Transcribed For Online by Geraldine cookie@oakhurst.net
Records Contributed by Vicki Bell-Reynolds rreynolds@pdq.net

These wells in time will fill up with sand and mud. So you have to go down in the well with a sand bucket and dig this sand and mud out and pull it out in the sand bucket and clean the well out.

Some of the wells were lined with rock and others were lined with brick.

I went fishing with another man down on the washita river one afternoon and we were catching or at least trying to catch bull frogs and cut off their hind legs for fish bait. I expect that we walked several miles up and down the river looking for for bull frogs, when we found one we would hit the frog over the body and catch them cut off their legs in all our walking and drinking river water we didn’t find very many frogs.

When we entered the first bottom of the river we run on to a big diamond rattle snake. This snake do fight at us and we both faught that son-of-bith all over the river bottom before we finally whipped him down and wore him down until he was completely exhausted before it would give in and then we killed it. We went on and found enough frogs legs for our fish bait baited our throw line and threw it into the river. We went back the next morning to see how many fish was on the line but, the turtles had eat off all bait. We did however a garr fish at one hook but we threw it back into the river so that was the last of mine and his fishing trips.

What I mean by a throw line you take a big piece of heavy string and about every two feet you would tie another string with a fish hook tied to it and then you would tie this small piece of string to the large piece. Sometimes these throw lines would be 20 or 30 feet long and when you put out a throw line you will have tie one end of the line to a big tree on the bank of the river so the fish can’t carry off with your line.

There would be several families that lived on the washita river that didn’t do anything but fish and sell them in town for a living and some times they would make pretty good money at the this business. I can remember one family in particular what lived down on washita river and they just lived in shack or hut, so this man never did cut his hair. His hair was about 3 feet long he would plat it and then would wind the hair around his neck. so he got tired of this and one day he told wife that he was going to have his cut off and that he was going to rent them place out on the prairie and live like the rest of the people. So he did and about 3 or 4 months after they moved out of the bottom he went blind and got sick down in the bed. They called a doctor in to examine him. The doctor told that he was not going to give him any medicine for he didn’t need it. For him to move back to the bottom and let his hair grow out and he would alright so the family did move back and as the man hair grew longer the stronger that he got and in about 3 or 4 months he was as stout and healthy as he ever was and he remained in the washita river bottom the rest of his life. He just simply couldn’t live any where else.

This family had 6 or 8 boys and they were all water duck they just lived in the water they would be on the bank of the river and they would jump into the water and stay under the water may be for a mile down the stream you would think that they would drown but than these boys seem like the deeper the water the better they like it.

This man and woman came to our house and wanted my mother to go with them and have their picture made together with mother as they were all getting ready and the man went into another room to change clothes so when he came out he had his coat on and his vest on top of his coat instead of his vest being under his coat. He wife got after him about it so he told well don’t you want me to look natural so they didn’t have their picture made that day.

Page Index
Return To Woodville's Introduction Page