with spades. Build them up so the wagons could get over. And there's plenty of them too, I want to tell you.

Hubert Laster (09:52): Lots of them.

Monroe Roberts (10:03): Lots of them.

Hubert Laster (10:05): I guess those little wagons just made holes, huh?

Monroe Roberts (10:07): Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It cut down. It was narrow, it was narrow you know.

Hubert Laster (10:07): Uh-huh (affirmative).

Monroe Roberts (10:12): It's called a butcher knife wagon just because they're narrow tire. See, that's where they're making them wider later on, but my first recollection is narrower and narrower and they'd cut down, go hub deep-

Hubert Laster (10:28): Yes, sir.

Monroe Roberts (10:29): [crosstalk 00:10:29] right in the center of the wheel. And you're almost hub deep. Mule and oxen. My first riding in wagon, an ox wagon, I went to church in an ox wagon.

Hubert Laster (10:43): Tell me something. Were those old springboard seats, were they comfortable or was it more comfortable to ride in the back?

Monroe Roberts (10:48): In where? In the school house you mean?

Hubert Laster (10:50): No, on the butt boards. Wagons.

Monroe Roberts (10:54): Oh, well my father and mother would always have a spring seat front. We'd sit down in the wagon and about three hours, take the end gate out. We was going to church or anywhere else, hang our feet out. We can jump out if we wanted to, play around and gather flower, and come jump back in, that ox was going, tugging along.

Hubert Laster (11:14): Pretty slow.

Monroe Roberts (11:15): Oh, we had a lot of fun.

Hubert Laster (11:17): Were the oxen a little slow?

Monroe Roberts (11:19): No, they'd walk on along. You could hurry them or you could slow them up either one. Well, I had a yokel option train and you'd have a little rope on them. Speak to them like one of us, and they'd mind it. Yes sir.

Hubert Laster (11:31): Well, besides church, what were big occasions back in those days?

Monroe Roberts (11:37): Well, the school and the church was the main things with us.

Hubert Laster (11:43): What about holidays?

Monroe Roberts (11:45): Well, we'd always take off holidays unless it was Thanksgiving sometime we would Thanksgiving, but my father wouldn't make us work on Fourth of July unless we wanted to. Ever so far behind at our work, he let us off the Fourth of July if we wanted to get off. That was the main day with us.

Hubert Laster (11:45): And Christmas?

Monroe Roberts (12:03): Christmas is the biggest day of all, greatest day of all, Christmas Day. And we looked forward to that from one year to the next. Felt it would never come when we were growing up because we looked forward to hanging up our sock and Santa Claus coming down the chimney and filling it up for us.

Hubert Laster (12:24): And he always did.

Monroe Roberts (12:25): Always did. Well, we thought it was Santa Claus. We didn't know any better and we would have surely been hurt if somebody that said there wasn't no Santa Claus.

Hubert Laster (12:35): I guess so. Did you celebrate Thanksgiving then?

Monroe Roberts (12:39): Well, not particularly as I spoke a while ago, like we did Christmas and Fourth of July. I don't know why. Everybody doesn't, seeing it's a great beginning and a great holiday for America if we just come to know it and appreciate it, like we ought to Thanksgiving Day. The last Thursday in November is the day that in 1620 our Pilgrim fathers landed, I believe and began settlement of America.

Hubert Laster (13:14): How many were there?

Monroe Roberts (13:16): 101, they left on the Mayflower from England. Of the 101, one man died on board and one was born. So it threw over the same amount as they landed as they left with.

Hubert Laster (13:34): And from that time until now it's still growing.

Monroe Roberts (13:41): Oh yeah, yeah. I guess it is. I guess it is. I guess it is. I think our country leads the world in most everything, America. We certainly have been blessed, doubly blessed because it was a good start. Our Pilgrim fathers come seeking, not wealth, but they were seeking God.

Hubert Laster (14:11): And they found him.

Monroe Roberts (14:11): They found him. And we've been here ever since and this country has moved along faster in progress than any nation under the shining sun because of that.

Hubert Laster (14:23): Didn't you tell me that you received a special award for preaching?

Monroe Roberts (14:29): Yeah. I'll show you that in a few minutes, I have it up there on a wall.

Hubert Laster (14:31): What was it for now?

Monroe Roberts (14:33): Well, they gave me one, the first one was a honor day, where they gave me $700 in cash besides other things. And all of them gathered in the little church I serve here in the community. Then my birthday just followed that and the state, from even headquarters, [Alexandra 00:14:53], were some state men here with five churches and their pastors here, gave me a celebration day for my birthday. Two in too much time.

Hubert Laster (15:03): And that's for being a minister of the gospel for 55 years.

Monroe Roberts (15:08): Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Hubert Laster (15:09): And you're 92 now.

Monroe Roberts (15:10): That's right, that's right.

Hubert Laster (15:12): So quick arithmetic, that's, you've been doing it since you were 33.

Monroe Roberts (15:15): Yeah, that's right. I believe it's 33.

Hubert Laster (15:19): Mr. Roberts, we've enjoyed visiting with you.

Hubert Laster interviews Monroe Roberts about growing up in Natchitoches Parish in a farming family, attending school, and preaching.

June 25, 2026

74. Minnie Lee Odum

Transcript

Dan Banuska: Today we travel back in time with Ms. Minnie Lee Odom after this message from Peoples Bank, our sponsor. Ms. Odom, we are very happy to have you with us on Memories this morning. Could you tell us a little bit about your own personal history, where you grew up and about your family?

Minnie Lee Odum: Well, I grew up partially in Catahoula Parish, it was then, it's now LaSalle Parish between Tullos and Urania is where I was born. But we were very unfortunate there in losing my... typhoid fever that so many people did have in those days, we lost my oldest sister on the second day of August, and then following on the 24th day of September, the next month we lost my mother. And so at the time of that, that I had already taken down with the fever myself, but we had the doctor that rode by the house and he'd come in and I had gotten to where I could walk, but by being almost propped, because it takes all the strength out of your limbs, you just don't have any strength left hardly. And so then that was why that first spell I had was just after my sister had passed away and then my mother was living, but then my mother had it also and I was up so I could just walk around.

Dan Banuska: So you were the nurse really in the family.

Minnie Lee Odum: Yes, and my father and one older brother and one younger brother.

Dan Banuska: What time in history are we talking about?

Minnie Lee Odum: Well, that would've been almost 1905. It was around in 1905 that we lost my mother and my sister.

Dan Banuska: That was quite common then, too.

Minnie Lee Odum: Yes. Oh, yes. So many people and so many of our young people passed away that we knew so well and that were friends of my older sister, especially. She was six years older than I was and I had a brother and then I had lost a little brother just with the childhood. So people not understanding conditions, some troubles and all the children had, my mother used to say, if we'd known then as we knew even when I was a child, we could have saved my little brother, but had the doctor, and didn't know how to treat him.

Dan Banuska: What was the treatment that they gave at that time?

Minnie Lee Odum: Well, for the malaria it was calomel and quinine. And I learned to do that about as good as any of them did because my father did it. And if he had to be gone, because he was a very busy man there being... we were 10 children, we were not quite all living at the same time because we'd lost my little brother before I was born. He was just older than I was.

And by this time, the 10 had been born, the time had come on and my youngest sister now was not a year old when my mother and sister passed away. And so it meant that my father had many responsibilities. He had the farm and we never did have... well, we never did have colored people on our farm at all. It was done by white people, but you couldn't get real reliable white people. When I say they didn't always live up to their word, you'd have just verbal understandings.

And we always had the family store next to us and did the furnishing there and for the people in the surrounding area. So they would get on time, they'd call it on time, put it on the book. And I could, and it doesn't sound like much now, but I have a book where it's over $6,000 that was put on the book that never was paid. Not 1 cent of it at all.

Dan Banuska: What kind of wages were people making at that time?

Minnie Lee Odum: Oh, that was 50 cents a day and money was a real good rate.

Dan Banuska: What could you buy in 50 cents at that time?

Minnie Lee Odum: Oh, of course, the truth about it is if you took care of things, you didn't buy very much. We didn't buy anything except coffee and flour and sugar. We raised everything else that we ate, all the potatoes and all the vegetables and we canned. I remember when we had the first canning machine, we used to put in jars, but we had a canner that we did it at home. And then we could have anything, you see. But you can't can everything by jars. I learned a great deal then that there's botulism that comes in and you can't get the germs that would grow in certain foods by just cooking it in open flame. You had to have pressure.

And it was only when we had pressure that we could save, for instance, butter beans. They just couldn't be kept. My own eating, it wouldn't have mind, it wouldn't have been bad. But some people just think if they don't have butter beans, they're missed a great deal. Well, my father did that. He got the families working on the place and we had about usually four or five families. And that meant that they used our stock. We had the stock and fed them and took care of them because everything was the one horse plow. It was all done in that way. And then with the hole that you hold, there were no cultivators.

In fact, Papa put in the little cultivators that we had that had to be mule-drawn. We had mules and we'd a pair of them to draw to do this. Cultivating have all the little plows that went along and not only in the hills, in the upright parts, right where the seed was planted, but in the middles too, cultivate that, and keep the grass down. And then my father was an estimate of timber. He could go ride through the woods and see some timber. I can see him now and I've ridden with him a lot of times. I liked it. And I have some land now in Winn Parish that we used to go over to see about it. And he had looked at that tree and he'd said, there's so many board feet in that tree.

Dan Banuska: That's a real art, isn't it?

Minnie Lee Odum: Uh-huh. Yes. And he knew that. So he estimated timber for the Urania lumber company at that time. That was something. And everybody in that section knows that certain people that I could name their names this morning. I had the experience not very many years ago, and my second brother who was living where he is now, that we went over and one of the Harteners was there. And while you just thought we had been childhood playmates all the time, he says, oh, we're so glad to have you all come in. Let me get these old pictures down here that used to be made when you all walked from that place up to Urania to where we went to school about three months in the summertime.

Dan Banuska: Let me interrupt you at this moment for a message from our sponsor, Peoples Bank. Once again, this is Dan Banuska and we are talking with Ms. Minnie Lee Odum on Memories.

Minnie Lee Odum: Well, of course, in taking care of everything, everything that you ate, all the vegetables, and we had vegetables the year round. We didn't just have vegetables in the spring and let it go down, but there had to be your collards or your winter cabbage and there had to be onions. And then your fall potatoes and the sweet potatoes of course had to be dug before the frost fell too much. They couldn't get bitten by the frost and we'd bank them so we'd have potatoes until all through the whole winter. And then-

Dan Banuska: What does banking potatoes mean?

Minnie Lee Odum: Banking, well, you fix a good a spot and have dirt in there and then put a lot of hay down and then start putting the potatoes in and getting it filled up. It was in like a wigwam in that shape. And just wigwams aren't there to fill them up to a point. And then they'd put more hay and then have boards that you'd lay against that and get them all covered up well, and then dirt would be shoveled and put over that and leave one place right in the front where you could always get in and get out your potatoes.

Dan Banuska: So farming and living then was a real art. You had to make sure that you had vegetables and fruit for the whole year.

Minnie Lee Odum: Yes, because it wouldn't do, we all knew that you couldn't live without vegetables. That's the most we knew about it, didn't know much of the composition. It was after then that I studied foods and learned of proteins and carbohydrates and fats and the minerals and the vitamins and all that came later. But there was something built up in my father and mother that just knew that had that through their lives, that they had to have fresh vegetables and they had to have meat. But instead of having a market that you went to, there were no markets. I know at that time, if there were any in Alexandria and Monroe, they were the closest ones. I'm not quite certain if there'd be any there because when we got beef, we only got beef two or three times a year. And then my father was always fattening a yearling, getting it, put it up and feed plenty of corn and the hay and all that it needed, and then killed that and divided it out among the people in the community because-

Dan Banuska: So the beef then had to be-

Minnie Lee Odum: Killed at home.

Dan Banuska: Killed and distributed and eaten immediately.

Minnie Lee Odum: Yes, it did, because there was no way of keeping it. But then the pork was different because it could be-

Dan Banuska: I'm going to interrupt you at that time because I want you to tell the story of pork on the next Memories. But before we conclude this Memories, I want you to tell briefly the first time that you tasted iced tea.

Minnie Lee Odum: Yes.

Dan Banuska: You tell me that story.

Minnie Lee Odum: Well, we had some friends who we hadn't known them so very long, but we were invited there, my older sister to have dinner with them one evening and with Mary and Ida. Name's gone from me. But anyway, it was something. Of course, I was all eyes, I always was, if anything food was about. And so when they had put this ice in their glasses, and of course, we had plenty of water from cisterns that had been made perfectly clean by somebody going on a rope down and washing them out and catching the cold water and it was snowing at the time, and we kept our cold water that way, but there was no ice. And anytime we had ice, it would be when people were very sick and maybe we could get the train to stop and let you have a piece of ice off of the train. But I tell you, their father was a Section Foreman and they could get ice. And so when they served us tea and we drank it, but I couldn't say that we were so very fond of it.

Dan Banuska: That was something that we, I guess, take for granted today having ice. Ms. Odum, it's been my pleasure having you on Memories today. And like I said, I plan to have you back again and we're going to talk about a story that you told about pork. We would like to close each Memories program with information that might be of particular value to the senior citizens.

If a taxpayer was blind at the end of a tax year, he is entitled to an additional exemption of $750. Let me repeat that. If a taxpayer was blind at the end of a tax year, he's entitled to an additional exemption of $750. If you have any further questions about this matter, please stop by and talk to the folks at Peoples Bank. They'll be glad to have you out.

I have a personal favor to ask of you. If you like Memories, call the people of Peoples Bank, or better yet, stop by and tell them personally. If you are over 60 and you have some memories you'd like to share with your friends in Natchitoches, call Peoples Bank 352-6404 or 352-8343. Or call KNOC, 352-9596. Or you can also call the Retired Senior Volunteer Office, 352-8647.

Dan Benuska interviews Minnie Lee Odum about growing up in Catahoula Parish, typhoid fever, managing a farm, canning, collecting timber, banking potatoes, and the first time she tasted iced tea.

June 18, 2026

73. Melvina Washington

Transcript

Hubert Laster: Good morning. I'm Hubert Laster, and this morning on the Memories program, we're going to be visiting with Mrs. Melvina Washington. We'll be back in just a moment after a word from our sponsor.

We're back again. Mrs. Washington, a lovely lady. She has been in Natchitoches Parish all of her life and she's 72. And you're not going to believe this, folks, but this woman does not look 72, she looks about 50 maybe. But anyway, this is Mrs. Washington.

Melvina Washington: How are you?

Hubert Laster: How are you?

Melvina Washington: Fine. How you doing?

Hubert Laster: Doing good.

Melvina Washington: Well, that's good.

Hubert Laster: You were talking about, you were born on the Bermuda?

Melvina Washington: On the Bermuda.

Hubert Laster: Uh-huh.

Melvina Washington: That's where I was born until I was 11 years old.

Hubert Laster: That's down on Cane River.

Melvina Washington: Down on Cane River, right. And when I was 11 years old, they gave me to my grandmother. Before she gave me to my grandmother, I was going to school. We had to go to school. We didn't have but three months' school, and in the three months maybe I'd put in a month. And we had to cross Cane River on a raft. You don't know what a raft is, do you? It was two logs with a board across it. And we had-

Hubert Laster: A boat?

Melvina Washington: Boards, you know.

Hubert Laster: Oh, boards, okay.

Melvina Washington: Boards across it. And we had to go get on that raft to cross the river in front our house to go to school. Now, I was going to school at St. Paul, it was at the church. It wasn't no schoolhouse then, it was at the church house. And that's where I was going to school. Well, I went to school there a couple of months until time to work. And when it was time to work, I had to stop and help pick cotton or either stop to help hoe. But I was real young, but I've been working all of my life. And when I was 11 years old, my mother had married. She gave me to my grandmother, and my grandmother and them all took down with the flu. And I was the only one didn't have the flu. All the people around in the neighborhood was down with the flu. And I would go around from one to another and fix soup for them and make tea. The kind of tea, in them times old people would have mint tea and they'd have another kind of tea, what they call horse mint tea. They would go out and gather these weeds and dry them and then make tea when you'd be sick with a cold or the flu. And that's what I had to do.

Hubert Laster: What kind of weeds are these?

Melvina Washington: Well, it's a kind of tall weed, it's kind of light, you know. Really, I almost forgot, really, how it grow, but anyhow, it had a lot of leaves on it. It was horse mint. And I would take that and boil it and make tea and give. When they'd give out a thing, they would give me a little money to go to the store and get things: a little lard, sugar, and coffee, and rice to have to fix lunch for them. And I would go, but they wouldn't let me in the store.

Hubert Laster: Why not?

Melvina Washington: Because the flu was quarantined, the place was quarantined, and they wouldn't let nobody in the store. You would go and stand on the outside and then you'd tell them what you want, and they would fix it and bring it and sit it out on the porch, and you'd put the money down and they would set the stuff and you'd pay for what you went after. And I would get on the horse and take it back to the house. You could get five cents' worth of lard, five cents' worth of sugar, five cents' worth of coffee, and five cents' worth of rice, which was 25 cents. And that's what I would take and have to cook food for them and go around. And I never did take the flu. And my uncle, I would help him work. I'd get out in the woods, we'd saw down trees, cut up wood, and tow it to the house. And when time to break up land, I would go and help him. We would take sticks and beat cotton stalks, you know the cotton stalks now what they plows them?

Hubert Laster: Yes, ma'am.

Melvina Washington: But them time we would have to take a stick and beat them down. And I would help him beat that. Well, when he would get ready to plow, I would run a turning plow with a turn of two foot in the middle, and he would come behind with a middle buster and bust it open and build up the row. And after we would get the land broke up and it'd be time to plant, well, he would go down in the middle, go down the row, and bust it open. And I'd go behind him and drop the seed. I'd drop corn and cotton, you know. When it was time to plant his corn, I would step, drop the corn all the way down. And he would come behind when I'd stepped, dropped, and cover it up.

And I would do that, and when 12:00 come, I would go home and I would help fix dinner, help fix lunch. And if they didn't have nothing for lunch, they would put me on a horse again to go to the store and get something. And in five minutes' time, you would imagine where I was living, where I had to go. And I didn't use no saddle. I'd just throw a pad on the horse and I was gone. The horse was named Nellie, and me and Nellie would go to the store, and I would be back time enough to get lunch ready.

Hubert Laster: Sounds like you wore old Nellie out.

Melvina Washington: Well, I tell you, me, Nellie really went. And I would help him haul wood. I would help him pick all the cotton, I'd help him load up the wagon and take it to the town up until I got old enough to marry. And I worked for myself from 11 years old. I've been going for myself since I was 11 years old.

Hubert Laster: We need to take a break right now. We'll be back in just a moment. If you've just joined us, we're visiting with Mrs. Washington this morning, and she's going to tell me something about what she was referring to earlier, about middle busters and turning plows and juniors. What is this all about? Tell me about it.

Melvina Washington: Well, a turning plow, that's a plow with just one blade on the side. And you turn, go down on one side of the row, and throw that foot to the middle, and you come back on that other side and throw that foot, another foot right where you threw the first one, and you come back with the second one. And it'd leave a ridge right in the center, and you'd come back with the middle buster. And when that middle buster come down-

Hubert Laster: Did it have two blades on it?

Melvina Washington: It had two blades, two like wings. You know?

Hubert Laster: Uh-huh.

Melvina Washington: And that foot would bust that center out and would throw that foot on each side, and that'd build up the row. That's what the way you had to get to plant your cotton.

Hubert Laster: Now, which one of these plows dug deep?

Melvina Washington: A middle buster.

Hubert Laster: Okay.

Melvina Washington: The middle buster was the one dug deep. And when the stuff grow, come up, we would take a junior and a little, it had about six little teeth, little small teeth on it. And you would go beside the row and your junior would break that crust loose before you'd get ready to hoe the cotton or the corn. And that's the way I had to do all of my days. I've been doing it all of my life. I never had found nothing too hard that I can do. Up until now, I'll try. At my age, I'll try to do some of it now. And we would pick our cotton. I'd help load the cotton, take it to the gin when cotton time, and when time to pull the corn, well, I would go with my uncle with the wagon, and he was on one side and I was on the other pulling corn and throwing it in the wagon and bringing it to the barn.

And I would help him unload the corn, and I would help him, sometimes it'd be night when we'd get ready to load our cotton. I'd get out there at night and I'd help him load cotton until 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 to get the cotton ready to haul it to the gin. And I was working for one bale of cotton and 12 bales of corn.

Hubert Laster: Now, how much was one bale of cotton worth?

Melvina Washington: $12. That's what I got out of a bale of cotton. And corn was 25 cents a bale. And you know how much that was, 12 times 25. That's what I got out of it, and I was living with them. But they was taking care of me, and that was for me to support myself with my clothes and my little school, and they would feed me. I didn't have to worry about food. They would give me all the food I need and take me. And I was raised in church. And that's where I was raised, I'd go to Sunday school every Sunday morning and come back home and eat dinner and go back for church for service that day.

And I never was a person to get out and go this place and that place, another place. When I'd go to church and Sunday school, I would come back home and I'd be happy. We'd get out in the yard and play. Run and play, and I'd have friends who'd come and visit me and we would have a good time, and I enjoyed it. And I worked with them up until I married in 1924.

Hubert Laster: So how old were you then?

Melvina Washington: I was 18 years old.

Hubert Laster: Okay.

Melvina Washington: When I married.

Hubert Laster: So a good age getting married?

Melvina Washington: Yeah. I married at 18, and me and my husband been together ever since. I have never left out of his house one day of my life. I've been right there with him. Raised my children, I raised four, I had four, two boys and two girls, and I raised five grandchildren.

Hubert Laster: How many years have you been married now?

Melvina Washington: 52 years, from 1924.

Hubert Laster: Oh, my, my.

Melvina Washington: And I have been right there with him ever since.

Hubert Laster: That's past what is the golden wedding anni-

Melvina Washington: Golden wedding anniversary.

Hubert Laster: My goodness.

Melvina Washington: That's what I have.

Hubert Laster: Paul Harvey ought to know about you.

Melvina Washington: Well, that's what it was. And I have never been no disagreeable, no, with nobody. I have got along with everybody I met, white and colored. I have friends know me sometimes and I don't even know them, because I love people and I love to be friendly with people everywhere I go. I'm not a stranger.

Hubert Laster: Well, you're not to me any more.

Melvina Washington: Not anywhere I went, I wasn't a stranger. That's my life. My children all grown and gone, and I've got one little granddaughter with me. She's 10 years old. I raised four and they done all got married and gone. I got 19 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Hubert Laster: My goodness. Sounds like a good time when you have a family reunion.

Melvina Washington: Yeah. Well, I've been wanting to have one. We have to have time. When they come home in the summer visit, I enjoy them.

Hubert Laster: Well, it's been an enjoyable morning visiting with you.

Melvina Washington: Yeah.

Hubert Laster: We have to go now.

Melvina Washington: Okay. I enjoyed being with you, and I hope that I'll be able to come back again. Thank you ever so much.

Hubert Laster: Thank you. If you would like to share your memories with us, would you please call the Retired Senior Volunteer Program? That number is 352-8647. This is Hubert Laster, wishing all of you a very pleasant, good day.

Hubert Laster interviews Melvina Washington about growing up in Natchitoches; crossing Cane River on a raft; stopping school to help pick cotton; tending to flu victims; turning plows, middle busters, and juniors; going to church; and on being married for 52 years.

June 11, 2026

72. Louis Nardini

Transcript

Dan Benuska: Today we travel back in time with Mr. Louis Nardini, or BB Nardini as he is more commonly known to his friends in Natchitoches. Mr. Nardini is the author of two books, My Historic Natchitoches, and No Man's Land, The Story of El Camino Real from Natchitoches to San Antonio. We'll be right back with Mr. Nardini after this message from Peoples Bank, our sponsor.

Mr. Nardini, welcome to Memories. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, when you were born?

Louis Nardini: Well, now I was born February 10, 1914, and I've spent all my life here in Natchitoches.

Dan Benuska: Where were you born in Natchitoches?

Louis Nardini: Well, I was born on Sibley Street, at least that's where my house was then.

Dan Benuska: Can you tell me when did the Nardinis come to Natchitoches?

Louis Nardini: They came to Natchitoches... The first Nardini Rayfield Nardini, Sr. Came to Natchitoches about 1846. Now he and his marriage... it gives... his parents came, well, in island of Catania, Italy.

Dan Benuska: Why did he come over here?

Louis Nardini: Well, he came over here. He was engaged to Soldini. He had to work for him four years to pay for his passage over here, and after four years he was clear.

Dan Benuska: What kind of work did he do for Soldini?

Louis Nardini: He was a cabinet maker and a furniture maker, and also a bricklayer. Dan Benuska: For those people that don't know who Soldini is, could you perhaps just say a word?

Louis Nardini: Yeah. Soldini was a man, the contractor that come in that it was backed by Trezzini to a certain extent, and he built some of the houses like the Dunkelman house and the LeMay house, and I believe the home that Sadie Taylor lives in. I'm not sure about that one.

Dan Benuska: What did your, I guess, great-grandfather or grandfather-

Louis Nardini: Grandfather. He was my grandfather.

Dan Benuska: What did he do after he worked as a cabinet maker for Soldini?

Louis Nardini: Well, he went in the business for himself, then. And, of course, all he got from all his labor. He also was able to swing with the times in Natchitoches. It established a grist mill. He actually bought a steamboat. It was sunk, and he got that boiler out of it and the machinery out of it, and he had a grist mill here in Natchitoches.

Dan Benuska: What time in history are we talking about?

Louis Nardini: We are talking about now about the 1870s. And then, well, he did gin stay work, certain amount of blacksmith work, and then mostly his business was in bricklaying. That was about the time a lot of brick work was done around Natchitoches, and I have one brick that came off of the Vienna plantation where they built houses for what was slaves at first and then later on is sharecroppers.

Dan Benuska: That's a memory for you then?

Louis Nardini: Yeah, it's a memory for me because one brick after he lay all the bricks, the last brick that he put out on the top of the chimney, he wrote Nardini on it.

Dan Benuska: That's quite a souvenir.

Louis Nardini: And I have one of those bricks.

Dan Benuska: Now, you told me also that you were related to the Bloodworths.

Louis Nardini: The Bloodworths-

Dan Benuska: And a story about a levy. Can you tell me about the Bloodworth Levy?

Louis Nardini: The Bloodworth Levy was Alfred Bloodworth. Now his mama was Ann Bloodworth. They own that property now, which is known as Northwestern State College campus. And the old lady, Ann, the original, the widow of James Bloodworth, Sr., came here to Natchitoches in 1820, and in 1830, her son... She was living up there what we known as the Bullard house. It's really the old Ann Bloodworth house. Bullard, all he did after he got into it— I'll get into that later— was build some rooms on the side of it, but that is an old Ann Bloodworth home.

Dan Benuska: Where was the levy?

Louis Nardini: The levy was right down on Mill Street. Now every time someone crosses that levy, they owe somebody something.

Dan Benuska: When was the levy completed?

Louis Nardini: It was completed in 1830

Dan Benuska: And there was, you said a toll levy?

Louis Nardini: It was a toll levy. Instead of having a bridge there, this was a toll levy. Everyone going across that, the people who walked across had to pay a penny and then it graduated up. I think you could cross anything for 15 cents, but all that is on records at the courthouse of how he got permission to build a levy. The size of the levy at water level was 40 feet, and at the top of it was 20 feet across.

Dan Benuska: What can you see of the levy there now?

Louis Nardini: The levy is Mill Street, that part of Mill Street where College Avenue ends and you go around.

Dan Benuska: Okay.

Louis Nardini: That is the levy today. There should be a marker there because it's a hundred and something years old now. Now, for example, Alfred Bloodworth had a son, Mack Bloodworth, who lived at Grand Ecore... who later he lived at Grand Ecore. Now everybody crossing that, the city didn't buy that road from him, and they started the procedure of buying it, but they only paid down so much and they never completed the sale. So everyone crosses that levy owes [unintelligible 00:06:11] in Campti. [unintelligible 00:06:13] she's the son of Moses Alfred Bloodworth... daughter of Moses Alfred Bloodworth. They owe her money for crossing that street now.

Dan Benuska: That's something that no one knows about. Let me interrupt you at this time, and we'll have a word from Peoples Bank, our sponsor. Again, this is Dan Benuska and we are talking with Mr. Louis or BB Nardini as he is known, on Memories. Mr. Nardini, one of the things that you told me, some very interesting information about some of the early laws in Natchitoches. Some of those laws were the early pollutants laws. Could we talk about those for a bit?

Louis Nardini: Well, that's a point there. That early pollutants law is this. We didn't even know we had a word such as pollutants back there then.

Dan Benuska: When was this?

Louis Nardini: But it is a pollutants law, and it's written pollutant, and that was in 1816, and it concerned the privies in Natchitoches. All those people would build their privies over ditches, and then when the rain came, it would flush it all down to the lower end of the ditch. Now, one in particular was this ditch that was formed between Second and Third Street. The ditch is still there, but all people up above, living up above built their homes over the privy. Now it all went down Horn Street during the rain.

Dan Benuska: So that Horn Street wasn't a good place to live?

Louis Nardini: Horn Street was a drainage ditch.

Dan Benuska: Right.

Louis Nardini: And of course that was right in the business section of town then, what was business section. Horn Street was bridged in several places and then it had an odor about it, naturally.

Dan Benuska: Right. You mentioned that the privies were sometimes called Louis the 14th.

Louis Nardini: Louis the 14th, the house of Louis the 14th.

Dan Benuska: Can you say why? Tell us why?

Louis Nardini: That goes back earlier. When the people first came into the area in 1700, and a little bit earlier and so on up while they were stuck here, boats gone. They had to root hog or die then, and the only way they could get back at the king was called it the little outhouse, the house of Louis the 14th.

Dan Benuska: Right. One of the things that you told me was about a soldier that had come to town with some money and really-

Louis Nardini: That's another pollutants law [unintelligible 00:08:52]. Now he had $85 on him.

Dan Benuska: What year was this?

Louis Nardini: That was a little bit later on. That was about in the 1830s.

Dan Benuska: Okay.

Louis Nardini: Now he came to Natchitoches, got drunk, I guess. Anyway, he was drowned in [inaudible 00:09:14]. Well, the judge then decided they had to bury this man, and so anyway, his bill come to the actual cash he had $85. To get him out, and they fined him for polluting the stream.

Dan Benuska: For dying in the stream-

Louis Nardini: Dying in the stream, polluting it, and they fined him for it, and that's what the charges were against, and naturally he was guilty of it. He didn't know it, but he was guilty of it. Then there were several about the area that died in this area, not knowing where the people come from or what they had on them. You could get a $14 lawsuit or a $60 lawsuit or a $2 lawsuit, whatever cash you had, that's what they took, and then it was brought in the court, then they buried you.

Dan Benuska: Could you tell me... You mentioned an interesting story about a man who was fined $25.

Louis Nardini: That was one of the Prudhommes down Cane River was racing his horse up what is now Jefferson Street coming into Front Street because Natchitoches always had a front street, see, and he was fined $25 because his traffic could hurt someone. He could run over a dog or something like that. On the same bill, on the same page in that book at the courthouse in the sheriff's business, as a fellow killed another, he was fined two and a half.

Dan Benuska: So if a man killed somebody-

Louis Nardini: So if a man had run across someone and killed him, his fine would've been less than it would've been if he had just been caught for speeding.

Dan Benuska: Mr. Nardini. I see we're running quickly out of time. We have about one minute, and you mentioned something to me about a famous tree in Natchitoches. Could you tell briefly about that?

Louis Nardini: The old live oak tree there in Natchitoches, it's at the corner of Second and St. Denise Street. Now that tree there used to be back there when I was a kid, and maybe before that, was just a meeting place for people and someone come into town or something while they could just stand around by that old oak tree and sooner or later who they were looking for would pass that. It was kind of a rendezvous oak.

Dan Benuska: So that old oak tree is the oldest thing in Natchitoches.

Louis Nardini: The oldest thing in Natchitoches, I believe.

Dan Benuska: Well, let's end at that point. If you're looking for something that reaches far back in history, go stand under the old oak tree. Mr. Nardini, thank you for being on Memories, and I look forward to having you back again. We would like to close each Memories program with information that might be of particular value to the senior citizens. This information is in terms of making a will. A will aids in estate planning, so as to help you escape excessive estate taxes. Plan on making your own will. If you have any further questions about this matter, talk to the folks at Peoples Bank. They'll be glad to help you out. I have a personal favor to ask of you. If you like Memories, call the people at Peoples Bank, or better yet, stop by and talk to them personally.

If you're over 60 and you have some memories you'd like to share with your friends in Natchitoches, call Peoples Bank 352-6404 or 352-8343. You can also call direct to KNOC 352-9596 or the retired senior volunteer office at 352-8647.

Dan Benuska interviews Louis Nardini about growing up in Natchitoches, his family, the Bloodworth Levy, early laws in the area, fining a dead man for pollution, and the oldest tree in Natchitoches.

of 9

Memories Podcast

Episodes

82. Ollie Bates

81. Nodee Scarborough pt. 2

80. Nodee Scorborough pt. 1

79. Verlon Larkin

78. Mrs. Vernon C. Cloutier

77. Reba Wheat

76. Marie Dupre

75. Monroe Roberts

74. Minnie Lee Odum

73. Melvina Washington

72. Louis Nardini

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