Pete Kaufman
Pete Kaufman
Interview June 5, 2012 – at his House on Hwy 29
Pete Kaufman 1 (15:00)
Ken: Ok, I’m just gonna set it.
Pete: Do you need a light?
Ken: No, that’s good. I’m, I’m good. It’s a pretty good ol’ recorder and I’ll just set it here and I think it will pick up our voices just fine. So I’m here in the living room of Pete Kaufman on Tuesday, June the 5th, talking to him about his memories of, of, uh, the cedar industry in Williamson County back in the old days.
Pete: Well I remember when you used to go up here on that highway going into Austin, 183.
Ken: Yeah
Pete: That used to be 29. A long time ago. Yes’um. Leander to Jollyville I’ll bet there was close to a dozen cedar yards.
Ken: Did you know any of the folks that ran them?
Pete: Yep.
Ken: Do you remember their names?
Pete: Jack Beddick.
Ken: Jack?
Pete: Bedding
Ken: Billick?
Pete: Billick
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: And there was a, it was a little bit further ___ had a cedar yard. Cahill __ Cedar Park had a cedar yard
Ken:Cahill?
Pete: Cahill
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: I bet there was seven or eight cedar yards between Leander and Jollyville. And you could see those guys come in, they had all kinds of hoopies coming off, on cars, it took them back ends off, put little beds on ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: They were cedar choppers. That’s what they all called ‘em. Cedar choppers. Go off the brakes every morning. Load use their wares when they got through cutting. To the cedar yard by two-three o’clock, unload, they’d be through for the day
Ken: They would be through for the day at two-three o’clock?
Pete: That’s right
Ken: So they must start right at, uh, sunrise
Pete: That’s right
Ken: That’s smart
Pete: And they’d be delivered by then, get up tomorrow and go back.
Ken: The boys did it too, didn’t they?
Pete: Huh?
Ken: The boys? The young…
Pete: Oh, yeah, there were some that were younger doing it. By the time that War come along everybody spreaded out and the cedar yards close one by one. close up, close up, close up. First thing you know there wasn’t any cedar yards.
Ken: And then, and then after the war
Pete: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. After the war.
Ken: Oh, after the war, huh
Pete: It started weedin’ ‘em out.
Ken: What do you think caused that?
Pete: I guess, better times. More jobs and everything, I mean, now they could do something a lot better than cuttin’ cedar.
Ken: When do you think the T-post came in? People started using steel posts?
Pete: After the War.
Ken: But it wasn’t just right after the War, was it?
Pete: Oh no, they gradually come in
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: You know, slowly what they used, slowly, it took time.
Ken: Did you have a, your fencing, was it cedar posts?
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Did you put ‘em in yourself?
Pete: I put some of ‘em in. Yeah.
Ken: Do you remember what a cedar post would cost back then?
Pete: Under a dollar
Ken: Under a dollar. How about a corner post?
Pete: A corner post, well that would be up to a dollar.
Ken: Did you ever sink corner posts in with a post hole digger?
Pete: Yeah. We used to have post hole diggers
Ken: Sure, I’ve got one too. But you don’t have, you don’t have rock here down deep do you?
Pete: Not solid rock, no
Ken: Yeah
Pete: That’s where you’ve got hell, if you in solid rock
Ken: Yeah
Pete: Might as well move over a little bit see if you could miss it
Ken: Yeah
Pete: Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn’t
Ken: Well that’s the best thing about a T-post is that you can get it in, sort of, in between the rocks.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Well did, uh, what did the people who cut the, they didn’t call themselves cedar choppers, did they?
Pete: Some of ‘em did, some of ‘em didn’t like the word, some of ‘em____
Ken: Some of ‘em cutters, or something like that?
Pete: Yeah, they chopped cedar posts
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: But they all made a livin’
Ken: Yeah, I know. It was hard work. Good work. Uh, did, uh, did you go to school with any of the kids that cut cedar?
Pete: Not that I’ve ever known. There weren’t many of ‘em lived down in Liberty Hill would be very poor.
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: They lived from Leander to Jollyville. Back there down the river, where the Marshall Ford Dam is. Before they built it. All that through there
Ken: Back where the Colorado River is?
Pete: Yeah, Um-hum
Ken: Have you ever visited their homes or anything like that, uh-huh
Pete: There there used to be an old boy that lived in Liberty Hill, Punk Cantrell
Ken: Yes
Pete: Did you ever know him?
Ken: I didn’t know him, but I’ve heard of him, uh-huh
Pete: That guy was good with a chainsaw. He was the best I ever saw.
Ken: Huh
Pete: And he cut cedar damn near till he died.
Ken: Wonder what age he died?
Pete: He died two or three years ago. He cut cedar up until about I’d say five years of his death
Ken: How old was he?
Pete: Oh, he was seventy something
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: But he could handle a chainsaw
Ken: Huh. Well there’s still some Cantrells
Pete: They lived right out through here
Ken: Yeah
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Our neighbors were Cantrells a few years back
Pete: What was their name?
Ken: Lee, maybe. Lee Cantrell.
Pete: He lives, I know him real well. He lives up here in Liberty Hill now
Ken: Right. In the town.
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Didn’t he used to live out there on Round Mountain Road?
Pete: Yes
Ken: See, he backs right up to me.
Pete: He did
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: I’ve been to his house several times.
Ken: But I hope to talk to him. He built some fence for me years ago. I believe, I believe that was Lee.
Pete: Where he lives now, do you go out of Liberty Hill, go down there across the railroad to the left?
Ken: Yeah
Pete: That’s where you go?
Ken: Yes
Pete: Well when you go out of Liberty Hill, he lives in the, next to the last or last house on the left, right there. Lee does.
Ken: The old frame house?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: I mean, it’s just an older white frame house on the left.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Yeah, with a roof like that?
Pete: I think so.
Ken: We used to buy eggs there years ago. It, maybe from his mother. Could that have been his mother’s house or something?
Pete: No.
Ken: We used to buy eggs from that lady. Pretty sure that’s the house. OK. It’s the last house.
Pete: On the left
Ken: Yes, uh-huh. Yeah
Pete: that’s where Lee lives at
Ken: OK, well good, good. Do you still see him?
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Good
Pete: All the time
Ken: good. So, did, I guess he cut some cedar too, if his daddy did.
Pete: Back in the days he did
Ken: Yeah
Pete: He’s a carpenter. He’s a handyman
Ken: OK
Pete: He works all over the country. People call him. Some of his kin folks have ____ that house. They all died and he inherited the and thats where he lives
Ken: Yeah. You know, when we first moved out there we’d buy eggs from that lady there. And I think it was a Cantrell.
Pete: ___
Ken: Yeah. Hum. Didn’t know that. Well what more can you tell me about those times and, you know, the cedar, so there’s a bunch of cedar yards, uh, a bunch of kids, uh, what else, uh,
Pete: Well, I, there’s cedar yards, they was all right on the highway going into Austin. On the left, on the right.
Ken: Do you recall them loading that cedar into boxcars?
Pete: No. Never did see ‘em do that.
Ken: OK
Pete: Who told you that?
Ken: Well, I just wondered if they did. There’s a train running along there. I thought maybe they, they, they took ‘em up to
Pete: Train runs through there still now
Ken: Yeah
Pete: I never did see them loading up boxcars
Ken: OK. But they did freight ‘em out on trucks
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Hum So if there were dozens of cedar yards, did you say?
Pete: Well,
Ken: Or a dozen?
Pete: Close to it, close to a dozen cedar yards
Ken: Were they the size of the one in Lampasas? That’s a big cedar yard.
Pete: Oh, I wouldn’t say so, nothing that big.
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: They’d sell those cedar for fence. ___ There was always somebody there loading a truck. They have pretty good turnover.
Ken: I see
Pete: It was quite a demand, back in those days, for cedar posts. Because that’s all people knew how to build fences out of.
Ken: Yeah
Pete: They’d take ‘em all over the country
Ken: Do you have any idea where, as far as they would take ‘em?
Pete: I know a lot of ‘em went to Lubbock, to the plains
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: they’d haul it to lumberyards, then resell it
Ken: I see. So the cedar yard was a middle man
Pete: That’s right
Ken: and then the lumberyard was another middle man
Pete: That’s right
Ken: You know how it worked for the, you didn’t have any cedar on your place to be cut, did you?
Pete: No
Ken: Jerry (Hawes) did. Huh. So if all the cedar yards, and if they had a pretty big turnover, well what is, do you have any idea, a cedar cutter then had a, a bunch of places he could sell his cedar at. He wasn’t at the mercy of just one buyer.
Pete: Oh, no. There’s several cedar yards.
Ken: So it must have been very competitive?
Pete: Well, most all the choppers, they worked out of one yard. They worked, you know, every one of ‘em probably go to a certain cedar yard ___
Ken: Uh-huh. I wonder how much they got, how were they paid, do you have any idea?
Pete: Well they graded the cedar. You know, stays, do you know what a stay is?
Ken: Yeah, oh absolutely, yes
Pete: And it’s twos, threes, fours, fives, and them big ones. And tops.
Ken: That’s the top of the post
Pete: That’s right
Ken: And the post is six and a half feet or so?
Pete: yeah
Ken: Yeah. So, I mean, would they get, if you and I are gonna pay a dollar a post, I wonder how much did the cedar man make?
Pete: I don’t have any idea
Ken: Yeah
Pete: what he made
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: But the cedar man, cedar yard always, they stacked the posts. A dozen, and they’d cross ‘em with a dozen. A dozen, then they’d cross ‘em with a dozen.
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: You know, he had a chalk he’d mark on the end of the post, the last one there. They were a little truck … Those cedar choppers, they’d come in and then unload their posts – the twos and threes and fours and fives
Ken:Um-hum
Pete: They’d pull up in their truck and stack ‘em on there. That cedar yard man, he knew exactly where they started. And he just kept how many they unloaded. He knew how many he received.
Ken: And they put ‘em, you said, on the back of a Model A, or a Model T?
Pete: Oh, all kinds of rigs
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: Some of ‘em was old cars they had.
Ken: I wonder how many, I wonder how many you could haul, on a car, a cut-out car.
Pete: Well, fifty, sixty, whatever they cut, stays, all sizes.
Ken: I heard a man could cut as many as a hundred posts a day if he is really good.
Pete: Well
Ken: With an axe. Yeah.
Pete: I don’t know about that.
Ken: I would love to be able to, I mean, if you’re thinking about each yard is, I wonder how many cedar men they were buying from. I mean, I mean, cedar cutters they were buying from. If they got a good turnover, with semis going out of there, and each man is cutting fifty posts a day, well, you’re talking about a lot of men working for each yard.
Pete: You mean working in the yard?
Ken: Working, working to supply the yard.
Pete: Oh, yeah, there’d be several, several rigs all in there
Ken: Per day?
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Well there, so I wonder how many cedar choppers there were. I mean in this whole area. Would there be a hundred? Or would there be more..?
Pete: I imagine there’d be fifty to a hundred
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh
Pete: At it’s peak
Ken: Uh-huh. At the peak.
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: I’ve heard sometimes the wives would help ‘em.
Pete: Oh yeah. A few of ‘em. Not a whole lot of ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh. So when you were going to Liberty Hill you didn’t have any friends who were, who were cedar cutters, huh?
Pete: Not that I remember, no.
Ken: Most of the people that you went to school with, were they farmers and ranchers?
Pete: Yes. Some of those folks had stores up there in Liberty Hill
Ken: Uh-huh. How many stores were there back then in the
Pete: The whole town used to be lined with stores.
Ken: Yeah
Pete: There used to be two banks, three cotton gins in Liberty Hill.
Ken: Three cotton gins.
Pete: Before the War it was a pretty lively little town. But after the War it just died then.
Ken: Uh-huh. When was the heyday of
Pete Kaufman 2 (15:00)
Ken: cotton in Liberty Hill.
Pete: Yes
Ken: You know when was cotton really a profitable crop. In the twenties?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Didn’t the price of cotton go down pretty good?
Pete: ‘29 it did.
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: When the bottom fell out
Ken: Did ya’ll grow cotton here on your place?
Pete: Yes
Ken: Do you remember how many acres you had in cotton?
Pete: Oh, had about three hundred and fifty acres in cultivation on this place. Me and my brother at one time, I used to have a brother farm with me, and we had, we worked for_____. Jonah, do you know where Jonah is?
Ken: Yes
Pete: We five hundred acres down there. We farmed. ___ this. We had three places leased around Liberty Hill. There was __ growing cotton up there. I was born about three miles west of Liberty Hill out there.
Ken: 1869?
Pete: Yeah. You know where Roy Butler has a high fence out there?
Ken: Yes
Pete: I turned in there right at that place. A few houses sit back off the road, you can’t see it. I was born out there. Moved out here, folks moved out here in ’27.
Ken: Hum
Pete: First year I started school.
Ken: So the Kaufman, the original Kaufman place was, was out there on 1869.
Pete: Yes
Ken: That’s pretty good land out there too, isn’t it
Pete: Oh, fair
Ken: Fair, yeah. Not as good as this.
Pete: No
Ken: So tell me about the cotton farming you used to do or do. Did yall always have a tractor?
Pete: Always. My dad didn’t until about the last year or two he lived. _____. First plow I planted single cultivator with ___
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: I was about nine or ten years old ___
Ken: What year were you born in?
Pete: ’21.
Ken: So ya’ll continued to farm that cotton even after the price fell?
Pete: Oh, yeah. I sold lots of cotton for 30 cents a pound. And made money.
Ken: Um
Pete: It cost less to grow it then
Ken: Why not? Fertilize – you wasn’t fertilizing?
Pete: Wasn’t using no fertilizer.
Ken: Huh
Pete: I forget now what year we first, I bet it was the first year we fertilized we just fertilized some of the land to try it out. It did so good we fertilized a little next year and we fertilized all of it.
Ken: How did you pick it?
Pete: With the hands. Usually Mexicans, come up from the Valley in trucks.
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: _____
Ken: What do you think is harder: picking cotton or cutting cedar?
Pete: Oh, definitely cutting cedar
Ken: (laugh)
Pete: I’ll tell ya
Ken: Yeah
Pete: You swing that axe all day long – you have to learn how to cut cedar.
Ken: Do you know how to, you know how they did it? Is there a way to do it?
Pete: Certain way you handle that axe. I don’t know, I never cut any. I’ve cut out a few trees, that’s about all. I didn’t want to learn how to use a damned axe.
Ken: (laugh) You don’t have a double bit cedar axe, do you?
Pete: No!
Ken: (laugh) You know, they’re not big
Pete: No, they’re light
Ken: Yeah
Pete: I’ve had one or two., but it wasn’t for cutting cedar.
Ken: Uh-huh. So, I’ve always heard cotton pickin’ was the hardest thing in the world.
Pete: Well, I think back to when I was thirteen years old, I ended up to be a weigher
Ken: What’s that?
Pete: Stay in the wagon and weigh everybody’s sacks
Ken: Oh, that’s nice
Pete: Then after that we’ll, my folks had a friend in Liberty Hill run a store. My dad wanted me to work in the store on Saturdays. So I worked in a grocery store every Saturday I was in high school.
Ken: That’s good.
Pete: Yeah. My first grade teacher, she used to have a little house that sit out in front of the school. And she put in a lunch room there. So I worked for her during the lunch break for my dinner.
Ken: Huh
Pete: So I never, I don’t remember ever carrying a lunch to school.
Ken: You’d have dinner in Liberty Hill?
Pete: Yeah. She had a little building out in front and she served meals out there. A lot of teachers would eat there and some of the kids would eat there.
Ken: Would you go home then after that?
Pete: Go home for the evening when school’s out
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah. Huh
Pete: I just worked there for my dinner.
Ken: Oh, OK
Pete: for my dinner
Ken: Did ya’ll have, you didn’t have school buses back then did you?
Pete: I never rode a school bus in my life.
Ken: How did you get to school.
Pete: Car. Started out Model T and after that Model A
Ken: Do you remember how much you made when you were picking cotton?
Pete: About a dollar a hundred.
Ken: How many hundred could you pick in a day?
Pete: I picked up to three hundred pounds a day.
Ken: That’s good. It’s a lot, isn’t it.
Pete: _____
Ken: I’ve read that the really best pickers might pick five hundred pounds.
Pete: That’s right. My daddy and two of his friends, back when they were young fellers, they’d go out from Liberty Hill and those three men would pick a bale of cotton every day. That’s five hundred pounds.
Ken: Oh my goodness
Pete: I mean that’s fifteen-hundred pounds – each one of ‘em pick five hundred pounds.
Ken: What did a bale of cotton bring back in the good days?
Pete: Well, I don’t know what it brought when I was a kid.
Ken: I heard, I heard it wasn’t unusual just to have a family with a small piece of property, have one or two bales – that’s all the money they needed.
Pete: That’s right
Ken: Back in the good days
Pete: That’s right.
Ken: So you think that the bottom falling out of cotton had anything to do with some of these folks starting to cut cedar?
Pete: No.
Ken: They were, why – different group of people, huh?
Pete: They were different, they were breeded different.
Ken: (laugh) In what way?
Pete: Well, they would cut that cedar. They’d rather cut cedar than pick cotton.
Ken: Uh-huh. What – now – some people have told me that, well like, that everybody cut cedar. And if you needed some extra money, so that farmers and ranchers, if they had some cedar on their land, that may be how they’d get out of some of that
Pete: Well, maybe so.
Ken: Other people have emphasized that there were people whose whole lives ,they didn’t ever own any land
Pete: That’s right. They were cedar choppers
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: People all down in there towards the river, old Leander and everything, all they did is cut cedar.
Ken: Where would they get, there’s no water in Leander, is there? I mean,
Pete: We used to be wells ___ side of town.
Ken: Yeah, but they wouldn’t be able to have a well, would they? Too deep, isn’t it? Let me just play this: the ones that lived around Austin lived on creeks.
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Are there any creeks that a part man could live on back in those days?
Pete: There actually was.
Ken: Maybe Sandy Creek
Pete: Yeah, yeah
Ken: I mean, so, what I’m getting at is there wouldn’t be any cedar choppers, they couldn’t really live in Leander ‘cause there’s no water, right? -- or Bagdad, or…they had to be further toward the river
Pete: ___ need the water.
Ken: I mean they wouldn’t have any water, way to get their water, would they? They didn’t have a well, couldn’t have any pumps.
Pete: Well there was used to be a lot of dug wells around the country.
Ken: what do you call it?
Pete: Dug wells.
Ken: Uh-huh. How deep would they be?
Pete: Oh, anywhere from fifty to sixty foot deep. We used to live out in west Liberty Hill and had a dug well out in the front yard. I do remember. When I was a kid my mother drawed well water out of the well. Rope and a pulley, you know
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah. How would they dig it?
Pete: By hand.
Ken: So a man would get down in a hole fifty feet deep?
Pete: Well I don’t know about fifty foot.
Ken: Down to where he hit water, huh.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: I’ll be darned. Huh.
Pete: I farmed a place down there below Jonah, you might of heard of Easley farm?
Ken: Yes
Pete: I worked it for twenty years or some about. And there was a well up here around the barn. It was a dug well. Hand dug. It was thirty-two foot of water. Wish we had a submersible pump – thirty-two foot of water.
Ken: Hum. My well is at four-fifty
Pete: These are six-fifty here.
Ken: Wow.
Pete: The world has changed a hell of a lot
Ken: Yes it has. I know that. My father was born in 1878. My mother was born in 1902. My mother just, my mother lived to be a hundred and two.
Pete: What part of the world? What part of the world?
Ken: Austin.
Pete: Austin.
Ken: Um-hum. She was born in Hyde Park and my father was Eagle Lake. He was a, he was a cowboy in the early days. He fought in the Spanish-American War. So I know, I know about change. I mean, I’ve seen, I’ve seen it through their eyes, and then, it’s just too fast for me now.
Pete: What part of Austin were you raised in?
Ken: Uh, on, in Tarrytown in west Austin
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: They, they were actually, uh, they used to ride horses out there when they were courting, and, they, I think, probably built one of the first houses out there. It was built in 1938. And, uh, put the, if you know Mopac and Windsor Road.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: At the top of the hill on Windsor Road. It was all – Exposition Blvd., which is a little further out, it was all woods out past that. That’s, my upbringing wasn’t so much as a city boy as a, I was always hunting and fishing, stuff like, I had a trap line
Pete: Yeah, uh-huh
Ken: To make extra money. So, that’s why I went to school with cedar choppers in my, you know, when I was growing up from west Austin. I’m surprised you didn’t go to school – did they just didn’t go to school, or – I’m surprised you didn’t go to school with cedar choppers kids.
Pete: No there wasn’t any _____ in Liberty Hill. Their families. That I remember. Course I finished high school in ’39. I never remember any of ‘em, families, being cedar choppers.
Ken: Um-hum. Where were, like, the Cantrells? And the – they were --
Pete: They just moved to Liberty Hill. They were born back up in Leander country – back in there.
Ken: OK
Pete: That’s where they’d come from.
Ken: Floyds – were some of them cedar choppers? Some of the Floyds? Or the John’s? How about
Pete: John’s was
Ken: Yeah. So they weren’t originally from Liberty Hill. You didn’t go to school with them?
Pete: No. No.
Ken: What are some other names – hum. … long pause … Well, what else do you remember?
Pete: That’s about all
Ken: (laugh) Do you think, um, who else do you think I ought to talk to then? Who, who would, uh, who also would have some memories about, about cedar
Pete: Lee Cantrell will tell you a lot about it.
Ken: Uh-huh. Good.
Pete: Stop there and talk to him.
Ken: He doesn’t have coffee with ya’ll, does he?
Pete: No. I can usually go up there to the Exxon station in Liberty Hill – you know where it is?
Ken: Yes.
Pete: I generally go up there every afternoon about twelve o’clock. Lee comes in there every day -- a lot of times we eat lunch. Not every day, but some, a lot of times. I see him come in there
Ken: He’s still working you say?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Isn’t he about seventy then?
Pete: I imagine he is
Ken: Yeah. Huh. Do you remember his daughter’s name?
Pete: No. I never did know any of his family
Ken: OK
Pete: You know he lost his wife ___
Ken: How long ago was that?
Pete: I’d say, a couple, say six years ago.
Ken: You remember her, what was her name?
Pete: I don’t know what her name was.
Ken: Did she work at Southwestern?
Pete: No.
Ken: OK. One of the Cantrells did work at Southwestern.
Pete Kaufman 3 (4:58)
Ken: Did you know the Whitts?
Pete: Yeah. They buried Tommy about two weeks ago.
Ken: Tommy married, you said
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: They buried him or married him?
Pete: Buried him. Tommy Whitt.
Ken: Where was that?
Pete: it was in Liberty Hill.
Ken: Well I want to say the person that we bought our land from was David Whitt.
Pete: Tommy lives out the way that you go to your place.
Ken: Um-hum. David Whitt moved to Briggs. Does that ring a bell?
Pete: I never did know David.
Ken: I think that’s the name. They were a pretty old couple. So Tommy was probably their son. How old was Tommy?
Pete: I want to say Tommy was about seventy.
Ken: Oh, OK Hum
Pete: Tommy was a little bitty dried up feller
Ken: (laugh) huh. D. B. Whitt. That’s who we bought that land from.
Pete: Well that’s _____
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: I don’t know D. B. Witt.
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: Tommy had one daughter, that’s all I knew of. Oh yeah, he had a son.
Ken: So he lived on the way to my place?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: OK. Did people back then, did they respect the cedar choppers for the hard work they were doing?
Pete: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ordinary folks
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: Common people, ordinary people. A lot of ‘em good people, like all people, some of ‘em good, some of ‘em bad
Ken: Uh-huh
Bird clock strikes the hour (laugh)
Ken: So did Rebecca grow up here in this house?
Pete: Yep.
Ken: Did you have any other children?
Pete: Two boys.
Ken: What are they doing now?
Pete: Mostly ____
Ken: Hum
Pete: There is a family picture there on the wall. Turn on a light so you can see – the first plug right there. See right there was my wife and me on the right
Ken: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. ___ that’s your two boys, you and your wife.
Pete: My wife taught school in Georgetown twenty seven years.
Ken: Oh, OK. My wife taught in Liberty Hill. That’s, uh, Rebecca’s daughter? That blond _____ girl?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Abigail.
Pete: Yeah. Far left up they’re all young people. On the far left.
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: That’s all the grandkids.
Ken: Oh, boy. Uh-huh. There’s Sam.
Pete: They were pallbearers for my wife. And Abigail too. First time I’d ever seen a lady pallbearer, but Abigail wanted to be right there with them.
Ken: Aw, that’s sweet. When did she pass away?
Pete: Six years ago.
Ken: I’m sorry. It must be real hard.
Pete: Sure is.
Ken: My wife and I’ve been married, were going to have our forty-fifth anniversary on Monday – Sunday.
Pete: We lacked two weeks of being sixty-four years.
Ken: Oh. Huh. Well, that’s tough.
Ken: Ok, I’m just gonna set it.
Pete: Do you need a light?
Ken: No, that’s good. I’m, I’m good. It’s a pretty good ol’ recorder and I’ll just set it here and I think it will pick up our voices just fine. So I’m here in the living room of Pete Kaufman on Tuesday, June the 5th, talking to him about his memories of, of, uh, the cedar industry in Williamson County back in the old days.
Pete: Well I remember when you used to go up here on that highway going into Austin, 183.
Ken: Yeah
Pete: That used to be 29. A long time ago. Yes’um. Leander to Jollyville I’ll bet there was close to a dozen cedar yards.
Ken: Did you know any of the folks that ran them?
Pete: Yep.
Ken: Do you remember their names?
Pete: Jack Beddick.
Ken: Jack?
Pete: Bedding
Ken: Billick?
Pete: Billick
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: And there was a, it was a little bit further ___ had a cedar yard. Cahill __ Cedar Park had a cedar yard
Ken:Cahill?
Pete: Cahill
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: I bet there was seven or eight cedar yards between Leander and Jollyville. And you could see those guys come in, they had all kinds of hoopies coming off, on cars, it took them back ends off, put little beds on ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: They were cedar choppers. That’s what they all called ‘em. Cedar choppers. Go off the brakes every morning. Load use their wares when they got through cutting. To the cedar yard by two-three o’clock, unload, they’d be through for the day
Ken: They would be through for the day at two-three o’clock?
Pete: That’s right
Ken: So they must start right at, uh, sunrise
Pete: That’s right
Ken: That’s smart
Pete: And they’d be delivered by then, get up tomorrow and go back.
Ken: The boys did it too, didn’t they?
Pete: Huh?
Ken: The boys? The young…
Pete: Oh, yeah, there were some that were younger doing it. By the time that War come along everybody spreaded out and the cedar yards close one by one. close up, close up, close up. First thing you know there wasn’t any cedar yards.
Ken: And then, and then after the war
Pete: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. After the war.
Ken: Oh, after the war, huh
Pete: It started weedin’ ‘em out.
Ken: What do you think caused that?
Pete: I guess, better times. More jobs and everything, I mean, now they could do something a lot better than cuttin’ cedar.
Ken: When do you think the T-post came in? People started using steel posts?
Pete: After the War.
Ken: But it wasn’t just right after the War, was it?
Pete: Oh no, they gradually come in
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: You know, slowly what they used, slowly, it took time.
Ken: Did you have a, your fencing, was it cedar posts?
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Did you put ‘em in yourself?
Pete: I put some of ‘em in. Yeah.
Ken: Do you remember what a cedar post would cost back then?
Pete: Under a dollar
Ken: Under a dollar. How about a corner post?
Pete: A corner post, well that would be up to a dollar.
Ken: Did you ever sink corner posts in with a post hole digger?
Pete: Yeah. We used to have post hole diggers
Ken: Sure, I’ve got one too. But you don’t have, you don’t have rock here down deep do you?
Pete: Not solid rock, no
Ken: Yeah
Pete: That’s where you’ve got hell, if you in solid rock
Ken: Yeah
Pete: Might as well move over a little bit see if you could miss it
Ken: Yeah
Pete: Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn’t
Ken: Well that’s the best thing about a T-post is that you can get it in, sort of, in between the rocks.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Well did, uh, what did the people who cut the, they didn’t call themselves cedar choppers, did they?
Pete: Some of ‘em did, some of ‘em didn’t like the word, some of ‘em____
Ken: Some of ‘em cutters, or something like that?
Pete: Yeah, they chopped cedar posts
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: But they all made a livin’
Ken: Yeah, I know. It was hard work. Good work. Uh, did, uh, did you go to school with any of the kids that cut cedar?
Pete: Not that I’ve ever known. There weren’t many of ‘em lived down in Liberty Hill would be very poor.
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: They lived from Leander to Jollyville. Back there down the river, where the Marshall Ford Dam is. Before they built it. All that through there
Ken: Back where the Colorado River is?
Pete: Yeah, Um-hum
Ken: Have you ever visited their homes or anything like that, uh-huh
Pete: There there used to be an old boy that lived in Liberty Hill, Punk Cantrell
Ken: Yes
Pete: Did you ever know him?
Ken: I didn’t know him, but I’ve heard of him, uh-huh
Pete: That guy was good with a chainsaw. He was the best I ever saw.
Ken: Huh
Pete: And he cut cedar damn near till he died.
Ken: Wonder what age he died?
Pete: He died two or three years ago. He cut cedar up until about I’d say five years of his death
Ken: How old was he?
Pete: Oh, he was seventy something
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: But he could handle a chainsaw
Ken: Huh. Well there’s still some Cantrells
Pete: They lived right out through here
Ken: Yeah
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Our neighbors were Cantrells a few years back
Pete: What was their name?
Ken: Lee, maybe. Lee Cantrell.
Pete: He lives, I know him real well. He lives up here in Liberty Hill now
Ken: Right. In the town.
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Didn’t he used to live out there on Round Mountain Road?
Pete: Yes
Ken: See, he backs right up to me.
Pete: He did
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: I’ve been to his house several times.
Ken: But I hope to talk to him. He built some fence for me years ago. I believe, I believe that was Lee.
Pete: Where he lives now, do you go out of Liberty Hill, go down there across the railroad to the left?
Ken: Yeah
Pete: That’s where you go?
Ken: Yes
Pete: Well when you go out of Liberty Hill, he lives in the, next to the last or last house on the left, right there. Lee does.
Ken: The old frame house?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: I mean, it’s just an older white frame house on the left.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Yeah, with a roof like that?
Pete: I think so.
Ken: We used to buy eggs there years ago. It, maybe from his mother. Could that have been his mother’s house or something?
Pete: No.
Ken: We used to buy eggs from that lady. Pretty sure that’s the house. OK. It’s the last house.
Pete: On the left
Ken: Yes, uh-huh. Yeah
Pete: that’s where Lee lives at
Ken: OK, well good, good. Do you still see him?
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Good
Pete: All the time
Ken: good. So, did, I guess he cut some cedar too, if his daddy did.
Pete: Back in the days he did
Ken: Yeah
Pete: He’s a carpenter. He’s a handyman
Ken: OK
Pete: He works all over the country. People call him. Some of his kin folks have ____ that house. They all died and he inherited the and thats where he lives
Ken: Yeah. You know, when we first moved out there we’d buy eggs from that lady there. And I think it was a Cantrell.
Pete: ___
Ken: Yeah. Hum. Didn’t know that. Well what more can you tell me about those times and, you know, the cedar, so there’s a bunch of cedar yards, uh, a bunch of kids, uh, what else, uh,
Pete: Well, I, there’s cedar yards, they was all right on the highway going into Austin. On the left, on the right.
Ken: Do you recall them loading that cedar into boxcars?
Pete: No. Never did see ‘em do that.
Ken: OK
Pete: Who told you that?
Ken: Well, I just wondered if they did. There’s a train running along there. I thought maybe they, they, they took ‘em up to
Pete: Train runs through there still now
Ken: Yeah
Pete: I never did see them loading up boxcars
Ken: OK. But they did freight ‘em out on trucks
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Hum So if there were dozens of cedar yards, did you say?
Pete: Well,
Ken: Or a dozen?
Pete: Close to it, close to a dozen cedar yards
Ken: Were they the size of the one in Lampasas? That’s a big cedar yard.
Pete: Oh, I wouldn’t say so, nothing that big.
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: They’d sell those cedar for fence. ___ There was always somebody there loading a truck. They have pretty good turnover.
Ken: I see
Pete: It was quite a demand, back in those days, for cedar posts. Because that’s all people knew how to build fences out of.
Ken: Yeah
Pete: They’d take ‘em all over the country
Ken: Do you have any idea where, as far as they would take ‘em?
Pete: I know a lot of ‘em went to Lubbock, to the plains
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: they’d haul it to lumberyards, then resell it
Ken: I see. So the cedar yard was a middle man
Pete: That’s right
Ken: and then the lumberyard was another middle man
Pete: That’s right
Ken: You know how it worked for the, you didn’t have any cedar on your place to be cut, did you?
Pete: No
Ken: Jerry (Hawes) did. Huh. So if all the cedar yards, and if they had a pretty big turnover, well what is, do you have any idea, a cedar cutter then had a, a bunch of places he could sell his cedar at. He wasn’t at the mercy of just one buyer.
Pete: Oh, no. There’s several cedar yards.
Ken: So it must have been very competitive?
Pete: Well, most all the choppers, they worked out of one yard. They worked, you know, every one of ‘em probably go to a certain cedar yard ___
Ken: Uh-huh. I wonder how much they got, how were they paid, do you have any idea?
Pete: Well they graded the cedar. You know, stays, do you know what a stay is?
Ken: Yeah, oh absolutely, yes
Pete: And it’s twos, threes, fours, fives, and them big ones. And tops.
Ken: That’s the top of the post
Pete: That’s right
Ken: And the post is six and a half feet or so?
Pete: yeah
Ken: Yeah. So, I mean, would they get, if you and I are gonna pay a dollar a post, I wonder how much did the cedar man make?
Pete: I don’t have any idea
Ken: Yeah
Pete: what he made
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: But the cedar man, cedar yard always, they stacked the posts. A dozen, and they’d cross ‘em with a dozen. A dozen, then they’d cross ‘em with a dozen.
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: You know, he had a chalk he’d mark on the end of the post, the last one there. They were a little truck … Those cedar choppers, they’d come in and then unload their posts – the twos and threes and fours and fives
Ken:Um-hum
Pete: They’d pull up in their truck and stack ‘em on there. That cedar yard man, he knew exactly where they started. And he just kept how many they unloaded. He knew how many he received.
Ken: And they put ‘em, you said, on the back of a Model A, or a Model T?
Pete: Oh, all kinds of rigs
Ken: Uh-huh
Pete: Some of ‘em was old cars they had.
Ken: I wonder how many, I wonder how many you could haul, on a car, a cut-out car.
Pete: Well, fifty, sixty, whatever they cut, stays, all sizes.
Ken: I heard a man could cut as many as a hundred posts a day if he is really good.
Pete: Well
Ken: With an axe. Yeah.
Pete: I don’t know about that.
Ken: I would love to be able to, I mean, if you’re thinking about each yard is, I wonder how many cedar men they were buying from. I mean, I mean, cedar cutters they were buying from. If they got a good turnover, with semis going out of there, and each man is cutting fifty posts a day, well, you’re talking about a lot of men working for each yard.
Pete: You mean working in the yard?
Ken: Working, working to supply the yard.
Pete: Oh, yeah, there’d be several, several rigs all in there
Ken: Per day?
Pete: Yeah
Ken: Well there, so I wonder how many cedar choppers there were. I mean in this whole area. Would there be a hundred? Or would there be more..?
Pete: I imagine there’d be fifty to a hundred
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh
Pete: At it’s peak
Ken: Uh-huh. At the peak.
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: I’ve heard sometimes the wives would help ‘em.
Pete: Oh yeah. A few of ‘em. Not a whole lot of ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh. So when you were going to Liberty Hill you didn’t have any friends who were, who were cedar cutters, huh?
Pete: Not that I remember, no.
Ken: Most of the people that you went to school with, were they farmers and ranchers?
Pete: Yes. Some of those folks had stores up there in Liberty Hill
Ken: Uh-huh. How many stores were there back then in the
Pete: The whole town used to be lined with stores.
Ken: Yeah
Pete: There used to be two banks, three cotton gins in Liberty Hill.
Ken: Three cotton gins.
Pete: Before the War it was a pretty lively little town. But after the War it just died then.
Ken: Uh-huh. When was the heyday of
Pete Kaufman 2 (15:00)
Ken: cotton in Liberty Hill.
Pete: Yes
Ken: You know when was cotton really a profitable crop. In the twenties?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Didn’t the price of cotton go down pretty good?
Pete: ‘29 it did.
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: When the bottom fell out
Ken: Did ya’ll grow cotton here on your place?
Pete: Yes
Ken: Do you remember how many acres you had in cotton?
Pete: Oh, had about three hundred and fifty acres in cultivation on this place. Me and my brother at one time, I used to have a brother farm with me, and we had, we worked for_____. Jonah, do you know where Jonah is?
Ken: Yes
Pete: We five hundred acres down there. We farmed. ___ this. We had three places leased around Liberty Hill. There was __ growing cotton up there. I was born about three miles west of Liberty Hill out there.
Ken: 1869?
Pete: Yeah. You know where Roy Butler has a high fence out there?
Ken: Yes
Pete: I turned in there right at that place. A few houses sit back off the road, you can’t see it. I was born out there. Moved out here, folks moved out here in ’27.
Ken: Hum
Pete: First year I started school.
Ken: So the Kaufman, the original Kaufman place was, was out there on 1869.
Pete: Yes
Ken: That’s pretty good land out there too, isn’t it
Pete: Oh, fair
Ken: Fair, yeah. Not as good as this.
Pete: No
Ken: So tell me about the cotton farming you used to do or do. Did yall always have a tractor?
Pete: Always. My dad didn’t until about the last year or two he lived. _____. First plow I planted single cultivator with ___
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: I was about nine or ten years old ___
Ken: What year were you born in?
Pete: ’21.
Ken: So ya’ll continued to farm that cotton even after the price fell?
Pete: Oh, yeah. I sold lots of cotton for 30 cents a pound. And made money.
Ken: Um
Pete: It cost less to grow it then
Ken: Why not? Fertilize – you wasn’t fertilizing?
Pete: Wasn’t using no fertilizer.
Ken: Huh
Pete: I forget now what year we first, I bet it was the first year we fertilized we just fertilized some of the land to try it out. It did so good we fertilized a little next year and we fertilized all of it.
Ken: How did you pick it?
Pete: With the hands. Usually Mexicans, come up from the Valley in trucks.
Ken: Um-hum
Pete: _____
Ken: What do you think is harder: picking cotton or cutting cedar?
Pete: Oh, definitely cutting cedar
Ken: (laugh)
Pete: I’ll tell ya
Ken: Yeah
Pete: You swing that axe all day long – you have to learn how to cut cedar.
Ken: Do you know how to, you know how they did it? Is there a way to do it?
Pete: Certain way you handle that axe. I don’t know, I never cut any. I’ve cut out a few trees, that’s about all. I didn’t want to learn how to use a damned axe.
Ken: (laugh) You don’t have a double bit cedar axe, do you?
Pete: No!
Ken: (laugh) You know, they’re not big
Pete: No, they’re light
Ken: Yeah
Pete: I’ve had one or two., but it wasn’t for cutting cedar.
Ken: Uh-huh. So, I’ve always heard cotton pickin’ was the hardest thing in the world.
Pete: Well, I think back to when I was thirteen years old, I ended up to be a weigher
Ken: What’s that?
Pete: Stay in the wagon and weigh everybody’s sacks
Ken: Oh, that’s nice
Pete: Then after that we’ll, my folks had a friend in Liberty Hill run a store. My dad wanted me to work in the store on Saturdays. So I worked in a grocery store every Saturday I was in high school.
Ken: That’s good.
Pete: Yeah. My first grade teacher, she used to have a little house that sit out in front of the school. And she put in a lunch room there. So I worked for her during the lunch break for my dinner.
Ken: Huh
Pete: So I never, I don’t remember ever carrying a lunch to school.
Ken: You’d have dinner in Liberty Hill?
Pete: Yeah. She had a little building out in front and she served meals out there. A lot of teachers would eat there and some of the kids would eat there.
Ken: Would you go home then after that?
Pete: Go home for the evening when school’s out
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah. Huh
Pete: I just worked there for my dinner.
Ken: Oh, OK
Pete: for my dinner
Ken: Did ya’ll have, you didn’t have school buses back then did you?
Pete: I never rode a school bus in my life.
Ken: How did you get to school.
Pete: Car. Started out Model T and after that Model A
Ken: Do you remember how much you made when you were picking cotton?
Pete: About a dollar a hundred.
Ken: How many hundred could you pick in a day?
Pete: I picked up to three hundred pounds a day.
Ken: That’s good. It’s a lot, isn’t it.
Pete: _____
Ken: I’ve read that the really best pickers might pick five hundred pounds.
Pete: That’s right. My daddy and two of his friends, back when they were young fellers, they’d go out from Liberty Hill and those three men would pick a bale of cotton every day. That’s five hundred pounds.
Ken: Oh my goodness
Pete: I mean that’s fifteen-hundred pounds – each one of ‘em pick five hundred pounds.
Ken: What did a bale of cotton bring back in the good days?
Pete: Well, I don’t know what it brought when I was a kid.
Ken: I heard, I heard it wasn’t unusual just to have a family with a small piece of property, have one or two bales – that’s all the money they needed.
Pete: That’s right
Ken: Back in the good days
Pete: That’s right.
Ken: So you think that the bottom falling out of cotton had anything to do with some of these folks starting to cut cedar?
Pete: No.
Ken: They were, why – different group of people, huh?
Pete: They were different, they were breeded different.
Ken: (laugh) In what way?
Pete: Well, they would cut that cedar. They’d rather cut cedar than pick cotton.
Ken: Uh-huh. What – now – some people have told me that, well like, that everybody cut cedar. And if you needed some extra money, so that farmers and ranchers, if they had some cedar on their land, that may be how they’d get out of some of that
Pete: Well, maybe so.
Ken: Other people have emphasized that there were people whose whole lives ,they didn’t ever own any land
Pete: That’s right. They were cedar choppers
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: People all down in there towards the river, old Leander and everything, all they did is cut cedar.
Ken: Where would they get, there’s no water in Leander, is there? I mean,
Pete: We used to be wells ___ side of town.
Ken: Yeah, but they wouldn’t be able to have a well, would they? Too deep, isn’t it? Let me just play this: the ones that lived around Austin lived on creeks.
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Are there any creeks that a part man could live on back in those days?
Pete: There actually was.
Ken: Maybe Sandy Creek
Pete: Yeah, yeah
Ken: I mean, so, what I’m getting at is there wouldn’t be any cedar choppers, they couldn’t really live in Leander ‘cause there’s no water, right? -- or Bagdad, or…they had to be further toward the river
Pete: ___ need the water.
Ken: I mean they wouldn’t have any water, way to get their water, would they? They didn’t have a well, couldn’t have any pumps.
Pete: Well there was used to be a lot of dug wells around the country.
Ken: what do you call it?
Pete: Dug wells.
Ken: Uh-huh. How deep would they be?
Pete: Oh, anywhere from fifty to sixty foot deep. We used to live out in west Liberty Hill and had a dug well out in the front yard. I do remember. When I was a kid my mother drawed well water out of the well. Rope and a pulley, you know
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah. How would they dig it?
Pete: By hand.
Ken: So a man would get down in a hole fifty feet deep?
Pete: Well I don’t know about fifty foot.
Ken: Down to where he hit water, huh.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: I’ll be darned. Huh.
Pete: I farmed a place down there below Jonah, you might of heard of Easley farm?
Ken: Yes
Pete: I worked it for twenty years or some about. And there was a well up here around the barn. It was a dug well. Hand dug. It was thirty-two foot of water. Wish we had a submersible pump – thirty-two foot of water.
Ken: Hum. My well is at four-fifty
Pete: These are six-fifty here.
Ken: Wow.
Pete: The world has changed a hell of a lot
Ken: Yes it has. I know that. My father was born in 1878. My mother was born in 1902. My mother just, my mother lived to be a hundred and two.
Pete: What part of the world? What part of the world?
Ken: Austin.
Pete: Austin.
Ken: Um-hum. She was born in Hyde Park and my father was Eagle Lake. He was a, he was a cowboy in the early days. He fought in the Spanish-American War. So I know, I know about change. I mean, I’ve seen, I’ve seen it through their eyes, and then, it’s just too fast for me now.
Pete: What part of Austin were you raised in?
Ken: Uh, on, in Tarrytown in west Austin
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: They, they were actually, uh, they used to ride horses out there when they were courting, and, they, I think, probably built one of the first houses out there. It was built in 1938. And, uh, put the, if you know Mopac and Windsor Road.
Pete: Yeah
Ken: At the top of the hill on Windsor Road. It was all – Exposition Blvd., which is a little further out, it was all woods out past that. That’s, my upbringing wasn’t so much as a city boy as a, I was always hunting and fishing, stuff like, I had a trap line
Pete: Yeah, uh-huh
Ken: To make extra money. So, that’s why I went to school with cedar choppers in my, you know, when I was growing up from west Austin. I’m surprised you didn’t go to school – did they just didn’t go to school, or – I’m surprised you didn’t go to school with cedar choppers kids.
Pete: No there wasn’t any _____ in Liberty Hill. Their families. That I remember. Course I finished high school in ’39. I never remember any of ‘em, families, being cedar choppers.
Ken: Um-hum. Where were, like, the Cantrells? And the – they were --
Pete: They just moved to Liberty Hill. They were born back up in Leander country – back in there.
Ken: OK
Pete: That’s where they’d come from.
Ken: Floyds – were some of them cedar choppers? Some of the Floyds? Or the John’s? How about
Pete: John’s was
Ken: Yeah. So they weren’t originally from Liberty Hill. You didn’t go to school with them?
Pete: No. No.
Ken: What are some other names – hum. … long pause … Well, what else do you remember?
Pete: That’s about all
Ken: (laugh) Do you think, um, who else do you think I ought to talk to then? Who, who would, uh, who also would have some memories about, about cedar
Pete: Lee Cantrell will tell you a lot about it.
Ken: Uh-huh. Good.
Pete: Stop there and talk to him.
Ken: He doesn’t have coffee with ya’ll, does he?
Pete: No. I can usually go up there to the Exxon station in Liberty Hill – you know where it is?
Ken: Yes.
Pete: I generally go up there every afternoon about twelve o’clock. Lee comes in there every day -- a lot of times we eat lunch. Not every day, but some, a lot of times. I see him come in there
Ken: He’s still working you say?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Isn’t he about seventy then?
Pete: I imagine he is
Ken: Yeah. Huh. Do you remember his daughter’s name?
Pete: No. I never did know any of his family
Ken: OK
Pete: You know he lost his wife ___
Ken: How long ago was that?
Pete: I’d say, a couple, say six years ago.
Ken: You remember her, what was her name?
Pete: I don’t know what her name was.
Ken: Did she work at Southwestern?
Pete: No.
Ken: OK. One of the Cantrells did work at Southwestern.
Pete Kaufman 3 (4:58)
Ken: Did you know the Whitts?
Pete: Yeah. They buried Tommy about two weeks ago.
Ken: Tommy married, you said
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: They buried him or married him?
Pete: Buried him. Tommy Whitt.
Ken: Where was that?
Pete: it was in Liberty Hill.
Ken: Well I want to say the person that we bought our land from was David Whitt.
Pete: Tommy lives out the way that you go to your place.
Ken: Um-hum. David Whitt moved to Briggs. Does that ring a bell?
Pete: I never did know David.
Ken: I think that’s the name. They were a pretty old couple. So Tommy was probably their son. How old was Tommy?
Pete: I want to say Tommy was about seventy.
Ken: Oh, OK Hum
Pete: Tommy was a little bitty dried up feller
Ken: (laugh) huh. D. B. Whitt. That’s who we bought that land from.
Pete: Well that’s _____
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: I don’t know D. B. Witt.
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: Tommy had one daughter, that’s all I knew of. Oh yeah, he had a son.
Ken: So he lived on the way to my place?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: OK. Did people back then, did they respect the cedar choppers for the hard work they were doing?
Pete: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ordinary folks
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: Common people, ordinary people. A lot of ‘em good people, like all people, some of ‘em good, some of ‘em bad
Ken: Uh-huh
Bird clock strikes the hour (laugh)
Ken: So did Rebecca grow up here in this house?
Pete: Yep.
Ken: Did you have any other children?
Pete: Two boys.
Ken: What are they doing now?
Pete: Mostly ____
Ken: Hum
Pete: There is a family picture there on the wall. Turn on a light so you can see – the first plug right there. See right there was my wife and me on the right
Ken: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. ___ that’s your two boys, you and your wife.
Pete: My wife taught school in Georgetown twenty seven years.
Ken: Oh, OK. My wife taught in Liberty Hill. That’s, uh, Rebecca’s daughter? That blond _____ girl?
Pete: Yeah.
Ken: Abigail.
Pete: Yeah. Far left up they’re all young people. On the far left.
Ken: Yeah.
Pete: That’s all the grandkids.
Ken: Oh, boy. Uh-huh. There’s Sam.
Pete: They were pallbearers for my wife. And Abigail too. First time I’d ever seen a lady pallbearer, but Abigail wanted to be right there with them.
Ken: Aw, that’s sweet. When did she pass away?
Pete: Six years ago.
Ken: I’m sorry. It must be real hard.
Pete: Sure is.
Ken: My wife and I’ve been married, were going to have our forty-fifth anniversary on Monday – Sunday.
Pete: We lacked two weeks of being sixty-four years.
Ken: Oh. Huh. Well, that’s tough.
