Simon Ratliff Tape 1 (15:00)
Ken:  Just a second. Let me get this thing going.  So, I’m here with Simon Ratliff and we’re gonna talk about his cutting cedar. And you were telling me you could cut ..
Simon:  I could cut a post a minute for the first hour.  And then I, the rest of it I’d cut two hundred and sixty posts a day, staves and all.  With an axe.  I never could do it with a saw.  A saw would’t cut what I would with an axe.
Ken:  How many staves would that be and how many?
Simon:  Well, I’d say fifty staves in a bunch
Ken:  And about two hundred posts?
Simon:  two hundred and sixty posts, maybe more. Its just according to what kind of timber you’re in.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  But when I, when I was eleven, we had virgin cedar, you know.
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  I mean, them little bitty things holding that shed up
Ken:  yeah (laugh)
Simon:  And, I’ve cut many of them.  But, I’ve cut a lot of ten inch posts. Which a ten inch posts is, is, you go around it three times, thirty three inches, thirty-four inches a half because it’s a half inch on every one of ‘em.  All but the duce
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  The duce is six inches, till it gets seven and a half, and then it goes into two and a half. Everything goes from seven and a half to nine and a half to eleven and a half until to twelve and a half, you know, like that.  And it
Ken:  So a duce is really two and a half inches
Simon:  Well, a duce really goes two inches, two and a half is a like a duce but it ‘aint.  Really a duce is just six inches.  It’s the only one in the whole outfit that’s got an even measure is a duce. 
Ken:  OK
Simon:  And a stave and a duce is _____  , you know They’re really staves.  ‘Cause they don’t get but six inches.
Ken:  So they’re six inches across, right?
Simon:  Six inches around.  Cedar, uh, cedar don’t grow real round.  It’s got little slopes in it.  Now pencil cedar like down at Bastrop is round
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  You can measure it across
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  But the best cedar for fence is hill country cedar.
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  And (laugh) it’s getting awful sappy now.  You’ve got a lot of good cedar in the country.   Now I’ve cut cedar off of Doc Ross’s place out here and other places all around.  I’ve cut in Cherokee when I was eleven years old. Back then six inch posts, you know, it’s big as a coffee can
Ken:  Six inches around?
Simon:  Yeah. A coff- a regular pound coffee can is four inches
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  It’s twelve and a half inches around it.
Ken:  OK
Simon:  And a post is the same thing.  If you take it to the government you’ve got to have a special ___ like that. But you can drop that size about to an inch and a half and sell them posts because they look like four inch posts, which we’ve sold a lot of ‘em eleven inches for fours.  And back when I worked, started working, duce and stave just got a penny a piece out of ‘em.
Ken:  How big is a duce at the top?  Six inches?  And a stave is?
Simon:  Well, say six inches ‘cause they use ‘em for staves. 
Ken:  Uh-huh  But they can be real small like that
Simon:  A duce really is just longer, you know, go up higher.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  A stave is five foot and a duce is six
Ken:  OK
Simon:  And that’s  where it is.  But most of the cedar cutting is good.  I like to cut cedar.  I’d rather cut cedar than anything I’ve ever done. 
Ken:  When, so tell me when, when you, when you, say you’re starting off – you’re in a, in a virgin cedar brake, it’s never been cut.  Uh, what do those trees look like?
Simon:  They stand like that post there.  Some that’s as high as that telephone post over yonder, light post
Ken:  They’re just going straight up aren’t they?
Simon:  um-hum.  Where I’ve seen that at the best would be at Cherokee
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Cherokee, when I was eleven years old I cut about, um, ten cents for that six inch post.  You didn’t get much more for a corner post, you know, about fifty cents and like that. 
Ken:  How big would that corner post be?
Simon:  Oh, anywhere from twenty seven and a half inches, and then it goes up, a eight inch post, you know.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And, most of ‘em wants about a twenty-seven, thirty inch corners.  I cut ‘em here so big (laugh)   ____
Ken: So when you, when you walk into that virgin cedar brake and you saw that tree, how many posts could you get out of one of those trees?
Simon:  Well, according to how many limbs is on it, going up it.  Getting those staves off a lot of ‘em. But most them straight ones like that you’d get, you’d get three out of it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And they eight foot long
Ken:  OK
Simon:  And sometimes ten foot long. When you cutting cedar, if anybody put a cedar yard in, you don’t want no six foot post.  You want a seven foot post.  ‘cause young people went from them six inch, six foot posts, you know, to seven.  That’s my daughter
Ken:  Hi!  I’m Ken Roberts.
Lisa:  Lisa Vista
Ken: Nice to meet you Lisa.
Simon:  Anyhow
Lisa: I love you
Simon: I love you too.  Anyhow, uh, I worked with Callahan.  He’s dead.  You know.  You know him I guess, from Bastrop
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Callahan.  _____  I worked with Frank J. Atwood. That was the Giesecke’s brother’s daddy in law.  I worked for Dick Turner.  And I worked for Jerry ___
Ken:  You worked for Dick Turner?
Simon:  Um-hum. 
Ken:  I talked to him the other day
Simon:  Yeah, he’s getting up in his age
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  He’s a little older than I am. (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh) He’s ninety four I believe
Simon:  Yeah. 
Ken:  About that.
Simon:  Yeah, I worked, worked for, well I worked for the feller that had it before he did.  Then he bought, bought him out.  And his daddy had it at Bertram, you know, which his daddy bought all that land that they had down there that they sold so high for fifty cents or a dollar an acre when he bought it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  They, they made more money off that land than they ever give for it
Ken:  Yep.
Simon:  They sold have a lot of land – but he had lots of land. That old man was a good old man. Dick good fella  I don’t got nothing against none of ‘em
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And, I worked for (laugh) a fella at Bee Cave.  Jack Rabbit Flats, you know where that is?
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  I put a cedar yard in there.  They didn’t know nothing about …
Ken:  Wait, Jack Rabbit Flats?
Simon:  Yeah
Ken:  I don’t know where that is.
Simon:  Well, you know when ya, before you get to the hill going up to Belton, going through Lampasas that way? 
Ken:  All right.
Simon:  That, beer joint out in the, across the railroad?
Ken:  Now we’re in, we’re in, um, Lampasas?
Simon:  Yeah, Lampasas, and you go back to Killeen
Ken:  OK, yeah, OK, so you’re turning right there.  OK. 
Simon:  Yeah, you go through Killeen, then you go over there. Anyhow, I worked for that feller and when I quit, I didn’t know he was cooking dope, you know, and he went to the pen for fifteen years.
Ken:  Oh, uh-huh
Simon:  And I went down there and I, I run that cedar yard. And you can’t get scared in a cedar yard.  You’ve got to price it and you’ve got to keep it. And don’t get scared of it. Because if you do you loose money.  But If you don’t you make money.  And they got scared and was selling ‘them big corner posts for little or nothing.
Ken:  What were they scared of?
Simon:  Scared it wasn’t gonna sell
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And I told ‘em, I said “I used to haul cedar when I was a kid, with my cousin.  I’ve been plumb clear up to Montana hauling it.”
Ken:  (to Lisa) – well, thank you very much.
Lisa: You’ve welcome.
Simon:  And, uh, I told him “you get, you sell a load to that feller at Clovis, New Mexico, and all these truck drivers knowed me.  And I said when I take a load I won’t never leave this cedar yard.  I’ll have to stay here and load it.  Because I said I’m a good salesman and I said I sell posts ____. And back then I was ___.  I’d go out and peddle them, you know
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And they didn’t want me on the roads (laugh) When I’d come back they had five trucks. They found out I was haulin and was in the yard and I never did quit until I quit sixteen months later. Like to kill me.  Loading them posts.  I, they got where they couldn’t hand ‘em up to me fast enough. They got a great big fork lift that would load a deck of staves at one time and I had to drive the fork lift and load the truck by hand by myself.  I loaded as high as three trucks a day.
Ken:  Hum – three semi trucks?
Simon: Yep.  Too much for one little ole feller
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  They worked me a lot, get home, bout time I got home it wasn’t long I had to come back, see I lived in Lometa, all the way back to Killeen, you know.
Ken:  That’s a long way
Simon:  Yeah.  But
Ken:  So when you cut….go ahead
Simon:  Huh
Ken:  Go ahead.  I was gonna say – you, you were telling me how you could cut, how long, so you have a, that’s a, a tree would be a little bit bigger than that at the base.  Wouldn’t it?
Simon:  yeah, a four inch post
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Well that’s about a, right at a four at the bottom
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  It’s, I’d say it’s a three, a big three and a half. 
Ken:  So if you, how big would your, were back to that, that really nice cedar brake you’ve just come into, they would be a little bit bigger than that at the bottom, won’t they?
Simon:  Oh yeah, the trees would be bigger at the bottom because most of ‘em’d be sprung out
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And, the trees, they get big at the bottom.  Some of ‘em would get big ,might near as big as that table, you know, back when it was virgin cedar.  It ain’t that kind of cedar no more.
Ken:  No
Simon:  And, but I, I’ve had copperhead that’s crawling across my feet and rattlesnakes – I missed them  on my head about that much (laugh).  It’s scary
Ken:  Would you start off by cutting it at the base and having the whole thing fall over?
Simon:  I could cut – back then I was good with an axe.  I didn’t put the weight against the axe, I would let the axe do the work.  When I ____ then the axe.  I had to cut ____. Well, I mean, it would cut through the ___. You could take – ain’t gonna ____ my leg now, you could take, after I got through workin, on them shoes, with an axe like that you could shave your leg.  You ain’t got no axes like that no more
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And I filed it where up to the eye, you know, where it’d be even. On one side it had a ___ pitch a chip out. When you hit it the chip would jump out
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Of course, you had to, when you cut that tree in two, I’m telling you, you still had to cut another lick on it, you know, on one side, pitch it out. 
Ken:  Would you say you could go all the way through a four inch post with one hit?
Simon:  I did with my axes.  I could. When I went and had appendicitis that was the last I used an axe.  It cut me open, it busted.  I worked three days in a cedar brake with appendicitis and it busted and they had to send people off to San Antonio to knock me out (laugh)
Ken:  All right then
Simon: And, uh, I was good.
Ken:  That was the last time you cut with an axe?  What year was that?
Simon:  1966.
Ken:  Were folks already starting to cut with chainsaws then?
Simon:  A bunch of ‘em was cutting with chainsaws.  I went and got a McCullough.  And They said- I’d watched people cut. They said it’d take you seven years to learn how to cut like I did. Well, they’re dead now.  And, the first day I got it I out cut him.  But I knowed how to run it cause I knowed how they …  I practiced just by watching.  And, that’s the only way you can practice on a thing like that.  And I had, I went from ___ down here at Lometa and cut wood for twelve dollars a cord and I got a super 210 McCullough.  That’s the best one they ever made, that they ever made.
Ken:  Hum
Simon:  From then on they didn’t make no saw. That saw – you could cut that off and it’d ___. Could jump up if you didn’t watch it, it’d jump on your foot. 
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  You could release it that quick. And when you release one them post oak, that thing would jump up like that thaat ___.and it’d jump off that high
Ken:  Huh
Simon:  I could cut five cords a day and haul it out and I … twelve dollars a cord
Ken:  What’d you haul it in?
Simon:  I hauled it to the pasture and they’d come and pick it up with big semi trailers
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  How did you get it to the pasture? Did you have a pickup?
Ken:  We hauled it, my daddy, I hired him for fourteen dollars a day, whether I cut any or not.  And let him work cause he didn’t have the kind of job he needed, and his Social Security wasn’t big enough.  So, I hired him, paid him, and let him haul one cord out and I hauled the rest
Simon:  Um-hum
Ken:  Was this in the 1960s?
Simon:  It was 19, 19, about ’68.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  In 1966 when they put that saw out and it’s the best saw I’ve ever owned.  Of course, they’ve got saws now that are probably better than it. But they ain’t cut no five cord of wood, nobody, with them.  They won’t cut that fast.
Ken:  How many times would you have to sharpen that chain to cut five cords of wood?
Simon:  Well, in that you didn’t have to worry about sharpening that green post oak like that.  Cause its green.  You’d sharpen it once a day
Ken:  Right.  How bout that, you ever cut
Simon:  But now if you’re cutting you sharpen it maybe every time you fill up a gas can
Ken:  Uh-huh. Do you ever cut, uh, Spanish Oak when it’s real, when it’s real dry?
Simon:  I’ve cut it dry, I burnt it dry, I’ve sold it, I’ve peddled it.
Ken:  It’s good fire wood, istn’t it?
Simon:  Um-hum
Ken:  I think that’s my  favorite

Simon Ratliff tape 2 (15:00)
Simon: It’s a hot fire
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  Mesquite.  Now, I don’t like cutting Mesquite because it hurts the saw
Ken:  Oh, um-hum
Simon:  It works on the chain.
Ken:  Hum
Simon:  But, no, I’ve cut cedar big as that wheel, at the little end on that pickup.
Ken:  At the little end?
Simon:  Yeah. That’s how I hauled here. they had, they hauled, they hauled it like clear to Taylor
Ken:  Hum
Simon:  Bout three or four Meskins would load it and I ran it in here by myself.
Ken:  Now would you cut that with an axe or that was with a chainsaw?
Simon:  (laugh) No, I ain’t used no axe in a long time.
Ken:  Uh-huh, no, yeah.  What would they do with the cedar cut that big around?
Simon:  Some people, they were rich people, they’d put it in and use it for corner posts, you know, around the place.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Only rich people gonna buy that kind of post.  It’s too big.  It take a lot of money to dig a hole for one of them things.  But I sold ‘em for ten dollars a piece.  I didn’t get what anybody else did
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  I just sold it make a living, I didn’t work hard.  I cut half a day at a time and quit when I got older. 
Ken:  So when you started out when you were eleven, that would have been 19, what 42, World War II.
Simon:  Um-hum. Right after that. We didn’t have no Social Security back in, then, it happened in ’44.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: When they’d give Social Security to people that, my brother was in the Navy. That’s dead now.  And, we cut a lot of cedar.  I worked for Brown and Root in Houston for eight months.  I worked on the dam.
Ken: OK.  You worked on the dam at, would that be Wirtz Dam?
Simon:  Yeah, the first one
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I didn’t work on the lower one.  But I worked on the ___ Houston.  The gravel company, I worked for them and got totaled out.  In my back, tore my muscles up.  jumped off of a box car to catch another one and stop it from running over other people and it run loose.  It didn’t have no brakes and I had to stop it, the other car.
Ken:  Did you just use a brake on it.
Simon:  You turn the wheel
Ken:  Yeah
Simon: And stop it.
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  And they tried to get me to say I got hurt there, and I said no I got hurt in the cedar yard first. About the muscle, I jerked a muscle with another feller helping me, I said “Throw it, and he wouldn’t so I jerked –  I grabbed it, and they had to bring me to a hospital.” Tore my left muscle up. Then I got over it.
Ken:  Huh
Simon:  I got a knot there right about an egg.  It stays there you know
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon: But that’s what it was
Ken:  So, when you were working for the, making, ya’ll were clearing out the, down there, right,  for the dam.  I guess you were cutting cedar down there too, weren’t you?
Simon:  No. That was granite.   That’s granite there.  Granite we was drilling
Ken:  OK
Simon:  We drilled with it.  With jackhammers
Ken:  OK
Simon:  They said it’d take big fellers to run that jackhammer.  And, I could drill more holes, me and one more feller, than any of ‘em there
Ken:  huh.  You’re not a big man.  You weren’t a big man then, were you?
Simon:  I could throw my leg on top of that jackhammer, you know, and just let it coast it’s way down
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And they wouldn’t do it.  I’ve had it jump over and hit me on top of my foot (laugh) and break break the steel
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And I’ve had them pavement rusters ___ plumb to the machine, you know.  Just melt em
Ken:  Did you ever, ever get cut by a cedar axe?
Simon:  (laugh) yeah.  One time I cut that much sole out and that tongue come out of this foot right here. The toe just fell over.
Ken:  Ah
Simon:  I’m a Pentecost and I went to church and they prayed for me and I got my toes work.  I never did go to a doctor.
Ken:  My goodness.
Simon:  I cut eleven posts that day and had, went to cut the other one, my uncle Richard, wasn’t nobody’d out cut him.  Daddy’s brother.  And I was one post ahead of him when I cut my foot in two.  So,
Ken: Did you, did you go to church that same day and pray for it? 
Simon:  I went and poured a bottle of campho phenique on it and went that night.  I walked a mile on it that night.  And they prayed for me and, and the Lord healed that foot.
Ken:  Umhum
Simon:  I cut the sole out, half out.  It, it cut pretty ____.  You see that scar here? 
Ken:  Yes sir, uh-huh
Simon:  That’s seventy-seven stitches.  ___ choppin and I told ‘em ___ they’d post ___ to chop these___ you know when Lampasas had that flood? 
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  Well, I cut these here telephone posts, the cedar posts, I cut’in ‘em on the half.  It’s long.  And then I grabbed one to throw it and I throwed it on an axe and that axe come at me. 
Ken:  Umm
Simon:  And I grabbed it as it cut my face in two
Ken:  Oh, my gosh.  How deep did it go?
Simon:  (laugh) it went pretty deep.  The doctor said “Ratliff, you just lacked an eighth of an inch of killing yourself.”  I said “No, the devil lacked a mile of killing me
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon:  (laugh) I said, He ain’t killed me yet. ____ and stuff, you know, it chopped them bones in two.
Ken:  I’m surprised it didn’t take your eye out.
Simon:  Well, it’s a wonder it hadn’t of killed me. 
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  But it just lacked a little, cause that’s right there at that ____.
Ken:  Did the sharp end hit you?
Simon:  Yeah.  The razor axe
Ken:  Yeah. I’ve heard that one end of the axe you kind of leave a little duller in case you’re hitting down by rocks
Simon:  And if that would of hit me, well it would have hurt me real bad.  You know, because it would’ve bruised
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  ___ my axe razor sharp.  And, it, it hit pretty hard.  I caught it in the air and all I could do is hold it as it was cutting me.
Ken:  Um!
Simon:  And I told a feller – he was going to town – I just happened to do it just as he was leaving.  I said “take me to the hospital I’ve got to have this sewed up.  I can’t drive.”  I had both hands holding it together.  He took me.  He said, see I’d been blind before that.  Thirty days before that.  I got my eyes put out.  And uh, and uh, well it may have been a little more time than that. Anyhow, I had my eyes put out with ammonium using a cutting torch.  I took a axe and hit one of them lines and it all hit me in the nose and near killed me. And he told my wife, he said “you take him home.”  After four days he said he’d never see another wink And they took me to Belton.  I told her “take me down there.”  I said “now, you don’t say a word.  Just lead me up to the altar and let me ask for what I want.”  And they took, led me to the altar on that Sunday.  Just like a bolt of electricity went up – I asked him for the, the, for Him to anoint me and pray to the Lord that I could see to make my family a living. That’s what I told Him.  And three days later both eyes popped open.
Ken:  That’s quite a story
Simon:   I have a, have a faith to believe it will happen, you know, and it happened.
Ken:  That’s wonderful. 
Simon:  Oh, I’ve been crippled.  (laugh) 
Ken:  You’re like a  cat with nine lives.
Simon:  Well, I had a big family to raise and I had to have somebody to do it (laugh)  and it had to be me
Ken:  How many children did you have?
Simon:  Seven.
Ken:  Y’all lived in Lometa?
Simon:  We lived in Marble Falls and Lometa too, and here.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Mostly we went to Houston and she, she didn’t want to stay up there and that’s the reason I quit Houston.  And I come back to a forty dollar a week job, seven days a week, cedar yard up at Jerry Nobles.  And
Ken:  Jerry Nobles?
Simon:  Yeah.
Ken:  He had the yard?
Simon:  Yeah, you know where you’re going into Marble Falls.  All that on the right all the way to the creek was cedar yard.
Ken:  How many cedar yards were there in Marble Falls?
Simon:  Huh?
Ken:  How many were there in Marble Falls back then?  Was it all one big cedar yard or a whole bunch of different ones?
Simon:  That one, and, well, there was another one up above.
Ken:  Oh
Simon:  Which ours was a little bit below. Frank Jay’s was up above and Jerry Nobles were the biggest ones. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And then he got, he wanted to, in ’66 he took me and I knowed cedar.  Cause I was raised up where it was, you know.  I knowed looking at it I could tell ya – just count the four inch posts to an acre
Ken:  Um-hum, um-hum
Simon:  I could tell ya how much about it would bring.  And, he took me out there close to Austin over at Bee, Bee Caves I think that’s what they called it.  And he took me down in a canyon and stuff
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And there was virgin cedar over there.  I told him, I said “if you buy it you’ll get rich off of it.”  He bought it the first… and I, I went back to Marble Falls working it the first year but the first year he made two hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars deal for it
Ken:  Cutting cedar in Bee Caves?
Simon:  He didn’t cut it.  He just bought it.
Ken:  Bought it, um-hum
Simon:  He bought it from the chopper and then he sold it. See, really, if you’ll price that post up and your corner post and make an average right at 100 percent profit, if you hold it.  But if you don’t hold it and you’re selling it cheaper it’d be about 50. But you can make money off cedar. If they still buy it.
Ken:  Yeah.  Tell me about this man, then. So, he, he, he bought, contracted with the guys who owned the land to cut the cedar off.
Simon:  He, he paid so much for a contract for so long to cut it.
Ken:  Would that be a percentage of what he cut?
Simon:  That’s a percentage.
Ken:  Do you know – about ten?  Because I’ve heard ten. Does that make sense?
Simon:  Well, back then probably ten, you know
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Now it would be thirty.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Cause people are crazy about cedar.
Ken:  Yeah.
Simon:  And a lot of ‘em having it pushed down and and paying big money to do it.  They wouldn’t, wouldn’t let a feller come in and cut it.  They’d just push it and burn it.
Ken:  Um-hum, a lot, isn’t a lot of it now pretty worthless?  When it comes down like that
Simon:  Yeah, a sappy cedar now would be – ain’t too good.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Lasts four or five years.  This kind of cedar come from, uh, out here on thirteen hundred acres. This cedar here.  I worked for that feller out there.  That company from San Antonio.  I don’t know his name.  I forgot it. Anyhow, Mr. Hibbler called me to come back out there.  I worked off and on out there about seventeen years, you know.  I like that old man.
Ken:  Out there on, uh, on Oatmeal?
Simon:  Yeah
Ken:  Yeah.  See that’s right next to my friend Carl’s place.
Simon:  Yeah, Carl is his boy. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Carl Hibbler .
Ken:  Oh, there’s a, uh, this is a different Carl.  He’s his neighbor.
Simon:  Oh
Ken: And Ronald Hibbler , the one that died
Simon:  Yeah
Ken:  Yeah, yeah.  So this is – you know – we’re talking two different Hibblers . Ronald is, does Donald, is it Donald and Ronald, or
Simon:  It’s about, Donald Hibbler is the one that’s alive.
Ken:  Uh-huh.  That’s your friend?
Simon:  Yeah.  And Carl Hibbler is his boy that lived there where he is.
Ken:  OK
Simon:  But he, the one that would clean the, I went out and got the old trash for him, helped him, after I got to helping him, and, you know, I worked a little out there with this hip trying to cut cedar but it was sure rough.  I couldn’t walk in it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And
Ken:  So you’re saying, going back to this Bee Caves thing. ‘Cause I know some folks out in Bee Caves that, that cut cedar back in those days. There was a pretty big cedar yard
Simon:  yeah, it’s probably, may still be there
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I don’t know
Ken:  Uh, the Roberts’, uh, It’s not related to me, but, uh, I talked to him and his granddaddy owned a cedar yard in Oak Hill back then
Simon:  I used to know them people down there you know.
Ken:  So this old, this man that, he contracts with all this, he made two hundred and something thousand dollars off of?
Simon:  Well it’s a lot of trucks going in and cutting a lot of people you know, and it had trucks every day  a loading.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And which he didn’t have to pay his hands.  I was a stacker.  I checked cedar too, but I, I loaded trucks.  And when, when you load a truck they’ve got to pay for the help to help ‘em. And I got more money loading a truck than the helper got, the boss got it to pay.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And I paid for six hands a week.  Working in the yard
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  But I loaded trucks and I’d get sometimes twenty dollars a, a loading one, you know. And if I cut the standards out I got a dollar a piece for cutting the standards.  They stand straight, you know
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And
Ken:  How many trucks could you load in a day?
Simon:  Most of em back then by hand is two.
Ken:  Um-hum.  So you’d make forty dollars a day.
Simon:  Yeah, it paid.  It paid for one of the hands
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Everyday.  I think it was just three, three hands.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Really, his son-in-law and another feller, Jackson, Dewayne Jackson.  He dead.  Most of them dead.  Old man dead too. 
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  He was my wife’s uncle.
Ken:  OK
Simon:  Jerry Noble
Ken:  How much did those guys get paid?  The hands?
Simon:  They got what I did. Sixty dollars a week
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  They really – I ought of been drawing more
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  But a lot of ‘em I paid for.
Ken:  You organized it all
Simon:  And when I wasn’t loading that I was checking cedar
Ken:  Uh-huh.  Where was that yard you were talking – is that Marble Falls?  Or was that, were they have one in Oak Hill?
Simon:  ___ Callahan’s was at Marble Falls–a big outfit. One of the biggest there ever was.
Ken:  What’s it called?
Simon:  Callahan’s. The one that from Bastrop
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And
Ken:  Oh, the same Callahan’s that has the Callahan’s store do you think?
Simon:  Yeah
Ken:  Huh
Simon:  Yeah.  He was, he- the old man be dead
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Him and his brother too, uh, that was Earl Callahan. 
Ken:  Hum
Simon:  He was the one that had it
Ken:  Is that, is that the store that, is that the yard that you were working out of when you were buying that?  Callahans?
Simon:  Well, no.  Not when they made that kind of money.  I worked at, I worked for Callahan, just worked for him.
Ken:  Oh, Uh-huh
Simon:  I loaded three trucks a day there
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Had three ___ to me I’ve been knocked.
Simon Ratliff Tape 3 (15:00)
Simon:  come across it.  ___ posts in a year (laugh).  Had three people handing me – I could stack ‘em as fast as they could hand ‘em.  But I was fast.  And I could check more cedar than anybody
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: Cause  I could stack posts on a stack by that car.  And make ‘em line up, you know, just stack ‘em
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And then, of course, when you went the other way you had to kind’ of go and straighten ‘em up. But I could stack, I, I could, I could stack as many as three checkers.
Ken:  So, this was back – what year do you think that was taking place in?
Simon:  Back then in ‘66
Ken:  ‘66
Simon:  Yeah, yeah.  ’60, no, it’d be about ’59-‘60
Ken:  Um-hum, um-hum
Simon:  when I worked for him
Ken:  And, you were stacking, so the cutters, they were the local boys who were cuttin’ the cedar.
Simon:  Well, they come from everywhere
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  They’d come from Austin, everywhere to cut cedar
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I had ‘em come in, one of ‘em killed him – killed his br-killed somebody.  There were two of ‘em, brothers. Earl, and, I can’t think of his brother’s name.  Anyhow, they said “you want to be careful.  He’ll kill ya over a post.”  And, I said, uh, “I ain’t scared of him.”  I said “he knows posts and I do too.”  I said “when he puts it off that truck he knows what it is and I know what it is when it comes off thar.”  And, my boss, he’d take it out, not Earl but the other one.  He’d take it out and put it up in another grade I’d take it back. His name’ Mac.  I said “Mac don’t take it out any more or I’ll quit.”  I said “that post goes back here.  It don’t go up there.”  And, he said something and when he did Earl said, “Mac, he’s right.” ‘Said that goes where he put it, so leave it where it is.  Then he started ____, he said “I’m gonna tell ya’ll something.  If I have to throw a load of posts off in this yard I want him to grade my cedar or nobody.”  He said “I want – I want just what I got comin. I don’t want you to cheat me.”
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  He already knowed when he left the yard what he’d got coming. 
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  You know
Ken:  And they’d pay him by the post, wouldn’t they?
Simon:  Oh yeah.  Different prices
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Yeah. 
Ken:  Of the, so, if you had a post, would fifty cents be good for a good fence post, or is that too much back then?
Simon:  Back then that would have been too much.
Ken:  Twenty five cents?
Simon:  I made about thirty five
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  For a four inch post
Ken:  And then what would the cedar yard owner, what would he sell that for?  Would he double it?
Simon:  Actually ‘bout what he was selling it for.  It was about, he was giving about twenty cents a piece for a four inch post back then.
Ken:  Oh, he’d be givin’ twenty to the cutter and then selling it for thirty five?
Simon:  Um-hum.  I’ve checked a lot of cedar at the check that brought in two cents apiece, you know.  Deucey and stuff,  crooked deucey. 
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And I worked in a …  I know what cedar is.  And a crooked post ___  be six and a half inches might ___ supposed to be __ crooked post, supposed to be throwed away.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Of course we sold it worse than that.  The crooked post got more heart than a straight post. 
Ken:  I cut some cedar on my place – big, big ‘ole trees and they’d, uh, you know, good, I was gonna use them for corner posts. They’re about that big and they’re real long and they’re about as long as that pick-up, straight.  But they don’t seem to have any heart to ‘em.  Is that, is that
Simon:  That’s sappy
Ken:  Yeah, they’ve kind-of rotting out there in the field.  I’ve got ‘em stacked up nice
Simon:  Um-hum.  Yeah, you’ve got worms. Well they’re not worms, they’re bugs that, like a wasp that eats on that there sap
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  They it feels just like sand if it get in your eyes
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I stack it out here with the heart cedar and they get in the sap and eat the sap off.  I’ve had cedar out here, cuttin’ it, just me.  I had cedar right out there in, over at that other house I had more.  I had a place in Lometa.  I finally sold it.  I bought cedar and cut cedar too.  And hauled it.  And made a pretty good living at it.  I didn’t get, I didn’t get rich. (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh together)  Well, it’s hard work.  Would, you know, so you’ve done other things.  You’ve loaded cedar, sounds like, you’ve run a jackhammer, uh, you worked in Houston
Simon:  I worked as a grease monkey in Houston on a crane
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And I was a winch operator.  Which, when they went and went and over there where all that disease was -- I just got married about two years before that.  They tried to get me to go to Haiti and I wouldn’t go.  I quit.  I won’t go if they don’t send my wife – I won’t go.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And they said “we can’t send her because they’ve got malaria fever. We can `give you shots and stuff but we won’t take her.”  I said “then you’ll have to take somebody else.”  They said “You’ll get paid seven times as much if you go, as you’re drawing here.”  Back then I was drawing a dollar seventy seven and a half an hour.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  That was in the ’50s?
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Which that was a hundred a ninety something dollars a week bring home pay.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  I worked ninety hours a week.  And
Ken:  It was a good hourly, good wages back then
Simon:  Yeah. And, uh, I worked for Jones Core Drilling.  You know where Hou, uh, Whitney is? 
Ken:  Whitney, Texas?
Simon:  Whitney Dam
Ken:  Uh-huh, yeah, OK
Simon:  I drilled cored holes  in there. And I drilled anchor holes with five, five-inch bits, for that dam.  I worked on it twice.  Every time I’d go to work my wife’d say “I’m gonna quit ya.  If you don’t take me home.” I’d quit. You know (laugh) and I didn’t work a lot
Ken:  And home was back here?
Simon:  Yeah, back
Ken:  In Lometa?
Simon:  They lived in Marble Falls.
Ken:  OK
Simon:  She wanted back with her Momma and them
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And I bring’d her home.
Ken:  Well, all things considered, would you rather, did you enjoy cutting cedar more or did you enjoy those other, other jobs?
Simon: Well, really, if I could’ve stayed I’d of enjoyed Brown and Root.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  ‘Cause I had an easy job. 
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And they wanted to send me over there to be the boss over a winch truck, is what they wanted.  They’d get it out there, and, you know, it’d rain and it’d go down to the bed and I’d have to get that truck out without taking a bulldozer and trying to get that.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Put the winch over it and just put it in low gear and let it crawl itself out
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  You know, and they liked that.  But the boss (laugh) when I first started they put me a pullin’ that stuff for piling down in the ground where they had the, where they was working, by the ocean, and, uh, I was pulling it out and it tear the side of the transmission out I’d been standing on up there on the tail-end of the boom pulling it. Me looking right straight up in the air and it jerked itself out and it fall and the boss was Harley Payne and he said he falled off that hill.  He did, he had to admit ___ they wouldn’t go against him, you know.  Because he could have sued them for a lot of money. And, I went and stayed with him and I quit and he wanted me back.  He told the superintendent, he said “ Where’s Ratliff at?”  “Said he quit, said he going home.” “Said, If you get ahold of him, I want him back here.”  I went back and worked for a while and then I told ‘em I gonna quit.  I worked at the purifying Station out of Pasadena.  See all that water comes from that purifying plant station when you leave Grand Bayou
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And come back in there.  Pasadena Tunnel.  You know where that is.  That tunnel in Pasadena.
Ken:  I don’t know Pasadena, no.
Simon:  Anyhow, we, I was working there when I quit the last time.  Most of my work’s been in cedar, you know.  And the wrecking yard – I spent a little time with it.
Ken:  Uh, when the, I heard there was a big virgin – they ran a railroad in the early 1900s from the Colorado River brakes up to Lometa.
Simon:  Yeah. It used to go through Lometa but they ain’t got no, it goes through now, the Santa Fe does, they used to cut cedar out there on the White Ranch
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And they had a railroad going out there back when, well I, I didn’t remember it – Daddy did. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  That was before my time
Ken:  I see.  Did your Daddy cut there?
Simon:  Yeah.
Ken:  So, is that kind-of where you grew up?  Is Lometa?
Simon:  Well, really to tell you the truth I growed up mostly on the San Saba and Lometa and I’ve been in Marble Falls and
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  But mostly in Lometa
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And, uh, I was born in Manchaca 
Ken:  OK.  How many uh, how many brothers and sisters did you have?
Simon:  Eight
Ken:  Eight?
Simon:  Yeah, we got three boys alive and one girl now. 
Ken:  How many was it back then?  How many boys and girls?
Simon:  Three girls and five boys.
Ken:  Were you the youngest, did you say?
Simon:  No.  I’m in the middle
Ken:  The middle.
Simon:  Yep.  My other brother ‘aint dead yet.  He’s eighty-four years old.  I’m eighty-one.  And I’ve got another one just younger than me by two years, then another one.  They are out there in Lampasas.  And Paul, the oldest one, he’s in Lometa.
Ken:  Uh-huh.  How old is he?
Simon:  He’s eighty-four.
Ken:  Uh-huh. Did ya’ll all cut cedar?
Simon:  Um-hum.
Ken:  Did they move on to something else or are you the
Simon:  Bill, he went to a been a driller for a feller here at town. And he, he worked for him in the caves drilling back in that cave at Austin that they go in.  Well, he worked in that cave.
Ken:  I don’t know anything about that cave.
Simon:  Anyhow, L.J. Henderson is, was his boss down here.  I never did work in Austin.  I did too – a little while.  I went and worked on the State Highway barn.  For about six months on the State Highway.  But I ain’t got no education and couldn’t get a job now. 
Ken:  Hum.  Did your Daddy, uh, work on that, on that White Ranch?
Simon:  Yeah
Ken:  Did he work there?
Simon:  Yeah, he worked in the White Ranch. 
Ken:  How long did that railroad run out of there?  Do you have any idea?
Simon:  No, I don’t know.  I know my nephew, my sister that died here a while back.  He owned the land where the railroad was but nobody knows who owned it.  The taxes ate it up and he got if for taxes.  And his mother’s place is out, out behind her place where the railroad went through.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And I don’t remember
Ken:  I’ve seen a picture of that bridge.
Simon:  Yeah
Ken:  It washed out thirty two times. (laugh)
Simon:  The bend?
Ken:  What’s that?
Simon:  The bend
Ken:  The bend, yeah.  Can you imagine trying to
Simon:  The year before that somewhere’s there, you know, across it, you know, below down there somewhere, I forget, when I was a kid, we forded it in a truck, would only be that deep
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  Where that bridge is they cut that thing down.  I went out there to load cedar.  To load over there on a truck that didn’t have no brakes on it.  And it, it was a two speed.  It didn’t have, uh, and I couldn’t pull the cedars out of the hill.  You know, Alligator Hill, they called it.  I comed back down it backwards about forty miles an hour and hit the cattle guard and went through it.  I could drive a truck that good then. And I come back into the bend and they had a six thousand dollar, a six thousand pound weight, supposed to be on it, you know, it dropped down.  It helped them ole ___ after that
Ken:  That bridge would drop down, then?
Simon:  Oh, it dropped down.  It’d take your breath.  And, I stopped there and I said “I’ve got twenty dollars for loading that truck and I had ‘em seven foot high on four tier on seven-foot-sixer.” And, uh, he, one said “I’ll take you across for twenty dollars.”  And I said “If you’re life ain’t worth more than twenty dollars, mine ain’t either.  I’ll just take it myself.”  And I got out there and when I come on up – when it raised up like that – and when it hit down it (it’s a phewww) and it’d take your breath.  I said “I’ll never go back across there again.”
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon:  I finally got over the hump and I made it into Lometa and I said “I’ll never go and load another load, not down there, not unless I can get through another way.”
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  That’s a long way to the bottom.
Ken:  Yeah, I imagine.  So you’d drive up on that thing?
Simon:  Yeah, it goes up before you, you go
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  across.  And then when you get out there about a third of the way it starts going down and you hit the middle and it’d just drop.”
Ken:  Oh my gosh.
Simon:  (laugh)
Ken:  (Laugh)
Simon:  It’s scary.
Ken:  I’ll bet it is.
Simon:  And, that piece of iron from that bridge is still down there and catfish lives in it.
Ken:  Uh-haw.
Simon:  In that there place, which I used to fish over at that feller to and he died and his boys got it. When you’re going from Lampasas and going to the dam, before you cross the new bridge
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Well that house on the left
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  He used to raise watermelons and I fished down in there behind the pecan trees
Ken:  Pretty land
Simon:  Yeah, you’d catch more fish there than you could out here.
Ken:  Yeah, that’s for sure. 
Simon:  I liked to fish down in there.
Ken:  I fished that, I fished there too.
Simon:  Everybody knows me, uh, even in Lometa I was named, uh, when I was young, the said “you cain’t buy nothing on credit.”  I was the only one in that town that could be a kid and go anywhere and get something on credit.  I’d buy my own bicycle and everything. Daddy didn’t have to sign nothing.  I’d tell them “if I can’t
Simon Ratliff Tape 4 (15:00)
Simon: pay for it, he’d can’t pay for it for me.” And I had, and before, after me and the wife lived there the last time, on, before that, they tried to sell me the store and I said “I don’t want it.”  And I said “I’ll come back” and he said “you don’t have to pay a penny for it, you just, it’ll just be signed over to you and you just take it.”  And I said “I don’t want it”
Ken:  I don’t want a store!  (checks tape recorder)
Simon:  What happened, It got robbed, see.  The night watchman would ____ clocks ___ and I was nightwatch in town. But I took it twice.  The last time I said “I won’t take it unless you get me a gun.” And you had to have a five thousand dollar bond. So, the bank bought me a permit for a gun and I carried a gun for a while and I quit ‘cause they come – I wouldn’t have used it but I scare ‘em with it, you know.  But I’d __ a threat. But he killed our night watchman.  I said “shoot – I wouldn’t have a job for that – nobody.”
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  But the night watchman feller, he had a dog and that dog, when he ___, that dog take a ____, that dog never did go back home. He come and stayed with me.  His head was that broad.
Ken:  Um
Simon:  He’d go ahead of ‘ya through them bushes. And (laugh) he was one good night watchman dog.
Ken:  So, when was your Daddy born?
Simon:  I don’t know, I don’t remember him ever telling me.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I don’t remember when my Mama was born.  Uh, I know the Gatliffs in San Saba
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Were her kin-folks.  We went from a G to an R name
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And, Mama was a Gatliff. And my Daddy was a Ratliff.
Ken:  Ratliff
Simon:  Which, we’re Cherokee Indian.  Part of it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Black Dutch.  My Mama was Black Dutch. 
Ken:  Huh.  Do you know when they moved to the Lometa area?
Simon:  Moved there several times. But when I was eleven years old I lived there and when the War was over I still lived there. In 1944. 
Ken:  So they never talked about where they came from, your Daddy?
Simon:  No.  No telling where they came from.
Ken:  Now, he cut cedar all his life?
Simon:  He didn’t cut it all the time.  He hauled cedar
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And watermelon and stuff like that on his truck
Ken:  OK
Simon:  He cut a lot of brush. 
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  Of which I cut a blood vein into this foot here.  Right in there.  And he’d lay his hand on it and say something and it quit bleeding – pumping blood out there. And he called one of the boys over there and said “look here.”   ___ stepped and it broke loose.  And he just reached down like that and it just shut off.
Ken:  Huh
Simon:  And they said ___“ they said the Lord done that for me.  He quoted scripture. He got that scripture and the sixteenth chapter of Ezeikal, sixteen and six.  It’s in it.  “as I pass by thee and saw thee polluted in thy own blood. I say unto thee, live in thy blood. I say unto thee, live in thy blood.”  And it stopped the blood.
Ken:  Wow.
Simon:  He got faith for it.
Ken:  Yeah.
Simon:  Daddy did. And I liked to have bled to death when I went to town and he stayed in the cedar brake. (laugh) They finally prayed until they got it stopped. But I’d finally given up and told ‘em ____when you pray this time __- to the hospital.  And they prayed and it quit.
Ken:  Hum
Simon:  Takes lots of faith.
Ken:  It does. That’s something.
Simon:  But I was raised up believing what I hear and I could sit all night and listen to an old lady preach in Lometa, you know old lady Hadley.  She was an old lady but she was good. Grandma Smith, we called her.
Ken:Um-hum 
Simon:  And, I could sit all night and listen to that old lady preach.  I loved listening to her preach.
Ken:  Is that church still there?
Simon:  The church is still there. It ain’t the same kind – it’s been built over and stuff, you know. But they moved the church now on top of the hill coming toward Lampasas, out there. And I don’t know what they’ve done with the other
Ken:  Hum
Simon:  The preacher’s dead.  He’s six years younger than me. He was a good preacher. Daryl Williams.  And, he ain’t here no more.  he’s got one brother alive.  There was just three of them.  Yep.  He helped chop cedar in Cherokee and San Saba and I’ve cut in Llano and I’ve  cut all the way through to Johnson City. 
Ken:  How would you find a place to cut?  Would they call you?
Simon:  One’s that had the yards.  You’d get the jobs from them mostly. But I got where I’d get my own jobs, you know, going to the cedar people.  They knowed me and I could go work for ‘em
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  I told ‘em I’d done a job they’d believe me.  Because I’d done a good job for ‘em.  I tried.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  But the worst part out here at Carl’s and his Daddy
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  You have to pile the brush, he wants it piled.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And I cain’t twist like I did
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon:  And that’s one of the reasons.  I could handle the saw, but that stacking brush I cain’t do that.
Ken:  Um-hum, yeah.
Simon:  And
Ken:  When ya’ll cut back with an axe, back when you were cutting posts and all, would you leave a, a stump sticking up?
Simon:  Well, I could cut that stump off with, right at the ground. If it was one like them, that didn’t spring out like that. You had to leave the stump, you know.  You couldn’t do it.
Ken:  Um-hum, yeah.
Simon:  But the round posts, I, I was good with the axe then and I could cut it off right even with the ground. Which a saw now, cutting them kind of posts, you cut it about that deep.
Ken:  Yeah
Simon:  You know.  You could do pretty good with the saw.
Ken:  So, would you use the duller end of the axe for cutting it on the ground?
Simon:  No.  I never hit the ground.
Ken:  Never hit the ground.
Simon:  Always right up to the ground.  I hit, once in a while, hit a rock, you know.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And just a wet rock cleaned it out.
Ken:  So when you hit that post, say that’s a tree there, would you hit it at that angle, or would you come in
Ken:  Well, you’re gonna come in like that. 
Simon:  Right at a ninety degree angle to it.  Yeah, ninety degree angle.  Then I’d just slip it off.  You know, the stump.
Ken: So that’s almost cut all the way through with that one
Simon:  That one lick cut it through.
Ken:  I’ll be darn.
Simon:  With that three, three pound Collins.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  Blade went like that, you know.
Ken:  I heard somebody call about a Kerrville Cedar Axe.  Is that the same thing?
Simon:  Well, I never did see one of ‘em.  I don’t guess.   We, the Collins, the Homestead Collins, which a Collins was the best axe, you know, the Homestead really wasn’t no good if it rolled up when you was filing it. 
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  The other just, steel fly off of it, you know.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I’ve stuck ‘em in trees plumb up to the eye and pulled it out and there wouldn’t be nothing but the iron left, you know, pull em in two.  That axe ain’t no good. 
Ken:  Oh
Simon:  But it wasn’t, it ain’t together right.
Ken:  You mean, you would leave the iron there
Simon:  leave the blade, pull the handle out.
Ken:  Oh,
Simon:  All it was was just a handle and iron
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  The good part of that – the blade be that deep
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  And boy, when you got one sharp it stayed sharp.  I’d take four days to sharpen one.  I’d use four different files to file the axe.  A twelve inch file.  I’d head out and get it, stick it in a stump, and file one side at a time until I got it filed. 
Ken:  How long would that take?
Simon:  Four days all together. 
Ken:  You were, working with
Simon:  Worked about an hour a day on it.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  You know
Ken:  With the four
Simon:  And then when I, the third day I’d take it out to temper it in and chop with it to see if ___ And if it stayed together, I’d go back and file it again. And then I didn’t have to file it no more for two or three days
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  But, yeah.  It’d take a lot of money now to file an axe.
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon:  One of those files costs ya twelve dollars a piece.
Ken:  You had four different ones, all different grains.
Simon:  The same kind.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  I’d buy eleven ten-inch to finish it off with.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon:  You know, take marks of it.  But ___ you get that one ___ on edge and you could really get that stuff off of it.
Ken:  But you could still do that, didn’t you?
Simon:  Oh, yes, if I had a stump and I could sit down (laugh) I’d get to it.
Ken:  I would like to find one of those cedar axes and buy it, you know, have one.  I’ll bring it to you to sharpen it.
Simon:  I couldn’t sharpen one here because there’s no stump.
Ken:  I’ll bring you a stump (laugh)
Simon:  Aw
Ken:  I’ve got plenty of stumps on my place.
Simon: You
Ken:  I don’t know where to find one, though, to buy it.
Simon:  Old Punk Cantrell’s boy and I would have one of them axes.
Ken: Is that, his boy, is that Lee Cantrell? 
Simon:  I don’t know.
Ken: See Lee Cantrell used to live
Simon:  You know where Punk lived?
Ken: On this side of Liberty Hill.
Simon:  Go down in town, and go down in there and he’s on the right. He had a cedar yard down in there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  He might have a axe.  He might be sell it, I don’t know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  Ain’t nobody, he’s got boy, his boy may be chopping cedar, I don’t know.
Ken: Oh, the only Cantrell I know in Liberty Hill is Lee, now.  I don’t know if that’s his son or
Simon:  They’re all over there, I think.  Most of ‘em
Ken: Yeah, yeah
Simon:  There’s one that you’re going into Liberty Hill.  That Big Trucking.
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  That’s one of ‘em
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  And, uh, I don’t know the other one, but, right now I wouldn’t know ‘em if I see ‘em.
Ken: yeah, yeah.  Did, did you, uh, did you start real early in the morning when you were cutting?
Simon: Oh, yeah, sometimes, I was,  brave back then. I’d build a bonfire and chop cedar and by nine o’clock I’d have a pickup like that to the top of the cab going to town.  I’d make two loads a day.
Ken:  Oh, so you’d build a bonfire so you could see
Simon: Oh, yeah.
Ken: What time that, you were starting
Simon:  It was taking a chance on a rattlesnake
Ken: Yeah, it is.
Simon:  I’d build a big brush fire and I’d cut, which is dangerous to do that now.  You’d catch the world a-fire.
Ken: Yeah, it would
Simon:  But, no, I used to build my fire.  I’d watch it, though, you know.  I’d keep it where I knew what it was doing.  By nine o’clock.  I’d be there by seven. And by nine I’d have that pickup loaded ready to go to the cedar yard.
Ken: How many posts would you have in it?
Simon:  About a hundred and fifty, staves and all.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  I would, to the top of the cab.
Ken: yeah
Simon:  This pickup I ain’t hauling nothing on it. Just a little bit of wood on it.  And a little bit of cedar from out here. I wished I didn’t even have it.  You get off in it and it’ll turn over and try, but it won’t kick in the switch.  And it, any other time you get in it and it just turn on and go.  You get out there right now and that thing’d take off.  You’re liable to drive to town and get out of it and it’ll go “rrwwww” and it won’t start.
Ken: Huh
Simon:  Then you let it sit awhile and shake the wires around on it and get in it and it’ll go.
Ken: did you ever, uh, have a old Model T or A or any of those old
Simon:  And that’s the worst thing I ever done in my life.  I hauled cedar. I was living in Cherokee with my brother. And I got a truck when I was fourteen years old.  My Daddy sold my truck that I, hauled for him, he was sick, you know, and I hauled and make a living for him on that truck and …
Ken: From the brakes to the yard?
Simon:  No, I was going like DeLeon
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  Up in there and selling the posts.
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  And I went and made a load and coming in, I didn’t eat all day, you know, and I was nervous and I seen a cop coming and I said “oh, he’s gonna catch me” and sure enough he did. 
Ken: What were you doing wrong?
Simon:  And, I didn’t have no driver’s license.
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Simon:  Of which, Daddy got mad about the way the cop told him. He said – he went to pay it and he said “fourteen dollars and seventy cents.”  He didn’t want to pay it.  He finally paid it.  He told him “Mr. Ratliff, do you want me to fine you two hundred and fifty dollars?”  He said “I’m trying to get you out light.”  And, he paid and he sold the truck.  But he and Daddy got in an argument, what it was. And he said, he said he was nervous.  He wasn’t nervous.  He said he was hungry, had the shakes, and said he wasn’t nervous.  He asked me “where do you live” and I said “Cherokee”.  He said “where you live” and I said “Cherokee”.  He asked me seven or eight times and I said “I told you already Cherokee.  I ain’t telling you no more.”  That’s what I told him (laugh).  And, Daddy went and sold the truck. And he got feeling bad about it and bought me an old ’34 Ford car.  It didn’t have no starter in it for about – had to just push it – just barely push it and it’d start.  And I decided I wanted me a truck.  So, Claude ___ in San Saba had a wrecking yard and I went and traded it to Claude __ without anybody going with me. Daddy didn’t have to sign for it or nothing. And I traded that car for that truck and I was paying the notes on it. Daddy, Daddy died but he taught me enough of ___ and I was a payment ahead on it. And I took it down there and said “Claude I’m gonna give this truck back to you.”   He said “no, you don’t want to do that, do ya?”  I said “Yeah.”  He said “why not let Jesse have it?”  I said “well, he said he didn’t want it and he’s gonna go out and get one his self, is what he’s gonna do, you know, on his own.”  And I said “if he come and try to get it don’t let him have it.”  He said “OK.”  So he went ___ getting it and got mad at me because he couldn’t get the truck.  I was making him a living sitting on a
Simon Ratliff Tape 5 (15:00)
Simon: couch when I was hauling cedar. I traded for two Model Ts.  Well the crooked deuce that I’d get four cents a piece for I think four hundred.  I got two Model Ts and made one out of it.  I was a pretty good mechanic back then. I could take the cars and fix ‘em up and I could  use that crank and that thing cranked you know. (chuuu-uuuchu)  Broke an axel on it and I got the other rear end put under it and my brother kept on, he said “I’ll give you this pair of boots and twenty dollars for that when I get twenty dollars.”  I couldn’t wear his boots because my foot’s bigger than his and ‘give ‘em to my Daddy and they fit him and my Daddy turn around and give them back to my brother and I never did get the twenty dollars.
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon: (laugh)  I had a Model T truck and he wanted it and I let him have it and I never did get paid for it.  I was good natured. I didn’t care.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: I’d get out and get another (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon: Oh, I made a pretty good of money, but when we moved in over here she went partners with him for this trailer. I ain’t got nothing to do with it, you know. I’m just here.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon: Give it to the boy and them.  And, she had a stroke before I ____.  We been sixty one years together and I ain’t gonna quit her now.  (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh) Aw. So she’s inside.
Simon:Uh-huh
Ken:  Your Mama?
Simon: She’s humped all over like her Mama was.  And she’s ashamed ____.
Ken:  Sixty one years.
Simon: Sixty one years.
Ken:  Congratulations.  That’s your diamond – you just had your diamond anniversary.
Simon: Yeah, well we had an anniversary all right.  Sixty one years we married right here in the courthouse.
Ken:  Uh-huh. That’s great
Simon: Been here about thirty seven years. I’m the oldest one left in this trailer park.
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: I come here first. That place right over there was mine. I sold it for fourteen thousand dollars and give her the money ___she ___.  I didn’t want this trailer. They wanted it and I said “how many years.”  And you get like thirty years contract and I said “uh, uh. you better not put my name on that trailer.”  I’ll don’t want no part of it
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon: Now they all want to leave it and they cain’t.  I ain’t cutting cedar no more (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)  Well that’s really something.  We’re gonna have our forty fifth anniversary in a few days and I thought that was a long time.
Simon: It’s good if you could go a-fishing and get away from the house once in a while.  It’s good.  I don’t like to just stay in one place all the time. 
Ken:  yeah.  I agree with you. In fact I went fishing this weekend.
Simon: You’d like it if you go to the dams. That old boy there, remember I told you.
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon: And see at that house. I think he still lets ‘em go for two dollars a head fishing.
Ken:  Oh, really!
Simon: And it’s a pecan bottom there
Ken:  Yeah
Simon: And it, all under that covered is good fishing in there--
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: Under that bridge
Ken:  Oh, that’d be fun.
Simon: Two dollars for twenty-four hours out on it.
Ken:  That’s beautiful down there.
Simon: Yeah, I like down there.  Well, I hauled lots of hay down there grass burs. If you don’t believe I cut cedar – the scars – oh, many of them
Ken:  Is that from cedar branches?
Simon: That’s from cedar branches cutting, uh, stabbing me.
Ken:  Yeah, that’ll get ya.
Simon: I’ve been scratched all over.  Yep.
Ken:  Yep, that will get ya.
Simon: You see scars everywhere! (laugh)
Ken:  I heard that cedar, what’s the furthest you ever took cedar from here?
Simon: Oh, I imagine, uh, fourteen hundred miles.
Ken:  Where is that?
Simon: Montana.
Ken:  Montana!
Simon: Uh-huh
Ken:  Driving a semi?
Simon: Yeah, I worked for my cousin,
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: driving. And we went to, we went to Berthod Pass, you know where that is in Colorado?
Ken:  What’s it called?
Simon: Berthod Pass
Ken:  OK, OK, yeah, I’ve heard of that. Uh-huh
Simon: Went to Cheyene, Wyoming and all through there and we hauled cedar up through there. All the way through Jackrabbit Flats and all.
Ken:  I’ll be darned.
Simon: They called it Jackrabbit Flats up there which was a big mountain.  It goes down that mountain like this, you know. 
Ken:  Yeah.
Simon: Ten miles straight up.  It’s up  - from the time you get thirty-five miles you get up there in an ole’ International.  You had the hoods off, you know, on the side. You had to go down and get the snow and put on the fuel pump to get it from vapor locking while the other one drove. And it’d take a fifty gallons of gas going up.
Ken:  My gosh.
Simon: That old straight-eight binder.  And sometimes a diesel had to help you up, you know
Ken:  Uh-huh
Simon: Go up behind ya and push ya.  Of course, that’s when I was sixteen or seventeen years old. That’s before I’d ever seen my wife or any of ‘em down here
Ken:  You were driving up to Montana at that age?
Simon: Oh yeah, without any driver’s license.
Ken:  Yeah.
Simon:  When I got seventeen years old I got my driver’s license in Belton and I had two wrecks in my life, which I went to Sinton to take a feller down there and he’s a drunkard and I didn’t know he was piling beer in my pickup.  One of them Deluxe pickups, Chevrolets.  Had the glasses on the sides, you know, real clean.  Six cylinder and I had it boomed to my pickup, where it would follow me, and he wanted to ride in it.  And he was drunk. And he turned, he broke both bumpers off when he turned the wheel.  I was driving forty miles an hour and it, it turned me, started to turn over on her side, and I turned the wheel and made it flip on my side and me holding onto the door like that and she kicked me out the door the third time it rolled over. It totaled my pickup out. And it knocked me pretty well out ‘cause my little ole’ boy was just a little thing, you know, baby, and a little piece of glass got him.  It scared him.  My wife said “get Anthony out, get Anthony out.” And I finally shook my head and got him out, you know.  That’s the first time I’ve ever been knocked out like that. The only time.  And, he come running back up there and that car sitting there on all four wheels, laughing and cuttin’ up and I jumped up and grabbed him in the car.  (laugh)  I was, “I’ll beat you to death if somethings wrong with my wife and kid.”  And he was was kinfolks (laugh) And then, uh, feller drove up and he said, uh “you better get rid of all this beer here, at the railroad track there.”  I said “beer?”  He said “Yeah. There is two cases here.”  I said “throw it away.” They throwed it over the railroad. And the cops put me in a motel that night after the doctors checked me.  But they wouldn’t let, wouldn’t get him one.  Let him just ____ outside.  So we stayed in a motel that night.  Then I dro, then they let me drive the pickup after it turned over, home.  We had it, it lacked about that much being through the dash and I had to look under it to drive it home
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon: And when I went to get insurance on it I traded a station wagon worth as much as the pickup, but I wanted that pickup, and I owed about fourteen hundred on it.  And the insurance sent me a letter. The cop told me, said “don’t send it to them. You go down there and make them give you your part before you give them a check.” Well I didn’t do it.  I just signed my name and sent it to them. And they took my station wagon and come and got the pickup
Ken:  Huh
Simon: I said “well, I lost it all.” Trying to help somebody.
Ken:  Um-hum, yeah.  That’s too bad.
Simon: I was bad about helping .  I had ____ go out an knock the clutch out, that little feller had a big ole’ woman and a bunch of little ole’ girls and I always, for kids, when I was funny, I wanted ‘em to take care of the kids, you know, I was raised with eight in the family and I had a bunch too and he said “I ain’t got money to fix my pickup. I need a clutch in it and don’t know how to put it in there and it’s out here on the side of the road.”  I said “I’ll go pull it in” and I go pull it in Lometa.  I worked pretty fast on it.  I could take and pull the transmission on a three-speed and put it back in in thirty minutes.
Ken:  Oh my gosh.
Simon: I had one of the things, just stab that transmission, leave it loose, and then you tighten it up after you bump the starter, ___ slip in there, all you had to do was put your universal on, and I could fix it in about an hour he’s ready to go.
Ken:  Hum
Simon: And, I never did get paid for none of that stuff, but I was helping him. I filed chainsaw for him he brung it to me. They charge a dollar a piece to file ‘em back then. I didn’t never charge nobody nothing.  Well I’ve done it here
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon: for Hallbrook, you  might know him?
Ken:  who?
Simon: Hallbrook
Ken:  No, I’ve seen the name
Simon: He used to be in real estate.
Ken:  Yeah, that’s where I’ve seen the name. Yeah, Yeah.
Simon: He retired from the Air Force, and all that, and his wife retired from the Post Office. He’s got a place out here. He did have a place at the lake and he got thirty five acres back in here somewheres
Ken:  Hum.  Were you too young, you didn’t go in the service, huh?
Simon: Yeah, I went there but I didn’t stay long. See, uh, they prayed for me here, and you may not know, believe what I’m telling you, but I was just married about eight or ten months. And they called me for examination and they prayed for me after I went to Abilene and got examined and I passed the Army and they gave me a choice and they prayed for me. And the Lord told me I wasn’t gonna be in there very long. I was going in for a sign.  I was supposed to went to come back and went to Belton and preached and I didn’t obey the Lord. In thirty four days you get an honorable, like I did. See, this first Lieutenant come. They was rolling clothes. And everybody didn’t like me because I kneeled down and I prayed at my barracks before I’d go to bed.  And nobody liked me in there. And said “I’m gonna get out pretty soon.”  Nah, you signed for four years.  And I said “cause I joined the Navy.”  That First Lieutenant said to Chief “well he’s rolling and called for me and I missed it.  I did have two shirts rolled.  I went to Regiment 4 where he was and talked to him in San Diego and he said “will you pray with me?”  I said “yeah.”  He said “I’m, first of all, I’m gonna tell you what.  Last night I had a dream.  And the Lord come to me and told me to get you out of here.”  And he said “is that what you want?”  I said “that’s what I know.” (laugh)
Ken:  Um-hum
Simon: And, and he, he said “well, you go back to your regiment” after he washed his face, you know he cried.  And it made tears come in my eyes because he was crying.  He went and told me, he said “you’ll hear from me before you hear from your fam- your wife.” I never had heard from her.  Just two weeks I was in there.  Well, no more I got to  I said “Lord, the devil’s still here. (laugh) What am I gonna do?” About the time I got over there he hollered Ratliff, let’s go catch a bus out, stay at the, where catch a bus and go to that next camp.  I went down there and I missed the bus.  Come back and took my clothes out and went and washed them and he come back and he said “Ratliff – go catch that next bus out.”  I thought “boy, I was gonna get a discharge.”  Two weeks I, I was at, well they just went, out of the brig, watching people. And when I was going over there he spoke to me.  And he said “say no more.”   I wasn’t supposed to tell nobody.  They got me in there and they got me a walking post, you know, as a guard, them bed wetters, you’d have to wake them up out of the bed to go wet and one of ‘em was mean out of the brig, he wasn’t really a bed wetter but he did it for spite.  He wanted to fight all the time.  He’d bruise my arm and I’d never would say nothing. One day I told  him, I said “quit doing that.” I said “or you’re gonna end up and I’m gonna end up having to hit you.”  And I said “I don’t want you doing”  And he hauled off and hit me.  Big Indian had a foot like that and Chief, Indian, and he wanted to stay in there but they wanted to discharge him, cause his foot was too big.  And, anyway, he grabbed that feller, and he said “you let my friend alone” (laugh)
Ken:  (laugh)
Simon: I didn’t have no more trouble with him. Anyhow, that night, well he said “I’m gonna run off.”  He ain’t gonna run off from --- you’d just get caught if you was to start.  Because you’re out in the ocean, you know, out on it, ___ they’ve only got one road going in.
Ken:  Yeah
Simon: And, I said “you aint leaving, not when I’m on duty.”  He said “Yeah, I’m leaving, and you ain’t gonna be able to stop me.  And I said “You don’t pull it off too easy, but I will stop you.” And they had already, I already had learned how to use that stick, you know. They learnt me, the learned me.  Which, it was forty four days all together.  Anyhow, he, I got him out and he slipped out and he started out that door, and when he started out I tapped him on the shoulder and I already had that stick ready to knock him in the head.  I was gonna put him back in bed.  And I said “go to your bed.”  And “no, I’m leaving.”  I said “you go to your bed or I’m gonna have to carry you in there.”  And he went back to bed.  I said “me and your name will be on that post in the morning for discharge.”  That just come out of my mouth like that.  I didn’t think. I wasn’t gonna tell nobody but it just come
Simon Ratliff Tape 6 (12:44)
Simon: ___ Sure enough.  There was my name and his name too. But his was a dishonorable.
Ken: Oh
Simon:  Mine general under honorable conditions.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon: Thirty four days.  I got paid for two months salary. They never did pay my wife’s.  She never has got paid.
Ken: Huh
Simon:  They’s supposed to have paid her, you know
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  She never did get paid.  That’s been was a long time ago
Ken: That is something
Simon:  Nineteen years old.
Ken: That is a
Simon:  She’d be rich.  Even at the price she got. Four hundred and something a month.
Ken: Man, that’s just something, though, that that happened to you.
Simon:  Oh, I’ve been through it but the good Lord took me through.  I didn’t do it myself.
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  I couldn’t have done it.
Ken: Yeah, yeah
Simon:  And I, they said “what, you Daddy didn’t get you out?”  I said “no way in the world my Mama and Daddy could have got me out like that.
Ken: Oh
Simon:  I said “The good Lord got me out.”  I didn’t, I’d have stayed, you know.
Ken: You were strong, you were a strong young man.
Simon:  Oh, yeah.  Stout.
Ken: Tell me something, when you went in the Army with all these city kids and stuff, and you’d been working, cutting cedar since you were eleven, I bet you were a whole lot tougher than those kids, weren’t you, I mean
Simon:  Well, I imagine if I went in hand-to-hand fights with ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  but I didn’t believe in fighting.
Ken: You didn’t believe in it, huh
Simon:  I had to fight a few fights in my life and I won. But I didn’t like to fight
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  Uh, I had one when I was eleven years old.  A Meskin called Bingo.  We was a-getting out of school at Lometa and going to, we lived out at Red Bluff, going towards San Saba
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  And,  these old girls, there was just three boys – a white boy and a brother. And then the two Meskin boys and a bunch of girls. And they wanted them to give me a whipping. And I said “I ain’t done nothing to nobody to get a whipping.”  And he, he got up and he hit me, you know, and of course, that feller, back then we rode pickups for bus. There wasn’t a bus
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  And he was watching through the mirror. He’d seen I wasn’t the one that done it. And I’d tell him “don’t do that no more, Bingo.” And he hit me six times before I got mad.  And when he started the seventh time – I don’t know how I did it – but, we was just standing up in that thing and I turned him a complete flip.  I don’t hit but with the right hand and both his eyes I put him on that steel bed, you know, I hit one eye and the other. He swelled up like a bunch of bumble bees got him.  He stayed in bed two weeks. I ‘bout killed that poor kid.
Ken: Um
Simon:  And then I think back now I could have killed him – why you want to fight? I’m talking about fighting
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  And I’d say “it’s  one move there and one – he was up in eighth grade and I’s in the fourth, and he said, he said he’s gonna give you a whupping, he’s a bully.  And I said to him “he ain’t gonna give me a whupping, I ain’t gonna fight him.”  “Yeah, you’ll fight him.”  I said “no, I won’t fight him.”  I said “I won’t have to.”  Back then I had good eyes and I looked him straight in the eye, you know.  Which I fought with my eye.  I didn’t fight with my fist.  I fought with my eye. Like a game rooster.
Ken: Hum
Simon:  If you didn’t look ‘em straight in the eye, you’re gonna get kicked from ___ And he come sliding (laugh) “I’m gonna give you a whupping.”  I said “you think you can?”  “I know I can.” And I said “you really do?”  “Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna tell ya.”  “Well you’re still the bully here.  You want to stay a bully?  If you do you better leave me alone because when I get through I’m gonna be the bull of the woods.” (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Simon:  (laugh) And he said “lets be friends” 
Ken: He believed you. Yeah. That’s good.
Simon:  And, another one when I was fourteen years old I had that ’34 car.  I hauled em around. I had twenty dollars.  Back then twenty dollars like a thousand.
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  You know.  I spent that whole twenty dollars on him. Got him a girlfriend. He was eighteen years old. He was a boxer. And we got out of the café and I asked him to help me push the car. They were leaving and they wouldn’t do it. I pushed it.  I ___ and I said next time I see you I’ll give you a whipping.  And I told the old boy, he come over and helped me, Charlie Colby, helped me push it, and he said “I’ll tell him.”  And about three o’clock in the morning I was sitting up there and my brother-in-law and brother and two girlfriends he had.  I didn’t go with girls then.  You couldn’t hardly get me to talk to em, hardly a’tall – I wouldn’t  talk to one. And (laugh) he kind of looked crossed eyed and he said “well, ____  he’s coming to give me a whipping. I told him I’d whip him next time I see him.” And got up there. I said “no”, I said “I knowed ya all of my life” and I said “I don’t want to fight you.”  “You’re gonna fight me anyhow.”   I said “No, I’m not gonna fight ya.”  That old gal got up there and hollered “yall gonna fight get it over with.” And when she did I jumped plumb to where they turned the water on there going toward Llano out there on the San Saba off of ___ right on top.  I jumped plumb down on it. And when he come down I just grabbed him by the shoulder and ____ him. And he come up and wanted to hit at me and I played with him. I wouldn’t hit him.  I played with him thought for about ten minutes but he couldn’t hit me. And pretty soon I went and hit him and knocked him over that bench. One of them church benches sit out in the yard. I knocked him plumb over that bench. And he grunted like a big hog when he hit the ground.
Ken: (laugh)
Simon:  And then here come that Jeep around there and he thought it was the law which they could stick him but they couldn’t stick me – I was just a minor.  And he sat down and I said “come on, if you want to fight, let’s get it over with.”  “I ain’t gonna fight ya while he’s here, that’s the law.”  I turned around and watched him drive off and hit me behind the ear. And I went blind. I just fell on that water outfit, shaking my head and I could barely see him when that boot started hitting me in the face and when I come up I went with that right and he went over that bench. I come from the ground after him
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  I mean I knocked him over and the next time he run up and I watched him and seen what he was gonna do. He had boots on, you know, and I seen his eyes move and they went to his feet.  And when he did he started to kick I jumped forward and he caught me here and I got him three times in the nuts.  I whipped him.  I like killed that poor thing.  When I did that I went down ‘cause his hand was busted. I hit him in the elbow and knocked him over that bench.  And when I hit him he said knuckle still busted.”  And he come back and he kicked me there and I got him three times in that same foot, while he had his leg up.”
Ken: With you leg, kicked him?
Simon:  ___ foot, I hit him
Ken: Fast!
Simon:  He was trying to kick me
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  And he got me. I jumped – where he got me on the shin. 
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  And  I got him three times and when I did I had to use this hand.  I just used it ___knock ___ off you know.  I went from the ground and I caught him on the chin and he went over that bench again. And she run out there and hit me and knocked me pretty near to that bumper.  That girl. Yeah “_____”
Ken: (laugh)
Simon:  ______ I said “I’ll whip the whole bunch of ya.” And they all run.
Ken: Hum
Simon:  I didn’t have no more troubles with him
Ken: That’s good
Simon:  And that was the last fight I fought
Ken: Yeah
Simon:  ____ fought my brother.  I didn’t want to
Ken: Hum
Simon:  But I fought him.  I’m embarrassed about that.
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  I didn’t want to. But he cussed my Mama and he asked for it.
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  Yeah, but I always let him whip me, you know.  Let he think he could. Until he did that. And he never cussed my Mama again.  (laugh)
Ken: Man.  You know I feel like I could sit here all day and listen to your stories.
Simon:  I used to could be a ____ and quarry these here bulls eye rocks -  look like a bullseye.  These sand rock for houses.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  I’ve quarried house, four square a day with an axe, busting it.  And we’ve done that.  I used to could run twenty miles an hour and get on the back of a truck.   When a squirrel hit the acre lamp I could run up to the front of truck where it was doing it. I can run twenty miles an hour, run and jump off it, catch that squirrel. 
Ken: Say that again – you’re going – you’re in the back of a truck
Simon:  Yeah. And he just run twenty miles an hour in this truck
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  ___ and I could run on that bed and jump off and catch a squirrel if it was out in the fl___
Ken: (laugh)
Simon:  I’d catch him and they’d laugh at me cause I could run twenty miles an hour.  I’d run past that truck. And when I’d leap I’d be ahead of that truck.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
Simon:  And that little squirrel had to get in a big hurry. (laugh)
Ken: Did you eat a lot of squirrels as a kid?
Simon:  Yeah, eat a lot of birds.
Ken: Uh-huh. Shotgun?
Simon:  No
Ken: Or, B.B. gun?
Simon:  I used a sling shot
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  I could be on my own sling shot back then and I could kill a bird in the air, you know, I’d cut their heads off flying. 
Ken: Doves, or any king of bird?
Simon:  You know, there’s mostly Doves, and Robins, and
Ken: Uh-huh, Uh-huh
Simon:  Robins sometimes they got a worm in the craw, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  But they’ve got real, real red meat.  They’re good.
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  But you don’t see much of them anymore.
Ken: No, you don’t. Did you catch a lot of fish as a kid?
Simon:  When I was a kid I lived, when I first started school, there used to be a creek at Cherokee about six miles out, going out toward the dam.  We lived back down in there and the water was clear, you know.   ___ fourteen foot deep and the trout was about that big
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  And that tree fell over and ___ we’d get out there and ___ tree.  And have a ___ and get that ___ down there and
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  We used to catch those fish in that water.
Ken: I see
Simon:  But you could see them down there in that water.
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  When you get ‘em out they about that big.
Ken: Trout?
Simon:  Yeah
Ken: Huh.  Catfish too?
Simon:  No, there wasn’t many catfish in there where they was.
Ken: Oh, OK
Simon:  But they had toads down there that big
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  You know, ___ soft shell turtle I thought “ __- I’ll get that thing.”  You can’t handle it.  There is no way you can hold that turtle.  I got a hold of him and there ___he’d take me down the stream
Ken: Man
Simon: ____ tired me out. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Simon:  He weighed about fifty pounds, that turtle did.
Ken: I heard there weren’t too many deer back in those days.
Simon:  Well, uh, there was a lot of deer down in there.  We had goats that was killed
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon:  Even had ___ riding goats like that
Ken: Did yall raise, did ya’ll have a garden and raise food too?
Simon:  Raised a garden, raised pigs, and scrape ‘em
Ken: Uh-hum
Simon:  Yeah, and cows
Ken: and milk ‘em
Simon:  I can tell you the best milk cow there is if I look at it
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:   I just – milk in her
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  I look at, I walk up in back of it and tell you whether she’s with calf.  ___ before she has the calf.
Ken: Um-hum
Simon:  It’d be an orange color. Her tits got to be that long, or I don’t want ‘em. About that big
Ken: Um-hum,  yeah.
Simon: I had one, I bought it – five hundred and fifty dollars – that was a long time ago
Ken: That is an expensive cow.
Simon: That cow had bag like that much above the ground.  She was ___
Ken: Yeah
Simon: ____
Ken: Um-hum
Simon: And I could milk six gallons a day. Six gallons a day from her and two ___ and a calf. 
Ken: I’ll be darn
Simon: And I showed her to my Daddy and he showed her to another ____
Ken: Uh-huh
Simon: Those old cows liked me though.  I could walk out and help ‘em without feed. 
Ken: Is this your son-in-law
Simon: That’s my boy
Ken: Your boy?  Let me go out and I’ll meet him here
End.