favorite. It's a hop bar. Yeah. Mesquite. Now I
don't like to cut mesquite because it
hurts the saw. It works on the chain. Now I've
cut cedar as big as I will at the little
end on the pickup. At the little end? Yeah.
That's what I hauled here that they had. They
hauled it that poor tailor. Huh. And that three
or four mesquite that loaded it. And
I ran in here by myself. Now would you cut that
with an ax or that was with a chainsaw?
No, I ain't. I ain't used no ax in a long time.
Uh-huh. No, yeah. What would they do
with the cedar that big around? Some people,
they're rich people, they put it in and use
it at corner posts, you know, around the place.
Uh-huh. Only rich people gonna buy that kind
of post. It's too big. It takes a lot of money
to dig a hole for one of them things. But
I sold them for $10 a piece. I didn't get what
anybody else did. Uh-huh. I just sold
them to make a living. I didn't work hard. I
cut half a day at the time and quit when
I got older. So when you started out and you
were 11, that would have been 1942, right,
World War II. Right after that, we didn't have
no social security back then. It happened
in 44 when they give social security to people.
My brother's in the Navy, that's dead now.
I cut a lot of cedar. I worked from Browning
Root in Houston for eight months. I worked
on the dam at another time. Okay. You worked on
the dam at, would that be Wurtz Dam? Yeah,
the first one. Uh-huh. I didn't work on the
lower one, but I worked on the other one.
This Clinton Houston gravel company, I worked
for them and got totaled out in my back. I
pulled my muscle up, jumped off of a box car,
catch another one to stop it from running
over other people. It got loose. Didn't have no
brakes on it. I had to stop it with the
other car. Did you just use the brake on it?
You turn the wheel and you stop it. Yeah.
They tried to get me to say I got hurt there,
and I said, no, I got hurt in the cedar yard
first about the muscle. I jerked the muscle
with another fellow helping me. I said, throw
it, and he wouldn't, so I grabbed it and had to
bring it to the hospital. I tore my left
muscle up. Then I got over it. I got a knot
there about like an egg that stays there,
you know. But that's what it was. So when you
were working for the, y'all were clearing
out down there right for the dam, I guess you
were cutting cedar down there too, weren't
you? No, that was granite. That's granite,
Darrell. Granite, we was drilling. Okay. We
drilled with jackhammers. Okay. They said take
big fillers around that jackhammer, and
I could drill more holes with me and one more
feller than any of them there. Huh. You're
not a big man. You weren't a big man then, were
you? I could throw my leg up on top of
that jackhammer, you know, and just let it
coast its way down. Uh-huh. And they wouldn't
do it. I've had it jump off and hit me on top
of the foot, break it in, break the steel.
Uh-huh. And I've had them pavement roasters,
red plum to the machine, you know, just melt
them. Did you ever get cut by a cedar axe? Yeah.
One time I cut that much soil out and
that tongue came out of this foot right here.
The toe just fell over. I'm a Pentecost, and
I went to church, and they prayed for me, and I
got my toe's words. I never go to a
doctor. My goodness. I cut 11 posts that day
and went to cut the other. My Uncle Richard,
there wasn't nobody out to cut him. I got his
brother, and I was one post ahead of him
when I cut my foot in. Did you go to church
that same day and pray for it? I went and
poured a bottle of camphor for meat on it, and
went that night. I walked around on it
that night, and they prayed for me, and the
Lord healed that foot. I cut the sole half
out. It cut pretty good, yeah. You see a scar
here? Yes, Sir. Uh-huh. That's 77 stitches.
Threw my chopping axe over on a big post over
from the chop to chop these. You know when
vampires had a flood? Yeah. I cut these here
telephone posts, the cedar posts. I cut them
in half. It's long, and I grabbed one to throw
it, and I threw it on the axe, and that axe
come at me, and I grabbed it as it cut my face
in two. Oh, my gosh. How deep did it go?
It went pretty deep. The doctor said, Gratley,
you just lacked an eighth of an eighth skill.
And I said, no, the devil liked the maw killing
me. I said, it didn't kill me yet. It liked
the eyes and stuff. You know, it chopped them
bones in two. I'm surprised it didn't take
your eye out. Well, it's a wonder it hadn't
killed me. Yeah. But it just liked a little
because that's right there at the nose. Did the
sharp end hit you? Yeah, the razor axe.
Yeah. Now, I've heard that one end of the axe,
you kind of leave a little duller in
case you were hitting down by rocks. And if
that would have hit me, well, it would have
hurt me real bad, you know, because it was
bruised. It was my axe razor sharp, and it
hit pretty hard, but I caught it in the air.
And all I could do was hold it as it was cutting
me. And I told a fellow there, he was going to
town, I just happened to do it just as
he was leaving. I said, take me to the hospital.
I've got to have this sewed up. I can't drive.
I had both hands holding it together. See, I'd
been blind before that, 30 days before
that, I got my eyes put out. Well, it may have
been a little more time than that. Anyhow,
I had my eyes put out with ammonia using a
cutting torch. And I took an axe and get one
of them lines and it all hit me in the nose and
it killed me. And he told my wife, he
said, you take him home after four days, said
he'll never see another wink. And they took
me to the building. I told her, took me down
there. I said, you don't say a word, just
lead me up to the order and let me ask for what
I want. And they took me and led me up
to the order on that Sunday. Just like a boat
electricity when I asked them for the anointing
and prayer oil that I could see to make my
family a living. That's what I told them.
And three days later, both eyes popped open.
That's quite a story. I have a faith to believe
it'll happen, you know, and it happened. That's wonderful.
Well, I've been crippled.
You're like a cat with nine lives.
Well, I had a big family to raise. I had to
have somebody to do it.
So how many children did you have? Seven.
Y'all lived in Lomita?
We lived in Morrill Falls and Lomita too and
here. Mostly we went to Houston and she
didn't want to stay up there and that's the
reason I quit Houston.
Now I come back to a 40-dot per week job, seven
days a week, cedar yard at Jerry Noble's.
Jerry Noble's? Yeah.
He had the yard?
Yeah, you know where, you're going into Morrill
Falls, all that on the right, all the way
to the creek was cedar yard.
How many cedar yards were there in Morrill Falls?
How many were there in Morrill Falls back then?
It's all one big cedar yard or a whole bunch of
different ones?
Yes, that one and, well, there was another one
up above which ours was a little bit below
but Frank J's was up above and Jerry Noble's
was the biggest one.
And then he got, he wanted to, in 66 he took me
and I knowed cedar but I was raised up
where it was, you know.
I can tell you, just count four inch posts
through an acre and I can tell you how much
about it drained.
And he took me off there close to Austin over
at Bee Cave, I think is what they call it,
and took me down in Canyon and stuff and it was
a virgin cedar over there.
I told him, I said, if you buy it you'll get
rich off of it.
He bought it and I went back to Morrill Falls
working after the first year but the first
year he made $277,000 to his part.
Cutting cedar in Bee Caves.
He didn't cut it, he just bought it.
He bought it from the chopper and then he sold it.
See, really if you cross that post up and your
corner post and make an average right
at 100% profit if you hold it.
But if you don't hold it and you were selling
it cheaper it would be about 50.
But you'd make money off cedar if they still
buy it.
Tell me about this man then.
So he bought, contracted with the guys who
owned the land to cut the cedar off.
He paid so much for a contract for so long to
cut it.
Would that be a percentage of what he cut?
That's a percentage.
Do you know about 10?
Because I've heard 10.
Does that make sense?
Well back then probably 10.
Now it would be 30.
People are crazy about cedar.
A lot of them having it pushed down and paying
big money to do it.
They wouldn't let a farmer cut it.
They'd just push it and burn it.
Isn't a lot of it now pretty worthless when it
comes out like that?
A sappy cedar now ain't too good for the past 4
or 5 years.
This kind of cedar comes from out here on 1,300 acres.
This cedar here I worked for that fellow out
there that comes from San Antonio.
I don't know his name.
I forgot it.
Anyhow, Mr. Hibbler called me to come back out there.
I worked off and on out there about 17 years.
I like that old man.
Out there on Oatmeal? Yes.
That's right next to my friend Carl's place.
Carl is his boy.
Carl Hibbler.
This is a different Carl.
He's his neighbor.
And Ronald Hibbler, the one that died? Yes.
We're talking two different Hibbler.
Ronald is...isn't it Donald and Ronald?
It's Donald.
Donald Hibbler was once alive. Uh-huh.
That's your friend. Yeah.
And Carl Hibbler was his boy.
I lived where he lived.
But the one that was clean, I went out and got
the old trash for him after I got the
hip in.
And then I worked a little out there with this
hip trying to cut cedar, but it's too rough.
I couldn't walk in it. Uh-huh.
So you're going back to this bee caves thing,
because I know some folks out in Bee caves
that cut cedar back in those days.
There was a pretty big cedar yard.
Yeah, it probably may still be there. Uh-huh.
I don't know.
The Roberts is...it's not related to me, but I
talked to him and his granddaddy on the
cedar yard in Oak Hill back then.
I used to know them people down there, you know. Yeah.
So this old...this man that he contracts with
all this, he made $200 and something thousand
dollars off of it?
Well, it's lots of trucks going in and cutting
a lot of people, you know, and it had trucks
every day a-loading. Uh-huh.
And which he didn't have to pay his hands.
I was a stacker.
I'd check cedar too, but I loaded the trucks.
And when you load a truck, they got to pay for
the help to help, and I got more money
loading the truck, and the helper got...the
boss got it to pay. Uh-huh.
And I paid for six hands a week of working on
the yard. Uh-huh.
But I loaded trucks, and I get sometimes $20
a-loading one, you know.
And if I cut the standards out, I got a dollar
a piece with cut standards, and they stand
straight, you know. Uh-huh.
How many trucks could you load in a day?
Most of them back then, the hand is two. Uh-huh.
So you make $40 a day loading? Yeah.
It paid for one of the hands every day.
Yeah, I think it was just three hands. Uh-huh.
Really, his son-in-law and another fellow,
Jackson, boy named Jackson, he's dead.
Both of them dead.
Old man dead too. Uh-huh.
He was my wife's uncle. Jeremy.
How much did those guys get paid, the hands?
They got what I did, $60 a week. Uh-huh.
Really, I would have been drawing more. Uh-huh.
Because I paid for it.
You organized it all.
And when I wasn't loading that, I was checking cedar.
Where was that yard you were talking, is that
Marble Falls?
Or would they have one in Oakey?
It was big.
Callahan was at Marble Falls, big out there.
One of the biggest ones there was.
What's it called?
Callahan wanted it from Barrowstrop. Uh-huh.
Oh, the same Callahans that has the Callahan
store, you think? Yeah.
The old man be dead. Uh-huh.
Him and his brother, too.
They were all Callahans.
These ones had it.
Is that the store that, is that the yard that
you were working out of when you were buying that?
Well, no.
Not when they made that kind of money.
I worked for Callahan.
I just worked for him.
Oh, wow.
I loaded three trucks a day there. Uh-huh.
Had three of them up to me.
I've been knocking.
Yeah, that's it.