Transcript and Audio of Interview with Stoney Teague

Stoney Teague

Interview May 2015

Oral History Interview with Stoney Teague, May 9 2015 on The Portal to Texas History.

ST001
Ken: So, if this thing’s working. Good. I’m sitting here, talking to Stoney Teague on Saturday the 7th of May, right here in beautiful Sandy Creek at the top of the hill, Cedar Ridge, boy it’s pretty up here. It’s got a nice breeze.
ST: Yeah, it’s always got a breeze out of both directions. Out the south and out of the north.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Did you have air conditioning when you put it in, when you built this house?
ST: No. I’ve just got window units.
Ken:Uh-huh
ST: Yeah, we, we went without it for, for a long time, because we put our house up at the top of a hill and made sure that the air would flow through in both directions, and all that. Anyway, we did without it for a long time, but finally we broke down (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
ST: We use window units, uh, we’ve got a window unit for the front of the house, and, of course, the bedrooms.
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah
ST: And, that’s all we use, window units.
Ken: Yeah, yeah. When were you born, Stoney?
ST: Uh, March the 10th, 1941. 3/10/41.
Ken: OK. And you were a truck driver most of your life, huh?
ST: Yeah, I drove truck, well, I cut cedar and laid rock and all of that with some of the, with Bill Hickman and Less Clawson, and some of the old rock layers.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And Cecil Clawson.
Ken:Right
ST: I worked with all of them. And then I went to driving a truck. And I drove a truck forty-eight years.
Ken: The Clawsons, yeah, do some of them live out here?
ST: Uh, Cecil. The last time I talked to him was working on my house. Right over here in this, uh, Honeycomb Hills.
Ken: Um-hum
ST:   He had built a couple of houses over there. Laid the rock and stuff on ‘em.
Ken:Uh-huh
ST: And I’ve seen him at Jonestown one afternoon, and talked to him over there, and that’s what he was doing and I, well that was, oh, I can’t remember, that’s back in the seventies, I guess, late seventies.
Ken: Uh-huh. Are you married? I believe you are.
ST: Yeah, my wife’s in the house there.
Ken: What’s her maiden name?
ST: Her maiden name was Dearing
Ken: Dearing
ST: Dearing.
Ken: Was she from West Austin? West of out there Bee Cave Area?
ST: Yeah, they, well, they lived around Spicewood.
Ken: OK. Dearing. I don’t know that name.
ST: Roy Dearing had Dearing’s Automotive over here on 620.
Ken: Oh, Dearing, yeah, I remember that name, yeah.
ST: Back years ago they had, well, when me and her first uh, well, we started dating, they had this old Gulf service station there in Leander. There on the corner, where the old road used to turn off and come out here.
Ken: Oh, yeah
ST: Him and her daddy run that, Roy and Amel, was his name
Ken: Amel.
ST: Yeah, Amel Dearing
Ken: OK. Sounds like they’re German
ST: That was, uh, I guess they was part German
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Anyway, Roy had that old Gulf service station up there, and both of ‘em worked there. Rebuilding engines and, you know
Ken: Yeah
ST: just whatever.
Ken: I noticed your neighbor here is a Stark. That’s not the Stark from up there at Bull Creek, is it?
ST: That’s Gene Stark, yeah, Homer Crawford was his Uncle.
Ken:Uh-huh
ST: I don’t know if you ever knowed the Crawfords.
Ken: Unt-uh
ST: Ruby Crawford was, uh, she married Gene Stark’s daddy back years ago when she was just a girl. And ‘ol Gene’s got a body shop over there.
Ken: Were they, were they, uh, there’s some Starks that grew up around Bull Creek. Were they from that area?
ST: I don’t know if they were from around there or not.
Ken: OK
ST: But, uh, Gene’s got some brothers that lives around Oak Hill.
Ken: OK, yeah. So, tell me about, your daddy, I think I, this is a picture of him. Let’s see if I have it here. Homer Teague, right?
ST: Yeah, his name was Homer Teague.
Ken: I think I have a picture of him somewhere. I found on this, uh well, maybe I don’t. Huh, there it is. Is that your father?
ST: I don’t know, I guess it probably is. He had a, yeah that’s probably him, ‘cause he had a dog like that and called him Bill Dog.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And that, everywhere that my daddy went that dog went with him.
Ken: Well he’s a young man, you can keep that if you want to. But I could probably make you a, I’m sorry that came out so weird, uh, but I could probably make you a real picture of that. Make, you know, if I got some photographic paper and printed it off, I’ll be happy to do that if you’d like.
ST: OK, yeah.
Ken: That’s a cool picture, isn’t it?
ST: I think I’ve got a picture of that dog.
Ken: How old do you figure he is there?
ST: Probably in his late twenties, early thirties.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
ST: He was forty two when I was born.
Ken: Well that’s pretty old, yeah. And who was your mom?
ST: Her name was, uh, Mary Marx.
Ken: Mary Marx, uh-huh
ST: Yeah, they was from over around Oak Hill over there.
Ken: OK
ST: That side of the family, uh, he, uh, my great-grandpa built that old rock store, that old big rock store there in Oak Hill.
Ken: Great-grandpa Teague?
ST: No. Marx.
Ken: Marx, OK.
ST: Yeah, he built that store there in Oak Hill.
Ken: OK.
ST: And, uh, then he built his house over on Barton Creek and both of them buildings was pretty well close to being identical.
Ken: OK
ST: But he built his house for his family over there on Barton Creek.
Ken: What was his name?
ST: His name was, uh, Henry Marx, was his name, but it was in German in was Henry, I can’t remember right off hand.
Ken: Uh-huh, OK.
ST: I’ve got a history of it somewheres there in the house.
Ken: Uh-huh. Well, uh, what happened to your mama?
ST: She’s still alive. She lives up there at Lampasas.
Ken: They got divorced?
ST: Yeah, they divorced in 1942.
Ken: Uh-huh. Right after you were born.
ST: Yeah, I was a year old.
Ken: Uh-huh, so you didn’t know her too well
ST: No, I didn’t know her until I was fifteen
Ken:Uh-huh
ST: And, well, I ain’t seen her, I guess, it’s been, I guess, over a year
Ken: Uh-huh. She must be really old.
ST: She’s ninety-five. Well, she’ll be ninety-five July the 1st.
Ken: Uh-huh, OK, huh. That’s something. So, did your dad remarry?
ST: No, he never remarried. No, he lived by hisself until he died. He died in ’65.
Ken:OK
ST: In June of ’65, I think June the 20th of ’65.
Ken: Now, where did he live? Where did ya’ll live growing up?
ST: Four miles down that old Bee Cave Road from Bee Cave over there.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: There’s nine miles, used to be nine miles, out there, of course, now, it’s not that far.
Ken: Four miles from 360, huh?
ST: No, it was four miles from Bee Cave.
Ken: Oh, four miles from Bee Cave.
ST: Back toward Austin.
Ken: Oh. OK. So he didn’t live on Bee Cave Road, he lived four miles off of Bee Cave Road?
ST: No, on the old Bee Cave Road.
Ken: Oh. OK. That’s not the same as the new one, huh?
ST: 2244.
Ken: Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, yeah.
ST: He lived right there, pretty close to where the old cemetery is.
Ken: OK
ST: Over there. From the cemetery, oh about as far as from here to Gene Stark’s house, across the creek there, was where we lived, that was our old home place.
Ken: OK
ST: And then Bruton Springs School was right up there on the old road
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: That’s where I first went, started school.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
ST: And, uh, they condemned the school. They said, well actually they condemned the water well. And they, uh, then they closed the school. Then I had to go to Eanes school. And, see, my grandpa, gave Bob Eanes that five acres of land there where the Eanes school is now.
Ken: OK. What was your granddad’s name?
ST: John
Ken: John, OK. So it was John had Homer, and then some other boys too.
ST: There was twelve kids, I think.
Ken: OK
ST: Had, I believe, five boys or six boys and six girls.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Something, I think there was twelve kids in that family.
Ken: A big family.
ST: Yeah
Ken: But was it just Homer and you and brother?
ST: Yeah
Ken: just the three of you?
ST: Just us three lived together.
Ken: I’ll be darned. What did Homer do for a living?
ST: Well, mostly cut cedar.
Ken:Uh-huh
ST: He cut cedar and cut wood, uh, there for a while he was a Deputy Constable under Jim McCoy, back in the, I guess, the ‘30s, and I think 1937 he took the oath of office as a State Game Warden and he was the Game Warden for a few years.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Other than that he cut cedar, cut wood, burnt charcoal. Just whatever it took to make a living
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh
ST: Made and sold whisky back during the depression.
Ken: Yeah. Some of the folks at Bull Creek were even doing it in the ‘40s after the depression.
ST: Oh, yeah
Ken: Yeah
ST: Yeah, a lot of the Youngs
Ken: Yeah. Ike Young
ST: Ike Young
Ken: I’ve heard stories about him having
ST: Ike Young, Brucy Young. Ike Young killed Boobie Allen over there, over a whisky still.
Ken: He killed Boobie Allen?
ST: Yeah
Ken: I didn’t know that.
ST: Yeah.
Ken: I heard, I knew about that case where that still got busted and that revenuer got killed. And he got, he got the rap for it, but he didn’t do it.
ST: Well, uh, him and Boobie Allen, the way I understand it, got in a fight and he stuck him with a butcher knife, just like you’d stick a hog and then pop the handle off so he couldn’t pull it out.
Ken: Oh my gosh.
ST: I guess he died in the penitentiary. I don’t know whatever happened to him after that.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
ST: I’ve got a picture of his brother, Ruffus Young.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Ruffus Young and my daddy was the best of friends
Ken: OK
ST: They run the beer joints together and they’d go down there on 6th Street and fight them old beer joints out
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh). Did they like to fight?
ST: Oh, yeah, man, they loved it.
Ken: Isn’t that something.
ST: Yeah, my daddy, hell, he’d get on a mule and ride ten miles to get in a fist fight.
Ken: (laugh) How, was he a big man?
ST: He stood five foot eight. His standard weight was a hundred and sixty-five pounds.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But he was all muscles. Well, them old boys, all they done was swing an axe all day long. You know. And they stayed in shape.
Ken: I imagine they did.
ST: yeah, they loved that fighting. And they’d drink that whisky, get drunk, and they’d fight each other, and then the next day they’d be out there working together.
Ken: Is that right.
ST: But, you know, there wasn’t no such a thing back then as welfare.
Ken: No.
ST: If a man got cut with an axe or got burnt out, you know, anything that happened to him. Everybody jumped in, you know, and they’d bail him out. They’d cut a load of cedar and buy his groceries pay his bills and get him back up, you know, where he could take care of hisself.
Ken: Uh-huh. So, everybody out there stuck together.
ST: Oh, yeah, they stuck together.
Ken: What was some of the other friends of your fathers, the people that stuck together, what were some of the other family names?
ST: Well, there was the Roberts and the Youngs and, there was the Doughertys
Ken: Doughertys, uh-huh, uh-huh
ST: Yeah, I went to school with all
Ken: The Pierces, did you guys know them?
ST: I knew the Pierces. Ed Pierce and my daddy was real good friends.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Ed Pierce used to haul cedar for my daddy. When- daddy never did drive and after me and Robert left home, well he didn’t have nobody to haul cedar for him so Ed would haul cedar to the yard for him so he could buy his groceries, pay his bills and stuff like that.
Ken: Uh-huh. He never did drive?
ST: He never did drive. He worked a pair of mules to a wagon until they made him quit getting out on the pavement. They paved the roads out there and as long as they were dirt he worked a pair of mules to a wagon.
Ken: Uh-huh. You mean out that Bee Cave Road?
ST: Yeah.
Ken: So, what year did they pave that road?
ST: I can’t remember exactly. I was just a kid. I guess probably four or five years old. I can remember them paving it, but, I guess, 1950, during the war, you know
Ken: Yeah, yeah, huh. So he never, ‘cause, I mean, most of the folks that I’ve talked to, they liked to drive. They had trucks, and, you know, they had these old Hoopies that they’d get their cedar on.
ST: Yeah, yeah, they’d go and buy ‘em an old car and take an axe and cut it off, put a little bed on it, and make ‘em a Hoopie. So they could get out and make a living.
Ken: Yeah, yeah. Huh. I wonder why he didn’t want to drive?
ST: He, uh got drunk one time. He had a Model T and he run it into John Wendt’s store, that was the only thing that was in South Austin back then. He run it into John Wendt’s store and knocked all the groceries off of the shelf and out on the floor, tore his Model T up, and he said that was the end of it. He quit driving it.
Ken: Huh! (laugh)
ST: He went and got his mules and hooked the mules to a wagon and he said if he needed to go to town or needed to haul anything, he’d hook his mules up
Ken: Is that thing still working? Yeah, that’s a….I’ll be darned! So, he had to stop, yeah, using the mules in the 1940s.
ST: Yeah, when they, when they paved the roads they didn’t want him, you know, running that wagon out there on that new pavement. So, he had to, had to get out, out of his wagon and that pretty well take him, you know, where he had to get somebody to help him then.
Ken: Were you living, that just reminds me of, were you living at that place in the 1950s when that drought came?
ST: Yeah, in 1950 all the water wells dried up
Ken: Yeah. What did you guys do for water?
ST: We carried water from a well over there on Barton Creek
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: About half a mile, we had to carry water and water the mules, you know, water the chickens or whatever was on the place, we had to carry water and water them.
Ken: Was that that municipal, that city run well, or something,
ST: No, it was just a regular old water well
Ken: Uh-huh. And it still flowed, huh?
ST: Yeah, it was, that old well was pretty deep. And it was right there, oh, just right below the cemetery.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: It was about, oh, a hundred yards from that cemetery.
ST002
Ken: OK. Well, you were lucky to live that close to it, then.
ST: Yeah. I guess it was probably a quarter of a mile and we could take a cedar pole and put a five gallon bucket on that cedar pole. Robert would get on one end and I’d get on the other end, we’d fill that bucket full of water and we’d make about three or four trips. Fill the water trough so the mules, horse, and stuff could get water.
Ken: Oh, man, you had a lot of stock, huh?
ST: Yeah, Yeah, the old man always kept horses and mules. You know, a lot of people don’t know that mules won’t reproduce.
Ken: No, I know they don’t. Yeah.
ST: You had to have a donkey and a mare.
Ken: Right, yeah
ST: And he always kept a donkey and a mare. He’d breed him up a good pair of mules. That’s what he used to pull logs and stuff out of them canyons.
Ken: Oh, of course, yeah, so he’d pull ‘em up to the road where somebody else could put ‘em on their truck, or he’d put ‘em on their truck.
ST: Yeah, he’d put ‘em on a truck and, mostly Ed Pierce and some of them boys, Raymond Teague and some of them and hauled cedar for him.
Ken: Uh-huh, huh. Where did ya’ll sell the cedar, do you remember?
ST: He sold at, there were several yards back then. Uh, King had a, King had a cedar yard there on South Lamar. And it turned to the right on South Lamar there and go up to the top of the hill. and there was a left up there, just before you get to where Ben White comes out now.
Ken: h-huh, right, Uh-huh. And then Joe Robert’s yard, you mentioned that. I guess
ST: Yeah. Joe Roberts and Little Jess Teague and Elsie had a cedar yard there at Oak Hill.
Ken: Little Jess Teague. Was that, was he the guy that fought in WWII?
ST: Uh. No, that was Rayburn’s daddy. Rayburn Teagues’ daddy. Little Jess.
Ken: OK
ST: And his wife’s name was Simpson. She was Buck Simpson. See, Buck Simpson is buried there in the cemetery, just as you go in the gate there.
Ken: Right
ST: And he was the one that was in WWI. He was a hero.
Ken: He was a hero, right, right. Well, there was a Jess, Jessie, or Jess Teague was in WWII, and, uh, you ever heard of him?
ST: No
Ken: Came back, yeah
ST: See, there was two Jess Teagues. And both their wives names was Elsie.
Ken: OK
ST: Bert, Raymond, well there were Charlie Teague, come off this country back years ago, and, as far as I know, he never had anything to do with the rest of the family. But
Ken: He came over here
ST: Around Leander, Liberty Hill, and back up in here. And as far as I know, he never did go back around any of his family
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But that was Jess and Elsie’s oldest boy. They lived on the old Bee Cave Road there where ___ Stevens School Road turns off? Well, they built right there on that corner.
Ken: OK. Huh.
ST: Yeah, they used to keep me and Robert for the old man when he needed to go to town or something, well they, he’d leave us there with them and he might be gone two or three days, you know, back when he was Game Warden
Ken: Uh-huh. How would he get there?
ST: Walk. He either rode a mule or walked.
Ken: Uh-huh. It was pretty far to walk.
ST: Yeah. He’d walk that nine miles and didn’t think nothing about it.
Ken: Huh. Isn’t that something. So you were telling me when we first started talking about your great-grandfather or whoever came here first and bought the land. You said he bought some land out there where you guys were.
ST: Well, my grandpa bought that land. Uh, Bob Mobley, they called him The Grey Ghost during the Civil War. He’d give my grandpa a thousand dollars. One of the boys got, his name was George, got run over there in Austin with a street car. And they sued the street car company and got eight thousand dollars out of the lawsuit.
Ken: That was the Mobley or your grandfather?
ST: That was my grandpa and grandma
Ken: OK
ST: That was John Teague.
Ken: OK. And one of his boys, George, got killed
ST: Got killed. And, uh, Bob Mobley and my grandpa was real good friends. And, I don’t know why, but he give him a thousand dollars, and he took that thousand dollars and that eight thousand dollars, nine thousand dollars, and bought that ranch up there, built the house, barns, everything on it. Now, I don’t how
Ken: Did you say 1880 or something?
ST: Along in the 1880s.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And
Ken: Damn
ST: My daddy said that the land didn’t have real good timber on it. They’d give fifteen cents an acre for it. If it had real good timber on it they’d give as much as two bits an acre.
Ken: And he spent that many thousand. How many acres did he get out of that?
ST: Fourteen hundred.
Ken: Wow. I’ll be darned. And it went all the way from Barton Creek to the Colorado River?
ST: Yeah. He had sixty acres of the cotton bottom there on Barton Creek.
Ken: Oh, that’s pretty, I bet. Is that still there?
ST: No, that’s all million, half a million dollar homes in there now.
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah. Man.
ST: You know, that’s, I drove through there here a while back, and you wouldn’t even know where you’re at over there.
Ken: No. I’ll bet not. Yeah.
ST: Yeah, that, that’s what started the school there at Eanes School when I, well I started at Bruton Springs School there, where my daddy was living when he died. When I was five years old. And then when I was, I think, seven years old I went, I started, no I guess I was six years old, I started, uh, to school there at Eanes School.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: My grandpa bought that little five acre piece of land there where Eanes School is now. And he cut all the timber off of it. Well, back then the land wadn’t no good. So, Bob Eanes come along and he wanted that little five acre piece of land to build a school.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: Well, I think then, my daddy said in the deal, my grandpa told him, said I’ll let you have that five acres of land – just give it to you, put a cemetery on it, put a church on it, and school on it. Well I don’t know if they’ll let anybody be buried in the cemetery or not, but the cemetery is still there.
Ken: Oh, I’ve seen that, uh-huh
ST: Uh, last time I went to a funeral there was in 1955. Emmet Riley was buried there. That was a real good friend of my daddy’s
Ken:Uh-huh
ST: All of the Rileys, the Pattersons and all of them was all, was all neighbors
Ken: Right, right, I’ve heard of a guy named Rush Riley.
ST: Yeah, Rush Riley and Emmet Riley was brothers.
Ken: OK
ST: Tom Riley was my great-grandpa on my mama’s side of the family. And, I think, Mary Roberts, if I’m not real bad mistaken, I think she was one of Jim Riley’s daughters.
Ken: OK. Married to Joe Roberts?
ST: Yeah
Ken: She was, I think she was a Patterson.
ST: Well, she might be. I guess she was a Patterson. She was Kate Patterson’s daughter
Ken: Uh-huh, OK. OK. Oh man, there’s a
ST: Kate Paterson was Emmet Riley’s sister and Will Riley’s and, uh, Tom Riley and all of them’s sister, Rush Riley’s sister
Ken: OK. So everybody knew everybody, didn’t they
ST: Oh, yes
Ken: Man. Do you remember Melba Teague?
ST: Melba Teague? Yeah, that’s Bert Teague’s daughter
Ken: ‘cause she went, she went to school with me at O’Henry. You know, that’s where I met Luther. So you went on to, uh, you went on to, what happened to Melba?
ST: She’s dead.
Ken: Oh, is she?
ST: Yeah, they buried her there at Bee Cave.
Ken: Oh
ST: I talked to, I went to a funeral over here on Hamilton Pool Road, here, oh, it’s been six, seven months ago now. Uh, and there was a boy there and he told me that she was buried there at Bee Cave in that little cemetery.
Ken: Hum. Man, that’s a bunch of, so everybody knew everybody. This is kind of funny, they seemed like everybody was marrying someone who’s a neighbor. Well, naturally, I mean, but you ended up with a, you didn’t know her when you were growing up, huh?
ST: No, unt-uh
Ken: Uh-uh
ST: I went to school with Rodney and Verna. That was the two oldest kids. And then Little Bert and Melba, Paulette, and I can’t remember the other kids of Bert and, uh, his wife had but, I used to lay rock with Bert. I helped him build a couple of houses over there in Rollingwood
Ken: OK
ST: Yeah, I was just a kid back then.
Ken: You went to Eanes School, when did you, when did you stop going to school?
ST: Let’s see, I went to the 9th grade, I guess, along about ’53 or ’54, somewhere along there
Ken: OK. So you never went over to O’Henry
ST: Yeah, I went to O’Henry, one year
Ken: You did. One year?
ST: Yeah
Ken: Man, I bet that was something, ‘cause then it had just opened up, hadn’t it? About that time.
ST: Yeah, along about that time. Uh, we went to Eanes School, uh, I can’t remember what grade they, uh, we had to quit Eanes, and then they sent us to O’Henry one year. And then I left home in 1954. I was gone six years. And I went to, I went to Oak Hill School one year and then I went to Houston and I went to school in Houston in one year. That was in eighth grade. And then from there I went to Dallas and went to work.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Had to go to work make my own living.
Ken: Had your older brother already left home? And you were the last one there?
ST: No, me and him left about the same time.
Ken: OK. Do you mind me asking why you left so young?
ST: Well, just, you know, got tired of being around the old man, him staying drunk all the time, you know, it’s hard to get along with
Ken: Was he?
ST: Oh yeah, he stayed drunk 90% of the time.
Ken: Oh, OK
ST: And he was hard to get along with to start out with
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: You know, and just finally got tired of it.
Ken: I imagine you did, yeah.
ST: Yeah, I stayed with a man and woman that used to run a beer joint there in Oak Hill. I stayed with them six years. And traveled around a little, ended up in Birmingham, Alabama working on a pipeline job. And then come back and went to work for the City of Dallas and I worked for them for a year then I went to south Texas roughnecking for a while
Ken: OK
ST: That roughnecking now, that’s a job! (laugh) Or it was back then. I think it’s a whole lot easier now than it was back then. Boy, that was hard work back then.
Ken: Uh-huh. I bet it was. It paid good, though, didn’t it? Better than anything else.
ST: Yeah, it paid good, but, boy, it was hard work.
Ken: Harder than cutting cedar?
ST: Oh, yeah. I went back to, when I got out of the oil patch I went back to Oak Hill, over there, and cut cedar over there with Earl Marx.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Earl was my uncle. I stayed with him, oh I guess six, seven months, over there on Barton Creek cutting cedar.
Ken: This was when you were using a chain saw by then?
ST: Oh, no. We used an axe
Ken: Still using an axe.
ST: Oh, yeah, we didn’t have no money to buy anything with.
Ken: OK
ST: If we had a chain saw we couldn’t afford gas for it.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: (laugh) We cut everything with an axe
Ken: When you were cutting with an axe, how much could you make, how many poles, posts could you cut in a day?
ST: We usually tried to cut about a hundred, a hundred and a quarter
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: About fifteen, sixteen dollars worth
Ken: Uh-huh. If you were a roughneck at that same year, how much would you be making as a roughneck?
ST: I think when I quit roughnecking I believe it was paying about $1.25 an hour. No, we was making, oh I guess, somewhere around forty, fifty dollars a week.
Ken: You could make as much in a day cutting cedar as you could roughnecking.
ST: Yeah
Ken: Isn’t that something. ‘Cause I always heard that was the best paid job in Texas.
ST: It was, you know, it was, it depend on what you done. If you was a floor hand, you know, it paid one price, and if you were a dirt man, dirt man, uh, made about $210 a week.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But, you know, it depends on, you know, who you was working for. And it had, it was like anything else, they had different prices they paid ya.
Ken: Yeah, sure. You didn’t ever know Don Simons, did you? He’s from Bull Creek area. The Boatrights and the Simons, the Shannons, they all lived in Bull Creek, but he was a roughneck for years and years.
ST: Yeah, I knowed the Boatrights, I knowed Frank and I knowed all the Simons, Connie Simons
Ken: Um-hum. Don’s father was Lee Simons.
ST: Yeah, I knew it.
Ken: And his uncle was Dick Simons
ST: Yep
Ken: Right. And he ran away for about the same reason you did and he became a roughneck eventually and made, you know, he wasn’t, he was gone from Texas for years and years, Louisiana and stuff.
ST: You know Floyd Cantwell had that old junk yard down there on, uh, Spicewood Springs Road for years
Ken: Yes, uh-huh
ST: And, I’ve seen him over here at Punk’s funeral, oh, I guess a couple of years ago and talked with him for a while.
Ken: I talked to him.
ST: Do you know Punk? Did you ever know Punk Cantrell?
Ken: I didn’t know Punk, but, I guess his brother is Lee Cantrell.
ST: Lee and Charlie
Ken: Uh-huh. And Lee lives in Liberty Hill
ST: Yeah
Ken: I know Lee. I didn’t know Punk. But I heard I should of, heard I should of talked to him. He told a lot of stories.
ST: That’s all he ever done was cut cedar.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But, later years he finally got up to where he could cut with a chainsaw. And him and Shorty was cutting together and Shorty said he kind-of got, you know, where Punk couldn’t, you know, couldn’t get out there and work by hisself because, you know, he just, he’d give plumb out.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And they were afraid you know that he’d get out there and he’d give out and he couldn’t get back, you know, so
Ken: Right
ST: Shorty finally just, you know, cut with him until both of ‘em got to where they just couldn’t cut any more.
Ken: Right
ST: And Shorty run that shop there at Liberty Hill for years.
Ken: Uh-huh. How old was Punk
ST003
Ken: when he stopped cutting, I wonder.
ST: Uh, I imagine Punk was probably up close to eighty, I imagine, because Shorty, Shorty I think is eighty six, eighty seven, somewhere along in there.
Ken: Wow. He was cutting into, that old, huh!
ST: Yeah
Ken: Isn’t that something! Huh!
ST: Yeah, Shorty is still living up here, right this side of Briggs, up there with Larry, his oldest boy. Uh, he bought a place up there and Shorty’s got a mobile home up there living up there.
Ken: Uh-huh. I think Floyd lives up there too.
ST: Yeah, Floyd bought a place up there. Yeah, Floyd wanted me to come up there and look at his new place. He built a new house up there and I told him, I said “one of these days I’ll come up there.” I ain’t never got a chance to go, so (laugh)
Ken: He described it to me. It sounds really nice.
ST: Yeah. He said it was real nice. It think that somebody was telling me that he’s got an Indian mound up there that he lets people go up there and dig arrow heads.
Ken: Oh, OK, that’s cool.
ST: I thought about, you know, going up there one of these days digging some of them arrows, I’ve always been interested in stuff like that. I’ve always collected antiques. I collect guns and knives, and coins, arrow heads, all kinds of antiques.
Ken: Man, I bet you’ve got a lot of that in the, where you grew up.
ST: Yeah, I found quite a few arrow heads and stuff back when I was a kid.
Ken: Do you still have them?
ST: No, no (laugh) my daddy give all of ‘em away when I left home. I had a shoe box full of ‘em. Real good arrow heads.
Ken: Yeah, yeah.
ST: I don’t know who he give ‘em to.
Ken: Yeah, I had a whole bunch of ‘em too, and I think they got stolen or something. They’re gone. (laugh) Well let me ask you about some of the, like, you mentioned the Youngs. I mean, they were, were they mean or just, I know that they sure got in a lot of trouble. Some of ‘em went to prison and all, but were they nice people?
ST: You know, as long as you didn’t bother ‘em, they were just, you know, ordinary peole.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Now, if one of ‘em ever got mad at you, boy you had your enemy then. But, no, they was just, you know, hard working old boys.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Brucy Young, uh, he got into a little squabble one time and when them boys would get into something, you know, they wouldn’t, it was impossible to go out there and arrest ‘em. They’d send my daddy out there. And he was constable under Jim McCoy back then. And, uh, Brucy killed one of his brothers.
Ken: Yeah
ST: And, my daddy had to go out there and get him. And, uh, they, Jim McCoy told my daddy, he said “we’re gona take five or six of these deputies and we’re gona go out there and straighten them Youngs out.” The old man said “alright, y’all go ahead.” “Well, you’re going with us.” My daddy said “no, I’m not going with you. You want to go out there and straighten them out, ya’ll go out there and straighten ‘em out.” (laugh) The old man said they talked about it a little bit and the old man said they finally decided well, better send Homer out there and let him go out there and get Brucy Young.
Ken: And he came with him, huh?
ST: Yeah, the old man said he went out there and told Brucie, he said “now Brucie, you go down there and give yourself up” he said “and in two or three days we’ll get you out of it.” And he went and got Polk Shelton and Emmett Shelton as his lawyers, got him out of it.
Ken: Uh-huh. Didn’t have to – what was it about?
ST: Well, they got in a fight over something and Brucy, uh, he didn’t intend to shoot him, but he shot him with a pistol. And, uh, they said the gun went off when they were squabbling among theirselves, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: I think they were drinking a little bit, and I think, uh, I can’t remember now, the gun went off and shot that boy and killed him.
Ken: Oh, man
ST: Didn’t intend to do it, you know, but it just happened. But, anyway, my daddy said he got on his mule and went out there and told Brucy, he said “now Brucy, I’ll come by here in the morning and you be ready to go.” And the old man said he went by there the next morning and got him and took him to the courthouse. I think Daddy said he stayed in jail two or three days and they got him out of it.
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh.
ST: But one of them boys got in trouble, they’d send the old man out there to get ‘em. He’d take ‘em down there the next day, and jail a day or two and they’d get ‘em out.
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve heard of Emmett Shelton
ST: Yeah, Emmett Shelton and Polk Shelton was my daddy’s lawyers.
Ken: That’s what they named that bridge after over there. They named it after him. I never called it that. I always called it the Low Water bridge.
ST: It had the low water crossing across that. There at the end of Red Bud Trail.
Ken: Yeah. Huh.
ST: Yeah, it’s
Ken: Well diddn’t one of the other Youngs kill his brother too? Brucy…Ellis, maybe Buster and Ellis.
ST: I don’t know. I, I know Brucie killed that one, but I don’t know
Ken: And then Ike, you mentioned Ike, he had a still, but you said he killed that Adams boy, or something like that.
ST: Boobie Allen.
Ken: Allen. Boobie Allen. Yeah. Man.
ST: I used to have some newspaper clippings that my daddy kept. I don’t know if I’ve still got ‘em or not. But I’ve still got so. me stuff in an old trunk that my daddy had. That brother of mine, when my daddy died, he went out there and cleaned that old house out, he piled everything there in the yard and set it on fire
Ken (laugh)
ST: And I went out there and some of the stuff that blowed out of the fire out in the grass, I gathered that
Ken: You saved it, huh?
ST: I got my daddy’s bond and stuff where he was a game warden and where he was a constable and some pictures, got some postcards, I’ve got a postcard that was sent to my daddy in nineteen and fifteen and one in 1918, that one in 1915 is a hundred years old this year. I don’t know what the post date is on it
Ken: Huh It’s funny he was a game warden, ‘cause, I mean, nobody paid any attention to the season. If there is a deer there, if you could kill it, you’re gona do it, yeah
ST: Oh, yeah
Ken: I can’t imagine him arresting one of his friends
ST: He wouldn’t -- I don’t think he ever arrested anybody
Ken: (laugh) That’s the kind of game warden you want.
ST: Yeah. I know the old man used to kill a deer every now and then and give it to somebody, you know, if their kids was hungry. You know, and they needed something to eat.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: He’d kill ‘em a deer and take it to ‘em. skin it and gut it, quarter it up for them. He was good with that pocket knife. It didn’t take him but a minute to cut a deer up. Man, he’d hang that deer and cut it up in just a few minutes it was ready to eat.
Ken: I’ll be darned. Do you ever hunt out here?
ST: No, I quit hunting years ago. I used to like to hunt, but man, once you pull that trigger, that’s where the work starts then
Ken: (laugh) It’s funny you said that. I’ve said that many a time to somebody. That’s exactly the truth.
ST: Yeah, that’s when the work starts.
Ken: That’s right
ST: That’s where the fun ends.
Ken: Exactly, yeah. But, I do like to eat deer. I like venison a lot.
ST: I never did like it. Of course, I lived on it when I was just a kid.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And, I can eat a little of the backstrap
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But that’s about all I want off one of ‘em. That’s the reason I quit hunting, ‘cause their ain’t nobody will eat ‘em, you know, so I just
Ken: Oh
ST: And I’m not gona kill anything if somebody won’t eat it.
Ken: No, no, no. So, you ate a lot as a kid, huh
ST: Oh, yeah, we had to. You know, we didn’t have nothing else. We either, you, whatever you killed, you’d eat it.
Ken: Right, right. But your daddy could buy, he’d buy groceries and stuff like that. Beans and
ST: Oh, yeah. He could buy groceries and stuff like that. I’ve still got them old ration stamps where stuff was rationed. During WWII
Ken: Yep
ST: I’ve still got them ration stamps.
Ken: Food was rationed back then too,
ST: Yeah, and gasoline
Ken: I know gasoline was
ST: tires
Ken: tires
ST: You couldn’t buy nothing.
Ken: Right
ST: Everything went to the war effort.
Ken: Right, right, right, yeah, sure. Huh. What were some of the other families, were the, uh, the Roberts, how about your, you had some uncles, you had an uncle John and an uncle Tom.
ST: yeah, Tom was, uh, the one that, him and his wife had fourteen kids, __, he had five kids by another woman
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: He told me he had nineteen. Jake and Minnie Stark had 21. And Jake told me, I mean Tom told me that he’d of beat old Jake if Etta hadn’t run off and left him (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
ST: I said, man, after, after that many kids, I believe it would be time to go.
Ken: I bet
ST: (laugh)
Ken: her name was Ettar? Was that her last name, or
ST: That was her maiden name. Her first name.
Ken: Her first name was like
ST: He got her out of an orphanage. Married her out of an orphanage.
Ken: So she wasn’t one of the local girls.
ST: No
Ken: Huh. Who was it, which one of them got into trouble with, with the law?
ST: John killed two men down on Congress Avenue.
Ken: yeah, that’s what I’m thinking of
ST: In a fight
Ken: Yeah
ST: And he got five years hard labor for that.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: That was back in, I guess, early nineteen hundreds, or late eighteen hundreds.
Ken: Right, right
ST: Yeah, he, a man by the name of Gest, John Gest, and Duncan, I think there was an officer named Duncan
Ken: I heard about that. And I heard the Gest man, he was messing with his sister or something like that, and it made him mad.
ST: I think he was married to one of the girls. And, uh, he’d slapped her around or something and anyway, John found out about it, he was down there in the beer joint and he had his .44-40 Winchester out there on the wagon and that guy came in the beer joint down there where he was at. And there was another guy, uh, my daddy said got on the stand and swore that John would have killed him too but he outrun a Winchester bullet.
Ken: (laugh)
ST: I said, now that’d be getting along pretty good, now! (laugh) but that’s – yeah, of course, back then, you know, if one of ‘em got in trouble, everybody’d go to the courthouse, you know, to make sure, you know, that it was told right, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: My daddy said he went to it with his daddy to the courthouse everytime they tried one of ‘em or something, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: He said that that guy got on the stand and swore that John would have killed him but he outrun a Winchester bullet. Yeah, John spent five years in the penitentiary over that.
Ken: Well, that doesn’t seem like too long for killing an officer, particularly.
ST: I don’t know, back then, you know, the penitentiary back then was a penitentiary, you know, it ain’t like it is now, high dollar hotel.
Ken: Uh-huh. It was rough, huh
ST: The way I understand it, you know, they worked back then. They put ‘em out there busting rocks
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Whatever they needed done, They done it by hand, you know
Ken: Uh-huh. But he got out, huh?
ST: Yeah. I’ve got pictures of him and Tom in there
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Yeah, I’ve got pictures of nearly all of the family. The Roberts, uh, Ollie Roberts, lived over there at Dripping Springs. One of his daughters was on Unsolved Mysteries the other morning. She lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they had been looking for her, and she had inherited some money, and the rest of the family got split up in the estate, I guess, and they were looking for her, and she finally got in touch with all of ‘em, got her money, and went back to Arkansas.
Ken: Huh. You know …
ST: That was Joe Robert’s brother
Ken: Yeah. Right. I’ve heard that story from someone else. Right. They found her.
ST: Yeah
Ken: Right. And she came back. They, it was Virginia Roberts’ sister. Right, yeah
ST: Charlie Roberts, was married Tiney Teague. That was Bert and all of them’s sister.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: And, Charlie’s daughter lived right in this trailer house, the first trailer house right here, going off the hill right here.
Ken: OK
ST: Linwood lives right back on top of the hill right there. That was one of her boys. That was one of Florine’s boys, Charlie Roberts’ grandson.
Ken: OK. Yeah, Luther said he was his nephew, I think.
ST: Yeah, Luther and Ed was brothers
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And Linwood talks just like him, looks just like him
Ken: Huh. Isn’t that something.
ST: Good old boys. Good neighbor
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah. Well, Luther is sure a nice guy. He really is.
ST: I haven’t seen Luther, man, since I was a kid.
Ken: Well, he’s done real well. He had that quarry out there. And he sold it and I think he got some money for it and got him a ranch up there in north Texas, you know, and he does a lot of hunting. He gave me some venison.
ST: Yeah, I haven’t seen Linwood up until he moved up here.
Ken: I’ve never met him.
ST: Linwood’s a good man. Good neighbor and hard working old boy
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And, uh,   he got one of his shoulders hurt. Had to have a surgery here a couple of years ago and I run his old truck for him about three days while he was laid up and I went up there and hauled I think three loads of building stone from San Saba where he had that quarry up there at San Saba. Over here to Georgetown
Ken: Uh-huh. Did you guys know any of the people that grew up around here, I mean, y’all moved out here, so there were the Maynards, and the Whitts, and
ST: Some of the Maynards, the Maynards used to own this right here.
Ken: Your lot here?
ST: This six hundred and forty acres – this section here. Over here behind Calkin’s Grocery, up on top of that hill, there is a cave up there.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: One of the Maynards lived in that cave up there and got ahold of this old Spanish stuff that the Spaniards left in there
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And all the arrow heads and all
ST004
ST: hauled all of that out of there and sold all that stuff. But he lived in that cave up there.
Ken: Huh
ST: And he bought a brand new car, went to, what was it, down, somewhere in south Texas and bought a ranch down there and stayed down there.
Ken: What was his name, do you remember?
ST: I can’t remember what his name was. But he was a Maynard, and Lewis Maynard is one of their, I guess great grandsons. Me and him run trucks together for years
Ken: OK
ST: Me and him real good friends. He lives up here in Hamilton now. He bought a place up there. And, uh, he comes to visit with me every time he comes down here. He usually spends the night with me.
Ken: OK
ST: But, uh, Arvil Maynard was Lewis’ daddy.
Ken: Alright. Were they the Bloody Holler Maynards?
ST: Yeah
Ken: ‘Cause that’s over that a way, right?
ST: Yeah
Ken: 1431 and that area between Calkins and 1431?
ST: Yeah
Ken: OK. So the Bloody Holler Maynards were Arvil and __. Did you know any Whitts?
ST: Yeah, I knowed Johnny Whitt and the Whitts, uh, one of ‘em worked for Shorty over there at the shop, uh, Tommy.
Ken: Uh-huh. Because that’s the piece of land that we got, was Bernard Whitt, David, I think David Bernard Whitt and he, they moved, they sold it and then moved up to, uh, Briggs, really, same area. I think they’ve passed away now. But, so out here, those folks, they grew up cutting cedar out here, the Maynards, the Whitts
ST: Yeah, they cut all the cedar off this out here and then Buster Foulkes and his daddy ended up with this six hundred and forty acres in here. And then they subdivided it, uh, there was three, uh, people, Dean Bilberry and two other guys bought this place and they subdivided it. And I bought up here in ’71, I lived here for about two weeks, three weeks, without any water or any electricity.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: I just burn a Coleman lantern at night. Had to go to Jonestown and jump in the swimming pool to take a bath.
Ken: Um-hum (laugh) sure (laugh) I know, I know what that’s like. We actually had water, but we didn’t have a bathroom when we first moved out there and we had our bathtub, 1975, it was outside. It was nice.
ST: Yeah, the Lunsford used to live over here on the Sunset. Macy Lunsford was foreman on that Sunset for years. That’s when Buddy Rogers had it.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: When Buddy died, all the heirs come in and they split it all up. I don’t know any of them.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But, Gonzalo Esquivell
Ken: Yes
ST: Do you know Gonzalo?
Ken: I do. I do.
ST: Gonzalo’s been over there pushing brush for ‘em. He’s got a dozer and he’s been over there pushing brush. Cleaning that
Ken: Recently?
ST: Yeah. Well I think his dozer might still be over there. No, I believe he’s got it over at the house. I come by there the other day and I think his dozer is back over here. But see, he worked for Kutscher. For years.
Ken: I heard a bad story that she just completely screwed him.
ST: Yeah, that girl did.
Ken: Yeah
ST: Yeah, I think he ended up with a hundred, about a hundred and thirty acres.
Ken: Who did?
ST: Gonzalo
Ken: Gonzalo did?
ST: Yeah
Ken: Out of that ranch?
ST: Yeah
Ken: Oh, good. I thought he didn’t end up with anything.
ST: No, the old man, before he died, he willed that place where Gonzalo is living. Everything on it, and all the land, to Gonzalo.
Ken: All of it, huh?
ST: I think there was supposed to have been five hundred acres
Ken: OK
ST: And, uh, Gonzalo ended up with, I think about a hundred and thirty acres he ended up with
Ken: Uh-huh, ‘cause the girl got
ST: She got the ranch and she tried to take all of it.
Ken: Well, I thought she’d taken everything, that’s what I heard.
ST: He ended up with about a hundred and thirty acres
Ken: That’s great. Man, that’s worth some money now.
ST: Yep
Ken: Wow. That’s great. That’s real good. You know, I’ve known Aurora for a long time, yeah. And Dora, the daughter
ST: Dora, yeah.
Ken: That’s something.
ST: Yeah, I’ve knowed Gonzalo for several years. Well, I met him right after I first moved up here
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And, uh, we done a lot of work on his old tractors and stuff when he was still on the ranch down here
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And, of course, some of the people that used to live up here, you know, they worked over on that ranch and, you know, when it come time to bale hay and stuff like that
Ken: Yeah
ST: They were, I used to know nearly everybody that lived out here. But, they’re all dead and all their kids are all growed up and moved away
Ken: yeah, yeah, there was, there was some Simons out here too.
ST: Yeah. Leo Simons lived right down here, one of his kids lived in that house right there
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Leon lived right down here at the bottom of the hill. You know, Leo and Leon were twin brothers.
Ken: OK. OK. So, are they related to, was it, uh, Margie, was it Margie Simons, she used to be a Carlton, I don’t know.
ST: I think of all the Simons is all kin
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: I think that all of ‘em, you know, about like everybody else, you know, they’re cousins. Some of ‘em was kin by marriage
Ken: Uh-huh. Well they’re, they’re from Bull Creek, along with the Boatrights.
ST: Yeah
Ken: So, did you know Dick Boatright ever? He had a yard up here on 1431
ST: Yeah, my daddy used to know all the Boatrights and he used to visit with ‘em, and, you know, of course, that was back when I was just a kid.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Now Frank come up here, with Roy Cantwell one day. And we was out there at the shop, working on one of my old trucks out there or something out there, and Frank came out here, him and Floyd, and they sat out there and talked to us, I guess, about an hour one evening. And then I heard Frank died here, I guess about a year after that.
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve met his daughter, Marie.
ST: I never did know her.
Ken: Uh-huh. She lives there on Bull Creek still. And they still have a reunion there, the Boatrights, and the Simons and the Shannons and they all, there at the Oak Grove Cemetery, right there, you know where that is, on Bull Creek Road?
ST: Yeah
Ken: Yeah, yeah. That’s something
ST: Yeah, Forest Shannon and all of the Shannons, my daddy used to know all of them. They used to buy cedar from him and buy rock off of that old home place out there. They’d come out there and buy a load of cedar, you know, buy - if they needed a load of building stone
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: You know, they’d buy a load of building stone from him.
Ken: Well I didn’t really realize, ‘cause you guys were the Bee Cave folks and they were the Bull Creek folks. Way back in the old days that was a long way from one place to the other. So you wouldn’t know each other too well
ST: Well, the way my daddy used to know all of ‘em, they all made whisky and sold whisky. And beer
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And the old man, he used to ride a mule across Mt. Bonnell and come back up in here and buy whisky from ‘em.
Ken: OK
ST: That was when he was Constable.
Ken: OK. Well, wasn’t there anybody making whisky near him?
ST: Yeah, my daddy made it.
Ken: OK
ST: But if he was in Austin, you know, and he knowed where they was at up here, you know, instead of riding, going back to Bee Cave, he’d just ride up across Mt. Bonnell.You know, come up here and buy whisky from somebody on this side of the river
Ken: Who else made it in the Bee Cave area? Rush Riley did, didn’t he?
ST: Yeah, all of ‘em. Anybody. Everybody
Ken: Everybody did
ST: Yeah.
Ken: Who was, what’s Rob Roy? Is Rob Roy a Riley?
ST: No. Rob Roy was, that was his name.
Ken: Rob Roy
ST: Yeah, he had two sisters, and they never married.
Ken: OK
ST: And they lived in his house, there, on that old Rob Roy Ranch
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: when I was just a kid I used to work for ‘em every now or then. You know, I’d mow their yard, or you know, pull brush for ‘em, you know, if they had a tree down or something, you know, we’d cut up the tree and haul the brush and stuff off for them. They was old maids.
Ken: Huh
ST: And when I was just a kid they was old ladies, you know, back then. Just as nice as they could be, you know, but they was pretty well stove up, you know, and they couldn’t get out and cut a tree you know and pull the brush and stuff. We’d, me and my brother, we’d go by there in the evening when we’d get out of school, we’d mow the yard for ‘em.
Ken: Uh-huh, make a little money
ST: Yeah.
Ken: I was thinking about, did you ever hear of a guy named Earl Short?
ST: Oh, yeah, Earl Short, Tom Short. All of the Shorts.
Ken: Now, are they Bee Caves folks?
ST: They lived on old Bee Cave Road over there in what you called the Brown Lane
Ken: OK
ST: They lived down at the end of the Brown Lane, there, Farley Brown, Charlie Brown, and all of them lived down in there, Tony Short
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Sonny Boy Short and all of them lived back in there
Ken: OK. Because I heard, well, he, he actually, somebody, somebody talked to him and they wrote it down, and they put it in the library. Uh, an interview done with him in the 1970s or ‘80s, Earl Short, and, uh, he got in a fight. He got in a gun fight there at, he called, they called it Hooper’s Switch. And I’m not, I think it is kind-of near where Bull Creek Road comes on into MoPac
ST: Um-hum
Ken: You know where that, I don’t know, it doesn’t exist anymore, I don’t think
ST: No, it don’t exist anymore. That was just a little old settlement in there, back years ago there was three or four little settlements, you know, like Hornsby Bend, you know. Now Hornsby Bend is still there
Ken: OK
ST: Back around this part of the country, you know, it was just a little settlement, and, you know, they’re not there anymore.
Ken: Right
ST: Austin took ‘em in, you know, about like they did Jollyville
Ken: Right. Yeah, he talked about, he got in a fight ‘cause there was a beer joint there at Hooper’s Switch and he went to sell his moonshine from Bee Cave at this beer joint where, you know, whoever owned the beer joint was a Bull Creek guy, and he had his own moonshine to sell, and didn’t want him selling it there, naturally, (laugh) so they they got in a, they got in a fight, I believe.
ST: Yeah, now, Earl Short was a good old boy. You know, he was just as good as he could be. But he was like everybody else, you know, if a man wanted to fight, and you dropped your hat, he’d pick it up. You know. He wasn’t afraid of nobody. I knowed Tom Short, Earl Short, I knowed all the Shorts all my life. I went to school with Evelyn and I get a letter from her on the cemetery deal over there, that old cemetery, every year they try to get together and clean it up. She lives up north somewhere, Wisconsin or somewhere. And, anyway, she flies down here once a year
Ken: Hum. That’s interesting about, you, just were talking about the Shorts and liking to fight. Uh, you know, I would fight as a kid, but I never really liked to too much, I mean, is that, did you as a kid, like, enjoy it?
ST: Yeah, we used to, you know, see if, you know, a man could spank me or not
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh)
ST: (laugh) I used to run them old beer joints pretty good, you know, and I’d get in a little scrap every now and then. Never would amount to a whole lot. I used to run with them Dougherty boys.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: They were pretty rough old boys. Of course, all of ‘em is dead now.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But, that was an older bunch. That was all the GB’s
Ken: GB Dougherty?
ST: GB Dougherty
Ken: What were their names, those Dougherty boys?
ST: Uh, Kelley and Arvil, Henry, Clarence, there was a bunch of them boys. I think there was eleven boys and one girl
Ken: My goodness
ST: Mary was the only girl
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: There was a bunch of them boys. And I think there is one of ‘em still alive. Of course, they, they got, all of ‘em got kids, but, you know, all the kids, I don’t know any of the kids except Henry’s kids.
Ken: Did they cut cedar too?
ST: Yeah, they cut cedar, drove truck, laid rock, whatever it took to make a living
Ken: I’m just thinking about, I mean, cutting cedar has got to make you tough. You know.
ST: Oh yeah
Ken: So, is that, maybe that’s why you enjoyed it, just ‘cause you’re better than any, most people you’re gonna come up against. So you’re gonna win.
ST: Yeah, you get out there, you know. Shoot, we’d just do it for fun
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Get about half drunk, get out there and just skin each other up for the fun of it
Ken: (laugh) and then be buddies the next day
ST: Oh yeah
Ken: Huh
ST: We’d never get mad at anybody
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: You know, no, that getting mad at people, you know, that was, you never heard of anybody getting mad
Ken: Is that right
ST: Yeah. They had to really do something awful bad for a man to stay mad at ‘cha
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh, huh. Who were the fighting Teagues?
ST: That was Jess Teagues’ bunch
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Raymond and, uh, old man Jesse, and all of them. They lived right there where the St. Stevens School
Ken: Is that Tiney’s brothers?
ST: Yeah, that was Tiney’s brothers.
Ken: Raymond and Jessie
ST: Jesse was her daddy, and Raymond was her brother. And Jess, well, Raymond lived there with his mom and daddy until they died. And they, uh, split that little place up and sold it. And, of course, Tiney and Raymond both dead now.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But Raymond used to hang around my daddy all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: The old man said one time he was going up to old Bee Cave Road over there, uh, he had a pair of mules, one of ‘ems name was Ned and the other one was Rody. One of ‘ems a ginny and the other one was a jack. He had ‘em hooked to a wagon. He was going up that old Bee Cave Road. He seen Raymond walking along up through there and old Raymond was drunk, he was stumbling around in the road. The old man pulled up to the side of him and told him to “get in the back of the wagon, Raymond.” They started on up the road and old Raymond hollered at the old man, said “Homer, pull over, I’ve got to pee.” Old man said “You can’t pee a going Raymond?” Raymond said “nope” and the old man strapped them lines, said “git up Rody!” (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
ST: The old man said he took him on up the road then.
(both laugh)
ST005
Ken: Why’d they call ‘em the Fighting Teagues?
ST: That’s all they’d do. They’d, Ed Pierce whupped both of ‘em over at that old West Lake tavern one evening, right out there on flat ground in a fist fight
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And they’d, they’d drink two or three beers, that’s all they’d want to do, is fight.
Ken: Huh
ST: (laugh) And they, you didn’t jump on Ed Pierce. Boy, Ed Pierce wasn’t nobody to fool with.
Ken: Was he a big man?
ST: No, he wasn’t a real big man, but he was all muscle.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But he was just a hard working old boy, you know and all Ed ever done was swing an axe. I don’t guess Ed ever owned a chain saw.
Ken: Huh
ST: But he cut cedar all of his life and he cut with, an axe.
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh.
ST: But, you know, every now and then, back then, you know, them old boys had to try each other. You know, and
Ken: Who was the toughest?
ST: I’d, I don’t guess it really made any difference who was the toughest, you know, they, they’d get out there and fight, you know, and then they’d get up, drink a beer together, you know, best of friends
Ken: Uh-huh. Was any of ‘em real big?
ST: There was some of them old boys that was a pretty good size men, you know
Ken: Because the Simons were real big.
ST: Yeah, Connie Simons, now, was a big man
Ken: Yeah, so was Don. They’re all over six foot.
ST: Yeah, Connie Simons was a big man
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But, Betty, me and Connie and Betty, and, uh, Ed Benningfield, was Connie’s, he married Connie’s sister, uh, we all drove trucks together. And, uh, Betty drove truck for me, oh, I guess, about, I guess for about oh, six, seven months.
Ken: Benny?
ST: Betty. Yeah
Ken: A woman
ST: Yeah. That was Connie’s wife
Ken: OK
ST: yeah, she drove truck for me for, I guess, five or six months. And then Connie got sick and she had to quit and go take care of Connie. And, uh, I don’t know, Connie had a lot of health problems. And, uh, he finally died and they buried him down at, I think at Ingram.
Ken: Hum
ST: And, then Betty, uh, I’d seen Connie Junior, over here at Dobin’s funeral. That was Punk’s brother, Dobin. Seen him over there at his funeral and he said that Betty died and their ain’t nobody knowed she even died.
Ken: Huh
ST: And, uh, yeah, they always hung around, you know, all the Cantrells, and all of ‘em cut cedar together, drove trucks together, done mechanic work together.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Shorty Cantrell was one of the best mechanics in this country. I’m not talking about a parts changer. I’m not talking about running up here and getting a water pump and putting it on, you know, I’m talking about, if you broke it he would take a cutting torch and welding machine and he’d set down there on the floor and put it back together.
Ken: Huh. Shorty. Is that, uh, Punk’s brother?
ST: Yeah, that was Punk’s brother and, uh, Lee’s brother
Ken: Lee’s brother. Right. Well, I guess back in the old days, back, like you were saying, when they were rationing everything, you had to be able to, you had to be able to do things. You didn’t have any money. You had to be able to fix things with your hands.
ST: Yeah. Yeah, there used to be some of them old cedar choppers over there, they’d take them old truck tires, and, they wouldn’t, didn’t throw nothing away. If you had an old tire that run over a staub or something, and you couldn’t fix it, they’d take a piece of a tire and cut it out with their knife, take stove bolts and put it in there, put two or three cubes in it, and had to pump it up with a hand pump
Ken: Um-huh, oh man
ST: Put it back on one of them old trucks. Get out there and make a load with it. (laugh)
Ken: Whew!
ST: But my daddy had a, you could get, uh, ration stamps for the whole family. All of your kids.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: He got ration stamps for me and ration stamps for my brother, and of course, for hisself.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: It wasn’t, they quit rationing, you know, and the war was over, well, he kept all that stuff. I’ve still got them old ration books and stuff there in that trunk.
Ken: Huh, that’s cool. That’s something
ST: Yeah, one of these days, I get a little time, I’ll get this stuff out and I’ll get ahold with you and show it to you.
Ken: Alright, alright
ST: I know you’ve probably seen them old ration stamps
Ken: You know, I remember my father, my mother, he had a gasoline thing and he, extra gasoline tank that he put gas in, you know, she said “don’t ever tell anybody.” You’re not supposed to have done that. (laugh)
ST: (laugh) Well, that’s like kerosene. You know, everybody used kerosene.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Well, they’d take a gallon jug and go get a gallon of kerosene. They’d figure out just how long it would take to use that gallon of kerosene because everybody burnt coal oil lamps. Started fires with it. The old man, he would take that gallon of kerosene, he’d put half of it in a five gallon can, you know, and set it back, have it somewhere, you know, set it under a brush pile out in the yard or something, you know, where nobody couldn’t see it
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: I always keep, you know, three or four gallons of kerosene, because you never knowed when you have to have some kerosene.
Ken: Yeah
ST: When I was about five years old I, one night we was walking home from up there at Bee Cave and the old man was drunk. We got over there in what they called the Snuff Box Church over there on that old Bee Cave Road. And it was right at, kind-of about half way in the middle of the hill over there, now, where you turn into, go into the cemetery, kind-of on the left right there, kind-of, well about as far as from here to my pick-up out there, down the hill there, that’s where that old Snuff Box Church was at
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Well, old Cody Hardcraft back, a few years ago, burnt the church down. I don’t know what old Cody was mad about, just setting something on fire, just to watch it burn. But, anyway, we was walking along there and I stepped on a copperhead.
Ken: Oh
ST: And got snake bit. Well the old man, we went to Emmett Riley’s camp. He was camped on the old home place there, and old man went by there and told Emmett, said “I need some kerosene, my boy stepped on a snake that bit him a while ago and I need to wash his leg down with kerosene.” Well, they washed my leg down with kerosene, along about nine o’clock the next morning he carried me up to the road and somebody come by, well he flagged ‘em down, they hauled me to Brackenridge Hospital and I stayed in the Brackenridge Hospital ten days.
Ken: Oh. That was pretty serious!
ST: yeah, it got pretty serious there for a while. Yeah, I laid in that Brackenridge Hospital ten days over that, then I got out of there then I got pneumonia. Went back in there for another ten days. And, boy, if a kid in school had anything, and it didn’t make no difference the sniffles or whatever it was, I had it. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
ST: I was the world’s worst about catching everything.
Ken: Oh, that’s terrible!
ST: I’d catch a cold or (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
ST: But here in the last few years I haven’t had much problems.
Ken: That’s good.
ST: I guess when I was in the hospital here in 2010 they pumped so much antibiotics and stuff through me that, so far I haven’t had a cold since then.
Ken: Oh that’s (laugh) yeah. Did you guys ever get in fights with the city kids?
ST: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Them little old kids down on 6th Street, you know, down there, why there wasn’t no contest.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: You know, they never got out and done any work.
Ken: Unt-uh
ST: You know, and at the time I was big enough to carry a post. I carried posts out for my daddy, you know.
Ken: Yeah
ST: He’d cut them posts, that was my job, getting them out to that road where he’d get a truck to ‘em
Ken: How would you get in those, ‘cause I do remember as a kid, you remember the Pig Stand on South Congress and then there was a Holiday House about Riverside Drive and then there was a, where did we go, up to Dirty Martin’s up there on Guadalupe, we’d drive that back and forth. Remember those days?
ST: Yep.
Ken: And, there was some fights just on the road
ST: Oh, yeah. It wasn’t nothing to
Ken: Unt-uh, pile out of your car and just pile into some of the other kids
ST: Yeah
Ken: Did ya’ll ever do that?
ST: Oh, yeah
Ken: So you kicked the city kids’ ass when you did that, I bet.
ST: Well, yeah, some of ‘em
Ken: Some of’em I know
ST: You took a pretty good little spanking from ‘em too
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh)
ST: We, we wasn’t real bad about that fighting, but, you know, we didn’t run from one either
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: yeah, that old Pig Stand, I remember that thing just as well as (laugh) you know
Ken: Yeah, me too. Is it still there?
ST: I don’t think so.
Ken: I haven’t been down to South Congress in so long.
ST: I haven’t either. I ain’t been out on South Congress. The last time I was out Daugherty boys out there and everybody got in a fight. I guess that was the last time I was out there.
Ken: How long ago was that?
ST: Oh, that’d been over forty years ago
Ken: Forty years ago
ST: Yeah, that was before
Ken: The Alibi Club. I remember that name.
ST: Hill’s Club, Alibi Club. All them old beer joints were right along in a strip up through there
Ken: On South Congress?
ST: yeah
Ken: yeah, I do remember that. Somebody was saying there were beer joints all the way from Jollyville back in the old days, Jollyville coming out this way too.
ST: Yeah, over there on old Bee Cave Road, used to be where you turned off to go down there where Ed Pierce and all of them lived back in there, Ed Pierce and all of ‘em, that was Ed’s daddy and mama Edna lived down in there
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Uh, there was a little old beer joint out there that they called the West Lake Tavern.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: Originally, when it started out, it was Beard’s Store.
Ken: OK
ST: And, uh, then Peewee Beard sold it and, uh, moved down the road about a mile and built a store down there. But that little old building was a little old wooden building there and all of the cedar choppers, rock haulers, everybody that, in the country, you know, when they started home they had to stop there and drink a beer.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: You know, and, nearly, well, all of the Shorts, Pierces, Teagues, everybody, you know, they’d all gather up there, and more especially on Saturday night
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: They’d dance, and, you know, just have a hell of a time. Just (laugh)
Ken: Yeah, I, where I think of Beard’s Store being is kind-of where, right next to the, well it’s still there, the old, but that must be the new one.
ST: Yeah, that was the new one.
Ken: OK
ST: That was where Peewee Beard and his daddy and mama had that little, uh, just a little old wooden building right there on the corner where you turned and went down toward where Ed Pierce and them lived down in there
Ken: Yeah, down on Red Bud Trail
ST: yeah
Ken: Right. Sure, ‘cause they were the only houses down there, weren’t they?
ST: Yeah
Ken: Right. I remember that.
ST: yeah, Charlie Reese and Pat Reese and, let’s see, there was a surveyer down there and he died and Charlie lived with his wife for several years there.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: I think both of them died, but, uh, yeah, and, uh, Ed Pierce lived right on down the road on the right hand side down there
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And, uh, yeah, that little old store was where you bought your groceries and stuff if you didn’t want to go all the way into town.
Ken: Uh-huh. If you did go into town, where was there to buy groceries back then?
ST: The old man used to go down on Sixth Street to Paul Brothers down there
Ken: Paul Brothers?
ST: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh. That’s a long way
ST: Yeah
Ken: So, you’d go all the way in on Bee Cave Road and then what we now call Barton Springs Road
ST: Yeah
Ken: all the way to South Congress?
ST: Well, you know Big Bear Food Store was the only thing that was in south Austin when I was a kid. When you crossed the river bridge, Congress Avenue bridge, Big Bear Food Store was right there.
Ken: I do remember it. Is that where Night Hawk then came in?
ST: yeah, Night Hawk was right next door
Ken: Right, uh-huh
ST: Night Hawk – they built it after the Big Bear Food Store was there for several years. But that was the only thing that was there
Ken: Right, right
ST: Right around the corner, they built an office building, right there straight across on the river bank right there. Well, right behind that building there was a liquor store. Well, that’s where everybody’d stop and get their wine, whisky
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: That was after Prohibition
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Well Baldy Brown and Charlie Brown and all of them, they’d cut a load of cedar and they’d stop there and get their wine. They bought wine by the case. They didn’t just go in there and buy a bottle
Ken: (laugh)
ST: They’d go in there and buy a case each. Each one of ‘em would buy a case for hisself.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And you didn’t fool with his wine. They’d drink that wine, that was all they’d drink was wine
Ken: I’ll be darned. Huh.
ST: Yeah, and they had old three-dollar watches. I know you remember them, old pocket watches.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: They had a cardboard display sitting up on the counter, you know, and had all them old watches on that display. Charlie and Baldy and all of ‘em and Earl Short, Earl Short. They all stopped in there and Earl seen them watches. Well, wasn’t none of ‘em could read, write, tell time, but Earl just had to have one of them. Well, him and Tom was cutting cedar out there on Barton Creek. Well, he got along up in the morning the next morning. Earl was cutting along there, Tom hollered at him, said “say there bud, what time are it?” He took out that old watch and he said “Thar she be” and he said”Damn if it aint, let’s eat!
Ken: (laugh)
ST:   They didn’t know what time it was (laugh). They couldn’t tell time
Ken: (laugh).What did ya’ll take out to the brakes when you cut? What did you eat out there for lunch?
ST006
ST: Whatever we had. Bean, potatos
Ken: Um-hum
ST: The old man always put a pot of beans on the fire. He cooked right out on top of the ground
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: We didn’t have no stove.
Ken: when you were in the brake, when he was cutting, or when you all were growing up?
ST: When we were growing up
Ken: He didn’t have a cook stove?
ST: He didn’t have a cook stove.
Ken: Huh
ST: And he finally got a cook stove after he moved into that old school house. He finally got a stove in there, but, shoot, I was eleven, twelve years old then.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: You know, but until then he cooked everything right on a camp fire, right on top of the ground
Ken: Hum. What, beans and
ST: Beans and potatoes, you know. Corn bread, you know. He’d make what you called a pone bread, you know. just a big old biscuit, you know, in a frying pan, and take a knife and cut it up, Pour a little bacon grease on it and that was a meal
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. What did they call that school? Was that called the Snuff Box School, or was
ST: No, it wasBruton Springs
Ken: Bruton Springs. So that wasn’t, ya’ll never called it Snuff Box School
ST: No
Ken: Some lady said that they did.
ST: No, that was a
Ken: It was the Snuff Box Church.
ST: That was Snuff Box Baptist Church.
Ken: And that was named after the preacher or something like that
ST: No, they, uh, had a brush arbor and they said all them old men sat around and dipped snuff under that brush arbor and spit that tobacco juice in the fire, and they started naming it the Snuff Box Baptist Church
Ken: OK. Was that near the school, near the Bruton Springs School?
ST: Yeah, about two miles.
Ken: OK.
ST: Yeah, Joe Hudson and all the Hudson’s, Green Hudson and all of them owned that ranch right there. And I can’t remember now if Joe Hudson or Green Hudson give ‘em that little, I think it’s two acres of land, to put that church on. And my grandpa give ‘em that two acres of land, I believe it was, to put that, no, it was five acres of land, to put the Bruton Springs School on.
Ken: OK
ST: That’s why they named it that. There ain’t nobody’ll ever know
Ken: No springs there, huh
ST: No, there wasn’t no springs there.
Ken: Huh
ST: But they named it Bruton Springs School, and that’s where I started school.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: But, uh, no, they was about two miles apart, but my grandpa gave ‘em five acres of land and then when they condemned the school, it was in the deed that it went back to the heirs or went back to the
Ken: Went to your family
ST: Yeah, went back to our family
Ken: Uh-huh. And then they gave ‘em this land for Eanes School
ST: Yeah. And that’s where my daddy was living when he died, was in that old school house
Ken: Uh-huh, oh, OK. Huh. How old was he when he passed away?
ST: No, he was sixty six. He just turned sixty six in August and he died in June the next year.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: Yeah, he died in 1965 and my youngest boy was born in ’65.
Ken: OK. How many kids do you have?
ST: Uh, all together, or the ones that carry my name?
Ken: Oh, the ones that carry your name, I guess
ST: I guess about five, maybe six. I’ve got a step-daughter lives right up the creek up here about five miles up there, her and her husband. They bought three acres from my wife up there and built a new home on it and he’s a welder and built a big, nice shop. He’s got a nice place there.
Ken: That’s nice.
ST: His name is Caps.
Ken: You’ve got a good memory. You can remember all these names.
ST: Yeah, yeah, he’s, his daddy had a radiator shop down on the Lockhart Highway and, uh, he’s kind-of like the rest of us, he’s getting pretty well up in age now, and he’s got a lot of health problems, and James has been trying to get him to close that radiator shop us, well, James had part of his welding business in that same shop, I understand, anyway, James is going down there, you know, as his daddy will let him, he’s just, you know, hauling stuff out and bringing it up here to his shop.
Ken: Uh-huh
ST: And I let him use my trailer. He’s got my trailer over there and he’ll run it down there when his daddy wants him to move something, you know, and James said there’s a lot of that stuff that he don’t want (laugh) you know, ‘cause it ain’t nothing but junk, you know, he tells his daddy “I don’t want that”, “yeah, you do”. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
ST: But James has got a nice place over there.
Ken: Uh-huh. Was there a, I’ve heard a story about one of the, was it Maddie, I don’t know, Maddie Teague, one of the, it was either a Teague or a Pierce woman was a, was kind-of a matriarch. Maybe her husband was dead, and she had a bunch of sons, and she kind-of doled out, she kind-of ran the sons. Do you, do you know who I might be thinking of? I just kind-of heard this rumor that there was this woman out there on Bee Caves that kind-of was like that. I don’t know whether it was Maddie Teague, or
ST: Well, I don’t, I don’t know, uh, Linwood’s grandmother, her name was Edna. Uh, that was Litton Pierce’s wife
Ken: Right
ST: She used to pull teeth, you know, and pretty well take care of all the boys, you know, if anything happened to ‘em, you know, and she’d nurse ‘em back to health, you know, if they got sick
Ken: Right. Yeah, yeah, that was Luther’s mother too
ST: yeah
Ken: Yeah, um-hum. Yeah, it could have been her. That would be Edna Pierce, or Patterson – what she used to be. I bet it was.
ST: Yeah, she was, let’s see, Lit was, I guess he was up, pretty well up in age when I was just a kid. I was just ten or eleven years old I can remember Lit drinking beer in that little old beer joint with my daddy.
Ken: Um-hum
ST: They didn’t have nothing else to do, you know, and Lit got to where, you know, he couldn’t get out and work like he used to. You know he couldn’t hold up to cutting cedar all day and so he’d go up there to that beer joint, him and my daddy’d sit there and drink beer, you know, and talk
Ken: Yep
ST: Yeah, I can remember Edna and remember Lit, but, like I said, you know, I was a kid, about eight, nine years old, ten years old
Ken: right
ST: And, I can remember Ed and all of ‘em. Do you know all of those, their boys
Ken: Yeah. Well, I don’t want to take too much of your time today.
ST: I’m not doing anything. I’m just (laugh) – you want a Coke?
Ken: Yeah, I would like one, thank you very much.
ST: Let me get us a Coke
Ken: OK. Alrighty
ST: It takes me a minute to get up and get my old legs to where I can move
End