Cigar Daisey oral history transcript

              CIGAR DAISEY WITH DAVE HALL

MARCH 25, 1989

[On page 5, two additional men arrive and join conversation. They are not identified. I

have called them MAN who sounds older, and MAN 2, who sounds younger. They are

from North Carolina and are attending a waterfowl-carving exhibition at location where

Mr. Daisey lives. This transcript contains some mature language and references. –S.

Cargill, Transcriptionist]

MR. HALL: When you were a boy, I know we talked about when you started hunting,

but about how yall lived and what you did around the island here?

MR. DAISEY: Well, as far as I can remember, you know, when you’re going to school.

And after school you followed the big boys. And the one that had the gun, you followed

him into the glade. He’d get you to take his shoes off, or you’d wade out and get his

ducks, or anything. You’d go to Dave Melvin’s store and you’d buy three shells for 10

cents; Monarchs. I think that’s what they were but they might even have been cheaper

than that. I think that’s what they were. Most people say in them days; I heard them

old timers set in the store and talk about it; they said that if you shoot in the head wind

you’d fill your shirt pockets up. It would blow back and fill your shirt pockets up, you

know? It was cheap shells, that’s all they were. Anyway, I followed the big boys in the

glade and they hunted. It was a thrill for me to go with them, you know. Of course,

when they come back out to the store that night; see, Chincoteague Island had about

twenty to twenty-five country stores and whatever they killed, they hung up right on the

store porch. They had nails drove up there overhead there and they’d hang them up on

the pole and they’d go in the store and try to sell them to people for whatever they could

get. Selling game was just the same as selling oysters and clams or anything. Around here

it wasn’t nothing that was frowned on. Anything they could eat, they’d buy if they

wanted it. That’s they way I was brung up.

MR. HALL: When you’d still in those country stores and listen to them talk, what were

they mostly talking about?

MR. DAISEY: They’d talk about how Roosevelt was going to save us; that was number

one. He was going to be our salvation, you know. Then, about hunting and fishing and

trapping and things that done all the time, you know.

MR. HALL: Well that was the only thing that was really going on.

MR. DAISEY: How many ducks they could kill. That was the only thing. They didn’t

give a damn about nothing else. When it comes to politics, all they know was Roosevelt.

When it come to everything else, it was survival. In other words, it was oysters, clams,

fish and things like that. That’s all they talked about.

MR. HALL: What was the country store that you used to go to the most?

MR. DAISEY: David Melvin’s old country store. It was probably established in 1900.

It’s not there anymore now. The building is still there. The new building is still there but

there’s no store there now. We went out there. It was a great world for the youngsters

now, I’ll tell you what they’d do for you; if you come out there and you were a youngin’

you could sit in the backend of that place as long as you didn’t open your mouth and run

your mouth, you could sit there. They didn’t want no foolin’. If you did they’d drive

you the hell home in five minutes! They had counters about that tall; about four foot tall.

The men would rest up on them counters, you know. They sit there with a knife and

they’d whittle a trench in them. Everybody had a pocketknife and they cut the counters.

Every bench and everything was full of; that’s all they had to do was do that or play

horseshoes and whittle. Because it was during the Great Depression, see? They wasn’t

no money. There wasn’t nothing for people do to. They hung on them old porch poles.

Most of them had four or five of them porch poles on them to hold the porch up. They

hung on them like crabs does on a piling, I ain’t kiddin’ you. That’s the way people

lived.

MR. HALL: When did you first start making decoys?

MR. DAISEY: The first decoys that I made was in about 1941 or 2 or something like

that. Me and my father made them. I went with him as a youngin’ on the north in of

Wallops Island we found a raft. It was a balsa wood raft. We took that and sawed it up

and made Black Ducks and Hooded Mergansers out of it. He could make a right decent

Hooded Mergansers. He made them different. Today, I’ve never seen one of them. I

don’t know where they’ve all gone.

MR. HALL: But you made them basically for your own use?

MR. DAISEY: We didn’t never dream about ever selling one. That was the last thing.

Because at that time you couldn’t get a dime or a dollar. You couldn’t sell on to save

your life. That’s the reason why they tell you all these tales about these people making

all these decoys. What in the hell did they do with them? Wasn’t nobody buying them!

They didn’t make them! I tell you, they didn’t make them! They didn’t make no such

amounts that they said they did. There weren’t no market for it.

MR. HALL: When did you start selling decoys?

MR. DAISEY: I never sold decoys until the early 1960’s. Even in the 1950’s if you

made yourself a dozen or two. I remember I made bunch of them. Herr’s made a model

52 plastic decoy. I liked it and I wanted some made out of wood. I made me some out of

wood. Now, somebody’s got them. I don’t know who they are. But I’d trade them off

for gun shells, or anything I could get. Any damn thing people would give me for them,

because they weren’t worth nothing. That stuff just was not worth nothing! I mean, if

you wanted, you could go on out here and get yourself a thousand in one night’s time.

Just by going in old unlocked sheds and things. People had them just heaped up in heaps.

We’d burn them! I’d split them right wide open down the back, right there on the south

end of Assawoman Beach. I’d split them right wide open little Hooded Mergansers and

we’d cook with them on a little Pet cook stove. That little pet cook stove won’t no

bigger than nothing. It was just right. We’d put two or three pieces down there and start

a fire with them. That’s how valuable they were. Couldn’t get no money! And the boats

cabins; just to show you how valuable they were; it was probably fifty to a hundred

“down the bay” boats. We called it ‘down the bay’. From here it was seventy miles

down to the Bridge/Tunnel. [Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel] Some of them would go

that far on week, or two-week trips. Some of them would stay a week, some of them two

weeks. The boats cabin up on top was solid full of merganser decoys and black duck

decoys and things like that. They’d lay out there the whole damn hunting season! If you

wanted them, all you had to do was go take them off the cabin, you know! You could

steal them if you wanted them. Won’t no big deal because they weren’t worth nothing to

nobody. Somebody told me; it was Lou [Last name unintelligible], he’s living out there is

Pittsburgh, Kansas; and you can leave your decoys out there in the front yard because

nobody knows what the hell they are out there. That’s the same way it was around here

at the time. They really didn’t give a damn about them, you know?

MR. HALL: How many decoys? You said you made how many in one season?

MR. DAISEY: I made eleven hundred and some one year. That was the best year.

MR. HALL: That was for a hunt club?

MR. DAISEY: A hunting club. I made a lot of them, about seven hundred and some for a

hunting club.

MR. HALL: What was the name of it?

MR. DAISEY: I don’t even know. It got burnt down. I know a lot of the men that was

in it. It was in Green Run Woods. There’s a hunting lodge right there in the same place.

MR. HALL: You don’t have any idea, in your life, how many decoys you’ve made now?

MR. DAISEY: About sixteen thousand, near as I can figure.

MR. HALL: Or close to it?

MR. DAISEY: Yeah. But I didn’t get no money for them, just remember that, I didn’t

no money from it. I really didn’t. You see? What confuses the whole damn deal is like

when people say, “Orrie Hatsell made these decoys!” Well, Orrie Hatsell didn’t make

these decoys, Dave. I know he didn’t make them! Ain’t no way. He had a family.

Everybody did the sanding for him, and Delbert was my age, and he done his painting for

him and everything. But he still didn’t produce that much stuff because he didn’t have no

market for it. He could only sell it maybe in October and November when the people got

ready to go hunting. He could sell a few at a cheap price. You know what I mean? Then

there was no more market for them the whole rest of the year! He made little boats and

things. So you see, he didn’t produce stuff like that. He didn’t make decoys year round

like I do today; January through December, no body did! Not in this neck of the woods.

Probably the most productive people I know was Madison Mitchell. Madison Mitchell

didn’t make them his self. He had college students and everybody in the world making

them. He had people who would start that saw early in the morning and never cut her off

till way after night, you know. He didn’t do it all by his self. The hand carved, you can

make five or six rough ducks, seven or eight maybe. If you want long summer days, you

might do a little better than that. But if you make three fairly decent ducks in one days

time, you’ve done a days work. Three fairly decent ducks. What I call fairly decent

ducks, with good lines and what have you. That’s a day’s work for a man. So you can

figure how much production you can have.

MR. HALL: That’s right.

MR. DAISEY: It’s only 365 days. You multiply that and you can figure on what you’re

going to get. It was not like; a lot of the reading that read, it makes for a good story but it

certainly can’t be like it was.

MR. HALL: Definitely, the times have changed here, as far as attitude and everything

hadn’t it?.

MR. DAISEY: Yessir! Yeah! Ain’t no doubt about it. Moss made the roughest decoys

of any man there ever was. But he didn’t produce that many of them. He really didn’t

make that many of them.

MR. HALL: “Buckaloo” and Walt Clark, I guess they talked a little bit yesterday too

didn’t they?

MR. DAISEY: Yeah.

MR. HALL: I don’t guess they’ve got any ill will any more?

MR. DAISEY: No, I don’t think they have. I don’t think they should have. It’s all over.

That’s water under the dam.

MR. HALL: Forty-two years ago, is what…

MR. DAISEY: Forty-two years ago both of them have got one foot in the grave you

might as well say, and why not? Forget it and go on. That’s something that happened

years ago. A different day and a different time. I think it’s wonderful that they both can

forget it and go on. Yes sir, I do. That’s my opinion of it. Walt’s had heart problems

and John…

MR. HALL: I’ve got them both on camera saying that they have no ill will against each

other, and that’s good.

MR. DAISEY: I’m glad you have. Did you tell him about whatchacallit being dead;

Ralph Harris?

MR. HALL: Umhum.

MR. DAISEY: You did? I wonder what he really thought about it. You know, I think

about it a lot, that day. I set beside John Buckley. He was driving and I set next to him

and Ralph Harris was on the back seat. I wonder a lot of times what his reaction was to

they way Ralph Harris was treating him. John Buckley didn’t say a word. He didn’t

say, “Don’t do it” or nothing.

MR. HALL: I don’t imagine he thought much of him.

MR. DAISEY: He was [unintelligible] like you wouldn’t believe. I ain’t kiddin’ you. He

was shaking me like a dog would shake a ball. He lifted me right up off my feet.

[Speaking to new arrivals] Come in, men, come in! I’d give you a cold beer, but people

that eats ice cream don’t love beer!

MR. HALL: Isn’t that something?

MR. DAISEY: That’s right!

MAN: Hey there, that’s our dinner!

MR. DAISEY: Is that your dinner?

MAN: Yeah! How you doing this morning?

MR. DAISEY: Well, I’m doing pretty good.

MAN: Well, you got your wind, the way it’s blown.

MAN 2: I want to know who that fella was walking around with you yesterday with

that long ponytail.

MR. HALL: That was Walt Clark!

MAN 2: Was that Walt Clark?!

MR. DAISEY: Yes that was Walter P. Clark.

MAN 2: He’s the one that’s got the eagle on his chest.

MR. HALL: Yeah. He said he was going to get it touched up. They split that eagle open

when they did that heart surgery on him.

MR. DAISEY: Let me tell you something or other; years ago me and him, did he tell you

about me and him trapping ducks together?

MR. HALL: Hunting and trapping.

MR. DAISEY: Well, he was working for Pop. I worked down there. At that time I

wasn’t married. My motor broke down. And I says, “Walt, me and you ought to…” I

said, “I got a nice set up down there for trapping and you and me will take it over if you

want.” He told me we’d do it after shucking days. So I shucked for Pop and he shucked

for Pop, opening oysters. Just as soon as we get through, had a twenty-five horse

Evinrude in a little tiny Crisscraft that would shake the living hell out of you. She like to

beat my balls til they were as big as your head, I ain’t kidding you! It like to killed me,

that somebitch! I ain’t kidding you! He was in charge of the club down there, then he

was. And he had a great big old .45 pistol. He never carried off on the water with him

because he was always afraid. He’d been doing some shooting and he didn’t want no

trouble with the Game Warden.

MAN: He might use her again.

MR. HALL: He served a little time.

MR. DAISEY: That’s right, he served time. He really didn’t want to kill nobody over it.

One night, we come up from setting our traps and he was watching. He saw this car and

we didn’t know who it was. It was Jim Williams. Walt says, “Stop this, get this

goddamned boat up in there!” I knowed how he was when he made up his mind about

something so we went right up underneath to the dock and tided up. He got out and

walked around there and Jim was hiding around the corner of the house. He yelled out,

“Some big footed sonofabitch has been here in the snowstorm!” He had this great big old

.45 pistol. He said, “I’m going to take this big old .45 and put a hurting on him if I catch

him!” Jim was scared of him, always was. He said he was just around there looking at

what was going on. He said, “Walter, I hear a lot of tales about you trapping ducks, you

know.” They caught 1,621; I remember it just as plain as if it were yesterday, that

season. It wasn’t a real good season, just a kind of poor season. We’d all get made at

times, and we’d half quit. Then we’d have problems with the people robbing us and what

have you. It wasn’t a great big year. But what we were making doing something else, see,

helped. I was trapping fur on the side too. I liked old man Walt, he was something else!

MAN: [Eating ice cream] See? I was going to bring you one but I was afraid it’d melt

before we got here.

MR. DAISEY: See now? I’m glad you didn’t. I am fat enough!

MR. HALL: You need to dunk that down in the Coors and give it a little flavor! Have

yall been to the show today? A lot of people over there?

MAN 2: Not that many. I don’t believe there was as many as there was yesterday.

MAN: No, not half as many is out there. We’re getting ready to head back to North

Carolina. It’ll take us about seven hours.

MR. HALL: I’ve got to drive to Washington tomorrow and catch a plane tomorrow

afternoon and go back to Louisiana.

MAN 2: We saw that old Earl, what’s his name?

MR. HALL: Federine?

MAN 2: Federine, yeah.

MR. HALL: He’s here?

MAN 2: No, I saw him down at Virginia Beach.

MAN: About two weeks ago. Him and his wife.

MR. DAISEY: Don’t be bashful. We’ve got to drink this man’s beer up, cause he’s

supposed to fill this up with shrimp when he goes back to Jersey.

MR. HALL: Fill it up with shrimp? Where’s he going to get the shrimp?

MR. DAISEY: Buy out there from along the road. That man’s got whole loads of them

out there.

MR. HALL: Where they coming from?

MR. DAISEY: From South Carolina. Plenty of it there help yourself.

MR. HALL: What do they get a pound, or for sixteen or twenty?

MR. DAISEY: Oh I don’t know; maybe three or four dollars I expect. Oh no, not for

sixteen or twenty, more like thirty or forty. You’ve got to get more than that for that

price!

MR. HALL: Everything has gone out of sight. You know, when I moved to Louisiana I

could buy all of the shrimp you wanted, good sized shrimp, for fifteen cents a pound.

And you know what a select bushel of crabs costs then?

MR. DAISEY: No.

MR. HALL: Three and a half dollars! And that ain’t that long ago now. And I am

talking about those big ‘selects.’

MR. DAISEY: Well let me tell you a story about the shrimp. Harold Wash told me that

they weren’t nothing but worms. And his father said they wouldn’t eat them for nothing

in the world. He said they fed them to the hogs!

MR. HALL: What’s that crabs?

MR. DAISEY: Shrimps! He said they were that long! And they fed them to the hogs!

It was right there at Stumpy Point, Long Boat Point they call it, off of Stumpy Point. He

said they weren’t nothing but worms and they wouldn’t eat them.

MAN: They catch them with their sink nets when they’re fishing to the cape when they

get hung up in them big marsh nets. They take and cast them off the front of the boat.

They cast them.

MR. DAISEY: Ain’t that something?

MAN 2: My Granddaddy told me he’d seen them right red in the water.

MR. DAISEY: Pull that door to. It’s getting cold in here. You’ll be getting chilly.

MR. HALL: They wouldn’t eat them big jumbo shrimp?

MAN: No!

MAN 2: They don’t eat shrimp around home. That’s not been that long ago. My father

told me about it.

MR. DAISEY: I can tell you when it was. It was 1940 something. I tell you what; most

people learned how to eat shrimp during World War II.

MAN 2: Most people wouldn’t eat them because they though they was…

MAN: We called them bugs.

MR. DAISEY: Bugs. That’s what they called them. That’s true! It’s hard to believe

ain’t it? People had just; all them years them shrimps have been here and they never

learned how to eat them, you know what I mean?

MR. HALL: Lord, lord! I can say one thing; those people in Louisiana; they learned to

eat everything a long time ago. I found some old articles in the newspaper in the early

1800’s and they ate all of the songbirds. They had French names for them. When

Audubon came to Louisiana in 1821, he was amazed at what was in the market in the

French Quarter. He got a list of all of that stuff. They were selling owls. They’d sell and

eat everything.

MR. DAISEY: I used to eat Starlings. I’ve eat them.

MAN 2: Down home we used to eat Cedar Waxwings, they call them Tee-Tees.

MR. HALL: They still eat them in Louisiana.

MR. DAISEY: But I’ve eat Robins and Starlings.

MAN: Robin ain’t bad.

MR. DAISEY: No, you better believe it ain’t bad.

MR: Hall: We caught a bunch [of people] a few years ago with twelve hundred Robins.

Because they migrate down there and in late January and February, you can’t believe how

many there are. I mean, you can go in a robin roost with a cane and just switch them.

Just kill them with a stick.

MR. DAISEY: Robins!?

MR. HALL: Oh, they roost down there by the untold thousands! They just poor in

there.

MR. DAISEY: See, it’s different in different places.

MR. HALL: Well, down there it’s the end of the line. Everything migrates down there.

Like Woodcock, good god a mighty; we’ve got more woodcock in Louisiana right now

than the whole rest of the United States combined!

MR. DAISEY: It’s hard to believe when you stop and think about things like that can be

ain’t it? Dave, they tell me the greatest place to hunt woodcock is right down here to the

end of this peninsula.

MR. HALL: Yep, they migrate. They build up there.

MR. DAISEY: They build up right there on the end.

MR. HALL: Cape May, New Jersey is the same way.

MR. DAISEY: How do they fly across to Virginia Beach? It’s seventeen miles across

there!

MR. HALL: I guess they just take off and do it.

MR. DAISEY: I guess the wind might help.

MR. HALL: They get something right before they do it.

MAN 2: I read something a while back where they tagged some little Piper or something

and that rascal, when they traced it down, had flew over two thousand miles.

MR. DAISEY: Oh yeah, some of the shore birds do. Shore birds is still… I read all I

could get all my life about them and it still fascinates me to believe that they can travel as

many as they do.

MAN: Across that open water, I don’t understand it.

MR. DAISEY: They get way up in the air and they take them currents and let

themselves go as far as they can go. To travel four or five thousand miles ain’t nothing to

them.

MR. HALL: Yeah, I banded a Blue Winged Teal one time in Saskatchewan and thirteen

days later it was killed in Cuba.

MR. DAISEY: Cuba, how about that!

MR. HALL: We know he made it in thirteen days because that was the difference in

between the time I banded him and the time he got killed.

MAN: And he could have been there a while before he got killed!

MAN 2: He couldn’t have been there too long!

MR. DAISEY: That somebitch was turning it on wasn’t he!

MAN 2: He was flapping that little wing, I know that!

MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it! It’s fascinating to learn about the whole thing.

But what gets me about it more than anything in the world; and this is what I can’t

understand; why do them ducks leave there before the ice?

MR. HALL: They can tell!

MAN 2: That’s nature!

MR. DAISEY: Now let me tell you another story. This is one of them bad stories. This

boy come here from Pittsburgh. He goes up to the falls, up by the falls and then you run

out of road there before you get to the Cumberland house, you know, where you go off to

the right? See, the Cumberland house is actually in…it’s not in Manitoba, it’s in

Saskatchewan. It’s just across the water is what it is. He said that there was six of them

that killed fifteen hundred, or 2100. I think he said fifteen hundred and 2100 hundred for

the whole trip. But anyway, he said the one morning they got up and the water had ice

about that thick. He said ducks could be seen for miles and miles! You know how they

kill ducks up there?

MAN 2: Knock a hole?

MR. DAISEY: He said they got between two lakes. The end of this lake, and here’s

another lake, and all they did was shoot and pass and shoot. You’d shoot thirteen or

fourteen boxes of shells so damn quick, you’d never believe it!

MR. HALL: Great day!

MR. DAISEY: And he would stick his hand out and grab one and go back home and eat

it. And there weren’t no trouble giving them away.

MAN 2: How about that!

MR. DAISEY: But that’s the way they hunt up there. That last morning, when that ice

come, there wasn’t a duck to be seen, see? There’d just be the ice out there.

MAN 2: They knowd it was coming I guess.

MR. DAISEY: It was Canvasbacks too and a lot of Redheads. I know it’s a job to kill

this deal. Because you’re talking about three countries; Mexico, United States and

Canada. I guess in Mexico they don’t give a damn what really happens. I was talking to

a man yesterday. It was that judge we were talking about. He was coming down there

you know. He’d go down there. My friend Dawley, he’s the best friend I got in the

world. He’s going to Argentina this year. He’s going to take his son. He’s going to kill

the greatest load of ducks you’ve ever seen. They promised him five or six hundred

pieces. He’s going to pay a lot of money, but… And they ain’t North American

waterfowl, don’t get me wrong. He’s going June the something.

MAN 2: Dawley Fulchter?

MR. DAISEY: Yeah. He’s gonna take that boy of his with him. I don’t think I’d go. I

wouldn’t fly to Argentina for any goddamned pieced of waterfowl. I’d go down there

hunting pussy before I’d go down there hunting waterfowl. That would be more fun to

me to tell you the truth.

MAN 2: I don’t want to go to no foreign country. Just got no desire to. Look, there

goes a Shelduck right there off of your decoys, it just went under, see him?

MR. DAISEY: Yeah. There’s three of them really. I don’t know where the other one

went.

MAN: Yeah of them come in.

MR. DAISEY: Boy, look at him! The wind blows on his head like you wouldn’t believe.

It blows his hair around, look at that!

MAN: I think that a Shelduck is as pretty a duck as there are. There’s the hen, right over

there.

MAN 2: We live right on the water like this, Cigar, and when I was a youngin’ I seen

Reds and them come down the shore and there’d be two or three hundred of them.

MR. DAISEY: Did you see that hen I made up there?

MAN: Yeah!

MR. DAISEY: I didn’t really like that hen. I’ll tell you what happened. The hen is

painted all right. I’ll tell you what happened about this hen. I was sitting there painting

this hen and there’s that triangular cone with the wind blowing and just tossing it and

tossing it. I wanted a little something different. I kept fooling and fooling with it and

after a while I saw it breaking up and finally I cut it off. I should have throwed the

goddamned head away. The head was good, every bit of it except the bill. I turned the

goddamned bill up just a little too much. It got on me. I should have quit right then and

there. It wouldn’t have been any more that a twenty or thirty minutes difference. Then I

turned around and tried to paint the hell out of it after a while. I wasn’t satisfied. Things

like that happen.

MAN 2: You might not have been satisfied with it, but whoever gets her will be.

MR. DAISEY: Well, it just learns you a lesson though; if you don’t like something as

you go along, you’d just as well stop.

MAN 2: Well, if I did that I wouldn’t never get nothing made! I’d just quit altogether

then. Oh man! I’ve got to get back home and get back to the same old grind.

MR. DAISEY: I’m glad to come to see me before you go home because I don’t get to see

as much of you as I want to but you know how it is. I’ll tell you the truth; when I get

over there to that show, I want to get away from it again. I don’t like it over there to tell

you the truth. It seems like if I leave home and go to a show I enjoy it more than I do if I

go to my own show.

MAN 2: Well, I hope you feel that way in December then.

MR. DAISEY: I’ve got to come down and see you then. That will be nice. I’ll enjoy

that. I go to New York and other places. I enjoy them places.

MAN 2: You won’t be coming to New York if you come down to us!

MR. DAISEY: If you got plenty of motels. Are they close to the show?

MAN: The best place to stay for you Cigar, I think would be there….we’ve only got

two motels on the island and they’re not fancy.

MR. DAISEY: I don’t give a damn about that.

MAN: Calico Jack’s.

MR. DAISEY: Calico Jack’s?

MAN: That’s the best one. Do know Walter Oller?

MR. DAISEY: Yeah. Well Walt told me they had the most fun. They had beer and

shrimp and everything in the world there for them. He said it was the greatest place you

ever wanted. Calico Jack’s!

MAN: Calico Jack’s.

MR. DAISEY: Goddamnit, he’s my kind of man!

MAN: We saw him up there at the show and he said he’d going to go two or three days

early this year.

MAN 2: I’ll tell you who else stays there and comes every year; the Cavalier coach,

Terry Holland; the Virginia team. He comes down there every summer and brings some

of them players with him.

MAN: Calico Jack’s. It’s right there on the end of the island and it ain’t nothing fancy

but it’s just what you need.

MR. DAISEY: We don’t want nothing fancy! Listen, I was raised up in the biggest mess

you ever seen so it don’t have to be fancy for me! I just want to know see, ‘cause you

live there. You know what’s what around there. Yeah, I’d enjoy that show down there.

MAN: We’ve done put you down for a Judge, so you’ve already got an invitation.

MR. DAISEY: There you go, maybe I’ll make it. [Not all words are understandable.

Mr. Daisey speaks of trying to talk someone into going with him and leaving the trailer].

Dawley will load me up. Dawley’s going to go down there. You know how he is. He’ll

go down there to see his father all the time. That Dawley, he’s the greatest fella in the

world. There ain’t nobody in the world like him. I want to tell you something; I don’t

have a minute’s trouble from nobody from the south! It’s a different story when you…

MAN 2: It’s them beautiful people.

MR. DAISEY: Dave, wake up on us now! [Concerned that Mr. Hall is falling asleep]

MR. HALL: I’m listening to ‘ya.

MR. DAISEY: He’s waiting for me. He’s beat out. He stayed up all night. I didn’t

keep him up last night! I got a good night’s sleep last night!

MR. HALL: No, I went home and worked on them tapes.

MR. DAISEY: Did you?

MR. HALL: I’ve got to make hay while I can. I get over there and do them photographs

right now in fact.

[Men from North Carolina comment on birds they see out of Cigar’s window.]

MR. DAISEY: You wouldn’t believe how many you see out there at times, them

Mergansers like that. Sometimes they are right there in that grass like you wouldn’t

believe.

MAN 2: We ran through some one time that had eat so much, they wouldn’t fly.

MAN: Yeah, they had eat so much bait.

MR. DAISEY: Yeah, there’s three of them at one time! I seen three of them at one time

then. [Observing birds outside] Goddamned if they don’t come up all at the same time!

They’re keeping somebody watching I guess.

MAN: We started to the banks over there hunting one day and we run into a raft of them

things there. They had been feeding. They couldn’t get off the ground. They couldn’t

get off the water, they had eat so much!

MR. DAISEY: Dave, can’t I get you one of these beers?

MR. HALL: No, I’m going over there in a minute to do those photos. I am hoping that

wind will allow where we might go out a little while.

Side B

MR. DAISEY: …and light in this pond. Captain don’t think I won’t put a hurting on

him too with the old single barrel. I’d put one in my mouth. I’d try one in my teeth and

one in my shirt pocket.

MAN 2: It’d take you all day to throw her out too.

MR. DAISEY: I’d sling one at her and I’d shove in another and give her another round!

It’s rough out there in the bay; they have to come in to that pond. Yeah, I enjoyed that.

Man, I enjoyed that. Goddamn I did. Ain’t no fun to me now, but you never would

believe it. Everything gets old to you. Son, I thought that was the greatest thing in the

world back in them days, and it was too. I honestly believe I’ve had a million dollars

worth of fun if you had to pay for it.

MR. HALL: Probably for than that.

MR. DAISEY: I’ll tell you one thing; if I’d had stuck with it I’d have been up s--- creek

as far as making a living and having any money, I’ll tell you that.

MAN: There are boats around home that our neighbors have; you know how you were

talking about those boats? Well these boats have glass in them so they can see all the way

around. It’s about this high and they can see all the way around.

MR. DAISEY: Yeah, well these were just plain companionways with a head. You could

slide that head on. It had a groove in it and you’d slide it on as far as you want. It had an

arrow on it. Still you kept your two cabin doors buckled together. And you had a hook

on the inside to hook them. Let me tell you something else; that same man, he was aboard

the Scout. The boat was named Scout down at the inlet. It was in August. I had a .410.

I wasn’t nothing but a youngin’ then. I had nine damn shells. It came the fullest tide

there was. See, the season didn’t come in until September. Them Railbirds would be on

that sea drift like you wouldn’t believe. I’d give them those grocery shots when I let go

you know. Just throw them you know? You’d never believe it. I killed seventy-eight

with nine damn shots, those rail birds.

MAN: Great lord, I reckon!

MR. DAISEY: And I shot Lou [unintelligible last name] in the ass, and a couple of others

on the boat too. I shot three men and 78 birds all in one day. With the same men one

morning, I was shooting Mergansers, it was getting late and it was the prettiest weather

you ever seen. I pulled them ducks till there was six or seven of them up in there. They

were old model decoys. My Uncle Jules died and I found them in Aunt Bertie’s attic. I

pulled them up there in the grass and wrapped the strings around the grass and left them

and went on clamming, you know. When I got through clamming it had just got dark and I

said, “I’ll get them tomorrow”. The next morning when I got there the tide was all over

and the wind was blowing and I never have seen them ducks again. The first one I ever

seen of them since, Roy Boll had them. Roy lived on the south end of this peninsula

seventy miles down there around. Here he come, he had two of them. They went ashore

on one of them beaches down there. I lost them Mergansers.

MAN 2: Some of the fellas down home used to, years back, leave their hunting rigs out:

some of the guides, you know. When a bad tide come up, they lost a lot of them that

way. They’d be walking the marshes looking for them.

MR. DAISEY: One night I was fishing in about 1950. I was going out from, I had been

home. It was way late at night and the moon was shining a little bit. I was going out by

the club and going out towards Tom’s Cove coastal fishing when the water splashed. I

wondered, “ What in the hell was that?” I had a little rig on the side of the boat where I

kept the oars. I guess I didn’t get the front of it on and the oar slipped out into the water.

I lost that oar that night. It was at night, and you don’t generally use the oars much no

way. That night and the next day I said, “Goddamnit, that’s my oar” when I seen that

water flood. Do you know where I found it? It’s in the museum now. John Macks

found it on Fisherman’s Island Beach. It when right out to Tom’s Cove and right on

down this inlet and went seventy miles down there and was ashore on that beach. I

didn’t believe that could have happened. Freak things happen in this world!

MAN 2: You’ve got that right!

MR. DAISEY: Well, let me tell you another one; Jimmy Jones, his boat was laying there

from a storm, it was laying in the middle of where the dock is and she broke loose and

went right on out, right on down the inlet. Great big old boats was going out there and the

water was sinking them down like you wouldn’t believe. Never seen pieces of them. All

they seen were pieces of cabin or what have you washing up on the beach. She went right

on down and washed up on Palmer’s Beach. She never had more than two scoops full of

water in her. She was sitting there on Palmer’s Beach, that little lake scowl sixteen foot

long, with an outboard motor on the stern of her and didn’t have two scoops full of water

in her! Try that one on! That thing is hard to believe isn’t it? Freak things happen you

know!