Julien Berntson

Veterans Memorial Hall Oral History Program
Interview with Julien Berntson
In his home, Duluth

July 20, 2018
Pippi Mayfield, Interviewer

JB: Julien Berntson
PM: Pippi Mayfield

PM: This is Pippi Mayfield with the St. Louis County Historical Society and the Oral History Program. It is July 20, 2018. Can you tell your name and spell it, please?

JB: My name is Julien (pronounced Ju-lean) Berntson, J-u-l-i-e-n B-e-r-n-t-s-o-n.

PM: Great. Can you tell me a little about your background – where you grew up and your family?

JB: I was born up at Hovland, Minnesota, a little town that’s northeast of Grand Marais – a little fishing village – in a little two-room house. No doctor but we made out all right. There were six of us children and we all survived.

PM: [laughing] That’s good!

JB: (We) went to a little one-room school. There were about 18 kids there. Flute Reed School was the name of it. It’s just all grown up now, all gone. When I got done with school, there was nothing to do except cut wood or something for a couple years. Then I went in the CCCs when I was about 16½; April 20, 1936. We planted trees and cut wood for the camp. There was a fire tower up at Mount Maud and this was a hot summer, 1936. We were building steps up the side of that mountain and a couple of the kids had passed out from the heat, so the camp doctor said to bring the boys back to camp. We got back to camp and a forest fire had started up at McFarland Lake. It wasn’t too hot to fight forest fires, so we spent the rest of the summer fighting forest fires.

That winter, I worked on a survey crew, estimating timber. They would count the trees and call for bids on the logging. Then they closed up that camp in the spring of 1937 and we went to Brainerd (Minnesota). We built a nice ranger station down there, planted a lot of trees around the Crosby/ Ironton area. Then I quit after two years. [laughing]

PM: Did you enjoy it or did you quit because…?

JB: I learned to drive a truck while I was in there. So then I passed the time away and then I got drafted in 1942. I had bought an old house and was remodeling it. My mother and brother and two sisters were living with me. I got a couple of deferments because I was still working on that house, putting in a new furnace and this and that. But I finally had to go in the Army the 2nd of March, 1942. (I) went to Camp Bowie, Texas. I was there for a while and then went to Louisiana. I was there for two or three weeks and broke my arm. [laughing]

PM: That’s a way to get out of work!

JB: [laughing] I went to the hospital and they had the cast there for eight weeks. (When) I was in the hospital, the general came in to see me, him and the lieutenant and the captain. “Where’s Berntson?”

“That’s him over there on that cot.”

I don’t remember if I saluted him or not, but anyway… He said, “How are they treating you? Are you getting enough to eat?"

“Oh yeah.”

“Are you getting some exercise?”

“Oh, a little bit, yeah.”

“Well, take care of yourself,” and then he left.

Then I went back to the outfit. That was in Camp Polk, Louisiana, where I was for a while. Then they shipped me back to Camp Bowie, Texas, to the hospital there. Then there was a trainload of us from maneuvers in Louisiana; they loaded us up and hauled us to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. That’s where the division wound up. So I went in the hospital there and finally I got out of there. I had asked the doctor if I could go home on furlough when I wasn’t doing anything. But he said, “Nope, you stay right here.” So, I stayed there. After everything was over, I went home on a furlough.

We stayed all winter at Camp Shelby. The truck drivers I was with at the time, when I broke my arm, they all left. They went to North Africa, I think, when we landed in North Africa. I never heard anything more of them. I was lucky I broke my arm. [laughing] I stayed in the States another year and a half. Went to maneuvers again in 1943 in Louisiana. Got done with that. We loaded our guns and equipment on flat cars and hauled them up to Camp Pickett, Virginia. So we stayed there the winter of (19)43 – 44. Yeah.

PM: Do you remember when you got drafted, how you felt about that? Did you just accept it or, how did you feel about being drafted?

JB: How I felt about being drafted? I wasn’t real happy. [laughing] I was too concerned about my mother and my brother and sisters. I had that house. It was tore apart quite a bit. But, Uncle Sam says you gotta go, so…

PM: You when you were in training: did you know what your job was going to be, in the Army?

JB: Well, there was big demand for truck drivers in the service. I got done with my basic training and a heavy weapons company, G Company, 167th Infantry. When I got done with that, I wound up in the 116th Field Artillery. They got there and they said, “That truck is yours there.” They never gave me a test or anything; they just said, “You drive that truck.” So that was it. I wound up on number 4 gun truck. We had four guns you know, what they called sections. So I was in the number 4 section. That’s where I broke my arm.

PM: What did you do to break your arm? Did you fall or what?

JB: We were out in the woods. The guns were in position and trucks would go back into the woods, camouflaged, you know. So we’re back there and it started to rain. The guys had their packs in the back, so I climbed up in the back of the truck and pulled the tarp over their packs so they wouldn’t get wet. Then I was climbing down… This truck had two spare tires behind the cab and a big gas tank across the back. Well, I was stepping on that gas tank when my foot slipped and I went backwards and I broke my left arm – bang! Just like that!

They picked me up and took me to the evacuation hospital at Camp Polk. It was a tented hospital. They said, “Count to 10.” When I started counting, they gave me a jab in the arm and I went to sleep. When I woke up my arm was in a cast. They did a good job; it never bothered me. I’m really lucky.

PM: That is good! Good. So, after you were in the States a couple years, then you got orders to go overseas?

JB: Well the whole unit went over – the 31st division. We went over as a unit, yeah. There were maybe 3,000 of us on this boat, the Aconcagua. The whole unit was there. We left Newport News down what they called a windward passage or something and down through the Caribbean through Panama Canal. We got through the Canal and something went wrong with the boat, so they stayed there for a couple days. There was, I think, three ships with men on and maybe a couple destroyer escorts or something. But the rest of the gang, they left, they took off. So we were in Panama all by ourselves. And when they got the boat fixed up, away we went, all by ourselves. The ocean was just like glass; there were no waves, no nothing. For about three weeks, all we saw was flying fish and porpoises. [laughing] Finally, we got to New Guinea.

PM: You didn’t really feel like you were going to war when you were watching porpoises, did you? [laughing with him]

JB: Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t worry much about it. I know I wouldn’t have gotten off that boat. We got out on land and could look around and see that Aconcagua out there, that was the name of the boat. I said, “Gee I wish I was on that thing going back!” [laughing] But I was lucky all through the war. Yeah.

PM: What did you do once you got to New Guinea? What did you do there?

JB: We didn’t do a thing for about two weeks, just getting used to the heat. And then we’d go on the hikes, patrols and so on. We didn’t really see much action. In the meantime, I had gone to school at Camp Bradford, Virginia, what they called a Naval Shore Fire Control school. We learned Morse code, and wig-wagging. Our duty was, when we made the landing, to go in there with the infantry and contact a destroyer for fire power, because our guns wouldn’t be on land yet. So, that was my main duty after I got to New Guinea.

We made a couple hops with airplanes, this crew I was with. There were about 30 of us. We got on an old C-47 and flew up to the coast of New Guinea, about 300 miles, and landed. We were there for a while, doing some patrolling. Then they put us on the plane again and we hopped up another 300 miles. New Guinea is about 1,200 miles from one end to the other; it’s a long island (with a) big mountain range in the center. Of course it’s hot there.

We had a good Air Force over there, General (George C.) Kenney, with the Fifth Air Force. And, of course, MacArthur. MacArthur and Kenney got along real good. I got a book on General Kenney and his Fifth Air Force.

We got up to the upper end of New Guinea and then the next step was up to Morotai, which is 400 miles or so to the north. We went up there September 15, 1944, and we made a landing there. We had very little opposition but of course we didn’t know that when we went in. You get out there and you get off the boat, way up there on the landing ship dock, big number three. They opened up the tailgate and all our LCMs (landing craft mechanical) went out. Everybody out there. We circled around until the time comes to head for shore, and then they would open them up wide open and head for the beach. Yeah, that’s exciting.

But anyway, we made out OK there. We stayed there for, I don’t know, six months or so. The next hop was up to the Philippines. Yup, we went up to… I’ll show you here. (A pause – sounded like he was unfolding a map.) Get this straightened out here. Yeah, here it is, here’s Mindanao. We went in here, Cotabato. Somebody had went in there before us, so it was all quiet. We went from Cotabato, east over here to Palangan and (Carman) and Maramac, Malaybalay and up there, Del Monte had a big pineapple plantation here. This is where we camped. The plantation--the cannery--had been burned down. That was gone. We ate a lot of pineapples. The fields were still out there. We ate a lot of pineapples and we took it easy.

We were getting ready to go to Japan in November. They had our guns all being overhauled, and everything was going to be in top shape and we were going to go to Japan. But then Harry Truman dropped the bomb and that was the end of the war. So don’t say anything bad about Harry. [laughing] Otherwise I might not have been here.

PM: Were you relieved not to have to go to Japan?

JB: Oh sure. I think everybody was. That wouldn’t have been any fun because they were telling us, “There’s going to be women and kids coming at you with sharp sticks and you have to shoot them.” You can’t say, oh, it doesn’t bother you.

PM: So how long were you in the Philippines?

JB: Oh, I don’t know exactly. I could look (it) up in the letters and see, but I don’t know. I suppose we were there six months.

PM: So you wrote back and forth with your family while you were there, quite a bit?

JB: Oh, I wrote every… Right along, yeah. I tried to write to my mother once a week anyway. I wrote to Irene quite a bit. Oh yeah.

PM: Was Irene your wife – or who is Irene?

JB: Irene was my oldest sister. I was single. I didn’t have any girlfriend or anything. I was free. [laughing] I was free as a bird. I was glad, too, because once in a while somebody would get a “Dear John” letter.

PM: So tell me about when you found out you were coming home, then. Were you…? I’m assuming you were pretty happy to hear you were coming home.

JB: Oh, everybody was happy. We came home as a unit. We got on a boat, the Barnett was the name of it. It was an attack transport. We waited from August until about the first of December for this darn boat. There was always a boat coming, you know. But finally it came. Barnett was the name of it. It was a fairly new boat. We got in there, climbed on board. I had a cot; it was in kind of the bow of the ship. That’s alright. We didn’t care what it was like; it was heading the right direction. [laughing]

Coming home, we left there about the first of December and we got into San Francisco on the 17th of December. The Pacific was pretty rough. We ate standing up, kind of cafeteria style. And you had to hang onto your tray because if you didn’t, it might slide because the boat would rock. But that was alright – we didn’t care. Heading the right direction.

We got into San Francisco and everything was jammed up. We stayed on the boat a couple days before we could get off. The boat finally went up the river… What is it, the Sacramento River that goes up there? [San Joaquin River] – up to Camp Stoneman, I believe, or something like that. We got off that darn boat. I think we got some different clothes, too, at the time. But then we got on a train; it was a troop train. We had wheels on the train and it moved right along. Up the Feather River Canyon… Of course, we left in the evening, so it was dark and we didn’t see anything. We got up on top of the mountains… We went through their regular route. Christmas day I think we spent traveling in Nebraska. Got into Camp McCoy (Wisconsin). I got discharged on the 27th.

PM: Of December?

JB: Yeah. And they didn’t ask me if I wanted to stay or anything. They just… I don’t think they had any use for people with my rank or something. So they just booted me out. [laughing] But, I got a nice letter from Harry Truman, thanking me for my service. I’ve still got that.

PM: Were you with the same group of people your entire time?

JB: Yeah. Yeah.

PM: Did you build some pretty close friendships?

JB: Oh yeah. Yeah. I had some close friends. I had one, Edward Vogt, he was from Tampa. Yeah, when we were in the Philippines, he had a little trouble. They’d been shooting at us, and he got pretty nervous about that, so we were in some little town – I don’t know if it was Malabalay or where it was – but he disappeared. So some of us went looking for him. We found him under a porch of a ramshackle house. He went and hid there. But we got him back. He went some place and he was gone away from us for a couple week. He came back and he was all right. He wound up going back home. He worked for the telephone company for a while, then he wound up as a deputy sheriff in Dade County. [Miami-Dade County in Florida] He had four children. I wrote to him for a while, but then that petered out.

I had another one, Lan Zone. He was from Brooklyn. He was a good guy, yeah. When we were at Camp Pickett, he wanted me to go to New York with him because he had a girlfriend and they were going to get married eventually. I said, “No, I’d be kind of a drag.” So I didn’t go to New York City. He was from Brooklyn. When he got home, they got married. I wrote for a while. They had a son. I think I’ve still got the birth announcement card someplace. He was a good guy.

PM: So what were some of your best memories of being in the service.

JB: Best memories? Going home on furlough! [laughing] I came home on a bus from Camp Bowie, Texas, Trailways. That was a bad move; it was like a school bus, up as far as Jefferson City, Missouri. Then they had a nice bus; they had Jefferson Lines. But up to there, you stood up. It was real bad. But when I came home from Camp Shelby, I took a train. That was nice. I think I came home twice from Camp Shelby. Then I came home from Camp Pickett, Virginia. That was a nice train ride from Camp Pickett to Chicago and from Chicago to Minneapolis it was real nice – fast diesels.

PM: While you were in, you never saw any combat or anything, right?

JB: I never saw any combat? Well, I don’t know what you’d call it if it wasn’t combat – they were shooting at us! [laughing] I jumped in the ditch once. The Japanese had… I think they were 75-millimeters; they weren’t big guns. But they were shooting at us from about two blocks away. We were on the road and I jumped in the ditch. There was water in the ditch but I got away from the zone of fire there. Then things quieted down. Our lieutenant, he was looking over there at the woods to see if he could see some smoke or something, so he decided he better fire some rounds over there. So they fired some rounds over there. I got out of the damn ditch and I could feel something on my back and I said, “What have I got on my back?” Here it was bloodsuckers! [laughing]

A mechanic in C Battery, he had a slit trench dug there, and there was a groove right past over where his head where a shell had gone past there. It must have been a dud or something; it never exploded. Talk about lucky, huh?

Another time we were parked in a spot – this is on the road going up to Del Monte – we were parked in this spot, and the Japanese were talking on their (radios) and using the same frequency we were on the radio! Our headquarters had somebody who was understanding what they were saying. They were going to attack our position that night, so they moved us out of there. They moved in a bunch of infantrymen so when the Japanese attacked it, they were surprised. In fact, the story was that they got about 90 Japanese killed there at that banzai (suicide) attack. That was a lot different than just the pushover from the artillery men.

We didn’t lose anybody to foreign action. We had some people who had troubles – athlete’s foot, jungle rot and stuff – but we were pretty lucky. In this one incident, where they were firing this artillery at us, there was an infantryman among us and one got wounded. But we never got any harm. One of the guys got a purple heart because he stepped on some glass and cut his foot. So they gave him a purple heart.

PM: That doesn’t seem right.

JB: They didn’t give me any purple heart for my broken arm, either. [laughing]

PM: When you came home, did you come back to the house that you had been…

JB: My mother had moved to Duluth. She couldn’t stay up there; they had to cut wood to keep warm. She couldn’t stay there. She came to Duluth and she got a job at the Hotel Duluth or some place – Holland Hotel? That’s gone now – that’s history. She was living in Duluth; that’s where I came.

PM: What did you do once you came back to Duluth then?

JB: I wasn’t here very long. I went down to… My sister and brother-in-law were moving up to Mora, Minnesota. I went down there, and I helped them move and then he had some problems with diverticulitis or appendix or something – I don’t remember. And this is during the time that they were going to plant corn and oats and stuff too, so I stayed there, and I helped them get their crop in. Irene and I did that work.

Then I came back to Duluth and got a job with the school system, taking ashes out of the ash pits because they were heating the schools with coal-fired boilers. It was a dumb job. We’d haul the ashes out and dump them someplace. A civil servant (job) came up and I went to the City Hall to apply for it. The secretary, Mr. Fewell, he says, “This is no job for a young man. You go over across the street and see Mr. Hessert at the Water and Gas department; he’s looking for meter readers.”

So that’s what I did. I went over there, and Mr. Hessert says, “Come on in Monday.” That’s what I did. I stayed for 36 years.

I wound up as a foreman in the service department. I kept a truck at home for 23 years, fixing furnaces. A lot of times, 20 below at night, somebody’s furnace would quit and I’d be out there and get the thing going again. Never lost a customer. [laughing]

I retired after 36½ years. I could have retired sooner but there was… My wife, Karen, and I, there were three of us and I thought, “I don’t want to retire and be broke,” so I stayed until I was 64. Then if I quit getting up at night or working weekends, then I would maybe be just as well off if I retired. So that’s what I did, and I don’t regret it at all. I have no regrets.

PM: That’s good. So, you remember dates and stuff excellently. Are your memories of the service very vivid, like it was yesterday?

JB: Oh yeah. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes just for no reason at all, something comes back to you. I don’t have any real bad memories like some guys do, but you can’t help but remember some things.

PM: Do you have any other stories from the service that you want to share?

JB: Well I don’t know. That was an experience going to this communications school. This is at Norfolk, Camp Bradford, they’re Norfolk. I only went to the 8th grade and I didn’t know too much. Some of the guys had taken Morse Code in their Boy Scouts and stuff, but I had to start from scratch. I got up to eight words a minute and they said, “That’s alright, we’ll pass you.” But some of those guys, like in the Navy, they do 30-some words a minute!

PM: Wow!

JB: Oh yeah. You have to have them slow down so you can… [laughing] They were professionals; that’s all they did. Then they had the blinker system. You had to read that, and semaphores.

PM: Could you do any of that again if you had to?

JB: No, I forgot that alphabet.

PM: Did you enjoy your time in the service?

JB: I didn’t enjoy it, but I suffered it. [laughing] I survived it. There were good days, you know. There were some bad days, but there’s… I don’t regret being in. It was all right. I did my share. I don’t feel guilty about living in the United States. I figure I own this spot here. [laughing]

PM: That’s true. Great. What kind of things did you write home about?

JB: Oh, just things that were going on. Most of the time I was asking my mother what she was doing and how she was – whatever. It’s all in those letters. Are you going to look at them?

PM: Yeah!

JB: They’re kind of boring. I don’t spell very good, but you can skip through and you can get an idea.

PM: I suppose it was nice for you to receive letters from them, letting you know what was going on, too.

JB: Oh yeah. She wrote me pretty regular, too. I tried to get a letter out to her once a week anyway. Of course, there’s a gap in there; I didn’t do any writing when I was on the boat for a month, so that shows up. That was a long ride. It was cold when we got on the boat. Then we got down there…after Panama Canal, it was… The ship had wooden planking on it and there was tar in the joints. We would sit on the deck and our pants would stick in the tar. But we ate two meals a day. Somewhere I’ve still got that ticket; they punch your ticket, you know. You eat twice a day. I’ve still got that someplace.

I got a commendation from my colonel about my service with the shore fire control. I remember reading that and I said, “I’ve gotta put this some place so it doesn’t get lost.” So I put it away and I can’t find it. I don’t know where I put it! [laughing]

I didn’t get any, no purple heart, no bronze medal. I got an arrowhead for landing and a couple other things, but nothing fantastic.

PM: That’s OK, though, because that means you weren’t hurt, or anything bad.

JB: I did my duty.

PM: Good. Anything else you want to share at all?

JB: No, that’s…

PM: No? Ok.

JB: I was lucky I broke my arm. Otherwise, it would have been an entirely different story.

PM: That’s true.

JB: I would have gone… I’m sure those guys went to North Africa, because they landed there that fall of ’42. Then from there they went to Sicily and Italy and some of them went up to England and they were in the D-Day landing. You gotta be lucky.

PM: Yeah. Well, I guess that broken arm was a good thing, then.

JB: Yeah. Oh, I’ve been shot at. I’ve been bombed and I’ve been…(had) mortar shells dropped around me. But I’ve been lucky.

PM: You survived them all.

JB: Yeah. One patrol I was on, they all had a dog ahead of the line. They captured two Japanese soldiers and they sent word back, “We’ve got two prisoners.” Then word came back, “Can’t take prisoners.” So they shot them. So we went by, and there they were laying along the trail. And they were neat looking guys. They had nice uniforms on. I don’t know where they came from – maybe they were from Halmahera, come over there to disturb us.

When you’re walking through the jungle, you follow the guy in front of you and you can’t see too much. The guy in front of me – maybe there was six in front of me – but they got on the wrong trail or something, and there was two wall tents, nice new wall tents, and they were kind of a pea green – not like a GI would have. This guy says to go back. We didn’t explore that at all. Of course, we in the artillery didn’t – that wasn’t our duty to instigate a battle. We were there to give them fire support if they ran into trouble.

Another time, this dog discovered… There were a bunch of Japanese in the creek, taking a bath, so the infantry just slaughtered the whole bunch of them. They didn’t take any prisoners. They just opened up on them and that was the end of those – there might have been six or eight of them down there. War is cruel.

PM: That’s for sure.

JB: I don’t know. It would be hard to shoot somebody in cold blood but it happens. They couldn’t take them back to camp, because then they’d have to take three to four guys to do it. I don’t know how many there were in this patrol I was with – you don’t see the whole thing. There might have been 50 guys – I have no idea. I know they had 81-millimeter mortars because when we got back to camp, they threw the base plates away. They’re heavy. They probably went up and got them later on. But you get pretty bushed, I tell ya, when it’s hot and you’re carrying a heavy load.

Our radios weighed about… They were 610s, was the name of them, and they weighed about 25 pounds. They came in two sections: battery in one section, radio in the other. There would be a lieutenant and I and about four other guys toting this stuff. We tried to stay together.

PM: What was the heat like there? You said a couple times that it was so hot there.

JB: Oh, it was hot. We never had any problem with cold weather. No.

PM: Was it humid, too, or just really hot?

JB: In the Philippines too, it was warm. Yeah. We crossed the equator; they had a big ceremony – initiation.

PM: I’ve heard of that before.

JB: I’ve got a diploma, signed by David Jones, if I can find it. I think I know where that is.

This is how you get your meals. They check you out. This is a ship I came home on, USS Barnett.

PM: What was the name of the other ship you sailed on?

JB: The Aconcogua.

PM: How do you spell that?

JB: Just like it sounds.

PM: Ok. You can write it on here for me. (pause)

JB: Acon…

PM: Ok, great.

JB: If you find a map of South America, you’ll find a high mountain there.

PM: It’s on there? Oh, yeah, you said it was named after the mountain.

JB: Yeah. It’s one of the highest mountains in South America, I guess.

PM: Ok.

JB: Yeah, this is… Don’t lose this.

PM: I think it’s great that you still have these things.

JB: When we got into San Francisco, pier 17, and we got passes. They let us take bus tours. We got around San Francisco a little bit, saw Nob Hill and Seal Cliffs [Seal Rocks]. The Mint was there. We didn’t get off that darn boat for at least two days. Then it moved up the river. I think it was Camp Stoneman.

PM: How long was it before you were in San Francisco until you actually got home?

JB: Well we got into San Francisco on the 17th. I got home on the 27th.

PM: Oh, so 10 days?

JB: Ten days, yeah. When we got on that train, the train never stopped. It was all military. We ate right on the train. We had Christmas dinner traveling through Nebraska, I think it was. Then we got into Camp McCoy. They moved us right along. We were glad to get rid of them and they were glad to get rid of us. [laughing] Oh well.

PM: Did you ever think about staying in the military at all?

JB: No. They didn’t ask me, either. [laughing]

PM: You said that.

JB: I guess if you had some rare talents or something, they would ask you to stay.

PM: But you’re OK that they didn’t ask you to?

JB: No, no… I don’t think I would have stayed. I was getting sergeant’s pay and overseas pay. When we were overseas, there was nothing to buy. We didn’t… We had our own canteen service, a truck came around. But, as far as civilian, there was nothing. In New Guinea, there was nothing to buy. It was all grass huts and pretty crude. We got to Morotai, they were a little more civilized up there, but there were no buildings. They were made out of grass – banana leaves. There were a lot of banana trees inland. We’d find a banana but they were all green.

PM: Was the Philippines nicer?

JB: Oh yeah. The Philippines are pretty well civilized. They got streets there! [laughing] Yeah, they had houses – nothing fancy. They weren’t well-to-do, I tell ya. They were pretty hard up, but they were civilized. After we left Cotabato, we went east and into a Moro country. They told us, “You don’t go anyplace by yourself. Have a half a dozen guys. And you keep your guns with you.”

(If) one guy is out there by yourself, they might kill you for your gun or your wristwatch or something. They were noted for that. But we didn’t have any trouble with the natives. The cooks picked up a young Pilipino boy and they had him helping in the kitchen. He was a good kid. They had little kids that would come around, naked, and got somebody to give them a t-shirt. He’d run off and pretty soon he’d come back again looking for another t-shirt. [laughing]

PM: He gave it to somebody else.

JB: Yeah. The people were poor. One of these letters here, I was writing to my mother. There was a boy, a couple kids, eight years old or so. They came into the camp. We were on maneuvers. The kid had a cigarette and I asked him, “What are you gonna do with that thing?” (He said) “Well give me a match and I’ll smoke the son-of-a-bitch.” [laughing] Eight year old kids!

That part of Louisiana, it was pretty rugged country. Kids would come in looking for handouts. We didn’t throw anything away. One black guy came in; he wanted something – whatever we could spare. So the cook had six or eight pounds of lard and he didn’t know what to do with it (because) they’d given him so darn many pounds of lard. So he was glad to give them to the black guy. They lived in shacks down there, too. There were hogs running around loose. One fell in the garbage pit and he was squealing and stewin’ around. One of the cooks got up and sloped the bank down so the pig could scramble out.

PM: [laughing]

JB: Yeah. If you laid there on the ground, then you’d hear one sniffin’ around there. [laughing] Don’t take life too serious.

PM: That’s for sure. Well, do you have any more stories? I’m happy to hear them. Otherwise, I’ll get out of your hair.

JB: Oh, I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. Nothing that I can think of at the time.

PM: Ok. Well, I appreciate you doing this interview.

End of recording
50:51

Transcribed by Mary Beth Frost

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