Alice Oestrick
Alice Oestrick
Interview May 2013
Ken: All right. Let’s see if it’s recording – I think it is. So, I’m sitting here in the living room of Alice
Alice Oestrick: Bill and Alice Oestrick’s
Ken: Alice Oestrick’s house in Lake Buchannan, Texas, on May the 21st, I believe it is. of 2013
Alice: Yes, that’s true
Ken: And so, Alice, I’d love you to just tell me all about – you grew up on Bee Cave Road, and, uh, went to Bruton Springs
Alice: No, not on Bee Caves Road
Ken: Near there
Alice: I lived off of Bee Caves Road on, I don’t know what they called it then. It was just a street, just a road, and, uh, there was, um, Dad and Mom had four children at the time
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And we were all real close together. I was the oldest and my sister was next to me, was Grace, and, and my brother was Steven, and my other sister was Jerry Lee. They wanted a boy so they named her Jerry Lee.
Ken: laugh
Alice: laugh. And that’s what, how we grew up. Then, when I was, well when Jerry was twenty years old they had another kid! Called Rodney. So, they stuck around to see him grow up and go to college
Ken: Oh, wonderful!
Alice: And become a lawyer. They saw him do that!
Ken: That’s wonderful.
Alice: Yeah. And, uh,
Ken: So what was it like out on, uh, where you grew up, what was it like out there at that time?
Alice: It was like a cedar brush. Lots of it! And, but we didn’t think anything about it. That was the way it should be! We was real, not too far from the creek.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Well it was pretty good bluff between us and the creek
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Barton Creek, you know. And, uh, we’d go down there in the summer and play in the water. And, uh, have picnics down there. But, I got married pretty young.
Ken: How old were you when you got married?
Alice: Sixteen. And then my sister, my sister-in-laws, they beat me. One of ‘em was, one of ’em was thirteen and the other one was, was, uh, fifteen, when they got married.
Ken: Your sisters?
Alice: Sister-in-laws
Ken: Oh!
Alice: My husband’s brother’s
Ken: I see, OK.
Alice: So
Ken: Now, who did you marry?
Alice: Bill
Ken: Bill Oestrick.
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: And, uh, you were a Patterson. Tell me about your parents.
Alice: My Patter---, uh, uh, Daddy was Ross Patterson
Ken: Ross Patterson
Alice: And, Mama was Ruby Patterson.
Ken: OK
Alice: And she had, we had those four, she had those four children right straight off and, like I said, there were four years between us! Laugh. I was the oldest one.
Ken: But tell me, can you – let’s do a little family history here on this, the Patterson family
Alice: Oh, OK, Dad’s, Dad’s brothers?
Ken: OK
Alice: Dad had, there was five of ‘em all together. He was one of ‘em. And, uh, Uncle Tom was the oldest one. Then Daddy was Ross. And Uncle Richard was after Daddy. And then Tom, Tom was in there somewhere, I can’t leave that one out, I think he was older than some of the others. He turned out to be a preacher.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, then, then there was R.V. and Meredith. And that’s the one you thought was my Dad.
Ken: OK
Alice: But he was the baby.
Ken: OK. And there, all, these are the boys?
Alice: Yeah, that’s the boys.
Ken: How about the girls?
Alice: There was three girls.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: There was Mary, and Lena, and, uh, Edna
Ken: OK. Now Mary is a
Alice: Roberts
Ken: is, married a Roberts
Alice: Yeah
Ken: Married Joe Roberts
Alice: That’s right
Ken: OK. And then they had, uh, a number of children, correct?
Alice: They had a lot of ‘em. I think there was, I guess all together there was nine I guess.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: I know there was a lot of ‘em.
Ken: You don’t remember some of their names?
Alice: I know just about all of ‘em. I think I can name them. There was Vernie. He was the oldest. Then Cecil. Then Stanley. Doris, Doris was before Stanley, she – and then Stanley. And then, uh, Aileen and Lorene, and Virginia. And that’s the one you talked to.
Ken: Virginia Turner
Alice: She’s the baby.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, I’m not sure if there’s any more in between those or not, but I think that was it.
Ken: Is Ollie, you mentioned Ollie Roberts
Alice: He’s the Uncle to, he was a brother to Joe.
Ken: Brothers, OK.
Alice: And, uh, so was, uh, so was, uh, Harve
Ken: Harve
Alice: Yeah. And they all lived out there on Bee Caves Road
Ken: Where did they live?
Alice: They lived, uh, they lived on Bee Caves Road. Right on Bee Caves Road, but not, not close to –close to where St Stevens is now
Ken: Yes
Alice: On, where St Stevens squares off to go to St Stevens, they lived right there on that corner
Ken: OK
Alice: And that was, that was his brothers. I didn’t know all of ‘em, but when my sister and I started to school, I was the oldest, and so they didn’t want me going by myself, so they would send her with me. And, uh
Ken: Mary, or
Alice: Grace.
Ken: Grace, uh-huh
Alice: And, so, uh, Ollie caught us walking on the road and he (laugh) carried us to school, he picked us up and carried us to school. I was only six.
Ken: laugh
Alice: laugh.
Ken: Was he a big man?
Alice: Not really
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, nobody came, so he built a fire, but he say’s “They’re not gonna”, uh, they wadn’t gonna get there. So he stayed there with us until somebody did come. And that was when we first started school. But the school was in Watson Springs Baptist Church to begin with.
Ken: Oh
Alice: Dad went to school in Bruton Springs, up on the hill. They tore that down and was building the new school when I started to school. And it, it was still called Bruton Springs.
Ken: Where was the Bruton Springs school? I should have a map here.
Alice: Patterson, Patterson Lane.
Ken: Patterson Lane, OK.
Alice: It was right there at Patterson Lane where the, the one that Dad went to school in was on the hill before you got there. On the, like if you were coming out Bee Caves Road headed for, headed for Bee Cave, it would be on the right side going. He was up in, the little house, a little schoolhouse built on top of the hill and he went to school there.
Ken: OK
Alice: That was the only one room, and, the one I went to school there was two rooms.
Ken: Was there a Turner Lane?
Alice: Not that I know of.
Ken: Or, OK. I was reading about…Tucker Lane?
Alice: Yeah, there was a Tucker Lane.
Ken: Hum!
Alice: I’m not sure where it is.
Ken: OK. ‘Cause I couldn’t find that on the map here. I think it must have changed names.
Alice: It must have. Yeah. ‘Cause I didn’t, I don’t remember it.
Ken: What was it like? ‘Cause I can picture – I grew up in Austin. I can picture Bee Caves Road as you leave, uh, Mopac or 360. 360, you know, going west. So you lived off of the, off to the left there, on Crystal, what’s now
Alice: Crystal Creek Drive
Ken: Crystal Creek Drive. Were there other, were there lots of other roads as you drove along the old Bee Caves? I guess it was unpaved, wasn’t it?
Alice: Yes. It was unpaved.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: My Uncle and Aunt lived across the creek from us, canyon from us. It was a big canyon. And they lived across there. That was Mom’s sister, I mean Mom’s brother, and Dad’s sister that lived over there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: ___, they lived – and it was called Grace Lane.
Ken: I see, um-hum
Alice: And across the street from that was River Hills Road, which took us down to the lake.
Ken: I see, OK.
Alice: And, uh, then, of course, there was other roads farther on out --- that hill, going up that hill there from Grace Lane was called Moore’s Hill
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And my cousin was always telling me about finding stuff over there by Moore’s Hill
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: (laugh) and, they went to, uh, they all went to school with me up there at Bruton Springs to begin with.
Ken: How many years did you go to Bruton Springs School?
Alice: Until it closed. Let’s see, it was, uh, I was in, I guess, 6th grade when they closed it.
Ken: I see
Alice: And they moved us to Bee Cave and I went to school there. Might have been 7th grade
Ken: That was a long way, wasn’t it?
Alice: Yeah, that’s the reason we had to have a bus to take us.
Ken: Right. And that’s where you met your husband?
Alice: Yeah, he picked us up and took – I got to ride in the front and all the kids others, they got to, had to ride in the back.
Ken: I see (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) But I was, I was only thirteen, thirteen-fourteen years old (laugh) then
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, he would take us to school and then come back and pick us up and bring us back home. And, uh
Ken: How many, how many children went to the Bruton Springs School?
Alice: All together I think there was about twenty, twenty-five, something like that.
Ken: That’s a large number
Alice: Yeah
Ken: Were they all grades?
Alice: All grades, all the grades from first to the twelfth.
Ken: To the twelfth.
Alice: There wasn’t very many in those grades.
Ken: In those upper grades?
Alice: Yeah. There wasn’t very many kids there, but, we had, we had a pretty good school.
Ken: Now, when the boys, did the girls stay in school longer than the boys usually? Or did the boys drop out and work earlier than the girls, or
Alice: Some of them did. Some of ‘em dropped out. My husband, they didn’t, he didn’t go to school hardly at all.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, uh, they had, they needed him home to help ‘em make a living.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And that’s what he did. And, uh, he wasn’t, he was three years older than me. So. He was a good man. I miss him like crazy.
Ken: I’ll bet you do.
Alice: And, uh (silence) Well, what they did for a living, when they first started, when Mom and Dad first started out, they burned charcoal. Have you ever seen a charcoal kiln?
Ken: I have. I have heard how it was done. I’ve never seen it done.
Alice: (laugh) Oh, I’ve seen it done (laugh)
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Made it come up into a peak at the top with those post
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And then they covered it over with bark, cedar bark. They’d peel it, those limbs, and covered it up with bark. And after they got the bark on there they would put dirt on it
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And then, after they got it built, well, then they would start a fire inside of it. A slow fire.
Ken: And you remember those days
Alice: Yes, I remember (emphasis)
Ken: You remember. Did you help them with that work?
Alice: I had to. I was little bitty but I remember it because they’d put, when the charcoal, um, when the, when it burned out and got ____ they would take a rake and rake it, rake it out to the edge. And you had to be careful when you picked it up so you didn’t get a “hot” one, and put it in the bag and haul it off to town. For fuel.
Ken: And how did y'all haul it to town?
Alice: We had a, Daddy had a truck
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: That he carried it in. Uh, an old Model-T Ford.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, and they’d, to begin with I guess, they’d use a horse and buggy, but I didn’t, I didn’t never see that.
Ken: I see. So they would then have to take it all the way in, I guess there by Zilker Park. Is that where
Alice: By Zilker Park is right
Ken: And then down to Congress Avenue and
Alice: And go all the way – they just peddled it from house to house.
Ken: I see
Alice: Is what they did. And, uh, they did that and after they decided they wasn’t making enough money to do that they went to chopping cedar posts.
Ken: You know what year that would have been?
Alice: Uh, I guess it was in the forties when they first started.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And we had to help ‘em do that too.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But they’d, uh, they would get to, talk to somebody about getting a, they called it a “cedar brake” and go out there and, and, sometimes it was already cut down. All they had to do was trim the posts out of it.
Ken:Um-hum
Alice: _____, they did that a lot. But I was with ‘em some
Ken: What would you do, when you were helping them?
Alice: I had to chop ‘em, then, when I wasn’t doing that, I had to carry them out to the road so they could load ‘em. And they loaded ‘em in the truck.
Ken: How old were you when you were doing that?
Alice: Starting off I must have been barely walking (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: They made sure we all worked! (laugh)
Ken: Oh, absolutely. Wasn’t that kind-of dangerous, for you, having an axe at that age?
Alice: Well, I can show ‘ya a few things.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) See, that
Ken: When you’ve got
Alice: I hit my foot with an axe from here to here (laugh)
Ken: Oh, my goodness
Alice: You can see that
Ken: I can see that scar
Alice: It took sixteen stitches to sew up
Ken: How did
Alice: I hit my knee right there with an axe
Ken: Ouch!
Alice: And then an axe come down the top of head
Ken: How did that happen?
Alice: It hung a limb above my head.
Ken: And how old were you when these things happened to you?
Alice: I was just growing up. (laugh)
Ken: A child. Younger --- ten years old or younger?
Alice: Yeah, something like that, yeah.
Ken: Now, when you had to have the stitches, how did they do, where did they take you?
Alice: Take me to Austin to, to Dr. Yaney. I remember his name (laugh)
Ken: Uh-huh. I bet it bled a lot while they were
Alice: Yeah, it did. It did. But I wasn’t the only one that got cut. My brother got – my brother got, uh, him and my sister were running through the brake, chasing each other and my husband was carrying an axe. He was cutting, cutting posts, and he carrying an axe, and my brother ran into that axe. It cut him, right here. Man, the blood went straight up to the sky, ____
Ken: Oh, no.
Alice: I didn’t know if they was gonna make it with him or not. But they did, they got him to the doctor and he sewed him up and
Ken: Hum!
Alice: and he was all right.
Ken: Those axes were so sharp
Alice: Uh-huh, they had to be sharp to cut those posts, dry posts (laugh)
Ken: Did y'all keep your axe, from the old days? Do you still have your axe?
Alice: No. I don’t have any axes. I think Bill has one out there somewhere. That he used.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: But he, when we got married he didn’t let me do that. I, I did, I sat around and listened (laugh) I didn’t do anything.
Ken: You sat around and listened?
Alice: Listened to them.
Ken: Listened to them. So when your husband, your husband then started, what year did y'all get married?
Alice: Nineteen forty-five.
Ken: Nineteen forty-five. And so y'all were cutting all ready, or he was, already cutting then
Alice: Uh-huh, yeah, he was. Him and his family
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: All worked together. And then they went, they didn’t stay with that either. They went, uh, thrashing pecans
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: did pecans and we worked on the Allen, Allen Ranch there on Lake Austin. And did a lot of pecan picking up
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, I think we did it on the halves. They get a, the Allens got half and he got the rest.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: We did pretty good. Doing that
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Of course they was a lot of us too! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Bill had two brothers and then he had me and he had his mother and his daddy and he would get in the trees and thrash ‘em down.
Ken: I see
Alice: So.
Ken: That’s
Alice: And that wasn’t easy work, either
Ken: I know. Climbing those trees, those big ole’ trees would be hard
Alice: He had a, he called it a “safety belt”. He made it out of a rope and he would just hook it onto the tree and climbed it with that belt.
Ken: So, he, how many years did he cut cedar after you guys got married?
Alice: Hum
Ken: You got married in forty-five. Did he keep, a few more years?
Alice: Yeah, uh, a few more years, yeah. When did the War start?
Ken: Uh, well, it started in nineteen forty-two, I think.
Alice: Well, my brother-in-law, the one next to Bill, uh, joined the se--, joined the Navy at the time, and, uh, and he served, I think he had three years he served. And he came, when he came back he started his own business then and he was, he became a mason, a rock mason, and
Ken: Yes
Alice: And, uh, so, um, Bill started working for him. And he worked for him until he, until he got killed. He fell off of a roof of one of the houses when it was raining. And, hit, broke his spleen, and bled to death before they could get him to the hospital. And, so, that was, that was George. And
Ken: Did your husband continue being a mason after that?
Alice: He took over George’s business
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: He paid George’s wife for it. And all the, all the tools and everything he had
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: He did that until he, until he retired.
Ken: Um-hum. Well there were quite a, quite a bit lot of mason work down in the, out in that part of the country. Quite a few people did masonry, didn’t they?
Alice: Yes, uh-huh. He did that, that was, he did best in that.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: When he got into that, he did best in that. Yeah, he was good. He was good at whatever he did. My grandson said “you know, I put up a wall, and I thought it was perfect. And here he come along and he looked at it, and he tore it down!” (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: He said “anybody else would have left it.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But he wouldn’t!
Ken: No, right, uh-huh
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: What, tell me about, who, some of your other sisters and brothers and who they married, and what they, the ones that stayed here in the, stayed in the Hill Country and what they did.
Alice: We don’t have any left stayed in the Hill Country.
Ken: Oh, you don’t?
Alice: Every one of ‘em moved away.
Ken: OK
Alice: See, uh, my, uh, sister next to me, she married a Henry Lentz. And he lived at Creedmoor at that time. And, uh, they moved down to Harlingen and they worked, and he worked down there some. I forgot what they did. Anyway, after they moved there they went to California. And that’s where she still lives is in California. And, uh, my other brother, he joined the Navy and when he came out he went to work for, uh, an Army base in San Antonio. And that’s where he’s worked most of his life. He can’t hear nothing ‘cause the airplanes were so loud that he’s lost his hearing.
Ken: So a whole bunch of those boys I bet, in the Hill Country, must have joined up in the service.
Alice: They did. They did. ‘Cause, see George was in the service, and and uh, Bill, he didn’t want to go. They did check him out but they wouldn’t, they didn’t take him. And, uh, he had high blood pressure and they didn’t want him
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, let’s see. Steve went into the Navy and then, uh, Dan, Daniel Grace, he went into the Navy. And George was in the Navy. And, let’s see, there was some more. Oh, my brother, the younger brother’s Dad’s brother’s – both of them went into the Navy. R.V. and Meredith. And, uh, my, the older one, he went into the Army. That was Uncle Richard. He went into the Army when the war was going on. So, there was quite a few of ‘em that went into the service.
Ken: Tell me about some of the ones that were, what I’m really most interested in is the cedar business, because it really hadn’t been that much written about it. Uh, so I know your, uh, Mary, uh
Alice: She had that cedar yard. Her and her husband
Ken: Tell me about that
Alice: Uh, well
Ken: Mary, yeah, they had the cedar yard with the Roberts.
Alice: Yes
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Yeah, Robert’s Cedar Yard is what they had
Ken: Uh-huh, right
Alice: And we didn’t go to the one where Mary and Joe was.
Ken: Oh
Alice: We went, there was another one down on Lamar further down, close to, into town
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And it was Fred and Ruby Roberts. She was – married Mable --- Fred Maples. And they ran that one. But it was run for Joe Roberts.
Ken: He was, uh, Fred Maples
Alice: Maples
Ken: And Ruby Roberts. OK.
Alice: Yeah, they got married.
Ken: I see. And, so, Joe owned that one too?
Alice: Yeah, he owned that too.
Ken: OK
Alice: And Bill hauled cedar to them.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, and, uh, I went with him wherever he went. I was with him
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: And he’d use that Model-T truck to haul it?
Alice: We had, let’s see, what kind of a truck did we have? I can’t even remember what kind it was. And old red Chevrolet, I think
Ken: OK
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: So, what was a day like, back when he was cutting cedar. Did y'all get up early before it got hot?
Alice: Yes, of course, we had to do that. Uh, my father-in-law, I remember, when we first got married, we didn’t get up early enough. So, he’d come down there and got us up (laugh)
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: So
Ken: Where did y'all live when you first got married?
Alice: Uh, Oh, Bill’s brother, step --- half-brother from another marriage, uh,had built a house. A small house down there, actually it was a shack. Down below the, it was on Lake Austin
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, and we, uh, we lived in, first we lived in, we rented a cabin on, uh, on Lake Austin. And we decided we couldn’t pay the rent so we, that, that house was empty, so we, we moved into it. We, uh, papered the walls with real thick wallpaper
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: I forgot what we called it (laugh)! So that the wind wouldn’t come through.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: We lived in it for twelve years
Ken: Twelve years.
Alice: Yeah. It was a two room shack.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But we lived in it
Ken: All right. Did it have water?
Alice: No. We had to haul water
Ken: From the lake?
Alice: From the lake or from the, the city had a spicket up on the hill there, at Bee Cave, and we’d go get it in a barrel and bring it back.
Ken: OK
Alice: So
Ken: When you grew up as a child, did, uh, did y'all have water near your house , or did you go down to the Barton Creek, or
Alice: I, when I was very, when I was pretty young they built, they drilled a well. So we used the well.
Ken: OK, good
Alice: Yeah
Ken: So, tell me, I was asking you about the cedar. But you got up early, I guess, with your husband, and
Alice: And we went out to the cedar brake. And he cut the cedar and his brothers, his brother, his mom and his dad, and, and, uh, I think there was two brothers, I think, ‘cause George was in the service and his other two brothers was out there chopping cedar with him. And they’d fill the truck up. It took ‘em sometimes, sometimes a day and a half or two days to fill the truck, and haul it off to the cedar yard.
Ken: How many posts, I wonder, would that truck hold? Was it, was it a flat-bed truck?
Alice: Um-hum
Ken: OK. It was a bobtail rig?
Alice: Uh
Ken: that’s a big flat-bed with a
Alice: It had a flat bed but it wasn’t very big.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: It could hold, it would hold about a hundred, or something like that. And they’d get ‘em on there and then we’d haul ‘em off to the, the cedar yard, and, and, until I got tired of fooling with other people and I said “why don’t we do it for ourselves!” So we did that.
Ken: What do you mean?
Alice: I mean, we used to have to share the money when we
Ken: Oh, you and your husband just did it by yourselves after that
Alice: Yeah, after that.
Ken: How much money would you get from a load of cedar?
Alice: Oh, it was – it depends on what size cedars we had
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Uh, anywhere from thirty to forty dollars, sometimes fifty
Ken: You’d split that among the three of you?
Alice: That, yeah, to begin with.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And I kept fussing about it so he just said “all right, we will do it ourselves.” So that’s what we did.
Ken: OK. So you probably
Alice: And he could, he could do pretty good by himself too. ‘cause he was used to doing it.
Ken: He could swing an axe
Alice: Yes, he could! He could make ‘em look good when he got through! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) What time would y'all finish up in a day? How long would you
Alice: They’d work until dark. Until they couldn’t see anymore.
Ken: They would work all day long
Alice: All day long! Unless they got a load. And then they’d haul it off and let the others go home and that’s how they hauled it off
Ken: I see. Would y'all, y'all’d be cutting on other people’s land I guess. Would y'all have to give ‘em ten percent, or something like that? How did that work?
Alice: Usually I don’t remember, I didn’t know, I don’t know that part of it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: We didn’t give ‘em very much. I think we got the cedar for free just for doing it.
Ken: I see
Alice: ‘Cause they wanted, a lot of ‘em just wanted it off.
Ken: I see, they wanted it cleared.
Alice: Yeah
Ken: Did y'all have to get rid of the brush too, at the same time?
Alice: No, they took care of that
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: They took care of that after we got through
Ken: That’s great. So, you’d take it into, the other Roberts cedar yard, there on South Lamar.
Alice: Yeah, we never went to the other one. Uh, see, there was another cedar yard up there called Al Erlich’s.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, uh, we never went to it.
Ken: Where was it located?
Alice: It was close to where Joe Roberts’ one was
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: I can’t exactly ---- somewhere in Oak Hill.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And Joe Roberts’ – they had one up there too. But we never went to either one of those. He liked, he liked Fred, so he’d go see Fred.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And I sat in the house with Ruby and talked to her and her three kids.
Ken: Uh-hum . Now, didn’t, uh, Edna Patterson, was one of the Patterson girls, right? Didn’t she marry Litten Pierce?
Alice: Yes
Ken: Tell me about that. Who, now, because the Pierces are an old family from out there too.
Alice: Yes, they were, they lived down closer to Eanes. We lived further out.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And they lived, they lived closer to Eanes. And Edna Patterson, I don’t know how much, I don’t remember how many children she had, but she had a lot. Uh, I can name some of ‘em.
Ken: Um-hum. Please do, ‘cause I went to school with a Pierce.
Alice: OK. There was, uh, Ed was the oldest one. I remember that. And then there was, my memory is failing me some. I can’t remember that. There was, the Reeces lived down there too. Reeces was, the Reeces was married to my mama’s sister that lived down there, lived with them. And they lived there. They all cut cedar posts.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And they lived in the Eanes territory. And, uh, I can remember those boys better than I can Litten’s. I know that he had some girls and one was Joyce and one was, uh, um, Marie, I believe, and Anne was one. But there was a whole bunch of ‘em. But we didn’t, we didn’t fool with them. We didn’t go see ‘em very much, and so, they were, just, distant relatives (laugh) that’s what they were. And, the same way with the Reeses. Dad was one of those kind that wanted to stay with his own. And he didn’t like the Pierces and the Reeses. (laugh)
Ken: Oh, really?
Alice: He didn’t think they did their wives right, or something, I don’t know.
Ken: Uh-huh. Did you ever hear of a little boy named Luther, about my age, named Luther Pierce?
Alice: Yes! That’s one of Ed’s brothers.
Ken: One of Ed’s brothers, alright. See, I went to school in old Henry Junior High School with Luther Pierce
Alice: Yes. Luther and, let’s see, if I hear the names I know them. But I can’t remember all of ‘em.
Ken: Tell me what happened to him.
Alice: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in ages
Ken: OK
Alice: ages and ages
Ken: Are there any Pierces still left in the Austin area?
Alice: Joyce is somewhere, but I’m not sure where. She lived out on, out close to the airport, that way. Her, she married James Whited, and they lived out that way
Ken: Whitehead?
Alice: Whited
Ken: Whited, OK.
Alice: And, uh, and then, uh, Joyce, Joyce’s brother, oh, yeah, Howard, Howard Pierce, was her brother. And he had a whole bunch of kids too. And, uh, of course, all these others did too. So, they just kind of, everybody kind-of multiplied. Boy, did my grandkids multiply!
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: I’ve got twenty-five great-grandchildren.
Ken: Is that right! That’s wonderful!
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: Do y'all have family reunions?
Alice: No, they don’t even talk to one another (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh), terrible bunch of kids! Anyway, that was, uh, well, we have family reunions, but usually it’s not the close family
Ken: Hum. Now, what, did y'all know another family, that I know was right there, was the Teagues. Did you know any Teagues?
Alice: Yes. I knew some Teagues. There was Joy Teague and there was Bertha Teague and Bert Teague, and, they were, all, all the kids, Raymond and Bert and, and, they weren’t kin to us.
Ken: They weren’t what?
Alice: They weren’t kin to us.
Ken: They weren’t kin to y'all.
Alice: Unt-uh. But they, they lived out there. Burt and Raymond and, uh, shoot, I can’t remember their names either. I didn’t think I’d ever forget those people (laugh)
Ken: What are some other families that you remember, that lived out there, and maybe they cut cedar. I guess everybody cut cedar.
Alice: Everybody cut cedar.
Ken: Everybody cut cedar.
Alice: That’s right, they did. Uh-huh. Uh, if they didn’t cut cedar, they got out of it as fast as they could.
Ken: Got out of?
Alice: Cutting
Ken: the Hill Country?
Alice: Got out of that business
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But, it was hard work. Very hard work. And not, not very good. I mean, you didn’t make a very good living out of it. And so they got, they left it as fast as they could and found something they could do better with.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Like Bill, masonry. Bill made a good masonry guy and he had his own business and, of course, he took over George’s but, I mean, he did good.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: He kept it going until he retired. And
Ken: Back when you were a girl, tell me, do you remember, back before, did y'all go into Austin a lot?
Alice: Yeah, every week.
Ken: Once a week?
Alice: Uh-huh.
Ken: How long did it take you to get from your house to, to Congress Avenue bridge.
Alice: You know, I really don’t remember how long it took. It just, I remember we were going, and we did go a lot. Every week
Ken: Every week. What, any particular day?
Alice: Usually on a Saturday
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: To get groceries, and then come back home
Ken: What would y'all buy there?
Alice: Groceries.
Ken: Did you grow anything? Did you grow corn and stuff like that?
Alice: Bill did. But, no, my daddy wasn’t a farmer And he certainly wasn’t. He, he had a little garden, but it didn’t, he didn’t make very much out of it. He just didn’t like that kind-of business. So, he didn’t do that. And, but, um, both Bill and my dad went into eggs. We got chickens and raised chickens and had eggs and hauled ‘em off to town, peddled them. Just like we did the coal, only it was a whole lot easier.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: But we got a, we had as many as nine-hundred chickens at one time.
Ken: Oh my goodness! That kept you busy!
Alice: Yes, it did! I was glad when we got rid of ‘em (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Yeah, we even candled the eggs. We took ‘em, you know, so we knew what they were doing. And, we put ‘em in boxes and hauled ‘em off to town. Sold ‘em, a lot of ‘em to HEB
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: HEB was good. They’d buy ‘em from us.
Ken: And, um, when you were young, what did y'all do for entertainment. Did, you didn’t go into town, though. You, uh
Alice: Yes, we did!
Ken: You did?
Alice: We’d go to a movie
Ken: OK
Alice: Yeah, we went to movies and, uh, to town.
Ken: Did y'all ever have any music out in the, you know, with neighbors and stuff. Did anybody play an instrument or have a dance, or something like that, or a party?
Alice: No. No. Dad wasn’t one of those kind-of people. He, him and mom went to dances before we were born but they never did it after (laugh) after we came. No, uh, no, we had box suppers at school.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, and, uh, they didn’t let us do that very much, either. But it was fun.
Ken: Did y'all go to church?
Alice: Yeah, we went to church.
Ken: Which church did y'all go to?
Alice: We went to Watson’s Springs. Watson Springs Baptist Church.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, we’d go every Sunday. And Dad would get on the outside with his brothers and have a big conversation and you could hear him above all what was going on inside (laugh.)
Ken: Oh, so he wasn’t actually in the church service?
Alice: Mama got after him. She says “that is terrible, the way you do it! You better not – you’d better quit!” He did. He quit. He didn’t go to church no more after that.
Ken: (laugh) So he wasn’t particularly a religious man, then.
Alice: Yes, he was.
Ken: Oh, he was!
Alice: Yes, he was very much. He did believe, very much so. But he didn’t – he said “all they were after was money and he wasn’t giving them any”
Ken: I see. OK. Were there any other churches out there on the Bee Caves Road area?
Alice: Uh, yes, Bee Cave had a church. And that Watson Springs church. And then they had a church down at Eanes
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, they weren’t all close together, ‘cause, that’s just the way it, that’s just the way it was. Now there’s churches all over the place.
Ken: Do you remember, um, when the bridge opened up, we called it the low-water bridge
Alice: I’ve heard that, yeah. Low-water bridge, yes
Ken: yes
Alice: Down there close to the dam
Ken: Yes
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: Do you remember that, when that happened?
Alice: I remember when it happened, but I can’t tell you when (laugh)
Ken: Oh, I remember. No, it was nineteen-forty-nine, or so.
Alice: Yeah (phone ringing)
Ken: Do you want to get the phone?
Alice: No, that’s not the phone. That’s the radio
Ken: Oh, that’s that alarm
Alice: Yeah. It’s telling us ___
Ken: Oh boy. Um, that must have been, that must have changed your life some, though, being able to get into Austin faster, yes, I mean wasn’t that a quicker, quicker way in?
Alice: Well, you know, Dad always had a truck, or some old car that we went in.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: So, we got to town pretty fast
Ken:OK
Alice: It wasn’t like riding in the, in the horse and buggy.
Ken: No, uh-huh. I was just thinking that your, I guess it’s not that much closer, is it? Not that much closer that way than the other way.
Alice: Which is that?
Ken: The low-water bridge into Austin
Alice: We did cross the low-water bridge a lot.
Ken: OK, yeah
Alice: Yeah, we did
Ken: And then, you could go to, the kids could go to O’Henry Jr. High School when it opened up.
Alice: Yeah, I had, I had two that went there, to O’Henry. Two, my two youngest ones went there.
Ken: What did y'all do before if you wanted to go on, you went all … Eanes went all the way to the twelfth grade?
Alice: No, I don’t, Eanes
Ken: I don’t think it did, did it?
Alice: It went to the eighth grade
Ken: OK, and so
Alice: Whenever they finished eighth grade they made, transferred into Austin
Ken: I see. And would many people do that?
Alice: Yeah, lots, lots of kids went to
Ken: Went to Austin. Was there a bus that took ‘em in?
Alice: Uh,yes they did. They had a bus that took ‘em
Ken: Um-hum. What about the boys? Were they, they were dropping out in, and probably they could work by the time they were in the eighth grade. Make some good money, couldn’t they?
Alice: Uh, they stayed in school.
Ken: Good
Alice: As much as they could. I know they did
Ken: I see, good. Good.
Alice: Not me, I dropped out to get married
Ken: I heard one boy, there’s a story that Mrs. Graham said, and, you know, she was, a, someone recorded her or something and said one of her students went on to get a, become a professor at the University of Texas.
Alice: I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it because
Ken: Maybe somebody you even knew.
Alice: I don’t know. I didn’t know that, but I, that’s pretty neat, I’m not surprised. Because they did – they stayed in school pretty good.
Ken: Good. Well, I’ve talked to some men who
Alice: My, my brother, my youngest brother, uh, went to UT. Finished law school and he became a lawyer.
Ken: That’s wonderful
Alice: And he is a good lawyer.
Ken: That’s wonderful.
Alice: That’s my youngest brother. Not the one that, the one that lives up here. They got to where they couldn’t ____ to ___ dam ___.
Ken: Huh
Alice: But they’re doing better now.
Ken: Good. Lets see if I’ve got any more questions for you.
Alice: Uh, you, mostly wanted to know about the cedar chopping
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, uh, uh, they chopped, they chopped the cedar posts and, and mostly I carried ‘em out. And, if they got to be too big, somebody else carried ‘em out.
Ken: But you were strong? Did, could you, did you have muscles in your arms and stuff like that?
Alice: I guess so, I did it (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) How did you get that cedar wax off of you?
Alice: They had, uh, coal oil would take it off and soap and water, a lot, would take it off, but you couldn’t, you wouldn’t take it off completely. But it, it was on there pretty good.
Ken: Did it ever get in your hair?
Alice: No, not much in hair. Mostly on your hands
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: When we carried those things out. When you first cut ‘em they didn’t have anything on ‘em. But it bled out. And when you picked ‘em up the next time you got it all over you.
Ken: I see. Huh
Alice: And, uh, the way he measured ‘em is he’d chop one, chop one down and cut it and trim it up. And cut it off where he thought it was and then stand it up to be sure it was six foot tall. ‘Cause that’s what it was cutting for.
Ken: ‘cause he’s six foot tall, wasn’t he?
Alice: Yeah, he was six’ two”.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: (laugh) that’s the way he measured ‘em
Ken: Hum
Alice: Stand it up there in front of him. If they didn’t go up as taller than him then it wasn’t no good. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Unless he had five foot ones. Most of ‘em, most of ‘em were six foot. And then, of course, he had some that was eight. And ten. Big ones then. I didn’t do anything with them. So. But he did. But one time we were in the canyon over there off of Bee Cave down near the river, the lake, down there, and he was throwing posts off of the hill. From the top, way, he would throw it way over the top of it, and I was down by the bottom. And he says “Are you out of the way?” and I said “Yep!” And he throwed that post down and it hit me. Hit me right there. I didn’t know any more after that! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Took me off to the hospital. I woke up in the hospital I didn’t know what happened to me.
Ken: Oh my gosh!
Alice: But, he said “well, you wasn’t out of the way”. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) That is a pretty dangerous job, then, I guess it was
Alice: It was.
Ken: I talked to some people that, that, said they could earn more money doing that than anything else.
Alice: A that time it was about the best thing you could do, it really was. And it, it’d depend on how strong you were and how much you could put out.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And they did pretty good.
Ken: Your husband was a big man, wasn’t he?
Alice: He was, yeah, he wasn’t, wasn’t real big. Maybe you can tell more by this one here. He wasn’t ___ but he was pretty big
Ken: Yeah
Alice: He weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, about something like that.
Ken: Uh-huh, OK. Hum. So, when did Bee Cave Road, did, is it paved at all, or did you move away while it was still a dirt road?
Alice: No, they paved it before we moved away
Ken: OK. OK.
Alice: Before I, before we got married, I think, they paved it.
Ken: Did people start moving out there from Austin at that point, or, did that
Alice: They didn’t like it – it was country. They did not like it at all. They didn’t come out there. And then somebody got started coming out there and they liked it so much till they made a big place out of it (laugh). So the house that we lived in then, they bought it. It was ours, it was, uh, we got it from, we got the land from his mother, and we built us a house on it. And, and it was a, it was a rock house, with, uh, I think we had three bedrooms and, and a living room, kitchen and bath.
Ken: Um-hum. What year did y'all build that?
Alice: Nineteen-fifty-seven. They finished it in nineteen-fifty-seven.
Ken: OK
Alice: So. It was fun. That was lots of fun doing that. Buying furniture for it and everything - we had a good time
Ken: Uh-huh. That’ s great.
Alice: But, dad would get us, take us to the cedar brake early in the morning. We’d go as early as we could before the sun got up. We couldn’t do nothin’ before that because it would be too dark – you couldn’t see. It was early when we went. And, then he would, uh, put us to carrying out the cedar posts that he cut. Or cutting some by ourselves. We did a whole lot of that ourselves. And I, and, uh, then, you said what would we do for fun? Dad was a play - he was a cut-up, I’ll tell ya! So, he would get us, set us down on the ground and play stick guys. I bet nobody ever knows what was! (laugh)
Ken: No
Alice: Get some sticks, he called some, he called this one “brother George”, this one “brother so-and-so” (laugh) and then every once in a while they’d have a fight (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Boy, did we like to do that!
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: That was part of the fun! (silence) That was Dad. Dad did that. But, I don’t know if anybody else did that or not. But Dad did.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: He kept us doing things like that. He was a big kid, always
Ken: A big kid?
Alice: Yeah. He never got, he never grew up.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) He had fun, wherever he was.
Ken: Did he cut cedar all, did you say he went into the pecans, or was that
Alice: No, Bill never went into the pecans. Bill, he went into the eggs business
Ken: Eggs?
Alice: When Bill went into the egg business then we went into the egg business. But until that time he was, he cut cedar posts.
Ken: So your dad went into the egg business too?
Alice: Yeah. Um-hum
Ken: Gave up the cedar?
Alice: Gave up all of it then. But he should have been, he was getting a little too old to cut that cedar anyway.
Ken: I wonder how old a man could cut cedar. Did you know anybody cutting into their sixties?
Alice: I don’t think so.
Ken: Or fifties?
Alice: Fifties, yeah, but not sixties
Ken: Not sixties
Alice: Not that I know of. Well, I take that back. Bill’s dad did. He was getting so bad, though, they had to, they had to stop him from doing it. And his mother was with him. She did it too.
Ken: You mean he was, could have hurt himself, was that why they had to stop him?
Alice: Yeah, yeah, he was hurting himself.
Ken: I see
Alice: He was not able to do it. He was, he was sick most of the time, by that time
Ken: I see.
Alice: Now he, uh,
Ken: Tell me something, you know, kind of personal here, um, did y'all ever feel, when you went into Austin, that some of the people in Austin, kind-of looked down at you as country-folk?
Alice: You know what? It didn’t bother me. They do. They did
Ken: They did?
Alice: Yeah, they did. And I didn’t know it
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But, uh, uh, I found out later when my kids started growing up, and, some of ‘em was ashamed of it. My sister wouldn’t even tell anybody about it at all. She was really ---. It didn’t bother me that bad. I said it was an honest living. We did well by it.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: It got us – and it was dirty. It was dirty living. But, it was a good living.
Ken: It was an honest living
Alice: Yes
Ken: Yeah
Alice: And
Ken: but just dirty in the sense of cedar bark, and
Alice: Cedar bark, and cedar wax
Ken: cedar bark and cedar wax
Alice: (laugh) Yeah, you stayed dirty when you was working in it, no doubt. It was, and I guess that ‘s the reason people looked down on us. I don’t know why they looked down, other than that, but they did.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: You’re right, they did. But, it didn’t bother me
Ken: That’s good. I, it seems like everybody I talk to has had a great deal of pride in the way they grew up and what they did
Alice: Yeah
Ken: working hard all day
Alice: Yeah
Ken: You certainly could never call a cedar cutter lazy
Alice: No! They weren’t lazy! They surely weren’t!
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) No, they weren’t.
Ken: So, you never had any problem with city kids, or anything like that?
Alice: No
Ken: The boys didn’t or anything?
Alice: We didn’t go to school in town until eighth grade
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Nobody ever said anything. I didn’t go as long as the other girls did. Uh, my two sisters graduated from Austin High.
Ken: OK
Alice: But I didn’t, and, uh, I never heard them say, complain about it at all. Except they wouldn’t tell anybody where they come from. Well, I think my youngest sister didn’t care, but the oldest, the older one did.
Ken: She just wouldn’t say where she
Alice: She wouldn’t talk about it.
Ken: I see. I wonder if the Austin kids, there at Austin High, if you said you were from Eanes School, would they know that, something
Alice: Well, they knew that people did this stuff back there
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Alice: Of course they did _____
Ken: Yeah
Alice: But they didn’t, they didn’t, they didn’t say anything
Ken: That’s good.
Alice: yeah
Ken: that’s real good.
Alice: Yes, they did, you’re right, that’s one of the things we had to put up with, but, uh, now when, uh, my daughter started going with a kid from, he didn’t ever work in the cedar, he didn’t know about it, and he started to acting like there was something wrong with people that did that. And Annie said “but look what y'all have done – she built you a house, stupid!” I said “yeah!”
Ken: Yeah
Alice: So, so, he was, that, he didn’t think, well, it wasn’t such a bad thing to do after all.
Ken: (laugh). I’ll tell you a funny story. I was talking to a man that, uh, he hauls cedar. And, um, there is a woman that, she’s got her nurse’s degree, and she’s just a friend of his. He’s an old, pretty, he’s about seventy-five, pretty elder, older man, and this woman, she’s still in her forties. But, she likes to haul cedar. She decided she didn’t want to be a nurse anymore and she likes to haul cedar with him. And so, they take, they get cedar and they haul it all over, you know
Alice: Um-hum, we’ve done that too.
Ken: Um-hum. And he’s still doing this, by the way. And she, uh, what she likes to do is she’ll go to a, like, meet a man, and he’ll finally say “well, what do you do for a living?” and she says “I haul cedar” and if he looks away or acts funny at all, she is through with him (laugh)
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: Isn’t that a funny story!
Alice: She’s not gona let him put her down!
Ken: Unt-uh, no, ‘cause she likes to do that. It’s a freedom, you know
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: You’re free. You’re your own boss
Alice: Yes, yes, that’s what dad always said.
Ken: Did he?
Alice: Uh-huh. He said “yep,” he said “I don’t have to do anything for anybody else. I do it myself.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: “ I can do what I want and when and I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to.”
Ken: That was important.
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: Well, do you know the background of your father? Do you know where, um, you know, how they got to Texas and where they came from, or anything like that?
Alice: My grandfather, uh, he came from west Texas, I think. I, Texas is all I know. And my grandmother, they had a place over on Barton Creek called the Riley Place, is what it was, and we’d go down to the, to the water, and on top of the hill from the water was where they had their, that was the old place, and we’d go, used to play in it, they had a fireplace, you know, that didn’t fall down, had a cistern and a whole bunch of stuff in there from when they lived there
Ken: Hum
Alice: My grandmother. And her brothers and sisters lived in there. And that was a long time ago.
Ken: Did y'all ever know anybody that lived in the Bull Creek area?
Alice: No
Ken: OK.
Alice: No, that was a little bit too far
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: If, uh, we didn’t sell, we didn’t sell anything over that way. We’d go to south Austin, or east Austin. That’s where we did our, our peddling stuff, for the coal and for the eggs mostly. And we did, we went to house, from house to house back in there, but we never did go out to Bull Creek. There was a lot of people over there too.
Ken: Oh, I know. A lot of ‘em came out to where I live in Liberty Hill.
Alice: Yeah. Have you always lived in Liberty Hill?
Ken: I moved out there in nineteen seventy-five
Alice: Um-hum
Ken: So I’ve lived there thirty-something years, almost forty years.
Alice: Thirty-something years, huh
Ken: Forty years, yeah. But, yeah, we grew up in, uh, I went to O’Henry Jr. High School. I grew up in kind-of the western part of Austin and my wife is from Houston, so we met in college
Alice: I see. Then what year was you, you in O’Henry?
Ken: I was in O’Henry in nineteen fifty-seven
Alice: Fifty-seven
Ken: Fifty-eight and fifty-nine. Um-hum
Alice: Hum. See, uh, my kids were in O’Henry, but I really don’t remember what years they were in there. I had two, two in O’Henry. Well, actually three. I guess Judy went there too until she went into Austin High. Then, uh, my son, he went and, he joined the Army, but he didn’t stay there. He didn’t like it after he got in there (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: So, he just, he bolted.
Ken: Hum
Alice: And he, that’s the end of that.
Ken: Oh, OK
Alice: And he’s uh, And he passed away in 2000.
Ken: Um. Well you have a very good memory, Alice. I appreciate your sharing your memories with us.
Alice: (laugh) Some things I don’t remember too well, like the names
Ken: Uh-huh. Uh, but is there anything else, that, you know, any memories that you have of, when you were a young girl, or, you know, up through the nineteen-fifties and stuff like that, that
Alice: Nineteen-fifties I was married
Ken: Oh, I know
Alice: Yeah. I felt, I felt left out, from my sisters because they were all having a good time and there I was tending to babies. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) How many did you have? How many children did you have?
Alice: I had three.
Ken: Three
Alice: Uh-huh. And, uh, so I kind-of felt left out in the cold there, with the girls having a good time. But, I got over that (laugh). Decided I wasn’t so bad off after all.
Ken: That’s right. Is that when y'all moved in the, what year did y'all build the stone house?
Alice: In 1957.
Ken: OK. So you raised your children in, in that, what you called the shack
Alice: Yes, yes. We lived there for twelve years
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Yes, we did. We raised ‘em in the shack
Ken: Hum
Alice: Bill picked me up one day and I went right through the floor, both of us (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) That’s funny
Alice: And he got mad at me one time. He was working on the stove and I was supposed to have him build us a fire and he said “daddy doesn’t do it like that.” Well, he says “I’m doing it my way!” and he picked up a shoe and he throwed it and it went into the wall! It stuck in the wall! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh). So you built a fire there for your cooking
Alice: Uh-huh. Yeah
Ken: And hauled your water from the spigot
Alice: Yeah, either from the city spicket or went to the lake and got it
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: sometimes it was easier to go get it out of the spicket than it was to go to the lake and get it. ‘cause you had to dip it out of the lake. But, ‘cause you couldn’t go down there and just, put the barrel in there and get it, you had to, you’d just have to dip it.
Ken: I’m trying to, if you looked across the lake to west Austin, where would, where would it be, approximately?
Alice: Well, you know where City Park is?
Ken: Yes
Alice: It would be further up than that. A big tall mountain, on the other side of that
Ken: OK. Alright. I know pretty well where that is.
Alice: Yeah, that’s where it is. That’s where, um, where Bill’s mother, her parents left her that place. Actually she left it to her and her brother. And her brother lived with her, and, uh, and he, she was, uh, not, she didn’t think he ought to have it or something. Anyway, it ended up with her having all of it.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: I don’t know. He passed away. So, she’d get his. They just ended up, she had, uh, she was married before, Bill’s mother was, ‘cause she had five children by. So Bill had, let’s see, he had three half brothers and two half sisters. And, uh, come to find out, really, they weren’t half to him. They were his. But, uh, ‘cause she told him, his daddy was Ernest Oertling instead of Jack Oestrick.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: But he was related to Jack Oestrick’s son. And, so he, he kind-of took hold of them a lot too because he figured them as his own brother and sister.
Ken: Um
Alice: but, yeah. She had over a hundred acres to begin with and Mr. Oertling took the other because, when they separated he got the other part. They were joining each other. Her’s was the smaller bit. And, so, then they sold it for, I think they sold it for taxes back then
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: So I don’t know why but anyway, she doesn’t have it anymore.
END
Alice Oestrick: Bill and Alice Oestrick’s
Ken: Alice Oestrick’s house in Lake Buchannan, Texas, on May the 21st, I believe it is. of 2013
Alice: Yes, that’s true
Ken: And so, Alice, I’d love you to just tell me all about – you grew up on Bee Cave Road, and, uh, went to Bruton Springs
Alice: No, not on Bee Caves Road
Ken: Near there
Alice: I lived off of Bee Caves Road on, I don’t know what they called it then. It was just a street, just a road, and, uh, there was, um, Dad and Mom had four children at the time
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And we were all real close together. I was the oldest and my sister was next to me, was Grace, and, and my brother was Steven, and my other sister was Jerry Lee. They wanted a boy so they named her Jerry Lee.
Ken: laugh
Alice: laugh. And that’s what, how we grew up. Then, when I was, well when Jerry was twenty years old they had another kid! Called Rodney. So, they stuck around to see him grow up and go to college
Ken: Oh, wonderful!
Alice: And become a lawyer. They saw him do that!
Ken: That’s wonderful.
Alice: Yeah. And, uh,
Ken: So what was it like out on, uh, where you grew up, what was it like out there at that time?
Alice: It was like a cedar brush. Lots of it! And, but we didn’t think anything about it. That was the way it should be! We was real, not too far from the creek.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Well it was pretty good bluff between us and the creek
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Barton Creek, you know. And, uh, we’d go down there in the summer and play in the water. And, uh, have picnics down there. But, I got married pretty young.
Ken: How old were you when you got married?
Alice: Sixteen. And then my sister, my sister-in-laws, they beat me. One of ‘em was, one of ’em was thirteen and the other one was, was, uh, fifteen, when they got married.
Ken: Your sisters?
Alice: Sister-in-laws
Ken: Oh!
Alice: My husband’s brother’s
Ken: I see, OK.
Alice: So
Ken: Now, who did you marry?
Alice: Bill
Ken: Bill Oestrick.
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: And, uh, you were a Patterson. Tell me about your parents.
Alice: My Patter---, uh, uh, Daddy was Ross Patterson
Ken: Ross Patterson
Alice: And, Mama was Ruby Patterson.
Ken: OK
Alice: And she had, we had those four, she had those four children right straight off and, like I said, there were four years between us! Laugh. I was the oldest one.
Ken: But tell me, can you – let’s do a little family history here on this, the Patterson family
Alice: Oh, OK, Dad’s, Dad’s brothers?
Ken: OK
Alice: Dad had, there was five of ‘em all together. He was one of ‘em. And, uh, Uncle Tom was the oldest one. Then Daddy was Ross. And Uncle Richard was after Daddy. And then Tom, Tom was in there somewhere, I can’t leave that one out, I think he was older than some of the others. He turned out to be a preacher.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, then, then there was R.V. and Meredith. And that’s the one you thought was my Dad.
Ken: OK
Alice: But he was the baby.
Ken: OK. And there, all, these are the boys?
Alice: Yeah, that’s the boys.
Ken: How about the girls?
Alice: There was three girls.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: There was Mary, and Lena, and, uh, Edna
Ken: OK. Now Mary is a
Alice: Roberts
Ken: is, married a Roberts
Alice: Yeah
Ken: Married Joe Roberts
Alice: That’s right
Ken: OK. And then they had, uh, a number of children, correct?
Alice: They had a lot of ‘em. I think there was, I guess all together there was nine I guess.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: I know there was a lot of ‘em.
Ken: You don’t remember some of their names?
Alice: I know just about all of ‘em. I think I can name them. There was Vernie. He was the oldest. Then Cecil. Then Stanley. Doris, Doris was before Stanley, she – and then Stanley. And then, uh, Aileen and Lorene, and Virginia. And that’s the one you talked to.
Ken: Virginia Turner
Alice: She’s the baby.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, I’m not sure if there’s any more in between those or not, but I think that was it.
Ken: Is Ollie, you mentioned Ollie Roberts
Alice: He’s the Uncle to, he was a brother to Joe.
Ken: Brothers, OK.
Alice: And, uh, so was, uh, so was, uh, Harve
Ken: Harve
Alice: Yeah. And they all lived out there on Bee Caves Road
Ken: Where did they live?
Alice: They lived, uh, they lived on Bee Caves Road. Right on Bee Caves Road, but not, not close to –close to where St Stevens is now
Ken: Yes
Alice: On, where St Stevens squares off to go to St Stevens, they lived right there on that corner
Ken: OK
Alice: And that was, that was his brothers. I didn’t know all of ‘em, but when my sister and I started to school, I was the oldest, and so they didn’t want me going by myself, so they would send her with me. And, uh
Ken: Mary, or
Alice: Grace.
Ken: Grace, uh-huh
Alice: And, so, uh, Ollie caught us walking on the road and he (laugh) carried us to school, he picked us up and carried us to school. I was only six.
Ken: laugh
Alice: laugh.
Ken: Was he a big man?
Alice: Not really
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, nobody came, so he built a fire, but he say’s “They’re not gonna”, uh, they wadn’t gonna get there. So he stayed there with us until somebody did come. And that was when we first started school. But the school was in Watson Springs Baptist Church to begin with.
Ken: Oh
Alice: Dad went to school in Bruton Springs, up on the hill. They tore that down and was building the new school when I started to school. And it, it was still called Bruton Springs.
Ken: Where was the Bruton Springs school? I should have a map here.
Alice: Patterson, Patterson Lane.
Ken: Patterson Lane, OK.
Alice: It was right there at Patterson Lane where the, the one that Dad went to school in was on the hill before you got there. On the, like if you were coming out Bee Caves Road headed for, headed for Bee Cave, it would be on the right side going. He was up in, the little house, a little schoolhouse built on top of the hill and he went to school there.
Ken: OK
Alice: That was the only one room, and, the one I went to school there was two rooms.
Ken: Was there a Turner Lane?
Alice: Not that I know of.
Ken: Or, OK. I was reading about…Tucker Lane?
Alice: Yeah, there was a Tucker Lane.
Ken: Hum!
Alice: I’m not sure where it is.
Ken: OK. ‘Cause I couldn’t find that on the map here. I think it must have changed names.
Alice: It must have. Yeah. ‘Cause I didn’t, I don’t remember it.
Ken: What was it like? ‘Cause I can picture – I grew up in Austin. I can picture Bee Caves Road as you leave, uh, Mopac or 360. 360, you know, going west. So you lived off of the, off to the left there, on Crystal, what’s now
Alice: Crystal Creek Drive
Ken: Crystal Creek Drive. Were there other, were there lots of other roads as you drove along the old Bee Caves? I guess it was unpaved, wasn’t it?
Alice: Yes. It was unpaved.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: My Uncle and Aunt lived across the creek from us, canyon from us. It was a big canyon. And they lived across there. That was Mom’s sister, I mean Mom’s brother, and Dad’s sister that lived over there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: ___, they lived – and it was called Grace Lane.
Ken: I see, um-hum
Alice: And across the street from that was River Hills Road, which took us down to the lake.
Ken: I see, OK.
Alice: And, uh, then, of course, there was other roads farther on out --- that hill, going up that hill there from Grace Lane was called Moore’s Hill
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And my cousin was always telling me about finding stuff over there by Moore’s Hill
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: (laugh) and, they went to, uh, they all went to school with me up there at Bruton Springs to begin with.
Ken: How many years did you go to Bruton Springs School?
Alice: Until it closed. Let’s see, it was, uh, I was in, I guess, 6th grade when they closed it.
Ken: I see
Alice: And they moved us to Bee Cave and I went to school there. Might have been 7th grade
Ken: That was a long way, wasn’t it?
Alice: Yeah, that’s the reason we had to have a bus to take us.
Ken: Right. And that’s where you met your husband?
Alice: Yeah, he picked us up and took – I got to ride in the front and all the kids others, they got to, had to ride in the back.
Ken: I see (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) But I was, I was only thirteen, thirteen-fourteen years old (laugh) then
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, he would take us to school and then come back and pick us up and bring us back home. And, uh
Ken: How many, how many children went to the Bruton Springs School?
Alice: All together I think there was about twenty, twenty-five, something like that.
Ken: That’s a large number
Alice: Yeah
Ken: Were they all grades?
Alice: All grades, all the grades from first to the twelfth.
Ken: To the twelfth.
Alice: There wasn’t very many in those grades.
Ken: In those upper grades?
Alice: Yeah. There wasn’t very many kids there, but, we had, we had a pretty good school.
Ken: Now, when the boys, did the girls stay in school longer than the boys usually? Or did the boys drop out and work earlier than the girls, or
Alice: Some of them did. Some of ‘em dropped out. My husband, they didn’t, he didn’t go to school hardly at all.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, uh, they had, they needed him home to help ‘em make a living.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And that’s what he did. And, uh, he wasn’t, he was three years older than me. So. He was a good man. I miss him like crazy.
Ken: I’ll bet you do.
Alice: And, uh (silence) Well, what they did for a living, when they first started, when Mom and Dad first started out, they burned charcoal. Have you ever seen a charcoal kiln?
Ken: I have. I have heard how it was done. I’ve never seen it done.
Alice: (laugh) Oh, I’ve seen it done (laugh)
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Made it come up into a peak at the top with those post
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And then they covered it over with bark, cedar bark. They’d peel it, those limbs, and covered it up with bark. And after they got the bark on there they would put dirt on it
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And then, after they got it built, well, then they would start a fire inside of it. A slow fire.
Ken: And you remember those days
Alice: Yes, I remember (emphasis)
Ken: You remember. Did you help them with that work?
Alice: I had to. I was little bitty but I remember it because they’d put, when the charcoal, um, when the, when it burned out and got ____ they would take a rake and rake it, rake it out to the edge. And you had to be careful when you picked it up so you didn’t get a “hot” one, and put it in the bag and haul it off to town. For fuel.
Ken: And how did y'all haul it to town?
Alice: We had a, Daddy had a truck
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: That he carried it in. Uh, an old Model-T Ford.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, and they’d, to begin with I guess, they’d use a horse and buggy, but I didn’t, I didn’t never see that.
Ken: I see. So they would then have to take it all the way in, I guess there by Zilker Park. Is that where
Alice: By Zilker Park is right
Ken: And then down to Congress Avenue and
Alice: And go all the way – they just peddled it from house to house.
Ken: I see
Alice: Is what they did. And, uh, they did that and after they decided they wasn’t making enough money to do that they went to chopping cedar posts.
Ken: You know what year that would have been?
Alice: Uh, I guess it was in the forties when they first started.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And we had to help ‘em do that too.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But they’d, uh, they would get to, talk to somebody about getting a, they called it a “cedar brake” and go out there and, and, sometimes it was already cut down. All they had to do was trim the posts out of it.
Ken:Um-hum
Alice: _____, they did that a lot. But I was with ‘em some
Ken: What would you do, when you were helping them?
Alice: I had to chop ‘em, then, when I wasn’t doing that, I had to carry them out to the road so they could load ‘em. And they loaded ‘em in the truck.
Ken: How old were you when you were doing that?
Alice: Starting off I must have been barely walking (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: They made sure we all worked! (laugh)
Ken: Oh, absolutely. Wasn’t that kind-of dangerous, for you, having an axe at that age?
Alice: Well, I can show ‘ya a few things.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) See, that
Ken: When you’ve got
Alice: I hit my foot with an axe from here to here (laugh)
Ken: Oh, my goodness
Alice: You can see that
Ken: I can see that scar
Alice: It took sixteen stitches to sew up
Ken: How did
Alice: I hit my knee right there with an axe
Ken: Ouch!
Alice: And then an axe come down the top of head
Ken: How did that happen?
Alice: It hung a limb above my head.
Ken: And how old were you when these things happened to you?
Alice: I was just growing up. (laugh)
Ken: A child. Younger --- ten years old or younger?
Alice: Yeah, something like that, yeah.
Ken: Now, when you had to have the stitches, how did they do, where did they take you?
Alice: Take me to Austin to, to Dr. Yaney. I remember his name (laugh)
Ken: Uh-huh. I bet it bled a lot while they were
Alice: Yeah, it did. It did. But I wasn’t the only one that got cut. My brother got – my brother got, uh, him and my sister were running through the brake, chasing each other and my husband was carrying an axe. He was cutting, cutting posts, and he carrying an axe, and my brother ran into that axe. It cut him, right here. Man, the blood went straight up to the sky, ____
Ken: Oh, no.
Alice: I didn’t know if they was gonna make it with him or not. But they did, they got him to the doctor and he sewed him up and
Ken: Hum!
Alice: and he was all right.
Ken: Those axes were so sharp
Alice: Uh-huh, they had to be sharp to cut those posts, dry posts (laugh)
Ken: Did y'all keep your axe, from the old days? Do you still have your axe?
Alice: No. I don’t have any axes. I think Bill has one out there somewhere. That he used.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: But he, when we got married he didn’t let me do that. I, I did, I sat around and listened (laugh) I didn’t do anything.
Ken: You sat around and listened?
Alice: Listened to them.
Ken: Listened to them. So when your husband, your husband then started, what year did y'all get married?
Alice: Nineteen forty-five.
Ken: Nineteen forty-five. And so y'all were cutting all ready, or he was, already cutting then
Alice: Uh-huh, yeah, he was. Him and his family
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: All worked together. And then they went, they didn’t stay with that either. They went, uh, thrashing pecans
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: did pecans and we worked on the Allen, Allen Ranch there on Lake Austin. And did a lot of pecan picking up
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, I think we did it on the halves. They get a, the Allens got half and he got the rest.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: We did pretty good. Doing that
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Of course they was a lot of us too! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Bill had two brothers and then he had me and he had his mother and his daddy and he would get in the trees and thrash ‘em down.
Ken: I see
Alice: So.
Ken: That’s
Alice: And that wasn’t easy work, either
Ken: I know. Climbing those trees, those big ole’ trees would be hard
Alice: He had a, he called it a “safety belt”. He made it out of a rope and he would just hook it onto the tree and climbed it with that belt.
Ken: So, he, how many years did he cut cedar after you guys got married?
Alice: Hum
Ken: You got married in forty-five. Did he keep, a few more years?
Alice: Yeah, uh, a few more years, yeah. When did the War start?
Ken: Uh, well, it started in nineteen forty-two, I think.
Alice: Well, my brother-in-law, the one next to Bill, uh, joined the se--, joined the Navy at the time, and, uh, and he served, I think he had three years he served. And he came, when he came back he started his own business then and he was, he became a mason, a rock mason, and
Ken: Yes
Alice: And, uh, so, um, Bill started working for him. And he worked for him until he, until he got killed. He fell off of a roof of one of the houses when it was raining. And, hit, broke his spleen, and bled to death before they could get him to the hospital. And, so, that was, that was George. And
Ken: Did your husband continue being a mason after that?
Alice: He took over George’s business
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: He paid George’s wife for it. And all the, all the tools and everything he had
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: He did that until he, until he retired.
Ken: Um-hum. Well there were quite a, quite a bit lot of mason work down in the, out in that part of the country. Quite a few people did masonry, didn’t they?
Alice: Yes, uh-huh. He did that, that was, he did best in that.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: When he got into that, he did best in that. Yeah, he was good. He was good at whatever he did. My grandson said “you know, I put up a wall, and I thought it was perfect. And here he come along and he looked at it, and he tore it down!” (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: He said “anybody else would have left it.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But he wouldn’t!
Ken: No, right, uh-huh
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: What, tell me about, who, some of your other sisters and brothers and who they married, and what they, the ones that stayed here in the, stayed in the Hill Country and what they did.
Alice: We don’t have any left stayed in the Hill Country.
Ken: Oh, you don’t?
Alice: Every one of ‘em moved away.
Ken: OK
Alice: See, uh, my, uh, sister next to me, she married a Henry Lentz. And he lived at Creedmoor at that time. And, uh, they moved down to Harlingen and they worked, and he worked down there some. I forgot what they did. Anyway, after they moved there they went to California. And that’s where she still lives is in California. And, uh, my other brother, he joined the Navy and when he came out he went to work for, uh, an Army base in San Antonio. And that’s where he’s worked most of his life. He can’t hear nothing ‘cause the airplanes were so loud that he’s lost his hearing.
Ken: So a whole bunch of those boys I bet, in the Hill Country, must have joined up in the service.
Alice: They did. They did. ‘Cause, see George was in the service, and and uh, Bill, he didn’t want to go. They did check him out but they wouldn’t, they didn’t take him. And, uh, he had high blood pressure and they didn’t want him
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Alice: And, uh, let’s see. Steve went into the Navy and then, uh, Dan, Daniel Grace, he went into the Navy. And George was in the Navy. And, let’s see, there was some more. Oh, my brother, the younger brother’s Dad’s brother’s – both of them went into the Navy. R.V. and Meredith. And, uh, my, the older one, he went into the Army. That was Uncle Richard. He went into the Army when the war was going on. So, there was quite a few of ‘em that went into the service.
Ken: Tell me about some of the ones that were, what I’m really most interested in is the cedar business, because it really hadn’t been that much written about it. Uh, so I know your, uh, Mary, uh
Alice: She had that cedar yard. Her and her husband
Ken: Tell me about that
Alice: Uh, well
Ken: Mary, yeah, they had the cedar yard with the Roberts.
Alice: Yes
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Yeah, Robert’s Cedar Yard is what they had
Ken: Uh-huh, right
Alice: And we didn’t go to the one where Mary and Joe was.
Ken: Oh
Alice: We went, there was another one down on Lamar further down, close to, into town
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And it was Fred and Ruby Roberts. She was – married Mable --- Fred Maples. And they ran that one. But it was run for Joe Roberts.
Ken: He was, uh, Fred Maples
Alice: Maples
Ken: And Ruby Roberts. OK.
Alice: Yeah, they got married.
Ken: I see. And, so, Joe owned that one too?
Alice: Yeah, he owned that too.
Ken: OK
Alice: And Bill hauled cedar to them.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, and, uh, I went with him wherever he went. I was with him
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: And he’d use that Model-T truck to haul it?
Alice: We had, let’s see, what kind of a truck did we have? I can’t even remember what kind it was. And old red Chevrolet, I think
Ken: OK
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: So, what was a day like, back when he was cutting cedar. Did y'all get up early before it got hot?
Alice: Yes, of course, we had to do that. Uh, my father-in-law, I remember, when we first got married, we didn’t get up early enough. So, he’d come down there and got us up (laugh)
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: So
Ken: Where did y'all live when you first got married?
Alice: Uh, Oh, Bill’s brother, step --- half-brother from another marriage, uh,had built a house. A small house down there, actually it was a shack. Down below the, it was on Lake Austin
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, and we, uh, we lived in, first we lived in, we rented a cabin on, uh, on Lake Austin. And we decided we couldn’t pay the rent so we, that, that house was empty, so we, we moved into it. We, uh, papered the walls with real thick wallpaper
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: I forgot what we called it (laugh)! So that the wind wouldn’t come through.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: We lived in it for twelve years
Ken: Twelve years.
Alice: Yeah. It was a two room shack.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But we lived in it
Ken: All right. Did it have water?
Alice: No. We had to haul water
Ken: From the lake?
Alice: From the lake or from the, the city had a spicket up on the hill there, at Bee Cave, and we’d go get it in a barrel and bring it back.
Ken: OK
Alice: So
Ken: When you grew up as a child, did, uh, did y'all have water near your house , or did you go down to the Barton Creek, or
Alice: I, when I was very, when I was pretty young they built, they drilled a well. So we used the well.
Ken: OK, good
Alice: Yeah
Ken: So, tell me, I was asking you about the cedar. But you got up early, I guess, with your husband, and
Alice: And we went out to the cedar brake. And he cut the cedar and his brothers, his brother, his mom and his dad, and, and, uh, I think there was two brothers, I think, ‘cause George was in the service and his other two brothers was out there chopping cedar with him. And they’d fill the truck up. It took ‘em sometimes, sometimes a day and a half or two days to fill the truck, and haul it off to the cedar yard.
Ken: How many posts, I wonder, would that truck hold? Was it, was it a flat-bed truck?
Alice: Um-hum
Ken: OK. It was a bobtail rig?
Alice: Uh
Ken: that’s a big flat-bed with a
Alice: It had a flat bed but it wasn’t very big.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: It could hold, it would hold about a hundred, or something like that. And they’d get ‘em on there and then we’d haul ‘em off to the, the cedar yard, and, and, until I got tired of fooling with other people and I said “why don’t we do it for ourselves!” So we did that.
Ken: What do you mean?
Alice: I mean, we used to have to share the money when we
Ken: Oh, you and your husband just did it by yourselves after that
Alice: Yeah, after that.
Ken: How much money would you get from a load of cedar?
Alice: Oh, it was – it depends on what size cedars we had
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Uh, anywhere from thirty to forty dollars, sometimes fifty
Ken: You’d split that among the three of you?
Alice: That, yeah, to begin with.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And I kept fussing about it so he just said “all right, we will do it ourselves.” So that’s what we did.
Ken: OK. So you probably
Alice: And he could, he could do pretty good by himself too. ‘cause he was used to doing it.
Ken: He could swing an axe
Alice: Yes, he could! He could make ‘em look good when he got through! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) What time would y'all finish up in a day? How long would you
Alice: They’d work until dark. Until they couldn’t see anymore.
Ken: They would work all day long
Alice: All day long! Unless they got a load. And then they’d haul it off and let the others go home and that’s how they hauled it off
Ken: I see. Would y'all, y'all’d be cutting on other people’s land I guess. Would y'all have to give ‘em ten percent, or something like that? How did that work?
Alice: Usually I don’t remember, I didn’t know, I don’t know that part of it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: We didn’t give ‘em very much. I think we got the cedar for free just for doing it.
Ken: I see
Alice: ‘Cause they wanted, a lot of ‘em just wanted it off.
Ken: I see, they wanted it cleared.
Alice: Yeah
Ken: Did y'all have to get rid of the brush too, at the same time?
Alice: No, they took care of that
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: They took care of that after we got through
Ken: That’s great. So, you’d take it into, the other Roberts cedar yard, there on South Lamar.
Alice: Yeah, we never went to the other one. Uh, see, there was another cedar yard up there called Al Erlich’s.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, uh, we never went to it.
Ken: Where was it located?
Alice: It was close to where Joe Roberts’ one was
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: I can’t exactly ---- somewhere in Oak Hill.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And Joe Roberts’ – they had one up there too. But we never went to either one of those. He liked, he liked Fred, so he’d go see Fred.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And I sat in the house with Ruby and talked to her and her three kids.
Ken: Uh-hum . Now, didn’t, uh, Edna Patterson, was one of the Patterson girls, right? Didn’t she marry Litten Pierce?
Alice: Yes
Ken: Tell me about that. Who, now, because the Pierces are an old family from out there too.
Alice: Yes, they were, they lived down closer to Eanes. We lived further out.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And they lived, they lived closer to Eanes. And Edna Patterson, I don’t know how much, I don’t remember how many children she had, but she had a lot. Uh, I can name some of ‘em.
Ken: Um-hum. Please do, ‘cause I went to school with a Pierce.
Alice: OK. There was, uh, Ed was the oldest one. I remember that. And then there was, my memory is failing me some. I can’t remember that. There was, the Reeces lived down there too. Reeces was, the Reeces was married to my mama’s sister that lived down there, lived with them. And they lived there. They all cut cedar posts.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And they lived in the Eanes territory. And, uh, I can remember those boys better than I can Litten’s. I know that he had some girls and one was Joyce and one was, uh, um, Marie, I believe, and Anne was one. But there was a whole bunch of ‘em. But we didn’t, we didn’t fool with them. We didn’t go see ‘em very much, and so, they were, just, distant relatives (laugh) that’s what they were. And, the same way with the Reeses. Dad was one of those kind that wanted to stay with his own. And he didn’t like the Pierces and the Reeses. (laugh)
Ken: Oh, really?
Alice: He didn’t think they did their wives right, or something, I don’t know.
Ken: Uh-huh. Did you ever hear of a little boy named Luther, about my age, named Luther Pierce?
Alice: Yes! That’s one of Ed’s brothers.
Ken: One of Ed’s brothers, alright. See, I went to school in old Henry Junior High School with Luther Pierce
Alice: Yes. Luther and, let’s see, if I hear the names I know them. But I can’t remember all of ‘em.
Ken: Tell me what happened to him.
Alice: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in ages
Ken: OK
Alice: ages and ages
Ken: Are there any Pierces still left in the Austin area?
Alice: Joyce is somewhere, but I’m not sure where. She lived out on, out close to the airport, that way. Her, she married James Whited, and they lived out that way
Ken: Whitehead?
Alice: Whited
Ken: Whited, OK.
Alice: And, uh, and then, uh, Joyce, Joyce’s brother, oh, yeah, Howard, Howard Pierce, was her brother. And he had a whole bunch of kids too. And, uh, of course, all these others did too. So, they just kind of, everybody kind-of multiplied. Boy, did my grandkids multiply!
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: I’ve got twenty-five great-grandchildren.
Ken: Is that right! That’s wonderful!
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: Do y'all have family reunions?
Alice: No, they don’t even talk to one another (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh), terrible bunch of kids! Anyway, that was, uh, well, we have family reunions, but usually it’s not the close family
Ken: Hum. Now, what, did y'all know another family, that I know was right there, was the Teagues. Did you know any Teagues?
Alice: Yes. I knew some Teagues. There was Joy Teague and there was Bertha Teague and Bert Teague, and, they were, all, all the kids, Raymond and Bert and, and, they weren’t kin to us.
Ken: They weren’t what?
Alice: They weren’t kin to us.
Ken: They weren’t kin to y'all.
Alice: Unt-uh. But they, they lived out there. Burt and Raymond and, uh, shoot, I can’t remember their names either. I didn’t think I’d ever forget those people (laugh)
Ken: What are some other families that you remember, that lived out there, and maybe they cut cedar. I guess everybody cut cedar.
Alice: Everybody cut cedar.
Ken: Everybody cut cedar.
Alice: That’s right, they did. Uh-huh. Uh, if they didn’t cut cedar, they got out of it as fast as they could.
Ken: Got out of?
Alice: Cutting
Ken: the Hill Country?
Alice: Got out of that business
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But, it was hard work. Very hard work. And not, not very good. I mean, you didn’t make a very good living out of it. And so they got, they left it as fast as they could and found something they could do better with.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: Like Bill, masonry. Bill made a good masonry guy and he had his own business and, of course, he took over George’s but, I mean, he did good.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: He kept it going until he retired. And
Ken: Back when you were a girl, tell me, do you remember, back before, did y'all go into Austin a lot?
Alice: Yeah, every week.
Ken: Once a week?
Alice: Uh-huh.
Ken: How long did it take you to get from your house to, to Congress Avenue bridge.
Alice: You know, I really don’t remember how long it took. It just, I remember we were going, and we did go a lot. Every week
Ken: Every week. What, any particular day?
Alice: Usually on a Saturday
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: To get groceries, and then come back home
Ken: What would y'all buy there?
Alice: Groceries.
Ken: Did you grow anything? Did you grow corn and stuff like that?
Alice: Bill did. But, no, my daddy wasn’t a farmer And he certainly wasn’t. He, he had a little garden, but it didn’t, he didn’t make very much out of it. He just didn’t like that kind-of business. So, he didn’t do that. And, but, um, both Bill and my dad went into eggs. We got chickens and raised chickens and had eggs and hauled ‘em off to town, peddled them. Just like we did the coal, only it was a whole lot easier.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: But we got a, we had as many as nine-hundred chickens at one time.
Ken: Oh my goodness! That kept you busy!
Alice: Yes, it did! I was glad when we got rid of ‘em (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Yeah, we even candled the eggs. We took ‘em, you know, so we knew what they were doing. And, we put ‘em in boxes and hauled ‘em off to town. Sold ‘em, a lot of ‘em to HEB
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: HEB was good. They’d buy ‘em from us.
Ken: And, um, when you were young, what did y'all do for entertainment. Did, you didn’t go into town, though. You, uh
Alice: Yes, we did!
Ken: You did?
Alice: We’d go to a movie
Ken: OK
Alice: Yeah, we went to movies and, uh, to town.
Ken: Did y'all ever have any music out in the, you know, with neighbors and stuff. Did anybody play an instrument or have a dance, or something like that, or a party?
Alice: No. No. Dad wasn’t one of those kind-of people. He, him and mom went to dances before we were born but they never did it after (laugh) after we came. No, uh, no, we had box suppers at school.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, and, uh, they didn’t let us do that very much, either. But it was fun.
Ken: Did y'all go to church?
Alice: Yeah, we went to church.
Ken: Which church did y'all go to?
Alice: We went to Watson’s Springs. Watson Springs Baptist Church.
Ken: OK
Alice: And, we’d go every Sunday. And Dad would get on the outside with his brothers and have a big conversation and you could hear him above all what was going on inside (laugh.)
Ken: Oh, so he wasn’t actually in the church service?
Alice: Mama got after him. She says “that is terrible, the way you do it! You better not – you’d better quit!” He did. He quit. He didn’t go to church no more after that.
Ken: (laugh) So he wasn’t particularly a religious man, then.
Alice: Yes, he was.
Ken: Oh, he was!
Alice: Yes, he was very much. He did believe, very much so. But he didn’t – he said “all they were after was money and he wasn’t giving them any”
Ken: I see. OK. Were there any other churches out there on the Bee Caves Road area?
Alice: Uh, yes, Bee Cave had a church. And that Watson Springs church. And then they had a church down at Eanes
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: And, they weren’t all close together, ‘cause, that’s just the way it, that’s just the way it was. Now there’s churches all over the place.
Ken: Do you remember, um, when the bridge opened up, we called it the low-water bridge
Alice: I’ve heard that, yeah. Low-water bridge, yes
Ken: yes
Alice: Down there close to the dam
Ken: Yes
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: Do you remember that, when that happened?
Alice: I remember when it happened, but I can’t tell you when (laugh)
Ken: Oh, I remember. No, it was nineteen-forty-nine, or so.
Alice: Yeah (phone ringing)
Ken: Do you want to get the phone?
Alice: No, that’s not the phone. That’s the radio
Ken: Oh, that’s that alarm
Alice: Yeah. It’s telling us ___
Ken: Oh boy. Um, that must have been, that must have changed your life some, though, being able to get into Austin faster, yes, I mean wasn’t that a quicker, quicker way in?
Alice: Well, you know, Dad always had a truck, or some old car that we went in.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: So, we got to town pretty fast
Ken:OK
Alice: It wasn’t like riding in the, in the horse and buggy.
Ken: No, uh-huh. I was just thinking that your, I guess it’s not that much closer, is it? Not that much closer that way than the other way.
Alice: Which is that?
Ken: The low-water bridge into Austin
Alice: We did cross the low-water bridge a lot.
Ken: OK, yeah
Alice: Yeah, we did
Ken: And then, you could go to, the kids could go to O’Henry Jr. High School when it opened up.
Alice: Yeah, I had, I had two that went there, to O’Henry. Two, my two youngest ones went there.
Ken: What did y'all do before if you wanted to go on, you went all … Eanes went all the way to the twelfth grade?
Alice: No, I don’t, Eanes
Ken: I don’t think it did, did it?
Alice: It went to the eighth grade
Ken: OK, and so
Alice: Whenever they finished eighth grade they made, transferred into Austin
Ken: I see. And would many people do that?
Alice: Yeah, lots, lots of kids went to
Ken: Went to Austin. Was there a bus that took ‘em in?
Alice: Uh,yes they did. They had a bus that took ‘em
Ken: Um-hum. What about the boys? Were they, they were dropping out in, and probably they could work by the time they were in the eighth grade. Make some good money, couldn’t they?
Alice: Uh, they stayed in school.
Ken: Good
Alice: As much as they could. I know they did
Ken: I see, good. Good.
Alice: Not me, I dropped out to get married
Ken: I heard one boy, there’s a story that Mrs. Graham said, and, you know, she was, a, someone recorded her or something and said one of her students went on to get a, become a professor at the University of Texas.
Alice: I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it because
Ken: Maybe somebody you even knew.
Alice: I don’t know. I didn’t know that, but I, that’s pretty neat, I’m not surprised. Because they did – they stayed in school pretty good.
Ken: Good. Well, I’ve talked to some men who
Alice: My, my brother, my youngest brother, uh, went to UT. Finished law school and he became a lawyer.
Ken: That’s wonderful
Alice: And he is a good lawyer.
Ken: That’s wonderful.
Alice: That’s my youngest brother. Not the one that, the one that lives up here. They got to where they couldn’t ____ to ___ dam ___.
Ken: Huh
Alice: But they’re doing better now.
Ken: Good. Lets see if I’ve got any more questions for you.
Alice: Uh, you, mostly wanted to know about the cedar chopping
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And, uh, uh, they chopped, they chopped the cedar posts and, and mostly I carried ‘em out. And, if they got to be too big, somebody else carried ‘em out.
Ken: But you were strong? Did, could you, did you have muscles in your arms and stuff like that?
Alice: I guess so, I did it (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) How did you get that cedar wax off of you?
Alice: They had, uh, coal oil would take it off and soap and water, a lot, would take it off, but you couldn’t, you wouldn’t take it off completely. But it, it was on there pretty good.
Ken: Did it ever get in your hair?
Alice: No, not much in hair. Mostly on your hands
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: When we carried those things out. When you first cut ‘em they didn’t have anything on ‘em. But it bled out. And when you picked ‘em up the next time you got it all over you.
Ken: I see. Huh
Alice: And, uh, the way he measured ‘em is he’d chop one, chop one down and cut it and trim it up. And cut it off where he thought it was and then stand it up to be sure it was six foot tall. ‘Cause that’s what it was cutting for.
Ken: ‘cause he’s six foot tall, wasn’t he?
Alice: Yeah, he was six’ two”.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: (laugh) that’s the way he measured ‘em
Ken: Hum
Alice: Stand it up there in front of him. If they didn’t go up as taller than him then it wasn’t no good. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Unless he had five foot ones. Most of ‘em, most of ‘em were six foot. And then, of course, he had some that was eight. And ten. Big ones then. I didn’t do anything with them. So. But he did. But one time we were in the canyon over there off of Bee Cave down near the river, the lake, down there, and he was throwing posts off of the hill. From the top, way, he would throw it way over the top of it, and I was down by the bottom. And he says “Are you out of the way?” and I said “Yep!” And he throwed that post down and it hit me. Hit me right there. I didn’t know any more after that! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Took me off to the hospital. I woke up in the hospital I didn’t know what happened to me.
Ken: Oh my gosh!
Alice: But, he said “well, you wasn’t out of the way”. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) That is a pretty dangerous job, then, I guess it was
Alice: It was.
Ken: I talked to some people that, that, said they could earn more money doing that than anything else.
Alice: A that time it was about the best thing you could do, it really was. And it, it’d depend on how strong you were and how much you could put out.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: And they did pretty good.
Ken: Your husband was a big man, wasn’t he?
Alice: He was, yeah, he wasn’t, wasn’t real big. Maybe you can tell more by this one here. He wasn’t ___ but he was pretty big
Ken: Yeah
Alice: He weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, about something like that.
Ken: Uh-huh, OK. Hum. So, when did Bee Cave Road, did, is it paved at all, or did you move away while it was still a dirt road?
Alice: No, they paved it before we moved away
Ken: OK. OK.
Alice: Before I, before we got married, I think, they paved it.
Ken: Did people start moving out there from Austin at that point, or, did that
Alice: They didn’t like it – it was country. They did not like it at all. They didn’t come out there. And then somebody got started coming out there and they liked it so much till they made a big place out of it (laugh). So the house that we lived in then, they bought it. It was ours, it was, uh, we got it from, we got the land from his mother, and we built us a house on it. And, and it was a, it was a rock house, with, uh, I think we had three bedrooms and, and a living room, kitchen and bath.
Ken: Um-hum. What year did y'all build that?
Alice: Nineteen-fifty-seven. They finished it in nineteen-fifty-seven.
Ken: OK
Alice: So. It was fun. That was lots of fun doing that. Buying furniture for it and everything - we had a good time
Ken: Uh-huh. That’ s great.
Alice: But, dad would get us, take us to the cedar brake early in the morning. We’d go as early as we could before the sun got up. We couldn’t do nothin’ before that because it would be too dark – you couldn’t see. It was early when we went. And, then he would, uh, put us to carrying out the cedar posts that he cut. Or cutting some by ourselves. We did a whole lot of that ourselves. And I, and, uh, then, you said what would we do for fun? Dad was a play - he was a cut-up, I’ll tell ya! So, he would get us, set us down on the ground and play stick guys. I bet nobody ever knows what was! (laugh)
Ken: No
Alice: Get some sticks, he called some, he called this one “brother George”, this one “brother so-and-so” (laugh) and then every once in a while they’d have a fight (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: Boy, did we like to do that!
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: That was part of the fun! (silence) That was Dad. Dad did that. But, I don’t know if anybody else did that or not. But Dad did.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: He kept us doing things like that. He was a big kid, always
Ken: A big kid?
Alice: Yeah. He never got, he never grew up.
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) He had fun, wherever he was.
Ken: Did he cut cedar all, did you say he went into the pecans, or was that
Alice: No, Bill never went into the pecans. Bill, he went into the eggs business
Ken: Eggs?
Alice: When Bill went into the egg business then we went into the egg business. But until that time he was, he cut cedar posts.
Ken: So your dad went into the egg business too?
Alice: Yeah. Um-hum
Ken: Gave up the cedar?
Alice: Gave up all of it then. But he should have been, he was getting a little too old to cut that cedar anyway.
Ken: I wonder how old a man could cut cedar. Did you know anybody cutting into their sixties?
Alice: I don’t think so.
Ken: Or fifties?
Alice: Fifties, yeah, but not sixties
Ken: Not sixties
Alice: Not that I know of. Well, I take that back. Bill’s dad did. He was getting so bad, though, they had to, they had to stop him from doing it. And his mother was with him. She did it too.
Ken: You mean he was, could have hurt himself, was that why they had to stop him?
Alice: Yeah, yeah, he was hurting himself.
Ken: I see
Alice: He was not able to do it. He was, he was sick most of the time, by that time
Ken: I see.
Alice: Now he, uh,
Ken: Tell me something, you know, kind of personal here, um, did y'all ever feel, when you went into Austin, that some of the people in Austin, kind-of looked down at you as country-folk?
Alice: You know what? It didn’t bother me. They do. They did
Ken: They did?
Alice: Yeah, they did. And I didn’t know it
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: But, uh, uh, I found out later when my kids started growing up, and, some of ‘em was ashamed of it. My sister wouldn’t even tell anybody about it at all. She was really ---. It didn’t bother me that bad. I said it was an honest living. We did well by it.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: It got us – and it was dirty. It was dirty living. But, it was a good living.
Ken: It was an honest living
Alice: Yes
Ken: Yeah
Alice: And
Ken: but just dirty in the sense of cedar bark, and
Alice: Cedar bark, and cedar wax
Ken: cedar bark and cedar wax
Alice: (laugh) Yeah, you stayed dirty when you was working in it, no doubt. It was, and I guess that ‘s the reason people looked down on us. I don’t know why they looked down, other than that, but they did.
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: You’re right, they did. But, it didn’t bother me
Ken: That’s good. I, it seems like everybody I talk to has had a great deal of pride in the way they grew up and what they did
Alice: Yeah
Ken: working hard all day
Alice: Yeah
Ken: You certainly could never call a cedar cutter lazy
Alice: No! They weren’t lazy! They surely weren’t!
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: (laugh) No, they weren’t.
Ken: So, you never had any problem with city kids, or anything like that?
Alice: No
Ken: The boys didn’t or anything?
Alice: We didn’t go to school in town until eighth grade
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Nobody ever said anything. I didn’t go as long as the other girls did. Uh, my two sisters graduated from Austin High.
Ken: OK
Alice: But I didn’t, and, uh, I never heard them say, complain about it at all. Except they wouldn’t tell anybody where they come from. Well, I think my youngest sister didn’t care, but the oldest, the older one did.
Ken: She just wouldn’t say where she
Alice: She wouldn’t talk about it.
Ken: I see. I wonder if the Austin kids, there at Austin High, if you said you were from Eanes School, would they know that, something
Alice: Well, they knew that people did this stuff back there
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Alice: Of course they did _____
Ken: Yeah
Alice: But they didn’t, they didn’t, they didn’t say anything
Ken: That’s good.
Alice: yeah
Ken: that’s real good.
Alice: Yes, they did, you’re right, that’s one of the things we had to put up with, but, uh, now when, uh, my daughter started going with a kid from, he didn’t ever work in the cedar, he didn’t know about it, and he started to acting like there was something wrong with people that did that. And Annie said “but look what y'all have done – she built you a house, stupid!” I said “yeah!”
Ken: Yeah
Alice: So, so, he was, that, he didn’t think, well, it wasn’t such a bad thing to do after all.
Ken: (laugh). I’ll tell you a funny story. I was talking to a man that, uh, he hauls cedar. And, um, there is a woman that, she’s got her nurse’s degree, and she’s just a friend of his. He’s an old, pretty, he’s about seventy-five, pretty elder, older man, and this woman, she’s still in her forties. But, she likes to haul cedar. She decided she didn’t want to be a nurse anymore and she likes to haul cedar with him. And so, they take, they get cedar and they haul it all over, you know
Alice: Um-hum, we’ve done that too.
Ken: Um-hum. And he’s still doing this, by the way. And she, uh, what she likes to do is she’ll go to a, like, meet a man, and he’ll finally say “well, what do you do for a living?” and she says “I haul cedar” and if he looks away or acts funny at all, she is through with him (laugh)
Alice: (laugh)
Ken: Isn’t that a funny story!
Alice: She’s not gona let him put her down!
Ken: Unt-uh, no, ‘cause she likes to do that. It’s a freedom, you know
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: You’re free. You’re your own boss
Alice: Yes, yes, that’s what dad always said.
Ken: Did he?
Alice: Uh-huh. He said “yep,” he said “I don’t have to do anything for anybody else. I do it myself.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: “ I can do what I want and when and I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to.”
Ken: That was important.
Alice: Uh-huh
Ken: Well, do you know the background of your father? Do you know where, um, you know, how they got to Texas and where they came from, or anything like that?
Alice: My grandfather, uh, he came from west Texas, I think. I, Texas is all I know. And my grandmother, they had a place over on Barton Creek called the Riley Place, is what it was, and we’d go down to the, to the water, and on top of the hill from the water was where they had their, that was the old place, and we’d go, used to play in it, they had a fireplace, you know, that didn’t fall down, had a cistern and a whole bunch of stuff in there from when they lived there
Ken: Hum
Alice: My grandmother. And her brothers and sisters lived in there. And that was a long time ago.
Ken: Did y'all ever know anybody that lived in the Bull Creek area?
Alice: No
Ken: OK.
Alice: No, that was a little bit too far
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: If, uh, we didn’t sell, we didn’t sell anything over that way. We’d go to south Austin, or east Austin. That’s where we did our, our peddling stuff, for the coal and for the eggs mostly. And we did, we went to house, from house to house back in there, but we never did go out to Bull Creek. There was a lot of people over there too.
Ken: Oh, I know. A lot of ‘em came out to where I live in Liberty Hill.
Alice: Yeah. Have you always lived in Liberty Hill?
Ken: I moved out there in nineteen seventy-five
Alice: Um-hum
Ken: So I’ve lived there thirty-something years, almost forty years.
Alice: Thirty-something years, huh
Ken: Forty years, yeah. But, yeah, we grew up in, uh, I went to O’Henry Jr. High School. I grew up in kind-of the western part of Austin and my wife is from Houston, so we met in college
Alice: I see. Then what year was you, you in O’Henry?
Ken: I was in O’Henry in nineteen fifty-seven
Alice: Fifty-seven
Ken: Fifty-eight and fifty-nine. Um-hum
Alice: Hum. See, uh, my kids were in O’Henry, but I really don’t remember what years they were in there. I had two, two in O’Henry. Well, actually three. I guess Judy went there too until she went into Austin High. Then, uh, my son, he went and, he joined the Army, but he didn’t stay there. He didn’t like it after he got in there (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Alice: So, he just, he bolted.
Ken: Hum
Alice: And he, that’s the end of that.
Ken: Oh, OK
Alice: And he’s uh, And he passed away in 2000.
Ken: Um. Well you have a very good memory, Alice. I appreciate your sharing your memories with us.
Alice: (laugh) Some things I don’t remember too well, like the names
Ken: Uh-huh. Uh, but is there anything else, that, you know, any memories that you have of, when you were a young girl, or, you know, up through the nineteen-fifties and stuff like that, that
Alice: Nineteen-fifties I was married
Ken: Oh, I know
Alice: Yeah. I felt, I felt left out, from my sisters because they were all having a good time and there I was tending to babies. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) How many did you have? How many children did you have?
Alice: I had three.
Ken: Three
Alice: Uh-huh. And, uh, so I kind-of felt left out in the cold there, with the girls having a good time. But, I got over that (laugh). Decided I wasn’t so bad off after all.
Ken: That’s right. Is that when y'all moved in the, what year did y'all build the stone house?
Alice: In 1957.
Ken: OK. So you raised your children in, in that, what you called the shack
Alice: Yes, yes. We lived there for twelve years
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: Yes, we did. We raised ‘em in the shack
Ken: Hum
Alice: Bill picked me up one day and I went right through the floor, both of us (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) That’s funny
Alice: And he got mad at me one time. He was working on the stove and I was supposed to have him build us a fire and he said “daddy doesn’t do it like that.” Well, he says “I’m doing it my way!” and he picked up a shoe and he throwed it and it went into the wall! It stuck in the wall! (laugh)
Ken: (laugh). So you built a fire there for your cooking
Alice: Uh-huh. Yeah
Ken: And hauled your water from the spigot
Alice: Yeah, either from the city spicket or went to the lake and got it
Ken: Uh-huh
Alice: sometimes it was easier to go get it out of the spicket than it was to go to the lake and get it. ‘cause you had to dip it out of the lake. But, ‘cause you couldn’t go down there and just, put the barrel in there and get it, you had to, you’d just have to dip it.
Ken: I’m trying to, if you looked across the lake to west Austin, where would, where would it be, approximately?
Alice: Well, you know where City Park is?
Ken: Yes
Alice: It would be further up than that. A big tall mountain, on the other side of that
Ken: OK. Alright. I know pretty well where that is.
Alice: Yeah, that’s where it is. That’s where, um, where Bill’s mother, her parents left her that place. Actually she left it to her and her brother. And her brother lived with her, and, uh, and he, she was, uh, not, she didn’t think he ought to have it or something. Anyway, it ended up with her having all of it.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: I don’t know. He passed away. So, she’d get his. They just ended up, she had, uh, she was married before, Bill’s mother was, ‘cause she had five children by. So Bill had, let’s see, he had three half brothers and two half sisters. And, uh, come to find out, really, they weren’t half to him. They were his. But, uh, ‘cause she told him, his daddy was Ernest Oertling instead of Jack Oestrick.
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: But he was related to Jack Oestrick’s son. And, so he, he kind-of took hold of them a lot too because he figured them as his own brother and sister.
Ken: Um
Alice: but, yeah. She had over a hundred acres to begin with and Mr. Oertling took the other because, when they separated he got the other part. They were joining each other. Her’s was the smaller bit. And, so, then they sold it for, I think they sold it for taxes back then
Ken: Um-hum
Alice: So I don’t know why but anyway, she doesn’t have it anymore.
END
