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LaFrance: We stayed on the boat.
Guerin: Tell me about it. Was it at night when it came through?
LaFrance: It was at night. We went in there and they had two big cypresses and part of it was in the river - they were big old cypress, I reckon maybe 24 inches, maybe bigger -1 anchored right along side them cypresses. I put three lines out. I put one on the front, one on the side, and one on the back. It was cutting up, it just sounded like jets was running over us, through the woods, you know? And they had a big, big live oak - not a live oak, but a pin oak - and the wind -1 could see that tree move, and I had a boy with me,
Bobby, and he was with me - from Hattiesburg, and I had the spotlight on it and I said, ?Bobby, The tree is going to go.? So I cranked the boat up, and all I could do, I could go out there and wade out there and untie it and everything, so I just backed off, took all the slack I could get out of that rope and that big old tree, it just came down. Missed the bow of that boat by about three foot. So about 12 o?clock, it calmed down. It got calm, calm, so I told him, I said, ?Well, let?s go to bed now. That?s the eye of the storm. So we crawled up in the bunks and went on to sleep. The next morning we got up and from where we were parked on the left hand side of that river, we was headed back this way -from the right side of that river on just as far as you could look, everything was laid down.
Guerin: And what about the little boats, those skiffs that you had towed?
LaFrance: We had them all tied along the river. We kept them all.
Guerin: Where was Mrs. LaFrance at the time?
LaFrance: She went to Waveland, she had a sister living at Waveland, and her brother Alphonse and her stayed with her sister and brother-in-law. She said that little house would just pick up and rattle... So then the bridge, the 90 bridge stuck, so we come down from up the river the next day, and couldn?t get out. The bridge was stuck. So I went to see CA Russ - he was the supervisor there at one time -1 worked for his daddy, Charley Russ and then I worked for him - and I went over there and he told me, ?Look, get one of them trucks and go see about your wife.? We got the truck and we went on down to Hwy 90 and we got to Waveland, and you couldn?t hardly get through the trees yet to go around them - trees and stuff, and we got there, and my dad done told everybody that we was lost, that we drowned. I had a ship-to-shore, but you couldn?t get out of that slough, I ket calling, calling, calling, SOS, asking ?can anybody pick us up?? Never could get out, and I?m used to talking to the camp, nine miles out. Nobody ever could pick us up.
Guerin: You mentioned the Russ name. You know that?s and old name in the county.
One Russ sold Christian Koch his land, and I know you know of the Koch family.
LaFrance: Yeah, oh yeah, I knew Aunt Nettie.
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