Archive Record
Metadata
Accession number |
1999.066 |
Catalog Number |
1999.066.020 |
Object Name |
Audiocassette |
Date |
1999 |
Title |
Boston, Gypsy Damaris Oral History |
Scope & Content |
Original tape. Audio Tape of Gypsy Damaris Boston's Oral History Interview with Nita Cole of Bossier Parish Historical Center. Interview with Gypsy Damaris Boston March 25 1999, at her home in Ida, Louisiana Interviewer is Nita Cole, Archivist (Mrs. Cole) This is Thursday the 25th of March and we are in Ida, Louisiana with Mrs. Gypsy Damaris Boston. Mrs. Boston why don't you start off by telling us something about yourself. Where were you born and where did you grow up? (Mrs. Boston) I grew up in Ida; I was born in Ida. My parents were living across the (Red) River at that time (in Bossier) and Dr. Herring who lived here in Ida was their doctor. The River was getting high because it was early in flood stage in late November and December and at that time they had a boat that was tied to a stump with a rope. If you were on one side of the river you got in a boat and rowed across and left the boat. The next person rowed it to the other direction. Mama was afraid the doctor would not be able to get there in time. So about two weeks before I was born they moved to Ida. The house that they had bought was not available, so they lived south of town when I was born. But very soon we moved into a house just north of the gin on Highway 71 and that's where I grew up. (Mrs. Cole) And when were you born? (Mrs. Boston) I was born December the 8th 1919. My people had come to Ida in 1909. My father was the principal of the school. Ida's a very young town, people had probably been living in the woods ever since the Civil War but Mr. Chandler who had had property across the River (in Bossier) had a great deal of property in Ida. He started a little store and sold lots and sold the right-of-way for what became the Texas and Pacific Railroad so that Ida became a town probably in 1897. There was a Post Office just above the state line which was called Bain in Miller County. The records of the Post Office showed that it was moved and named Ida, the name of the railroad station. The mail came up on the train. The trains (for passengers) were two times a day, going south in the morning and north at night. Ida became a commuter community. People could work in offices in Shreveport and get home. Most of the older people were farmers and many of those families are still here. (Mrs. Cole) And they had originally come from Bossier Parish, then, across the River? (Mrs. Boston) Many of the families came from Bossier Parish because until there was a dam built at Dennison, which was probably not until the 1940s, Red River would overflow almost every year. The water would extend from Kelly Bayou on the west side clear on over to almost the hills in Bossier Parish. A number of the families, in probably 1907 or something like that, came to Ida because Ida is high ground. Another advantage, Ida has good water. The Bossier Parish water at that time was mostly pump water and very strong of iron, so that if you lived down in the "bottoms" you were likely to catch rain water to wash your clothes in or bring your clothes out into the hills so that your sheets would not be dingy. When Mama and Daddy came in 1909, the old school building was on this four acre site. The original building was two-story, with an auditorium downstairs and a chemistry lab upstairs, and classrooms. The old cement walk to the school is still in the yard with a historical marker at the road. The ground was more or less like cement when the children played here. All of the trees have grown up since those years. To take care of increased enrollment, five two-room wooden buildings were added to the school ground. Children called them "chicken coops". I am living in one of those buildings. The living room and two bedrooms were once a classroom. The north room was for a class of third and fourth grade students. I went to school in that classroom where I now sleep. These wooden buildings were all abandoned in 1928, when the new brick school was built on Highway 71. It's right by the James Allison house (19535 Louisiana Highway 71). Then the schools were consolidated, perhaps around 1950. I do not know when they consolidated the school but then that building became a private school. After the school closed and the property was sold, the grounds eventually grew up. Mama and Daddy stayed in Ida four years (came in 1909) and then went to several different schools. They got tired of moving every four or five years, so they decided that they would go across the (Red) River and farm on land that they had bought across the River (in Bossier parish). At that time there was a little place where the steamboats could land. That would have been in the period of time around 1916 or '17 because my brother (Crit Petty Jr., August 1917) was born there. This good place to land was called Lake Port because the steamboat could not land on the west side of the river. Missionary Lake had formed there and was a very large lake. The River made a bend and later the channel changed, separating the lake from the river. There were about four Means brothers prominent in Ida activities. Burney Means ran that Missionary Plantation (on the west side) and probably he was the older oldest one of the boys. But there were four of the brothers that had come to Ida and they always took different political sides because that way, no matter who was elected, the person in political office would be obligated to somebody in the Means family. And Missionary Plantation was in danger of being eaten up by the river during the flood stage. (Revetment work was done on the levee to save the land.) (Mrs. Cole) Now, was this directly opposite Ida on the other side of the river, or was it probably a little bit further down? (Mrs. Boston) Ah, Missionary Road is the road that you came through, and it (Missionary Plantation) will be almost straight with the middle of Ida. The steamboats could not land on the Missionary side. They landed at a little place that they called Lake Port. I do not know whether they called it Lake Port (or the landing for Missionary Lake), or whether it was just the place where the steamboats could get to. Everything for the plantation was unloaded on the east bank and hauled to the plantation by small boats. Everything I think has crumbled into the river long ago at Lake Port. So even though it's not on the maps now (laughs), in 1917, it was. My mother lived to be a hundred and ten. After my husband's death in '87, my mother was already pretty old then and living alone, so I would come up and stay a few days with her and take her back to Shreveport and she would stay a few days with me and we would keep both places up. But then, she broke her hip when she was a hundred and six, so I just came on to Shreveport and got my daughter to stay in my house there and I just stayed on at Ida. Well, after her death at a hundred and ten, I was going through her papers and I ran across something that I think might be of historical value (a composition book). It is a story that she tells. I'm sure it's a speech that she was making at some occasion. I do not know, but it's very interesting. Now my mother and daddy's house burned and the only thing they had left were things the neighbors had borrowed (laughter) and forgot to return. Among them was a postcard with their pictures on it. Some South Louisiana street artist copied the photograph for the portraits (which are displayed on the wall in the house in Ida). Mama was an artist and a music teacher and she was not satisfied with the way the artist had painted her mouth, so she took the picture apart (laughter) and redid her mouth to make it more realistic looking. (Mrs. Cole) Uh huh. . . well good for her! (Mrs. Boston) My sister Myrtle (the next portrait on the wall), is a retired school teacher, and the bust is my brother Crit, Jr. The one (photograph of Crit, Jr., another brother) on the top has a trailer here, but he lives in South Louisiana. He had come up for the family reunion. Joe Petty, (another photo) Joe surveyed off many of the inner sections of Barksdale when Barksdale was built, so that might have a connection with Bossier Parish. (Mrs. Cole) Does he still live in Bossier now? (Mrs. Boston) Joe lived in Ida for many years but he was living in Shreveport when he was doing the surveying. Ida had the first, the Petty Art Pottery was probably the first art pottery in the state of Louisiana. They made little novelties and Joe, during the Second War, ran that pottery. They shipped pottery all over the United States and to Hawaii because no one wanted anything from Japan. But after the War, of course, the Japanese market came back in. (Mrs. Cole) And so he did some work on Barkdale when it was first organized. (Mrs. Boston) He did the surveying on the first inner sections in Barksdale. And they said that when Barksdale had the dedication that the cars backed up, there was only one bridge at that time as I understand it, and they said that the cars backed up all the way to the old Highland Hospital. Did you grow up in Shreveport? (Mrs. Cole) No Ma'm, I'm from South Louisiana. (Mrs. Boston) Well, Highland Hospital is, I can not tell you where, but it's possibly a mile or so from the Courthouse. But Barksdale, at that time, was the biggest air force base in the world. And that would have been, like in the early thirties. But during the Second World War, Joe came back. He had worked on Corney Lake and from there he came to Ida and took over the pottery. At the bottom, my brother Frank Petty, is the one (photograph) just over my sister Myrtle, the schoolteacher, and he is the one that designs pottery. He designed all the molds and he designed the lamp vase over there. That's what he's done all of his life. And that's just the recent book about the pottery that they're putting into the library. I'm going to put one in very soon and there's a lot of information because he had worked for several potteries and is very knowledgeable. This sister (photo) Ingles, died when her baby was a month old. But she was quite a musician, and everybody will remember her because she played the piano so much. These (photos) are two of my brothers. The one on the left (Douglas) is the youngest in the family. He was in the Marines and then was so young after the Korean War after he retired from the Marines that he had a second career and is retiring from that now. Merwin was in the Air Force and he was an Air Traffic Controller until he retired at the Barksdale and the downtown airport and the big airport (he lived in Shreveport). He's dead and Joe's dead and both of my sisters have died. So Mama's fortunate that she got all her children grown. I have written all my life. I have been a storyteller all my life because, the third grade teacher when I was in high school would sometimes want to grade papers or something and she would get me to come down and tell her children stories, so she could do something else. So, I have been making up stories and telling them ever since. When I was about fifteen, my grandmother bought me a used Royal portable typewriter for fifteen dollars so that I could type the family history, because the family history, she had quite a bit. When she was a girl, all of her family was talking about the Revolutionary War and the relatives that were in it. Well, when I was a child, everybody was still talking about the Civil War and the events in it and so I did type the family history and she would include in there stories that are not usually in a family history, because she knew that I would want to write about them at some time in the future, which I have. And my mother, in this (the composition book) she tells about growing up and if you would like to take it and make copies. . . (Mrs. Cole) Make copies. Yes, we'd love to. Yes. And then I can send it back to you. (Mrs. Boston) Yes. It probably is quite interesting. (Mrs. Cole) And it's written in her hand, too. (Mrs. Boston) Yes, and if you wanted to keep the original document and send me a copy, you might do that. I don't know what else is in it, but I think it's interesting. My mother had grown up in Tennessee, and met my father when both of them were attending Peabody. Daddy (Crit Petty) was born (in Many, Sabine parish) after the Civil War and had very little formal education, but he was a mathematical genius and was sent to Peabody. When he got up there one of his math teachers got sick and she asked him to teach her class. And he said, "This class, I've never had." and it was some class, maybe geometry or something he had never had. She said, "You can do it." Said, "Just study one lesson ahead of the students, and if they come to a question that you don't know, you tell them to think about it, and that tomorrow you would tell them the right answer." Well Mama got out of school a little bit earlier, because she probably had a teacher's certificate and he went on and had more schooling. Her uncle placed teachers in Louisiana. Her uncle had a teacher placement service. And the State of Louisiana wanted teachers who could not speak French, because they said the French children will not learn to speak English if you can understand them. So they sent her to Breaux Bridge, which is somewhere in the southern part of the state, to be a teacher. Her mother came down with her because there was no one else left in her family except my grandmother and mama. My grandmother had been a teacher, so she would help Mama with the teaching, except she was not a paid employee at that time. Mama taught at Breaux Bridge and then when Daddy got out of college a short time later, they were married in Shreveport at the First Methodist Church. There was a Yellow Fever Epidemic and they could go to Many, which was my Daddy's home town, but they could not go north, because the fever had come up from the southern part of the state. They were quarantined if you went north because you might spread the fever, but if you were going down to where the fever already was, there would be no danger. So Daddy had different teaching jobs. Well, after they left Ida in probably 1913, they went on to several other places and went across the (Red) River on to their own place (in Bossier parish) and tried to farm for a couple of years. Mama said they were just "babes in the woods." She said their meat all spoiled and, of course, if you're a farmer, being able to preserve your meat, that's real important because you can't go to a grocery store. But she said, and perhaps she will tell that in this book. I do not know what all she said in this, but she used to tell about the alligators. Not far from where they lived there was a hunting lodge, where the rich people from Shreveport, or different people, would come up and stay. They hired a woman to live there and do the cooking. But the men would come up and maybe stay a week and hunt, and the house, the hunting lodge was built on high supports. Everything was built up high off the ground because it overflowed so much. And Mama said that it was, I believe it was at Half-Moon Lake, there was several of those lakes in northern (Bossier) parish that have since been drained and cultivated. But the lodge was on one of these lakes and the woman that did the cooking would throw her scraps out the window. In the wintertime when the water was high, the scraps would just land in the water, and the lake was so full of fish that the water would just churn when the scraps would hit the water. But in the summertime, she would still throw her scraps out the window and then the alligators would crawl up under the house to get the fish or whatever game or stuff they'd thrown out the window! The logger-head turtles were enormous size and I remember as a child seeing a skull of a turtle that my mother had brought home and had for years there at the house. It looked like a turkey carcass. You've seen, you've pulled all of the meat off of a turkey's bones and it was just about that large! You know, and even in Kelly Bayou, which is on this side (Caddo) of the river, a man told me that he had dug up a turtle so large in the middle of the summer, the turtle was buried down in the mud, and he pulled it up on the bank and one of the men in town stood on the turtle and the turtle could walk with him. Well, Boss Martin was the man that stood on the turtle. He was square and Dutch, and probably weighed a hundred and thirty or fifty pounds so, that had to be a big turtle. (Mrs. Cole) Really. And did people eat turtle or alligator meat back then? (Mrs. Boston) Ah, people in this area do eat turtle. I have not eaten turtle, but many people do and they say it's very gelatinous. If it gets cold, it's very gelatinous and also they say that there's different kinds of meat in turtle, but. . . (Mrs. Cole) I've eaten turtle in South Louisiana, but those are small, the terrapins. (Mrs. Boston) Well, some people do eat them up here, but I just haven't. When I was a child, they were still clearing the land across the (Red) River (in Bossier). They would ring the trees, and the trees would die and they would cultivate around the tree stumps, and eventually they would get the brush off into great piles and then burn them. And from Ida, you could sometimes see the piles when they were on fire. (Mrs. Cole) Uh huh. Across the river in Bossier. (Mrs. Boston) They have cut timber off this land two or three different times since 1900. When I was a child, much of the land was cultivated which has now grown back into timber. I guess you noticed by the church they had cut timber just a few weeks ago in this area. Mama said that when they moved over across the river, they moved into a log cabin and the squirrels and the birds had chinked all of the holes in the cabin with pecans (laughter). They (Mama) emptied out a great big bucket of pecans just where the squirrels had tucked them in. They had native pecans, but by the time I can remember the pecans, some of the pecans, had been grafted (with paper shell pecans). And the Gore family, Mr. Gore, was the overseer of the place when Daddy had it. And I think Daddy sold it, probably in 1940 or something like that. I think O'Delle Gore who would have been a son probably, bought that place, and probably is still living on it across the river. I remember the big pecan orchards and I remember that the potatoes were so big, the sweet potatoes were so big that Daddy brought some from across the river for us to use. You couldn't get . . . (laughter), my grandmother had to take a hand-axe and cut them in three or four pieces to bake them in the oven! In those days people would bake an oven full of potatoes at one time and a lot of those potatoes ended up being fed to the cows or the hogs just because they were too big. See, the ground was incredibly rich; it was very black. (Mrs. Cole) All that flooding probably. (Mrs. Boston) It would flood every year and Daddy used to tell the story about the big, old hog that was going to have some pigs, and they couldn't find her. And eventually she showed up with the pigs, and they found that she had eaten a hole in a pumpkin and Daddy said that she had had her pigs inside the pumpkin. Well, I knew that Cinderella rode in a pumpkin coach and I never asked if that was a true story or not (laughter). But the water would flood and sometimes leave white marks on the trees. Another story Daddy would tell was of a man that was going to buy some property over there. And he was asking about what the marks were on the trees because he didn't want to buy the land if it was in the overflow area, which anything you bought over there would have been. And so, whoever was trying to sell the land said, "No, we have a lot of big hogs here and that's just where the hogs have been scratching their backs and that's the lines on the trees." He said, "Well, he didn't believe he wanted to take the land, but he was quite interested in seeing some of those hogs!" (laughter) -- thought he might want to buy those. The land was so soft after the rain that if a field was plowed, if you walked in a plowed field, you were likely to bog up. Mr. (Dan) Logan, whose books on farming are over there, said that if you used a wagon in the bottom land, in the winter time, it was hard to carry any load because it would bog up. And the people would have to take an axe in the wagon to chop out the mud between the spokes of the wagon wheels, because they would just get so heavy the horses could not pull the wagons. Since they've stopped the land from overflowing, you do not see the rich, black dirt. It looks like any other dirt. End of Side A. Tape 1 Gypsy Damaris Boston Interview Side B, Tape 1 (Mrs. Boston) He (Dan Logan) has a very detailed accounts of growing up in Benton and how farm families would have been. (Mrs. Cole) We have copies of that in the archives. It's wonderful because he talks about who did what kind of chores and that sort of thing. It's very interesting. (Mrs. Boston) But you have both of them Tilling the Good Earth, and Do you want me to do all that with mine, too? (Mrs. Cole) Um hum, right. (Mrs. Boston) They're very interesting. He was very much interested in learning the secrets of nature. He said that he had heard a Methodist presiding elder preach, in which the man said that if you would read the Bible for a certain number of minutes a day for ten years, you would have an education. And after the sermon was over Mr. Logan said, "If I would read twice as long, could I get an education in half that time." And the man said, "I think that you could." And he (Dan Logan) said that he had been reading (the Bible) ever since. Of course, when he was telling me that he was near eighty and he had been keeping a journal for many of those years -- a journal as to weather and how the crops were doing. Some of that information is probably in LSU(S) Archives. Because he had so many things, papers and things of his. (Mrs. Cole) I've written to Junior, his son, to ask if he had any papers relating to Bossier, at the same time that I wrote to you so, I haven't heard back from him. (Mrs. Boston) Well, that's good, because I know that his mother. . . (had a home in Benton where Mr. Logan grew up). His daddy had been injured when a buggy (turned over), and the horse ran away with him. His daddy was injured and he eventually died. His father had been a surveyor and his grandfather perhaps had surveyed land in Arkansas, because he speaks of his grandmother as being a widow and having a big plot of land, because of a payment for some surveying services that the grandfather had done for the government. And he talks about his grandmother living in the Bradley area up in the edge of Arkansas. Ida was not settled as quickly as some of these other places because this was Caddo Indian country and people weren't supposed to be here, although they were. But it was really not settled as quickly as the Bossier part and places up in Arkansas were settled because they had to find a place where it was easy to get across the river. And there were not many places they could cross. At Shreveport you know, Texas Street was your main road going west into Texas. If you tried to go north of Ida, there was a creek that made it almost impossible. If you were going east of Ida, you got down in the bottom land which was River mud and very difficult. If you went south of Ida, you got into a sand bed and even some of the first people that settled here, I've heard old people talk about taking a load of cotton to Shreveport to gin, and they would have to go west of Ida and go around through the hills. (Mrs. Cole) Um hum. The high road, take the high road. (Mrs. Boston) They could get on Black Bayou, which is like at Rodessa and then they could get in, eventually, get into Shreveport by water. So until 1928, there were very few roads. The roads weren't very big and there were not many of them and you did not have the trucks or the mechanized farm, so everything was very much like it'd been fifty years before -- little communities every six or ten miles. Every little community had it's own church and it's school. Each person had just a small acreage and you did hand labor. But then, once you began to get highways and trucks and mechanized farming, the way of farming and the way of life changed dramatically. And so many of the expressions that we have in this part of the country, I doubt if people would know when you say, "He's as stubborn as a mule." Children today haven't had any experience with mules; they don't know what that means. To say someone is square was a great compliment when I was growing up -- a fair person, a very good person, dependable, a square person, a square dealer. My children, if somebody was a square, they just think that he was. . . it's just not a compliment at all. There's so many things. My husband's mother was telling about her home and her kitchen and she was telling my son, he was a college graduate, that they had a safe in the corner of their kitchen. And it troubled my son a great deal. He wanted to know why they kept their money in the kitchen. She meant they had a pie safe, a place that they could put their pies and it would have a perforated metal door so there'd be ventilation, but you could put your pies and cakes, and they would be safe from the mice (giggling) and the flies that might get in your house. But to my son, a safe was some place you keep money. And people were, a lot of them were Scotch-Irish in this part of the country. And they didn't believe in ghosts and haints (sic) and witches and angels and things as such. But they would knock on wood, which was just another way of entreating the deities to help you out a little bit. And some of them were superstitious but they would not admit it. Now, some of the superstitions were really logical, because they would not want you to take out ashes on New Year's Day, because if you did someone would die in your family before the end of the year. Well, that made sense because if you had an old person or a baby in your family and you let all the fires die out so you could clean out the fireplace, January weather changes so in Louisiana, the house might get cold and somebody'd take a cold. So that made a lot of sense. People did not want to plant weeping willows. The weeping willow in England or somewhere else was supposed to be a beautiful girl who had fallen in love with someone and the man did not want to marry her. Maybe he was a man of wealth. But she stood outside the gates and wept so long that she turned into a weeping willow tree. Well, my friend's mother did not want anybody to plant a weeping willow tree in her yard, because if it did, when it got big enough to shade your grave, you would die. So she didn't want a weeping willow in her yard. In those days, most of the people would chop all the weeds off of their yard and have it bare and sweep it with a brush broom. The reason for that is that there wasn't any grass. If you cleared off a bunch of trees, the sun has not gotten to the ground and so there's no grass there. And if you built your house after you chopped down the trees, there would be no grass. And to make the flower beds, you would just chop up what weeds were out there and then circle your flower beds with old bottles or rocks like I have outside, or tires, anything. Then you could see tracks if anybody, if any mice or snakes or anything tried to get in your house. They did not plant flowers along the edge of the house, they planted things away from the house because you did not want anything at the edge of the house where a mouse or snake or anything. . . (could hide). (Mrs. Cole) Where they could hide? I'd never heard that, that's very interesting. (Mrs. Boston) And for years, the older people did not have flowers (against the houses), but by about the thirties, maybe the middle of the thirties, they began to landscape their houses. They began to put screens on their doors and they landscaped the houses and they'd say, "Tie down your house with shrubs." It was probably in the middle, in the early thirties that people began to put flowerbeds adjacent to their house. Mama had said that across the river (in Bossier) there was no grass, but that there were every plant imaginable growing because of the river overflowing. And the thing that I'd remember would be that one December, we went over (across the river) and I picked enough green, what we called "tommy toes," little wild, you might call them cherry tomatoes. But they were little wild tomatoes growing, you would sometimes see them growing in the cotton patch. I picked enough of them that on the eighth of December, on my birthday, I made green tomato pickles, 'cause my daddy liked them. Everybody called them "tommy toes." And they were little tomatoes and they were very acid. But they were perfect little tomatoes, just like the cherry tomatoes, except they'd grow on big vines and ground was so rich over there. And for tomatoes to be growing that late in the season, it's unusual. That's the reason I remembered it. I was not expecting to find them that late in the season. But they would, people would make soup out of them, make very, very good soup. And the other superstitions, I was talking to a group of children in a Black school and one of the little girls told me that it was very bad luck for two people to sit on the same chair. And I thought about that, that was something I'd never heard before. But then I got to doing a little thinking about it, people did not have enough chairs for everybody to sit on. So you always gave your best chair to company, like, if a judge was coming, he had the chair. So if two people were going to try to manage something and both people were trying to. . . like the chairman of a committee. If you've got two people trying to run something, it could be disastrous because you'd have a conflict of interest. So I suspect that is where the expression got started. This little girl's mother had probably told her not to sit in the chair with her boyfriend. I suspect that was where the expression first started (in her house). Many of these old expressions have some truth in them, when they first got started. And the stories that the grandparents tell got polished and they are so much better fifty years later than when they really happened. But they do have a bit of truth in the background. And most of the people up here have been very, very religious, very church-going. But then, there was no social activity that wasn't connected to the church. Out in the country revivals were very wonderful because they would have a brush-arbor revival somewhere out in the country. And a brush-arbor, did they have them in South Louisiana? (Mrs. Cole) No, they didn't, but Mr. Touchstone has made one for us at the Center, so we have a very nice one. (Mrs. Boston) Ok. Well out here the churches were small. They were hot and if you had a revival, it was usually a visiting minister. They'd go out half a mile or so from town where there was a bunch of trees and sometimes they'd take a piano out or church benches. The kids loved it because if you were old enough to date, you'd have a whole night with your date and they usually had good singing. So the brush-arbors were an activity. . . (The telephone rings at this moment). Excuse me, please. (She goes to answer telephone). Interview Continues (Mrs. Boston) You should have a section about the Fridays, you know, the Everett Publishing Company? Now that would be important because they have a reputation all over the United States for their bookbinding. So if you do not have information on them, and you would call Evelyn Friday, because it was her father who started the book-binding business by pulling out the cars and putting out tables in the garage. It has just grown until they recently sold it. But I think that business just took up a whole square in Bossier City. (Mrs. Cole) I've been over there. They did my thesis so I've been over there. They've got all the newspaper clippings on the wall, but that is a good idea to call her and interview her. (Mrs. Boston) Yes, because they sold the binding business, but she would have, you see, I think maybe her daddy had it for forty years. He had it a long time. And then she married Mr. Friday and that would have been the Second World War when he started working there 'cause he was just young. (Mrs. Cole) Tell me about some of your publications. You've been a writer for quite a while haven't you? (Mrs. Boston) Yes. When I was little they elected me the editor, the reporter for the 4-H Club and also the Epworth News. Epworth Lee was a Methodist organization so I would send in the things for the Shreveport Journal and they would pay me like a $1.40 or something for a story because you know, they paid by the inch. And I was just sure that I would make (laughing) four figures, the checks with four figures without any decimals for all my work! But I started writing when I was very little and I have always done it. But my reason for writing changes. When I was little, I wrote as a reporter for school organizations or things of that sort. Then after I got married, I would be writing like PTA news and church news and things of that nature. Then, as my children got grown, I began to write for the Shreveport Magazine and River Cities and occasionally have something published. And I joined the National League of American Penmen and got real interested in it. But now I am very much interested in writing more to give pleasure to people. And also, to have a variety of stuff that my grandchildren can read that I have written. I'm on the staff, I'm a writer for the Oakhill Gazette and that is in Austin, Texas. And you said you'd seen something. What paper was it in? (Mrs. Cole) It was in the Tribune? In the Bossier Tribune. (maybe the Press?) (Mrs. Boston) Well, these would be probably from the Bossier Press Tribune. Now these are from, they have changed. They're not using my work as regularly now because I think they are printing a lot of it in Minden. But these are from the Bossier Parish Post. I haven't had anything in there (The Tribune) recently. I haven't sent them anything recently, but I am sending things currently to the Bossier Parish Post. And then this one is the Oakhill Gazette and the editor picks out what they want. The story may be the same story, but the editor does their own lineup. They call, he calls it "Gypsy's World" in Austin, Texas and this one is called "Magical Renderings." The editor wanted "Magical Renderings." But I just love that -- I'm just one of "Louisiana's best-loved folklorists" (the title under "Magical Renderings"). (Mrs. Cole) And nobody writes folk tales and information like that you know. That's what I found so interesting about it. I only got to read two of them so (laughs) this is wonderful to get to see all of the ones that you've had published. (Mrs. Boston) Everything is different. All of these stories will be different and of course, I've been doing A Secret Garden. I've been working every minute I could out in the yard trying to get A Secret Garden ready. This is to the zoo in Fort Worth. This is very interesting. My daughter-in-law is president of PTA and I worked in their book sale. They had a hundred thousand books that they were selling like a dollar a hard cover and they earned $33,300 for their PTA Scholarship Fund. Now I'd just come back from Delaware and while I was there I told stories to children in Delaware there at my granddaughter's school. I told my own stories and they loved it. This is a Thank You note that the children put together. (Mrs. Cole) Isn't that wonderful! Look how they've all signed it. Oh, it's a little booklet that they've all written letters to you. That is so nice. (Mrs. Boston) I've told stories in Austin, Richardson, Delaware, in Montessori schools and different age groups. I used to do that for the Shreveport Regional Arts Council. I would actually go in and have seminars for the children. I've been to Bossier and different places. This book was probably the first book that Mr. Friday put together. (Mrs. Cole) And that's Pink Hair right? (Mrs. Boston) My mother had her hundredth birthday and I wanted to give something to all the children. So this is the story, illustrated by one of Mama's great-granddaughters and it's a true story about my daughter. And Mr. Friday put it together as one of his, probably the first book. They had had a bookbinding business, but for a while he had a publishing business and he did Mr. Logan's books and he did one for me. (Mrs. Cole) When was this? When was this published? (Mrs. Boston) This would have been uh, gosh I don't know. Mama was a hundredth birthday, so it would have been probably '90? (Mrs. Cole) The book reads 1984. (Mrs. Boston) But any rate, I had started, I had really wanted to write a column for shut-ins because my friend who grew flowers had to go to the nursing home. I would write her stories about what was blooming on her street and she enjoyed them so much. I just signed them Gypsy Damaris, because she knew who I was and I did not need to use my married name. And I carried them to the paper and told them that I wanted to write a column for the shut-ins, and so the editor of the paper at that time told me that they had as many columnists as they wanted to print, but for me to leave my stories. So I left a sample story with them and they published it and then after that I would send one every month or every few weeks. They would always publish it. And a few years later I got a telephone call and a person told me that he and his friend wanted to start a publishing business. They had things of their own that they wanted to publish. And they wanted to publish a collection of my stories, so that they could get started and maybe get their own work out in front of the public. I had never met the person before. The paper, since they hadn't paid me for the articles, they were very glad that I was having that opportunity. So the two young men put together Dear Louisiana . . . love, Gypsy and soon after that, they published four or five books, and soon after that, the price of paper just sky-rocketed. And they had young families and so they had to abandon their project. Well, after that I wrote for Barksdale Officer's Wives Petticoat Press. I think I've got some copies. The Second World War was going on. We had lived in Maryland but we could not do any sightseeing because the gasoline was so expensive. Well, it was that way because it was rationed. And so I thought that the Barksdale people could see so many things. 'Course gas is no problem now. So I started writing for the Petticoat Press, which was apparently like the officers' wives magazine. And I would write articles about things that I thought were interesting. I don't even remember what all subjects I covered. But I'm sure I must have something in each one since I saved them all these years. But they were about places you could see or things that might be blooming in the area. (Mrs. Cole) Just trying to get them organized around what was going on in Bossier at the time. (Mrs. Boston) Now this one (article) is about Walter Jacobs Nature Park. That was, these were in '81. This is about Fort Jessup. That's not far from here. They would change the editors of this little magazine very often because the men were being transported in and out of Barksdale. (Mrs. Cole) Here's one (an article) Auto Pilot by Lee Risinger. She and her husband were friends of mine. Here we go, here's Spring by Gypsy Damaris. (Mrs. Boston) Um hum. Lake Bistineau State Park, a lot about the Red River Revel, because the Red River Revel started as a bicentennial thing. Holiday in Dixie was much earlier, but the Red River Revel was a bicentennial project and so it has been going on since '76. End of tape and Interview |
People |
Boston, Gypsy Damaris Petty |
Search Terms |
Oral History Ida Missionary Lake |
Lexicon category |
6: T&E For Communication |
Interview date |
1999-03-25 |
Interview place |
Mrs. Boston's home in Ida, Louisiana |
Interviewer |
Nita Cole |
Medium |
Plastic and Metal |
Recording media |
Cassette Tape |
Lexicon sub-category |
Sound Communication T&E |
Inventoried date |
2025-06-12 |