Maurice Stevens

William Morris Stevens, when I was born, September 6, 1930.

And where were you born?

Oh, down near Marquand.

Who were your parents?

Claudia Stevens and Ruby Stevens.

Your grandparents?

Well, I was thinking.

William Zinus was my dad's dad.

And Bill Leets was my mother's dad.

L-I-E-T-E-Z. Your mom was Cozine?

Grandma?

Grandma Stevens.

She was Matthew.

OK, Matthew.

OK, well, I knew there was Cozine in there somewhere.

What's her maiden name?

What was Leets' name?

What's Grandma Leets' name?

Elizabeth, I believe.

Elizabeth, OK. So what are your earliest memories?

What are your earliest memories?

Of what?

Being a baby, a child?

Yeah, what can you tell us about your childhood?

Well, there wasn't no money around.

I mean, nobody had no money.

Land wasn't worth nothing.

Did your family farm?

My dad had a farm, yeah.

And was it his farm or the family farm?

Well, he bought the best family out.

How long had he owned it?

Really?

Before you were born?

Did he buy it before you were born?

Long during that time.

What kind of things did they, did they raise animals?

A mix of animals and crops?

Mostly animals, hay and stuff.

Where'd you go to school?

Greasy Creek.

Little country school and Mark I, high school Mark I. Why'd they call it Greasy Creek?

That's where it was at, on Greasy Creek.

Yeah, it was on Greasy Creek.

There's an old creek right in front of the house.

I mean, right in front of the school.

Some guy was named Greasy and they named the creek after him, I think.

Oh, OK. Little school still standing there.

I graduated out of high school in 1948.

I graduated out of there in 44.

Do you remember any things, any particular story from school that you remember?

Anything funny or just anything that stands out to you?

I mean, grade school or?

Grade school or high school, either one.

Oh, we used to play a little softball.

That's the only thing we knew about.

We didn't know nothing about basketball or volleyball.

We got to high school.

We were just out there in the country by ourselves.

Right.

Did you have baseball gloves?

No.

You just caught them with your hands.

Well, softball, I guess.

That's the kind of ball we had.

Did you like school?

Yeah, I liked school well.

Any favorite subjects or anything that interested you?

We used to have a lot of spelling matches.

Did you win?

Most of the time, me and my sister started school together.

She was a year older than me.

And we went through grade school and high school all together and graduated high school together.

And me and her was the head of the class in spelling and stuff like that.

Wonderful.

So growing up on a farm, did you help on the farm a lot?

Did you help out with things?

Yeah, whatever it was.

We'd do cut sprouts and cut wood.

We had to cut the wood with a cross-cut saw, chop and axe, whatever we had.

They picked the corn with a team of mules, a team of horses, didn't you?

Team mules.

Team of mules.

I remember some of that.

So were you able to sell the produce and the meat in town?

We ate most of it.

So, OK. See, I had seven brothers and sisters.

So we took quite a bit of feed off.

OK. Your farm was basically for you guys to live off?

Yeah, that's what we lived off.

OK. And he done timber.

They done timber work.

Yeah, we had some timber work.

And that would help you get what you couldn't grow.

So as you got moved into early adulthood, what did you do as you transitioned out of school?

Yeah, after 1948.

Well, I worked in timber around until I went to the Army.

In the Army?

I'd say I worked in timber around until I went to the Army.

OK. Until I was 51.

Did you go to Korea?

No, I was on the division training committee.

Any Army stories?

Well, me and three other guys carried the flags in front of the division training.

The division parade one time carried the flags and rifles on the yard in front of the Red View and Sam.

Me and, by that time, I was sergeant, and there was me and three other sergeants.

Was that the highest rank you achieved sergeant?

Yeah, I was just in through years.

Oh.

Well, you really rose like cream.

Yeah, I done good in the Army.

I think they said he'd had a scholarship to go to college somewhere, wasn't it?

You had a scholarship to go to college?

Nah, I didn't.

That's what Wilma was telling me.

Well.

He didn't go, but he was top of his class at that time.

That would've been for sports.

Softball?

Volleyball.

Volleyball?

I was a pretty good volleyball player.

So what did you do when you came back after the Army?

Did you come back to this area?

Yeah, I went to work at St.

Louis for a while to fish your body, and I came down to the refinery down here, and I worked in the lab there for 10 years.

Where it national is, I worked in the lab there for 10 years.

Who was it that we just recently interviewed that worked in the lab there?

That was Jack Ward Skinner?

Did you know?

Jack Skinner?

Yeah, yeah, because that's where he worked in the lab.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we worked together.

Oh, OK. So then you stayed up in St.

Louis for about 10 years, and then you came down here?

No, I'd done that after the mine shut down, after the refinery shut down over here.

I went back to work in St.

Louis.

And did you live up there where you worked?

First time I worked up there, I lived up there.

Then the next time, I worked up there after I got out of the Army, and I came down and worked down here, the mines for 10 years, and I worked construction for two years, went back to St.

Louis.

I lived up at my family's city down here.

And Fisher Body, where was that?

In the city, within the city?

Yeah, it was in the city.

OK. That's the Reginald Union.

Ford plant was out in Hazelwood.

I worked out there the last, around this, yeah.

You were wearing a Cardinals hat.

Were you a fan of the Cardinals back then?

I went to all the games I could.

Really?

Yeah.

Who was your favorite player?

Probably Stan Musial.

The man.

Stan the man.

He was a good player.

Decent.

A decent person.

Yeah, a good person.

Yeah.

Yeah, he was a good man.

I think it was the ballgame when he didn't your dad catch a ball.

I saw it one.

Oh, OK. Saw the foul ball out, and I had to kill him.

With your bare hands?

No, I had to.

And that whole thing went for two days.

OK, so you went up to St.

Louis, and you worked for a while.

At any point, when did you come back this way, or did you stay up there for a long while?

Came back in 70, wasn't it?

70, yeah, OK. And I worked in Timbers the rest of my life.

So when you say you worked in Timbers, what were some of the things that you did?

Oh, cut loads and haul loads and run a sawmill.

You used a cross-cut saw quite a bit, him and Paul Mouser.

I don't know if you knew Paul Mouser or not, but when is it?

That was back before one time, either.

Oh, OK. Paul Mouser, didn't he tap the trees and get syrup?

He had maple syrup?

Elwood had done more of that than Paul did.

Paul did some?

Elwood did.

Oh, Elwood.

Paul did, too, because we lived right above him.

We'd help him gather the water.

I'd done nothing out of the shed, too.

And we didn't like we couldn't make a living.

Right, when you would tap for syrup, you would have to spend a lot of time boiling that down, right?

Yeah.

How long would it take to boil it down?

Was it several days?

Well, you had a big pan that you'd put the water in there, took it down, and it got down pretty thick while you put it out in a kettle and purified it.

OK. I imagine that was a time-consuming process.

It was, day and night.

Yeah, wow.

Would you have to be really careful, like monitoring?

Were you burning with wood?

Yeah.

And did you have to, like, when you're doing that, I would imagine you'd have to be careful not to over, could you burn it and stir it up?

You could, but it didn't cook down that fast.

Right.

So what's the proportion to the sap?

And then how much syrup do you get?

What is it like?

About 50 gallon of water makes a gallon of syrup. 50 gallons to one gallon.

I'd cook it down a lot.

Yeah.

Unless you want to make the candy, because then you make candy out of it.

You can cook it on down to make candy, can't you?

Yeah, you can cook it on down to make candy.

He used to do that for us when I was down there.

So that's a lot of boiling.

They'd put it out in a kettle, wouldn't they?

Usually put it out in a kettle, or that's what I'm all about.

Never got to a certain stage, you'd put it out in a kettle and put some egg whites and stuff in and purify it.

I'd boil down skinless stuff off of it and purify it.

And you would start in, what, March?

February or March?

Probably?

Probably February, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

February and March, maybe any time.

January, the other part of January and February.

Wow.

When the sack comes up, that's when it starts getting warm weather for them all there.

And then season the night and thaw the day a little bit.

Did you always use the same holes in the tree, or did you have to?

I had to re-tap them every year.

OK. And would one tree ever give out?

I guess if it got too old, would it not?

Well, ours never did die.

It was storm-blown a lot of the day.

Well, yeah.

Are there people still around here doing it, I guess?

Still tapping?

Mm, I don't know.

Well, I think he was when he died.

Yeah.

Zon Kuhn went out in Boulder County.

He was on my route.

He done some of it every year just for himself.

But he passed away his boy dead, and he did some of it.

Louie Gorse does some of it.

And there's another guy, Mark Gwynn, that moved in.

Mark, Mark Gwynn, he's trying to make it up.

I think he is cooking off the kettle though.

No, he went to Louie's this year and cooked it off.

Gorse used to do that all the time.

Now, I know it's maple trees, but is it a certain type of maple?

Does it have to be a sugar?

Sugar maple.

It seems like a, you know, I think about ways to get something to sweeten your food, and that seems like one of the more difficult ways to do it.

Did you ever keep bees or anything like that?

We had a lot of bees.

Did you?

We made honey, and we had probably 20 stands of bees.

Wow.

When I was a kid.

Did you help with that?

No, we didn't.

Now, thinking about sweeteners, I've also heard of sorghum molasses.

Did you grow that, sorghum?

Sorghum, yeah.

Did you use that for sweetening?

Now, how does that work?

Well, you go cane and drip it down and grind it and get the juice out of it and cook it off.

I like to do maple syrup.

Don't take as long to cook it off though.

Is it the same proportion, 50 to one?

Oh, it makes it a lot more.

So you grind it, and you get the liquid off of it?

You'd run it through a press or something, wouldn't it?

It runs through a press and squeeze it out and run it over.

I think I've seen pictures where they would have a horse that would go in a circle to do that.

Like a mill.

That was a mill press.

Yeah, OK. So a horse would walk around there all the time.

OK, yeah.

Think about it.

And what about, so you called it a press?

Yes, it was.

I don't remember what.

I don't know.

I just know Joe Ray Lispite used to make it out there, kind of a dude.

And what about fruit?

Did you make cider, things like pears or?

Oh, we canned a lot of fruit.

But you didn't press it to get the juice from it?

No, we didn't make no cider or nothing.

Only someone's time for the day, probably.

Yeah.

Well, there were seven of you.

So seven kids.

Eight kids, seven decided to meet me.

I was the next eldest one.

So I got to do more store work.

Do you remember during that time growing up, were there any celebrations in the community that you remember?

Any carnivals or fairs or anything like that that you remember?

Well, they used to have a picnic down in Mark One.

Fourth of July picnic.

OK. But we didn't eat until 10 or 12.

We had to ride a team of wagon down there.

When did you get cars?

Was it, do you remember when?

Well, my dad got a Model T sometime, I don't know, back in the late 30s.

And then he got a Model A Ford in about 1940.

Was it common for people to have cars or?

Not very many people had any.

What were the roads like?

I had never asked any.

Were they rock roads?

I imagine they were rock for a long time.

Just went across country.

Yeah?

Wow.

The old Bloomfield Road went up past their house.

I mean, from Mark One coming up to the, I was telling them about the old Bloomfield Road coming.

First house and then it broke off up here by Noah Miller's, wasn't it?

So it would go all the way to Bloom?

Yeah, it was what they kind of called it, wasn't the old Bloomfield Road, all the way.

It went to the Abel Place out there down the street.

Yeah.

So Model As were newer than Model Ts.

Model As were newer?

Yeah, they were newer than the Model T. I think they started making the Model A in 28.

It was not very good carb.

The Model As was a good carb.

Well, what did you use to go up to St.

Louis when you worked up there, by that time you had your own car?

Well, the first car I bought when I went to work in St.

Louis I forgot the number, the 38 Chevy.

So in 1954, you bought a 1938?

1953, you bought a 1938.

See, now it's hard to find parts for cars that are, you know, 20 years old.

Yeah.

And you had a 54 Buick too, wasn't that a 54 Buick?

Yeah, 51 Ford, and I had several different cars over here.

But the first one you got was a 38?

38 Chevy.

How did that run?

How did that run, the 1930?

The Buick, yeah.

Yeah, it's probably something that's changed over the years.

I imagine people kept their cars a lot longer and just repaired them.

And today, it seems like people don't keep their cars as long.

Well, they'd have to overhaul them every so often, wouldn't them old cars?

Yeah, they'd have the bearings in them and stuff like that.

I remember him talking about some of that.

Did you work on your cars yourself?

Yeah.

Yeah, I changed it more to a Model A in just a little bit.

When you were, you said you worked in timber, where was the area where you cut down the trees?

Was that also Marquand?

No, not in the Marquand area.

But in the Madison County?

Yeah, Madison County.

Did they ever replant trees after you cut them down?

Oh, we just went through and cut out the bigger stuff and let the young stuff come out.

They just cut stuff like tie stuff, and they didn't clear cut nothing back then.

So selective.

They're selective, and then they just, in another five or six years, they go back in and cut some more.

Right.

Did you cut a mix of wood, or did you go for particular trees?

Whatever was big enough.

You said it was mostly being used for ties, or did you use it, was any of it used for building or furniture?

It depends on what years he was talking about.

After I came back from St.

Louis, I went to work.

They made the squares, and they'd run in their lumber.

And made pallets out of them.

Made pallets out of them.

Pallet-grade lumber, the last one we started.

Well, when you come back from St.

Louis.

Yeah, when I come back in 1970.

I had a family member who said that the government, he worked for the government planting trees.

And I'm guessing it was WPA.

And he was complaining that the government made them plant trees on good farmland.

But yeah, they did.

But it was a way to work.

It wasn't him.

It wasn't in what he loved.

Slaughter on the family farm, and different tracks he had.

Yeah, he would have been too young.

But it was during, I'm pretty sure it was well.

No, they said it was during my lifetime.

Was it?

So how would the city compare to living in Madison County?

Which one did you like more?

You mean St.

Louis?

Yeah.

Madison County.

Madison County, yeah.

He never did take his kids up there, did he?

Well, not me.

Not very much.

No, we'd go for a visit, but that's about it.

What did you do here for fun, recreation?

Hunting, fishing, things like that?

Most of it was hunting and fishing.

I used to have some of the good coon dogs and good running dogs, and I hunted a lot.

My family would have put hunting too.

Yeah, we'd call those fur.

Fur was something in there that wasn't in there now.

Coon, raccoon hides, and box hides and stuff.

Where would you sell it?

People would come around and buy it, wouldn't they?

Well, we got to sell it out down to.

Advanced there for a while.

Advanced and then out.

White water.

Yeah, they'd skin a skunk or about anything they could catch.

Don't catch a skunk, they'd skin it out and put it in their pocket.

Wow.

Remember that?

A good skunk was worth the money.

Did it smell like a skunk?

No, it didn't.

Yeah, and if you caught him, it was bad news.

They'd possum hunt and everything like that too.

I bet they used a carbide lighter or lantern back then.

And did you eat most of that?

Did you eat possum?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Did you have any favorites or anything that you particularly didn't like?

I liked raccoon more for a while.

My mother'd cook it.

No, raccoon's greasy, right?

Raccoon is greasy?

Well, he cooks the grease off of it.

Yeah, but I mean it's a.

After he's fat, his mother was a good raccoon cook or two.

Squirrel and rabbit.

Were there any that you didn't like?

Felt pretty good.

No, all that we ate was good.

We didn't eat no possum and stuff like that.

Back then, you ate what was on the table.

Yeah, it wasn't as good as your eye.

And I'm picky.

I don't like this.

I ate what they had.

Did people eat fox?

No, we didn't.

Why not?

You could, but we just never ate it.

They ate too much like a dog, I guess.

They maybe got a lot of meat.

No, the fur skins, they're not a lot of meat on them.

There's no fat on them.

But you probably used the fur.

Oh, the fur.

Yeah, you get, you know.

Well, I've got as much as $45 out of fox hide.

That's when you're making three, four bucks an hour.

I mean, in five minutes, you had one.

You know, people today talk about seeing big cats and bears, pumas, bears.

Did you often, any time, did you see that kind of thing?

In the last year and a half.

What about when you were younger?

No, we had some bobcats, but we didn't know bears.

Well, we had back, what year was that that grandpa seen that bear running across the field?

That's when he was picking corn up there.

Remember what Johnny Sanders' old house?

It came over the gate over there, but his grandpa's old dog was chasing a bear across the field, barking a little ichabash.

That's in my lifetime.

I was about like that, though, I remember that.

So that had been, what, 50 years ago, probably.

So the fox was going behind it, barking, wasn't it?

Bear wasn't paying no attention to it.

That was one of those, where they were picking corn over there, I guess it was, wasn't it?

Yeah.

You had never caught a bear, though?

I've seen four wild ones.

Wow.

Around here, haven't you?

Yeah, around down there on my farm.

Last year we've seen one, didn't we?

Me and...

Yeah, you did.

How big?

Oh, it ran down the road in front of us and stopped and looked at us and turned and went back over the hill.

It was kind of rusty, colored, and then it went a black one.

All the others I've seen was black.

And they used to haul ties down to mark one.

The team of them ragged in, didn't you?

What, the team of them ragged in?

Yeah, the team of them ragged in.

Then we got in my leg truck.

Did you ever take the train?

Three times.

Come to Frederick County and went to Delta.

Went and rode both ways.

Is your family, are they still in the area, or did people spread out?

Is your family still nearby?

You mean my family?

Yeah.

All my family's around here.

OK. Your siblings?

Yeah.

Your sisters and aunts, or my aunts, they don't live here?

They don't, none of them live around here.

OK. Well, Ann Combs, I don't know if you remember Ann Combs.

He was a teacher at Malamot.

That was his sister.

OK. She taught 40-something years.

That's 50 years over there?

Yeah.

That's the one who went to school with him.

OK. Ann Combs, she teaches Malamot.

Ann Combs is the wife.

Well, I'm sorry.

I'm still stuck on, like, you know, cat, wild cats.

Did you have chickens?

Like, did they ever come in the yard?

Yeah, we had chickens.

Uh-huh.

So did they ever, like, foxes or bobcats ever come into the penthouse?

Oh, they'd slip in and get one.

Once in a while, they had hawks cut on them, too.

Ah, right.

Once in a while, two in a possibly get in there.

I guess you had dogs out there, though, to scare them off.

I remember one time, Grandpa's told me he'd come from the barn and seen a glow underneath the house, pieces of wood.

Wood had grown out on the floor and burned through the floor, and coals in the bottom underneath the house.

Remember that?

I don't think Grandpa was telling me that.

It was his dad.

So that's just a story that Grandpa had told me.

Right, the barn.

It actually happened to him.

Yeah, I know.

So the wood, the fire?

It fired out of the fireplace, rolled out on the floor, and burned through the floor and fell through the fence.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

But it didn't catch the house on fire?

A little bit.

I don't know.

You're so calm about it.

Yeah.

Well, the house wasn't underpinned probably back then.

You could see it.

As far as I see, it cracked through the floor anyway.

Right.

I remember the old house.

Were you close?

So you were close to water?

Yeah, the creek.

The greasy creek.

Right to our farm.

We got water out of the spring.

You know, let's, for a second, think about the house.

So you said it was raised up?

Well, it's set on blocks.

On blocks, kind of like rocks.

It was set on rocks, wasn't it?

And so it would have had like a plank floor, but like no insulation or anything underneath it.

No, there was no insulation back then, was there?

Because that's one of those things that we all, today, we take for granted that a house and a floor is a certain thing.

And I think people would think of it as an interesting thing to imagine living in a house where it's raised up and it's just, you've got just planks of wood between you and the outside.

Did you hear animals and things like that get up under your house?

No, I didn't.

Yeah, because I live in a small house that I oftentimes will get armadillos underneath me.

I hear them underneath my cabin.

And their shells are hitting the bottom of my house.

And that's, you know, I've got to try to keep them out, but they like getting underneath there.

Yeah.

Were your floors cold?

Did you do anything particularly to try to keep warm when it was wintertime for your feet?

Well, we had a fireplace.

Right.

And a heating stove, cook stove.

And did you tend to wear a lot of clothes in the winter?

Yeah.

I mean, in other words, like in the house.

So you had people, today, everybody keeps their temperature nice and warm, but I imagine back then, you really layered up in the house.

Yeah, yeah, it was warm.

Yeah, whenever I stayed down in the old house, I had a blanket on me about that thick.

Very good mood, crawling underneath the old, that old house we're talking about.

And you know, water'd freeze up whenever we was living there on the farm, water'd freeze up in the water bucket.

Right.

In the house.

It did, that old messy cook house down there.

Yeah, it'd freeze.

That's 32 degrees.

I know it.

That's when I was about like that.

So yeah, so even if you had a fireplace or a wood, a stove of sorts, it would still die out and it would get pretty cold.

Yeah, it'd get pretty cold.

Yeah.

You wouldn't like cooking with a chainsaw.

Well, right.

They didn't burn slabs and stuff like that, wouldn't they, from the sawmill?

All the comforts we have today, you know, young people hearing these stories will find it hard to believe.

I know.

The difference and what people live with.

Well, like I said, the story, of course, I'm 65, going on 66, we raised pigs and one time I went down there, there were three pigs laying in the spring, dead.

Of course, you know, back then you just throw them out.

There were already a couple thrown out because there'd already been a couple grounded.

And you just throw them out and then you let the water run through it and then you drank the water the next day, all night eating it.

And I fell in the old spring one time to make a complete circle.

This was whenever, this wasn't on grandpa's place, but it was one time, whenever we lived.

What do you mean, complete circle?

Well, I wasn't very big.

I fell in, I was leaning over, getting a bucket of water and I fell over and I didn't want to, shh.

Oh, okay.

Made a, made a, that was the hard part.

We was raising hogs.

But back then we'd just throw a hog out and nothing to it, you know.

Or that's what, that's what we'd done to them anyway.

You couldn't use the pig afterwards or could you?

Well, I'd say about that long.

Oh.

It's good if we didn't have a bunch of big ones, I guess.

Okay.

And dad would smoke some meat.

Remember he'd smoke some meat up in the old smokehouse.

So you had a smokehouse on your property?

Well, we did when we lived, this was when I was a kid, when dad- We did at home too.

Yeah.

That's what you'd done.

That's your main blood to secure a smokehouse.

Yeah, we'd do, we'd kill a deer on November while we'd hang it up out in the smokehouse and just leave it hang there and shut off whatever you want to eat.

Once it chilled out, why it wouldn't spoil to hang out there in the smokehouse.

So when you smoke meat, it's not that it's, is it just a very jet, like a 150 degree heat or not even that hot?

Not that hot.

You just put a bucket down the floor and put your smoke in, put your little wooden stuff in and it'll smoke, it'll smoke up in half.

They call it cold smoking, right?

It's not, technically it wouldn't really cook it.

No, it wouldn't cook it.

It wasn't cooked, it was- You cure it.

Right.

Put the sugar and stuff on and cure it and then you get to cure it and then you smoke it.

Okay.

So you're really more drying it than anything.

Yeah.

And drying it in such a way that it doesn't rot while it's drying.

Okay.

Then when you cut some pieces off, do you have to cook it?

You know, heat it up to eat it?

Yeah, yeah.

Just like smoke, just curing it so it'll keep.

Well, it's got a bunch of salt on it, you know, and you sure can cure it too, don't you?

Mm-hmm.

But they usually put salt on it.

So the salt and the smoke would basically protect it?

Oh yeah, it wouldn't spoil it when it got smoked.

You'd leave it hanging out there.

Was there a certain season when you smoked things?

Where you- Do you have to be in the fall?

Where you killed your hogs in the fall and then smoked them in the wintertime.

Back then I'm thinking, when did they implement like deer season or did you hunt?

Well, it started in about 1944.

Okay, so really before that, you could just kind of hunt when you needed it.

Well, there wasn't no deer.

Yeah, oh.

Oh.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Wasn't very many, was there?

Not very many.

And I guess that's why they implemented the seasons.

Mm-hmm.

Was to let the deer replenish.

Yeah, they stopped a few around here and there and then they got spread and then they got open a season for deer too.

I believe 44 was the first season.

Yeah, I think that's what I remember.

But you had to hunt for a deer back then and then it wasn't just we'll walk out and get one now.

I've seen them walk around in the city on the street.

Yeah, and they got a problem with them in the city.

They're kind of in a way now.

So what was their predator to keep their numbers down?

Yeah.

These guys.

Yeah.

I thought you'd get my word.

Yeah, basically it was people that kept them down, right?

Well, there wasn't any.

There wasn't any.

When I was a little boy, there wasn't none.

Why?

They just wasn't around here.

They just wasn't running around.

They'd kill them all out.

Oh.

I think they just been overhunted, probably.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they had to get something to eat.

There was no season out in the back.

Right.

If people needed them, they would just go hunt them if they needed them.

How about fishing?

Did you have a place?

What kind of fish did you catch?

All kinds.

Whatever you caught.

Whatever they could get to eat, wasn't it?

Whatever they could eat, bull frogs.

Oh, yeah, frogs.

Tastes like chicken.

Yeah, they're like chicken.

Yeah.

I'm curious about the construction of your house.

OK, it was up on rocks.

But what about your fireplace?

Did you have a hearth?

It was built from the ground up on the outside of the house.

So it was on the ground.

It was on the ground.

It had to be, because it was heavy.

Yeah.

The old fireplace is still sitting standing, no houses down.

But I don't know if it had a hearth.

I don't think it even had a hearth on it.

Not much of one did.

I don't remember one in that room.

It had a little out in front of it.

It had a little bit, but I don't know.

And then so the log rolled out, burned a hole in the floor.

But the rest of the floor didn't really catch on fire.

Well, I don't know how much it may have been a hole like that that fell down, you know.

I don't know how big, you remember how big a hole it was?

It made too big a hole.

It probably, you know, where you see coals coming from the barn, you know, that much coal, you see it.

But I don't know how big a hole it made.

But it didn't, the rest of the floor didn't catch on fire.

So...

It caught on fire when we put it out.

Oh, OK. Were you, it was nighttime when it happened?

No, it was early in the morning.

He went to feed them.

I guess he went to feed them.

What did he want to feed them?

Feed the horses and mules or whatever.

Mules, probably back then.

Mules.

I remember one time, I guess you were talking about the griffins over there, that woman would make a mud pie that way the neighbors think she had something to eat.

Mm-hmm.

Remember?

Oh.

You was telling me, you was telling me that.

They didn't have, she had a bunch of kids in the manhole.

I guess he left, didn't he?

Or if he got killed, maybe he's the one who got killed and she didn't have nothing to eat.

So she, you know, that's what you told me anyway.

They'd make a mud pie, let the neighbors think she did have something to eat.

Well, he had several kids.

But they didn't eat it.

Well, no, just to show, let people think they had something to eat.

Yeah, we gave our neighbors milk and stuff like that all the time.

Yeah.

I imagine it was more common back then.

Yeah.

Yeah, you didn't sell it and everything, you had anything, you gave it to them.

Right.

Did you, were you active in any kind of a church?

Well, not really, wasn't, but his dad did give the Mountain View Church the land down to build a church on, didn't he?

Well, we went to Walton Grove Church when I was a kid.

We went there every Sunday.

Yeah, I forgot about, yeah, that was before my time.

We had to walk down there about a mile and a half.

A mile and a half, probably wasn't it, from the old home place, yeah.

But everybody was there.

I think that's something we don't get as much today, people walking places.

Everybody drives places, and I suspect back in your time you spent a lot more time walking and getting to know the environment around you.

Yeah, and the ride, this was a wagon, ride the move.

And when he played sports, he'd walk from Mark 1, well, that was probably six, five miles up there, he'd walk after a ball game from Mark 1.

After the game, I'd walk home every night.

After the game, he'd walk home every night.

He'd walk around with you.

Did you, as a kid, did you guys, like, did you learn the names of the birds and the trees and like, did you kind of understand what was going on around you pretty well?

Oh yeah.

I think that's one of the things today, again, kids don't know that, they don't really understand what kinds of trees they have or the kinds of insects or anything.

Did you do anything with black walnuts?

Boy, they're everywhere now, but.

Oh, we used to pick out a lot of walnuts.

Did you ever use hickory nuts?

Yeah.

Everyone knows you could eat those until a few years ago.

We used to go up on Cotton and Mountain every year, get a bunch of hickory nuts.

Everybody talks about walnuts, but hickory nuts are really good, too.

They are.

Hazelnuts, you had hazelnuts, you had hazelnuts.

A lot of hazelnuts.

Yeah.

That's just, you know, what a hazelnut is.

Yeah.

There were a few of them trees down in the old home place, yeah.

There used to be a lot of them around, but you don't see them much anymore.

What about pawpaws?

Did you ever do pawpaws?

Yeah.

That's another one that.

My mother really likes pawpaws.

Oh, they taste so good.

You never hear, I guess because they can't sell them at a grocery store, they don't keep very well in the shelf.

But boy, when you get a fresh one off of a tree.

I wouldn't have pawpaw either.

No, that's not a persimmon, is it?

No, pawpaw.

No pawpaw.

Green, about that.

Yeah.

I like that.

It's almost like a banana.

It's a banana flavor.

Kind of, in a way.

Yeah, it is.

Oh.

Yeah.

Did you have any persimmons?

Did you have those?

Oh, yeah.

There's not many persimmons around anymore.

There's not as many as there used to be.

Yeah.

Can you cultivate them, or are they just wild?

Takes us a little while.

Wild.

Yeah, we've got a few at our place, patches.

They seem to grow in little groups.

They grow in little groups, yeah.

The deer like to eat them.

Possums like them pretty much.

No.

Yeah.

They used to treat possums and persimmons.

Possum went around with persimmon trees.

Did you ever have any pets that were like wild animal pets?

You hear people that take in raccoons and possums.

My daughter, my little girl had a raccoon.

Oh, okay.

Can't be a long time.

Yeah.

Did she keep it in a cage outside?

She kept it in the house.

Huh?

Oh.

Well, it went about like that.

Raised it for my baby.

Yeah, it grew up a pretty good size.

And it didn't bite?

Didn't bite her.

I don't see anything going to it.

Well, what about beaver?

Did you eat beaver?

That's one I've heard of people eat.

We ate some beaver one time.

Yeah.

I might got you one or something.

There's a lot of meat on them.

Yeah.

It seems like there would be.

The dark meat.

Yeah.

I'd skin them out, but I never really cared about eating them.

You know what I saw recently that I've never heard anybody sing in Madison County, and I'm wondering if you did.

Have you ever seen otters?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

I saw some a couple weeks ago, and I first saw some.

I've got a grandson that caught a lot of them at a high price.

They used to be about $140 apiece.

Who would buy them?

What did they want with them?

Fur.

Me, fur.

Oh.

Yeah.

He caught a lot of them there for a while.

Yeah.

They work on the fish bath.

Mm-hmm.

They'll play in that little creek.

No, because you can go up a little creek.

They used to have a lot of fish in them.

You'd find their scales there on the bank.

I've done that.

I don't know where they just clean out the whole creek.

Yeah.

They'll clean out a whole water, and just move on up to the next one, and these little old creeks, like Greasy Creek and stuff like that, they just clean them out.

And the ponds.

The ponds, yeah.

Who's going to ask it?

My son's father-in-law, they got a pond out there, and they had catfish like that, and they'd kill probably 20-something otters.

They'd just come in and clean it out.

Wow.

And kill a bass, and they just eat everything in there.

Yeah.

The main part of their diet is just fish.

Yeah, they just travel and eat fish.

They'd come up a little old creek, and then they'd come over to the pond, and they'd try to kill them.

Well, they destroyed all the fish.

Yeah.

They'd put fish like that in there, bass like that in there, and my grandson would come up there and fish, and come up there and take a minnow or something out of the pan, and then the otters cleaned them out.

Catfish would do the same.

That's out of the bunker.

Yeah, out of the bunker, yeah.

Okay.

Are they pretty common in Missouri?

They're native to Missouri, I imagine.

Otters.

Yeah.

They are now.

Yeah.

They've grown a bunch of them.

They've grown a bunch of men.

Yeah.

They're just everywhere.

Hmm.

We go to Minnesota fishing a lot.

Ah.

Started up, went up there in 1964.

Oh, yeah.

And they've been a lot of years, yeah.

Yeah.

Why did you, why do you go there to fish?

Do you do it like in the wintertime?

Just take a vacation.

Oh, okay.

Is it like ice fishing?

Ice fishing?

No, it's...

No, we go in the June.

In June, yeah.

Do they have a particular fish there that we don't have here that you like?

Not particularly.

Oh, okay.

Same stuff.

We can catch anything.

Anything in the collection.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

That's why I got a line bass.

You know the pack.

Walleye.

Proppie.

We caught a lot of proppies this year.

Dad didn't go this year.

We didn't go.

No.

He told me to just go to health next year.

We're taking them.

This year, I've missed one.

Yeah.

That's been taken.

I took them this year, but I didn't know.

If he could make the trip.

But I think he could have made the trip.

It's been all right.

There was 36 of us went that one year.

What about his family?

Whoa.

Nice.

You get like a big cabin.

Yeah, there's a resort up there.

We rent about everything in there.

At that time, we rented about everything in that resort.

When we first started going up there, there was an old way out of the resort there.

And he lived in Council Los Islas.

And we'd go up there and stay at his place.

And we'd just do the whole resort.

If we didn't call him and make a reservation, he'd call us and see if we was coming.

Who is this that you stayed with?

A guy from Council Los owns the resort.

He'd go back to Council Los Islas.

He'd go up there and rent that resort.

Well, he jumped out of the window at school.

He'd about to get a whooping.

I thought you were a good student.

Poor guy.

Why did you jump out of the window at school?

Were you in trouble?

A little.

I think your dad ran him back to school, didn't he?

How old were you?

In high school.

Were you running for the teacher or from students?

I don't know why I was living.

I think Brentel was after him.

I mean, the superintendent was kind of into it.

Well, that was a hands-on superintendent.

I wasn't running for me.

That superintendent was involved with the students.

Hey, jump out of the, I don't know what window, I don't remember what window you came from.

Oh, sure.

This just gets better and better.

I don't know what he got in trouble for.

So you were in the superintendent's office on the second floor.

Did you break a leg or anything?

No.

Well, that's good.

He was in pretty good shape back then, wasn't he?

I was in real good shape then.

Yeah, I walked home from all the ball games.

I was in good shape.

Played the basketball and volleyball.

You liked the volleyball better than the basketball.

I don't know.

I was a better volleyball player than I was basketball.

Well, those are winter sports.

So you walked five miles after the games in the winter.

Wait, so what year were you born?

1930.

So we just celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the moon landing.

Do you remember that happening?

The moon landing in 1969?

Yeah.

Was that something you were able to watch on TV, or did it stand out to you as something important?

I remember that one being important to me.

I remember watching it on television.

Of course, you had black and white television back then, and you may get one channel, or 12, 6, and 3.

That covered everything you needed to know.

Channel 12 covered all that.

It's not like any of it now.

Did you read the newspaper regularly?

Was that a regular thing that people did back then?

Yeah.

It seems a little less common today.

Used to.

I hardly ever read it now.

Yeah, I delivered a mail, and the people used to get a Democrat, and now they don't.

Yeah.

We used to get a stack like that, and a balance like that.

Nothing like it used to be.

I mean, I delivered in Boilinger County, too, in Madison County, both.

There wasn't that many in Madison County on my end of the route.

The county's a little down.

When you used to deliver it, did it have more of the news from all over Missouri, and not just Madison?

I hardly...

I never did read much, but it had more in Madison County.

Democrat news used to be pretty newsy.

Yeah.

I mean, it had a lot of stuff in it.

But it was about that thick, too.

Yeah.

I had to shop a little bit for a while, different things.

Well, they had another newspaper here for a while, Madison County Press.

You don't remember it?

No.

It was Madison County Press with the name of it, and this Democrat news was a different paper.

Did you mostly stay in Marquand, like for shopping and stuff?

If you did need to get something from a store, didn't Marquand have what you needed, or did you have to come into Fredericton?

Yeah, I would have needed...

Yeah, there were several stores in Marquand back then.

Yeah, there were a bunch of stores in Marquand.

At one time.

Four or five restaurants.

So this, like, Fredericton was a bigger town with more stores, Marquand also was...

Oh, yeah.

They had a few stores down there.

There's a place where you tie your team up out behind the store and have a big long chain there where you pull up and tie your team up.

Wow.

And didn't they have a violin company down there for a while, too?

A soda bottle company?

Yeah, there was a bottle company.

Ice House and everything.

So they made soda in Marquand?

Yeah.

They got some names of Marquand on it, with some soda bottles with Marquand.

Wow.

I never heard of this.

No.

What kind did they sell?

I don't know.

Flavors.

Like a cola?

I don't know about cola.

I've seen some of the bottles.

Danny Ward's got some of the bottles.

What's his name?

A gas man.

Rich Miller's got a bunch of them, too.

Has Rich Miller got some of them?

You know him.

I think I've heard the name.

M&G Gas.

Okay.

Yeah.

He's got a bunch of bottles from Marquand.

So more like a cream soda or a root beer, something like that?

Probably some.

I'd say pretty much.

I mean, I helped with getting me some good, something like that.

Yeah.

And your name is?

Jerry Stephenson.