Floyd Cantwell
Floyd Cantwell
Interview January 2015
Floyd Cantwell, Jan 30, 2015 at his wrecking yard on 2243 and 183A
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FC: granpa because they don’t know any other grandpa
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah
FC: I was born in their life, and, and I claim grandpa to all of ‘em, so. And I do for all of ‘em just like I do for my own, you know.
Ken: Damn
FC: I’ve got, I don’t know, I’ve got twenty, twenty grandkids, about thirty seven, thirty eight great grandkids.
Ken: Is that right! Isn’t that something. Can you keep all their names straight?
FC: (laugh) I don’t know, but I’ll tell ya, when you got a whole bunch of little bitty ones its hard. I’ve got some six months to three, four, five years old and I, well I see most of ‘em all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. That’s cool.
FC: All the little fellas, I’ve got, I’ve got the sweetest grandkids in the world.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: All of ‘em. ___ grandkids always, they love me to death.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. I treat ‘em all the same, it wouldn’t make any difference though.
Ken: Well, lets go. Tell me about, what did your daddy do?
FC: Well, when I was six years old he got ran over with a freight train. He had a load of rock. He was a rock layer.
Ken: OK
FC: Yeah. Lee Cantwell. You know.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Down there on old Hancock Drive there, he, him, and I had a brother that was in the truck with him, my brother lived here till last year, but it took him out through the windshield, hit the top of a rock pile and had a million scars on top of his head but it didn’t kill him, so.
Ken: Oh man
FC: He stayed in the hospital for a while though
Ken: Man, that’s rough
FC: It was, but, it chewed my dad up in just little pieces up and down the track. He had the hood up on that old ’35 Chevrolet and it just chewed him, you know
Ken: Uh-huh, huh. So your mama raised you?
FC: Uh, my mama raised me, and all my aunts and uncles and wherever I could stay at.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. My grandfather mainly, you know. He always had food, you know, whatever, when I was hungry.
Ken: What was his name?
FC: Fred Rogers.
Ken: Oh, Fred Rogers, uh-huh
FC: Yeah, he was the one that homesteaded a big part of Northwest Hills at one time.
Ken: OK
FC: Up on top of Spicewood, all that ground, he owned on both sides of the highway there.
Ken: Wow.
FC: Up that big hill
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Up far away from Mesa back this way.
Ken: How did that work back then? Back before 360. I mean, I was, I grew up in Austin
FC: Well 360 wasn’t
Ken: 360 didn’t exist
FC: 360 went right through my, Harve Simons’ property, and the Duvall’s and Waldens, yeah.
Ken: So you, you come up, they used to call that Bull Creek Road, didn’t they?
FC: That was Bull Creek. Yes. And then they changed it to Spicewood Springs Road
Ken: Yeah, and so
FC: But, they have a springs down there right before you get to Mopac, across Spicewood Springs
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: That spring, then they finally moved Bull Creek over where 2222 is, which that was a sad day because everybody knew where Bull Creek was. Now they changed that over to Bull Creek and put Spicewood over there. The City did that, so.
Ken: Uh-huh. So when ya’ll
FC: A lot of people looking for Bull Creek Road and it wadn’t there no more.
Ken: Right
FC: It was there, but it wadn’t. It had a different name, see.
Ken: Well, Don was telling me, back in the real old days, before they put in Spicewood, he would go up Bull Creek and then, what, would it
FC: Well, there was always Bull Creek, Spicewood, it’s the same road.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. It’s the same old road that it was 83 years ago, it’s just they widened it but you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. It hadn’t changed.
Ken: OK
FC: And I’ve been around longer than Don has.
Ken: So it went up that hill a long time ago?
FC: Yes sir.
Ken: OK
FC: Up there where 360 used to go up, about halfway the hill, it went out and around and out.
Ken: Following the creek, right?
FC: Yeah. My grandfather talked to him and he let him, he give him the right of way to come right straight down ____’s house
Ken: OK
FC: come straight off the hill.
Ken: Didn’t it used to just cross the creek, again and again, all the way to the lake?
FC: Well, no, no, no.
Ken: Hum?
FC: It crossed a couple times, yeah, yep
Ken: Yeah
FC: It – when you go down, uh, 360, there was no road down through there. All it was is a, used to wasn’t, 360 wasn’t there.
Ken: Uh-huh, I know.
FC: Not at all. It was nothing but pasture. You’d go down through just like going off out here in my pasture, out here in this field next door. And there was an old creek road that people went down there and old lady Duvall, she had a gate and a lot of times she wouldn’t let certain people through there, but she’d let the people that lived out there, they wanted to go through, she didn’t care.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: As long as she knew them. Ms. Duvall, when you’d leave Spicewood Springs Road, she owned that property to the left out and about half way, about half way down there, the Walden’s owned half there back to 2222.
Ken: OK
FC: See. I knew ‘em all. I knew all the Waldens, I knew the Duvalls. She just had her and her one, had one boy, McNeil was a good guy and he was a sheriff for a long time, constable for the county.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
FC: Yeah. Me and him was friends. We run together when we was kids and rode horses.
Ken: What was it like to grow up back there on Bull Creek? I’ll bet it was beautiful back then.
FC: Aw, we went swimming every day it was warm enough.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We had a lot of good swimming holes up and down through there.
Ken: It is beautiful. Have you seen it in the last few years?
FC: Oh, yeah, yeah, I go down there, up and down it all the time.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah.
Ken: It doesn’t look quite the same, does it?
FC: No, well, a lot of it does. Yeah. Go up on top of the hill where we used to, my grandfather gave us property up, when you get to 360, look up on top of the hill right there where Spicewood, all that property there used to belong to me and my three brothers, yeah. But that’s different. It used to be, they cut cedar over there, and there used to be mountain lions and everything else. We had an old Airedale dog and a half black hound and that dog, we’d go over there, me and my brother’d go over there and cut cedar when we was about ten or eleven years old, and that dog, every time we’d go over there, he’d, that old mountain lion stayed over there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah
Ken: (chuckle)
FC: What was really, you know, would really get you to wondering back there in them old days, my mother was raised up, Fred Rogers, he had one girl, then he finally adopted another girl, my mama was a loner, you know, but, when she was six years old, up Spicewood Springs Road, you go up that holler, and he had an old log house he built up there. When she went to school, it used to be over on 2222, there used to be a schoolhouse over there. And, he had her an old donkey and in the morning, at six years old, before daylight, he had a trail that went to their house. She’d done it by herself. Would you turn a little six year old girl and let her go about five, six miles over the mountains, on a jackass to go to school?
Ken: Not these days! (chuckle)
FC: I mean, back in the old days, there were mountain lions and everything else.
Ken: Oh, yeah.
FC: Can you believe you could turn her loose before daylight? He had an old trail and had that donkey. She’d ride that donkey to school.
Ken: I’ll be darned! (chuckle)
FC: Then tie that donkey up and ride him home in the evening. It was a long way across there.
Ken: I believe it.
FC: Even right now, they’ve got houses, but you go back the same route and go over it, it’d still be a long ways.
Ken: Yeah, you bet’cha. Don said he would walk all the way into Austin.
FC: Oh, I have too, but
Ken: Man
FC: One day we went over here and we cut cedar over at Georgetown on 29, and back in them days my Dad had an old, stepdad had an old ’50 model Chevrolet and the clutch was out on it, so we stayed over there about a week. We was getting hungry, you know, and we’d have, we’d have two or three loads of posts cut and then we walked all the way to Georgetown and walked the old road into Round Rock and we cut back across and went back over to Spicewood Springs Road and Mama had a big pot of ribs, we ate them, and that night we went coon hunting.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: (laugh) We made about forty miles then went coon hunting (laugh).
Ken: (laugh). That’s a lot of walking
FC: Well, but, you know. Actually, back them days, the kids were tougher than what they are nowadays.
Ken: Oh yeah.
FC: Yeah. Man, I’ll tell you what, when I was twelve years old I, man, I could do anything.
Ken: You started cutting at ten, you said.
FC: Oh, I started cutting cedar when I was big enough to walk. My grandfather, I used to have an old gray horse, we’d go up in those canyons, we’d cut, all the cedar on top was pretty well gone, them cedar cutters, you know, that’s the way they made their living. And he had that old gray horse, we’d go up there in the canyon and he’d park that old wagon up on top of the hill and that old gray horse’d go down, I’d hook two, three posts on him and he’d take off. Grandpa, I was five, six years old, after Daddy died, I didn’t dare to go up unless I had a post on my back.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: Ain’t no way.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: But that horse knew right where to stop. He’d go up there and I’d unhook him, hang the old singletree back over him hamstring, turn him loose, he’d go right back down where they were cutting at, and I’d go back down there, follow him back down, hook him on, turn him back loose.
Ken: That was a hard thing, getting those posts out of there, wasn’t it?
FC: It was.
Ken: A lot harder than cutting them.
FC: That’s the only way your’e gonna get them.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Either pack ‘em by back, or drag ‘em out with a horse.
Ken: Isn’t that something! Man!
FC: But that horse drug a million, a million posts out of them canyons over there. This is another one of my stepsons. This is Rusty.
Ken: Hi Rusty, I’m Ken Roberts.
FC: That’s Harold D, Lester’s brother, there.
Ken: Alright.
FC: This guy is writing a little deal up on cedar cutters. I told him I cut cedar when I was young. I knew all about it, and I had a cedar yard before.
Ken: Where did you have a yard?
FC: Right over here. I had two of ‘em. Had one over here on ___ and I had one over here on Bagdad.
Ken: OK. So, Dick Simons, he moved up here – No, Dick Boatright moved up here and put a road in, put a yard in, didn’t he?
FC: No, the old, Dick Boatright’s, the old man
Ken: yeah, the old man
FC: Yeah, yeah. Well, they had, a long time ago, when I first moved to Leander, the Boatrights had a yard here right here in Cedar Park.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: ___ grocery right across the street, where all that Callahans used to be in there, well all that was a cedar yard then.
Ken: OK
FC: yeah. And the Post Office was right in front of my store. That was before they cut the road straight through. That old road went around by the feed store, Callahan’s Feed Store
Ken: yeah, yeah.
FC: Yeah, when I had my convenience store, the road went that way.
Ken: OK, right. I actually worked at the Leander Post Office for Ruth Boatright for many years
FC: It’s a new Post Office, yeah, but not there at the old one
Ken: No
FC: Yeah. I’ll tell you he name of the people that used to run that old one. They, I should come out with it. They had one boy, and a girl. They run that thing for years and years.
Ken: So, tell me about the, what do you remember about the, the, some of the old timers and, I hear they used to brew a lot of moonshine up in the
FC: Some of the Boatrights did a lot of moonshining.
Ken: Yeah
FC: And a few of the Simons
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I hear stories, you know, that moonshining was a, was just about, kind of go out when I was born. You know, it was the older Boatrights, a little older than I was, was the one’s that was really made the moonshine.
Ken: Yeah, uh-huh
FC: But a long time ago, see, my grandfather lived on top of the hill. And they were one law that would come out there. And he stopped and spent the night with grandpa because it was a long ways out there. But he wouldn’t go any further than grandpa’s house. But he was out there trying to catch the moonshiners.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yep.
Ken: And your grandfather would put him up?
FC: Huh?
Ken: Your grandfather would put him up?
FC: Oh, yeah, Jim McCoy, he was an old lawman
Ken: I heard about him
FC: Anyway, he was the one that would come out that far, but the rest of the law, they didn’t dare come out, they was scared to come out there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And, but Jim was a friend of the Boatrights, and the moonshiners, and all. And he got along with them. As long as only he’d come out there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah.
Ken: He got along with them? But he’d bust them, huh?
FC: Huh?
Ken: He’d bust ‘em?
FC: He just tried to get ‘em to quit.
Ken: Oh, OK.
FC: No, he didn’t dare to go, no, no, no, nobody busted ‘em. No, no, it was a no-no.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: But his house, his property was the, from there on was a danger zone. See, back in them days there was no, it was just an old gravel road, it wasn’t no
Ken: Going down the hill?
FC: No, going down the hill, that hill wasn’t there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: No, it was a little wagon road coming up to grandpa’s house.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Later years they put that road through there. But it wasn’t, it used to be up there, further up on the hill, up there, was an old road that went off that area, and matter of fact, he lived right, right beside that old road when he was a little kid, you know. It’d come out the middle of the hill, that hill wasn’t even there.
Rusty: They called it Turn’s Hill
Ken: OK
Rusty: Lew Hill is the other one
FC: Yeah, Lew Hill is the one on this end of the cemetery.
Ken: OK
FC: Yeah
Rusty: Yeah, Turn’s Hill was on that end.
Ken: Alright.
FC: Betty Turn, she used to be
Rusty: There used to be a Turn at the bottom.
FC: Yeah, there was a lady named Betty Turns, and they named that hill after her.
Ken: OK
FC: The big hill. But there wasn’t nothing, no more than a wagon road going through there. I can almost remember when there was nothing but a wagon road.
Ken: Uh-huh
Rusty: Every time they put asphalt out there, old Frank Boatright’d ___ dad-gum-it
FC: I’ve seen every house
Ken: He did what?
Rusty: He took a scooter and come off that hill, going down the hill, we used to take formica tops and sit up there and slide down that hill.
Ken: (laugh)
Rusty: The only problem is, that curve at the bottom.
Ken: Uh-oh!
FC: I’ll tell you what, used to had an old timey car hood, about this big around, that two people could sit on it, and it comes a snow storm, and you’d get that thing and make you a rut, that thing’d make a hundred miles an hour, go swoooo---
Ken: I bet it would! Dam! Those days are over, aren’t they! Snows like that!
FC: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Ken: I remember that.
FC: It’s a wonder we hadn’t got killed. And we almost did get killed.
Ken: Marie Boatright still lives out there
FC: Yeah, Frank’s daughter, yeah.
Ken: Yeah.
FC: Yeah, she just hung in there. You know, her brother moved out. She’s about … well her and her brother’s the only ones left out of Frank’s. Frank, his wife died, and, the other kid died, and, you know, it’s just two of ‘em in Frank’s family is all that’s left
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Then maybe, well no, there’s three, there’s three. OK. He’s got three or four grandkids.
Ken: Yeah. So, I heard back in those days that a man could make a pretty good living cutting cedar.
FC: You know what, you didn’t make the big money. You made
FC002
FC: You still had to grow gardens and you still had to raise hogs, and
Ken: Yeah
FC: You had to shoot a deer when you see one, and back in them days
Rusty: There wasn’t an easy way of life!
FC: I’ll tell you what. There were more squirrels ate rabbits ate back in them days than there was anything.
Ken: Uh-huh
Rusty: The day I was born my dad ____ coon ___
FC: There was always a lot of rabbits, and you know what, they didn’t kill – We had squirrel dogs back in them days, me and my brother. We’d go in the morning and we had a, had two dogs, and we could always catch eight or ten squirrels. Every day.
Ken: Your dog would catch ‘em, or you’d shoot ‘em?
FC: Heck yeah, no, we had a nigger shooter
Rusty: They’d tree ‘em
FC: When them damed squirrels hit the ground our dog would catch ‘em.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: I mean, they were dogs. We had a couple dogs and there could be a squirrel half a mile away, they’d be sleeping in the yard, get up, you’d see ‘em get up, sniff, sniff, and that dog’d get up and go straight to that squirrel – we knew what was going on.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. I mean, ___ long ways. From here to Leander.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
FC: That dog’d get up, you know what he’s going to do. A long time ago there used to be a lot of people had a lot of old Walker hounds, them old fox dogs
Ken: Yeah
FC: And they’d come out, every once in a while, and let ‘em hunt, you know, and we had this old, one regular old collie dog. In daytime he was a squirrel dog. But they’d go fox hunting over there, you know what, everytime we’d take our collie dog with us, them hounds would be (baying), our dog here, he’d be (yip, yip) he’d have a fox up a tree right there close by.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: Them fox dogs, they just wadn’t dogs. I think they get after a deer and maybe run off.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And that collie dog, I knowed what he was gona do, ‘cause he was gona, a fox and a squirrel have a certain scent, but he knew what to do at night. That’s the only thing he treed was a squirrel and a fox.
Rusty: Them hound dogs took the scent on the ground. Where this dog would take the scent in the air
FC: Well, he’d go straight to ‘em
Rusty: ___ all around, they ___
FC: We had a black dog
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We had a black collie, had a regular collie dog like old Lassie. Them was the best two dogs in the world. Especially when it come to squirrels and fox. They didn’t bother rabbits, they didn’t bother nothing like that.
Ken: You said you dad had, you dad cut a load of the cedar the day you were born to pay for the hospital bill?
Rusty: Forty dollars worth
Ken: Forty dollars, what year was that?
Rusty: I was born in fifty-one.
Ken: Was he using an axe or a chainsaw?
Rusty: Axe. He had no chainsaw.
Ken: Forty dollars worth!
Rusty: Back in ’57 we didn’t know what chainsaws were.
Ken: Yeah, they came in, what, 1960 or something like that. Yeah. Forty dollars. That’s pretty good! Forty dollars is a pretty good day’s work in 1950, 51.
FC: I’ve cut … When I had my cedar yard ___ Eddie Simons, one of Bill Simon’s boys, we had over there on ____, over in the Enfield where they had the golf course right where Mopac is
Ken: Yeah
FC: They had, one day I had a friend over there and he told me we’re gona build a big building over there. If you want them posts, you’re more than welcome to ‘em. Went over there and we run the cedar yard until about 1:00 and we ate and had a jug of water and went over, me and him that afternoon. We both had chainsaws. We cut $800 dollars worth with chainsaws that one evening, that good posts.
Ken: Eight hundred dollars?
FC: Eight hundred dollars, between us.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We was partners, but anyway, I took him in as a partner, load, you know
Ken: Yeah You know the salary back when you were a boy, it couldn’t have been a dollar and hour
FC: We graded our own cedar so I see what we did, you know, but, boy
Ken: I was thinking, is it, I mean, I was working in 1960 for a dollar and a quarter an hour, so I bet it was even less than that in 1950. So forty dollars, that’s, that’s pretty good
FC: You know, actually, when I started in the junk business, from the time I was twenty years old, I was already a rich man. I started when I was seventeen.
Ken: What happened? How’d you do that?
FC: Just junk cars.
Ken: Wow
FC: And a lot of hard work
Ken: Uh-uh
FC: I did still cut cedar when somebody had good posts, I just didn’t cut off, I had trucks, and I had money, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And I’d chop with a choppin axe
Ken: Wow, yeah, that’s a lot of work too
FC: I know all about cedar. It was fun
Ken: It was fun!
FC: It was fun!
Ken: How many hours – would you start early in the morning when you went to school?
FC: Oh, well, just whatever. I mean, we had no certain time. If you had something really important you wanted you wanted to do that afternoon, you’d go early and get through with it, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yep.
Ken: Could you cut eight hours?
FC: Oh, you didn’t want to cut no eight hours.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: No
Ken: That’s too long, isn’t it?
FC: No, it’s not too long. It’s just that a lot of people cut, go in about seven thirty or eight and they’d cut ‘till about twelve or one and they’d load up and come out, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Rusty: It’d get too hot.
Ken: Yeah, you betcha.
FC: Hot, cold, whatever, this was a normal thing that they did, you know.
Ken: Your father-in law
Rusty: My father-in-law was Charles Cantrell.
Ken: Oh, Charles Cantrell!
Rusty: Yeah, they called him Punk
Ken: Yeah, yeah. Liberty Hill. I live in Liberty Hill.
Rusty: Yeah, well, he cut cedar all his life. He’d get up before daylight and go out there and get there right at daylight and he’d go until about eleven, twelve, and he’d come
FC: Him and his brothers were diehard cedar cutters.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: They did that up until about ten years ago.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah, I talked to Lee Cantrell.
Rusty: Lee’s still cutting.
FC: They’re still some cedar cutters. They’ve got a cedar yard out there. Out there, you’re going to Briggs just before you get to 138, there on the left, that guy piled the shit out of them posts
Ken: Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that.
FC: I got some places that’ve got cedar and I have people call me every day wanting to cut my cedar.
Ken: Really. It must be good cedar then.
FC: No.
Ken: No (laugh)
Rusty: It’s just hard to get. There’s so many people out there cutting it now.
FC: I’ve got property right out in Briggs. I sold this place on ____ where the big house is. And built me a new house up in Briggs out of a, what over at Hutto, forty years old, it was a hay barn, this old drill stem hay barn, then they decided thewy’de make a church out of it, put concrete in it, made it real nice church, you know. But it’s a forty by hundred and I-30 went through there and that guy, I was over at bought some old junk from him and he said that church has got to go. I said I’ll take a thousand dollars, it had airconditioning, it had everything hooked up to it. I went down there and they had church on Sunday, then on Monday I had four or five guys over there tearing it down and built me house out of it.
Ken: That’s cool. So, that’s where you live out there now?
FC: Yeah, right there, about four or five blocks from the store there in Briggs
Ken: OK
FC: Everybody loved my house. I’ve got a forty by fifty living room. When they walk in they think its amuseum I’ve got deer heads hung, pictures, all over, so it really is a cool house. People love it.
Ken: That’s cool.
FC: _____That old drill stem pipe as soon as I got it built the first tax notice I got from from Burnet County they valued my house at four hundred fifty thousand.
Ken: Hum!
FC: My wife filed and went over there and had her bill. There were six guys, three on each side, and three of ‘em was on my side and three of ‘em was against me and they guy at the ___ was on my side so they lowered it to two hundred and fifty thousand.
Ken: (laugh)
Rusty: Do you know where Mason Creek is over there?
FC: Yeah
Rusty: Floyd owned all that. We had, we stayed in the old Mason house, there, that old two story
Ken: Oh, yeah, yeah, right there on
Rusty: That big house that used to be there, that’s where we lived.
FC: As a matter of fact, I sold that to Jim Boatright. He bought that. But I bought that place over here, both of them at the same time. But I sold it.
Rusty: Do you know where the River Ranch is in Liberty Hill?
Ken: Yeah
Rusty: He used to own it.
FC: 808 Ranch.
Ken: Yeah, I think that’s where John T. lives, Boatright.
FC: They’ve had a lot of people there since I … But I had the best ranch had four hundred and fifty acres up Cypress Creek up there, where old, I lived on that place for seventeen years. And that was one of the best ranches I ever owned. Back, go up Cypress Creek, up there where all the shopping center is
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah. I owned that, and I sold that then bought the 808 Ranch, kept it a while, then I sold it and moved, sold it to Roy Butler and then I moved back down here and bought the spot we’re in
Ken: You sold that to Roy Butler?
FC: yeah
Ken: Man.
FC: Yeah, I bought and sold half of Cedar Park, Leander.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: And about half Spicewood Springs Road.
Ken: That’s something.
FC: I’m doing a pretty good job at Briggs now.
Ken: (laugh) You think Austin’s going to move out to Briggs?
FC: Yes sir. We’ve got a new plant going in up there. We’ve got a space center their going in and hiring 200 people.
Ken: A space?
FC: They’re building rockets.
Ken: In Briggs?
FC: It’s, you go into Briggs, on the left, they are working like hell on it right now.
Ken: I’ll be darn. Huh.
FC: They’ve go a big, they’ve got this same plant in California but they claimed they can build it for a third down here than what they built it out there for.
Ken: Uh-huh. I’m surprised they can get two hundred workers out there.
FC: Well, they will. You know, this is why I say they are gona have to build houses.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Huh
FC: I help a lot of people buy property, you know, I’m a kind of fixer. They call me and want to know if it’s a good deal. I don’t always tell ‘em if it’s a really good deal, but they call me. I’m kind-of a scout when it comes to buying property.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Any time I find a nice place that I think is a good deal, I don’t care how much money, I tell ‘em if it’s a good place, they usually buy it.
Ken: Um-hum
FC: Yeah. I’ve got big places on, behind Sun City on 195, I bought for people, and up there in Briggs, I bought property there, you know, when I find ‘em a place and buy it, well they kind of give me free run of the property to do what I want to with it until they resell it, or I resell it for them.
Ken: Got you.
FC: There was one man up there, ___”find me a place”, I said “OK”, I found him a 750 acre place. Went in there and bought it right on the spot, come out, kept it a year and I run cows on it. He said Floyd “we’re thinking about selling that, you may have to move your cows.” I said “let me sell it for you.” I called an old lady, went up there, come back. I made him a million dollars in one year.
Ken: Oh my gosh!
FC: I made a million dollars and I still got the property.
Ken: You’ve still got your cows on it?
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Do you take care of cows all the time?
FC: I’ve had cows all my life.
Ken: I do too. I don’t have very many. How many cows do you have?
FC: Oh, I’ve got about eighty.
Ken: That’s a lot. Finally we’re making some money on these things.
FC: I’ll tell you what, I did better this year on my calves ever in my life.
Ken: You betcha. Where do you take them? Where do you sell ‘em at?
FC: I sell ‘em up there in Lampasas.
Ken: I’ll tell you what. Have you ever thought about going to San Saba?
FC: Yeah, I have, I used to have, I still own an auction up in Lometa, up there
Ken: OK
FC: I had a goat auction, I had my back operated, you can’t get nobody to do it for you, so I just one day I went up there, I was losing money, people writing hot checks and stuff for animals. I told Jim, I said “hey, when the sale is over with don’t say nothing, but ___ tell them there ain’t gona be no more.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I’ve still got, I’ve got part of it leased out, but I still own it. Still got the barn and cafe
Ken: I took some cows up to San Saba for the first time about a month ago.
FC: Yeah
Ken: And I drove right past the Lampasas auction, it was a day early and there was hardly anybody there. I go up to San Saba and there were hundreds of people.
FC: Well that sale was going on up there. The sale wasn’t going on up there at Lampasas. What did the calves bring you?
Ken: Oh, I averaged about thirteen hundred dollars per calf.
FC: A calf? That’s about what they’ve been bringing.
Ken: Yeah
FC: I’ve had, I have a little three hundred and eighty pound calf, about three and a half a pound up there, it sounds pretty damn good.
Ken: Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s hardly worth it to keep raising ‘em up. Just sell them young, really.
FC: I like ‘em four to five hundred pounds.
Ken: yeah
FC: Five hundred you lose money because they don’t bring much, but I’ve had, I’ve had several five, six hundred pound heifers bring me fifteen hundred dollars.
Ken: Yeah. The heifers are bringing in a good price now.
FC: I sold about, oh, I don’t know, I sold nearly all of my young calves, you know, I sold, I think I got about fifteen left right now that, I’ve got about ten ready to go, I just, kind-of was waiting
Ken: A special breed, or are you just
FC: No, I mean I’ve got every kind. Most of ‘em got black in ‘em, you know.
Ken: Yeah, yeah, I got an Angus bull
FC: I’ve got two or three cross-bred Bramers, and I’ve got some yellow cows
Ken: Did you ever know
FC: I don’t have a whole lot of ‘em, but one time I had, you know, I used to have a lot of Longhorns, and Longhorns is not really the way you want to go.
Ken: They’re crazy
FC: Well, I like to eat the Longhorns. They claim the meat is better for you. I don’t know why they don’t bring as much. I can’t believe it. When, you know what, what gets me? They’ll take them calves and put ‘em in a feed lot and they’ll make ‘em weigh fifteen to two thousand pounds and when they cut ‘em they just throw half the fat away.
Ken: Huh!
FC: You know, they put big money getting it on ‘em then they turn around and
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
FC: you know. But meat, ribeyes is better with that fat on there, but people, I don’t want that fat meat, it ain’t no good for you. I’ve ate it all my life
Ken: Um-hum
FC: You know, that, it’s just one of the things that, and Longhorns, most of their meat is lean, you know
Ken: Yeah. I’ve raised one of ‘em that’s half longhorn. I had a longhorn bull sneaking on my property
FC: yeah. I had one, my neighbor over there had a Longhorn bull that jumped over and bred one.
Ken: Up there on Bull Creek. Did ya’ll have milk cows, or
FC: Yes, we did milk cows.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We milked a million cows. Grandpa always had about twenty-five, thirty old cows. He had about four or five milk cows. He raised, up on them hillsides, he raised a little bit of corn and a little bit of ___ and that’s what he had for feed, that and fodder tops
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And he had probably, he’d give a kid a half, or give ‘em one tit or something, you know, and he’d probably get two or three gallons a day.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Then Harve Simons, my dad-in-law, did the same thing, you know.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Back then in the old days they didn’t have, they didn’t
FC003
FC: raise it – they didn’t have the feed to feed ‘em see.
Ken: Right. Of course not. Yeah. You had gardens and stuff like that?
FC: Oh, everybody had gardens, yeah.
Ken: What did you grow?
FC: A million things. Beans, potatoes, corn, beets, onions,
Ken: Uh-huh. Where was the nearest store?
FC: Uh, what you call Rosedale over there.
Ken: OK
FC: Over on Burnet Road up there, there was a German guy then there was a, there was a law man, a Mr. Sunday, right there where 2222 come out at, right there at, had an old store right there on the corner, and there was only two stores that were even close by.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: ___ and then Jollyville had an old store. Out this way
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: It was about, oh, a good fifteen, twenty miles in each direction from where they was, back around the road with a wagon, to either one of the stores.
Ken: Right. Right. Now, that’s where Don said he went to school, in Jollyville
FC: Yep. There was a lot of Simons went there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Toungate are all tied in with the Simons too.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Lum Toungate , Buster Toungate
Ken: Did they all cut cedar?
FC: Well, yeah, they all did in the early days, yeah. One of ‘em, Harve’s, up there, ___ brother-in-law, he had a liquor store there on old 183 there. But he used to be, you know, I don’t know what happened. They changed that road, a long time ago that 183 used to be highway 29.
Ken: Yep
FC: Yeah, a long time ago, when I was a kid.
Ken: Right. I remember that
FC: They had an old
Ken: Hilltop Inn
FC: Yeah, you remember the Hilltop?
Ken: I do!
FC: Anyway, back this way they used to have a, three or four beer joints up through there.
Ken: Really? Out on old 29!
FC: Old 29. Yeah, all the way from Mopac back up to, almost Jollyville right now
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: As a matter of fact there were four beer joints.
Ken: Do you remember the names of ‘em?
FC: I can. It might take me a little bit. One of ‘em was the Hill___ That was different, yeah, this was down
Rusty: Where Balcone reaches
FC: Before, there used to be … Oh, just aminute I’ll tell you. Before they cut 183 through over there, the new 183, the old road that went down through there. Hilltop Inn and right there overlooking Balcones Trail.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: That used to be Balcones before they ever had Mopac through.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yep. There, then up there they had 29, Rip Farmer owned that 29 Club and
Ken: On 29, Rip Farmer?
FC: yeah. He had one and you come on back this way, there was another one, what they called the Sunset, one of ‘em was Sunset, then uh, Swazie, not Swazie but ___Swazie’s ___, let me think of it. What it used to, the one I bought the horse from old doc fro. He had that last beer joint this way. I still got a horse ___
Ken: Where was that one?
FC: It was on old 29. All four of ‘em was up there.
Ken: As far up as Cedar Park today?
FC: No, it wasn’t even to Jollyville.
Ken: Oh, OK
FC: All the way from Balcones to, up before you get to, before you get to Spicewood Springs Road
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah
Ken: Now Farmer, that rings a bell. I went to school with a Dewey Farmer.
FC: Who?
Ken: Dewey Farmer. He would be my age and, uh, the Farmers lived
FC: All the Farmers are just about dead now except the younger one. I’m still friends with them. I know them all.
Ken: Do you. Who is the younger one? I might like to talk to him.
FC: Let me think. Let me think. His name is Mike Farmer. I think he lives here in Cedar Park. And Jerry Farmer was one of the young ones, he had this grass, had this grass patch up here on Leander Drive.
Ken: Is he still alive?
FC: No
Ken: OK
FC: Both of his kids are dead too. He had two boys. One of ‘em got shot. The other one, I don’t know what happened to him, he got, but he died last year.
Ken: Huh.
FC: Let me think who else. I had a couple nieces that married some of them. Little Man Farmer, the one that owned the grass patch. Louise married, not Louise, Jerry married Louise and Little Man, they called him Little Man, the one that had the grass over here, they were both grass people, he married Patricia.
Ken: Your niece?
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Uh-huh. Now,
FC: They are all tied in with the Cantwells.
Ken: OK.
FC: Their kids are, you know.
Ken: The place I remember them living was down on Shoal Creek and 35th Street, in there.
FC: You know on 35th Street, or 34th Street, the Farmer’s always had, they sold tomatoes
Ken: Yeah, the fruit stand.
FC: yeah, they had a fruit stand, every one of ‘em. Then there was another guy, I can’t think of his name, but I will in a minute. That kind-of married into the Farmers, you know. They had two or three fruit stands in there.
Ken: So which Farmer, who do you think would be good, which of the Farmers would be good to talk to?
FC: Well, I don’t know. You know, I don’t know, they all, I don’t think there’s none of ‘em as smart as I am about the old time and all
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: See, I used to ride the horses up to Congress Avenue, and mules, and down Sixth Street
Ken: (laugh)
FC: We’d ride to Spicewood Springs Road. When I was a kid a quarter would get you everything you needed.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: OK. There’d be five or six of us boys and we all had horses, you know, we were ten, twelve years old. By Spicewood Springs Road, that’s where my junk yard was, by Spicewood, we’d ride all the way over there on Airport, go down Airport, go down to Red River, and they had an old theater there I called Skinny’s. And if you’d go in there you could buy a bag, get into the show for a nickel, you’d buy a bag of popcorn for a nickel, you could buy a Coke for a nickel, and, you know, and a candy bar for a nickel.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Twenty-five cents would give you everything you needed to do. If anybody had twenty five cents and they wanted to get on a horse and ride – we rode.
Ken: When did you get your first car?
FC: Oh, I was twelve years old
Ken: Do you remember what it was?
FC: Yeah, ’36 Ford convertible four-door.
Ken: All right!
FC: I’ve got pictures of an A-model , back when I was a kid an A-model , I don’t’ know how I go ‘em, but I’ve got ‘em hanging on the wall.
Ken: Did you ever have a hoopie?
FC: I made hoopies. If I had a car I made me a hoopie.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. That’s the first thing I’d do is take a saw, cut the top, and leave the windshield and I’d build my bed – an A model wadn’t much and I’d put my bed and I lay my old cushions on my bed and when I’d haul cedar I’d have cedar stacked all around and leave room to sit.
Ken: Uh-huh. What was your bed made of?
FC: Well just whatever my grandpa picked up side of the road.
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh)
FC: No, he’d usually try to make it out of two-by-sixes.
Ken: Yeah.
FC: I was a pick-up making guy. I hauled a lot of cedar with them old 21 inch tires about like that. I could actually, back in my day when I was twelve or fourteen years old, I could cut ten dollars worth and haul on that A-model That’s a lot of cedar back on an A-model . When I graded it, I usually didn’t cut just everything, I cut something that, you know
Ken: worth some money?
FC: Yeah, ‘cause you cut a bunch of crooked stuff you wouldn’t get over three or four dollars on there. If you cut some good straight posts, you know, from a good tree up to five, six inches. You’d try not to cut long posts, because your truck, your A-model would just rare up. You had to cut what you could haul.
Ken: Uh-huh How many could you haul without it raring up?
FC: Well, if I didn’t get too long ones, I could, you know, I’d move my bed so up, you know, they’d go plumb to the dash. So you get about half of it would be hard and you get a little weight on that front tires.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: You couldn’t haul over seven foot posts. In fact, in them old days six foot was all you needed because them old rocks out there, people couldn’t dig a hole in that rock. They didn’t want them big posts that you drill four foot into the ground, see.
Ken: Most of those posts, they would be hauled out of here, wouldn’t they, long hauled?
FC: No, well they were, people, my brother-in-law, Harve Simons, young Harve Simons, him and my brother-in-law Homer Crawford, they hauled to West Texas. They had an old ’35, ’36 International and stuff. They’d get something they could haul two pretty good decks on it and they hauled out west, yep.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Usually didn’t haul south, but they hauled west, I don’t know why.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: They would haul plumb into Colorado from here.
Ken: Uh-huh, I’ve seen ‘em there.
FC: Yep. They hauled, they hauled back in them old days, there was just one of them old trucks taking them two weeks to go up there and back.
Ken: Yeah
FC: But, anyway, that, my brother-in-law did, both of my brother-in-laws did that. One day Homer Crawford up there, he got up in Colorado on one of them, edge of one of them hills up there and the law pulled him over. He’d gone a way and they told him “pull over, pull over.” And he pulled off that road and that truck with all them damn two decks fell over and unloaded there. He told he said it’s gona turn over. And the law said “get it over there.” He was a great guy, I guarantee it.
Ken: Man.
FC: I had the best brother-in-laws in the world. I loved ‘em.
Ken: Crawford and Simons
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Did you ever know any Pierces?
FC: Pierces – my grandma was a Pierce.
Ken: OK
FC: Yeah. Grandma Rogers was a Pierce. Yeah.
Ken: Did you know some of the
FC: She was a full blood Irishman.
Ken: Horseman?
FC: Irishman. She was Irish
Ken: Oh
FC: Anyway, she, yeah, I know, Isaac Pierce, Chester Pierce, and I know, I still know a lot of Pierces. A lot of ‘em live up, uh, in Briggs, up there right now.
Ken: Really
FC: Yeah
Ken: And they’re related to you?
FC: Yeah.
Ken: I’d sure like to talk
FC: Through my grandma, you know.
Ken: I’d like to talk to a Pierce because
FC: Well, I can give you one of them’s names. It is not Pierce, but his mama was a Pierce.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: one of Arthur Pierce’s grandsons.
Ken: OK
FC: He lives up there and he probably, he knows a little bit. He’s not no young guy, but he is retired, so he can
Ken: Yeah
FC: He can tell you about cedar choppers too. He’s still, he would still cut cedar if he was able. But he’s down in his legs and he had to cut a whole lot of cedar, a lot of ____
Ken: I’m looking to write down that name here. What was his name?
FC: Richard, oh, just a minute I’ll tell you the last name. Anyway, he lives just before you get to, just before you get to that little cedar yard on this side there.
Ken: Oh, really, on, up on 183
FC: Up on 183
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: He lives out there, his sister lives down closer to the road and he lives up a little lane up there, he lives up behind her.
Ken: OK. Richard. Not Ward?
FC: No, his name is not Pierce, because he had a different daddy, but his mama was a Pierce.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. Arthur Pierce’s daughter.
Ken: Was it Whited?
FC: Nah, it wadn’t Whited. I know all of them too.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I run around with them when I was a kid, drank a little beer together when I was fifteen, sixteen
Ken: (laugh)
FC: I’ve done everything. Amazingly I’m still alive.
Ken: Well, you are one of the last ones.
FC: I’m one of ‘em!
Ken: Yeah.
FC: You’re gona look a long ways to find another one that knows as much as I know at 83 years old
Ken: Yeah, yeah
FC: I can tell you all about Sixth Street, ____
Ken: Well tell me about Sixth Street, because I heard it was pretty wild back then.
FC: It was! They used to have an uncle Ruf. Ruf Young married my daddy’s sister, and he absolutely was the meanest man in the world.
Ken: Ruf Young
FC: Ruf Young, uh-huh.
Ken: Yeah, the Young’s were bad, weren’t they?
FC: He wasn’t bad. He was the best guy, big red-headed guy, weighed about two hundred fifty, maybe two eighty, all muscle, man. He’d go down on the beer joint on Sixth Street. I’d go in, ten-twelve years old, they’d serve me a beer just like they served him one. No questions asked.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And he’d go in there and he’d get drunk and somebody, boy, he’d, when he was drinking, you didn’t want, unless you had something kind to say to him don’t say nothing. You know. I’ve seen him take a bar stool and just pick it up and wham, just like that, and old Jim McCoy is the only other guy that could come in there and arrest him. He, and them laws would have to shoot him to get him out of there. Anyway, he’d come in there and he’d say, now Ruf, you know, you’ve done wrong, you’ve got to go to jail. He said “well, you gona damn sure have a beer with me or I ain’t going nowheres with you. He’d make Jim McCoy sit there and drink a beer and they’d get that drank and he’d get up and go with him.
Ken: What would he arrest him for doing?
FC: For fighting. Always fighting, hurting somebody
Ken: OK (laugh)
FC: (laugh) One day. Let me tell you a story. They were up there, him and his son-in-law, Gephart, Marion Gephart, up there where I lived on top of the hill when I was, well I must have been eight or nine years old, when my mother lived there. And they, him and his son-in-law was fighting a little bit. They got out of the truck and Marion took a knife and held it like this here and cut him, and all his guts fell out, right there on that ground and everything, and they, somebody took him to the hospital and they washed him up and he lived another forty years after that.
Ken: Oh my gosh
FC: That’s how tough he was.
Ken: My
FC: Anyway, I mean, he just drew all the way across, his guts was hanging out here like that.
Ken: Now, was he part of the Buster Young and Ellis Young and Ike Young and all that?
FC: They were his brothers
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah, that’s right
Ken: ‘Cause I don’t,
FC: Ruf had, he had eighteen kids and had one boy. And his name was Jimmy Young
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: His name wadn’t Ruf. And anyway they called him Nubb. Anyway, all the Haydons, four brother married four sisters. All my first cousins. So I’m kin to all the Haydons.
Ken: Haydons?
FC: Yeah, Yeah A bunch of ‘em live up there right, this guy right here, that’s got that fish right here, he
FC004
FC: one of my first cousins
Ken: Oh man
FC: Yeah, he died now. Anyway
Other guy: Dobbin. ____ Cantwell, lives over ____
FC: ____, anyway, Lester’s still got a ____ of fish that’s made made out of them fish. We thought about cooking it Superbowl, I don’t know.
Ken: Those some big catfish
FC: That’s Lester’s wife’s kin-folks there
Ken: A Cantrell?
Other guy: Yeah, you know Charles, Punk, my father-in-law? That’s his brother.
Ken: OK.
FC: His brother and his wife, Betty.
Ken: OK
FC: As a matter of fact, he lived with - part of Punks property, he give it to him, still part of their place on Bagdad
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh. So you knew the Youngs. Well, that’s a bunch of, so there was – you knew some of them. They were from over on Bull, on Bee Cave area, weren’t they? The Youngs
FC: Uh, not particularly
Ken: No?
FC: might be some, a few there, but not the older ones
FC: They might, some of ‘em, live out there, I don’t know
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: You know, all them. But they’re all Ruf Young’s, my uncle’s brothers
Ken: Yeah, OK. Did you ever meet Litten Pierce?
FC: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: There are some Pierces live up by the, his kin folk, the other side of the river up toward there, on Bee Cave road up there
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I can’t think of their name. – Ed Pierce and
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah, he lived over there. They were cedar choppers.
Ken: Yeah.
FC: They’re all kin folks. I mean I’m kin to ‘em through my grandma
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: The Wallaces, I’m kin to all the Wallaces
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. Ed Wallace. Ed Wallace’s brother married my grandma’s sister, so. They claimed he was the meanest man that ever lived
Ken: (laugh) Why is that?
FC: Well, you know, he was just a mean guy. I never knew him, but I knew what I did from my grandma and my grandpa, and, you know, filled me in
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah, Litten Pierce and Edna Patterson married
FC: Yeah, I know them. They all, they traded with me and I knew ‘em real well.
Ken: I bet you did.
FC: Yeah. When I was seventeen years old when I started ____ up there. All my kin folks getting _____ too.
Ken: Man
FC: All the Wards over at Four Points, all them people over in there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I knew them, yeah.
Ken: Yeah, Richard Ward, I
FC: Richard Ward, he had a cedar yard down there.
Ken: OK
FC: Richard Ward, last, right there where we’d go, you know where the, on Chrystal Falls where the drug store is on Bagdad?
Ken: Yeah
FC: Richard Ward was the last one to have a cedar yard. Just turn that car on that old street right there on that bend
Ken: Right
FC: That was Richard’s.
Ken: I live real near there
FC: Huh?
Ken: I live real near there.
FC: Right now?
Ken: Yeah
FC: Well, you don’t live in Liberty Hill, do you?
Ken: Well, I live in the country between Liberty Hill and Leander
FC: Well, anyway, I owned that property across the street where that old big, old Dick Faubion’s place was, then Richard had that little old cedar yard, but I knew Richard off, you know, way back. I know all the Wards.
Ken: What was his wife’s name, ‘cause I
FC: I’ll tell you what, I can’t think of it, but she was a sweet lady, man. She thought the world of me.
Ken: Yeah
FC: I can’t think. Just a minute. God damn it. That’s funny. You get talking and you draw a blank
Ken: Oh, sure. It will come to you.
FC: Yeah, it will come to me.
Ken: Yeah, So there
FC: My brother in law, the one that married my wife’s sister, Uncle Jack Cantrell, he’s kin to these people here
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: He worked for Richard. He worked for Dick Boatright. As a matter of fact, he would, they had a cedar yard out there in Utopia, when he moved out to Utopia to run the cedar yard out there for ‘em, well then he just stayed out there, you know, this is where he spent the rest of his days. And Aunt Rosie, my wife’s sister, she’s still alive in Kerrville at a resthome
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: She’s uh, she’s ninety-four, five
Ken: Huh
FC: And she can’t do nothing for herself, but she’s still going, she’s still. She’s old but she’s the sweetest lady that ever lived, you know.
Ken: What was her name? Rosie
FC: Rosie, yep, Rose
Ken: She married Richard Ward?
FC: No, she married Jack Cantrell
Ken: Jack Cantrell
FC: Yep. But they all was good friends of Richard, though. Her husband, at one time, run a cedar yard for Richard, way back
Ken: OK. How about Pearson, TM Pearson, did you know him?
FC: Yeah
Ken: He’s still alive.
FC: Is he? I haven’t seen him in a long time, but I know him, yeah
Ken: Yeah. He had some health problems, but he’s doing alright. Nice guy, sharp
FC: Oh, yeah
Ken: Well that’s interesting you mentioned Utopia because there’s a bunch of, a bunch of people seemed like they went out there and cut
FC: They did. I mean, there’s still some Simons’ went out there and cut
Ken: Yeah
FC: Uh-huh
Ken: And the Boatrights?
FC: There were Boatrights, there were Boatrights went over to Leakey
Ken: OK
FC: Over at Leakey, a lot of Boatrights lived out there, and they was all cedar cutters.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Jessie Boatright
Ken: Yeah
FC: And his brothers
Ken: Yeah
FC: I went to Jessie’s funeral here oh, eight or ten years ago
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Maybe a little longer than that. Yeah, about eight years ago.
Ken: So, in a sense, the Austin cedar people, they moved out west, following the cedar and populated the whole area.
FC: Well, they just wherever there was cedar. That’s where they went, you know. Lived in tents or whatever, you know
Ken: Yeah
FC: Did whatever, you know. Long time with those axes. Somebody wanted to go cut cedar, wherever it was, they’d have to have a chopping axe and they’d feed me, we’d go somewhere, take an old, old mattress or something and take some kind of old tarp, hang that over it, didn’t have no sides or nothing you know. Rain, or whatever
Ken: That’s rough
FC: One time we were down at the, oh, let me think here a minute, me and Isaac Pierce, one of these boy’s uncles named Isaac, we were down at Wimberly, up that creek, and we took a load of cedar out one evening and come back up the creek there was a big old soft shell turtle about that big around.
Ken: Big old what?
FC: Big old soft-shelled turtle
Ken: Oh, man.
FC: So we jumped out, grabbed him, put him on back in that truck, got up there and we skint that son-of-a-bitch, we’d get, it wasn’t about the Wallaces, or the Pierces, they was about eight or ten little tents up there where people ___,we, uh, we skinned that thing, cut him up in pieces, and gave everybody, everybody in the camp up there turtle meat. And we took that son-of-a-bitch, and we had some flour, you know, and a little salt and pepper, we’d salt and pepper it and put it in a skillet, man, you talk about good eating.
Ken: I bet
FC: It was good eating. But next morning we had to. We had some left over in the morning that pan was plumb full of blood, you know you can’t, cannot, you cannot, I don’t care how much you cook it, you can’t cook all the blood out of it.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
FC: son-of-a-bitch gona have blood in it. But it, really, when it was hot, it was good, man.
Ken: Oh man
FC: I mean really good.
Ken: Man, I’ve never seen a turtle like that.
FC: Anyways, we made a big meal for everybody out of it
Ken: (laugh)
FC: I’d eat one right now if I had one
Ken: Yeah
FC: Put him in a … put a little salt, pepper, corn meal on him, flour or something, and drop it in a fish cooker. Yeah! Taste good. If you didn’t tell somebody they wouldn’t know what it was.
Ken: Huh!
FC: We ate a lot of armadillos way back in our day. Armadillos are hard, the only thing hard to get the hull off of ‘em. But now, now you cook, now you do an armadillo, if you’re gona eat it, like you would a gar, you know, they’ve got that old hull on it.
Ken: Yeah
FC: You take a Skill saw and go right up the back bone, right in the middle, then take your knife and just peel ‘em. But back in them old days we didn’t have Skill saws.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: A lot of people had knives
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve heard a squirrel – I’ve never skinned a squirrel. I heard they were hard to skin.
FC: Uh, I’ve skinned a million of ‘em.
Other guy: Kind of like a rabbit ___
FC: You don’t do squirrels that way. You do them like you do a deer. You just hang ‘em up by the legs and get it started, you get somebody to hold ‘em, and two people, you get his leg skinned and you can just pull it off of him, cut his head off, gut him, and chop it up in some little pieces.
Other guy: (skinning rabbit)
FC: Yes he did
Other guy: That was Ella Simons, That was Harve’s wife
Ken: Really?
Another guy: And he had a big cedar yard down there
Ken: Yep
Other guy: You know where Ace is? there used to be an old church there. It was turned into a house ____
Several people talking , business being transacted, End
FC001
FC: granpa because they don’t know any other grandpa
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah
FC: I was born in their life, and, and I claim grandpa to all of ‘em, so. And I do for all of ‘em just like I do for my own, you know.
Ken: Damn
FC: I’ve got, I don’t know, I’ve got twenty, twenty grandkids, about thirty seven, thirty eight great grandkids.
Ken: Is that right! Isn’t that something. Can you keep all their names straight?
FC: (laugh) I don’t know, but I’ll tell ya, when you got a whole bunch of little bitty ones its hard. I’ve got some six months to three, four, five years old and I, well I see most of ‘em all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. That’s cool.
FC: All the little fellas, I’ve got, I’ve got the sweetest grandkids in the world.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: All of ‘em. ___ grandkids always, they love me to death.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. I treat ‘em all the same, it wouldn’t make any difference though.
Ken: Well, lets go. Tell me about, what did your daddy do?
FC: Well, when I was six years old he got ran over with a freight train. He had a load of rock. He was a rock layer.
Ken: OK
FC: Yeah. Lee Cantwell. You know.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Down there on old Hancock Drive there, he, him, and I had a brother that was in the truck with him, my brother lived here till last year, but it took him out through the windshield, hit the top of a rock pile and had a million scars on top of his head but it didn’t kill him, so.
Ken: Oh man
FC: He stayed in the hospital for a while though
Ken: Man, that’s rough
FC: It was, but, it chewed my dad up in just little pieces up and down the track. He had the hood up on that old ’35 Chevrolet and it just chewed him, you know
Ken: Uh-huh, huh. So your mama raised you?
FC: Uh, my mama raised me, and all my aunts and uncles and wherever I could stay at.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. My grandfather mainly, you know. He always had food, you know, whatever, when I was hungry.
Ken: What was his name?
FC: Fred Rogers.
Ken: Oh, Fred Rogers, uh-huh
FC: Yeah, he was the one that homesteaded a big part of Northwest Hills at one time.
Ken: OK
FC: Up on top of Spicewood, all that ground, he owned on both sides of the highway there.
Ken: Wow.
FC: Up that big hill
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Up far away from Mesa back this way.
Ken: How did that work back then? Back before 360. I mean, I was, I grew up in Austin
FC: Well 360 wasn’t
Ken: 360 didn’t exist
FC: 360 went right through my, Harve Simons’ property, and the Duvall’s and Waldens, yeah.
Ken: So you, you come up, they used to call that Bull Creek Road, didn’t they?
FC: That was Bull Creek. Yes. And then they changed it to Spicewood Springs Road
Ken: Yeah, and so
FC: But, they have a springs down there right before you get to Mopac, across Spicewood Springs
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: That spring, then they finally moved Bull Creek over where 2222 is, which that was a sad day because everybody knew where Bull Creek was. Now they changed that over to Bull Creek and put Spicewood over there. The City did that, so.
Ken: Uh-huh. So when ya’ll
FC: A lot of people looking for Bull Creek Road and it wadn’t there no more.
Ken: Right
FC: It was there, but it wadn’t. It had a different name, see.
Ken: Well, Don was telling me, back in the real old days, before they put in Spicewood, he would go up Bull Creek and then, what, would it
FC: Well, there was always Bull Creek, Spicewood, it’s the same road.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. It’s the same old road that it was 83 years ago, it’s just they widened it but you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. It hadn’t changed.
Ken: OK
FC: And I’ve been around longer than Don has.
Ken: So it went up that hill a long time ago?
FC: Yes sir.
Ken: OK
FC: Up there where 360 used to go up, about halfway the hill, it went out and around and out.
Ken: Following the creek, right?
FC: Yeah. My grandfather talked to him and he let him, he give him the right of way to come right straight down ____’s house
Ken: OK
FC: come straight off the hill.
Ken: Didn’t it used to just cross the creek, again and again, all the way to the lake?
FC: Well, no, no, no.
Ken: Hum?
FC: It crossed a couple times, yeah, yep
Ken: Yeah
FC: It – when you go down, uh, 360, there was no road down through there. All it was is a, used to wasn’t, 360 wasn’t there.
Ken: Uh-huh, I know.
FC: Not at all. It was nothing but pasture. You’d go down through just like going off out here in my pasture, out here in this field next door. And there was an old creek road that people went down there and old lady Duvall, she had a gate and a lot of times she wouldn’t let certain people through there, but she’d let the people that lived out there, they wanted to go through, she didn’t care.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: As long as she knew them. Ms. Duvall, when you’d leave Spicewood Springs Road, she owned that property to the left out and about half way, about half way down there, the Walden’s owned half there back to 2222.
Ken: OK
FC: See. I knew ‘em all. I knew all the Waldens, I knew the Duvalls. She just had her and her one, had one boy, McNeil was a good guy and he was a sheriff for a long time, constable for the county.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
FC: Yeah. Me and him was friends. We run together when we was kids and rode horses.
Ken: What was it like to grow up back there on Bull Creek? I’ll bet it was beautiful back then.
FC: Aw, we went swimming every day it was warm enough.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We had a lot of good swimming holes up and down through there.
Ken: It is beautiful. Have you seen it in the last few years?
FC: Oh, yeah, yeah, I go down there, up and down it all the time.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah.
Ken: It doesn’t look quite the same, does it?
FC: No, well, a lot of it does. Yeah. Go up on top of the hill where we used to, my grandfather gave us property up, when you get to 360, look up on top of the hill right there where Spicewood, all that property there used to belong to me and my three brothers, yeah. But that’s different. It used to be, they cut cedar over there, and there used to be mountain lions and everything else. We had an old Airedale dog and a half black hound and that dog, we’d go over there, me and my brother’d go over there and cut cedar when we was about ten or eleven years old, and that dog, every time we’d go over there, he’d, that old mountain lion stayed over there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah
Ken: (chuckle)
FC: What was really, you know, would really get you to wondering back there in them old days, my mother was raised up, Fred Rogers, he had one girl, then he finally adopted another girl, my mama was a loner, you know, but, when she was six years old, up Spicewood Springs Road, you go up that holler, and he had an old log house he built up there. When she went to school, it used to be over on 2222, there used to be a schoolhouse over there. And, he had her an old donkey and in the morning, at six years old, before daylight, he had a trail that went to their house. She’d done it by herself. Would you turn a little six year old girl and let her go about five, six miles over the mountains, on a jackass to go to school?
Ken: Not these days! (chuckle)
FC: I mean, back in the old days, there were mountain lions and everything else.
Ken: Oh, yeah.
FC: Can you believe you could turn her loose before daylight? He had an old trail and had that donkey. She’d ride that donkey to school.
Ken: I’ll be darned! (chuckle)
FC: Then tie that donkey up and ride him home in the evening. It was a long way across there.
Ken: I believe it.
FC: Even right now, they’ve got houses, but you go back the same route and go over it, it’d still be a long ways.
Ken: Yeah, you bet’cha. Don said he would walk all the way into Austin.
FC: Oh, I have too, but
Ken: Man
FC: One day we went over here and we cut cedar over at Georgetown on 29, and back in them days my Dad had an old, stepdad had an old ’50 model Chevrolet and the clutch was out on it, so we stayed over there about a week. We was getting hungry, you know, and we’d have, we’d have two or three loads of posts cut and then we walked all the way to Georgetown and walked the old road into Round Rock and we cut back across and went back over to Spicewood Springs Road and Mama had a big pot of ribs, we ate them, and that night we went coon hunting.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: (laugh) We made about forty miles then went coon hunting (laugh).
Ken: (laugh). That’s a lot of walking
FC: Well, but, you know. Actually, back them days, the kids were tougher than what they are nowadays.
Ken: Oh yeah.
FC: Yeah. Man, I’ll tell you what, when I was twelve years old I, man, I could do anything.
Ken: You started cutting at ten, you said.
FC: Oh, I started cutting cedar when I was big enough to walk. My grandfather, I used to have an old gray horse, we’d go up in those canyons, we’d cut, all the cedar on top was pretty well gone, them cedar cutters, you know, that’s the way they made their living. And he had that old gray horse, we’d go up there in the canyon and he’d park that old wagon up on top of the hill and that old gray horse’d go down, I’d hook two, three posts on him and he’d take off. Grandpa, I was five, six years old, after Daddy died, I didn’t dare to go up unless I had a post on my back.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: Ain’t no way.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: But that horse knew right where to stop. He’d go up there and I’d unhook him, hang the old singletree back over him hamstring, turn him loose, he’d go right back down where they were cutting at, and I’d go back down there, follow him back down, hook him on, turn him back loose.
Ken: That was a hard thing, getting those posts out of there, wasn’t it?
FC: It was.
Ken: A lot harder than cutting them.
FC: That’s the only way your’e gonna get them.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Either pack ‘em by back, or drag ‘em out with a horse.
Ken: Isn’t that something! Man!
FC: But that horse drug a million, a million posts out of them canyons over there. This is another one of my stepsons. This is Rusty.
Ken: Hi Rusty, I’m Ken Roberts.
FC: That’s Harold D, Lester’s brother, there.
Ken: Alright.
FC: This guy is writing a little deal up on cedar cutters. I told him I cut cedar when I was young. I knew all about it, and I had a cedar yard before.
Ken: Where did you have a yard?
FC: Right over here. I had two of ‘em. Had one over here on ___ and I had one over here on Bagdad.
Ken: OK. So, Dick Simons, he moved up here – No, Dick Boatright moved up here and put a road in, put a yard in, didn’t he?
FC: No, the old, Dick Boatright’s, the old man
Ken: yeah, the old man
FC: Yeah, yeah. Well, they had, a long time ago, when I first moved to Leander, the Boatrights had a yard here right here in Cedar Park.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: ___ grocery right across the street, where all that Callahans used to be in there, well all that was a cedar yard then.
Ken: OK
FC: yeah. And the Post Office was right in front of my store. That was before they cut the road straight through. That old road went around by the feed store, Callahan’s Feed Store
Ken: yeah, yeah.
FC: Yeah, when I had my convenience store, the road went that way.
Ken: OK, right. I actually worked at the Leander Post Office for Ruth Boatright for many years
FC: It’s a new Post Office, yeah, but not there at the old one
Ken: No
FC: Yeah. I’ll tell you he name of the people that used to run that old one. They, I should come out with it. They had one boy, and a girl. They run that thing for years and years.
Ken: So, tell me about the, what do you remember about the, the, some of the old timers and, I hear they used to brew a lot of moonshine up in the
FC: Some of the Boatrights did a lot of moonshining.
Ken: Yeah
FC: And a few of the Simons
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I hear stories, you know, that moonshining was a, was just about, kind of go out when I was born. You know, it was the older Boatrights, a little older than I was, was the one’s that was really made the moonshine.
Ken: Yeah, uh-huh
FC: But a long time ago, see, my grandfather lived on top of the hill. And they were one law that would come out there. And he stopped and spent the night with grandpa because it was a long ways out there. But he wouldn’t go any further than grandpa’s house. But he was out there trying to catch the moonshiners.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yep.
Ken: And your grandfather would put him up?
FC: Huh?
Ken: Your grandfather would put him up?
FC: Oh, yeah, Jim McCoy, he was an old lawman
Ken: I heard about him
FC: Anyway, he was the one that would come out that far, but the rest of the law, they didn’t dare come out, they was scared to come out there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And, but Jim was a friend of the Boatrights, and the moonshiners, and all. And he got along with them. As long as only he’d come out there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah.
Ken: He got along with them? But he’d bust them, huh?
FC: Huh?
Ken: He’d bust ‘em?
FC: He just tried to get ‘em to quit.
Ken: Oh, OK.
FC: No, he didn’t dare to go, no, no, no, nobody busted ‘em. No, no, it was a no-no.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: But his house, his property was the, from there on was a danger zone. See, back in them days there was no, it was just an old gravel road, it wasn’t no
Ken: Going down the hill?
FC: No, going down the hill, that hill wasn’t there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: No, it was a little wagon road coming up to grandpa’s house.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Later years they put that road through there. But it wasn’t, it used to be up there, further up on the hill, up there, was an old road that went off that area, and matter of fact, he lived right, right beside that old road when he was a little kid, you know. It’d come out the middle of the hill, that hill wasn’t even there.
Rusty: They called it Turn’s Hill
Ken: OK
Rusty: Lew Hill is the other one
FC: Yeah, Lew Hill is the one on this end of the cemetery.
Ken: OK
FC: Yeah
Rusty: Yeah, Turn’s Hill was on that end.
Ken: Alright.
FC: Betty Turn, she used to be
Rusty: There used to be a Turn at the bottom.
FC: Yeah, there was a lady named Betty Turns, and they named that hill after her.
Ken: OK
FC: The big hill. But there wasn’t nothing, no more than a wagon road going through there. I can almost remember when there was nothing but a wagon road.
Ken: Uh-huh
Rusty: Every time they put asphalt out there, old Frank Boatright’d ___ dad-gum-it
FC: I’ve seen every house
Ken: He did what?
Rusty: He took a scooter and come off that hill, going down the hill, we used to take formica tops and sit up there and slide down that hill.
Ken: (laugh)
Rusty: The only problem is, that curve at the bottom.
Ken: Uh-oh!
FC: I’ll tell you what, used to had an old timey car hood, about this big around, that two people could sit on it, and it comes a snow storm, and you’d get that thing and make you a rut, that thing’d make a hundred miles an hour, go swoooo---
Ken: I bet it would! Dam! Those days are over, aren’t they! Snows like that!
FC: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Ken: I remember that.
FC: It’s a wonder we hadn’t got killed. And we almost did get killed.
Ken: Marie Boatright still lives out there
FC: Yeah, Frank’s daughter, yeah.
Ken: Yeah.
FC: Yeah, she just hung in there. You know, her brother moved out. She’s about … well her and her brother’s the only ones left out of Frank’s. Frank, his wife died, and, the other kid died, and, you know, it’s just two of ‘em in Frank’s family is all that’s left
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Then maybe, well no, there’s three, there’s three. OK. He’s got three or four grandkids.
Ken: Yeah. So, I heard back in those days that a man could make a pretty good living cutting cedar.
FC: You know what, you didn’t make the big money. You made
FC002
FC: You still had to grow gardens and you still had to raise hogs, and
Ken: Yeah
FC: You had to shoot a deer when you see one, and back in them days
Rusty: There wasn’t an easy way of life!
FC: I’ll tell you what. There were more squirrels ate rabbits ate back in them days than there was anything.
Ken: Uh-huh
Rusty: The day I was born my dad ____ coon ___
FC: There was always a lot of rabbits, and you know what, they didn’t kill – We had squirrel dogs back in them days, me and my brother. We’d go in the morning and we had a, had two dogs, and we could always catch eight or ten squirrels. Every day.
Ken: Your dog would catch ‘em, or you’d shoot ‘em?
FC: Heck yeah, no, we had a nigger shooter
Rusty: They’d tree ‘em
FC: When them damed squirrels hit the ground our dog would catch ‘em.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: I mean, they were dogs. We had a couple dogs and there could be a squirrel half a mile away, they’d be sleeping in the yard, get up, you’d see ‘em get up, sniff, sniff, and that dog’d get up and go straight to that squirrel – we knew what was going on.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. I mean, ___ long ways. From here to Leander.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
FC: That dog’d get up, you know what he’s going to do. A long time ago there used to be a lot of people had a lot of old Walker hounds, them old fox dogs
Ken: Yeah
FC: And they’d come out, every once in a while, and let ‘em hunt, you know, and we had this old, one regular old collie dog. In daytime he was a squirrel dog. But they’d go fox hunting over there, you know what, everytime we’d take our collie dog with us, them hounds would be (baying), our dog here, he’d be (yip, yip) he’d have a fox up a tree right there close by.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: Them fox dogs, they just wadn’t dogs. I think they get after a deer and maybe run off.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And that collie dog, I knowed what he was gona do, ‘cause he was gona, a fox and a squirrel have a certain scent, but he knew what to do at night. That’s the only thing he treed was a squirrel and a fox.
Rusty: Them hound dogs took the scent on the ground. Where this dog would take the scent in the air
FC: Well, he’d go straight to ‘em
Rusty: ___ all around, they ___
FC: We had a black dog
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We had a black collie, had a regular collie dog like old Lassie. Them was the best two dogs in the world. Especially when it come to squirrels and fox. They didn’t bother rabbits, they didn’t bother nothing like that.
Ken: You said you dad had, you dad cut a load of the cedar the day you were born to pay for the hospital bill?
Rusty: Forty dollars worth
Ken: Forty dollars, what year was that?
Rusty: I was born in fifty-one.
Ken: Was he using an axe or a chainsaw?
Rusty: Axe. He had no chainsaw.
Ken: Forty dollars worth!
Rusty: Back in ’57 we didn’t know what chainsaws were.
Ken: Yeah, they came in, what, 1960 or something like that. Yeah. Forty dollars. That’s pretty good! Forty dollars is a pretty good day’s work in 1950, 51.
FC: I’ve cut … When I had my cedar yard ___ Eddie Simons, one of Bill Simon’s boys, we had over there on ____, over in the Enfield where they had the golf course right where Mopac is
Ken: Yeah
FC: They had, one day I had a friend over there and he told me we’re gona build a big building over there. If you want them posts, you’re more than welcome to ‘em. Went over there and we run the cedar yard until about 1:00 and we ate and had a jug of water and went over, me and him that afternoon. We both had chainsaws. We cut $800 dollars worth with chainsaws that one evening, that good posts.
Ken: Eight hundred dollars?
FC: Eight hundred dollars, between us.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We was partners, but anyway, I took him in as a partner, load, you know
Ken: Yeah You know the salary back when you were a boy, it couldn’t have been a dollar and hour
FC: We graded our own cedar so I see what we did, you know, but, boy
Ken: I was thinking, is it, I mean, I was working in 1960 for a dollar and a quarter an hour, so I bet it was even less than that in 1950. So forty dollars, that’s, that’s pretty good
FC: You know, actually, when I started in the junk business, from the time I was twenty years old, I was already a rich man. I started when I was seventeen.
Ken: What happened? How’d you do that?
FC: Just junk cars.
Ken: Wow
FC: And a lot of hard work
Ken: Uh-uh
FC: I did still cut cedar when somebody had good posts, I just didn’t cut off, I had trucks, and I had money, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And I’d chop with a choppin axe
Ken: Wow, yeah, that’s a lot of work too
FC: I know all about cedar. It was fun
Ken: It was fun!
FC: It was fun!
Ken: How many hours – would you start early in the morning when you went to school?
FC: Oh, well, just whatever. I mean, we had no certain time. If you had something really important you wanted you wanted to do that afternoon, you’d go early and get through with it, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yep.
Ken: Could you cut eight hours?
FC: Oh, you didn’t want to cut no eight hours.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: No
Ken: That’s too long, isn’t it?
FC: No, it’s not too long. It’s just that a lot of people cut, go in about seven thirty or eight and they’d cut ‘till about twelve or one and they’d load up and come out, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Rusty: It’d get too hot.
Ken: Yeah, you betcha.
FC: Hot, cold, whatever, this was a normal thing that they did, you know.
Ken: Your father-in law
Rusty: My father-in-law was Charles Cantrell.
Ken: Oh, Charles Cantrell!
Rusty: Yeah, they called him Punk
Ken: Yeah, yeah. Liberty Hill. I live in Liberty Hill.
Rusty: Yeah, well, he cut cedar all his life. He’d get up before daylight and go out there and get there right at daylight and he’d go until about eleven, twelve, and he’d come
FC: Him and his brothers were diehard cedar cutters.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: They did that up until about ten years ago.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah, I talked to Lee Cantrell.
Rusty: Lee’s still cutting.
FC: They’re still some cedar cutters. They’ve got a cedar yard out there. Out there, you’re going to Briggs just before you get to 138, there on the left, that guy piled the shit out of them posts
Ken: Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that.
FC: I got some places that’ve got cedar and I have people call me every day wanting to cut my cedar.
Ken: Really. It must be good cedar then.
FC: No.
Ken: No (laugh)
Rusty: It’s just hard to get. There’s so many people out there cutting it now.
FC: I’ve got property right out in Briggs. I sold this place on ____ where the big house is. And built me a new house up in Briggs out of a, what over at Hutto, forty years old, it was a hay barn, this old drill stem hay barn, then they decided thewy’de make a church out of it, put concrete in it, made it real nice church, you know. But it’s a forty by hundred and I-30 went through there and that guy, I was over at bought some old junk from him and he said that church has got to go. I said I’ll take a thousand dollars, it had airconditioning, it had everything hooked up to it. I went down there and they had church on Sunday, then on Monday I had four or five guys over there tearing it down and built me house out of it.
Ken: That’s cool. So, that’s where you live out there now?
FC: Yeah, right there, about four or five blocks from the store there in Briggs
Ken: OK
FC: Everybody loved my house. I’ve got a forty by fifty living room. When they walk in they think its amuseum I’ve got deer heads hung, pictures, all over, so it really is a cool house. People love it.
Ken: That’s cool.
FC: _____That old drill stem pipe as soon as I got it built the first tax notice I got from from Burnet County they valued my house at four hundred fifty thousand.
Ken: Hum!
FC: My wife filed and went over there and had her bill. There were six guys, three on each side, and three of ‘em was on my side and three of ‘em was against me and they guy at the ___ was on my side so they lowered it to two hundred and fifty thousand.
Ken: (laugh)
Rusty: Do you know where Mason Creek is over there?
FC: Yeah
Rusty: Floyd owned all that. We had, we stayed in the old Mason house, there, that old two story
Ken: Oh, yeah, yeah, right there on
Rusty: That big house that used to be there, that’s where we lived.
FC: As a matter of fact, I sold that to Jim Boatright. He bought that. But I bought that place over here, both of them at the same time. But I sold it.
Rusty: Do you know where the River Ranch is in Liberty Hill?
Ken: Yeah
Rusty: He used to own it.
FC: 808 Ranch.
Ken: Yeah, I think that’s where John T. lives, Boatright.
FC: They’ve had a lot of people there since I … But I had the best ranch had four hundred and fifty acres up Cypress Creek up there, where old, I lived on that place for seventeen years. And that was one of the best ranches I ever owned. Back, go up Cypress Creek, up there where all the shopping center is
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah. I owned that, and I sold that then bought the 808 Ranch, kept it a while, then I sold it and moved, sold it to Roy Butler and then I moved back down here and bought the spot we’re in
Ken: You sold that to Roy Butler?
FC: yeah
Ken: Man.
FC: Yeah, I bought and sold half of Cedar Park, Leander.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: And about half Spicewood Springs Road.
Ken: That’s something.
FC: I’m doing a pretty good job at Briggs now.
Ken: (laugh) You think Austin’s going to move out to Briggs?
FC: Yes sir. We’ve got a new plant going in up there. We’ve got a space center their going in and hiring 200 people.
Ken: A space?
FC: They’re building rockets.
Ken: In Briggs?
FC: It’s, you go into Briggs, on the left, they are working like hell on it right now.
Ken: I’ll be darn. Huh.
FC: They’ve go a big, they’ve got this same plant in California but they claimed they can build it for a third down here than what they built it out there for.
Ken: Uh-huh. I’m surprised they can get two hundred workers out there.
FC: Well, they will. You know, this is why I say they are gona have to build houses.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Huh
FC: I help a lot of people buy property, you know, I’m a kind of fixer. They call me and want to know if it’s a good deal. I don’t always tell ‘em if it’s a really good deal, but they call me. I’m kind-of a scout when it comes to buying property.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Any time I find a nice place that I think is a good deal, I don’t care how much money, I tell ‘em if it’s a good place, they usually buy it.
Ken: Um-hum
FC: Yeah. I’ve got big places on, behind Sun City on 195, I bought for people, and up there in Briggs, I bought property there, you know, when I find ‘em a place and buy it, well they kind of give me free run of the property to do what I want to with it until they resell it, or I resell it for them.
Ken: Got you.
FC: There was one man up there, ___”find me a place”, I said “OK”, I found him a 750 acre place. Went in there and bought it right on the spot, come out, kept it a year and I run cows on it. He said Floyd “we’re thinking about selling that, you may have to move your cows.” I said “let me sell it for you.” I called an old lady, went up there, come back. I made him a million dollars in one year.
Ken: Oh my gosh!
FC: I made a million dollars and I still got the property.
Ken: You’ve still got your cows on it?
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Do you take care of cows all the time?
FC: I’ve had cows all my life.
Ken: I do too. I don’t have very many. How many cows do you have?
FC: Oh, I’ve got about eighty.
Ken: That’s a lot. Finally we’re making some money on these things.
FC: I’ll tell you what, I did better this year on my calves ever in my life.
Ken: You betcha. Where do you take them? Where do you sell ‘em at?
FC: I sell ‘em up there in Lampasas.
Ken: I’ll tell you what. Have you ever thought about going to San Saba?
FC: Yeah, I have, I used to have, I still own an auction up in Lometa, up there
Ken: OK
FC: I had a goat auction, I had my back operated, you can’t get nobody to do it for you, so I just one day I went up there, I was losing money, people writing hot checks and stuff for animals. I told Jim, I said “hey, when the sale is over with don’t say nothing, but ___ tell them there ain’t gona be no more.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I’ve still got, I’ve got part of it leased out, but I still own it. Still got the barn and cafe
Ken: I took some cows up to San Saba for the first time about a month ago.
FC: Yeah
Ken: And I drove right past the Lampasas auction, it was a day early and there was hardly anybody there. I go up to San Saba and there were hundreds of people.
FC: Well that sale was going on up there. The sale wasn’t going on up there at Lampasas. What did the calves bring you?
Ken: Oh, I averaged about thirteen hundred dollars per calf.
FC: A calf? That’s about what they’ve been bringing.
Ken: Yeah
FC: I’ve had, I have a little three hundred and eighty pound calf, about three and a half a pound up there, it sounds pretty damn good.
Ken: Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s hardly worth it to keep raising ‘em up. Just sell them young, really.
FC: I like ‘em four to five hundred pounds.
Ken: yeah
FC: Five hundred you lose money because they don’t bring much, but I’ve had, I’ve had several five, six hundred pound heifers bring me fifteen hundred dollars.
Ken: Yeah. The heifers are bringing in a good price now.
FC: I sold about, oh, I don’t know, I sold nearly all of my young calves, you know, I sold, I think I got about fifteen left right now that, I’ve got about ten ready to go, I just, kind-of was waiting
Ken: A special breed, or are you just
FC: No, I mean I’ve got every kind. Most of ‘em got black in ‘em, you know.
Ken: Yeah, yeah, I got an Angus bull
FC: I’ve got two or three cross-bred Bramers, and I’ve got some yellow cows
Ken: Did you ever know
FC: I don’t have a whole lot of ‘em, but one time I had, you know, I used to have a lot of Longhorns, and Longhorns is not really the way you want to go.
Ken: They’re crazy
FC: Well, I like to eat the Longhorns. They claim the meat is better for you. I don’t know why they don’t bring as much. I can’t believe it. When, you know what, what gets me? They’ll take them calves and put ‘em in a feed lot and they’ll make ‘em weigh fifteen to two thousand pounds and when they cut ‘em they just throw half the fat away.
Ken: Huh!
FC: You know, they put big money getting it on ‘em then they turn around and
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
FC: you know. But meat, ribeyes is better with that fat on there, but people, I don’t want that fat meat, it ain’t no good for you. I’ve ate it all my life
Ken: Um-hum
FC: You know, that, it’s just one of the things that, and Longhorns, most of their meat is lean, you know
Ken: Yeah. I’ve raised one of ‘em that’s half longhorn. I had a longhorn bull sneaking on my property
FC: yeah. I had one, my neighbor over there had a Longhorn bull that jumped over and bred one.
Ken: Up there on Bull Creek. Did ya’ll have milk cows, or
FC: Yes, we did milk cows.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: We milked a million cows. Grandpa always had about twenty-five, thirty old cows. He had about four or five milk cows. He raised, up on them hillsides, he raised a little bit of corn and a little bit of ___ and that’s what he had for feed, that and fodder tops
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And he had probably, he’d give a kid a half, or give ‘em one tit or something, you know, and he’d probably get two or three gallons a day.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Then Harve Simons, my dad-in-law, did the same thing, you know.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Back then in the old days they didn’t have, they didn’t
FC003
FC: raise it – they didn’t have the feed to feed ‘em see.
Ken: Right. Of course not. Yeah. You had gardens and stuff like that?
FC: Oh, everybody had gardens, yeah.
Ken: What did you grow?
FC: A million things. Beans, potatoes, corn, beets, onions,
Ken: Uh-huh. Where was the nearest store?
FC: Uh, what you call Rosedale over there.
Ken: OK
FC: Over on Burnet Road up there, there was a German guy then there was a, there was a law man, a Mr. Sunday, right there where 2222 come out at, right there at, had an old store right there on the corner, and there was only two stores that were even close by.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: ___ and then Jollyville had an old store. Out this way
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: It was about, oh, a good fifteen, twenty miles in each direction from where they was, back around the road with a wagon, to either one of the stores.
Ken: Right. Right. Now, that’s where Don said he went to school, in Jollyville
FC: Yep. There was a lot of Simons went there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Toungate are all tied in with the Simons too.
Ken: Yeah
FC: Lum Toungate , Buster Toungate
Ken: Did they all cut cedar?
FC: Well, yeah, they all did in the early days, yeah. One of ‘em, Harve’s, up there, ___ brother-in-law, he had a liquor store there on old 183 there. But he used to be, you know, I don’t know what happened. They changed that road, a long time ago that 183 used to be highway 29.
Ken: Yep
FC: Yeah, a long time ago, when I was a kid.
Ken: Right. I remember that
FC: They had an old
Ken: Hilltop Inn
FC: Yeah, you remember the Hilltop?
Ken: I do!
FC: Anyway, back this way they used to have a, three or four beer joints up through there.
Ken: Really? Out on old 29!
FC: Old 29. Yeah, all the way from Mopac back up to, almost Jollyville right now
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: As a matter of fact there were four beer joints.
Ken: Do you remember the names of ‘em?
FC: I can. It might take me a little bit. One of ‘em was the Hill___ That was different, yeah, this was down
Rusty: Where Balcone reaches
FC: Before, there used to be … Oh, just aminute I’ll tell you. Before they cut 183 through over there, the new 183, the old road that went down through there. Hilltop Inn and right there overlooking Balcones Trail.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: That used to be Balcones before they ever had Mopac through.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yep. There, then up there they had 29, Rip Farmer owned that 29 Club and
Ken: On 29, Rip Farmer?
FC: yeah. He had one and you come on back this way, there was another one, what they called the Sunset, one of ‘em was Sunset, then uh, Swazie, not Swazie but ___Swazie’s ___, let me think of it. What it used to, the one I bought the horse from old doc fro. He had that last beer joint this way. I still got a horse ___
Ken: Where was that one?
FC: It was on old 29. All four of ‘em was up there.
Ken: As far up as Cedar Park today?
FC: No, it wasn’t even to Jollyville.
Ken: Oh, OK
FC: All the way from Balcones to, up before you get to, before you get to Spicewood Springs Road
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah
Ken: Now Farmer, that rings a bell. I went to school with a Dewey Farmer.
FC: Who?
Ken: Dewey Farmer. He would be my age and, uh, the Farmers lived
FC: All the Farmers are just about dead now except the younger one. I’m still friends with them. I know them all.
Ken: Do you. Who is the younger one? I might like to talk to him.
FC: Let me think. Let me think. His name is Mike Farmer. I think he lives here in Cedar Park. And Jerry Farmer was one of the young ones, he had this grass, had this grass patch up here on Leander Drive.
Ken: Is he still alive?
FC: No
Ken: OK
FC: Both of his kids are dead too. He had two boys. One of ‘em got shot. The other one, I don’t know what happened to him, he got, but he died last year.
Ken: Huh.
FC: Let me think who else. I had a couple nieces that married some of them. Little Man Farmer, the one that owned the grass patch. Louise married, not Louise, Jerry married Louise and Little Man, they called him Little Man, the one that had the grass over here, they were both grass people, he married Patricia.
Ken: Your niece?
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Uh-huh. Now,
FC: They are all tied in with the Cantwells.
Ken: OK.
FC: Their kids are, you know.
Ken: The place I remember them living was down on Shoal Creek and 35th Street, in there.
FC: You know on 35th Street, or 34th Street, the Farmer’s always had, they sold tomatoes
Ken: Yeah, the fruit stand.
FC: yeah, they had a fruit stand, every one of ‘em. Then there was another guy, I can’t think of his name, but I will in a minute. That kind-of married into the Farmers, you know. They had two or three fruit stands in there.
Ken: So which Farmer, who do you think would be good, which of the Farmers would be good to talk to?
FC: Well, I don’t know. You know, I don’t know, they all, I don’t think there’s none of ‘em as smart as I am about the old time and all
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: See, I used to ride the horses up to Congress Avenue, and mules, and down Sixth Street
Ken: (laugh)
FC: We’d ride to Spicewood Springs Road. When I was a kid a quarter would get you everything you needed.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: OK. There’d be five or six of us boys and we all had horses, you know, we were ten, twelve years old. By Spicewood Springs Road, that’s where my junk yard was, by Spicewood, we’d ride all the way over there on Airport, go down Airport, go down to Red River, and they had an old theater there I called Skinny’s. And if you’d go in there you could buy a bag, get into the show for a nickel, you’d buy a bag of popcorn for a nickel, you could buy a Coke for a nickel, and, you know, and a candy bar for a nickel.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Twenty-five cents would give you everything you needed to do. If anybody had twenty five cents and they wanted to get on a horse and ride – we rode.
Ken: When did you get your first car?
FC: Oh, I was twelve years old
Ken: Do you remember what it was?
FC: Yeah, ’36 Ford convertible four-door.
Ken: All right!
FC: I’ve got pictures of an A-model , back when I was a kid an A-model , I don’t’ know how I go ‘em, but I’ve got ‘em hanging on the wall.
Ken: Did you ever have a hoopie?
FC: I made hoopies. If I had a car I made me a hoopie.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. That’s the first thing I’d do is take a saw, cut the top, and leave the windshield and I’d build my bed – an A model wadn’t much and I’d put my bed and I lay my old cushions on my bed and when I’d haul cedar I’d have cedar stacked all around and leave room to sit.
Ken: Uh-huh. What was your bed made of?
FC: Well just whatever my grandpa picked up side of the road.
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh)
FC: No, he’d usually try to make it out of two-by-sixes.
Ken: Yeah.
FC: I was a pick-up making guy. I hauled a lot of cedar with them old 21 inch tires about like that. I could actually, back in my day when I was twelve or fourteen years old, I could cut ten dollars worth and haul on that A-model That’s a lot of cedar back on an A-model . When I graded it, I usually didn’t cut just everything, I cut something that, you know
Ken: worth some money?
FC: Yeah, ‘cause you cut a bunch of crooked stuff you wouldn’t get over three or four dollars on there. If you cut some good straight posts, you know, from a good tree up to five, six inches. You’d try not to cut long posts, because your truck, your A-model would just rare up. You had to cut what you could haul.
Ken: Uh-huh How many could you haul without it raring up?
FC: Well, if I didn’t get too long ones, I could, you know, I’d move my bed so up, you know, they’d go plumb to the dash. So you get about half of it would be hard and you get a little weight on that front tires.
Ken: (laugh)
FC: You couldn’t haul over seven foot posts. In fact, in them old days six foot was all you needed because them old rocks out there, people couldn’t dig a hole in that rock. They didn’t want them big posts that you drill four foot into the ground, see.
Ken: Most of those posts, they would be hauled out of here, wouldn’t they, long hauled?
FC: No, well they were, people, my brother-in-law, Harve Simons, young Harve Simons, him and my brother-in-law Homer Crawford, they hauled to West Texas. They had an old ’35, ’36 International and stuff. They’d get something they could haul two pretty good decks on it and they hauled out west, yep.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Usually didn’t haul south, but they hauled west, I don’t know why.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: They would haul plumb into Colorado from here.
Ken: Uh-huh, I’ve seen ‘em there.
FC: Yep. They hauled, they hauled back in them old days, there was just one of them old trucks taking them two weeks to go up there and back.
Ken: Yeah
FC: But, anyway, that, my brother-in-law did, both of my brother-in-laws did that. One day Homer Crawford up there, he got up in Colorado on one of them, edge of one of them hills up there and the law pulled him over. He’d gone a way and they told him “pull over, pull over.” And he pulled off that road and that truck with all them damn two decks fell over and unloaded there. He told he said it’s gona turn over. And the law said “get it over there.” He was a great guy, I guarantee it.
Ken: Man.
FC: I had the best brother-in-laws in the world. I loved ‘em.
Ken: Crawford and Simons
FC: Yeah.
Ken: Did you ever know any Pierces?
FC: Pierces – my grandma was a Pierce.
Ken: OK
FC: Yeah. Grandma Rogers was a Pierce. Yeah.
Ken: Did you know some of the
FC: She was a full blood Irishman.
Ken: Horseman?
FC: Irishman. She was Irish
Ken: Oh
FC: Anyway, she, yeah, I know, Isaac Pierce, Chester Pierce, and I know, I still know a lot of Pierces. A lot of ‘em live up, uh, in Briggs, up there right now.
Ken: Really
FC: Yeah
Ken: And they’re related to you?
FC: Yeah.
Ken: I’d sure like to talk
FC: Through my grandma, you know.
Ken: I’d like to talk to a Pierce because
FC: Well, I can give you one of them’s names. It is not Pierce, but his mama was a Pierce.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: one of Arthur Pierce’s grandsons.
Ken: OK
FC: He lives up there and he probably, he knows a little bit. He’s not no young guy, but he is retired, so he can
Ken: Yeah
FC: He can tell you about cedar choppers too. He’s still, he would still cut cedar if he was able. But he’s down in his legs and he had to cut a whole lot of cedar, a lot of ____
Ken: I’m looking to write down that name here. What was his name?
FC: Richard, oh, just a minute I’ll tell you the last name. Anyway, he lives just before you get to, just before you get to that little cedar yard on this side there.
Ken: Oh, really, on, up on 183
FC: Up on 183
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: He lives out there, his sister lives down closer to the road and he lives up a little lane up there, he lives up behind her.
Ken: OK. Richard. Not Ward?
FC: No, his name is not Pierce, because he had a different daddy, but his mama was a Pierce.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. Arthur Pierce’s daughter.
Ken: Was it Whited?
FC: Nah, it wadn’t Whited. I know all of them too.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I run around with them when I was a kid, drank a little beer together when I was fifteen, sixteen
Ken: (laugh)
FC: I’ve done everything. Amazingly I’m still alive.
Ken: Well, you are one of the last ones.
FC: I’m one of ‘em!
Ken: Yeah.
FC: You’re gona look a long ways to find another one that knows as much as I know at 83 years old
Ken: Yeah, yeah
FC: I can tell you all about Sixth Street, ____
Ken: Well tell me about Sixth Street, because I heard it was pretty wild back then.
FC: It was! They used to have an uncle Ruf. Ruf Young married my daddy’s sister, and he absolutely was the meanest man in the world.
Ken: Ruf Young
FC: Ruf Young, uh-huh.
Ken: Yeah, the Young’s were bad, weren’t they?
FC: He wasn’t bad. He was the best guy, big red-headed guy, weighed about two hundred fifty, maybe two eighty, all muscle, man. He’d go down on the beer joint on Sixth Street. I’d go in, ten-twelve years old, they’d serve me a beer just like they served him one. No questions asked.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: And he’d go in there and he’d get drunk and somebody, boy, he’d, when he was drinking, you didn’t want, unless you had something kind to say to him don’t say nothing. You know. I’ve seen him take a bar stool and just pick it up and wham, just like that, and old Jim McCoy is the only other guy that could come in there and arrest him. He, and them laws would have to shoot him to get him out of there. Anyway, he’d come in there and he’d say, now Ruf, you know, you’ve done wrong, you’ve got to go to jail. He said “well, you gona damn sure have a beer with me or I ain’t going nowheres with you. He’d make Jim McCoy sit there and drink a beer and they’d get that drank and he’d get up and go with him.
Ken: What would he arrest him for doing?
FC: For fighting. Always fighting, hurting somebody
Ken: OK (laugh)
FC: (laugh) One day. Let me tell you a story. They were up there, him and his son-in-law, Gephart, Marion Gephart, up there where I lived on top of the hill when I was, well I must have been eight or nine years old, when my mother lived there. And they, him and his son-in-law was fighting a little bit. They got out of the truck and Marion took a knife and held it like this here and cut him, and all his guts fell out, right there on that ground and everything, and they, somebody took him to the hospital and they washed him up and he lived another forty years after that.
Ken: Oh my gosh
FC: That’s how tough he was.
Ken: My
FC: Anyway, I mean, he just drew all the way across, his guts was hanging out here like that.
Ken: Now, was he part of the Buster Young and Ellis Young and Ike Young and all that?
FC: They were his brothers
Ken: Yeah
FC: Yeah, that’s right
Ken: ‘Cause I don’t,
FC: Ruf had, he had eighteen kids and had one boy. And his name was Jimmy Young
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: His name wadn’t Ruf. And anyway they called him Nubb. Anyway, all the Haydons, four brother married four sisters. All my first cousins. So I’m kin to all the Haydons.
Ken: Haydons?
FC: Yeah, Yeah A bunch of ‘em live up there right, this guy right here, that’s got that fish right here, he
FC004
FC: one of my first cousins
Ken: Oh man
FC: Yeah, he died now. Anyway
Other guy: Dobbin. ____ Cantwell, lives over ____
FC: ____, anyway, Lester’s still got a ____ of fish that’s made made out of them fish. We thought about cooking it Superbowl, I don’t know.
Ken: Those some big catfish
FC: That’s Lester’s wife’s kin-folks there
Ken: A Cantrell?
Other guy: Yeah, you know Charles, Punk, my father-in-law? That’s his brother.
Ken: OK.
FC: His brother and his wife, Betty.
Ken: OK
FC: As a matter of fact, he lived with - part of Punks property, he give it to him, still part of their place on Bagdad
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh. So you knew the Youngs. Well, that’s a bunch of, so there was – you knew some of them. They were from over on Bull, on Bee Cave area, weren’t they? The Youngs
FC: Uh, not particularly
Ken: No?
FC: might be some, a few there, but not the older ones
FC: They might, some of ‘em, live out there, I don’t know
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: You know, all them. But they’re all Ruf Young’s, my uncle’s brothers
Ken: Yeah, OK. Did you ever meet Litten Pierce?
FC: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: There are some Pierces live up by the, his kin folk, the other side of the river up toward there, on Bee Cave road up there
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I can’t think of their name. – Ed Pierce and
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah, he lived over there. They were cedar choppers.
Ken: Yeah.
FC: They’re all kin folks. I mean I’m kin to ‘em through my grandma
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: The Wallaces, I’m kin to all the Wallaces
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Yeah. Ed Wallace. Ed Wallace’s brother married my grandma’s sister, so. They claimed he was the meanest man that ever lived
Ken: (laugh) Why is that?
FC: Well, you know, he was just a mean guy. I never knew him, but I knew what I did from my grandma and my grandpa, and, you know, filled me in
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah, Litten Pierce and Edna Patterson married
FC: Yeah, I know them. They all, they traded with me and I knew ‘em real well.
Ken: I bet you did.
FC: Yeah. When I was seventeen years old when I started ____ up there. All my kin folks getting _____ too.
Ken: Man
FC: All the Wards over at Four Points, all them people over in there.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: I knew them, yeah.
Ken: Yeah, Richard Ward, I
FC: Richard Ward, he had a cedar yard down there.
Ken: OK
FC: Richard Ward, last, right there where we’d go, you know where the, on Chrystal Falls where the drug store is on Bagdad?
Ken: Yeah
FC: Richard Ward was the last one to have a cedar yard. Just turn that car on that old street right there on that bend
Ken: Right
FC: That was Richard’s.
Ken: I live real near there
FC: Huh?
Ken: I live real near there.
FC: Right now?
Ken: Yeah
FC: Well, you don’t live in Liberty Hill, do you?
Ken: Well, I live in the country between Liberty Hill and Leander
FC: Well, anyway, I owned that property across the street where that old big, old Dick Faubion’s place was, then Richard had that little old cedar yard, but I knew Richard off, you know, way back. I know all the Wards.
Ken: What was his wife’s name, ‘cause I
FC: I’ll tell you what, I can’t think of it, but she was a sweet lady, man. She thought the world of me.
Ken: Yeah
FC: I can’t think. Just a minute. God damn it. That’s funny. You get talking and you draw a blank
Ken: Oh, sure. It will come to you.
FC: Yeah, it will come to me.
Ken: Yeah, So there
FC: My brother in law, the one that married my wife’s sister, Uncle Jack Cantrell, he’s kin to these people here
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: He worked for Richard. He worked for Dick Boatright. As a matter of fact, he would, they had a cedar yard out there in Utopia, when he moved out to Utopia to run the cedar yard out there for ‘em, well then he just stayed out there, you know, this is where he spent the rest of his days. And Aunt Rosie, my wife’s sister, she’s still alive in Kerrville at a resthome
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: She’s uh, she’s ninety-four, five
Ken: Huh
FC: And she can’t do nothing for herself, but she’s still going, she’s still. She’s old but she’s the sweetest lady that ever lived, you know.
Ken: What was her name? Rosie
FC: Rosie, yep, Rose
Ken: She married Richard Ward?
FC: No, she married Jack Cantrell
Ken: Jack Cantrell
FC: Yep. But they all was good friends of Richard, though. Her husband, at one time, run a cedar yard for Richard, way back
Ken: OK. How about Pearson, TM Pearson, did you know him?
FC: Yeah
Ken: He’s still alive.
FC: Is he? I haven’t seen him in a long time, but I know him, yeah
Ken: Yeah. He had some health problems, but he’s doing alright. Nice guy, sharp
FC: Oh, yeah
Ken: Well that’s interesting you mentioned Utopia because there’s a bunch of, a bunch of people seemed like they went out there and cut
FC: They did. I mean, there’s still some Simons’ went out there and cut
Ken: Yeah
FC: Uh-huh
Ken: And the Boatrights?
FC: There were Boatrights, there were Boatrights went over to Leakey
Ken: OK
FC: Over at Leakey, a lot of Boatrights lived out there, and they was all cedar cutters.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Jessie Boatright
Ken: Yeah
FC: And his brothers
Ken: Yeah
FC: I went to Jessie’s funeral here oh, eight or ten years ago
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: Maybe a little longer than that. Yeah, about eight years ago.
Ken: So, in a sense, the Austin cedar people, they moved out west, following the cedar and populated the whole area.
FC: Well, they just wherever there was cedar. That’s where they went, you know. Lived in tents or whatever, you know
Ken: Yeah
FC: Did whatever, you know. Long time with those axes. Somebody wanted to go cut cedar, wherever it was, they’d have to have a chopping axe and they’d feed me, we’d go somewhere, take an old, old mattress or something and take some kind of old tarp, hang that over it, didn’t have no sides or nothing you know. Rain, or whatever
Ken: That’s rough
FC: One time we were down at the, oh, let me think here a minute, me and Isaac Pierce, one of these boy’s uncles named Isaac, we were down at Wimberly, up that creek, and we took a load of cedar out one evening and come back up the creek there was a big old soft shell turtle about that big around.
Ken: Big old what?
FC: Big old soft-shelled turtle
Ken: Oh, man.
FC: So we jumped out, grabbed him, put him on back in that truck, got up there and we skint that son-of-a-bitch, we’d get, it wasn’t about the Wallaces, or the Pierces, they was about eight or ten little tents up there where people ___,we, uh, we skinned that thing, cut him up in pieces, and gave everybody, everybody in the camp up there turtle meat. And we took that son-of-a-bitch, and we had some flour, you know, and a little salt and pepper, we’d salt and pepper it and put it in a skillet, man, you talk about good eating.
Ken: I bet
FC: It was good eating. But next morning we had to. We had some left over in the morning that pan was plumb full of blood, you know you can’t, cannot, you cannot, I don’t care how much you cook it, you can’t cook all the blood out of it.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
FC: son-of-a-bitch gona have blood in it. But it, really, when it was hot, it was good, man.
Ken: Oh man
FC: I mean really good.
Ken: Man, I’ve never seen a turtle like that.
FC: Anyways, we made a big meal for everybody out of it
Ken: (laugh)
FC: I’d eat one right now if I had one
Ken: Yeah
FC: Put him in a … put a little salt, pepper, corn meal on him, flour or something, and drop it in a fish cooker. Yeah! Taste good. If you didn’t tell somebody they wouldn’t know what it was.
Ken: Huh!
FC: We ate a lot of armadillos way back in our day. Armadillos are hard, the only thing hard to get the hull off of ‘em. But now, now you cook, now you do an armadillo, if you’re gona eat it, like you would a gar, you know, they’ve got that old hull on it.
Ken: Yeah
FC: You take a Skill saw and go right up the back bone, right in the middle, then take your knife and just peel ‘em. But back in them old days we didn’t have Skill saws.
Ken: Uh-huh
FC: A lot of people had knives
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve heard a squirrel – I’ve never skinned a squirrel. I heard they were hard to skin.
FC: Uh, I’ve skinned a million of ‘em.
Other guy: Kind of like a rabbit ___
FC: You don’t do squirrels that way. You do them like you do a deer. You just hang ‘em up by the legs and get it started, you get somebody to hold ‘em, and two people, you get his leg skinned and you can just pull it off of him, cut his head off, gut him, and chop it up in some little pieces.
Other guy: (skinning rabbit)
FC: Yes he did
Other guy: That was Ella Simons, That was Harve’s wife
Ken: Really?
Another guy: And he had a big cedar yard down there
Ken: Yep
Other guy: You know where Ace is? there used to be an old church there. It was turned into a house ____
Several people talking , business being transacted, End
