*Soft, blues music* *Typewriter keys*
*Music fades* P. Simineau:
My name is Patrick Simoneaux and I was born June 9, 1964. I was out of the plantation when I was
but 10 years old. *Music continues
then fades* It was fun, we had about,
I want to say about twenty families living here. When I was here, I ain’t never seen no new family
came to the plantation. It always was, people I knew staying on the plantation already.
When I was growing up oh, Lord, we had some kids running around, playing. You know they was mostly
family, but we had oh, Lord I can’t count, we had, my mom had eight and other families had
more than eight. You know some families had like about ten or twelve in the family.
My mom and my dad raised us, ‘cause we was in school. I went to Sixth Ward Elementary. There was
integrated, black and white. My mom used to walk us to the head of the road to take the school bus.
When my mom used to work and say like, if someday if we were sick and couldn’t go to school,
they had young, I was 10 years old, they had a girl, I believe was 11, 12 years old watching me,
you know. I said, “I’m 10 years old, 9 years old, you’re watching me!?” That’s how it was you know.
That’s how it was. I told my mama, when I graduate,
I don’t want her to work no more ‘cause she almost got her leg cut off on the cane cutter.
My mom and my dad worked in the sugar cane field, you know. My dad used to drive the tractors and
my mom used to walk the rows and that’s how she almost got her leg cut off by the cane cutters,
while walking the rows in the cane field. I didn’t work in the field, but my brother and
sister did along with my mom, you know. Do my dad, when the weekend come, you’re doing work. You’re
getting the yard cutting grass or doing something, feeding the hog you know, feeding the chickens,
you’re doing something when the weekend come you know. When it’s the weekday, and
you’re not needed they tell you get your lesson but when the weekend come, they’re making you work
you know. While they’re out there in the field, when they come home, the house better be clean,
the house better not be dirty when they come in there knocking off or if their house is dirty, you
and everybody in the house getting’ whipped. Or we used to have in the Big House,
they used to have two ladies, we used to call them the Old Maids. We used to
get the mail or get the milk. They used to give us a quarter or sometimes fifty cents.
Soon as we get the money, in our hand, we’re running to the store
getting penny candy, you know. Back in that day, back time, a quarter was
plenty of money. It was whole lot of money. The plantation store then was Waguespack,
you know. It was a family owned store you know, and they gave credit to people, you know,
and you pay them about every week, you know when you get paid, you paid them, you know. You know
when you get paid, you pay them you know. Just like they had a filling station around here,
they give you free gas, you know. Well not free gas, they give gas on credit you know, yeah,
things like that. It was, if them youngsters can see how we came up, the world would be a better
place. That’s how we were born and raised on the plantation, you know, to respect our elders.
My mom and her sisters, her daddy and mama was born and raised on this plantation too.
You know, it was like family among families staying on this plantation.
Yeah, they used to tell us things like that. Your great- grandfather was born this plantation,
your great, great, great grandfather was born on the plantation. Their life,
their life was harder coming up and as the years go by, our life got, I ain’t going to say better,
but it got better as time goes by you know. You listen to your grandfather and grandmother,
tell you stories about the olden days, the slavery days you know.
And I, I enjoyed days like that being on the plantation. Getting off of school,
playing with your neighbors, your friends, well all of us was kin
to say. You know, running around we had a certain time to be inside. If you ain’t inside
before that light go up on that porch, if you ain’t inside, you get whipped. We used to be in
the cane field, playing in the cane field, making camps in the cane field you know, then we used to
see like a house building up, we used to be under the house playing house you know. Ah, you know,
I had some fun on this plantation. We had a rooster about three houses from us,
we had a rooster, and when you get off the school bus, you better put on your
running shoes because he would chase you like a dog. Matter of fact, I have a brother right now
that has a peck on his nose from the rooster. I wish I could go back to them days, ‘cause
I enjoyed myself on this plantation, I really did. I had so much fun, me and my sisters.
I have three sisters and four brothers, made eight of us. We lived in that house right
there. We lived off the land. See like if you get cut or get a nail in your feet, we wasn’t
going to any doctor, grandmother get salted meat and put it on your feet, you know. That salt will
get the infection out of your feet. Yeah, you know, there wasn’t no doctor.
Just like I said, we were born and raised off the land. My daddy used to raise hogs,
chicken, you know, grew gardens, we were raised off the land, yeah, we were raised off the land.
When I tell you, my daddy had a garden, he had a garden. No rain for a certain, for so many
days or weeks, we used to have to water it by going to the well and get the water by hand
and water it by hand. He grow mustard, cabbage, okra, lettuce, tomato, corn, we grown damn near
everything they had to grow. Yeah, we used to kill hog, get there, boil the water, help my daddy
kill the hog, my mom get there and cook the red beans, we have fresh pork, love the taste of the
fresh pork. We have the neck bone, my daddy used to make hog salad, hog cracklin’, boudin, hog head
cheese. Oh yeah, wanna talk about when we kill a hog all the family on the plantation get
together. We shared the meat. You know we didn’t sell it, we give it, we share. We kill a hog,
everybody on the plantation eat. They have other plantations, like Saint
Joe down the road Oak Alley, you know or Bessie K, you know. They got ‘ol Whitney Plantation,
Evergreen, yeah. You know they had some plantations around here you know. We had other
kin people staying like on Saint Joe plantation you know. So, when we kill a hog, they coming
you know, yeah. It was like a family reunion. We, matter of fact we still do that now. But I can’t
tell you the last time I had went to hog killing. We used to call it a hog killing. Nobody on the
plantation should never went hungry. If one person cook, everybody coming to their house and eat.
That’s how it was on the plantation. If one had it, everybody had it.
My daddy used to raise chickens, we used to get there, and ring the chicken
all, and have it on a Sunday. On a Sunday, that was our Sunday meal, chicken stew.
We call it hen stew, with a good potato salad and some sweet peas, that was our Sunday meal.
We were raised off of all that. *Music continues then fades*
Lots of fishing, that’s what we used to fish a lot. That’s another thing, we lived off the
river too. That’s what we were raised off. And in fact, I was baptized in the river, right there,
I was baptized in the Mississippi River. *Music continues then fades*
Well I was 10 years old, so the in the late sixties, in the early seventies, people start
moving from off the plantation, ‘cause they got stabilized, they was able to save some little
money and you know buy a house, or their family or their family’s relative left them a house.
Once we left here, we moved one, two streets down called Church Lane. And my grandmother,
they had a hay lane, we could have walked from the hay lane to my grandmother’s house, my dad’s mom.
And when we get whipped that’s where we running to, we running to my grandmother.
When my grandmother died, we moved in my grandmother’s house.
It was hard to get to do things, get situated like leaving from the plantation and going
and staying in a house. We ain’t had no restroom, we had to go outside and use the restroom.
You know we had to boil our water for to take a bath. We ain’t had no bath running water, like
bathtubs and all that. We had wells, you know it was a big transition leaving from the plantation
and most, most people from the plantation, they end up packing and leaving and
going and staying on the west bank like Marrero, yeah, like Jefferson Parish.
That was most people from around here, that’s what they did.
When they got the opportunity to you know, to making some money and buy a house, they end up
moving to Jefferson Parish on the west bank. *Music continues then fades*
Our houses? We had like, our house was like a three-bedroom house. You know we had like
little bunkbeds, sometimes we sleep on the floor. Get, make a pallet, put the blankets on the floor
and sleep on the floor. Used to get in the yard, have big 50-gallon barrels, making fire you know.
Yeah, we have to use the restroom outside. Inside, we ain’t had no tub like we had,
now we had, we called it a foot tub. We used to have a big foot tub. We used to put water
in there and take a bath. We used to get our water from the well. Yeah, we had a well.
Matter of fact, the well up there. We had a wooden stove, well we had stove, you know iron
stove where we had to put wood in there for it to light, you know, for the heat to come, you know.
Back in the day, they didn’t have curling irons. My mom had a straightening comb we
used to call them, a straightening comb. Put it on the stove and then straightened
my sister and them’s hair with it. We used to have a man, passed selling fruits,
you know, selling meat, different kinds of meats they bring to you, you know. Like drinks, juice,
milk, things like that they bring to you, you know. Ice, the ice man used to come pass. You need
any ice? He’d have blocks of ice, used to have a picket to pick it, to break it up, yeah.
Back in the days. Tell you we had, I want to say about… might have had twenty cabins over
here. It might have been more because they had some in front of the plantation. All the houses
were straight in line, all the houses were in line together and we had a road in front of the houses,
and we had a cane field on the other side of the road. See how the houses are separated,
that’s how they were separated on the plantation. That’s how wide the houses were from each other
on the plantation. We had plenty front yard and plenty backyard. We even had gates like that
and some people had like, fences but it wasn’t like fences now, it was like chicken fences.
See these cabins, these cabins have been through so much hurricane, I mean hurricane,
bad hurricane Betsy, Camille, these cabins have been through so much and they are still standing
so these cabins were built right. *Music continues softly*
Yeah, it was hard times, but you know, our parents working in the field taking care of us,
you know, it was some hard days but you know the Lord blessed us to put us through them days,
you know. But other than that, as the days went by, days got better
and better, better and better you know. *Music volume picks up then fades out*