John Boatright: Uh, lets see. Grandpa oatright, he, uh, I .../67531... · John Boatright: Oh, yeah Ken: Isnt that something! It changed. Down on that creek there John Boatright: We

JB-001

Present: John Boatright, wive Shug Boatright, son Johnny and his wife Mary (Roberts) Boatright

Mary Boatright: Just a little history there, so. We’re combined, but we’re different families.

Ken: OK. So, tell me about the Boatright family then

John Boatright: Uh, let’s see. Grandpa Boatright, he, uh, I don’t know exactly where he came from to

Bull Creek, but he came out there and lived on Bull Creek.

Ken: Bull Creek

John Boatright: Yeah

Ken: What was his name?

John Boatright: Let’s see, what was Grandpa’s name?

Mary Boatright: Was it Jess?

John Boatright: No, no, no no… La Durst

Mary Boatright: Ladurst

John Boatright: Ladurst

Ken: Oh, uh-huh

John Boatright: Yeah. Everybody called him Nurse. But its Lenearst

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: That was his Irish

Ken: Oh, he was Irish?

Mary Boatright: Boatright’s are Irish and Dutch

Ken: Well

John Boatright: Lenearst. That was his real name.

Ken: Did he come from Wales, or Ireland?

John Boatright: Wales, I think. Yeah.

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: Yeah. And, uh, the old timers all called him Nurse

Ken: Nurse

John Boatright: You know. Nurse

Ken: Nurse, Uh-huh.

John Boatright: Ya. “Here comes ‘ole Nurse.” And, but it was Nurst. I thought they saying Nurse

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: (laugh)

Ken: Have you been out to that Bull Creek area in the last fifteen, twenty years?

John Boatright: Oh, yeah

Ken: Isn’t that something! It changed. Down on that creek there

John Boatright: We talked about going back down there just a few days ago. We were gona go down

there

Ken: It’s really beautiful, but the water isn’t as – my wife and I used to go out in the water, we’d go

swimming in Bull Creek and back up before 360

John Boatright: Ya

Ken: The water isn’t like it used to be because, I guess, the run-off, it’s got a lot of algae and stuff like

that

Mary Boatright: Ya. The stuff from people’s houses

Ken: Yeah, but otherwise it, it’s just like Austin was. It’s like a little snapshot of old Austin


Mary Boatright: Um-hum

Ken: You know

John Boatright: Have you ever seen that cemetery?

Ken: I have. And I saw a Lee Boatright

John Boatright: Ya

Ken: If, for information contact Lee Boatright. You’re related to them?

John Boatright: Ya

Ken: Really?

John Boatright: Oh, ya. And all the, my daddy and uncles, mom, they’re all buried there in that little

cemetery.

Ken: Is that right!

John Boatright: Ya

Ken: So that’s where the Boat—

John Boatright: And I went to school right here. Just across that road. Right there

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: for

Ken: Right on the creek?

John Boatright: right on the creek. Just, well, just off of the creek.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: But we could run down there, get cool

Mary Boatright: (laugh)

Ken: You were lucky to live on that creek back in the old days. That’s a beautiful, beautiful country –

even into the sixties that was beautiful.

Mary Boatright: Ya

John Boatright: Ya, we

Ken: Who were, what are some of the other families that lived there? I heard the

John Boatright: Faglie

Ken: F-f-f-f

John Boatright: Faglie, F A G L I E, I think

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And that last three letters fit ‘em perfect.

Ken: OK. I talked to someone else – and I think Ronnie told me, things are starting to come together –

the Simons

John Boatright: Ya, oh ya.

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: They were like kinfolks. They’re not, but

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: Ya, they were really good people.

Ken: I’m gona talk to a Ms. Simons who lives in Bastrop, who’s husband, I can’t remember his name, just

talked to me, on the top of my head, but he, he’s passed away. But he, uh,her husband was that Simons

there

John Boatright: Ya

Ken: I’m gona talk to her too.

John Boatright: Uh-huh. Ya, good people, them Simons.

Mary Boatright: Did they cut cedar posts too, Papa?

John Boatright: Ya

Mary Boatright: Simons?

John Boatright: Everybody cut cedar posts.

Mary Boatright: Everybody on Bull Creek cut cedar posts?

John Boatright: Everybody. And they’d have, some of the old folks would have a little field and they’d

get enough corn planted to feed two or three hogs

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: Kill ‘em for bacon

Ken: Uh-huh. OK

John Boatright: Ya

Ken: Why don’t we just, just tell me about it then. I mean, if you know any other names, that’d be great,

but, are you saying that, you, those Boatrights right there, that was the nucleus and ya’ll populated

John Boatright: ya

Ken: created the Boatrights in the Cedar Park area and out here in Liberty Hill and the whole thing?

John Boatright: ya

Ken: It all started right there.


Ken: I didn’t know that.

John Boatright: ya.

Ken: Greg Boatright

John Boatright: ya

Ken: great-grandson or something like that

John Boatright: Greg and Trent

Mary Boatright: his nephew

Ken: You know Trent?

Mary Boatright: his nephew

Boatright son: all the moonshine was going on

Ken: Where?

Mary Boatright: Didn’t you hear about that? The coal, charcoal people and the moonshine?

Ken: I know that that was done back then, but I have not

Mary Boatright: Papa tell ya some stories

John Boatright: (laugh) Let me tell ya. My daddy was a good honest man and made lots of whiskey.

And we’d load his old truck with about ninety to a hundred bushels of charcoal in tow sacks.

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: And, when he went to town on Monday to peddle his charcoal he’d go right out there to

the capitol, drive up there, this black guy’d swing the gate open. In goes daddy. Then he’d put him

under that big ‘ole tin shed. Daddy’d jump up there and start to digging, and then back out

Boatright son: Unloading the whiskey back there

Ken: Oh, my god (laugh)

John Boatright: (laugh) I’ll tell ya. Some of the high priced capital people come out to the place to get

whiskey too.

Mary Boatright: They weren’t above the law.

Ken: Was that in the 1930s and during prohibition?

John Boatright: Yep. In the 1930s.

Mary Boatright: They were moonshiners

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: yep.

Ken: Ya. Didn’t Cactus Prior’s daddy have a, a bar.

John Boatright: I don’t know.

Ken: I think, didn’t he. He used to go out in the hills and buy it for his bar.

John Boatright: Ya, I bet he did.

John Boatright: But every, everybody bragged on how daddy, how good daddy’s whiskey was. And

when, when the capitol bunch got a hold of it, man he can’t make it fast enough.

(all laugh together)

Ken: Would he make it right there on ___?

John Boatright: And they’d come out there in these big, black cars, and they’d get out with their

shotguns, they’re gona go hunt doves. But daddy goes the other way and fills their car up (laugh)

Ken: OK. (laugh)

John Boatright: they were, ya

Ken: you mentioned charcoal too

John Boatright: ya

Ken: did they burn charcoal?

John Boatright: ya. Burn charcoal. Took a load into Austin every Monday morning.

Ken: Was that back, was that even…I hear that was used for irons. For ironing.

John Boatright: Oh, ya, ya, that, they did, yes, ya. ‘cause wood burn fast and burn out.

John Boatright: And that charcoal just sat there, dead heat, you know. And you can regulate it with how

much you put in there

Ken: um-hum. Do you remember how it was made? How they, how they burned the charcoal?

John Boatright: Ya. Sure do.

Ken: Tell me about it.

John Boatright: Ok. Here we go. We’ going to have a round circle. All right. Now we’re gona get our

pick and shovel and we’re going to dig that sucker down a foot all the way around and we’re gona pitch

that dirt right up here like that

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: and the wood would go in here. Right here in the center. And dad would sharpen a six

foot post. He’d sharpen the end off and he’d drive it in with a sledge hammer.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And then start, just leaning, this other wood up against that one stick.

Ken: how big would that other wood be?

John Boatright: Oh, anywhere from the size of your arm to this big around

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: ya.

Mary Boatright: What kind of wood, cedar?

John Boatright: cedar. Cedar. but you could mix oak with it and, he’d do that once in a while, but he

didn’t like to.

John Boatright: And, uh, and he would, anyway, he’d go to Austin on Mondays to peddle that charcoal.

Ken: How long would he let it burn away?

John Boatright: Uh

Ken: He’s got it all piled up now, covered it with dirt

John Boatright: and then he’d, he’d, up here where he builds this nest around this here. He pulls that

peg out of the ground and pours some fire coals

Ken: uh-huh

John Boatright: you know, down in here. ‘cause you don’t want it to blaze.

Ken: no.

John Boatright: and he’d pour that hole full and boy, in just a day or two you’d see it coming out. When

you’d stack it you’d leave a little hole , a, you don’t put the butts together. You space them, you know.

Ken: um-hum

John Boatright: when you lean them up you leave a little space between all of that

Ken: uh-huh

John Boatright: boy, in two or three days you’d see it begin: to come out, come out, boy the first thing

you know you had that charcoal going.

Ken: how much

Mary Boatright: How long did it take?

John Boatright: uh, let’s see, I guess five days because, let’s see, it was five or six days, but he, he always

made it in on Mondays, going to town.

Mary Boatright: how much charcoal would come out of that one …

John Boatright: Well, uh, from a hundred bushels to a hundred and twenty, something like that

Mary Boatright : Bushels?

John Boatright: uh-huh

Ken: How much would it sell for?

John Boatright: Uh, well he tried to get twenty five cents a bushel. And when it’d get late in the day he

would twenty cents (laugh) but he got rid of it. And, and, to top it off, let’s see, uh, uncle, no, daddy’s,

let’s see, what was it, I don’t recon if my grandpa or one of my uncles, but anyway, they had a little ‘ole

store there in darkie town

Ken: uh-hum

John Boatright: And, what they didn’t sell it all, he’d sell it all there. It’d be gone the next day

Ken: So he, when did that, that, did that go aw---, did that stop with electricity? When women got an

electric iron

John Boatright: ya, you bet (laugh)

Boatright son: You know they moved away from that charcoal

John Boatright: (laugh) ya, they moved away from that (laugh)

Ken: I wonder when Austin got electricity? I don’t know when Austin did.

John Boatright: ya

Ken: Twenties? Maybe before that.

Mary Boatright: PEC. Johnson, President Johnson

Ken: ya

Mary Boatright: The rural didn’t have anything until --- PEC wasn’t around until the thirties or forties.

Ken: Forties, ya

John Boatright: You know, and, another thing, uh, they’d come out there in dove season and they’d

come out pretty late in the day, and daddy would disappear and just after dark, well that car would

leave full of whiskey.

Ken:Uh-huh. I wonder if they, ya

Mary Boatright: there on Bull Creek, did it happen when you’all…

John Boatright: Oh, ya. Daddy made whiskey all

Ken: oh, ya.

Ken: Was he the only one that made whiskey on Bull Creek?

John Boatright: No.no. Heck, no. (laugh)

Ken: Everybody made it?

John Boatright: Everybody that had any ambition (laugh) Wasn’t too lazy

Ken: Well, it was one of the few ways to get money

John Boatright: ya.

Ken: you know, I mean, I just, I was just reading something and, and, if you think about charcoal, you

know, you couldn’t haul a cedar posts into Austin, that’s just, you didn’t have, you’d need a wagon and

horses.

John Boatright: ya

Ken: So, so charcoal was a way to, to transport it, and, well not just that, but I mean for the, you can get

more value for your wagon load filled with charcoal. You think about corn is the same way. You know,

you carry all that corn into town, turn that corn into whiskey

John Boatright: yep

Ken: you’ve got a lot higher value product.

John Boatright: ya. You know, daddy had a twenty-nine Chevrolet truck.

Ken: uh-huh

John Boatright: flat bed

Ken: ya

John Boatright: and he’d manage to get a hundred bushels on there, and how he did (laugh) he’d go into

town

Ken: A hundred bushels of charcoal. So he was still selling that charcoal …

John Boatright: ya

Ken: I guess there were folks without electricity,

John Boatright: yea, oh ya

Ken: even if there was

Mary Boatright: the blacks folks used a lot back then, and then people that were doing their stoves,

heating their houses still with the coal

Ken: Absolutely

Mary Boatright: So that’s what most of it was for heating, wasn’t it papa? They heated it

Boatright son: Rough terrain too, they probably couldn’t, back then didn’t have the capability of getting

water, you know

Ken: I mean, did you have to go all the way down Bull, up, around, down the creek, or how did you get

back in there before --- ‘cause I remember there used to be a road that would cross Bull Creek a whole

bunch of times back in the sixties.

John Boatright: ya

Mary Boatright: Was it Spicewood Springs?

Ken: No. This was coming off of Mt. Bonnell, coming out, coming out Mt. Bonnell, off to the right, Down

where that BBQ place is

Boatright son: Jesters. We know about Jester’s

John Boatright: Jester’s Estate. That’s my, my grandpa owned that, and then my daddy after grandpa

died. Daddy bought that place.

Ken: Oh, OK

John Boatright: so they both, granddad and dad, owned Jester’s Estate, and daddy sold it to Beauford

Jester.

Ken: Oh, OK. What year did he sell it?

John Boatright: You know, I don’t know. Must have been in the forties.

Ken: OK. I bet it sold cheap back then.

John Boatright: Oh, yeah (laugh) Real cheap.

Mary Boatright: Did somebody not have owned Mt. Bonnell and wished they had kept it, --- they sold it

for like a dollar or something because it wasn’t worth anything

Boatright son: No that was

Mary Boatright: And Granite Mountain

John Boatright: Ya, that was

Mary Boatright: --- Mountain, or Grant Mountain

John Boatright: I believe it was Granite Mountain

Boatright son: Granite Mountain

Mary Boatright: Ya, somebody owned Granite Mountain in Marble Falls. Who was it? Grandpa, do you

know who owned Granite Mountain and sold it? It wasn’t nothing but a big ‘ole rock, right.

Shug Boatright: I can’t remember that far

Mary Boatright: I remember hearing that story from you or somebody.

John Boatright: yeah

Ken: (to Shug) So you’re a Henry from your Mom’s side

John Boatright: uh-huh

Shug Boatright : ya, my mother was a Henry.

Ken: your mother was a Henry related to R. E. Henry?

Shug: yeah

Ken: and then he had a Marble Falls connection too? You said owned Granite

JB002

Ken: Granite Mountain, that’s

Mary Boatright: Was it the Henry side that owned Granite Mountain?

Shug : It probably was.

Mary Boatright: The Henry’s from Marble Falls? Were they from there?

Shug : They lived on Cow Creek. Do you know where Cow Creek is?

Ken: I sure do.

Shug : That’s where my grandma and grandpa lived

Mary Boatright: That’s where she was raised. See

Ken: You were raised on Cow Creek?

Boatright son: ______ (laugh)

John Boatright: That’s no lie (laugh)

Ken: Cow Creek. That’s where the Turners lived

John Boatright: Yep

Ken: Son and Punk Turner

John Boatright: Yep

Ken: And, I talked to Dick Turner, who had a cedar yard in Bertram


Ken: ----brother. Was he related? Yeah. It’s a very small world, once you start talking

Mary Boatright: All the cedar choppers knew each other. That’s what’s really cool.

Ken: I wonder why they

Mary Boatright: Because the Boatright’s knew the Roberts’. The Roberts’ knew the Boatrights had a

cedar post yard. And they all kind-of spread out. And then in Bertram. I don’t know whats going on in

Bertram. His daddy also had one in Leakey.


Mary Boatright: He created another post yard in Leakey.

John Boatright: Yeah, he sure did.

Ken: Your dad had one in Leakey?


Ken: Because you’re --- Ronnie Robert, Ronnie’s

Mary Boatright: No, no this is a Boatright

Ken: I know. I know that. But he was telling me about Steven’s cedar yard. No. No. No. In Leakey!

That’s a whole ‘nother area.

Mary Boatright: Yeah. You into Uvalde and Leakey, Lost Maples

Ken: Yeah, I know that.

Mary Boatright: Yeah. That’s where his dad, the Boatrights are still there

Boatright son: There are still Boatrights there

Ken: Are there Boatrights there?

John Boatright: Um-hum

Mary Boatright: There’s still some clans

Ken: I would love to talk to them. The reason….there’s a whole cedar industry based in Camp Wood and

Leakey.


Ken: And there’s one in Junction and there’s one in West Austin, and then there’s the Liberty Hill –

Leander

Mary Boatright: That one’s still working – in Leakey. We were there visiting and the people there,

Boatright, had sold it to someone else who owns it, so there’s still

Boatright son: You can stop in to the General Mercantile store, right there. There’s a lady, a Boatright,

working there, named Barbara or somethin’. She can put you in contact with an older lady, I can’t

remember her name, she’s a Boatright too. They could give you a more positive history back there.

Ken: I’d love to get that

Mary Boatright: If you go to Leakey you can see its real old still. It’s still like Cedar Park was thirty-forty

years ago.

Ken: Oh, I know. My wife and I, we went to Camp Wood last spring, just to sort-of check it out.

Mary Boatright: I’m going to the Frio River this week.

Ken: Are you!

Mary Boatright: Yeah, take the grandkids to Leakey and

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Do the Lost Maples, do the ___Garner State Park

Ken: Sure, it’s beautiful. Would ya’ll have a telephone number that sometime you could give me, of the,

of the Leakey folks?

Mary Boatright: I don’t know where it’s at, but I have

Ken: Well, if you ever dig it…. Can I give you a card?

Mary Boatright: Yeah, give me a card, Ken. If you go in that store, everybody knows them. You say

Boatright in Lakey, they’ll know. The ____ we started going around knocking and

John Boatright: Yeah, they’re cedar choppers.

Mary Boatright: You had that tall cousin that lives there, uh, tall lady she’s a bit younger than papa and

she lives there

John Boatright: She’s over six foot

Mary Boatright: Yeah. _____ But she came to reunion. Thank you Ken

Ken: You’re welcome.

John Boatright: (reading card) Ken Roberts.

Mary Boatright: Papa was talking about roads and how to get there and stuff. I’m sorry, Ken

Ken: Yeah, how

Boatright son: Jester

John Boatright: I don’t know

Ken: How’d yall get out of there? When you left? Where, how did you get into Austin?

John Boatright: We, we just toured Leakey one time, that I know of. And we turned around somewhere

in Leakey and come back the way we went in.

Ken: Yeah. Oh, I was thinking about Bull Creek.

John Boatright: Oh, Bull Creek.

Ken: Back in the home place.

John Boatright: Oh, yeah.

Boatright son: How did you get back and forth to Austin? What road did you

Mary Boatright: From Bull Creek to Austin

John Boatright: Yeah, well if you went south it was closer, but you had that long hill called, uh, let’s see,

Turner’s Hill, I think it was back, that was it, I think. And this other one over here on this side was called

Louie Hill because my Uncle lived right just down there

Boatright son: Does 2222 come up that big hill ____ over there?

John Boatright: No,

Boatright son: going up the hill to Jester, off 2222


Boatright son: Yeah, going to Jester is a real steep

Ken: You bet

John Boatright: We came right there, by the cemetery, you know, you go off a little hill there

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: And if you went straight, that’s where we lived, up there

Ken: OK

Telephone ringing

John Boatright: In Uncle Louie’s house. Louie Waechter.

Shug : (answers telephone)

John Boatright: And, uh,

Ken: You know, there’s another guy, is it, uh, Frank Boatright?

John Boatright: Yeah, Frank

Ken: You know Frank?


Ken: What relation is Frank to you?

John Boatright: None!

Mary Boatright: laugh

Ken: You serious?

All laugh

John Boatright: He’s a cousin – first cousin.

Ken: Why don’t you claim him?

John Boatright: Oh, he’s just a rounder

Mary Boatright: a wild one.

John Boatright: Yeah, old Frank

Ken: Is he still alive?

Mary Boatright: He died

John Boatright: No.

Mary Boatright: a few years ago, didn’t he? About four or five years ago, papa?

John Boatright: Yeah, he died

Mary Boatright: His daughter still lives there, Ken. On Spicewood Springs Road

Ken: Yes

Mary Boatright: Are you gona go talk to her?

Ken: I have not talked to her. I haven’t talked to anyone

John Boatright: Frank Boatright

Ken: You know, you had mentioned a guy that yall talked to many years ago, perhaps, wouldn’t that be

about 1990?

Mary Boatright: I was a ’72 graduate of high school, so

Ken: You were way back, OK

Mary Boatright: ‘60 or ’70, yeah. It

Ken: ‘cause you know, there was an article in the Austin paper about Frank Boatright.

Mary Boatright: I remember that, and his daughter

Ken: His daughter Marie

Mary Boatright: Yeah, she’s still would guard the house, and

Ken: Right

Mary Boatright: I remember reading that

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: That’s typical

John Boatright: Yeah. Frank was

Ken: I have a story about Frank. Do you ever hear of a good, did he have a goat named Shadow?

John Boatright: A shadow?

Ken: A goat named Shadow.

John Boatright: No, I didn’t

Ken: well, I heard a story. So here – this guy, this guy, wrote for the Austin paper, wrote a story about

Frank and Marie Boatright.

John Boatright: Uh-huh

Ken: Called it Sundown of the Cedar Choppers. That’s the only other thing I’ve ever read. And he said,

he said well you’ve got to talk to Junie Plumer, because Junie Plumer was a realtor who negotiated, I

think Frank sold some land to the City of Austin, or something

John Boatright: He might have

Ken: Yeah. And so Junie Plumer, that was her first job. She had just graduated from college. And she

went out there and negotiated this thing with Frank Boatright. And she said that he had a goat named

Shadow. And the reason they called it Shadow was because it was always behind you sticking it’s nose

where it shouldn’t have been

All laugh

Ken: And, and she said the whole time she was talking she was beating this goat, and, and Frank was just

standing there, no … just stone faced. Not doing anything, you know. And she finally just gave up and

let the goat __- to the gate and let the goat do what it wanted to do.

All laugh

Ken: And she said that later on when she got to know Frank better, that he said that as soon as you left

that room we just lay on the floor and howled (all laugh together) Do you have any stories like that?

John Boatright: Not like that! Frank’s always had a story.

Boatright son: Tell him about the revenuers that time they came down there and chased, who was it?

Uncle Ab or,

John Boatright: Let’s see.

Boatright son: Took off running

John Boatright: Oh, yeah. Uh, they would, raided, and they caught Ab, Uncle Ab, ‘cause he was crippled.

He’d been out____. And they caught somebody else. And, uh, anyway, this guy got away. And, this, this,

police, or whatever you call ‘em, what do you call ‘em?

Boatright son: He called them revenuers.

John Boatright: Revenuers. Yep. He’s talking, and he said, uh, I wonder if they caught ‘ole Floyd? And

Albert, his brother, they’d already caught, he said Floyd wasn’t with us. He said “the hell he wasn’t. I’d

seen him go up a cedar tree eight feet tall!” (all laugh) He was a big ol’ tall guy. (laugh)

Ken: So he climbed that tree?

John Boatright: He didn’t climb that tree. He jumped that tree. He said “the hell he wasn’t!” (all laugh)

Ken: So, when did you, uh, were you cutting cedar, tell me when you started cutting cedar. How old

were you?

John Boatright: Oh. About twelve or thirteen. Me and my brother Jim. Daddy, uh, we could cut, uh,

pretty good little jag, you know, in a day

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatrigh: Daddy’d haul it out to Cahill’s.

Ken: Cahill’s yard?

John Boatright: Yep. There in Jollyville

Ken: Um-hum, uh-hum

John Boatright: Yep.

Ken: What did he haul it in?

John Boatright: Oh, thirty-something model Chevrolet truck.

Ken: Um-hum

Boatright son: Daddy, how did you start to work? Tell him about the school deal, where you and Jim

John Boatright: (laugh). We ____

Boatright son: When you quit school early, when ya’ll walked away from school, tell him that story. Do

you remember that?

John Boatright: Uh, clue me in on it.

Boatright son: Jim --- remember, Jim wouldn’t go to school unless you went.

John Boatright: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I started, somehow, uh, they let me go at five, and, uh, that-a-way

they could keep Jim at school.

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: So, we went,

Boatright son: Jim was older than you

John Boatright: Yeah. And, we went there together. Same grade.

Ken: How old was Jim then?

John Boatright: Just a year older than me.

Ken: OK

Mary Boatright: Jim went to school and he’d come back

John Boatright: Oh, yeah. He’d come back. He wouldn’t stay. That’s it. That’s it.

Mary Boatright: And then, Jim, the teacher came to Jim’s mom and daddy and said “what am I gona

do?” John’s daddy said “if you let him go too, he’ll stay.” So John T got to go to school a year early so

Jim would stay in school. They were real close brothers

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: we stayed in the same grade.

Ken: You said that school was right there on the creek?

John Boatright: Yeah. Yeah, you had to cross the creek to get that far

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: Yep. And, I mean, it would get wild. That creek, ooooh-we

Boatright son: you went there until about the sixth grade?

John Boatright: Uh, yeah. And then we moved and we went to. Well, me and Jim went to school down

on Bull Creek, there where the cemetery is.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: That little house there. We went to school there.

Mary Boatright: Did you go to that one at Whitestone at 1431 and 183 that Preston Carlson moved that

building years ago?

OtheShug : Yeah, used to be on the corner

Mary Boatright: Yeah, that was Whitestone. Middle school or something?

John Boatright: yeah

Mary Boatright: They just moved that to put up a McDonalds. At 1431 and 183

Ken: OK, yeah

Mary Boatright: That was where he went to school. That big ‘ole grape vine. They moved that big ‘ole

grape vine.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: That’ where you went to school

John Boatright: After we lived out

Mary Boatright: You lived out here? At Cedar Park

Ken: Where did they move that school to?

Mary Boatright: It’s somewhere.

Ken: I want to talk to Preston Carlton sometime.

Mary Boatright: Catch him early too, he’s

Ken: Yeah, yeah, so, uh

Boatright son: You quit the sixth grade? Did you’all leave school togeher?

John Boatright: He said “you ain’t going to go to school here. You’re going to work” (laugh) Right now.

Mary Boatright: Twelve years old

John Boatright: Chopping cedar.

Ken: Did you have the same size axe your daddy had?


Mary Boatright: Can you imagine! Twelve year old boy

John Boatright: Yeah, a three pound double bit Kelly axe

Ken: Kelly. I talked to a man who … was it a Collier axe, too, was that another one? Collins, or

something like that?

John Boatright: There might have been. But it may have been a pole axe too, ‘cause it’s one blade

Ken: Oh, OK

John Boatright: That’s a pole axe.

Ken: OK

John Boatright: And the other is double bit

Ken: Ronnie showed me one of those.

Mary Boatright: Did he have one, grandpa?

Ken: He has a cedar axe.

Mary Boatright: I have to go get his. He’s probably got mine. (all laugh)

Ken: No, you have to leave that stuff alone.

John Boatright: I’ve seen all of ‘em I want to see.

Mary Boatright: Yeah, you probably don’t want to see

Ken: (laugh)

John Boatright: my dad moved out to, uh, Whitestone, put in a cedar yard.

Mary Boatright: When was that, papa?

John Boatright: Oh, he did pretty good in that cedar yard.

Mary Boatright: What year did he start up here, in his own cedar yard. ‘Cause you were selling to

someone else before he opened

Shug : about 40 wasn’t it?

John Boatright: Yeah. We were hauling out to Mr. Cahill’s yard before daddy went into business for his

self.

Mary Boatright: When was that? ‘cause you were born in ’30, so how old were you when you came out

here and he opened his own yard?

John Boatright: I think I was thirteen.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: So, then about’43, ’42, like you said

Ken: Where were you cutting back in that, when you were still pretty young?

John Boatright: Cedar?

Ken: Yeah, where, where did you get the cedar from?

John Boatright: Anybody that would give it to you, you’d cut it.

Mary Boatright: Was it Jonestown?

John Boatright: Yeah, we cut a lot of cedar over there at Jonestown, sure did.

Mary Boatright: How far did you go? Did you ever go to Marble Falls?

John Boatright: Oh, no.

Mary Boatright: Did Cedar Park have a lot of posts?

John Boatright: Yeah, Cedar Park had two yards

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And we were just a mile up the road in Whitestone, there, my dad’s yard.

Ken: Uh-huh. Was that good cedar? If you drive along Spicewood Springs Road, that’s all still cedar

back in there. It was, did yall cut a lot in there, right, you know, where you lived.

John Boatright: No, not, not on Jonestown Road, but, I know that there is cedar there now that would

really be good.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: It’d really be good.

Mary Boatright: Where’d yall cut cedar posts at, papa? Spicewood Springs? Austin? Bull Creek?

John Boatright: Just about anywhere

JB003

Ken: How many years did you cut cedar with an axe? How old were you when you, I guess quit, cut with

an axe, cut with a chainsaw

John Boatright: Never used a chainsaw

Ken: Never used a chainsaw

John Boatright: No. No. They hadn’t been invented

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: My brother had a two and a half pound Kelly and I had a three pound

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: I said “How come I’ve got a three pound and you don’t?” Daddy said “Don’t let it

bother you.” (laugh)

Mary Boatright: That half pound bothered you by the end of the day, though, didn’t it.

Ken: When you cut a load, what time would you start work?

John Boatright: We’d try to get over there real early, you know. Not, not daybreak, but shortly

thereafter

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And we would cut until about four o’clock. And then we’d come in and check out

Ken: Did it take you, two of you

John Boatright: No. Three of us.

Ken: Three of us.

John Boatright: Dad and

Ken: Dad, you, and Jim


Ken: And, yall would cut, for that long, and you’d just, you’d get one load out of that

John Boatright: Ya. That’s all

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: Yeah, that’s all. One load

Ken: What would they give you for a load of cedar posts, on the average, back then?

John Boatright: Well, let’s see. If I could think of some____

Ken: How many could you cut?

John Boatright: It depended on how fast ____

Ken: Sure it does

John Boatright: You start out with a deuce.

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: That’s a Six foot, two inch a top.

Ken: Right

John Boatright: Then you’ve got the two and a half. Then you’ve got the three. Then you’ve got three

and a half. Then you’ve got four.

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: And then you’ve got five. And then you’ve got six, and that’s a good place to cut it off

because it don’t pay for the time in them great big logs

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: It, it don’t pay for it.

Ken: Oh, really?

John Boatright: Uh-huh. It don’t pay for it. So, it is really better to cut ‘em off as fives, but sometimes

we would slip six or two in there.

Ken: If you had a tree that was starting out real big, you would want to cut it up higher where it got

narrow?

John Boatright: Yeah. Cut, cut off the limbs. If it’s too big then, you know, if it’s too big around

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: Just cut the limbs off – just as far as you can reach.

Ken: Uh-uh

Shug : About six foot tall, or how tall a post could you cut?

John Boatright: Here is something I wrote, Don’t know if it makes sense

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: Uh, these, this is six by two

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: That’s a deuce.

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: Six foot long and two at the top

Ken: Right

John Boatright: OK. Here we go, we’ve got the two and a half

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And this is what

Ken: Oh, that’s the price!

John Boatright: This is what we was paying.

Ken: You bet.

John Boatright: We were paying five and seven and right here we’ve got, what is that, six by three, was

ten cents.

Ken: I see. And that’s what you got paid for it.


Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And that’s what we paid when daddy, when daddy went to the cedar yard.

Ken: That’s what you’d pay the cutters.

John Boatright: Yeah.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: And, uh, this here is six by, what,

Ken: I appreciate that. Twelve cents. Yeah, you’re giving me all those prices.

John Boatright: Yeah, ya, ya, ya.

Ken: I really appreciate that.

John Boatright: Yep. And, uh,

Ken: So, if you could

John Boatright: And what, what

Ken: Seven by three and a half.

John Boatright: Seven by three and a half

Ken: Uh-huh. Seven by four is sixteen cents

John Boatright: Yeah, OK. All right. And, um, let’s see

Ken: Seven by five

John Boatright: Seven by five is twenty cents. Yeah. And an eight by four was twenty six cents. And, uh,

that’s eight foot long, four inch top

Ken: Uh-huh. Yeah.

John Boatright: And, this eight – five was thirty. Eight by six was thirty five and then this, bigger than

that, was a block. And, and, uh, we just cut it off right there because it would, that blocking would sit

down there and nobody wanted it because it’s too big for fence posts, too big to just haul around

(laugh) and, and, uh, we cut off that blockig and we’d get, sometimes, we’d pile it down there at the end

of the

Mary Boatright: Corner fence posts, didn’t they, papa? When they used the blocking end?

John Boatright: Yeah, yeah, that’s, they could. But these, these six….

Ken: So your load would be a, whatever you came across.


Ken: So, it’d be a mixture of everything

John Boatright: Yeah, sure would.

Ken: And what would you think of a, what would you call a really, if you had a really good day, when

you, uh, how much money would, could you make, between the three of you, cutting, you were just

cutting?

John Boatright: Ummmm, I imagine the three of us could cut, maybe

Shug : ____

John Boatright: No, we couldn’t cut

Shug : That’d be 15 posts apiece

John Boatright: Yeah, but we cut more than that.

Mary Boatright: When was your daddy happy, when he had lots of money? What was his happiest day?

Boy! We made thirty bucks today, boys! Was it that much? Or was it

John Boatright: No, but, uh

Mary Boatright: Ten dollars a day?

John Boatright: It would be something like twenty five

Mary Boatright: That would be a good day?

John Boatright: Yeah, that would be a good day.

Mary Boatright: He’d be happy to have twenty five bucks


Mary Boatright: That’d buy lots of bread and milk and stuff back then


Ken: A loaf of bread was probably a nickel back then

Mary Boatright: Yeah, probably was.

John Boatright: And, uh, when it got, when it got ta eight, eight inches top, you know

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: That was called blocking.

Ken: Um-hum

John Boatright: And, anything any bigger than that went into blocking.

Ken: Did they use those blocks sometimes for foundations for houses?


Ken: Because I’ve got a friend in Bertram who’s got a, one of those old frame houses, and it’s got cedar

blocks up under it

John Boatright: We lived in a house with cedar blocks.

Mary Boatright: _____ foundation, that’s why they called it ____ blocking. That’s probably where they

got the word blockends from. And then when they checked in the load, when they called it “checked in”,

they would check. I remember working for my grandma, checking the cedar posts, they would bring in a

load, I would, my grandma

Ken: You were the checker?

Mary Boatright: I did it. I actually checked for my grandmother ___ post yard because she was raising us

when she was sixty-seventy years old.

Ken: I know

Mary Boatright: I remember she taught me how and you had ‘em lined up and you’d check here, and

you got food, and then when the next load came in you’d start from that check and they’d put down a

row and row would be like ten across and ten this way. You know they had twelve, uh, deuces

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Maybe twenty staves, and I’d count how many and then check right there, when they

got through with their load, I’d mark the end of that post. And then when the next load started, the next

person brought their load in.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: And we’d go to this pile of deuces, the two-and-a-halves, the three’s

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: The staves.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: And the block ends

Ken: And Ronnie would unload it, or load, or what?

Mary Boatright: Ronnie didn’t do anything. He didn’t work. (laugh all) He, he was out there doing the

labor part. Pa had him out cutting wood and

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: But we were always doing something. Building houses and stuff

John Boatright: Daddy

Mary Boatright: But checking was checking a load off

Ken: That’s a skilled job. You would check the wood posts.

Mary Boatright: You actually went and, and then wrote, got their report, their bill

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: But, the check was a check marked on that, end of that post

Ken: I see

Mary Boatright: They were stacked like this, and then like this

Ken: Right, right

Mary Boatright: They could be this tall.

Ken: Yep


Mary Boatright: And the end of that post, the last one on there, on the load, they’d have a check mark

on it

Ken: Oh, it’s the last one on

Mary Boatright: So the next person who came in, I’d know that was the last load, I would start here and

they had their load, then I’d put a check up here

Ken: I see, I see

Mary Boatright: That was called checking the load

John Boatright: Yeah. That’s the way they did it.

Mary Boatright: And it was a blue crayon, chalk, or something they used

John Boatright: It was just a big-‘ole ____

Mary Boatright: Big, blue marker

John Boatright. Yeah. It made a good

Mary Boatright: Yeah

John Boatright: wide mark

Mary Boatright: And that way you’d count so that people would watch you check, you know, they trust

you had the load marked before hand, the one before, it was already,


Mary Boatright: the stack, the posts was already stacked, they called it, how many, did they call it

stacked? Or tiers?

John Boatright: Tiers.

Mary Boatright: Alternate, would tier them. And so, they knew when they started putting their’s on

there, they had to stack them in a line, and you could count how many they had. If they had two rows it

might be twenty four, or two twelve, you know, rows of. And then you’d write up your report, they had

twelve two-by- six foot two’s and, uh, ten six by fours

Boatright son: _____ and like that

Mary Boatright: Have you ever seen that? A stack of cedar posts?

Ken: Yeah, yeah, so, were you actually doing the grading of them too?


Ken: So they were trusting

Mary Boatright: the men, they pretty much knew what they were, and I could tell ‘em out there “yeah,

that’s gona be a two and a half, that’s a three”

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: The stave was a little bitty one.

Ken: Yes

Mary Boatright: Was a stay less than two, papa?

John Boatright: Yeah, we called ‘em aces.

Mary Boatright: Yeah, aces, stays

Ken: Aces, OK

Mary Boatright: But they would put it on the right pile, you know

Ken: The cedar, they would unload their own trucks

Mary Boatright: They would unload their own trucks.

John Boatright: Yeah, there was some cedar, uh, some of them guys you could trust

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright (laugh)

John Boatright: And some of em you couldn’t (laugh)

Mary Boatright: You also had the Browns. Did you ever talk to any of them? They were really po folks,

right there on Brody and, uh, Convict Hll

Ken: The Browns?

Mary Boatright: The Browns brought us loads . They’d get their load and papa would, you know, they’d

go to the alcohol store before they went home.

John Boatright: And you know what, we had one or two, uh, people that we wouldn’t let ‘em grade

their own because they’d grade themselves too hard.

Ken: Oh, too hard.

Mary Boatright: They’d put it where it shouldn’t have been

John Boatright: Yeah. And we’d always grade it for them.

Ken: Um-hum. How many, uh, a question for both of yall, since you both were doing the yards, how

many loads would typically come in? To your yard in a day?

John Boatright: Yeah. We could run ten. We could run twelve. And then the next day you might run

eight.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: That’s the way. It wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t

Mary Boatright: Who hauled in to you, papa? What people around Cedar Park hauled into Dick

Boatright’s yard? Do you remember some of the names? Of the regulars?

John Boatright: Let’s see

Mary Boatright: The local people in Cedar Park? Were they local people who would bring into his yard?


Mary Boatright: Do you remember some of the locals?

Ken: You said Dick Boatright?

John Boatright: Yeah, Dick Boatright.

Mary Boatright: His name was Dick Boatright

Ken: J. T. is Dick?

John Boatright: Yeah. J. T. is Dick Boatright. That’s his nickname.

Ken: OK

John Boatright: J.T. -- Jeff Thomas

Ken: OK

John Boatright: Uh. And, uh, there was two other yards. King and, let’s see, what

Ken: Right. I’ve heard of ‘em all

Mary Boatright: Who were the Cedar Choppers who unloaded for you? Who brought loads and

unloaded for you?

John Boatright: Let’s see.

Mary Boatright: Any Roberts’s?

John Boatright: No, wasn’t no Roberts’s

Ken: How about John’s?

John Boatright: John’s, yeah.

Ken: Cantrell?

John Boatright: Yeah. Yeah.

Ken: How about Cantwell?

John Boatright: Yes (laugh)

Ken: He’s a Liberty Hill name.

Mary Boatright: Liberty Hill, ___

Ken: Uh-huh, yeah, uh, who else? Floyd, uh, let me think, who else would it be? Yeah. So, uh, is that

also in your yard, would, would, ten or so loads

Mary Boatright: No, We never had that many come to ours. We probably had two or three guys, loads

Ken: Uh-huh. And every one of these loads that’s coming in is more than one man cutting, probably

Mary Boatright: Yeah, there was two or three guys

John Boatright: Yeah, you’d hook up with

Mary Boatright: in big ‘ole flat bed trucks

John Boatright: If a guy has got about three teenage boys, they are gona be in there too.

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: laugh.

Ken: I was talking to somebody that said that they’d go out there and, there were four of ‘em I believe,

and they’d send a truck in early in the morning, 10:00, and they’d send another truck in later on. I know

what it was, it was this fellow in Marble Falls. He said him and his daddy and his brother, well they’d cut

the first truck load and they’d go in and then they’d quit.


Ken: Well, then, the two sons, being younger and stronger, right. They’d keep, they’d keep working all

day, and then they’d bring another truck load in. So, that’s a lot of

John Boatright: I’ll tell you what. Uh, them ‘ole cedar hills bought a lot of groceries.

Ken: I hear, I hear that

John Boatright: They had bought a lot of groceries.

Ken: Tell me something. Um, what all did you have to buy back then, if you were, um, I was talking to

Mrs. Henry and she was saying they didn’t buy anything but flour, you know, just a few


Ken: So, you didn’t, did you grow a lot of your own foods?

John Boatright: We, uh, we had our bacon and eggs, that type of stuff. Milk, butter, all that.

Ken: Did yall have a garden? Did your mama?

John Boatright: Yeah, we had a garden.

Ken: What would she grow in the garden?

John Boatright: Uh, tomatoes was number one, . And, uh, cucumbers

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: okra

John Boatright: Okra. Yeah. It seems like everybody likes okra.

Ken: I just bought a bag of okra from Charlie Maughan, the cedar chopper

John Boatright: Really?

Mary Boatright: Okra hasn’t started

Ken: He had it, he had more okra, he had enough okra to fee an Army.

Mary Boatright: laugh. ____ for years

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: She had the best garden there. She’d grow okra like crazy

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: We can’t, we can’t grow okra worth a darn.

Ken: Are you serious? You can hardly kill it.

Mary Boatright: I know. I can’t grow it. I can’t grow it.

Ken: laugh

Mary Boatright: I don’t know what it is. It probably needs water and the drought probably

Ken: Yeah, I think that’s probably the problem.

John Boatright: Yep. Naw, them old cedar choppers are all right.

Ken: You know, that’s what I’m hearing. They bought lots of groceries, uh, Mrs. Henry, now they

actually made enough money, apparently, off cutting cedar, her husband, Artie, to buy land with it. I

mean

John Boatright: Now Artie did a lot of watching. (laugh) I set you straight on this.

Ken: OK. OK

John Boatright: Somebody’d cutting ‘em. But it wasn’t Artie.

Ken: It wasn’t Artie?

John Boatright: laugh. That guy was a little lazy

Ken: I won’t tell her you said that (laugh)


Mary Boatright: He was a good supervisor, right papa?

Ken: Uh, OK

Mary Boatright: Probably how he made money

JB004

Ken: Did yall ever get cedar off the Sunset Ranch?

John Boatright: Sunset. No, we didn’t.

Ken: Rogers, you know, Rogers and Turner went together, I think they went together, and they had a

cedar yard, didn’t they there, in Cedar Park?

John Boatright: Uh, let’s see. Let’s see. King,

Ken: Yeah, King

John Boatright: King had one, and, uh, and, uh, let’s see, who was the other yard?

Ken: I have a name right here.

John Boatright: King

Mary Boatright: Uncle Bob Hart had one. Over there on 1431

Other Mary Boatright: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Did you ever hear anything about Bob Hart?

Ken: Never heard of Bob Hart.

Mary Boatright: That’s her brother-in-law

Boatright son: Brother-in-law

Mary Boatright: Who married her sister. He had a cedar post yard on 1431, right there, um, Angel

Springs.

Ken: Yes

Mary Boatright: Uh, before, after Jonestown

John Boatright: Just before Jonestown

Mary Boatright: right before that valley on the left there.

Ken: Yes, right

Mary Boatright: They owned, they owned all that valley there, and they left it to The Children’s Home.

He had a cedar post yard too – Uncle Bob did. Didn’t know that.

Shug Boatright: Yeah. I was over at Mrs. Henry’s house one morning, __- and somebody come to the

door, they wanted Uncle Bob to load a big ‘ole truck, you know

Mary Boatright: A big eighteen wheeler?

Shug Boatright: Yeah. And she, she said, “well, I can’t do it.

Ken: Here’s a name for you. Is he still alive? Mr. Pearson? Managed the yard in Cedar Park?

Shug Boatright: And she’d of helped him

John Boatright: TM Pearson

Ken: Yeah

Shug Boatright: continues to mumble

John Boatright: Let’s see, T.M. was down there in that, I believe he was in that King, I think

Ken: OK

John Boatright: Yeah. Yeah I know TM

Ken: Yeah, well I’d love to talk to him about, his health isn’t very good

Mary Boatright: Who was that?

Ken: Mr. Pearson. T. M. Pearson. He managed a big yard in Cedar Park

Mary Boatright: Was he part of Ivan Pearson

John Boatright: No. They no kin.

Ken: I got his name from a Betty Henry.

Mary Boatright: I never heard of that one.


Ken: Did the Bonnet’s cut for yall?

John Boatright: Bonnet. Yeah. They didn’t cut much cedar posts, though, the Bonnets.

Ken: OK

John Boatright: I don’t know what they did, really, but I know they picked a lot of cotton.

Ken: Cotton, that’s back when Liberty Hill had two or three cotton gins

Mary Boatright: And Round Rock. Shug picked cotton in Round Rock.

John Boatright: Yep

Shug : and Leander

John Boatright: Leander had a gin

Ken: Yeah. What did you think is harder, picking cotton or cutting cedar?

John Boatright: OH, man, picking cotton! (laugh) Damn. man!

Shug Boatright: I loved to pick cotton, ______, you know, and we got paid for it, and I learned to love it.

Ken: Yeah

John Boatright: Boy, I”ll tell you. A Cotton shirt hurts my back. I hate cotton. I hate picking cotton.

Whew! And I can’t make another, eat ‘em.

Mary Boatright: Maybe you weren’t as good as your wife over there, at picking cotton.

John Boatright: I wasn’t!

Mary Boatright: Shug was good at it. She could pick a whole bunch.

Ken: How much did you pick in a day, Shug ?

Shug: Two hundred pounds, at least.

Ken: Are you serious?

Shug: I’m serious

Mary Boatright: She’s a hard worker.

Ken: That is a lot of cotton.

Shug: Yeah, it was a lot of cotton.

Ken: I hear the very best pickers couldn’t pick but three hundred pounds

Shug: Yeah

Mary Boatright: She was a young girl, too. Tell the story about your sister down the road with her hat up

on her foot.

Shug: (laugh) Old Kitty. She’d retired. She was sitting on her sack resting when we were pickin’. Picking

cotton. And she put her bonnet up on her foot and laid on her back and she’d get that ‘old foot cross her

like this. One day papa looked down there and he said “damn ‘ole ____ is really moving on down there.”

(laugh)

Mary Boatright: He couldn’t tell she wasn’t picking cotton (all laugh) She’d be laying down

Shug: Laying down on the sack

Mary Boatright: She was smart, that’s smart.

Ken: That is.

John Boatright: She’s still living too. And she’s, what, eighty-nine?

Mary Boatright: They all have nicknames. Shug, Kitty, Cricket, Aunt Jim. Emalee was what, Emalee?

John Boatright: Yeah. She was the only one that didn’t have one

Mary Boatright: ___, ____, Othella, and, what was her name?

Ken: Oh, uh-huh.

Shug: I don’t know, but I’m glad had me a nickname (all laugh)

Mary Boatright: They all have nicknames.

Shug: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Kitty, or something else.

Ken: My mother was named after an opera star.

Shug: Oh!

Ken: Uh, her name, she’s German. They named her Antonio Velazquez

John Boatright: Can you believe that! (all laugh)

Mary Boatright: The poor girl

Ken: No, she changed it to Viola right away.

All laugh

Ken: Yeah. Her parents apparently loved this opera star. I guess that she grew up right where you were

born, right at 43rd and Avenue D in Hyde Park, and she said that, uh, there’s an oral history of Hyde Park,

and she is featured prominently in. She was born in 1902 and I guess, anyway, she just passed away a

couple of years ago.

Mary Boatright: Joe Roberts 1902. Joe Roberts was in Austin as well. Same as your mother

Ken: Wow.

Mary Boatright: How old was she?

Ken: A hundred and, almost a hundred and two

Mary Boatright: My gosh! That’s awesome.

Ken: Yeah, it is awesome! And, uh, she said that when the boys would go to Shoal Creek, which was

pretty close, you know, and a lot of cedar choppers lived along Shoal Creek. They all had to, they had to

live near water, because, you know,

John Boatright: Yeah, you had to have it to wash with and everything

Ken: She said that they always had to load up the bucket with rocks. To protect themselves.

Mary Boatright: They all lived in tents, lived on the creeks and stuff, my mama and daddy had a tent

when they first got married, out there somewhere, where they were living near Hunt Texas somewhere.

Ken: Ronnie showed me

Mary Boatright: Showed ya this picture

Ken: showed me a picture of that.

Mary Boatright: They lived in tent houses, ‘cause they were moving. They were kinda like nomadic

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Cedar choppers went where cedar was and they stayed there and worked ‘cause a

rancher may have let them stay on his property

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Cut the cedar. They’d have a tent and they’d go to the next place.

Ken: Yeah, I’ve got Ronnie’s name in the most round about way, like I said. I got Ronnie’s name from a

Simons, Aunt Virginia, whoever that is.

Mary Boatright: My Aunt, Aunt Virginia is my Aunt.

Ken: Turner

Mary Boatright: Yeah, Virginia Turner is my Aunt.

Ken: is she related to the Turners out there on Cow Creek?

John Boatright: I bet they are.

Mary Boatright: Well, the Reimers. The Turners actually kin to the Reimers

Ken: Oh, OK.

Mary Boatright: Jimmy Turner

Ken: Over there by Hamilton’s Pool

Mary Boatright: Yeah, yeah

Ken: Reimers is a place we used to go swimming

Mary Boatright: Yeah. But Turners, Uncle Jimmy would be from South Austin, but I don’t know. His

mom and dad, uh, they were South Austin Turners, I think.

Ken: What I would give for a huge family tree of all this

Mary Boatright: Get all the old Austin people back here, let’s have a local yokel. There are not very

many of us left around that are from here. It would be interesting.

Ken: I know. I know.

Mary Boatright: Because everybody knew each other back then. Especially the hillbillies. In the

outskirts.

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: Even the Oak Hill South Austin ones knew the ones out here in north Austin. like I said,

the cedar choppers

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: The hard workers, the ones who went into Austin.

Ken: Yep

Mary Boatright: They all knew each other

Ken: Yeah, but I have to tell you, that when I met Ronnie, he started off, and he, just after about five

minutes, he said to me, he said “let me just give you the background.” And he

Mary Boatright: He has a lot of history

Ken: Well, just, the story of your upbringing, and going to live with your grandparents, and what

happened to your mom and dad, and all that, I was just floored, pretty much

Mary Boatright: God is good, though. God gave us Joe Roberts, a miracle, took in four more kids, raised

nine, then took us in, that’s a blessing. He worked us hard. He was blind.

Ken: He was blind.

Mary Boatright: He was blind. And he ran a cedar post yard.

Ken: I know it.

Mary Boatright: One of my girlfriends said “I don’t think he’s blind because he could walk around.” I said

“I’ve seen him run smack dab into a tree. I know he’s blind.”

Ken: Laugh

Mary Boatright: (laugh) Poor thing. They were tough people. And they, they did what they had to do,

but, but they had seen other kids get taken away and put in orphanages

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: But they let us

Ken: What they did for yall, I mean, that, you know, that’s a tragedy. That was just a tragedy. But it

turned out OK

Mary Boatright: But God worked with it and he gave us papa and memaw

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: And we helped them too.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: So it was good both ways.

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: And we worked hard. He put us. We built a house. Us girls Pa blind, tell us what to do,

built an add-on to the house we lived in.

Ken: Is that right!

Mary Boatright: Blockends and everything else. We framed it. We sticked it and stuff, but he wouldn’t

let us say we could not do anything. That’s why I think all of us girls grew up to be strong independent

women and Ronnie too, because Pa never tell us we couldn’t do anything.

Ken: How many sisters did you have?

Mary Boatright: I have, uh, two other sisters.

Ken: OK

Mary Boatright: Celia Roberts is right here. Gail is still out South. She won’t come north of the river.

Ronnie and Bubba, they won’t come north of the river.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: but, uh, we were raised, and Ronnie, we worked hard and sometimes we probably

didn’t like it when were young, but, it made us.

John Boatright: You know your Uncle Lon?

Mary Boatright: Uncle Lon?

John Boatright: He’s my Uncle too.

Mary Boatright: That’s what I mean. Your daddy’s sister married my daddy’s brother, daddy’s grand-

father.

John Boatright: Yep

Mary Boatright: We’ve had us, we have strangers, when we started getting it together we found out our

kin, we told em we were dating, and in my daddy and momma ___ We know those Boatright’s over in

Cedar Park

John Boatright (laugh)

Mary Boatright: And Johnnie’s family would say “We know some Roberts’s”. And we’d find out that

Uncle Lon Roberts married his grandmother’s sister, Lily, and

John Boatright: Yeah (laugh)

Mary Boatright: Are we kin-folk?

All laugh

Mary Boatright: No, we’re not blood kinfolk. No, we’re not blood kinfolk.

Mary Boatright: It got out of hand, and us too, ____ strangers

Ken: Isn’t that something. Now, Ronnie just called me up

John Boatright: Uncle Ronnie.

Ken: I know better than to call him about this time of day.

Mary Boatright: How

(laugh)

Ken: He told me that.

Mary Boatright: He’s napping. He won’t answer his phone. He takes his nap, boy.

Ken: that’s right.

Mary Boatright: He’s probably mad at me. He called me this morning. I had to hang up because I had a

realtor coming over, bringing a contact to me, and I haven’t called him back yet. So I have to call him in a

minute, na, na, na …

John Boatright: Who’s that?

Mary Boatright: Ronnie Roberts.

John Boatright: Ronnie?

Mary Boatright: Yeah, Uncle Ron

Ken: He said he got some ___ from, I showed him, I sent him, from the Eanes School, you know

Mary Boatright: The Patterson’s

Ken: The Teagues, The Roberts Cemetery is right there. And I showed him the pictures of the class, of

the 30s that had Tiny Teague Roberts, Tiny Roberts, several pictures of Roberts’, and all the Roberts in

the school. They were, I mean, ___ the school had fifteen people, but several of them were Roberts

Mary Boatright: _____Cause Pa only went one or two years

Ken: But he’s got I sent it to him.I figured he’d be interested in it.

Mary Boatright: He would be. Aunt Virginia would too. Did you get to talk to Aunt Virginia?

Ken: I have not talked to her yet. And I also sent him a little thing from Emmett Shelton. I don’t know if

you know, he’s Mr. Westlake. He was a man who represented, uh, he was a lawyer, and his daddy was a

lawyer, and he was a lawyer in the thirties, and, uh, in the 1970’s he started making tapes and telling

these stories, and, uh, only one of ‘em is transcribed. They are all in the Austin History Center, but one

of ‘em is called The Cedar Choppers. Four sixty-minute tapes, or forty five minutes. And there’s a Harve

Roberts, and I copied that part of the

Mary Boatright: Uncle Harve.


Mary Boatright: Harve Roberts lived in, ______

Ken: Exactly

Mary Boatright: Harve Roberts

Ken: He tells a story about Harve Roberts

Mary Boatright: He was a good man

Ken: And this other, pretty rough guy. And I can’t remember his name. But he’s pretty, figures

prominently as one of the tougher ones. But Emmett was representing all these cedar choppers up in

the Hill Country. As a lawyer.

Mary Boatright: Why? What would they need lawyer for?

Ken: Well, ‘cause their kids would get in trouble.

Mary Boatright: Yeah, the kids were always out there ___ so he had the kids, kind-of getting them out of

jail.

Ken: And, and, you know, as soon as I mentioned, Ronnie knew his name, as soon as I mentioned his

name to Ronnie, kind-of mixed feelings, because, well he was acting like he is the, he is the civilized

friend of all the people, you know. And he was, their friend. But he also ended up with their land

John Boatright: laugh

Mary Boatright: Yeah, he was a

Ken: Do you know what I’m saying

Mary Boatright: a proper back stabber.

Ken: He would trade sort of his services for land. And pretty much he ended up owning Westlake

Mary Boatright: Shelton. I knew a Shelton. I remember the name. I used to work in the Travis County tax

office.

Ken: Yeah, and

Mary Boatright: in the land assessor’s office. And I remember that name, Emmett Shelton.

Ken: Well the low water, what we used to call the low water bridge, which is the one right above the

dam where I go fishing now, its called the Emmett Shelton bridge.


Ken: He had it built, and then, of course, the value of his land just shot up

John Boatright: laugh.

Ken: Here’s a story that he tells about Harve Roberts. Uh, that, this fella had a goat. His neighbor. This

pretty mean guy. Had a lot of kids and was pretty rough. And he had a goat and, and Mr. Roberts’ place

didn’t have a door. A goat could get into the house. He worked for the highway department or

something and every time he came home the goat was on his kitchen table eating his food. So he goes

over and he tells this guy, you know, please keep your goat away from my house. And the guy said, you

know, “that’s not my problem.” You know. And the guy said, “well, I’m gona shoot your goat.”


Ken: Well Emmett said “now”, and he tells it really great, he said “now Harve, you know, if you shoot

that goat there’s gona be trouble.” There’s gona be, and they’re gona come after you, and then you’re

gona have to shoot one of them, and there’s three or four of them


Ken: You’re gona have to shoot them too!


Ken: and so you either have a choice to make. You can either let that goat come in or keep it so he

can’t come in, you can move. (all laugh)

Mary: I’d have shot the brothers

John Boatright: Well, he gave you some choices!

Ken: He, yeah, yeah

Mary Boatright: Did you ever find out from people what they did with the posts that they had, like a

cedar post yard? Where’d they go? ‘Cause I remember pa had one, Hank Coxson, from Houston, would

come with a big ‘ole eighteen wheeler. He probably went everywhere. And, they’d load that whole truck

up and take it back to Houston.

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: ‘Cause they’d use those cedar posts for that. There was a guy in Giddings. He was a big

‘ole German drunk. He’d come and load up and we’d hope he’d get out of there without hitting a tree!


Mary Boatright: And he’d go back to Giddings with a truck load.

Ken: Uh-huh

Mary Boatright: Big ‘ole truck load.

Ken: Well, this fits , see this is the story, it not only provided

JB-005

Ken: a living for people in the Hill Country. And I think after cotton, you know, ‘cause cotton wasn’t any

crop in the 1930’s or ‘50s, was it, this boll weevel, and one thing and another pretty much killed the

cotton, didn’t it?

John Boatright: I try and not think about cotton. Laugh. That ain’t for me.

Ken: Well yeah.

John Boatright: I’d rather chop that cedar.

Ken: And so cedar was the source of money, not only… But also, it fenced the West. I don’t mean just

Texas. I mean they were taking it up to Colorado, they were taking it to Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, all

those places up there.

Mary Boatright: They’re is still standing, too.

Ken: They’re still standing.

Mary Boatright: Because that heart

John Boatright: That’s right

Mary Boatright: That’s pretty cool.

John Boatright: Yeah, that heart cedar, it just don’t give up.

Ken: I have a picture here of Bull Creek

John Boatright: You know that white ring around there, that’s sap. It’ll fall off

Ken: I know.

John Boatright: That old heart cedar’s gona stay there.

Ken: You know that, uh, that, did that heart cedar, you don’t get much of that any more. I mean, you

can have a big cedar post and it won’t have very much heart to it anymore


Mary Boatright: Why?

Ken: I don’t understand it. I don’t know

Mary Boatright: I didn’t know there was a difference.

John Boatright: Grew fast and somebody cut it down.

Mary Boatright: Maybe they, maybe yall had the old cedar that was hard

John Boatright: The, uh, up in the hills, you know, where it’s dry and rough and you get more heart

cedar

Mary Boatright: That’s what it is

Ken: Do you think that’s it, because it was rocky and dry?


Mary Boatright: It had to be harder

John Boatright: Yeah, if it was, way down in good land it grows fast and

Mary Boatright: That’s interesting. I hadn’t even thought about that.

Ken: Look at that truck there. Is that the kind of truck that yall were loading? That’s a little bigger?


Ken: You, you didn’t have a truck that big, did you?

John Boatright: No, not, not me, but them truckers that come in

Ken: That came in


Ken: Yeah

Ken: Now look at that truck. Was that something like what yall were driving? This is a great picture. This

is in Marble Falls.

John Boatright: That, I think that’s a later model than we had. We had a ’35 Chevolet.

Mary Boatright: The Browns used to drive something like that. A big ‘ole flat bed.

John Boatright: You know it looked a lot like that

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: But it was a ’35 Chevy that dad had

Ken: Here’s one. This is

Mary Boatright: That was before my time.

Ken: Yeah, that’s going way back, isn’t it.



Ken: That’s something like your dad might have taken into the, into the capitol.

Mary Boatright: Uh-huh. That might have been hauling stuff. That was charcoal and some moonshine in

the back (all laugh)


Ken: I wanted to show you this picture here, of Bull Creek. Do you remember that?

Mary Boatright: I never go to Bull Creek. Even now I haven’t

Ken: It’s not as pretty

Mary Boatright: It’s not as pretty. Look at them sitting there swimming, enjoying the water. What a

beautiful sight.

John Boatright: You met Frank Boatright?

Mary Boatright: He’s dead. He was talking about him.

John Boatright: You never met him.

Ken: I never met him.

John Boatright: Boy, you missed something. Whew! (laugh)

Ken: I want to ask you. This is another, they, they claim that these folks, that this picture was taken on

Bull Creek. And so I was thinking if I showed this picture around …


Ken: that someone might recognize somebody. This was a family. This is in the Austin History Center

and it says “A Bull Creek Family”.

John Boatright: A Bull Creek family

Mary Boatright: looks like Shirley Vicker’s kids. Some of the Vickers

Ken: I know the Vickers. How do you know the Vickers? They’re from Liberty Hill

Mary Boatright: Yeah That’s her (points to Shug) niece.

Ken:Oh, my goodness!

Laugh

Mary Boatright: The Vickers, Shug married … Shirley Vickers used to sing.

Ken: Um-hum

Mary Boatright: She’s still alive. Her husband just died.

Ken: I know he just died. Don. I was in class that morning … I would have gone to the funeral. He used to

run cows on my place.

Mary Boatright: Yeah, that’s her neice.

Ken: Oh my gosh!

Mary Boatright: Yeah, the Vickers. Shirley was Aunt -- Jim’s daughter. That you’re talking about. Do you

know anybody here papa? Shuggie, do you know any of these people.

John Boatright: This guy right here looks familiar.

Mary Boatright: That’s a lady there, papa.

John Boatright: Is that a lady?

Ken: I believe it is.

John Boatright: I think she’s a Boatright

Mary Boatright: She looks like a Boatright

Ken: Yeah, she does.

John Boatright: She looks like one.

Ken: Yes, she does.

Mary Boatright: Trying to think which one she’d be. Which one is she

John Boatright: I don’t know.

Mary Boatright: Could she be your mom?

John Boatright: Could have been.

Ken: There is a man sitting right next to her. And you can hardly see him. He’s kind-of cut off

Mary Boatright: Do you want your glasses, papa?

John Boatright: Oh, no.

Mary Boatright: ‘Cause you can’t see with them or without ‘em, huh?

John Boatright: I ‘caint

Mary Boatright: Can you see that? Shug would probably know.

Ken: I don’t think. Can you tell when that picture might have been taken just by the clothes? Look at

these little … these kids are all dressed up.


Ken: In their finest.

John Boatright: I don’t know. I think that’s kin-folk right there. Look like

Shug: What do you want me to see?

Ken: This picture here of ..

Mary Boatright: This woman looks like a Boatright.

Ken: This is, this is, uh, a Bull Creek

John Boatright: Here comes somebody

Ken: It says it’s a Bull Creek family, that lived on Bull Creek, and I, can’t imagine, you might even be able

to tell what, from the dress, when that might have been.


Other people enter the room –greetings.

Shug: Might be Granny

Mary Boatright: Is that granny?

Shug: It looks like her

Mary Boatright: That’s what John thought.

Shug: I think it is.

Mary Boatright: That looks like Paw-paw over there

Ken: Does that look like him?

Shug: I can’t tell. But this really looks like Granny.

John Boatright: I said it looked like a Boatright.

Shug: Yes, it really does looks like Granny Boatright.

Ken: It’s a great picture


Mary Boatright: His mother

Ken: I can give you a copy Let me give you a copy of this to take with you

Mary Boatright: Who are these other people that they’d be hanging out with, Shug

Shug: Huh?

Mary Boatright: Does it look like anybody else they’d be hanging around?

John Boatright: My Granny Boatright …

Mary Boatright: that’s old tents. That’s what they lived in.

John Boatright: … was a Williams before she

Mary Boatright: She was a what?

John Boatright: Williams.

Ken: That looks like up on a hill, looks like it could be a, something up there, too. Isn’t that something.

Shug: Now I don’t regognize those _______ I believe its Granny

Mary Boatright: yeah it does look like Granny Boatright. I wonder who’d they be hanging … Be

somebody they’d know pretty well, though.

Ken: I was thinking, you know, I would show it to. I wanted to go to that, did yall ever go to the reunion

John Boatright: No

Mary Boatright: Did yall have a reunion recently? The Boatrights up there in, uh, on 1431 ? What’s that

reunion they used to have? Clausen reunion is what I’m thinking of. wasn’t Granny a Clausen?

Shug: Yeah

Mary Boatright: pa said she’s a Williams

Shug: No. She’s a Clausen.

Mary Boatright: What else do you have?

Ken: Oh, just, you know, that’s my whole briefcase

Mary Boatright: I got a picture of that from Heritage Society. Cedar Park has a Heritage Society. Have

you ever been

Ken: Betty. I asked her if she had any pictures and she didn’t

Mary Boatright: There’s a Heritage Society that has some stuff, I don’t know who has it, but Chamber of

Commerce might know. Harold just moved, our Chamber of Commerce person, but, it used to have

some stuff, somebody was ___ history

Ken: Yeah

Mary Boatright: I had one, J. T. Boatright, cedar post, and there was some girls on it, I think they were

sisters or something

John Boatright: probably

Mary Boatright: On top of this cedar post pile.


Ken: You know what? Yeah. I have a real good scanner at my office. Oh, OK.

Mary Boatright: A scanner. If it doesn’t work, let me know.

Ken: OK

Mary Boatright: It will be good

Ken: OK. Isn’t that a great picture! That’s a lady who lives in Marble Falls. And that was her parents.

And would have been her older brother. And he stopped cutting cedar after a while. This is that railroad

line that, uh, did you know there’s a whole railroad line that runs from the cedar breaks of the Colorado

River, near where Bend is, to, uh, Lometa. Just for cedar.

Mary Boatright: For cedar! I didn’t know they had that. Lometa Cedar Posts, by yard, largest cedar

railroad yard in the Southwest.

Mary Boatright: Lometa, Is that up there by Lampasas?

Ken: Yes. And here’s the bridge. It run across the Colorado. In 1912 that bridge, that bridge, uh, it

washed up twenty three times.

John Boatright: Really!

Ken: Oh, Yeah. They shouldn’t have put a bridge across the Colorado River


Mary Boatright: Can you imagine.

John Boatright: Every time it rained they’d say, well, let’s go build a bridge!.

Ken: Here. These are just, I was up in the Panhandle, and, uh, like I was saying, uh, the cedar fenced the

West, well, the very first use of cedar, Palo Duro Canyon. Yall heard of that?

John Boatright: Oh, dear. Yeah

Ken: You know where that, in Spanish means hard post.

John Boatright: Is that what it

Ken: and that’s what it’s named after. Cedar posts.

John Boatright: Aww

Ken: And Charles Goodnight, the Goodnight trail, the cattle trail


Ken: He went together with this guy named J. Adair, John Adair, and they called it the J A Ranch. This is

the J A Ranch headquarters and it’s built of cedar out of Palo Duro Canyon. And, they fenced off one of

the very first ranches in the panhandle. The very first use of barbed wire to enclose a ranch was in the

panhandle. A hundred and twenty eight miles of fence with cedar posts.

Ken: These are the guys that cut in the Palo Duro. Their seven feet tall. Look at those guys


Ken: Seven foot cedar cutters.

Mary Boatright: They could swing an axe

John Boatright: You know they could

Mary Boatright: My daddy used to live in Canyon, Texas too

Ken: Here was that old cedar eradication program. You may have, you know, where they haul a chain in

between

John Boatright: Yep

Ken: two bulldozers.

John Boatright: Yeah, yeah

Ken: You ever seen that

John Boatright: you bet

Mary Boatright: What’d they do that for? Just to pull it out faster?

John Boatright: No. They did it so they would get grass instead of brush

Ken: The government paid people

Mary Boatright: To cut the cedar out of it?

John Boatright: Yeah. No. They’d take a big ‘ole chain and two dozers and they’d just wipe that cedar

Mary Boatright: ‘cause that’s all the want. Now a days it’s environmental birds They would just die


Ken: Ain’t that something!

Mary Boatright: What’s that?

Mary Boatright: Was that a picture on purpose, or was she just

Ken: This is, have you ever heard of Alan Lomax?

Mary Boatright: No.

Ken: Alan Lomax went around the South and collected songs, uh, from black penitentiary – he’d go to

prisions and, that’s where Leadbelly came from, um, they first discovered him. Well, he went to school

at University of Texas in 1936.


Ken: and he went out in the hills and collected songs. I had not found the songs. I’m still working …

theyre in the Library of Congress

Mary Boatright: I have a tape of my gandpa. It’s on a, it’s, uh, him talking, singing some of the songs. He

used to have the most gorgeous sing – he would just sing

Ken: Oh, my goodness!

Mary Boatright: ___ anymore, so I’ve got to figure out if it still works

Ken: Well

Mary Boatright: I’ll translate some for you

Ken: You could transcribe that stuff onto digital I’ll do it for you.

Mary Boatright: OK. Good. I’ll ___

Ken: Yeah. We do that at Southwestern all the time.

Mary Boatright: ‘cause I’ve got it, I recorded him, but he died fifteen years ago. __Come to my house

and he would sing some of his little diddies and stuff

John Boatright: Is that right!

Ken: Tell me Mr. Boatright, I don’t want to tire you out, uh, we can always talk another time too, ‘cause

I’d love to hear some more of your stories. We’ve got too much to talk about. But, um, so, when yall had

the yard, would you contract with the, with the guys who had the land, and can pay them ten percent or

something. Did yall, you just bought whatever people would bring to you, huh?

John Boatright: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what we did.

Ken: You never contracted with a, with a rancher, that says “cut

John Boatright: “cut this”. No

Ken: OK.

John Boatright: No. We never did.

Ken: OK

John Boatright: They’d just, old cedar choppers, they all knew my dad because he was a cedar chopper

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: They knew he was honest.

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: They’d go out there and cut ‘em, and bring ‘em to him.

Ken: So when did you, uh, how old were, did you cut cedar your whole life, or did you, did you stop,

start doing something else later on life?

Mary Boatright: He worked for the State

John Boatright: Yeah. I worked for the State for, how long did I work for the State?

Mary Boatright: Twenty one, twenty two years.

Mary Boatright: State hog farm up there

Ken: Oh, you worked for the hog farm up there in Leander.


Ken: OK

Shug Boatright: Yeah, we lived on that place.

John Boatright: yeah. Free house. You bet.

Mary Boatright: Clean water and all free

John Boatright: The water, and the gas.

Mary Boatright: It was a lot of hogs.

Ken: You took care of the hogs. Did yall have the inmates helping you there?

John Boatright: Well, now, way back to when they had the dairy too, they did have some, I don’t know if

they were inmates or just a little bit

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: I think they were just a - I don’t think they were inmates

Ken: Uh-huh

John Boatright: But, they did away with the dairy before I started. And I worked, I think it was fifteen

years, fifteen, sixteen years. Every Monday morning I ‘sd load that old semi-trailer with all the hogs we

could get in it.

Ken: What would yall do with those hogs?

John Boatright: Took ‘em down to the city abitor for the State Hospital

Mary Boatright: They raised the meat for the State. State Hospitals. They raised all the pork

Ken: OK. So you did that until you retired? Because that thing went out of business, didn’t it, in 1970’s

or so?

John Boatright: Yep. It went, I don’t know if it was seventy, yeah, I guess it was ‘70s.

Shug Boatright: Then you came to Liberty Hill and worked at Meridell

Ken: Oh, you worked for Meridell?


Ken: Oh, gosh

John Boatright: Thirty three years

Ken: Thirty three years here!


Ken: I know so many people. That’s where – when I moved to Liberty Hill, uh, you know, there were a lot

of young people working. I knew, Tom Blazienz, Lupita.


Ken: Remember Lupita


Ken: I just gave them some okra on the way home from Marble Falls (all laugh) And I was talking to

them about, see, I’m all alone here, my wife is up, I just kind-of have a grandson, our granddaughter

born at 2:15am this morning. (collective Oh)

John Boatright: Oh, really

Ken: In Colorado. And, um, so I’m gona go up there and I’m going, so I was just with Mr. Maughan, and I

thought he grew all this okra. This Okra’s gona spoil. I’m not gona cook this okra. And I was driving

through Bertram and I said, Tom and Lupital, I’ll just give it to them. I go and you know what they were

doing? They were picking okra. And they said they were short okra.

Mary Boatright: Just in time (collective laugh)

Ken: Yeah, and I said, “well, I was just gona give it to ya for nothing, but I, I want a couple of jars.”

Documents

John Boatright: Uh, lets see. Grandpa oatright, he, uh, I .../67531... · John Boatright: Oh, yeah Ken: Isnt that something! It changed. Down on that creek there John Boatright: We