What did folks do fifty plus years ago before internet, Hulu, Twitter and all the social media sites of today? Now people are “friends” with strangers all across the globe, but rarely have the opportunity or desire to reach out and touch those same “friends”. There was a time when friends walked or rode mules and horses in the dark after a long day picking cotton or haying to visit and attend dances.
My great grandfather, Joseph Montezuma Self, born July 6, 1867, made, played and sold fiddles. He died December 9, 1955 at age 88. Two of his daughters, Eula Mae Self (born in 1906) and my late maternal grandmother, Emmie Eldorado Self Byrd, wrote down some verses of the old songs their daddy played and sang so long ago.
One of his granddaughters, Mellionee Byrd Flores, now in her nineties, remembers how her grandpa sat on a bench in front of a store for hours with “some other old men” playing one of his fiddles. “When he wasn’t sawing and carving in his workshop he was fiddling, and when he wasn’t fiddling, he sat around picking splinters out of his hands”. She said he dipped snuff that would trickle down into his long beard, and she remembers how her momma would wash his beard for him.
One of his younger grandsons, Jerry Byrd (age 81), says that Grandpa Self stayed with his family at times in the way that old folks did back then. Rarely were they put in nursing homes, but rather they would take turns staying with their kids. Joseph and his wife, Mary Emma Langton Self, had ten children some of whom eventually populated Sabine and Vernon Parishes with many offspring. My grandma married Arthur Byrd, and they had nine kids.
Jerry remembers how his grandpa hung his fiddle on a nail above the bed he slept in at their house, and he said Grandpa Self claimed not to have shaved since the age of 35 which accounted for his “nicotine” beard that Jerry says was caused by his pipe smoking. Like his sister, Jerry also remembers his grandpa using his knife to pick and cut bloody splinters out of his hands.
“Grandpa Self always walked with one crutch” Jerry recalls, but he doesn’t know the why of it. “He would walk down the trail to a neighbor’s leaning on that one crutch, but I saw him coming down the trail one day with the crutch hanging over his shoulder.”
Most of Joseph’s grandchildren remember how people would gather at homes for a dance or Shoe-dock, and they would clear a room of its furniture to make more room for the dancers and fiddle and guitar players. My grandparent’s frequently hosted dances or “Shoe-docks” at their home in the Rattan area.
Long-time Sabine Parish resident Janet Cook Dowden said her late momma, Lovie Mae Langton Cook, told her, you “docked” your shoes at the door and danced barefoot so the floor didn’t get scuffed. On the other hand, Glen Miers said he remembers when Lee Prewitt hosted a Shoe-dock down in Toro bottoms because he’d put down a new raw wood plank floor, and he wanted the dancing to smooth the splinters down. Benny Miers says he never went barefoot at the Shoe-docks he attended so guess it depended where you were at whether you danced barefoot or not. Some remembers pouring sand on the floor so dancers had an easier time of gliding and sliding; it probably helping smoothing the plank floors down too.
Even after all these years Benny can remember some of the dance moves, and depending on the space, couples would hold hands or lock arms and circle, stopping to twirl, hands up, and swapping partners while dancers sang the words unlike square dancing where they have a caller. Benny described the dancing as “very lively”. Dale backs that up because he said he was standing in the doorway one night when Lester Dewil, who was on leave from the military, came dancing by so fast that he hit Dale with his elbow so hard that he knocked Dale into the yard. As Benny said, the dances were lively.
Or, these dances were sometimes called a Jump Josie which was more like a square dance. All ages participated. Jerry recalled once back in the early 1940’s when a bunch of folks attended a Shoedock / Jump Josie at their house, and it came a fierce storm with hard rain that made the red dirt, rough road impassable. Neither horse and wagons or motorized vehicles like Chevy pickup trucks that were so popular at that time could traverse it so most people stayed the night. The Byrd house had a wraparound porch which was where the family often slept in hot weather, and that’s where folks bedded-down that night.
Below are verses from some of the songs Great-grandpa Self and other musicians of that era played at the Shoe Docks and Jump Josie’s as recorded by two of Great-Grandpa’s daughters:
Old Uncle Ned he rode into town
He rode in to buy his niece a wedding gown
Where shall the wedding be, a way down yonder in a hollow tree.
What’s for dinner will the vegetable be,
Two white beans and a black-eyed pea.
Messrs. went a possum hunting and I wanted to go,
Messrs. told me to go back and jump Jim Crow.
I wheeled about and turned about to do just so;
And every time I turned around, I jumped Jim Crow.
Old Uncle Ned died years ago
He had no hair on his head,
No where the wool would grow.
He had long fingers like a cane in the break;
He had no eyes, he had no teeth to eat,
So, he had to let a hocake be.
Wake up Jacob and blow your horn,
The goats have jumped fence and the cows are in the corn.
Hands in the hopper, hands in the sack every time the mill turns the corn goes crack, crack, crack.
Had a little chicken and it wouldn’t lay an egg so I poured hot water up and down its leg;
The little chicken cackled, the little chicken laid, the little chicken laid me a hard-boiled egg.