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Robert Paul HEBERT Oral History Tape

Note from Glen PITRE: The official project was named “Memories of Terrebonne”. Glen PITRE was project director. “We were funded by The Terrebonne Parish Council, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress”. This interview was conducted by Glen PITRE, an associate of Cote Blanche Productions, recorded on April 28, 1983.. Transcribed by Phillip CHAUVIN Jr. as a project of the Terrebonne Genealogy Society.

Tape 137

My name is Robert Paul “Jack” HEBERT, born on the 31 day of July 1899 {s/o Joseph S. HEBERT & Elizabeth DUMESNIL}.

[Now where]

That was right here in the little town of Gibson. Never lived no place else, in my life and I live now {on Geraldine Road} within a mile from where I was born, where the American Legion Hall is, there was a little house, in them trees, that’s where I was born. We moved further up this way to the little white house by the bridge {now highway 182, house is no longer there}, then my daddy bought this {property} in the latter part of 1904 or the first part of 1905. I know when he bought it, I was five years and six months old. It must have been 1905. He moved me here in March 1905. Made my living here, worked in the swamp. I went to school. When I went to school, in the morning, when I got up, if we had two suits of clothes, we were lucky. One suit, half way clean clothes to go to school, and one to work in the fields. I started school {GibsonPublic School} when I was about 6 ½ years old {ca. Feb. 1906?}. I graduated from the 3rd grade, three years later, that’s all I got, until now. I would get up, in the morning, help my daddy in the fields. He did a lot of contract work, and if he was not at his work, help him in the field, until 8:15, that would give me 45 minutes to put my best clothes on and walk the mile to the schoolhouse. Stay there all day, at 3:30 the bell would ring, then we would all run out of school, take the road and come back here, get back in them old rags and back in the fields, to help my daddy. When he quit in the fields, I would come home, chop kindling, to make coffee in the morning, get the wood in. In winter time for fire. The next morning the same thing over again, that was five days a week. On Saturday it was all day in the fields. When I was about ---Tape # 138--- eleven years old {ca. 1910}, my daddy took sick and couldn’t work anymore. I was working for a cousin of mine, across the bayou in the field with a shovel, cleaning water drains, behind three sets of plows. I did that for about two years, then I went behind a plow, myself. When I didn’t have no work with the plow, I worked picking white beans. Some days I worked all day for just 15 cents. They paid 15 cents for a barrel of shelled beans. On Saturday we used to dress meat. On Saturday we would take the mule and go round up a calf and kill it, for the next morning. We had no ice box or refrigerator, no nothing. We would kill the animal and hang it up to cool over night. On Sunday, we would get up early and take part of the meat to sell at the Donner sawmill, come back and clean up. {Charlie BREAUX was a butcher, he was Mr. HEBERT’S God father. He lived across the bayou and had a special house, all screened, to hang and slice the meat}. On Monday the same thing over again. Over and over; over and over. When I got to be about 16 years old, I was supposed to be getting 80 cents a day, because I was following the men. On Sunday morning, he would give me a soup bone to make a pot of soup. In 3 years, he bought my daddy a 40 dollar mule, off what he owed me. That wasn’t too much salary. When daddy took sick, me and my mother would take a saw and go in the woods and chop wood to sell.

[Firewood?]

For stove wood and fireplaces. We would get a dollar a cord. Me and my mother cut many a cord of wood, to feed my other two little brothers and my sister. My daddy couldn’t work. I remember one time, when my daddy was sick, in bed, mama went to the store in Gibson to get a five cents can of tomatoes to put in a soup, she didn’t have the nickel and she didn’t get the tomatoes. If you didn’t make it you didn’t get it. Between her and my sister [Lucile HEBERT}, they would wash clothes and iron for outside. We was lucky to have clothes to wear. Mrs. {Adolph} MELANCON {nee Sallie FANDAL}, she used to live in Gibson, she was pretty well off. She would go to New Orleans and buy whole bolts of material, she would tell my mama, make me three suits of clothes for my three boys, and make some clothes for your children, with the rest of it. That was how we would get clothes. Don’t go for any relief. They didn’t have that. When I went to work, at the sawmill in Donner {Dilbert, Stark & Brown Cypress Company}. I was 20 years old. I worked there about seven years, at night, getting 20 cents an hour. You had to work 11 hours a night. I have killed alligators 6 foot long, with a spike pole, on the logs, with the light of the mill at night, to be able to make a living. When I worked at Donner, I would get here about seven thirty, eat my breakfast, go to bed. At four o’clock in the evening, my mother would call me, that lunch was ready. I had to walk to Donner. I had to walk there from here, make a day’s work and walk back. After 3 years, they gave me more pay. I was able to buy an old “Model T” {Ford}, and then I could go to work in that. When the 1927 storm come, it took the top off of everything, I patched it up. The night I got married, I was 23 years old. I married {Helen KEYSER, who came on the orphan train and adopted by Arthur BARRAS and Rose BOUDREAUX} the 29 day of January 1923. That will be 60 years this year, and we never was apart. One time during the depression, I had no job. I was trying to farm. What I could make, was what we could eat. I would plow all day in the field. They had a few frogs. I would plow all day until five o’clock, eat my supper, get my frog light and hit the road. It would be eleven at night before I would come out of the woods. I would sell them frogs, so I could buy clothes and shoes for my children to go to school.

[Where would you sell the frogs?]

There was a man passing here every morning buying frogs. He was a colored fellow by the name of Steward RUFFIN.

[Would he take them to Houma?]

He did that for years. He would buy them right here and bring them to Houma. Whenever we would get short during the depression, after I eat my supper, I would go out and kill a deer, to have meat to eat. That was the only way I could get meat to eat. One of my sons, Francis HEBERT, he now lives in Schriever. At night, he was 7 or 8 years old, we would take the light, the 22 rifle and the dogs, and go in the pasture there, they had water, there, backwater would come in then, and kill me some Choupic.

[You had a gun?]

I had got hold of four dollars and a half, and bought me a single shot rifle. I still have it. You could buy a whole box of 50 cartridges for 15 or 20 cents. It was easier getting them that way. You would shoot right over them, and you could go pick him up. After a while, the boy said we got enough, I have a load. I had about 8 big Choupic in that sack. We come here, me and my mother had an old wooden door, we set some sacks on the floor near the fireplace, skin them Choupic, take the bones out, and I had about 6 sticks I had made special, clean them, and put them in the dish pan. We had no ice box, freezer or nothing. We had a board on the back porch over night to let them cool. In the morning, I would get up about 5 o’clock, take my sacks and the sticks and get up on the house, put the sticks across the fireplace chimney and hang them on there. My mother would light the fire in the fireplace, and that would smoke the fish. My wife would light the stove, the pipe would go up in the chimney and make more smoke. At 11 o’clock I would knock off in the fields and get up there and get the fish, nice and brown, but this is the only way you could keep the fish from spoiling. In the afternoon, my wife would cut it up and fry it, to have something to eat.

[Would they last?]

They would last two or three days fried. I had my wife and four children, at that time, my daddy, my mother and one of my uncles {Lezin HEBERT}, to eat with us, so it didn’t go far. When they opened up the WPA, I had a heck of a time getting on. They did not want to give me a job. They said I had a farm and was farming. I asked them are you all going to buy what I am going to raise? I might be able to make it. Where am I going to get some shoes and clothes? So they gave me four days at two dollars a day, each month. That was eight dollars a month. I had to go work 10 hours with a shovel or axe for four days. Then I would have to go chase frogs and Choupic, or something. We were lucky this time of the year. I had bought a piece of leather and made me a belt. With my bucket and my net. You could go right across the railroad by Roy Jones place over there, they had cattle in there and it was all cleared and water covered the ground. You could catch a bucket of Belle River Crawfish every time you went. In 35 or 40 minutes, I could catch a bucket of crawfish, bring them to my sister and mother, who would take care of them. Finally after a while, things got a little bet better. In my life, with the wages they had, the biggest pay I have ever made was a dollar and a half an hour. I was driving a truck for HubCity contractors. Sometime I had to be on the road 18 hours, so I would do pretty good. The man I was working for said “it don’t matter how many hours you make, you will get yours”. I did not get much rest. I would leave here and go to a job in Hattiesburg. I had to stay over there. They gave me 3 dollars a day, for my expense. It was enough for my eats and a place to stay. When the job would be over, I come back here {his son Francis made him quit this job. He told him working those long hours, one day, they would find him in a ditch}. One time I stayed away for two weeks, I got a job on a towboat. Those two weeks seemed like two months, it was the longest I stayed away in my life. I raised four children {Paul Robert, Francis Adam, Alice (Richard) Mc ALLISTER and Theresa (Parris) BROUSSARD}, they all got a pretty good education and they remembered {wife delivered 9 children, 5 died at birth or at a young age}. The reason I can live good now is because they are helping. Right now it costs me 35 to 40 dollars a week, doctors and medicine. For me, and my wife, we are both under the doctor. I can’t complain, I am not a rich man, but a lot of days I would have been better off in bed, but you couldn’t stop. You had to keep going. Right now I will be 84 years old this coming July. I can do a better days work better, than many of these young men. I would be willing to do it, but they are not willing to do it. That would be the difference. They just don’t want to work. They don’t need to, today they can go to the welfare and get $200.00 a week, and I don’t get that on my Social Security, that I paid all my life. I have lived with colored people, all my life. I have no complaints. If I needed help, they would help. If I could help them, I would. We never had any quarrels. They have an advantage and if they can do it, I don’t blame them. If I get that opportunity, I would take it myself.

[When did you go work in Donner?]

I started working in Donner when I was 20 years old. That would have been in 1919. I was working on the log pond, in the back of the mill, at night. I had to bring the logs in, to the man who put them on the log chain. I would walk logs all night. I remember one night, I seen frost at 7:30 at night. That is hard to believe. That is how cold it was. By the next morning, the logs would be all frosted up, and you had to be careful not to fall. There was nothing to hold you but the water, and you could fall overboard. I am not struck with rheumatism today.

[You had a six foot alligator on the logs?]

I had a six foot alligators, two of them, at different times. Walking on the logs, jumping on a log, and look at the other end, and there was an alligator. I would ease up behind him and get him back of the neck with my spike pole. I killed two of them that way in the time I was working.

[You would sell the alligators?]

I would give them away, they wasn’t worth but about 15 cents a foot, and I did not have time to fool with it. I had to sleep in the daytime, to do the work at night. So if anybody wanted it, I just gave it to them. At 15 cents a foot, you did not get much out of them. A lot of people would not believe that is what happened, but it did.

[And you worked there for a long time?]

I worked there; pretty close to 10 years. That is when trouble started. The mill quit. It shut down at night. The Donner company bought from old man D’ESCHAUX. They bought the swamp and the little mill he had. They paid $80,000 for it. They made a mill that would average 60,000 to 70,000 feet of board lumber a day. It ran for 34 years, 22 hours a day. When they shut down, Norman and Breaux bought the rights to the rest of the trees that was left for $85,000.00. You know them people were making money. After the mill shut down, I had worked for Norman & Breaux, when I was but 16 years old, on a pull boat, so after the mill shut down, I went back to work for them, working on a pull boat.

[Did the Donner mill have pull boat?]

At that time, Donner had two skidders and a pull boat running, they had a log train and pull boat puller. I did not work for them in swamp, at all. I worked at the mill all the time I worked for them.

[Did everything belong to the mill?]

Every thing belonged to the company. When they came out with the NRA [National Recovery Act], the government was going to set the price for labor. They told the government, they did not ask how to earn their money, and they were not going to let the government tell them how to spend it. They shut down {planning mill operated for about an additional two years on rough cut lumber stacked on their property}. They shut down all to gather and put about 1000 people out of work. At the time, there was not too much work going on. They had all the swamp from GrassyLake to Schriever, between the Southern Pacific railroad and Bayou Lafourche. On this side, from the Donner mill area plum to Schriever, between the railroad and the ridge, to down below Chacahoula. All that was theirs.

[From Chacahoula?]

Land from the sawmill, the swamp there, between the Chacahoula Ridge and the Bayou Black Ridge, they got $35,000.00, just for that piece there.. They owned all of that. We decided to make a few dollars in the winter trapping. Roy Jones daddy {Roy died 18 May 2006, s/o Oscar JONES}, come from Texas {Orange, Texas}, took over the swamp. Do you know how much he was charging to trap? He charged 50 percent of what you caught. We had to furnish our traps, clothes and everything. We would catch the animals and bring them out to him and he would give us 50 percent, after all them years working for the company.

[You didn’t have to sell your furs?]

We didn’t sell them. We had to catch them. We would not even skim and dry them. He had a man skinning them and drying them and then he’d sell them. He set the prices, if he told you he got $2.50 for a mink hide, and you know it should have been $5.00, you had to take his word. You would have to take half of $2.50, but he still got $5.00 for it. That was what they were doing the poor people.

[What kind of stuff would you catch?]

We would catch mink, coons, possums and an otter now and then, but not often.

[Not the muskrat?]

No. I broke ice many a morning, to go run traps, with shoes on, we couldn’t afford boots.