Histories

September 1976 Interviews between Dennis Au and Fr. Lambert LaVoy

I’m Dennis Au. I’m conducting an interview with Rev. Lambert LaVoy on September 7, 1976. Previously in the day in the afternoon I talked to Father LaVoy and he sang several of the songs he recorded for Mr. Clarence Reim ________ and he agreed to an interview that night. Because Rev. LaVoy was heading for Florida very soon I had to record him immediately and admittedly the recording was done in haste. The recording was done in Father Leroy’s travel home parked in back of the Rectory at St. Joseph’s Parish in Erie.
Interview begins:
Q. Earlier today we were talking about the songs, the old French songs, and one of the songs were talking about was the old one, (18) ______________.
A. Wee (Rev. is singing the hymn in French).
Q. Very good. Where did you learn this song?
A. My dad used to sing that. My dad used to know a lot of songs. He knew a lot of French songs and he had learned songs of the ______, _________ Pointe, his home was half in Ohio and half in Michigan and then my father composed songs himself of relatives and characters in the neighborhood and I used to hear my father sing those songs. Unfortunately they weren’t recorded and are now lost. We could have had wise years ago, 50 years ago that we have now by preserving these things why we would have many of these songs today. It’s a shame they are lost.
Q. Do you remember the content of any of these songs?
A. Well there was a song that (and starts singing in French)…..that’s all I can remember. Well anyway the song goes on and we’d meet at the saloon at the Pointe O’ Shane there was a big oak tree where two roads came to a point and there was a saloon there and the song goes on and tells about all the different characters that appeared there, see, and there was a lady there by the name of Mrs. Roberts (Robere) and Mrs. Robere would come and get a (48) ________ and then the little ________ that she took made here dance (French) ______________. She would jump sideways in other words and the song in French sounds very catchy. She had a few drinks why she was pretty lively with her jumps.
Q. That line was in the song?
A. Yup. I don’t remember the song anymore. I think my father is the one that, no it was (54) Moes LaPointe (sp) that was the author of that Pointe O’ Shane.
Q. Who exactly was Moes LaPointe?
A. It was Mose LaVoy. Moes LaVoy was a butcher. He would go out and stay in a ______ and buy calves and steers and butcher them and then take them to the city and peddle the meat from house to house. That’s how he raised his family. But he had a good element of Indian too. Moes LaVoy was 1/4 Indian. He was a huge man. He weighed close to 300 in his day and I say he had 13 children by the first wife and then he married the hired girl and had 13 by her. Her name was Sare Ann. She was a little bit of a woman. She was only about half as big as he was and then somebody was making fun of his wife one day and he said, (67) “French”, don’t touch my heart, he said, now don’t touch my heart”. He referred to his wife as his heart. He was a very jolly man. Very good natured man. A tremendous strong man. He could pick up a beef and carry it on his back. And he lived to be around 90 years old before he died. He was a barb no question about it and had no education at all but he had tremendous talent. He had tremendous talent for a lot of things.
Q. And he was a tremendous singer.
A. Yes, oh yes a beautiful singer. My father said when he would sing, it sounded like music coming out of a violin. It was all natural and he had no formal training or anything like that and then he must have had an unusual talent because he would compose these songs and he could compose them on the spot about anything he saw in the country, you know, describing things like I’ve described in this book you know. But his songs would have all the local characters in the neighborhood he would have all those in his song and the funny things that would happen in the old days. Unfortunately that’s all gone. There were no recordings in those days and that’s all been lost.
Q. Do you remember any specifics for example on the subject of one song?
A. Well that was the Pointe O’Shane was the one that I remember the most and it’s gotten away from me because I haven’t heard that in 50 years and it gets away from you. It gets away from you. I had a wire recorder and my sister I think had recorded something on the recorder then I took it and recorded off a recorder and I don’t know I think my nephew has some of those wire rolls somewhere up in Michigan somewhere way up in Traverse City. I think he has those recordings. He’s got some of my father’s singing.
Q. In French?
A. Yeah. Some of my father’s singing in French. Oh yes.
Q. What did Moes die, you mentioned he was about 90 years old?
A. Oh my goodness, Moes has been dead for oh around 60 years at least since he’s been gone. He’s been dead for over 60 years maybe longer than that. You see he was my grandfather’s uncle and my goodness my grandfather was born in ’49 and Moes was his uncle. Moes must have been born in the ‘30’s. He must have been born back in the ‘30’s so if he were living today he’d be 140 years old. Yes I guess he would. My father would be 100 years old if he were living today.
Q. When would he sing these songs?
A. You see whenever they had weddings and then in the winter time you know there were no television or radio in those days and people used to have a lot of house parties and they would get together and sing just for the love of singing and then of course for all the weddings they would sing all night long. They’d have a little drink once in a while you know and then they’d sing all night long, play the violin, have square dances, and then towards morning they’d begin to recite these poems and sing the French songs. At my aunt’s weddings in (108) ________ at my grandfather’s place in 1912, I was 12 years old so I remember it well and all night long they sang, they drank whiskey and sang, see it was Moes LaPointe, Moes LaVoy and Moes Evans and those three men all night long sang and entertained. They just sat there the three of them and sang ________. They’d sing awhile and play the violin awhile, and square dance awhile and then sing awhile see. That went on all night long.
Q. Were all of the songs…what language were they sung in?
A. That was all French. Everybody was speaking French. There were very few people who spoke English at that party just some of the non–French spoke English. Everybody was visiting in French and talking in French. Oh yes. Now French was spoken in English right here in Erie as late as the early ‘20’s. It was the language around here. Now of course the English people of course were only speaking English but the French people all spoke French and the children all spoke French right up into the ‘20’s. But it began to disappear by the ‘30’s. That 2nd generation began speaking English.
Q. Why do you think it disappeared?
A. English is the language of the country. It just gradually became anemic. Yeah the French people thought if they spoke English why it would give them some prestige.
Q. Did anyone try to preserve the French language here at all?
A. Well it wasn’t that anybody tried to get rid of it or preserve it, it was just the way life…you see the children kept on going to English schools and as I mentioned in my book when they started the schools back in the ‘30’s, you had English teachers teaching who could not speak French teaching French children who could not speak English, I don’t know if you read that in my book or not, and where the children constantly went to English speaking schools, how could they help…they weren’t getting any grammar in French, they were getting their grammar in English all the time and it was inevitable that the French language would sooner or later disappear. It was inevitable. But in the progress of Quebec today they retained their French there. Now the purist French in the world is spoken in Canada believe it or not and not in France and the Canadian French, not the Canadian French of the United States we spoke of (139) _____ right here but the French spoken in Canada today is an old French and when France became separated from the mother country, when Canada became separated from the mother country after French ended the war risking a revolution, you see after that they were no longer connected with the academy in Paris, the academy of French in Paris, you see, and so the Canadian French remained static whereas the Parisian French changed you see. And so the Canadian French, it’s an old French but it’s a beautiful French and then so it does vary somewhat with the French spoken in France today.
Q. Do you find it varies with the Petra (sp) that was spoken right here in Monroe?
A. Well the Petra that we are speaking in Monroe you see was the word that had been coined because they had no grammar. They didn’t go to school and so they would form words you know of their own of the Canadian that you would not find in the dictionary. You see that’s your Petra, you wouldn’t find in the dictionary.
Q. Do you remember any of these words that were coined here?
A. Well yes for example the word “harness”. The real word for harness in French is (150) _________ and we always said _______ here. So there were a lot of words like that that were changed. The word for “engine” we used to call it well a steam engine was a locomotive was a…a railroad is called a _______ a world of iron. You would call a locomotive a ________. Well that’s not correct. _______you say you can see how it’s ______ just a little bit that would be a word…..now in Quebec they wouldn’t call that a _________, I think they would call it _______. So we have many words here that you wouldn’t find in Canada. Now by the same token the French in Louisiana, you know where they came from. They were deported from ________ and I’ve been down there in Louisiana and I’m able to talk with any of those people but sometimes they say some words that only….they call those Cajuns down there. They say some words that only they would know in Louisiana that a Canadian person wouldn’t understand….certain words. But you can still carry on a conversation with them. They think you are hard and you think they are hard see. Now you see a Frenchman in Canada is called a _________ and Frenchman in Louisiana is called a Cajun and word Cajun comes from Acadian. See in French they didn’t say Acadian, they’d say A’cadian and then they’d shorten it and say Cajun. See how that would come from…..you would find it in the French dictionary A’cadian meaning Acadian but you wouldn’t find in the French dictionary Cajun see. Cajun the word is very common in Louisiana. So you’ll find a lot of words like that that they have formed, they have broken down words and it just comes from usage see. Now for example the French word “bullhead”. Well in Canada, in English they call them (190)______ and in French we call them ______ and you can even find in the dictionary, it’ll say ______ it’ll say ______ sometimes. In the South sometimes you’ll see ______ marked on the market and it’s nothing else but ______ what we call bullhead here, it’s the same fish. You can have two names depending what region it’s being used you see. Now for a wheel barrow this here we always said ________ for a wheel barrow. Now I don’t know what they would call it in Canada but I have noticed many words in fact I’ve got a little book right here I think would be a great help to us. I was in Canada this summer, hah. Here, “Songs of Quebec”. Speaking in French________ “All the people want to go to Heaven”. We were up to Sorel (sp) this summer. French ________ , “I shall rise to my home”. French ______________ …..Look at that and I’ll see if I can find another, I think I got one that has some translations in it. I’ll give you that.
Q. Thank you very much. There’s some interesting songs in here. One of them that I just came across is “Al leh yet” (sp).
A. Yes.
Q. Did the French here sing “Al leh yet”?
A. No they didn’t here. Not much. I never heard it sung when I was a child here by the local French around here. Let’s see.
Q. And there was another song that the Canadians sang.
A. Here’s one here, “Travel Fun __________”. This book here is written for English people who go to Canada.
Q. But there’s one song “Go long go long my budda” (sp) singing in French ________. Have you ever heard that song here?
A. Here’s another one I’ll give you.
Q. Thank you.
A. You’ll find a lot of Patra’s in there.
Q. I noticed when you said “good evening” in French, it was very definitely French Canadian almost.
A. Yeah French speaking ______. “ _______” means goodnight or good evening.
Q. In Parisian French people say ¬¬¬¬__________ sound in French Canadian. Is that the way it was said in this area too?
A. Somewhat, yes. We went down there to Sorel Quebec in a good song jamboree. Sorel is 41 miles above Montreal. We were there in conjunction with the Olympics. (still trying to find books)
Q. Did you ever have any formal training in French?
A. No. I studied French in school, yeah, in a correct French seminary and I can read French after a fashion. I can pick up most any kind of French and understand, not absolutely everything but understand what they are talking about. Yeah. They’ll say a lot of words that are not familiar with me and I know the words. In Canada I talk to those Canadians in French. I carry on a conversation without hesitation. In Canada I have no difficulty at all. They might think my French is hard but I still make myself understood you know. But if I were there a short time, it would not take me no time at all to pick it up, you know, no time at all I could pick it up. I could figure out things. When you hear them talking French on the radio, now a lot of that gets away from me on television. I know what they are talking about but there’s 50 percent of the words they are saying them pretty fast and they get by me. But when we were there in Canada I could read the street signs very well in French. I could read those correctly all the time you know and the signs of the stores, I could read those signs. I just tell my sister what they meant without no difficulty at all. Once in a while there would be some words that it would get away from me. Let’s see there was one there that I had a hard time solving it. Oh they had different streets that would say “P.O. Six” and I said they must be talking about Pope Paul the Sixth but it didn’t mean that at all, you see. And I never did figure out what that was because sometimes I saw “P.O. Sank” (sounds like) and I knew it wasn’t the Pope but the first time I saw it I said this system they are honoring the Pope over here. I see Pope Paul’s name you see and I found out later it wasn’t the Pope at all you see.
Q. I’m very interested in how the French language right here in Monroe differed from standard French and even Canadian French and those examples you gave me such as the wheel barrow were interesting.
A. Yeah. French (278) _______. ____ is way up there on the Saguene (sp) River. See the Saguene River is way up above the part of the city of Quebec, way, way up and it’s a city on the river, on the Saguene River and the Saguene River runs….they can go by ship for 100 miles inland right to the door up the St. Lawrence River and it’s source is the big lake, Lake St. John, and we drove it took us all day long, we drove around the Lake, it took us all day along to drive around the Lake see. And so our smaller rivers empty into Lake St. John, but the big river, the Saguene River, is navigable from Lake St. John and the ports, the cities on the Lake they are navigable for the ships coming from the ocean will come in there after 100 miles inland.
Q. I went to Quebec last year and really enjoyed it. It’s a great place to be.
A. You’ll find a lot of stuff right here in this book.
Q. Thank you. I really appreciate that because I do plan on returning it.
A. Travel Fun see.
Q. Parle Vous France (sp).
I sang some other songs earlier in the day and one of them was sung to me by my step–grandmother and I was wondering if your mother sang any songs like it?
A. Now my mother was born in 1877. No it would be later than that. I was born in 1900 and she was 22 when I was born so she was born about oh year about 1882 and she had lost her French because they wanted to be modern in they spoke English. She lost her French before 1900. So after she was married she would always insist after we came along we speak French and she would speak French to us but anybody else she would answer them in English. When she was growing up she was conscious of it and she would speak in English but when she would talk to us, she would speak in French and if we spoke in English, she would say “parle france ah” (sp) “speak French there” because she wanted us to keep the French. At home years ago we all spoke French but since we’ve grown up and gotten an education and gotten away from home of course we’ve gotten out of the practice of it you see. And it’s surprisingly you see I haven’t practiced the French very much in the last sixty years, not very much. But when were home my father never spoke anything else except French to us and we talked French all the time but our French was horrible, I mean, since I’ve studied grammar I can see where our French was just horrible see. So you might call it the “pad ra” and there was a reason for it because they were living in the wilderness for so long that you had to have a grammar to keep a language straight you know.
Q. Can you name any of the specific grammatical differences between the French here and text book French that you learned in school?
A. Well for example we would say “here”. We would say “French” (33)_____ whereas the correct way would be “_______”. We would say for “egg” we would say “______” and they’d say “____”. We would say “_______” for “wagon” whereas the Frenchman would say “______”. We would say “________” for a “long boat” or river boat they would paddle and say “______” different from a canoe and what did we call that……”________” that’s correct and that would be a little boat. “_______” “animal” that would be the same. One thing we said that was always wrong. “___________” “how are you” and a lot of the French would say “______” we never said “____________” and I thought it was just English for people trying to put on the dog but I find out that you’ll find the word “______” you’ll find it in there some place :_____”.
Q. So the French here were quite a bit different.
A. Yeah I would stop and have to think I suppose if I’d start talking to the French or somebody I’d see plenty of the mistakes, you know.
Q. Did everyone make these mistakes?
A. Oh yes around here because they all talk that way but you wouldn’t find any grammar for the words that we use around here. We call it muskrat French you know. There’s a foundation in fact all right but the Canadians would think it would be horrible. It’s surprising how many English words that are really French, for example, we are in places where for example they serve crepes suzette. Well the word “crepes” is nothing else but the French crepes like pancake. A crepes suzette as far as I’m concerned I didn’t know what crepes suzette were … one time I went to a fancy place where they were putting on the dog and we say, and to me if nothing else they were just plain ole pancakes. It’s a very thin pancake. And it’s just the way they mixed the dough, they call it crepes suzette. I think it was a pancake that had a lot of eggs in it see. I think where they got the suzette…all I can see was from many of the pancakes that my mother made it just that they had more eggs in it and that’s supposed to be a very fancy thing, crepes suzette.
Q. Did your mother make any of these fancy pancakes?
A. No. She made us simple old fashion pancakes with buckwheat flour. We used to raise our buckwheat years ago and we’d have our ____ buckwheat flour but if anyone didn’t have buckwheat flour they’d use plain white flour to make pancakes with and sour milk. Sour milk and flour and a little baking powder will make real good pancakes but they’d be white and on the light side. I favor the dark pancakes for me.
Q. There were some other songs too that I remembered. (393)_______ mentioned the song. He’d forgotten a lot and he called “Mattaline”. Do you remember “Mattaline”?
A. I’ve heard it but I wouldn’t know it.
Q. Could you recall the titles of any of the songs?
A. No. I don’t know anymore. That’s gotten away from me. I’d recognized them if I heard them but now if my life depended on it I couldn’t think of them.
Q. Another thing that we talked about earlier and you mentioned you (400) _________.
A. Well when I was a youngster you know and I was small my uncle used to talk about _______ and it gave me a feeling right away of some wild ghosts in the dark ______ you see. It was something that gambled in the darkness. It was a evil spirit and I was sure exactly what ______ looked like you know but you run across it in French literature all the time.
Q. Why would your uncle talk about the…..?
A. Oh you know they were just teenagers you know and I was a little kid who followed after them. I was only maybe 4, 5 or 6 and it turned out that __________________(French). Or maybe they want to go frog hunting and I’d want to go in and they’d say “oh no you’ll meet _______.” They wanted to impress upon me were evil spirits of some kind when I wanted to go frog hunting and they wanted to go at night and I wanted to follow along and they didn’t want to be bothered with me and so they’d say “________” would get me or something like that.
Q. Pretty clever. Did your parents ever talk about the “_______”.
A. No. My folks never talked about the ________.
Q. How about something called (424) “lupin”?
A. What is it or does it mean?
Q. It’s a goblin. Something that almost looks like an orangutan that rides on horses at night.
A. Never heard of that.
Q. In fact he rides on a horse and he carries usually a rose bush or a briar bush and beats the side of the horse and makes him so tired and so foamed up that by the time morning comes the farmer can’t use his horse.
A. Oh I see. His horses are tired out at night. He wants to wear out the horse and the farmer can’t use it.
Q. Have you ever heard of anything like that?
A. No I’ve never heard of anything like that before.
Q. Or something called the “__________”?
A. Another word I can think of right now “tomato”. Tomato, we call it “_________” meaning “apple of love” but in Canada they say “to mat”. And then we used to say “tat tat” for potato whereas they say “pun potato”––“apple of the ground”. We used to say “pa tat”. I don’t think you’ll find the word “pa tat” in the dictionary at all.
Q. I don’t think so either.
A. No. French (449) ________________________ “that’s a piglet”. ________ is a little pig. “A more” that would be the boar. “pun” chicken that would be a little chicken. “ett” at the end of a word always means little. On any French word anywhere you see “ett” put little on it. And “_______”. You know what a “_______” is? Have you heard that, it means a cart.
Q. Did anyone the French at least a long time ago were known to have these 2–wheel carts instead of 4–wheel?
A. The reason why they had the 2–wheel carts, remember you had mud roads and we always had 2–wheel cart and we had some 2–wheel carts that had pretty heavy wheels on it too and we used them in the spring before we had stone roads before the ‘20’s and the spring of the year everything was quagmire. The horses couldn’t pull a 4–wheel vehicle so you’d hook on a 2–wheel vehicle see. They use them to race with you know. They’d race with their 2–wheel carts too. So we had 2–wheel carts then your racing sulky with the rubber tires came out with, that came out for most of the wealthy people with their race horses and for the fancy race carts they came out with the pneumatic tires and the wire wheels. But they were outgrowth of the old cart and there were just refineness of the cart.
Q. Where do these old carts come from?
A. The blacksmiths used to make them. The blacksmiths would make the wagons. In those days there wasn’t too many commercial made things. Everything was made locally. They’d make their own wagons. I remember when blacksmiths if you had a wagon and you’d break a wheel the blacksmith would make you a wheel. That’s not too long ago in fact. As a matter of fact I’ll tell you somebody that I saw make a wheel. I say Matt make a wheel for those cannon carriages over there and they were stolen. Did you hear about those that were stolen?
Q. Yeah.
A. I saw those wheels and he had beautiful big wheels, made real heavy just like the original ones, just like the picture and Matt made those from scratch.
Q. He did and he did a good job too.
Do you remember who the cart makers were?
A. Well any blacksmith, they had carriage makers. You had the carriage makers to make the fine carriages. I remember we used to have surreys with a fringe on top, we had one of those. My grandfather had it and when he got his first automobile in 1914, the Overland, he gave us the carriage but we had another one before that that wasn’t quite as refined as that. That had a fringe on top too. We used to call those surreys. You had some surreys that had 3 seats in them that could carry 9 people or you had surreys that carry, just 2–seaters, 5 people. I used to pile a lot of kids in them. And there were very fine carriages made oh yes from Civil War time. Well don’t they have some here at the museum, some carriages with tires?
Q. We don’t have any carriages, we have some sleighs but no carriages.
What about the ordinary farm cart, the 2–wheeled farm cart?
A. They were made by mostly local carriage makers. (520) ________ Oh yeah there were people who made buggy’s and carriages. Now there was a very fine carriage…the Fisher Brothers were manufacturers of carriages before….they went to develop automobile bodies. They were manufacturers of fine carriages down in Ohio and their carriage shop became the first body shop. There’s where your body shop grew out of carriages. As a matter of fact you had several automobile companies that were outgrowths of carriages. Now did you ever hear of the Studebaker automobile? Well the Studebaker automobiles, there was the Studebaker Wagonworks down there in Indiana.
Q. We do at the Museum have the Studebaker wagon.
A. You do have the Studebaker wagon. Well the same company became the manufacturers of the automobile called Studebaker. There used to be a very fine buggy, what did they call that, 20–wagon, and if you had one of those you really had a Cadillac in buggys. But I remember sometime we would have a wheel that would break in the spring of the year in the mud and you could go to the blacksmith shop and he would make you up a wheel. If a phalli would break and they would make a new phalli. Do you know what a phalli is. A phalli is what goes around the spokes underneath the tire see. You had those arts all over in a small towns. You had a lot of artisans in small towns. You had somebody in every small town…..since people lived in the village and country, all the villages had wagon makers. They could make wagons. You could buy them commercially or make them but the boughten ones…I remember our first wagon at home was a hand made wagon that had been made, what was this man’s name that used to make wagons near west Toledo, he used to make my grandfather’s wagons and that’s all he did was make farm wagons, hmm slipped my mind. He was an old German fellow.
Q. Something else I’m rather interested in. I’ve read about the French making these in the winter time and summer were these old straw hats. Remember the straw hats?
A. Yes. Now the straw hats were made in Europe preceding the thrash machines. When they used to flail the wheat, cut the wheat with flails, you see your straw was long and they would merely break up the heads and take that whole straw that was not broken yet and they would soak that straw after it was ripe and soak it and soak it and it makes it tough and they would….my great grandmother was constantly making straw hats and my father used to call that “_______” (694) she would weave straw hats and she’d make straw bonnets. The women all made straw hats and straw bonnets for the summertime and _________.
Q. What did these straw hats look like?
A. Well they weren’t as refined as the Panama hat. They would be that fine of a weave. They’d be a coarser weave. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to some of those old stores where they had cheap straw hats. I remember we could buy cheap straw hats for a dime when I was a kid, of course, a dime does as much as a dollar does now. But I remember when you could buy a big straw hat for farm work for a dime or fifteen cents or twenty cents, take your pick. I think that the little store I think they’ve got some of those old fashion straw hats that were hand woven, I think you’ll find them in the little store over there at Rasinville. I think you’ll find an old fashion store where the straw hats were made locally and I think they have a couple of them.
Q. I don’t recall seeing any but I’ll have to look again.
A. I’ve seen some from somewhere and I don’t remember if I saw them there but I’ve seen them somewhere. And then they would just simply just take see what they would do, they would make a weave about that wide…..
Q. That’s about 1/2 inch?
A. Not quite a 1/2 inch, I would say about 3/8 inch or 1/4 inch and they would start from the center and they would take thread and they’d sew them, they would just run thread like this back and forth from one straw to another and they’d start weaving it flat on a surface and keep going around and around and they keep on sewing the straw together. I’ve seen one of my sister’s one time and I’ll never forget, one was about 4 and one was about 6 and my mother bought them each a beautiful straw hat, my mother was going and she would come back and when she came back she said to me look at my hat, she unwove it and she unwove the whole thing and she had just the crown left and she had that crown on her head and she thought she was pretty. She had simply pulled the threads off and it come loose and once she got it started you could rip it off. They would just hand sew it with white thread.
Q. With white sewing thread?
A. Yeah. Just take white sewing thread and they would just pass it in the straw and see they’d go just like that from one side to the other. Now Easter week this year another place I took a trip was a Caribbean trip and we were down in Jamaica, we were in Acoreas and Montego Bay Jamaica and the ladies make all kinds of hats, make all kinds of Panama hats and bonnets, just all kinds and stuff is flowing over in all the shops. Everybody has straw hats and they make and they try to sell them to the tourists, but everybody makes them. Even the little kids start working on them. That country is full of that stuff in that stuff in that troubled country, they have all kinds of stuff in weeds. And they can make some pretty nice things too. Your best hats are Panama hats and that’s where they came from is Panama. Of course they were made all over Hawaii and places but they still call them Panama hats and even today you can buy very expensive Panama hats in the finest dress shops.
Q. Were the hats the French made here ever sold?
A. Oh sure they used to sell them to city people. The farmers make hats and all kinds of things, everything was hand made and they would peddle eggs, potatoes, apples, butter and sweet corn, pumpkins, lettuce, tomatoes. They’d go to town to the market with all that, and straw hats and all that stuff. You could go into the farmer’s market and there would be a variety of everything, even homemade brooms. Up until 50 years ago you didn’t have too many things that were made commercially. See we are living in a commercial age now where everything is made by machine but before automobile, machines were not very common. You see it’s automation that has completely changed our civilization.
Q. It has.
A. Now you buy everything already made and the machine has put the small operator out of business. You can’t produce by hand and sell it on the market to compete because the machine can make it so much faster. It’s not better just faster and not near as good. You see in the olden days the farmers used raise their sheep and make their clothes from their own wool and they had the spinning wheels. The spinning wheel has disappeared now.
Q. Did your mother spin?
A. No. The spinning wheel was out before my time but my great grandmother spun. I don’t even think my grandmother spun. The spinning wheel disappeared over 100 years ago as far as practical use is concerned. Over 100 years ago. They began to develop the machines pretty much around Civil War times, 1950’s.
Q. Another thing that I’m very interested in are some of the old holiday customs of the French and I hear the New Year’s Day celebrations.
A. Now that we used to do that. Every New Year’s the French didn’t celebrate Christmas. Christmas was the children’s day but it was all traditional and with us even to this day. Our big day is not Christmas. Our big day is New Year’s. (side B 48)_______. As a matter of fact I’ve got a story written in right in my book on New Year’s Day….
Q. That’s the Day _______ Book, isn’t it?
A. Yeah. _________. (looking through the book) Here we are. The early French had customs and traditions that are all but forgotten. __________ New Year’s was not celebrated on New Years Day as today like our all night Pagan rivalry of drink and carousing. New Year’s is a sacred holiday. The feast then of the circumcision of our Lord. They arose refreshed. All went to mass together, see it was a holy day, we observe New Year’s and is still observed as a holy day same as the Sunday. Are you Catholic?
Q. No.
A. We observe it as the same as Sunday so we have six holy days in a year and most of the holy days will fall on a set date. It’s like Christmas, it’s always on the 25th and New Year’s Day would be on the 1st but it would change every 7 years. It could fall on a Sunday too.
Q. I’m familiar with those days because we have them in the Lutheran Church too. Have the same calendar.
A. Yeah. Absolutely. All went to mass together to give homage to the infant Christ. See that Christ has come now they are going to give them homage, he’s a week old see. Beseeching his blessings on this the first day of the year. Then with a good conscience began the celebrating of the festive New Year. The family was bustled into the 2–horse sleigh, bobs or log boat… now do you know what a log boat is? A log boat is a simple two runners that slide right on the ground and it’s only that high from the ground, you put the 2 flat runners…like I made a log boat with an axe––I’ve made several log boats already––you could saw them out in such a way that you would have your runner turn up you know to the front like that or you could take an axe and you could “U” them out–I’ve done that already–and then you would take and have a cross piece like a “U” to raise it up about that high from the sleigh. You’d have a little chunk of wood…
Q. That’s about 6 inches?
A. And then you’d have a cross bar on the top and then you could put a box on top or else you could put a plank. They called them log boats because they were low and you could roll a log on them real easy. When there was snow you could roll 3 or 4 logs and then by rolling the log, see the boat was so low, the runners was so low you see, the runners where they slide…every farmer had a log boat. But you had swings and bobs too. So as we said the family was bustling to the 2–horse sleigh and the bobs were on board and onto grandpas and grandmas. It was customary for the young married people to go to their parents, that would be grandparents to their kids you see. “Bon jour Pa Pa, Bon jour Ma Ma” and the grandchildren, “Bon jour Pe Pe, Bon jour Me, Me”. (96)more French). “I wish you a Happy New Year.” And upon bended knees asked for their parental blessings. Eventually the exciting conversations, the new baby and the quilting bee, the neighbor’s death, the disastrous fire, the neighbor’s funeral, the tall tales of the hunt and of the swamps and the creeks were suddenly interrupted by the call for supper. When all had assembled around the crude “U’d” wooden table Grandpa piously invoked the blessings of God upon this providential ________. Then from the Dutch oven and the steaming kettles came forth the roast of wild hog, venison or wild turkey, now we are going back quite a ways, the French slipperys…do you know what a French slippery is?–that’s a pot pie, we make those, wherever you find French….even to this day my sisters when we had chickens….what they do they take dough and roll it out like a pie dough and then you cut it in squares and you drop it in boiling broth and then it comes out white and fluffy and oh that’s delicious. It takes an old chicken hen you can’t do that with a rooster. You gotta have a fat hen for that. When you have a good fat chicken and that will make real good broth and it’ll make a real fat broth and that makes a nice pot pie. And that’s what we sometimes call slippery. But French pot pie and slippery is the same thing. I’m surprised all the _______ would know about slipperys.
Q. My mother makes something similar called “glacy”.
A. Yes that’s very similar to it. Well then from the dutch ovens and the steaming kettles came forth the roasts of wild hog, venison or wild turkey, the French slipperys, and the succulent vegetables. On Mardi Gras, the day before Lent, the young people would congregate in the old fashion kitchen enjoy themselves by tossing pancakes or as it is called in French “__________”, reawakening the crepe.
Q. Did you do that as a growing up?
A. No. They quit that before our time. But I remember we used to go to our grandfather’s on New Year’s Day and we lived in Deerfield, we moved to Deerfield in 1904, and sometimes we went with bobs and sometimes in a log boat and if there was no snow we would take a carriage. Of course a farmer had a lot of stock in those days. My father would have to find somebody to do the chores while we would be gone, and we would be gone for three or four days, and my goodness when we would get to my grandfather’s folks from over here to the other state line to the big house there, the house is still there, and that was a very French type house too. Incidentally that house nobody ever visited that house , _______ when they were getting…remember when they would go around photographing these old houses, they should have gotten that one because that was a typical French house. Did you get that one?
Q. Yes we got it. It’s just in Bedford Township isn’t it.
A. Yes near the state line.
Q. We thought we missed it because I thought it was in Erie but it was actually in Bedford.
A. But I’ll tell you now I was born on the same farm. I was born in Erie and I thought I was born in Bedford but you see the road don’t run north and south. You know the Dixie Highway is running northeast and southwest whereas your lines run north and south and so the line of Bedford cuts across right there just before you get to the brick house and just cuts the corner of my grandfather’s farm and I was born about as far, we lived about a block away from the Bedford line. For a long time I thought I was born in Bedford but I was born on the Erie side of the line.
Q. What kind of celebrations did you actually do… participate on Mardi Gras?
A. Well you see everybody would say Happy New Year, Happy New Year, and speak French and play cards and just have fun. In those days the kids would put on skits. When we went to the old country public schools and we would recite our skits that we had parts in our plays and we would sing and when I was a kid I was always playing Priests and I’d play mass and my sister would be in the choir and they’d have a houseful coming and everybody would say “make the children play mass”. And to some people that was very sacred. It was very, very sacred. That would be done at my grandfather’s house. Then they would sing and they’d start singing in the evening and all start singing French songs but they would play cards then the kids would play by themselves and of course lots to eat, turkey, goose, not very often, chicken, and roasts and minced pie. My grandmother used to make her own minced pie, I mean from scratch. She’d use apples and grapes, she’d use wine, she’d use dates and she’d use a lot of things to put in it and there were real mince, she used to put meat in it, she would put pork in it and beef in it and everything of course had to be in proportion you know. Oh that mince pie when I was a kid I used to sneak in the school sometimes and she’d have a great big five gallon jar of it, a crock full of it, 5 gallons, and when I was a kid I used to always sneak down there with a spoon and slurp, slurp. So that’s the way we celebrated it but this is going back in the frontier days you know and where the people had to get or rustle their living from the wild pretty much but that was done right here in Erie here as you see right here. There was no such a staple as white granulated sugar in frontier days. The only natural sweet was the wild honey but the Indians crudely refined a sweet from hard maple trees which the white man called Indian sugar, better known as maple sugar and the Indians taught the white man the art of making maple sugar. In the month of March when the sap began to run, the Indian’s tapped the hard maple trees. The Indians taught the white man a lot of things.
Q. Do you remember some of the other foods, how about something the French called “the toot”.
A. Oh “the toot” that was delicious. It would be next to a dressing but more meat in that and less gooie and it’s sort of a meat pie, that’s what it is. It is an old fashion French meat pie. They would make it in a tin and sometimes round tins. That had a lot of good stuff in it, I’ll tell you. For that they would save the gizzards, and the sweet breads and such as that. The more gizzards and sweet breads you could put into it, the better it was. Then you put in some beef and a little bit of pork and that was delicious and then they would put crust on top and bake it.
Q. Sounds good.
A. Yes indeed.
Q. How about something called, my mother calls them “quets______”?
A. Let’s see “quets”, that’s a sort of a dough that is worked into something like a big braid. If we spoke of a “quet” that would be a girl’s braided hair. Now they would make a dough and bake it and they would even put apples in it too you know and after they made the dough they sort of made it just like a hair braid, but with dough see and they would make it that long and cut it in pieces and that would be “quets”. Now I had forgotten all about those but I remember when I was a kid there were some people who made them but you don’t see them anymore. But I do remember though when they did have them and I’ve seen them in some places. The Swedes make them. I’ve seen them in Seattle, the Swedes make them still and people like that, Norwegians make them. You’ll find them in France too.
Q. How about something called (201) “______”?
A. Yeah that is cake
Q. The butter?
A. Butter. That would be a butter cake.
Q. Have you ever heard of it?
A. No. I can see now it would be a yellow cake. I’m sure that would be a name for a French yellow cake. When you use butter and eggs in it, yeah, I think it had to be just a simple French yellow cake.
Q. How about “muskrat”?
A. “_________” French. You see that’s a misnomer. The muskrat outside of the French is very much misunderstood animal and I’ve got a lot about muskrats here.
Q. I noticed you have a little stack.
A. In fact they used to have the famous muskrat dinners in Monroe but I think the only place in Monroe County they have them in the area is still right here. They still have them right near here and I’ll tell you who makes them, he used to be Vice President of the Gratton Construction Company and that’s O’Neal Peady (sp).
Q. I heard about him. Mr. Arthur Juliar (sp), I was talking to him and he mentioned him.
I had always heard that at one time in a winter that was very near here that some Frenchmen applied to the Bishop for special dispensation to declare the muskrat a fish so they could be eaten on “fast” days.
A. No that wasn’t quite it.
Q. What was the story?
A. ___theology on that point that you are talking about. To a Frenchman in the early days anything that was on the water or in the water was a fish and to the French that lived around the area and you must remember they weren’t scientific. And anything that lived in the water or near the water belonged to the fish family. And they innocently ate muskrat thinking that it was fish rather than meat. The old French considered muskrat not meat but fish. Now you see a lot of the people or about half of the people right here in Erie would not eat muskrat on Friday and half of them would. Now our families wouldn’t eat it on Friday. They used to salt muskrat. They used to scare muskrat in the winter time under the ice and they’d salt a whole barrelful for Lent because it’s supposed to be fish, but our folks would never eat it. On neither my father’s side nor my mother’s side, not on Friday. But I know some of my uncles did, some did and some didn’t. So the Priests how do you treat your people on the subject if they are convinced it’s fish don’t interfere with them. If they think it’s meat then they can’t eat meat on Friday and that’s the system we follow. So if people can convince me they say well Father what can be do about muskrat on Friday––well in our family we always eat muskrat on Friday. Now what do you consider muskrat? Oh we think it’s fish. So I say go ahead eat it. Well you can bleed a muskrat like you can bleed a pig but you can’t bleed a fish. You can’t bleed a turtle. A turtle and frogs are amphibians and you can eat an amphibian. They do have blood but it don’t run in veins like it does in human beings, you can’t bleed a turtle to death, you can make him bleed but you can’t bleed him to death. You have to cut his head off to kill him. You never bleed a turtle and you can stick a frog but his blood won’t run and he won’t bleed to death. But you can bleed a pig to death. Anything that bleeds you can bleed to death because they’ve got to have arteries and amphibians don’t have that kind of an artery. But you see they say the heart is different. The four ventriculars to one heart and three in the other, now which is which. How many ventriculars do we have in a human heart? I think it’s three.
Q. I think it’s four.
A. It’s four well then an amphibian has three. The heart works different in amphibians than it does in humans. You see a frog and turtle can hibernate, they can sit on the bottom of the lake all winter long and they appear dead and they will get oxygen through the water which will permeate through the skin. Both turtles and frogs will lay in the mud all winter and hibernate and they appear to be dead but just as soon as you put them where there is heat , why they come to life fast. They are actually not dead, it’s just nature’s way of sleeping. Of course many animals and we aren’t allowed to eat animals that hibernate.
Q. Bears.
A. Certain bears will hibernate. Most bears will hibernate, black bears will hibernate. Grissly’s won’t hibernate too much, they will on some occasions but rarely. Brown bears, some will and some won’t hibernate. You take a woodchuck will hibernate. We’ve already baled straw in the field when in those days we had thrash machines and the (289)_______ and _______ used to buy the straw and we used to bale straw all over with the hay balers in the winter time and then that straw would be hauled into Monroe and they would make brown paper with. At one time we were baling, there was a great big muskrat ______________come to finish up and he acted like he was almost dead. He would act very sluggish. Well ordinarily they wouldn’t and they run fast and they fight and he didn’t offer any resistance to fight but after they played with him for a while, he began to get active but he was just like wakening out of a deep sleep. So there will be certain animals that will hibernate and they sleep all winter, like the bear they sleep all winter. And strangely enough this is a little off beat what we are talking about but a bear will always when he makes a bed in the winter time, did you know that he always makes it on the sunny side of the hill or range or mountain?
Q. No.
A. Yes he makes it on the sunny side because when the sun comes up in the spring of the year it’ll thaw the snow and the ice off from him before it will on the shady side. Oh yeah all hunters can tell you that. Anything that hibernates you will find on the sunny side of the…if there’s a mountain or ridge or hill, the bed will always be on the sunny side.
Q. Were there very many muskrat hunters around here?
A. Yeah. I used to trap muskrat. Oh yes muskrat hunting yes and there’s still muskrat trapping here yet, but the price is not very good now. Now we have these swamps here all along Lake Erie at one time were just loaded with muskrat but you see a muskrat is not a rat. They are different from a rat. They are a fur bearing animal. See a rat is hair animal, rodents are hair but a muskrat belongs to the beaver family and a Frenchman may not call it a muskrat. The Indians called it little beaver but the French called it “_________” and you would not find the word __________ in any dictionary. You’ll find the word muskrat but you find the word _________ and a Frenchman always calls _________, never calls it a muskrat. And it’s the Indian name _______ for little beaver.
Q. Never heard of that.
A. Their habits are very much alike and as you know muskrats around the country along the ditch they’ll narrowly burrow a hole, start burrowing under the water then they come up in a bank. That’s the way we use to trap them. But they get in the marshes they make houses. You’ve seen the house?
Q. Yeah I’ve seen them.
A. They are like little beaver houses. But they don’t make damns like a beaver. But anyway our lake has become so polluted, not marshes have been killing them, but a muskrat normally lives in a marsh and lives on the roots of sweet flags––do you know what a sweet flag is? You know these long tails grow up to look like palms, they call those sweet flags. Now a sweet flag grows down and the roots of a sweet flag is like a white onion in the muck. The muskrat goes down there and he cuts that tail off and he digs out that root and he brings it up and he’ll roll that and he’ll carry that in his house and he’ll put up his winter supply and they look just like great big white onions. Now pollution has so permeated the muck that the muskrat can’t stand in. A muskrat is a very clean living animal, very, very clean in the animals. _______ daily where they can get it where they are in the country and they got to quick meandering through corn fields. They’ll eat corn which is very good food and there’s good pork and good beef too. But in the marsh’s where there’s no corn they live on sweet flag roots. Now there is not anywhere near the amount of muskrat here there was at one time. There used to be when I was pastor here. A lot of my cousins used to trap in here and they figured it was a crop. Alvin _______ right down here only a few miles from here still traps them but it don’t pay because there isn’t enough of them and the price is not good. There are too many synthetic furs on the market. But he told me he’s quit trapping the last few years. He said that the muskrat has become scare on account of the pollution in the marshes.
Q. What about spearing them?
A. They used to. Now a muskrat will come out in the winter time and he will swim under the ice and when the ice….have you ever seen a muskrat spear?....
Q. No.
A. A muskrat spear is nothing else but a single iron rod that is sharpened and has a harpoon on it. And sometimes they will take….have you ever seen what they call a pike pole that they use for lumbering?.....a pike pole is a wooden shaft that’s about this big around and it’ll be 10–12 feet long and it’s got to be strong and lumberman will stand on one log and push logs with them and then they’ve got a sharp iron spear that comes out. Now a muskrat spear is made on that order but not that heavy and so with a muskrat spear you can jab through think ice with it. And so around here what they used to do when the muskrats were very plentiful they’d go in the neighborhood and skate or walk on the ice around muskrat houses and if there was no snow on the ice and the ice was not too thick and the muskrat would be swimming and you’d see his form underneath the ice, they’d jab that spear right through the ice. You could jab it through ice that thick well the rod would be as big as your finger and it had a harpoon on it like a fish hook and what they would do is “boom” and drive it right through the ice and it would go right through the muskrat’s back. I never did that and I never saw it done. I heard my father talk about it. My father said when he was a boy it was a very common thing was spearing muskrat through the ice. Now it would be unlawful to do it. A long time ago that’s been outlawed.
Q. Another story I’ve heard about the marshes ______ I guess a story from Mr. Art Julior, from the Julior Orchards, he said at one time they would go down at the end of Erie Road and they’d have a party and call it “_________” (380). Do you remember that?
A. No, oh I’ve been to some parties, “__________” means _________. Oh sure you see the hunters years ago they would have a shack in the back and they would bring in any game they could get and then boil it and make themselves a soup and that was your bullion and they’d put onions with it and they would make themselves a broth. Sure. My uncle one time, I think asked my grandmother if he could have a couple chickens when he was a teenager and they had a shack in the woods to make a meal. So they went out there and they got the fire too hot and the roof caught fire when the chicken was almost done and they had to take the kettle with the bouillon to pour it on the fire and they had to eat the chicken dry. But here is a paragraph on the muskrat that I’d like to read for you: Here is a habitat, now he’s talking about the marshes, that _________________ the numerous family in the great common wealth for many, many years perhaps two hundred or two thousand who knows has it’s kingdom established here not without interference it is true nor free from the predatory visits of four footed neighbors and two legged invaders of his possessions yet not withstanding these entourage circumstances the numbers do not suffer any apparent decrease. The muskrat will always remain. He may be scarce but _____comes back very rapidly. He has big families. ______ upon mercilessly followed his very castle by spear and gun and trap. He has maintained his ground and water and is still found doing business at the old stand. You may call him by his scientific name ________ or you may confer upon him his Indian musksquash or ________ a the Canadian knows him. Or you may designate him by the plain every day local and universal term of muskrat. Yet even with this most _________ name he is still the same quiet well behaved keen eyed shrewd and _________ rodent ___________. He is simply indifferent to all. He likes clean water and clean food preferably vegetables, very preferably the fact it must be beyond question clean. Seldom are fish bones in his habitation though he is not adverse to a nice bird sometimes when his favorite food the sweet flag group, is not obtainable. He is particular but not foolish about his table. He does not like _____ as an architect ___________ cannot be said to be progressive. His domicile is constructed on the same lines as it has been constructed during all times around ____ mound of reeds and mud about 4–feet high entered below to a water trap entrance. Now the long existing prejudice against the use of muskrat as food for humans was a fortunate one for the muskrat in connection with his life, the liberty and the pursuit of happiness but it finally became known that muskrat meat was one of the great delicacies of the winter. One _________ (453) an expert muskrat under any cook was to discover and when he declared that you cook him with onion you shan’t told him from duck.
Q. Where did this _________ live?
A. The question was considered as ______ and the rodent was ever much suffered and I’m quoting that from Bulkley (sp) Vol. 1, p. 302.
Q. I wonder if _______ was a local Frenchman?
A. Oh sure. Now one of the most popular functions in the Monroe Yacht Club was the annual Muskrat Banquet which occurred about Christmas time and it attracted guests from so many surrounding towns. At one of these recent feasts over 100 persons partook of the festive “Musksquash” cooked in a dozens different ways. Even to this day in Erie there is the annual muskrat supper prepared and cooked by no less a _______ than the _______________ people. So they still have their muskrat dinner here every year and he was the one that prepares the muskrats. They have to get them from Canada now. Still they are more plentiful from the Canadian side than they are here. They have less pollution over there in the water but the muskrat will come back. As a matter of fact some years ago the “Du Sos” (sp) were down here, the biggest carp fishermen in the world were right down here in this parish, just 3 miles from here or less and Enis Du Sos who became very wealthy furnishing the Jews in New York with carp, told me 2 or 3 years ago that pollution was so bad in the swamp that the muskrats were leaving the marshes and going up the ditches. The ditches were full of muskrat. He said I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen that before in my life where the muskrat left the marshes. To go up the ditches and the creeks they go up for miles and miles looking for a clean place to live.
Q. I was wondering about muskrat recipes. Lot of people have different ways of preparing.
A. I know two ways of cooking them.
Q. What are the two ways you know?
A. One way you can cook them and my mother’s recipe I like that the best way of all, you know that muskrat has a muscle right here, a little gland underneath it’s legs, back of it’s front legs and also in the groin of his hind legs. Some people that don’t know what it is, they think it’s just a little piece of fat but if you don’t cut that out that spoils the fishy meat. When you skin the muskrat you must cut that muscle off. It’s not very big. It’s only about the size of a kernel of wheat maybe a little bit bigger. Once you know where it is you’ll find it and cut it right off but if you leave it on you’ll spoil the taste of your muskrat. So be careful when you skin him. And then you take your muskrat and put him in water and if it’s fresh muskrat you just gut it. You put your muskrat in your water overnight and throw salt––I do that with any kind of game, rabbit or anything that I use to get to dress them, even chicken–you throw them in clean cold water and if you wash them out real clean, have your hands full of salt and leave them stand in cold water overnight. The salt brine draws the blood out and you always find in the morning that your muskrat, chicken or coon or squirrel will always be whiter. Then you take your muskrat and you are ready to cook it. Some people will soak it in vinegar instead of water but I’ve never done that. It kills some of the wild taste but I like the wild taste. Anyway you take your muskrat you can fry him in deep fat and put plenty of seasoning on––I like a slice onion on mine–and you can cook him that way. Also another way I like to cook him is to prepare him the same way but take Reynolds Wrap and I put my muskrat on the Wrap and I open him up and put potatoes, onions, stalks of celery–I’ll cook them up– and carrots and then I will take and wrap it up real tight and I will cook it very slow for about 2 or 3 hours in a slow fire and all the steam stays right inside.
Q. Is that in an oven?
A. Yeah you put it in an oven, you wrap it up real tight in Reynolds Wrap or Aluminum Foil and cook him real slow and your vegetable cooks too and one helps the other. The steam stays all inside there, juices stay inside and juices from the vegetables will permeate the muskrat and the juices from the muskrat will permeate the vegetables and they all blend in together. I like him that way too. The first time that I cooked muskrat there was no one there to tell me and that’s how I did it and fortunately he came out well. And I cooked them that way for a long time before I cooked him like my mother’s style. I can cook them either way and I like them either way but I’ve seen people cook them with corn. They line them with corn and if they’ve got corn on the cob, they cut it off. They will lay the muskrat on his back and he’s open and they will fill him up with corn. Another way…did you read Harold Maurice (sp)?
Q. No.
A. Harold Maurice is the ________ Bentley took his place. He sold out to Bentley. I buried Harold Maurice in St. John here about 7 years ago. Harold Maurice used to get wild rice and he would lay the muskrat on his back and he would season it well with different spices and whole ground pepper and he had a couple other spices he put on too and he would put wild rice instead of corn…I like it very much wild rice that goes real good. So there are a lot of different ways they can cook them. Some cook them like a soup or stew and I don’t like it them that way. I’ve eaten some that I wouldn’t turn my hand over that I’ve eaten. I was invited in Monroe one time by a fellow who said I’ll show you a real way to eat muskrat and he overcooked it and the meat was falling off the bone and we went fishing and the kettle was full of bouillon, broth and I don’t particularly care for muskrat broth. It don’t lend itself to it. It’s like venison. Now venison is another thing you shouldn’t cook so it’s good and you can cook it so the dogs won’t eat it if you don’t do it right.
Q. You have to be very careful with it.
A. You can’t cook wild game like you would any kind of meat. You have to cook wild game according to its kind. There is a recipe for every kind. The French, of course do all these recipes that they had. Some have different recipes but I don’t care for corn on mine but some people do. They like the corn in them.
Q. Your mother fried them.
A. Yeah. Just like I told you the first way she would fry them in deep fat and that’s with (beginning seasoning in them you see.
of 3rd tape
side A) Q. What would she season them with?
A. Well I know she would use coarse pepper for one thing and salt and of course you’ve got this seasoning you buy now you put with food that brings out the flavor in it, I put that on it too. It’s a very common name. So I don’t call myself a good cook but I can cook muskrat so you can eat it. I’ve cooked it different ways. One time I went to Alaska and the first time I went to Alaska I had a muskrat and you know the Irish people won’t eat muskrat.

(there’s a skip in the tape)
A. …..he just enjoyed it tremendously.
Q Enjoyed all the muskrat.
A. Yeah. We ate it all.
Q. One thing that I was fascinated about apparently is that the French around here
were called Muskrat French?
A. Well that’s just a common name. Yeah Muskrat French.
Q. Was that in common use around here, the name?
A. No that name has come up pretty much in recent years. When you talk about a Muskrat French you are talking about one with no education and he lives back in the marshes and that’s why the “Muskrat Frenchman”, you see. Living back in the marshes, he’d rather hunt than do anything else. That’s a Muskrat Frenchman. And of course we kid each other, we call each other muskrat Frenchman for the fun of it. Lot of it is done in jest. But what you would call the old muskrat Frenchman would be what they would call the ole “____________” you know the runners of the woods, that was a muskrat Frenchman.
Q. We all have a little bit of the spirit in us.
A. Yeah you had to admire them because they opened the country for us. That’s the purpose they served. You see the “____________” came in this country as hunters and trappers first before any there were any roads or anything else and they