Heaven and High Water

Heaven and High Water

Fictional Stories based on the early life of Alfreda Felterman Laws

By Lana Laws Downing

Copyright 2011 Lana Laws Downing

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-1-4659-8308-4

Library of Congress Control Number 2011916194

Book design by Casey Laws Lapin

Illustrations by Ann Blanchard Horton, Mary Laws Horton,

Dutie Templet and Lana Laws Downing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Thanks

Foreword

1. Going to Napoleonville

2. Miss Carrie

3. A Healing and a Bedtime Nightmare

4. A Different Color

5. Halloween Horror

6. A Day in Heaven

7. High Pockets

8. Darkness and Light

9. My Little Margie

10. The Gold Locket

11. There Is Life …

12. Hellfire and Damnation

13. Gone Is Gone

14. Alfreda Finds the Brass

15. Cyclone!

16. The Bottom Falls Out

17. The Power of Invention

18. Portents

Dedication

This book is lovingly dedicated to my mother, Alfreda Felterman Laws, and to all the members of our family who keep her memory alive and lively.

These stories are fictionalized narratives of happenings at the Lake Verrett skidder camp during the years 1922-1928. The central characters are real, as are some of the general events, but each story is a work of fiction loosely based on the facts as told to me by my mother.

Thanks …

Warm thanks to my dear Trent for his patience and encouragement; to my family, especially my uncle F. C. Butch Felterman for answering unending questions; to Casey Laws Lapin for editing and layout; to Ann and Mary Horton and Dutie Templet for contributing their artistic talents; to Hugh Brown of Patterson and John T. Magill of The Historic New Orleans Collection, who made it possible for me to use the priceless film footage of the Williams cypress operation; to Ginger Rushing and Howard Hebert, Jr., who took us out to the skidder camp, sharing their knowledge of the area; to Cheryl Arboneaux at St. Anne Catholic Church in Napoleonville for answering obscure questions about the church on the Canal Road; to JoAnne Plessala for guidance on the publication process; to Tika Laudun of LPB for her encouragement early on; and to Kim Graham and the Wednesday writing class, who heard numerous Alfreda stories, never failing to offer support. Without the impetus of that class, this book would not have happened.

Alfreda Felterman Laws, circa 1960

Foreword

My mother, Alfreda Felterman Laws, was a remarkable woman. She was a friend to everyone she met, never hesitating for a second to jump in to help when she saw the need. The beneficiaries of her kindness ranged from the very wealthy to the poorest of the poor. Her life was a full one, full of children—seven of her own, plus many strays who came and went at various times—full of her Catholic faith, and full with the various charities and clubs with which she was involved. She loved newborn babies, incorrigible druggie teenagers, people of all faiths and all walks of life. She loved arranging flowers and sharing her floral talents with anyone who asked.

As she aged, her body failed her, but her mind remained active and positive. It was a pleasure to visit her during her last years, which were spent in a room in a nursing facility, where she never failed to greet visitors with a smile and a cheery word. A visit with Mama was always a spirit-lifter.

Throughout her life, but especially in her last years, a favorite topic of conversation was the beginning of her life, which was spent in timber harvesting skidder camps in the Louisiana cypress swampland, where her father was employed in the cypress timber industry. She was born in the F. B. Williams skidder camp at Belle River. When she was three, the Felterman family moved to the Lake Verrett camp outside of Napoleonville. The remote location was accessible only by boat.

Life in the camp revolved around the monumental task of cutting down the huge cypress trees that grew in the swamp, then getting them in from the swamp to the skidder camp on the edge of the lake, where the logs were made up into great rafts or tows of timber that could be transferred by water to the Williams sawmill in Patterson, the largest cypress sawmill in the world in the early 1900s.

Mama went to school at the camp until she reached fourth grade, when she transferred to the Napoleonville Canal School, which required daily boat trips to and from the Attakapas Landing. Mama always said that her life in the skidder camp was one of total freedom, and that everyone in the camp was basically equal. There was no exchange of money, only the brass tokens which were used in making purchases at the Williams commissary.

One clarification: When hearing about Mama’s life in the skidder camp, the uninformed often ask the obvious question: What is a skidder? Actually, there was not a piece of equipment known as a skidder. The word comes from the practice of pulling logs from the swamp. This formidable task was accomplished at the Belle River and Lake Verrett camps by means of a winch and cable. With this apparatus mounted on a railroad car, workers dragged the huge logs across the swamp floor, skidding them to railroad cars, where they were loaded and transported out of the swamp to the lake. The Big Boom my mother described happened every day when the log train returned to the skidder camp on the lake shore and dumped the heavy load of logs into the lake to be made up into great tows of logs boomed together with iron chain dogs. Chain dogs were short lengths of chain with spike-like pieces on each end. Finally, the logs were towed to the mill in Patterson by the steamboat Sewanee, where the logs were hauled into the mill by means of a log slide, a large piece of machinery constructed of heavy timber reinforced with wide strips of thick steel.

Mama’s memories were very clear about events in the skidder camp. Over the space of several years before her death, I interviewed her with a tape recorder, asking questions about her own life, and about life in general in the skidder camp. The following fictional stories are based on those interviews.

Note: The eighteen stories in this book were written over a span of three years. Each story is intended to stand alone; the book is not a continuing saga. However, I have attempted to place the stories in chronological order. Some of the stories, such as the death of Margery, are very factual. Others, such as Halloween Horror, are pure fiction.

Alfreda, age 2, taken at Belle River skidder camp where she was born.

Going to Napoleonville

Mama’s Words: "My first cousin Clyde and I were very fortunate one day. We had a lucky break. Uncle Ed, who ran the train, wanted us to go to town with him. Of course, he was single, a bachelor. He had a girlfriend, some lady on the road to Napoleonville on the canal. We were so excited. We went with Uncle Ed to town. Little did we know that Mama and her sister Aunt Mal were very, very nervous and upset that Ed had taken the children because they knew that he liked to have his little drinks every weekend, so they were worried that he might have too much to drink with their children. But no, he was wonderful. He took us to visit his girlfriend and they gave us things to eat. He took us to town, bought presents for us, bought me a beautiful fan. In those days, it was the kind that opened like the paper fans we see today—but mine was Japanese silk. And he bought me