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LP001
Ken:  So, I’m gonna press record now.  What I would like to do…I think that means my battery is not working, oh well. Uh, anyway, I’m here with Luther Pierce, on the 13th of March
LP:  Friday the 13th
Ken:  Friday the 13th, that’s no good.
LP:  You have to walk lightly today.
Ken:  So, uh, yeah, what I’d like to do is just have you tell everything you remember about the old days. I know you’ve got a great memory. So your mama was Edna Pierce.
LP:  Used to be Patterson
Ken:  Used to be Patterson, right.  Let’s see if that thing is
LP:  She was born in 1906.
Ken:  1906.  I think, here, that thing blinking means that the battery is gona give out on me and I’ve got some more but I don’t know if they are any better. We’ll see. As long as it keeps working.  Uh, and, how, she married your daddy Litten
LP:  Litten
Ken:  How old was she when she married him?
LP:  Sixteen.
Ken:  Sixteen.
LP:  He was eighteen.
Ken:  I read in this thing here that her daddy maybe wasn’t too happy about her getting married that young.
LP:  He wasn’t and mama told me that they spent their honeymoon in a tent down there on Barton Creek.
Ken:  Huh.
LP:  But, uh, mama’s daddy’s name was Pate Patterson.
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  And I don’t know how he come up with all that land, well you know, he had right at a thousand acres there with like a mile and a half frontage on Barton Creek.
Ken:  Wow. Did he run stock or something like that?
LP:  I don’t know.
Ken:  Did they farm? A little corn?
LP:  Maybe a little by the house just to eat.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Most of this was, wadn’t farm land, it was hills and cedar brakes.  They probably cut stove wood for a living back then.
Ken:  Those old valleys, did they have some little valleys that you could farm along Barton Creek there?
LP:  They yeah, a little flat area if it didn’t get too high you know and wash it away
Ken:  Yeah, yeah.
LP:  Uh
Ken:  I’m gona change these batteries out because this thing keeps blinking at me. I’ve got a bunch here.  I just
LP002
LP:  She’ll be seventy June 24th.
Ken:  Oh, so, she’s younger than you, huh?  What were we talking about – so, your mama. So she burned – see, that surprised me, I thought about that later, because you told me you cut wood for her. She burned cedar in her little wood burning stove.
LP:  Um-hum
Ken:  ‘cause that’s, ‘cause it, probably, it gets hot real quick.
LP:  It gets hot.  Yes.
Ken:  Did she cook on that stove?
LP:  Yeah
Ken:  But you got her a gas.
LP:  No. She was scared it would blow up and kill her.
Ken:  So, she kept, she kept with the wood burning stove until she died?
LP:  Til she died.  It’s over in that Eanes Historical Society.
Ken:  We used to have one just like it. It is one of those long little stoves
LP:  It’s got a deal back here that – like thats the top of your stove, and there’s two warmers up above.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Where you put, like, uh, stuff that you want to keep warm, ‘cause the heat is, you know, down in it  and it rises up there and keeps that, it acts like a warmer in that top part.
Ken:  Could you just put a pan right there on top of the stove and cook on it?
LP:  That’s how you do it. 
Ken:  You could fry an egg?
LP:  Oh yeah.  Oh, she could cook some good homemade biscuits in it.
Ken:  What did you grow up eating as a kid?
LP:  I guess what all poor people eat.  And that’s probably why I’ve got a stint in my heart, but maybe not.  I can remember macaroni noodles with tomatoes, fried potatoes and pinto beans.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But mama would change ‘em – the beans, you know, so we wouldn’t get tired of one kind or another, but she’d cook those little white looking beans, she called them navy beans
Ken:  Yep, um-hum, I remember them.
LP:  The butter beans.  Do you remember the butter beans?
Ken:  Um-hum, sure.
LP:  My oldest brother Ed, said, he jumped up there to the table one day and said all we had was water gravy, because we didn’t have no milk, and biscuits.  I don’t guess you remember Rex jelly
Ken:  Rex who?
LP:  Rex jelly, come in a big ole’ gallon glass jar? Ed got up and said “is this all we’ve got?” And boy, he said, “I shouldn’t have said it” (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  He said Daddy jumped on his ass and you know (are you taping me? Are you taping?)
Ken:  Yeah.  You tell me – anytime you want to.  I’ll turn it off.
LP:  I’d better not cuss then.
Ken:  No, that’s perfectly OK.
LP: boy, because Daddy says “let me tell you something”  Daddy called Ed “Riley”.  Because, see, my Grandma Patterson was a Riley
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Before she … And they were known to be real, real tight. Uh, Rush Riley, I remember that name, but, anyway, Daddy said “I want to tell you something, Riley.”  “If you want something better than this to eat you get you a job and make you some money and buy it and we’ll cook it.”
Ken:  (laugh) How many people would she be serving?  How many kids were around the table?
LP:  Well, they was so big that the only ones that I can remember at home, Howard was there for a little bit, and, uh, but Gladys and Margie was the two that I remember more when I grew up, and, of course, it come a time there when I was the last one.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, I was more or less forced out of the house because of, not only did he start charging me to stay there, uh,
Ken:  He charged you?
LP:  Yes. Ten dollars a week.
Ken:  Ten dollars a week!  That’s quite a lot, back then.
LP:  I told him that.  I can rent a house for that.  I’ll go over – and he’d say “well, go ahead and go, that’s what ____.” But, uh, he said “also you ‘aint getting in, these doors are being locked at ten o’clock at night.” And this was, I done graduated from school, and it was too cold to sleep in the car, so I’d tap on the window where mama was and get her to – well, he caught us one night.  Caught her letting me in  and took a swing at me, but I ducked, he missed me and then mama run in between us and stopped, but, I wouldn’t of hit my daddy anyway. 
Ken:  No
LP:  But, anyway, daddy – I always thought when we were growing up he was mean to us ‘cause he worked us so damn hard and didn’t give us nothing
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But he let us know, when you jump up at this table to eat, boy, you’re getting paid for working for me.
Ken:  Uh-huh.  I’m gona turn this off and tell you a story, because I don’t want anybody to hear this.  My daddy, I told you, was real old, right.  And he was an old time Texan.  He grew up, he grew up in one of these feuds himself, and he was the youngest, just like you were, of a whole bunch of boys – thirteen boys and four girls.
LP:  Damn!
Ken:  I know.  And his mama was a Cajun.  And, he was pretty mean too.  He had a razor strap that he hit me with and my mama would lock me up in the bathroom until he got home. Because she wadn’t gona do anything.  But she was a lot younger and she didn’t really agree with it, but he said “you make sure and tell me what he did wrong and I’ll take care of him when I get home.”   I’d have to wait in the damn bathroom, you know, for hours for him to beat me, you know, that was no damn fun, you know.  It hurt, like hell, and I remember when I was eleven years old, that would have made him almost eighty, and I remember being at the dining room table, and he’s coming after me with that razor strap and I’m just dancing around that table, on the other side, and I’d say “you ain’t never gona hit me again, old man.” And, he never did. 
LP:  (laugh_
Ken:  (laugh)  He couldn’t catch me!
LP:  (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh) anyway, I had to tell you.
LP:  Daddy whupped us with a leather – when he’d give you a whipping you’d remember. But we needed, growing up, which I guess every kid knows, we could get away with it a lot more with mama than we could with him.  But, see, he worked so cheap for Tommy Bradfield, man, mama told us many times, is how I can remember it, he got paid every two weeks.  And his check was seventy three dollars and eighty cents.  Every two weeks, ‘cause they held out social security, but he didn’t pay no tax because he had so many kids.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, uh, when he’d go into Beard’s Store to pay them, we had a charge account there, I sometimes wonder old Peewee didn’t, uh, make  him some money off of that extra, because daddy’s check would never pay the bill.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  So, he’d just, all he did was put an X on there and then he would sign his name and give him the whole check. So he had us every evening going down behind the house, there was fifty three acres there, and cut, I never did have to do it, but my, all the older ones did.  I remember packing ‘em out. But Howard had to cut him like twenty or twenty five cedar posts every
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  and pack ‘em out to the road. That’s so on Saturday mornings he’d load ‘em on his old pickup. He had a thirty-four Chevrolet that he bought used and drove it like two hundred and something thousand miles and then he got a thirty-six.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And they had three speed transmissions they were in the floorboard. And coming out of that, over there behind the house, you know, there were a pretty good size hollow and stuff back there, and he’d get a run at that thing and we’d fixed this rock ledge we at that time, you know, put rocks in there and this and that, but it never would pull that. ‘Cause he would run it up there as far as he could, and I’m standing over with a big rock to stop it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  ‘Cause we’d throw about twenty or twenty five posts off and then I’d get the stop block back out and he’d go back down and get another run at it and make it over that ledge and stop and we’d load ‘em back up.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Where if he’d had a truck with a four speed transmission where you got a ___ it would have pulled right out of there
Ken:  I’ve heard stories about
LP:  But that’s how he got his spending and drinking and beer money
Ken:  From you guys cutting
LP:  Cutting each evening.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And he made the girls work too. They didn’t like, they didn’t, I don’t know if they could use an axe or not. Mama could.
Ken:  Really
LP:  Oh, yeah. 
Ken:  Did anybody ever cut themselves?
LP:  My brother Howard, the one that died in ’09, he had a split toenail.
Ken:  Ok
LP:  He split his big toe right way back in there.  Mama was always scared and said that Howard run out there in front of her one day.  “I’ll cut it, mama, I’ll cut it.”  And he did. He cut his toe first thing.
Ken:  Hum!
LP:  But I didn’t.  I cut my leg with a chainsaw.  I think the scar is still there.  But, you know, when them saws you had to watch backwards motion
Ken:  Uh-huh.  That’s back when they didn’t have a
LP:  (showing scar). That’s not much there
Ken:  Back before they had a thing that stops the chain if it pops back on you.
LP:  And see what got me was, I used a chainsaw for, I did this, hell in the ‘80s.  I was cutting up wood, that I’d hauled it in in poles, about eight foot poles And threw ‘em off, and, you know, they criss-crossed every which way. And I was in there and I was coming, instead of going down through it, cut a hole in my foot coming up, because if you go down it will pinch.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And when I did, another stick of wood down there, around the end of it, the flat end, that bar just barely touched it, and it will make it kick up and that tore my britches, and I thought I just tore my britches with it.  And then I said, well, I’d better look at it.  And I turned the saw off and pulled my pants up and my god it scared me!  I took the sleeve of my shirt, I had on a long sleeved flannel shirt, cut it off, and wrapped it around it and tied it real tight.  I was down there the other side of Manor when I did that.  I hurried home and got her and we went to an minor emergency sewed it up.
Ken:  When did you cut with, what was your first memory of cutting with a saw, how old were you, what year would that have been? Or your daddy, either one.
LP:  Daddy never did.
Ken:  Never?
LP:  Unt-uh.  But we needed a saw all those years I was in high school.
Ken:  Uh-huh.  You cut with a saw in high school?
LP:  No.  I got one later.
Ken:  You used an axe in high school?
LP:  I did.  Remember I told you I used to go over and cut twenty-five or thirty posts in the evening for Ed?
Ken:  Yeah.  You made ten dollars.
LP:  Half. Because if it was eight dollars worth I got four.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And see, I could make, well, I could make five or six dollars in a couple of hours, and you know, back then, like I told you, Ronnie Warden called me and this was like September of ’63, maybe October, at Cross Allen machine shop down there on Third or Fourth Street, east of Congress
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  We got an opening there and boy it was paying $1.25 per hour. Didn’t you say you got like eighty something cents for a gas station?
Ken:  Back then, I think, a dollar and a quarter was pretty much what I made by the time I graduated from high school. That’s what I was making.
LP:  When I was going to McCallum, see, I used to help my brother, Howard, lived right there about a block from McCallum.  And I stay a couple of nights with him and then I’d go home and then leave mama’s and come out through there early to get to school before eight.  But, I used to go, Howard had an old forty-six Chevrolet truck. That’s what they were hauling rock on.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And, they had, uh,he let me, I got out of school at noon.  And then I could go and load up whatever he needed.  ‘Cause they had it stockpiled out there, why out North Lamar, across from the, do you remember where Coxville Zoo was?
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  Well, there is an old beer joint in there, Leon Carter had it, and he’d let ‘em dump rock in there and what I’d do, if they needed four tons back then we went by the feet, but, uh, he had me going off of that hill on 620 where Comanche Trail is.  It ain’t nothing now-a-days.  Go off of it and load
LP003
LP:  - that old truck had a four speed, low gear, with the key turned on, using the gears and the brake.  Those trucks had hydraulic brakes but no booster
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And daddy told me one time, I told him about how it wouldn’t stop, oh, it’d stop, but it’d take a while.  He said “well, you think them trucks won’t stop, you should have drove back in the thirties when they had mechanical brakes.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  See, back then, when you hit the pedal in there, all it was was a deal under there that, a rod that pulled both, pulled your brake shoes, front and the rear. I never drove one like that. But I used gas trucks my whole life in the rock quarry.
Ken:  Do you remember, I told you about somebody getting killed on a rock truck? And that was Floyd Cantwell’s daddy.
LP:  Did he?
Ken:  Yeah.  Floyd Cantwell’s daddy.  I think he was a Houston.
LP:  Rock truck or a cedar truck?
Ken:  A rock truck.  He was coming there, a place called Hooper’s Switch.  You probably don’t remember it.
LP:  I remember that road
Ken:  And that’s basically Mopac and Bull Creek Road. I think there was, I think the train had a switch there or something like that.  And, yeah, he said, I bet that’s what happened to him.  I bet his, he had a load of rock and him and his little brother, Floyd’s little brother, was in the, or big brother, was in the, before he was killed, was in with his daddy, and he survived.  His brain, he had a brain injury, but he survived and his daddy, he said, was just up and down the tracks.  I bet that’s what happened.  He couldn’t stop that truck with all those rocks in it.
LP:  I remember us hauling those cedar posts one Saturday morning, me helping daddy out there close to where you’re talking about, you know, they call that the triangle there where Balcones – I’m talking about just west of Mopac. Balcones and 2222 you know
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  There was a beer joint there in the triangle part, called Triangle where all them cedar choppers out of Bull Creek whatever drank beer. And then across the road was a cedar yard there and I still remember Roy Cox was the one running the cedar yard.
Ken:  Roy Cox. That’s where Floyd Cantwell grew up. That’s his, he was born there
LP:  Right in there close to where he grew up
Ken:  Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah
LP:  They said Sonny Short stopped in that Triangle beer joint, you know, this is Virginia Short’s oldest brother, same age as Ed
Ken:  Sonny Short
LP:  His name was Malcolm Harold, but they called him Sonny
Ken:  OK
LP:  His mama called him Sonny Boy
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  He stopped there in whatever kind of old truck he had, and went in there and ordered him a beer and they wouldn’t give him one.  Said he was too drunk.  Ed told me this.  He went back outside and got in his truck and they had an outside area with tables and stuff, chairs where you could sit and drink your beer with privacy wood fence around it.  He run that truck through that fence and run over top of all them tables and chairs, and made another hole where he come back out on the back side
Ken:  That reminds me. The Shorts, now, one of those, another story that is in that Austin History Center is by a guy named Earl Short.
LP:  Earl. There was a bunch of ‘em. There was Earl, Tom, Tony, Charlie, my brother could tell you. There’s another one, but I’m not, I can’t remember his name.
Ken:  They were pretty tough, weren’t they?  The Shorts.
LP:  Ed fought Sonny Short in that Westlake beer joint for like,  they said they fought like an hour or so. They’d stop and rest, and drink a beer, and then get back. And it was over. Sonny Short had stole Ed’s deer rifles out of his house, and hawked ‘em at Brazos Pawn Shop down there on Red River. And I was a kid then, but I was with him.
Ken:  Where he stole it?
LP:  No, I was with Ed when he found ‘em.
Ken:  Oh
LP:  And JB Bratton told Ed said Sonny Short brought these.  So he told Junior Short at Beard’s Store, tell your brother Sonny, when he sees me he better be ready to fight.  And sure enough they did Ed said “I couldn’t whup him boy, but he quit, so I guess that means I won, ‘cause he said he asked Sonny “you ready to go again?” He said “no, I think I’ve had enough.”
Ken:  Did he give him his money for the deer rifles
LP:  I didn’t know.  I bet he didn’t, but see, Sonny Short was probably, this was probably within a year or so of when I told you he run through that board fence ___.  He was a full-fledged drunk.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, uh, there was another beer joint down there called Elm Grove Lodge, right there on Bee Cave Road and it was Soap Creek Saloon there later
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  Do you remember it?
Ken:  Yeah, oh yeah, I went to Soap Creek Saloon many a time.
LP:  You did?
Ken:  I did.  I saw Willie Nelson there.
LP:  You did?
Ken:  I did. 
LP:  And then, another story that they told me about, uh, Tony Short was with Sonny that day, when Ed found him him and Ed said, It’s a good thing the old man wasn’t there with me, or he’d of got Tony, because Tony was trying to help Sonny a little bit.  And I took it to mean that, like, when Sonny hit him and knocked him over by him, Tony would probably push him back out of there.
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  But I took it as that.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But, another story that Ed told me and they’d seen it, but Tony and Sonny was drinking beer in that West Lake beer joint, used to be on the corner of West Lake Drive and Bee Caves Road.
Ken:  OK
LP:  And, uh, they got in an argument in there about who’s truck would out-pull who. And they tied ‘em together with a chain out there in the middle of Bee Caves Road, back to back, and they couldn’t stop.  Tony he drug Sonny Short backwards all the way to Beard’s Store before they got him.
Ken:  How far was Beard’s (laugh). Where was Beard’s Store?
LP:  A half mile down
Ken:  Toward town?
LP:  Yes, from West Lake.
Ken:  Uh-hu
LP:  Maybe not quite a half mile. 
Ken:  Tell me about Beard’s Store. What was it like?  I don’t ever remember going in there.
LP:  It was just a little grocery store is what it was but he give all them poor people credit up there.  I don’t know if he was honest about it
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But I know we quit buying in there.  Did you ever hear of a store way out South First Street, past where Ben White, before Ben White, called Plumleys?
Ken:  Plumleys.
LP:  I remember going to that store after we quit buying at Beards 
Ken:  Uh-huh. I’ve heard of the Plumleys.  A Jim Plumley
LP:  See, daddy called that down there like going off the hill to the low water bridge
Ken:  Yep
LP:  That low water bridge
Ken:  Yep, yep
LP:  On the left, he called that Plumley’s flats, down in there.
Ken:  Before you get to it, or after you cross the bridge?
LP:  Before you cross it.
Ken:  Oh, that little island and all that in there?
LP:  Yeah, and see, the University of Texas owned that on the right.  The City owned all that in there where he was calling it Plumley’s.
Ken:  OK.  I wonder why he called it that. 
LP:  I guess that’s who used to live there.
Ken:  Huh. Before it was, uh, before they built the dam, I guess.
LP:  Yeah.  And I told you, I remember walking down there with Danny and daddy and the short bridge was finished and they weren’t working on the long bridge.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And I told Daddy, those are some big fish.  He said, yeah, boy, them ain’t no good, them are carp.  I still remember him telling me that.
Ken:  They are not that bad.  I caught the biggest catfish I’ve ever caught in my life right there.
LP:  You did?
Ken:  Yes.  It wasn’t that big, it was probably about that big (laugh).
LP:  You know every time it got on a rise, like they opened the flood gates, we fished down there then when the water turned muddy ‘cause it was good catfishing
Ken:  Um-hum. It was.
LP:  But what I liked was bass fishing on Lake Austin.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And I did it the old fashioned way, they called it, are you taping this?
Ken:  Yep. (laugh)
LP:  ‘Black people fishing” and I’d use a cork and a minnow according to how deep it was, maybe two to three feet, and then put a little split shot out about a foot from the hook to keep the minnow from swimming to the top
Ken:  Yeah, I know what you call it.
LP:  Man, bass couldn’t resist it. This was like in March and April, when ____
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Like right now is a good time to fish.
Ken:  So, I was thinking, tell me, the Shorts. Were they not married to a Tucker?  I mean, so, you’re kind-of related
LP:  They might have been, but, see Daddy and Tony, every time they’d get drunk and they’d start arguing over who owned that cemetery.  You know, Tony lived right there by the cemetery.
Ken:  The Tucker cemetery. 
LP:  Um
Ken:  Yeah, I think, Rudy’s, is that the name of that BBQ place?
LP:  Yes. I couldn’t think of it before
Ken:  I know, I know, I remember that Yeah, Yeah, Rudy’s. There is a Rudy’s up and down I-35. That’s a national, is it the same one, kind-of a big chain now?
LP:  Yeah
Ken:  OK
LP:  But Rudy’s, it seems to have the best BBQs in Round Rock there.
Ken:  OK, yeah, yeah.
LP:  But, I’ve eaten it, what I liked about Rudy’s is you go in there and ask for extra lean brisket, that’s what you’re gona get.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  They ain’t gona try to leave a little fat on it.
Ken:  Uh-huh, uh-huh
LP:  You know, I asked one time, down there in Elgin, at that Southside Market, before they moved out on 290, you know, they used to be in downtown Elgin
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And this man cut me up some brisket and I said “I don’t want no fat on it.”   He said “all right, but I’ll have to weigh it first.” So do whatever you got to do (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  So he weighed it, then put it back out there and cut half of it off of fat and threw it in the trash.
Ken:  Yeah, I was thinking about, was your grandmomma Mattie Tucker?  Does that ring a bell?  She was
LP:  Annie? Annie was my grandmother.
Ken:  Right. And she married a Teague, was it a Teague? (was a Reece)
LP:  May have been.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  So you need to talk to, I ain’t got any, I don’t know, my sisters are too bad off, Joyce is older than me, uh, I wouldn’t of known that, Annie Pierce was a little old bitty woman, but I’ve seen a picture of her one day standing by these chicken coops.  See Joyce’s - Ann was her favorite.  See I had a sister named Ann.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Named Annie Bess.
Ken:  Annie Tucker, yeah.
LP:  Annie was my grandma, but she died before I was born.
Ken:  Uh-huh, right.  Well, she was one of the, so, I kind of looked at these family trees to try and figure out how everybody’s related and the Tucker girls, every one of those Tucker girls married a bad boy, if you will, if you want to call the Shorts bad boys, you know.  Uh, one of the Tucker girls married a Plumley. One of the Tucker girls married a Young. Now, do you remember any stories about the Youngs? Any, beside what Emmett Shelton said (laugh)
LP:  Uh, all I remember, and this was told to me by somebody else that was older than me, was that, uh, Ike Young, I don’t know who he was married to, but, he was Howard Hamilton and Beau Hamilton’s real daddy
Ken: OK
LP:  They went by Hamilton.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, uh, I heard that Ike Young died in Travis County jail, I think they said he hung himself.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But I’m not sure.
Ken:  He was a moonshiner.
LP:  But you said that he went to federal prison.
Ken:  I know he went to Leavenworth because I’ve seen this uh, whatever, saw some document, you know.
LP:  Do you want something to drink?
Ken:  I’m good.  I just ate in Georgetown.
LP:  Did ya?  I don’t eat dinner.  I ate this morning at Sun City about ten and I’ll wait again tonight about six thirty, I usually, I’ll go feed my wife, you know, a little bit
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  I’ll have to go probably and, boy time is flying and I’ll have to leave about four fiteen. We have thirty more minutes.  I go over every evening and feed her.  And then when I get through with her we sit around a little bit and talk, then I go across the street to Georgetown Hospital, ‘cause if you sit down and think about it there is not a regular café or a cafeteria in Georgetown and that hospital’s got like a homecooking food
Ken:  Used to be the Monument was on that side of town.
LP004
LP:  It’s still there.
Ken:  Yeah.  And his prices are a lot higher than they used to be.
LP:  And you know the house I worked on the summer of ’62 when I worked with Tony Short?
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  We did a house there, just down the hill, by the South San San Gabriel, on old 81. They tore it down about a year or two ago.  It was built in ‘62
Ken:  Huh
LP:  Complete rock house.  It was for somebody named Weir.
Ken:  Oh yeah
LP:  Probably was the Weir, probably the town Weir was named after him.
Ken:  There is a lady named Weir that lives out on 2243, outside of Georgetown.
LP:  I know where you’re talking about.  See, we hauled rock out of there.
Ken:  Yeah, yeah, that’s right across from that big quarry.
LP:  We called him Doc Weir.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  The man.  I don’t know if he used to be a doctor or not. 
Ken:  I don’t know.
LP:  But I spent my whole life up there.    Heard those stories hauling rock and I didn’t move up here, you know, until eight years ago.
Ken:  Uh-huh, but you
LP:  I worked up here.   Every day and spent my whole life in these other people’s places.
Ken:  How did you get into the rock business?
LP:  Howard was doing it, my oldest brother, next to me, but he is eleven years older.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  He was doing it about 1960.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  He died in ’09 and they had a deal in the paper about him that he started hired Howard Pierce  Stone Company in 1960 and it is still being proudly carried on by his sons and grandsons, and it is.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  See, Howard had two boys.  I worked for from ’64 to ’68 for Howard and he was good to me. Uh, on the ten point of, if it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t got no credit.  He cosigned for me to buy a 270 deer rifle at Oshman’s Sporting Goods.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And he cosigned after I paid that off, for me to buy a set of tools from Montgomery Ward.  I should have bought ‘em from Sears. ‘Cause, you know, Craftsman is the best.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  The Wards were called Power Craft, but, anyway, he cosigned for me, and, you know, I took auto mechanics at Austin High for however many years they had it, seemed like three years.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  I know I had it in the 12th grade. ‘Cause I had it old man Hicks were welding, auto mechanics, and woodwork.
Ken:  Um-huh
LP:  ‘Cause he used to tell me “shut up, Pierce, or I’ll fail you in all three my classes.”
Ken:  (laugh)  Did you ever think about becoming a mechanic?
LP:  I could have. Remember, I told you the other day when we met that old man Hicks called me when I was about forty years old.  I was umpiring at Northwest little league, and he asked me if, uh, knowing how to do mechanic work.  I said I could fix anything I wanted to fix, but, when I graduated from Austin High I could not stab a distributor and get it in time.
Ken:  You couldn’t do what?
LP:  Stab a distributor and get it in time.
Ken:  Oh, uh-huh
LP:  And my grandson over there, Jake, he did it in the eleventh grade.  Of course, he’s going to A&M now. And I said, Jake, I can’t believe that you done this.  ‘Cause I damn sure couldn’t do it.  I pulled my distributor out and had to have my brother-in-law to come out there and put it back in time for me because, well, I just didn’t understand how it worked.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  Could you pull a distributor out?
Ken:  No.  I was never a very good mechanic.
LP:  Huh?
Ken:  I was never a very good mechanic. It is kind-of funny that Dudley was real good at that stuff, and I think it’s kind-of like we were so close as young kids, whenever he was really good at something, I kind-of shied away from it. ‘Cause he’d always beat me at it. (laugh)
LP:  And, uh, Ronnie Warden and that boy that I was good friends with, after Edward Blackman died?  Uh, well, Edward Blackman also moved to Bertram in about the starting the 11th grade, but, uh, Ronnie Warden did, he was a mechanic his whole life.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  He worked for a while at that boat____ place and he moved to Roger Beasley Mazda on Burnet Road, of course Johnny Coconut was a salesman there. Did you know Johnny?
Ken:  Coates?
LP:  Coconut
Ken:  I remember a Johnny Coates, but not a Johnny Coconut.
LP:  Well, Johnny Coates used to drink coffee with Linwood out there in the Big Wheel.  Johnny lives out there off of Fritzhugh Road.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And he was drinking coffee, been drinking coffee with him there for, uh, he installed swimming pools.
Ken:  Huh
LP:  So, you knew Ralph Franzetti the midget?
Ken:  Yeah, yeah.
LP:  I seen him out there one day in  McCoys.
Ken:  Huh
LP:  But, uh, Johnny Coates was asking Linwood one morning out there “were you related to the Pierces out of West Lake?” and Linwood said “Hell, boy, I am one of them Pierces out of West Lake.”  He said “What?” And Linwood said “Yeah,” and he said “You know Luther Pierce?”  “Yeah.”  “He’s my uncle.” (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh) 
LP:  “What about Charlie Roberts?” and Linwood said “Yeah, he’s my brother-in-law.”
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But I haven’t seen Johnny since Bull Creek.
Ken:  I haven’t seen him in a long time.
LP:  We were drinking beer in Bull Creek there one day. We was working out there in Lakewood and I had two or three Mexicans helping me. This was probably ’72 or 3. And Johnny came in there. Now, do you remember the boys that owned, uh, Bull Creek is now, what’s that BBQ place?
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  County Line?
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  OK.  John Walcott was owner on that.
Ken:  Huh
LP:  Do you remember them?
Ken:  I don’t.  I never went out there much.
LP:  John, he was in school, he is the same age as me.
Ken:  OK. All right.
LP:  But, you know, he had that one over in West Lake, what we call Cedar Crest Corner, but it was kind-of out on the hill.
Ken:  Where was that?
LP:  On Bee Cave
Ken:  Oh, Bee Cave Road, right, right
LP:  And he had kind-of out on
Ken:  OK. Was that where Cedar Crest Nightclub used to be?
LP:  That’s it.
Ken:  I didn’t know that. ‘Cause I’ve heard about the Cedar Crest
LP:  Before that, see, Emmett started that. That’s where Daddy met Emmett. Emmett built them rock cottages back there with fireplaces in ‘em. It was called it Moose Head Lodge. That was one of the first things Emmett  did when he got out of law school and moved out there. That’s when Emmett met Ed. He tells it in that Eanes book that Daddy brought Ed with him, ‘cause they were building one of those rock fireplaces in cottages. He built several of them, Emmett  did.
Ken:  OK
LP:  And it was kind-of like, well like, you know, Bull Creek Lodges was a same deal that you could go out there and, uh, rent them little cottages and stay the weekend or whatever.
Ken:  So, Emmett , it was a beer drinking place and a BBQ place both, or something like that?
LP:  Yeah, and when it was Cedar Crest Lodge it was a beer drinking place. And, uh, I don’t know if it was a beer drinking place when he called it Moose Head or not.
Ken:  There is a story that Emmett  Shelton tells.  It just, it came to my mind and I think it was a place further south, Oak Hill, Manchaca, somewhere in that area.  But, some boy, some guy was starting this restaurant. And he said “How you ‘gona keep them hillbillies out?”  He said “Just put table cloths up.” (laugh) Now, he had a guy guard that place.  It was just a, you ever hear of the name Ernest Thurman?
LP:  Yes, Daddy had a bullet in his leg from Ernest, Ern Thurman. Daddy always called him Crazy Ernie. They was rabbit hunting.  With a .22. And Daddy, you know, one held the fence open for them to crawl through it. And Daddy went through first, and then was holding it open for Ern Thurman, and the .22 shot somehow and hit him in the leg here, and it was still in there. They decided to leave the bullet in.
Ken:  Huh.  Did he tell any other stories about him?
LP:  But I didn’t know, that’s the only way I knew about Ern Thurman.  He is in Tucker cemetary.
Ken:  Huh. ‘Cause he was bad.
LP:  Daddy said he called him Crazy Ernie.
Ken:  He got killed.  He got shot.
LP:  Did he?
Ken:  He got shot by, by, well, there’s a little beer joint out there on Bee Cave Road that started by Lila Tracy, Pearl Tracy. And her, Ernie Thurman was her son by another man, right, and she now married this Tracy (Brust) fella. And this other guy was still partners with them. And, uh, this story is in those tapes that Emmett  Shelton did.  And he, they got, he was always at odds with his step-father. Always at odds with him. And he said that he got drunk and was gona shoot him or something like that, and did, and shot at him, and this guy was already trying to leave, forgot his name, Brust, or something like that. And he was trying to leave, get away from this, get away from Ernest Thurman, and he shot, Ernest Thurman shot him but didn’t kill him and this guy shot him, killed him.  He shot, this is how bad he was. Emmett  Shelton tells the story, and I found it in the newspaper as well. But they never prosecuted him for it because nobody would testify against him because he was so mean. He was that mean, you know.  He was just a scary guy.  They, on a dare, he shot someone.  From two hundred yards away. On a dare. He said “I bet you can’t hit that boy way out there.”  At Onion Creek. And he did.  It was a University of Texas student. He was well liked by everybody.  He didn’t die.  He recovered after several months in the hospital.  And Ernest Thurman
LP:  Did you ever hear of a Jack Lloyd?
Ken:  No.
LP:  Jack Lloyd tried to stop them from, I mean, Emmett  Shelton tried to stop ‘em from driving them cows through there to the river to drink.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And Emmett  Junior had just got back here from the marines.  And, Jack Lloyd, this is some things I heard.  Jack Lloyd told Emmett  Junior “if you don’t get out of the way I’ll blow a hole through you that I can walk through.  And Emmett  Junior and Emmett  backed up and let him go own through with their cows. But, see, that was my grandma’s job, every day, she went with the men.  Annie. And, uh, that was their job, driving them cows over there to the river, and let ‘em lay around there on the river bottom and drink and then drive ‘em back home before dark.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, uh, see mama knocked her out with an old iron skillet because she accused mama of – she didn’t have dinner ready. When they got back.
Ken:  Did she live with them?
LP:  Yeah, mama, daddy moved mama in with his mama.   And never left.
Ken:  So his, he moved
LP:  Edna Patterson married her and moved her in with Charlie Pierce and Annie.
Ken:  Oh, oh, right, OK
LP:  Something he wouldn’t let us think of doing.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But, anyway, when they came home at dinner, mama said she had  - packing one kid on her hip, another one two or three hanging on her skirt tail and grandma came in there and accused her “why ain’t you got dinner ready?”  “You been laying in bed reading funny books, ain’t ya.”  That’s what you call comic books.  And mama got –  Must have really got mad.  Hit her on the head with that skillet and knocked her out. 
Ken:  Huh
LP:  And that’s about the time when I was telling you that she was scared all day what daddy was gona do when he found out.  But that’s when she told me she wanted to go home. And he said “get in the truck, I’ll take you home.” But another thing this ___ done.  You know all of that?  Rob Roy, you know about it?
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  Rob Roy on the creek and all that?
Ken:  Yeah.
LP:  Tommy James, Judge Looney owned that.  And Tommy James married Judge Looney’s daughter. Did you know Tommy James, the lawyer?  A little bitty guy.
Ken:  Unt-uh
LP:  Show up, wore a cowboy hat.  Uh, I doubt if he was five foot tall, maybe five two
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  But, uh, they caught Jack Lloyd over there, somewhere in that, what Tommy owned, you know, it went from Bee
LP005
LP:  Cave Road. Tommy didn’t own it then, Judge Looney did. But Tommy got it when he died because his wife got it.  And, it went from Bee Cave Road all the way to the river.  He made Judge Looney strip his clothes off, everything, and left him like that.  See, he would have wooped Tommy James’ ass but he thought he was a kid.  (laugh)  That’s how I heard it.
Ken:  Who did that?
LP:  Jack Lloyd.
Ken:  Jack Lloyd.  I don’t, that doesn’t ring a bell.
LP:  See, that was way before my time. This is some of the things I heard ‘em talk about.
Ken: They talked about that kind of stuff. How did they feel about?  I mean, someone that was a, sort-of
LP:  They started coming up, all that land was kind-of like open range.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And they started buying it and them old timers that had been there didn’t much like it.
Ken:  No I don’t imagine so.  I just wondered, when they, back in the family
LP:  See thats where talking about where Dixie Tank was. What we called Dixie Tank.
Ken:  Unt-uh
LP:  It was right there on the, on, right there on the edge of that park that, where Rob Roy is. In fact, it’s right off of 360 now, in there.
Ken:  What’s this Dixie Tank?
LP:  Wild Basin
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Remember it’s a spring, I’ve never known it’s
Ken:  Oh, you mentioned that before. The spring that never went dry.
LP:  And Charlie Roberts told me that somebody used to have a still there.
Ken:  OK. And it’s where the Wild Basin is now.
LP:  Yeah
Ken:  Yeah.
LP:  In fact, I walked down there one day. I parked and walked down there and I was surprised that that thing was level full.  As dry as it was. 
Ken:  It still had water in it?
LP:  Oh, yeah, it was full of water.  I told you we used to get in that hole of water and it come off of  a little water fall.  That spring did.  And went into a pool.
Ken:  So, you could go there now?
LP:  When I went it was real dry summertime.  I’m thinking this was in the 90s.  It has to be after Charlie died.  He died in 90.
Ken:  It’s in that Wild Basin park.
LP:  Yes
Ken:  So, you could walk there now, and see that now, that spring?
LP:  I walked down there and the next thing I knew I heard something coming through the brush and it was a deputy sheriff and it just so happened to be Judge Blackwell’s boy. See Judge Blackwell lived up there on Bee Cave Road his whole life
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And I knew he had a boy that was a sheriff, but that’s what, who it was when I seen his name tag I told him what I was doing. But that was funny because I said when I got back in the truck, hell, you couldn’t even stop and take a crap without somebody stopping to see what you were doing.
Ken:  Uh-huh. Do you ever go down to, you know, all that Barton Creek now, they have a trail along it.
LP:  I know it.
Ken: Have you ever been down there?
LP:  Unt-uh
Ken:  Well my wife and I went down just about
LP:  You talking about on Mopac?
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  Where it goes on down, you know where Camel’s Hole was?
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  the pool.
Ken:  Camel’s Hole was up, wasn’t it? Was it.
LP:  Camel’s Hole from 360 was down the creek.
Ken:  Right, we parked at Mopac.
LP:  And went up the creek?
Ken:  Went up the creek.  Yeah. There was a nice pool up there.
LP:  There is, yea.
Ken:  I forgot what that’s called.  Yeah, but it’s not the same, it was noisy, is what it was.  You could hear Mopac and 360, you could hear all that traffic way down in there. But there was still some real nice cedar in there, some very old cedar.  I guess they just could never get it out of there.
LP:  I looked, oh, that cedar grows back pretty quick, quicker than you’d think.
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  See, when we went through there cutting that stuff behind, that daddy owned, we just cut the best ones and leave the others and let ‘em grow up.
Ken:  Um-huh
LP:  But, uh, I bought four cedar posts for my front porch on my little cabin up there in north Texas and I bought ‘em, what’s was his name, he wasn’t a Bonnet.
Ken:  There in Lampassas?
LP:  No, right over here on 183.  If you go to Florence then go over to 183, just south of
Ken:  I stopped there and just looked at their cedar.  I don’t know what his name was.
LP:  I bought 8-5.  He told me his name.  See, I didn’t know him, but, like Ruda May, the one you talked to, her daddy, my oldest brother, was what you could call a real cedar chopper, ‘cause that’s all he ever done.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  Then he started, later on as he got, you know, up in his thirties or forties, then he started cleaning off lots and burning the brush. Emmett  always had him a job.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  Somebody that Emmett  knew
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  Uh, I seen Emmett ’s boy, Polk one day down there in 2-Js on a Saturday, this was in 1990, and
Ken:  2-Js.  I haven’t thought of that name in twenty years.
LP:  Polk, I sat down in the, he came in after me.  I had my son-in-law with me, the Arizona one, and he set in the booth next to me. And Polk said “I heard that daddy and Ed still running West Lake Hills.”  I said, yeah, Polk, that’s what I heard.  I said “Ed said he thought that man wanted to fight.” Ed hit him and knocked him down on the ground, but, anyway, what caused it was somebody had cut cedar posts on the wrong place, on Emmett ’s side. And Ed followed their muddy tracks out of there, it was some Pennys is who it was. And somebody that had bought a couple acres let ‘em cut posts on theirs and they got over on his and cut his. That’s what started it and Ed told Emmett over at Emmett ’s house.  And, uh, Joyce Shelton, that was Emmett ’s second wife, the one that he married that was too young for him. She wasn’t going to let him go and Emmett  was saying “get out of the way, Joyce Shelton, you ain’t stopping me now.”  And Emmett  had a double barrel shot gun.  Well, he took it with him, him and Ed went over there. Have you heard of John Lloyd?  This is no relation to the Jack Lloyd, the mean one.  John Lloyd was real rich.  He had built all kinds of mansions over there in West Lake Hills.  John Lloyd’s son-in-law was there and he was talking real, real smart.  And the sheriff was there too. And John Lloyd’s son-in-law walked up to Ed and shaking his finger at him, right in his face, said “what are you doing over here anyway?  You’re the son-of-a-bitch that probably cut these posts.”  So Ed  hit him and knocked him down on the ground. And that sheriff told John Lloyd’s son-in-law, said “you can file on him for that.”  He said “well, then, that’s just what I’ll do.”  So, the sheriff was handcuffing Ed, Ed said Emmett  scared him more than the sheriff.  He got one handcuff on him before Emmett  knocked ‘em.  “You leave that man alone. You get them handcuffs off of him. I am his attorney”, and then he turned to John Lloyd’s son-in-law and said “you file on him I’ll charge you for five thousand dollars a tree for every cedar that you cut on my place and we’ll go through there and count the stumps.” So they unlocked the handcuffs and let him go. And that’s what Polk was talking about. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  See Polk’s a lawyer too.  He took over Emmett ’s practice.
Ken:  OK
LP:  Polk was the same age as my red headed sister. I’ve got a picture of her up there, uh, Gladys was seventy three in January and Polk was in all of her elementary school.  He went to Eanes too.
Ken:  Is he still alive?
LP:  Polk is, yeah.  Uh, he’s got an office somewhere downtown.
Ken:  I’ll be darned.  I should talk with him.
LP:  Uh, Ed was cleaning off sixty-five acres for John Musellman, which was just up from the river there, West Lake Drive used to go around there and go on down and end at the river and now they’ve got it going, so I think that was Colorado Creek Road.  But, anyway, Ed was cleaning off that sixty-five acres for john Musellman, cutting all the cedar and the underbrush, and burning it, and Emmett  came down there. This was about a week from when that happened. Emmett  always called Ed Edward. And see, Emmett  said he met Ed when he was about twelve years old on that Moosehead Lodge, daddy had brought him with him mix up cement and stuff and give him ___. And, uh, Emmett  told Ed, said “you know, Edward, Edward, every time I think about what you done to that man, it brings a smile to my face” (laugh)  ‘cause you give that son-of-a-bitch just what he deserved.
Ken:  (laugh) Emmett  must have been a character.  Did you remember him?
LP:  Oh, yeah. I worked for him. He expected you to work, too.  I seen him get mad with a boy working, I mentioned his name a while ago, Junior ___, Emmett  told, uh, somebody came over at noon.  I’m gona have to let ‘em in the back
Ken:  Oh, yeah, no problem.
LP:  See me and Bill does the swimming pool for Emmett in the summer of, must have been ’61.  Emmett  divorced his wife and married a young woman that he met down there at the capitol named Joyce Shelton.  I don’t know what her real name was, but she worked at something like court reporter or something.  But, uh, Emmett  told me and Bill that day, when we got through, don’t bring that blond headed boy with you no more. He combs his hair too much. You know, Junior would stop every now and then and pull a comb out of back pocket and comb his hair, but, you know, some people do that out of habit.
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  But if you worked, Emmett  expected you to work.  If you didn’t work hard, he didn’t want you.  And it was like a, keeping up with him, you know, well he was glad to be out there doing it, ‘cause he’s been in the office all week. 
Ken:  Do you think he was fair? Emmett ?  Because he sure ended up with a lot of land.
LP:  I don’t know if he got any of it, well, you know, I heard that he defended John Marshall.  Did you ever hear anything on him?
Ken:  Unt-uh
LP:  John Marshall had that Marshall Ranch in there next to where Lost Creek subdivision is
Ken:  I know about the Marshall Ranch.
LP:  See Emmett  got part of that and he got it right where 360 was coming through
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  So Emmett  probably knew about that.
Ken:  What did John Marshall do to have anything
LP:  He was just like an old hermit man, but Dan Marshall, I’m not sure if that was his son or what, he was like a hermit. We cut cedar posts in there for a while.  Myself and my brother-in-law, hell he walked around in there naked with no clothes on.
Ken:  Huh.  Speaking of characters, did you ever hear of Homer Teague?  You remember him?
LP:  Barely.
Ken:  What do you remember about him? They said he was a character.
LP:  He always said when he passed them Teagues, you know, he always walked, he never had a vehicle
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And he had a towsack there, he’d walk down there to Beard’s Store then pack his groceries home in that towsack
Ken: How far did, where did he live? 
LP:  He lived right there where Patterson Lane is.
Ken:  OK
LP:  That used to be a little old bitty school house or some kind-of house there, because, did you ever
Ken:  Yeah, yeah, I came across that Bruton, the Snuff Box School, Bruton Springs.
LP:  Daddy was raised on Bruton Springs on the river. 
Ken:  OK
LP:  Uh, that’s how he met mama.  I think.
Ken:  Uh-huh, OK
LP:  And, you know, Bruton Springs is go down Cuernavaca and take that first left and go down in there to the river. 
Ken:  OK. OK. That’s where your daddy was raised?
LP:  I remember when I was probably in high school, we were cutting that cedar posts for  Oswald Wolf in there, you know that Wolf ranch was pretty big.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  This was on that, they called it Turkey Foot there for some reason
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, uh, Homer Teague come walking by there and stopped and I didn’t know him but he was talking to Sonny Whited and he pulled his pants down to show us
LP006
LP:  He was ruptured. And you couldn’t have got his private parts down there in a gallon jug because his guts had come out and went down in there.
Ken:  Oh, that’s terrible. Now, he had a couple of kids.
LP:  He raised Robert and Stoney. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Stoney still living.  He could probably tell you a bunch. Stoney lives over there where I said Linwood lives in that Sandy Creek
Ken:  Does he really? That would be something to talk to him.
LP:  It would.  I always heard he got their names from the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Ken:  That’s right. That’s what I heard too.
LP:  Did you hear that he raised them boys at first in a cave back in there somewhere?
Ken:  No, I didn’t hear that. He raised ‘em in a cave?
LP:  I heard that. I don’t know if it is true.
Ken:  Uh-huh.  I heard that he
LP:  Robert is dead. Robert had a heart attack young
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Robert is buried in, do you know where the Roberts Cemetery is?
Ken:  The Roberts-Teague Cemetery, yeah, I’ve been there.
LP:  That’s where we put Tiney
Ken:  OK
LP:  Tiney always used to call me. See, Charlie Lee died in 1990 and Tiney probably died in 2004 or 05.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But she used to call me up. She called every day. She was lonesome. She said Lufer, she never could say my name, she said it like Lufer,
Ken:  Uh-huh   
LP:  And, uh, Lufer, you gona dig my grave when I die?  I said “I sure am.”  She said “well, I want to be buried right there next to Sonny Boy and the Old Man.”  “Well, thats where we’re going.”
Ken:  And the Old Man was Homer?
LP:  Was her husband.
Ken:  Homer?
LP:  Charlie Roberts.
Ken:  Charlie Roberts, OK
LP:  We called him
Ken:  Tiney, oh, Tiney, yeah right, yeah, yeah, yeah
LP:  And, uh, but, you know, that’s what I was telling you the other day, that I was bow hunting there because she was right next to that Rob Roy and them people put them feeders in their back yard
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Anyway, that’s the best kind of deer. The bow hunt is, I called ‘em city bucks. (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  But, anyway, I went on out there one evening to bow hunt and got to talking to her and, you know, I didn’t even go hunting that night.  I sit right there and talked to her until dark. She was a good old woman.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  But, she, if you listened to her, she would scare you, ‘cause she sounded mean.  And, uh, she let an old man move in there with her named CD Culverson. His name was Charlie.  And he supposedly bought half that three acres. And he give her money, whatever, three thousand dollars or something.  But they never did get no papers or nothing. So, actually it was still all hers. But, uh, he was like a pack rat.  He hauled all kinds of stuff in there. And, there come that big flood in ’81, that Memorial Day flood, and the health department was walking, you know, that’s Bee Creek where she lives.
Ken:  OK
LP:  It was right in front of her house, there about from here to my porch.  And they, it runs in to Lake Austin there just above the dam.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  I really like fishing in Bee Creek down there for bass. But, uh, the health department was walking that Bee Creek to try and find out where all that trash and crap and stuff came from.  Well, they found her house. 
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  And it was a blond headed woman from the health department and her boy told me this, Charlie Roberts, before he died. He said that woman made the mistake of going down there to Tiney’s by herself.  And said she asked Tiney, probably what kept Tiney alive, she had drank three or four beers, Old Milwalkee in the evening, every evening. And she come out of there with her eyes sparkling and Charlie got down there before it was over and said that woman asked Tiney, said “I just kind-of wondering where you used the rest room at around here.”  And she come back with, can I say all this on this?
Ken:  Oh, yeah, yeah.
LP:  “Well, that ain’t none of your damn business, where I use the rest room.” Said “I own this f-ing place, I’ll crap behind a cedar bush if I want to.” (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  And, Charlie said that woman was shaking like the leaves on the tree.  “You see that road, you come down here on, you better get your ass back up that road or I’ll run you up it with my double barrel shotgun.” And she did have a, you ever hear of a ten gauge?
Ken:  yeah, I’ve heard of it.
LP:  She had a double barrel ten.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  That woman from then on, I told Tiney, you cannot, this is the state health department, they’ll be back, you can’t do that. She said “well, I pay taxes on this damn place. This place is mine.” Well the way they ended up settling it is she got a port-a-potty
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And kept it ever, you know, all the years they come out and serviced it and all, and that’s how they let her stay there, and, but Charlie said that same little girl come out there, he lived right up on the hill from her, but she would never go down to Tiney’s.  She’d park at his house, if he wasn’t there she would wait until he come home, and get him to walk down there with her
Ken:  (laugh) Did they do a story on her in the Austin paper? Take a picture of her house and stuff?
LP:  I think that was mama. 
Ken:  OK. That’s what it was then. ‘Cause I remember seeing a story
LP:  My sister called me and said “Hey, Luther,you ain’t gona believe this, they’ve got a picture of Old George on the front page of City -State.”  She’s talking about our outhouse.
Ken:  (laugh) Old George!  They did a, you’ve probably got to be going pretty quick. They did a, a recording, you’ve got to hear this.
LP:  Fred Frizzell had a, seems like it was four hundred acres.
Ken:  So, you knew Frank Boatright.
LP:  Yes.
Ken:  I’ll be darned.
LP:  And I met him at the end when he moved to Jarrell. Well, he was up there at ___.
Ken:  Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
LP:  See, he owned all that old gravel pit and stuff over there.
Ken:  Oh, OK
LP:  Bought it because nobody wanted it and it was cheap. But he was a man of his word. He told Linwood, Linwood bought a acre or two acres from Byon G___ up here and the water was like a quarter mile away.  And, if he could run his own, you know, dig his own ditch and all, and pipe, then he could hook on to it. And Frank Boatright had several acres, Marie ended up with it, she may still own it because there are a couple of trailers in there and  they all pay her rent, but, uh, he also had another acre on the other side of that county road that joined Linwood. And Frank told Linwood, see, if you did the ditch, ‘cause he had a rock saw, and you know with a rock saw it will dig like, well, you said it, about a foot deep, it is doing like six and eight foot a minute.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  So Linwood sawed the ditch and then went and bought the pipes and Frank Boatright came by there one day and asked Linwood what did the pipe cost?  I forget what he told him. Fifteen hundred, twenty-five hundred.  Old Frank pulled out a giant roll of hundred dollar bills.
Ken:  I’ll be darned.
LP:  counted ‘em off and give it to him. That a way he got him a meter on his one acre.
Ken:  Uh-huh, uh-huh. So, you were saying, you went out there hunting
LP:  When I, Frank, where that four hundred acres, we were at the end of the the Yucca Mountain Road, it used to dead end off of Spicewood Springs?
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And see that Great Hills Golf Course and all was over there like half or three quarters of a mile.  I got a buck out there in the garage that, biggest buck I ever killed in my life, I killed back in there.  Man, they was some damn good deer hunting.
Ken:  Hum. Probably all the nuts and stuff
LP:  That boy that worked for me, I told you thirty one years, he leased that part in there from Frank Boatright, from Marie.  Frank was already dead. But, when Frank showed it to me he had all of his stands right on the fence. You were actually looking over the fence into the (laugh) said, oh, I don’t care, you can shoot over there. But it didn’t look good.
Ken:  Uh-huh. Yep. You were talking about that wallet. Did you actually see him do that, have a wallet nailed?
LP:  I stopped thinking it was a , was it was a wallet or a purse?
Ken:  I don’t know. I never seen it.
LP:  I stopped, gonna get out, and check it, and it was nailed down with a nail. And I bet they were right looking, if anybody was looking, they were ____ That’s what they put it there for, was a joke.
Ken:  Huh
LP:  Uh
Ken:  Did you ever hear of a guy named Stark that lived up there?
LP:  No, but I knew some of the Starks’, they were cedar choppers.
Ken:  Yeah, were they up West Lake there?
LP:  There was a Johnny Starks?
Ken:  I don’t know ‘em
LP:  I don’t know, when I heard about them, I  used to see ‘em, ‘cause when somebody got a good cedar brake, like we cut in that Rab Ranch, which is straight across the road from Broken Spoke
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And, see Johnny Starks was in there.   Rayburn Teague, Lee Brown, we called him Baldy
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  See, all of them, what they did was go through there and give you a strip, mark it with an axe, this is yours.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And then another one, and another one.
Ken:  So, they’d give you a strip and you could cut that strip?
LP:  Boy, that was the probably best cedar break I was ever in.
Ken:  Across from the Broken Spoke on Lamar?
LP:  Yes, that was right up Branch.  It’s now, they developed it.  Barton Hills.
Ken:  OK
LP:  See, I worked for Truett Forester, who had an office on Loop 360.  I met Truett when he first got out of, he worked for First Austin Company, the Bullards and stuff, they owned that big ranch there, that’s it, where Lost Creek is.
Ken:  Hum
LP:  And I met Truett about ’68.  His first house, I hauled his first house, and they I laid ‘em for a while later on in the ‘70s and, uh, then I hauled every house that he told Charlie Roberts that boy, Tiney’s boy  Because shortly I got Charlie Lee job of doing some retaining walls for him.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  I’d haul it and Charlie Lee would lay it
Ken:  You know every, it seems like you just know everybody in Austin.
LP:  Charlie asked Truett, did Luther haul rocks?
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  Luther’s hauled every  house I ever built.
Ken:  Wow!  I mean, you remember all of these people. It’s amazing to me.
LP:  That’s what Rita was saying a while ago. “Boy, your memory is better than mine!”
Ken  It really is good.
LP:  I don’t want to get Alzheimer’s. That’s what scares me. 
Ken:  It’s a scary disease. And I know you know about it, but, I don’t think you’re in danger.
LP:  I got it fixed, right now, you know, I told you I got all these places that I own that are paid for they’re are in a trust.  My daughter is a trustee and I’m one
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  The reason I didn’t make my wife one is she couldn’t handle it. But Lisa could. 
Ken:  That’s good.
LP:  And then the money and all that too, but I’ve got it fixed where if Lisa thinks I’m getting Alzheimer’s, all it takes is a note from a doctor, saying that I have it, and that-a-way she don’t have to go to court
Ken:  Do you have it in your family?
LP:  Huh?
Ken:  Do you have it in your family?
LP:  I’ve got it in the trust.
Ken:  I mean, the Alzheimer’s. Do you have it, do any of your, mama or daddy, or anybody. 
LP:  Oh, yeah,not mama. Mama didn’t have it, Daddy either, but it come from Patterson, but I’ve got
Ken:  Come from Pattersons
LP:  two living sisters right now, Joyce is eighty-three and Ann is seventy-eight, nine. They’ve both got it. Joyce is real bad off.
Ken:  That’s terrible
LP:  And so I have two older brother’s die from it.
Ken:  Oh, OK.
LP:  Ed had it and Howard had it. And then my oldest brother Litton, he got Leukemia,  he died at seventy-two. 
LP007
Ken:  How many kids were in your family?
LP:  Eight lived.
Ken:  Eight lived, and you said two or three died?
LP:  Three died from something wrong with them after a few days, and then Maime died in 1933 from diphtheria.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  She was only twenty-five. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But if you count down our years, like Ed was born in twenty-three, Maime in twenty-five, Cooter, that was Litton, we called him Cooter in twenty-nine. There was one in there, from twenty-five to twenty-nine. But there were two boys, well Joyce was born in thirty-one, Howard thirty-four, uh, Anne thirty-six, Margie thirty-nine, my red-headed sister Gladys was born in forty-two, and I was born in forty-five.
Ken:  See, right there, you can just name off those dates, that’s amazing.  It really is. 
LP:  Boy, I’ll tell you what. That’s horrible to watch.  I watched Ed go from being muscled up to skin and bones in about a year and a half or two years.
Ken:  Hum
LP:  But what they’ve told me over at that nursing home, if you ever leave to go somewhere and forget where you was going, you’ve got some kind of problem. But, you know, I’ve got a post office box.  I figure if I ever forget the number I should know something’s wrong. ‘Cause I can still remember my locker number at O’Henry and Austin.
Ken:  That’s amazing.  You’ve got an amazing memory.
LP:  909 at O’Henry
Ken:  That’s amazing.  You’ve got a great memory.  Well, you know, you’ve done really really well, I mean, you’ve, all, the house, and everything you’ve done, uh, did you ever feel as, you know, I’m speaking to you now as someone your age. I went to, you know, I came from Casis, and you came from Eanes, did you feel ever back then, you know, hillbilly, or different than?
LP:  I knew I wasn’t as good as yall. We figured than anybody that had a toilet and a place to take a bath inside the house was better off than we were.
Ken:  Better off than you were, but not, not better.  Did you, I mean, did it kind-of give you a little bit of
LP:  There was some that  I made really close friends with like
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And I’ll even admit this, that, probably in O’Henry and Austin High, they could probably smell me, the stench.  We took baths, ‘cause mama made us. But we didn’t take that many.
Ken:  One a week, or something like that?
LP:  Yeah, maybe, and then, the low-water bridge, over below the short bridge, the whole time I had a car me and Bill had our swimming trunks in the back and a bar of ivory soap
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  We didn’t buy shampoo but, this is gona sound strange to you, but I never had under arm deodorant until I got married. But Bill found some somewhere, I don’t know if he picked it up, or whatever. “Here boy rub some of this under there and it’ll make ‘em smell good.”  But, you know, you can even ask Rita. She was the same way, you know, the summer time, when we come out of the cedar brakes and alcohol would take the cedar wax off your hands, you know, after the cedar wax dries it’s hard to get off.
Ken:  You bet.
LP:  Go-Jo would take it off too, but we found out later.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And,  uh, the best place to go down there was take a bath in the river.
Ken:  yeah
LP:  But I’ve heard mama tell daddy, there is that bath water there, you better get in it. And this was in the kitchen, the biggest room in that old house. And I just took a bath in it. And if it was winter time, or cold, then she would heat some hot on the wood stove to add with it.  She would tell daddy, you ain’t had a bath in six months. You better get in there and take it in that water.  He said “well, you know what?  That’s my business.  I might not take a one for another six months.”
Ken:  Where is she by this time, did she have water in the house?
LP:  No. She never did.
Ken:  Never did.
LP:  She got the, she hooked on the, when the city run water out there, she had a faucet. We dug the line and run it over right outside the back door.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, uh, she thought, man, this is
Ken:  That was when you were alive. You were already born. So before that she was going down to the hollow, like you were telling me before, going down the hill, or something like that.
LP:  Yes, and, you know, mama had a really, really hard life.  It didn’t have to be that hard.  I mean, she, I told you, she would pack her clothes down there, so that she had tie Cooter up to keep him from jumping in there and stirring up, you know how the water gets muddy looking.
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And then hang them clothes out on them bushes to dry.
Ken:  Uh-huh, uh-huh
LP:  It shouldn’t have been that way.
Ken:  Well, when did she get electricity?
LP:  I said fifty-seven.
Ken:  So, you did not grow up with electricity.
LP:  Unt-uh
Ken:  until you were
LP:  Twelve. About the time I got to O’Henry
Ken:  Uh-huh, uh-huh
LP:  Uh, remember me telling you that I asked mama, “Could I turned that coal oil lamp up?”
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  And she said “no”, ‘cause it will blacken up the ceiling.
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  And it would
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  if you turned the wick up higher you could see the black smoke go up
Ken:  Right, right
LP:  But see, Tiney lived about the same way, Tiney Roberts.
Ken:  Right.
LP:  But it’s for somebody that could use a chopping axe, buddy, a woman, she could do it.  We kept her plenty of wood there, me and Rita’s brother
Ken:  Uh-huh. You know, I would think that some, because I, because I was kind-of on both sides of the fence, I told you at one time we had money and then, a little resentment toward the folks that had a lot of money and flaunted it, you know.  I would think that some people would, would just get mean and want to fight, you know, just really dislike the rich kids and, you know what I’m talking about?
LP:  I made better friends when I got to town than some of them smart ass ones that I went to Eanes Elementary with.
Ken:  Uh-huh. Well, maybe they were kind-of resentful and kind-of mean because of all
LP:  They thought they was better, there was no doubt about that.
Ken:  Who’s that, the ones you went to Eanes with, or the kids in Austin?
LP:  Kids that I went to Eanes with.
Ken:  They thought they were better than you, or
LP:  Oh, yeah.
Ken:  Huh
LP:  I had a girlfriend till she seen in the fifth grade, and she, I got on the bus to go home one day and she was on there. And she lived on Red Bud Trail. Over in there where Emmett, Emmett was the one that started that
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  And when she seen where I got off the bus at, she never, just never spoke to me again. And, uh, well I had a lot of, like I made real good friends with Ronnie Warden, Edward Erlenlson, Terry Smith. Did you know any of them?  Bobbie Ellis
Ken:  The first, Ronnie Warden for sure rings a bell.
LP:  He come out of Mathews Elementary
Ken:  OK
LP:  But Terry Smith and all them came from out in there like, remember UJH, University Junior High
Ken:  Um-hum
LP:  And, uh, Pearce Junior High
Ken:  Yep
LP:  That had to be before, they all come to school in Austin High
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  But I wanted to take that Future Farmers of America.  You had to raise an animal. And I didn’t want to have to do that and take ‘em out there to my house.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  To look at him where I lived.
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  But, there was few, Jack Waldop was one of ‘em. He was (laugh) like I told Charlie Lee, he was better than us, but, my god, he never acted like it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And he’d come up there, Charlie Lee’s house, and me too, and just climb right on up there up to the table and eat whatever Tiney had fixed.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  He had fried potatoes every day, and deer meat. For every meal.
Ken:  She killed that many deer?
LP:  Oh, yes, a bunch. You know, I went through that for a while, being a game hog when I was a younger
Ken: Was there still lots of deer up there in the hills when you were a kid? There was kind-of a 
LP:  Oh, yeah, it got real good in the late fifties and then on through the sixties.
Ken:  OK, ‘cause there was a time when they were scarce, wasn’t there?
LP:  Yes
Ken:  Yeah
LP:  But in the thirties there, we’d eat rabbits and all.
Ken:  I was reading about some folks that were such good rock throwers, they could hit a squirrel and kill it.
LP:   Yeah, and, you know, we got that good with what we called a nigger shooter.
Ken:  sure, sure, a sling shot.
LP:  I’ve got one out there in the garage.
Ken:  The old timers?
LP:  I had one, Howard and Junior Short, which was Tony Short’s boy too, he about the same age as Howard, carnival came down there, right in there about where Auditorium Shores is now.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  He was breaking these burnt out light bulbs with a nigger shooter. Shit, they wouldn’t miss.  So they closed it up, wouldn’t let ‘em play no more.
Ken:  (laugh)_
LP:  And they went and told this cop, and he come back over and made ‘em open it. But, you know, they didn’t realize you had some hillbillies up there that, that’s all they hunted with was a nigger shooter.
Ken:  Uh-huh
LP:  And, see, I was good with one. I could hit a soda can from here to the front porch almost every shot.
Ken:  Uh-huh, uh-huh
LP:  So, I got my brother in law, he came out of North Austin, he lives in Bastrop now, I took him to a robin roost, where they roost at night, and we were using a nigger shooter with rocks. And I said “what we’ll do is we’ll kill five, I’ll kill five and then you can kill five.” Well he couldn’t hit one. (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
LP:  So, well, hell, this ain’t gona work, or I’ll never get another shot from now on, you shoot five times and I’ll shoot five times. ‘Cause, you know, I told him “I thought you said you could shoot ‘em.”  He said “Well, I thought I could.”
Ken:  (laugh) Hey, before we go, I’ve got to
END