Ep. 5 - Earl Clement: Jack of All Trades - Miracles in Meat

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(01:20):
Music.

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When I was about three, my grandmother, his wife passed away unexpectedly and
we lived with Pawpaw for a while, while him and my mom and a couple of his buddies
built, he built, they built us a house in Houma.
And then every summer growing up, I remember we would all pack me,

(02:06):
my sister, my mom and Pawpaw into his camper and we would go all over the country.
So we've been to the Grand Canyon, to the Florida beaches.
We've been to Yellowstone, Washington, D.C., all over. We'd be gone the whole summer.
So my mom was a teacher and Papa was a principal. So we all had the summer off.

(02:27):
I have so many wonderful memories of those summers, which is why I also have a camper.
And we go camping with my kids and, you know, it's great family time.
So Earl is also the only person left that I know that knew my father's grandfather,
which his name was Valerie Jean-Baptiste Bourgeois.

(02:47):
He's the OG that started all this. And he actually passed away before my dad
was born. So he didn't even get to know him.
And I knew Paul Earl just not just as Bo's grandpa, but he was my very first
principal at Schriever School from maybe kindergarten to second grade.

(03:08):
So I have some pretty cool memories from back then and we'll get into those
later on in the podcast. Let's get started.
All right, here we go. I'm Shane. Got Bo here with Bo's grandfather, Earl Claymore.
Mr. Earl, I'm going to call you Paul Earl because that's how I feel about you.
And we start all of these off the same way we ask our customers what their first

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or earliest memories are of the bourgeois brand,
the building, the products, going in the building, tasting something,
whatever your first memory about bourgeois meat market was.
We'd like to hear that. Well, I guess probably one of the original customers
of Bourgeois Sweet Market.

(03:56):
I was born in 39. My dad was in a service, so we moved in with my grandparents
way back when, so when dad was in a service.
And I remember my grandmother buying products from, actually raw meat,
from the original bourgeois, Lester's father.

(04:18):
I have vague memories of it because I was a kid, you know, I was,
but he would pass in his, I don't remember for sure what it looked like,
but it seems like it was an old bus. us.
And he would deliver, he would take his products, he would basically take an order.

(04:39):
None of us had electricity at the time. So he would take the orders,
what you wanted for the next week.
And then he would deliver the meat the following week.
He was, I can't say that I I interacted with him, I didn't, I was a kid,
a very young kid as a matter of fact, but I know my grandmother did,

(05:01):
and they actually looked forward to the meat coming in.
They had no way of refrigerating meat, we didn't have electricity,
so they couldn't even preserve meat for any length of time.
So that's my first memories of a bourgeois meat market.
So was it special, the meat, getting the meat and knowing that it's going to come and go?

(05:24):
It was, but as it turns out, I guess he must have figured out that when the
Iceman was passing, we didn't have a refrigerator, no electricity. Electricity.
So that was a guy who would come with blocks of ice and every week he would

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ask you how much you wanted,
whether you wanted a quart's worth, 50 cents worth or whatever,
and he would just chop up the meat blocks and put it in your ice box.
Basically, that was how you refrigerated meat. So it kept the product pretty
good for that period of time, but you couldn't freeze anything.

(06:06):
There was no refrigeration to do that.
So it would pretty much be a one or two meal serving of product that he would give.
So at the time, though, we were 13 of us living in the house.
So I guess it was a pretty good order.
That's so cool. So I have so many questions, but let's start with,

(06:29):
you don't remember the cuts of meat that you were getting?
Man, I ate enough number seven steaks.
It seems like that's all I could remember is Grandma buying number seven steaks.
I don't think it was ever the roast or anything like that.
It was, and I don't really remember that for sure, but I know why I remember

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it. But I know darn well I had some number seven steaks.
So what's funny is like calf cuts are kind of dying off a little bit in the
last 20 years or so. But sevens are still really popular.
They were good eats. How'd she cook them? Well, first of all,
who cooked and how did they cook them?
My grandmother, of course, was a cook. She cooked daily.

(07:13):
Again, you couldn't preserve food, so she had to cook every day.
My grandfather worked in the fields, so he had to get up and he was off and
running every morning, five, six o'clock in the morning, he had to go to work.
And so at that point in time, she'd start cooking. And did they have natural gas yet?
No, no. We had no electricity, no running water, and no natural gas. So a wood stove.

(07:38):
We had a wood stove toward the latter part of the, but that was toward the end
of World War II when they got what's called, what we would call the coal oil schools, the kerosene.
Okay. But at that point in time, it was simply a wood stove,
and they'd have to get the fire going on the stove. How she cooked on that, I have no idea.

(08:01):
What time did she wake up to have breakfast ready for Grandpa and light a fire?
She had an early morning every single morning.
And she prepared food for all 13 of us and had to wash clothes on a washboard.
Had to, you know, and you had to, the water was, it was scarce.

(08:24):
Got a cistern? We had a couple of cisterns, but even still, when you had dry
periods of time, when you had to, you know, kind of preserve water,
because that was no other source of water.
Yeah. You couldn't, there was no such thing as well water over here.
You couldn't get good, clean well water. You couldn't drill wells that deep to get good water.

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So we just had to preserve water, watch how you washed.
We had to bathe in the same water one after the other.
What was the sleeping situation like?
I was a young kid, and I remember I personally was sleeping on chairs.
They put chairs together, and you'd sleep on top of the chairs.

(09:11):
How many bedrooms in the house?
As I recall, they had three bedrooms in the house, but-
My family was there, my mother and me and her sister and her husband and four kids.
We had a cousin, Norman. We had a great-grandfather who was living there.

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So we were all in the house.
And that was just prior to World War II, things were so much different than they are now.
I mean, you just didn't have the services that could help you.
You didn't have anything you had to provide for yourselves.
So we did a lot for ourselves. I guess that's where we learned to do what we had to do.

(09:56):
Did you have a garden? We had a field.
Yeah, we had a garden every year, every summer.
That pretty much was what you had to do. And you had to preserve food. You had to can food.
I remember my grandmother having, we didn't put them in jars.

(10:19):
We actually put them in cans, and she had a special kind of canner where you
could purchase the cans with a lid to put on top,
and you had to sterilize the can.
You had to sterilize whatever you would put in it.

(10:39):
So we put up beans and peas and okra, and I don't remember putting up tomatoes,
but we always had so many tomatoes we didn't know what to do with them.
But all of those products, we had to can and store them.
We had walls and walls and walls of canned stuff that stacked up on one another.
And if you didn't sterilize them properly, you'd hear them popping every once in a while. They'd blow.

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Did you have any animals? Hogs? Mostly, yes. We had hogs. We had cows.
The cows weren't to eat. The cows were milk cows.
We had a lot of chicken. We had chicken.
That was almost a daily thing because at least you could keep them alive until you cooked them.
And we had, you mentioned it now, but we had acres and acres of corn.

(11:30):
And we'd break the corn late summer and stack them in a corn crib.
Basically a big building where you would just fill up dry corn.
You'd break the corn when it was dry and just throw it into a corn crib.
And you could use that corn to feed your cow.
You could feed the chickens, stuff like that.

(11:51):
Nice. Where was the property?
What's that? Where was the property? Where'd you live? At the time,
we were living off of Highway 1, going toward Labadeville.
Okay. Before the Brulee Road. I don't know if you know where that is.
All right. But the property that we had that we were farming on was my grandfather

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and his brother. brother, Ivers Adams.
And there were fields and fields like maybe 40 or up and long of just corn and
peas and that kind of thing.
How much of that was to eat versus to sell? We didn't sell anything. That was for us to eat.
Grandpa had a field, a garden on the side of the house where we were living.

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The corn came mostly from the field. The stuff that we ate, the beans,
the peas, the okra, those kinds of things. That was in our garden.
The corn was across the street in a big field, and that's where we got the cow,
and we had a lot of corn, and we'd feed the cattle and chicken and stuff.

(12:59):
What was your favorite thing that your grandma cooked?
So instead. How'd she cook them?
She smothered them down? Smothered them down. We ate a lot of rabbit.
We ate rabbits also.
Y'all raised them or y'all would hunt them? We'd hunt them.
We didn't grow any rabbits. We didn't grow any rabbits.

(13:21):
We'd hunt them. But the property back then, when you look back,
and it's hard to realize that I've been around for 85 years almost.
But things have changed so tremendously. And back then you could almost walk
out in your yard and hunt.
It wasn't because you- Especially if you had all them crops. Yeah. Probably a trait.
It's not like you had to go miles to look for a place to hunt. It was there.

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So that changed in my lifetime. Right now you got neighbors on top of one another. You can't hunt anymore.
Anything else besides rabbits that y'all would- We raised hogs.
Every year you'd have a boucherie.
One time, you know, we'd do a boucherie where you could, again,
we had no way to preserve it except we had the big cross where we'd salt the

(14:09):
pork down, which cost some money. I don't know why.
Maybe you would know this better than me. Why didn't we salt down the beef?
You can't do that? I've seen people doing it with lard.
With lard. Preserving the beef just in solid lard. I think that's called confit.
C-O-N-F-I-T. tea and way to do it

(14:30):
holds a long time yeah 25 30 year
shelf life oh as a matter of
fact uh i remember the like the people coming across like
christopher columbus or that gang you know they would uh like eggs things like
that they'd put it in paraffin you could you could take you could take an egg

(14:50):
a raw egg and put it in paraffin it'll last for years because you can't get
back I can't get air to it.
I guess the same thing would be true with beef or anything. I guess that's what
the Lord did, I guess. He stops the product from getting bacteria.
What was maybe some of your first jobs or big chores you had as a kid?

(15:10):
Well, every year we had, as a kid, we all had to contribute to the labor.
With working in the garden, I guess my role more than anything was shelling
peas and beans and stuff to get them ready to cook whatever.
Some of the earliest first jobs I guess I had was when a kid was,
some of the neighbors, some of the farmers in the area planted those shallots and things like that.

(15:36):
I had jobs where I would plant shallots. In fact, the dorm rows looked like
they were like 100 and 200 feet long.
And you'd plant shallots. And every. What you got paid?
25 cents a row. row and i'm
telling you couldn't see the end of the row either what a

(16:00):
deal yeah so anyway uh that
was pretty much it there were no paying jobs for for kids or anything like that
that i was aware of at the time it was mostly working with the family working
in forms and to get what you need yeah that that's the most interesting part
yeah that that pretty much it is that we were depending on ourselves for survival.

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And in that sense, I guess I was blessed all of my life, really, in that we had a family.
And we never worried about food.
We never worried. In fact, we never worried about anything, you know,
because we always knew that we had one another for backup.
So you mentioned your dad, also named Earl, was in World War II.

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And that's why everybody moved in to the same house because all the husbands
and dads and grandpas were fighting.
Yeah, and there was no income. When Dad went in, as a matter of fact,
I don't know if you want to hear about him, but I got a story to tell you about him. Yeah, absolutely.
Dad was a pretty remarkable guy. He went to LT, which is a small school on 308

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going toward Labadeville.
How did he get there? He had to walk.
At the time, he wasn't living on highway. He was living, he and his, let me regress.
Yeah. Okay, dad's father died when he was a young boy.

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They were living on a plantation. It was called La San Cuartas,
which was off of 308. It was a plantation.
I don't know who owned the plantation, but anyway, there were a bunch of row
houses where you had people that were working on the plantation had homes to
live in. Well, his daddy died.

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He had an older brother.
And when he died, to stay in those houses, you had to have people working on the plantation.
Well, his daddy died, so there was no one working on the plantation.
So his brother dropped out of school in the eighth grade and started working.
What was his name? Lester.
Isn't that cool? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, his dad started working on,

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his brother started working on the plantation.
So that the family could have a place to live. So that they could have a place
to live. So, my grandmother, my dad's mom made a few pens.
She used to make, she'd make filet gumbo, filet for the gumbo.
She would get the sassafras leaves, dry them, crumble them, and basically put

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them in Coke bottles and cap them and sell them.
That's the money she made. That's what she did.
And Lester worked on the plantation. My dad was younger. He continued going to school.
And in those days, you had like pretty much multiple grades in one classroom.
Dad was, I guess, relatively bright, so they skipped him a grade.

(19:02):
And at that time, graduation was at the 11th grade. They didn't have 12 years of school.
So Dad graduated from high school. He was 16 years old.
During that period of time, during those high school years, he had a job working
for Mr. Edmund Derame, a lawyer in Thibodeau.

(19:24):
His Edmund Derame Jr. was the most recent one that you might have a memory of,
but it was the old man Derame that recognized that Daddy had some ability and
encouraged my mother to send him to school.
The only local university he had at the time was USL, Lafayette.

(19:46):
So they had no money so
daddy went to went to usl on a basketball scholarship
and he wasn't making enough money to eat so he got a job as a waiter didn't
have enough money to eat then so he got himself a boxing scholarship whatever
it takes yeah what a hustler yeah so so anyway he got a boxing scholarship,

(20:10):
he got through college doing that, and he went through a four-year program,
and he graduated in three years.
He was 19 years old and a college graduate. And what year, you think?
This was in the late 20s, early 30s? I was, no, it was, I would say the year

(20:36):
he graduated, I was born, it must have been 37 or 38 is when he graduated from college.
And he, how did he meet Momo? He knew her before he left? Yeah,
they were in school together.
I mean, it was a local community. It was a little LT school.
The building is still there. I don't know what they use it for anymore,
but the building is there.

(20:57):
And so when he got out of the service
they got married he got a job and he was principal he was a teacher and got
a job at principal as of lockport school there was a school in lockport where
he got the principalship of that school and the war broke out in 41 so he volunteered.

(21:20):
And and that's the point in time when we had to move in with so y'all were living
in lockport before that?
Yes. We lived in Lockport for a brief time and the wall broke out.
Gotcha. So we had to move back. We had no other place to go so we lived in,
we moved in with Grandma and Grandpa like everybody else. Yeah.
So, that's what he did. He volunteered to go in.

(21:41):
So that was your mom's grandparents that you were My mom's grandparents.
My, my grandmother on my dad's side was still living on Los Ancuadro.
Lester was still working at that plantation all that time. Golly.
So anyway, that's Dad's story. That's who he was.

(22:06):
And I guess because of that, I'm fortunate, I'm lucky, because in those days,
there weren't that many people from around here going to college.
How he ever managed to go to college, I have no idea.
How he managed, there was no money. He didn't have any money.
His mama didn't have any money.
How did he get to Lafayette?
I would have guessed it was going to be by train. I don't know.

(22:26):
Okay. I mean, he didn't have any vehicle.
Right. You know, he had to go by train. So that's how he went.
Sheesh. And as it, as it turns out, he, you know.
So how old were you and how long was he gone in World War II?
I was born in 39. I guess I didn't, after, for the first couple of years,

(22:49):
of course, I have no memory of that.
But he came back probably 45
or 46 after the war after the war
was over in the pacific he was in he was fighting in
the pacific gotcha so he
was he probably didn't get back i'd say
until about 46 or 47 so i would have been
maybe six seven years old geez when he

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got back and what was god what
was that like meeting your dad kind of because you
probably didn't remember him when he left no i didn't because uh
and he there was no time off you know right when he
was on a ship in in the pacific and he
couldn't take a break you know he had to come he had to keep fighting yeah so
i have no memory of that really you know except that those are those are some

(23:37):
years that probably would have been some formative years so i wish i had with
him i didn't you know anything about his His service?
Nothing except that he was in the Pacific. He was on the... He was in the Navy? In the Navy. Okay.
The ship he was on were, I guess, a medium-sized vessel where there were landing

(23:59):
craft, basically to discharge tanks, troops, that kind of thing,
had to go in and put people on the ground.
So that's the kind of vessel he was on.
He was involved in fighting all the way even into Tokyo Bay, you know.
So, but he made it without a scratch and survived it.

(24:23):
Probably dropped off a lot of Marines, Shane. Yeah. Any pictures?
No. Again, that was a, that's in your realm. Yeah, sure.
In those years, they just didn't have it. But he did bring back one picture,
though, or one postcard of Tokyo.
I guess I should have brought that just to show you where they show what was left of Tokyo in 45.

(24:49):
Wow. I think I had one building standing. That was it.
But anyway, when he got out of the service, he had to, as it turns out,
the building he was in, when Principal Shivan Lockport, the building burned down.
So when he got back they had no building he was not he was no longer had a principalship there,

(25:11):
and he was not able to get another principalship until
i guess maybe 51 or 52 and the reason for it was soldiers and were prep were
protected if they were drafted you know they would be entitled to their job
when he got back he volunteered so he wasn't entitled to anything i see what
you get I like that rule. I see what you get.

(25:34):
So what did he do in that time? Was he still teaching? Yeah, he started teaching.
And another thing he did was, in fact, there were a lot of veterans in those days.
There were a lot of people in this area that really couldn't even read and write.
Yeah. And he started, he volunteered to teach veterans. and he would teach night

(25:57):
classes over in Shakhtar to teach them how to read, write, that kind of thing.
He did that after the Serbs.
So just so everybody knows now, I am a fourth-generation butcher,
but I also taught classes at
Nichols and Tulane, so I'm also a fourth-generation teacher. Yes, you are.
That's pretty cool. Because, yeah, my great-grandfather was a teacher and principal.

(26:22):
Papa was also a teacher and principal. with my mom, teacher,
and then, yeah. So that's super cool.
What else? What else to say about your dad, Paul? Nothing except he was a great provider.
And I think you are where you are. I am where I am because of him.

(26:42):
Because in that time period, there weren't that many people that thought that the value of education.
I look back at my cousins, let's say, Lester's children.
They didn't have the advantage that i had of seeing the
potential of an education yeah they dropped
out of school went to work and there's no shame in it but it's that was that

(27:06):
was a thinking that was a foresight yeah whereas in my case i don't think i.
Have a question that i was going to be a college graduate and that was unusual
at the time and it was unusual not in then this That's certainly my period,
but for my dad's time,
you worked.
To survive. Not even to be successful. You weren't thinking about anything except

(27:30):
surviving, putting food on the table, because that's what you had to do.
You didn't buy it because you didn't have money. Right.
So that was his thinking, and I guess it was Edmund Derame, the old Derame,
who encouraged him and saw to it that he went to college.
But he did it and I don't know how he did it I still don't know it's remarkable

(27:53):
that he did but at least he gave me the impetus to go and get an education,
hence it provided your mother you realized the value of an education and you went from there.
Okay, now let's talk about you. So where'd you go to high school?
What's that? Where'd you go to high school? I went to Thibodeau High. Okay. Graduated in 57.

(28:18):
And then did you go straight to college from there? Yes.
Yeah, I went to LSU at the time. There was no Nichols yet? There was a Nichols.
At the time, I don't know, as they provided very many four-year degrees.
It was like a junior college kind of thing. Gotcha.
But anyway, yeah, I went to LSU. I went there, and I didn't graduate from LSU.

(28:41):
I transferred back in my senior year to Nichols.
Anyway, that's when your grandmother and I got married that year.
I need to know more about that. So where did you meet her? Her name was Dorothy. Yes.
I'm trying to think when we first met. Was it in high school?

(29:03):
No, it wasn't in high school because I was very little. I was at Thibodeau High School.
She was at Mont Carmel Convent. Oh, I didn't know that.
At the time, that's where the old, the convent is where the old Holiday Inn is right now.
And as a matter of fact, her graduating class had 14 people in it. Nice.

(29:26):
That's when you had a separation of girls and boys. It was an all-girls school,
and you had the boys' school at Thibodeau College, which was off of Highway 1.
It was in a different location. Gotcha.
So, I guess somewhere along the line, we must have mingled and got to know one
another. Can't tell you I know how.

(29:49):
Anyway, we started dating. When you got back from LSU?
Prior to. I was dating her while I was at LSU. Gotcha. So...
Anyway, we... What was dating like in 1958, say? There weren't a lot of... Yeah, what would you do?
There wasn't a lot. Go to drive-in, you know, go and get a burg or something

(30:12):
at the 69, whatever, drive-in or something like that. That's about it. Cool.
Yeah, the women of the world dances, things like that. Nice.
Okay, so y'all got married when?
I guess in 62?
62. So right after you graduated. Yeah. Actually, my senior year of college, we got married. Gotcha.

(30:36):
And your grandmother was teaching. She started teaching at Bayou Blue Elementary
in Lafourche Parish, in Bayou Blue. Yeah.
And she did that until I graduated. And then she still continued to do that
until we started having children.
Awesome. So you had my mom, obviously, was the oldest, Marie.

(31:00):
And then Cain came next, and then Parnco. Yes.
As a matter of fact, another thing my dad did for me, as a matter of fact,
he had bought some property to show you how things have changed.
He bought property off of Highway 1.
It was a big lot, 100 by 200, where his house is existing now.

(31:22):
In addition to that, he had the property across the street called the Batua,
which was on the buyer's side. Right. Well, when Dorothy and I decided we were
going to get married, Daddy offered me the property to build a house on the buy-side. Okay.
And I built a house on that side. And he helped me. And the more he helped me,

(31:43):
he did most of the work, truly.
So I built a house there.
And that's when we moved in and where Marie was born, your mother.
Okay. She was born. That was her first house. I didn't know that.
Well, shoot. Let's talk about this. Because, yeah, you built that house.
That's not something most people do or say. No.

(32:03):
How did you build it? Why did you build it? How did you know how to build it?
I guess it's kind of like you. I'm the rat that knows my way through the maze.
I don't know. It's a genetic thing, you know.
It really is. I did a lot of work, and I did a lot of observing in the way that I was raised.

(32:25):
If something broke, you had to fix it. So it was a common skill set that a lot of people had? No.
I guess I'm an exception in some sense.
Lester, my uncle, the one who was working on the plantation,
was a plantation carpenter.
And so he helped build my mom and dad's house on that property I was telling you about.

(32:50):
And I guess I observed, I worked with them, stuff like that.
And your dad learned at some point too. My dad is similarly,
had really the same skills.
He knew how to do things.
In that time period, I guess you just had to observe and do,

(33:11):
and you had to, as a helper too, you had to work.
You know, it's like your involvement as an adult, you learned as you went, you progressed,
you observed, you asked questions, you learned what to do and you do it.
Shane, same way with you, I'm sure the same thing.

(33:32):
You just, as an adult, you just, You just know what your responsibilities are, and you just do it.
Yeah, but why not just get somebody else to build it? It costs money. We didn't have money.
We had no money, bro. My first job, when I started teaching,
my first salary was $3,200 a year.

(33:59):
I would take home $220 a month. And that's what you had to get by,
and apparently that's not enough.
To build a house. Not enough to do a bunch of anything. And this was after college?
That was after college. What were some of your friends, your peers making that didn't go to college?
Most of them were the oil industry, of course.

(34:23):
I have no idea what they're making except that I'm sure it was a heck of a lot
more than I was making because there were welders and electricians and roughnecks.
They were making money. When did that industry take off?
I would say probably a lot of it at that point in time, and that was a point,

(34:44):
too, when Saudi Arabia and when oil production in that part of the world started to ramp up.
There were a lot of people from this area, really, that went to Saudi Arabia
and started working in the oil fields.
A lot of the people down here, they were just good, hard-working people, tough people.

(35:06):
They knew how to work, and so they worked on the oil rigs, a lot of the guys.
That's when Texaco was big around here, not so much anymore, but they were.
Everybody just went in that area. And it provided a lot of opportunities for
a lot of people to make money, you know.

(35:29):
So besides teaching, what other jobs have you ever had? Oh, man.
I worked. One job I had was for Houston Contractors back at Chag Bay on a pipeline.
Just running a pipeline, that kind of thing. Clearing waterways, that stuff.

(35:49):
I worked for General Motors at
one part of the time on floor planning of automobiles and stuff like that.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
What was that transition like? How did you get there? It was whatever.
I never just quit teaching to do that. This was summer jobs.

(36:09):
I also had a job driving a Greyhound bus. That was an interesting job.
I would, Greyhound had a position for teachers.
Greyhound at the time was a pretty big industry for transporting people.
And so they would, every summer they would hire teachers to work on what they called a reserve board.

(36:30):
The reserve board was where you put your name on a list,
and whenever there was an overflow for a route for the New Orleans area,
like if it's from New Orleans to Mobile,
if they needed two bus drivers instead of one, you if your name was at the top
you got that job you ran into mobile if it was to go to jacksonville you ran
to jackson wherever you had to go that's that was your job so i did that one

(36:55):
summer i worked for core lab analyzing core samples.
This is all side hustle shane this is him he needs a few more dollars and he's off for the Right.
And so are you finding these opportunities in a newspaper or through a buddy?

(37:15):
Someone's telling you about this stuff?
Again, I guess it was job hustling. If you heard about a job, you applied for it.
You know, I also, I did the core samples. I did the bus driving.
Do you help design automobile plans? No.
I did work with GM for a while. I did work with E.J. Mitchell.

(37:39):
I left teaching for a short period of time. I worked for E.J. Mitchell Company.
It was a company out in Houston selling the Raveler pump valves and Herberger
compressor valves in the oil industry. So I did that for a while.
That's probably the worst job I ever took, truly, because it kept me away from home. I had a route.
I had a district where we ran all the way from Corpus Christi,

(38:03):
Texas, all the way up to Jackson, Mississippi, three states, Arkansas, Louisiana.
I left that job in a hurry. One day, I'd always call Dorothy to see where she
was or what was going, because since I was away from home.
And when the last time I called her, she said, Cain, my middle son or the middle

(38:27):
child had viral meningitis.
Well, the word meningitis scared the hell out of me. I didn't know what that was, you know.
It didn't sound good. It's not good.
So anyway, as it turns out, it's called viral meningitis, But anyway,
so I got on the phone and I called Mitch, E.J.

(38:48):
Mitchell, the company I was working for in Houston.
I told him I was quitting, I was leaving, I was going to drive the car.
I had a home base in Baton Rouge.
So I told him I was going to leave the car at the office in Baton Rouge,
but I couldn't go anymore. I had to quit. So I left that.
So those are the kinds of jobs. I took some, I would work a lot of summers with,

(39:11):
well, you might know Andosek.
Eric Andosek? Lou Andosek, Eric's daddy. Okay.
He did, he had a contracting company. He would do construction work.
I worked with him doing construction work.
Like residential, like building houses? Yeah. So that's how that got started?
Go ahead. And you had already kind of developed your construction skills at

(39:34):
this point. Yes. So he wanted you. Yeah.
So he was looking for carbon. So I did that. So I did about anything,
anything that would pay money. I did.
Don't matter how much. At this time, were you looking to stick with anything
career wise or were you still in a, in a, in a hustling mindset?
Mostly it was trying to feed a family. I had three kids. We didn't want,

(39:57):
I didn't want Dorothy to work. We wanted her to be home raising the children.
So I had to make enough money, you know, to do that. So I still wanted to teach.
I liked teaching. I still like teaching.
That was a thing for me.
So I would take whatever job I could during the summer months,
you know, to supplement my income.

(40:19):
Then I went and I got a few dollars ahead. I started doing some other things
instead of working and doing stuff for other people.
I started constructing things, building spec houses that we could sell.
So I did that with a partner. Frank Pugh was his name at the time.
And I developed a little trailer park on the north side of near the Prospect

(40:43):
Street Bridge in that area.
So I did things like that and built some apartments over across from Perkle's
over there. Built a couple apartment buildings.
So I started doing things. Is that Gloria Street? Yes, Gloria. Okay.
Yeah, we had two apartments in there. Were you the first to develop in there?

(41:05):
Pretty much. Yeah, way back when.
Is it the two right on the front corner? No.
Those were developed later before they did all of that. It was,
I forgot that, 208, 207, 213, somewhere. And that's the address in that area.
And anyway, it was just, so I started doing that just to make money.

(41:28):
But I still wanted to teach. So I do all that work during the summer.
And I have a protracted time after that, you know.
Yeah, just build a quick fourplex in three months with just you and your buddy. Yeah.
What were the regulations like back then to build something?
I hate to say this in public, but there weren't very many. There were none.

(41:50):
Right. I guess that's what I would assume. It's not too many.
It's a lot easier, right?
As a matter of fact, the houseboat we moved to over in Houma when you and your mama moved in.
Yeah. I drew less plans on a napkin.
And just started, huh? Yeah. Get some wood and just start. Yeah. So that's nice.

(42:11):
My whole childhood, I remember Papa building houses over the summer.
You know, Mom would bring us out there and we'd see him or whatever.
I remember him building the house I grew up in.
Did that provide more financial security for the family?
For you and your family, yes. No, no, no. Specifically doing,
when you started doing it for yourself instead of for other people.

(42:33):
Yeah, it was because, yeah, it did it.
The biggest salary that I ever made while I was working was $50,000 a year as a principal.
Towards the end as a principal. That's toward the end.
I'm a multimillionaire right now. I mean, I'm not boasting about it.

(42:55):
And that's not from teaching. And it ain't from selling corn.
And it ain't from growing corn and putting it in the cornfield.
No, because, you know, you just like the house in Florida, for instance,
we built. Okay, I built that.
Him and Miss Ev built that. Yeah. Just the two of them.
And I bought the property for $80,000. i

(43:19):
built a house for 50 000 this was in
early 2000 when i was we built it
we started building it i guess around 2000 okay we sold it last year for 550
000 so i pocketed 550 000 because i did

(43:39):
it that was my labor that was my involvement in it yeah you know so So,
and all the other houses, all the other things, like the apartments,
we built the apartments.
We held on to those for a period of time.
Then we sold them and pocketed the money. You know, in the interim,
we were collecting the rent.
It cost us nothing because the rent would amortize the loan and would take care of expenses.

(44:03):
And the loan's pennies compared to if you had to pay labor to build it. Yeah.
The only money I ever made or the only way I was able to accrue any money was with my labor.
Yeah. In other words, if you build a house for $50,000 and it's worth $100,000,
then you made $50,000 even if you don't have it in your pocket.

(44:26):
At some point, you got it in money.
Was there anyone teaching you or kind of mentoring you along this journey of investing?
No, not really. Did you learn any of that in college? No.
I always figured my sweat equity would carry me through.

(44:47):
You know, if you work at it, you're going to come out.
You can't pay a lot of labor because labor is going to eat you up on those kinds of projects.
And I didn't have the expertise to hire people.
Like I did on this last project, they wouldn't allow me to do the electrical
and plumbing. When was this?

(45:08):
Just this past year. Once a year. And you wanted to do all of it?
And they wouldn't let you?
Well, they wouldn't let me do the electrical.
I couldn't even put up a temporary service. The guy, I'm in the office line
for an electrical permit. I'm going to do that.

(45:29):
And the guy's sitting on the side of me, and he said, man, he says,
get yourself an electrician. I said, hell, I can put up an electrician.
I can do that. Doing this my whole life.
Longer than most of the electricians. I want you to go eat in your truck,
buddy. Yeah, so I said, okay, I know how to do this. He said, no.
He said, they make you take a test.

(45:50):
St. Tammany does. You've got to take a test, an electrical test. I said, I can pass a test.
Yeah.
So he says, no. He's an electrical engineer at NASA. He couldn't pass a test.
I said, oh, Jesus Christ, man.

(46:13):
So he can't pass the test. So I'm thinking, well, Earl, you don't have a shot.
NASA electrical engineer can't pass it. Yeah. Good luck.
Because, I mean, the NEC code book is about two inches thick.
They don't want to know whether they're not going to give you a test on whether
you know how to pass, hook up wires to put up an electrical service.

(46:36):
They want to know if you can pass this book. Yeah. And meanwhile,
how did that go letting somebody else do it?
So I've paid somebody 600 bucks to do it. And how'd they do?
Did anyone almost die? He hooked the wires backwards. Backwards.
That's the guy that really got me killed.
That's perfect. Hooked the wires up to the meter pan backwards so that when

(47:00):
Pawpaw was trying to put in the fuse, it was extra hot.
The fuses were hot. You never could take the fuses off.
You would have known better. Yeah, I don't know what to do. But they probably
didn't ask that question in the test, right? Yeah.
Man, I bet you could come up with a good test, huh? Yeah. Wow.

(47:26):
So you kind of learned as you went, on your own, as needed. Yeah, that was pretty much it.
Again, like I said, I think genetics has a good part in it. You know,
you learn how to do stuff.
I think Bo is an example of that. He's learned how to do by trial and error.
If he doesn't know what to do, he calls home, hey paul i said oh jesus man what

(47:49):
the hell do you want so now you know hey so shane so 2011-ish i bought a house
on blade court it's got four apartments in the backyard shane currently owns it,
but yeah the the build the house
had been built in the early 50s the apartments were built in the early 60s and

(48:10):
everything was just needed a lot of work so so papa for the next 10 years got
daily phone calls about how to do this how to do that and and shane got the
deal and shane got shane got it all fixed up ready to go.
By the way, are you still doing bed and breakfast? Man. Airbnb,

(48:32):
baby. It's doing well. Doing very well. Super.
Again, that's part of a process of you being an entrepreneur.
You didn't, you had no, you know, you just learn how to do stuff and you know what you need to do.
Yeah. You do it. Bo got a lot of the same calls that you got from Bo. Yeah.
I call Bo, ask him the same questions. sometimes he might he might actually

(48:55):
ask you and then give me the answer and have me think that it was his idea of
course most you know most of the time that's probably true boy slick huh oh yeah.
Uh but it's a lot of trouble for me because a lot of things that i want to
hire someone to do i i know i'm like
man bo would know how to do it yeah and

(49:16):
then i gotta dig into it that makes you yeah i gotta dig
into it and then i'm seven trips to lowe's after there
i finally might call them but again
that that's that's the point i'm making like like we'll learn
that through observing and doing in trial
and error you know i'm a pretty smart guy now
because i did everything twice you know right i

(49:37):
couldn't do it by the first time but i got it right the second time papa always
told me that i've always so many times when we're doing
something i'm like how do you know how to do this he said
because i've done it wrong a bunch of times first yeah
yeah that really is the way yeah the
only way hey speaking of doing stuff wrong
paul did you ever have any accidents while building all these houses especially

(49:58):
like beach houses and stuff where they're maybe way way off the ground oh yeah
tell me about some oh man i can tell you about my Wally Coyote hat.
Yes, please. You ever heard of that much thing? Yes, sir.
Well, I'm putting, I'll put up, I have this place in Florida I'm building,

(50:21):
okay? I'm doing all the work. I'm putting the roofing myself on building.
So it's a corrugated roofing on Dura. It's a non-metal product,
but it's, so you have to be careful with it. You don't want to damage it.
So I'm putting it up. I climb up on the roof. It's like 18 feet off to 18 feet.

(50:43):
The roof is like 18, 20 feet off the ground.
Because the house is on piling. It's on piling. So it's like a two-story building.
So I get up there and I figure, well, it's getting hot. But summertime,
so I figured I'm going to get up early in the morning so that I don't,
it's still cool and I'm not going to damage the roof.

(51:05):
So I tie a rope around my waist and I had it tied at the peak.
So I had something. Just to be extra safe. Be safe, you know. I'm into safety.
So I get up there. I climb up on the roof.
And I knew it was going to be cool. I didn't know it was going to be wet.
You know. You don't die with all that humidity and stuff. Got a lot of humidity in Florida, man.

(51:30):
So I get up on the roof. I'm climbing, and I start to slip, and I got no way
to hold on. I can't catch.
But I got a rope around my waist, and I got it tied. So I slipped to the edge of the roof. Boom.
So I said, man, that's great, you know. So I'm like Wiley Coyote. I look up at the rope.
When I look up at the rope, the rope breaks. It's coming down.

(51:52):
Did you watch it snap? Yeah.
So that was my Wally Coyote act. So anyway, I fall to the ground,
bam. I said, Jesus Christ.
18 feet. Yeah. And how old were you at the time? 60-something.
So anyway, about 20 years ago.

(52:12):
So yeah, I was about 65 or so. Anyway, see this too here?
It's not real. It swings me into the castle, into a scaffold. Bang.
So I knock this one out. So anyway, I fall to the ground.
After that, I look at the rope, you know, and I'm figuring, what kind of rope is this?

(52:33):
It's a 316th Dacron rope. You can pull a car with that.
Working load, 90 pounds. I weigh more than 90 pounds.
So anyway, it broke. The rope didn't hold me. Rope, I guess,
ain't like it used to be. No.
It's misleading. They're serious about that working load, though. Right.
What did you learn that day? What kind of lessons did you learn?

(53:00):
Did it again i went back up same way i
got a bigger rope i know
what the problem is i just needed a bigger rope yeah yeah i'd
have been great if it wouldn't have been for a big rope yeah it's way worse
than he makes it sound though i'm sure slides off of the roof and now he's swinging
from the by himself yeah swinging from the rope that's three quarters of an

(53:25):
hour how How thick, Paul? 3-16.
Yeah, 3-16. So digging into your belly, right?
It's like an extension cord.
He's swinging, smashes his face into the scaffolding.
Knocking the tooth. And then thinks, oh my God, thank God I tied this rope.
That hurt really bad, but I'm going to be okay. Looks up, rope pops.

(53:48):
And out of that, I was flat enough that when I put it around my waist,
I tied it with a slip knot.
That felt good, huh? Yeah, maybe he's lucky it popped. Yeah,
you're right. I couldn't have got me down.
I don't like to see how that goes. Miss Evelyn, climb up on the roof and cut

(54:09):
the rope. Yeah. Jesus Christ. You're going to have to do it.
Oh. Oh, boy. That's a good story. Yeah.
Any others, Paul? It seems like I remember you teaching me a trick when you're
working on roofs to tie some ladders together.
Oh, Lord. I don't know.

(54:29):
Well, we were working on Father-in-law's house on LaGuard Street in Thibodeau,
and as a matter of fact, we corrugated 10. It's hard to get up.
But if you put a ladder, one on each side, and tie the two together,
what you have when one ladder's at the bottom, the other one's at the top.
Well, I'm at the top of the ladder. The guy's at the bottom of the ladder on the bottom one.

(54:54):
He forgets I'm at the top, so he gets off the ladder, so the top ladder slides.
Off so the rule to that shane is be a man on the bottom ladder,
say i learned that lesson you know you learned a lot of stuff by being stupid

(55:14):
right well i wrote this down earlier i wanted to know about maybe your first
time out of state yeah you had mentioned some some trains and buses earlier.
What was your first time out of state? Did that happen as a kid or as an adult?
I guess my first, I first recall, I guess, a vacation trip to Colorado with

(55:38):
my parents, that kind of thing.
As an adult, I guess our first trips out of state would have been probably to Florida.
We enjoy, we always enjoy going to Florida, going to Navarre,
going to Navarre beach. We spent a lot of time on the beaches over there. Nice.
In fact, when we first started going to Navarre beach, they didn't have any

(56:01):
buildings. The condos that they have now, they didn't exist.
The only building they had on the beach at the time was a holiday inn on the beach.
They used to have a near the national seashore. They had a campground and we
did a lot of camping over there. Nice.
It was on the sound side, but you could walk across to the beach.
So, like I said earlier, I grew up doing a lot of camping with my mom and grandpa,

(56:24):
but they did the same thing when my mom was young.
So, tell me about your first camper.
Oh, man. I built one. I knew it. I knew it.
I had one of the first motorhomes around. I bought an old bread truck.

(56:45):
How much you bought it for? Oh. Probably $400 or $500.
But those were some. Did it come with the bread? No.
It was an old bread truck. And I did everything I could.
I had a kitchen. I had a shower. I had a toilet. I had beds. The whole bit.

(57:07):
And we'd go camping in that thing. It was nice.
Y'all ever get turned away? Oh, yeah.
First time we went to this place in some place
it was a wind dig place you know in florida and they thought
at the time i think they're charging about four bucks a night you know that
kind of stuff really expensive so we go in his place and they wouldn't allow

(57:31):
me in so made man i said geez how could y'all tell that you know god turned
me away i bet you were kind of proud of that though Oh, man.
No, no, no. We said campers only, no bread trucks. Yeah. Yeah.
How old was mom when you built that?

(57:51):
Hmm. I don't know. She's probably not even a teenager.
I don't remember for sure. We were living over on Isle of Isle at the time.
Yeah, so maybe like 10 years old, call it, the early 70s? Yeah.
Something like that? Something like that. Where did y'all take that thing?

(58:11):
Most of the time we did it summers, going toward Florida. We spent a lot of
time on the beaches in Florida.
I don't remember going too far north. I think we might have gone up to Missouri
or something like that in those areas.
Most of the time, where the land was flat, you wouldn't go too far,

(58:31):
you know. Had no six-cylinder engine.
Imagine mapping out your trying to get away from all the hills.
Yeah. Two hills. Mostly that's where we went, Florida.
All right. That's so cool. What happened to the bread truck?
My brother-in-law wanted it. gave it to him. Figured he deserved it. Uncle Joe.

(58:53):
Come on. There's a lot of good Uncle Joe stories.
I'm not talking any Uncle Joe stories here.
What did he do with it? He lived in it? He used it? He used it.
And just passed around it.
And toward the end, well, he died. I don't know what happened to it after that. Gotcha.

(59:20):
I can tell you another story about that old, remember that, the one you and
I used to camp in, that little coachman motorhome?
So I remember the camper, there was a camper first that you pulled with the
Suburban. Right, right.
Which that Suburban is its own podcast.
Yeah. But anyway, the coachman, you know the guys who I sold it to.

(59:44):
I sold it to the two sports here, Michael and his brother.
What the heck? Can't think of his name right now. Anyway, they bought it.
They wanted to just patch around or have a place to go when they got,
you know, hang out at the games and stuff like that.
So I told them, sure, you can have it.

(01:00:07):
So I gave it to them because it was beat to hell.
It started to rot, water leaks. I never took care of it. It was exposed to elements. So I gave it to them.
And I said, okay. Cranked it up. It started, ran fine.
So I told them, yeah, come get it anytime you want. So I gave them the keys,
they got it. They got it all the way to Highway 11.

(01:00:29):
I live off of Highway 11, about a block or two. I get a phone call from them.
It says, hey, camp is on fire.
And that's your lesson for going to a free camp.
So anyway, they come to find out, I guess, there were a bunch of rat nests or

(01:00:51):
squirrel nests on top of the manifold of the vehicle. And by the time they got
it to the highway, it heated up enough. Just hot enough.
That's good. So that ended that camping. Did it burn down?
Or just messed it up enough? It messed up the interior. It messed up the cabin
since, you know, the way the configuration of the motor and all that was in there.

(01:01:12):
So I just told them to haul it back to the house. They did. I still had insurance
on it. So I filed an insurance claim and they gave me $7,000.
Nice. Yeah.
So anyway I made I made $7,000 on that deal it was a good deal actually worked
out real good got any good stories about my mom,

(01:01:34):
should go out to Lake Verret skiing and stuff like that and pull them on tubes and all.
She was a young girl and I remember her in her little bikinis and all,
you know, and pulling her behind the boat on a rope and we're going and going
to town and all of a sudden somebody else, hey, she's got a flag up.

(01:01:55):
It was her bikini bottle and she was holding up at the top of her legs because,
her bikinis had fallen off.
What about uh oh so going
back to my grandpa lester and
that bourgeois family i know

(01:02:17):
you remember him dropping meat off but when when
was the first time you went to the store and where was it was
it where it's at now was it across the street no it's where
it is now okay that would have been that would have been like in the mid 60s
okay way back then yeah so from then so i guess what i'm trying i'm wondering

(01:02:39):
is when did papa's dad stop delivering meat so,
not not that you know you were a kid but at some point y'all stopped getting
meat from there and then how'd y'all get meat after that as it turns out i recall
daddy doing this again there were a limited refrigeration.
I don't know if you remember, but there was a guy who built a refrigeration place.

(01:03:04):
The Ice House on St. Patrick.
Yes, over there. And so, Daddy would rent.
Unit to preserve or to put food in. Oh, that's what Miss Kathy and Miss Karen
did, too. Their parents, the A-Bears?
Yeah. Do you know them or remember them?
They had the spot where West Main Pizza was on St. Mary.

(01:03:29):
You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about.
It was across the street. It was on the by side.
That was Miss Kathy and Miss Karen, the twins that worked here. That was their parents.
They had a meat market, but I think a big part of their business was renting out cooler They did.
Actually, that's what they did. And so I don't remember the configuration or

(01:03:49):
anything like that, but I do know that we didn't have the ability to,
daddy still didn't have the ability to preserve food like that.
So we'd buy meat in quantities, you know, like maybe go to an auction and buy
a quarter calf or a quarter side of beef or something and preserve it and put
it in their place. That's how we preserved meat.

(01:04:09):
This was after World War II when your dad came back? Yes, yeah.
That's really interesting. So cool. That whole business.
Like a mini storage for meat. Yeah, basically, the building is still there.
I don't know what they're... In fact, at one time, I think Dave Leboeuf had
tried to sort of a pizza place in that building. Yeah, it was West Main Pizza.

(01:04:31):
Yeah. Well, it's not there anymore. He sold it. Right. But that was the building
that all of those coolers and stuff were in.
That was the original building. So how did you access them?
Like they had to be open and you had to go inside and they let you in kind of thing?
Yeah, you had to go in through the interior. There was no exterior.
It wasn't like it was a like a home.
Outside door to a padlock or something? No, you had to go into the building.

(01:04:55):
Gotcha. And I don't know what the costs were. You know, Daddy did that. I had no idea.
So that's, that pretty much was how people...
Preserved food, or we're able to do the beef, the market like that. Nice.
Oh, Shane. So, don't forget that Papa was your principal. Right.

(01:05:17):
Schriever School, Schriever Elementary. He was a wimpy kid. I was a small little sack of peas, huh?
He had blonde hair, too. Oh, yeah. Very blonde. Yeah. Cotton top.
Schriever School was kindergarten through third.
No pre-K, right? No. No, I'm pretty kidding. No.
And. I don't think you were there that long, were you? Just three years.

(01:05:42):
I don't remember you being there that long. K through three.
You were my principal for kindergarten, first, and maybe second.
And then we got someone new, maybe my third grade year. Okay.
Do you remember who took over after you?
A woman, Mrs. Chauvin. Chauvin, yep. Yep.

(01:06:02):
She, if I remember correctly, she wore combat boots. Yep. I remember that.
How long were you the Prince of Water, Paul? I guess about 10 years. Okay. Yeah.
Good experience, as a matter of fact. That was one of my best teaching experiences
ever. I enjoyed to be with the community.

(01:06:23):
It was a lot of family-oriented people, just little hard-working people.
This is a good question. When did they get away from paddling kids?
It was way after Papa retired. Yeah. After you left, Shane. Far after.
But seriously, until when? The 2000s?

(01:06:45):
And when I was in high school, we got paddled. That was 2000s.
2005. Five. I'm trying to think when I left Shreve.
Well, if you were in second grade, that'll help. Yeah. Had to be 93.
I quit. 94. I left. 10? Oh, no. I retired in 97.

(01:07:07):
That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds right. Right. So probably about 2000
or so is when they started the no corporal punishment stuff.
I think the superintendent at the time was Liz Skirtel.
One story I have, I rode the bus. My mom lived right there in Shriver.

(01:07:30):
And I rode the bus. and there
was one day where the entire bus
got called to the principal's office over the over
the intercom oh man it was it
was if your student rides bus whatever have them report to the principal's office
so and i'd never really i've never been called to the principal's office before

(01:07:53):
this i was i was a good kid so the whole bus which is i don't know how many
seats on a bus It must've been 30, must've been 30 kids.
So we're all waiting on the side of the principal's office.
There was, I think there was like a little, you know, almost like a bench,
like a church pew style bench.
Waiting there maybe from for quite some time and that might have been on purpose

(01:08:17):
it might have been just to just to spike some nerves a bit but we all got called
in there we didn't know what it was for
and we get in and we all had to sit down and there was a tv with a you know
vhs player and it must have been it must have been you and it must have been
our bus driver but we were told to sit down Turn the lights off. Keep quiet.

(01:08:39):
Don't move. And watch what's on the TV.
So they pressed play. And it was the video surveillance of our bus.
And we had to watch what was happening on our bus.
And hey, everything was happening. There was kids, there was throwing things,

(01:09:00):
there was kids jumping over the seats, running under the seats,
running back and forth, fighting, beating, you know, wrestling,
in fun, but just terrorizing the bus.
And I guess the bus driver had enough and gave you the video and you had to watch it.
But we all had to watch it too. And then we all got paddled.

(01:09:23):
And we had to lock the entire bus. We had to line up.
And it was a quick, it was a quick one, you know, I don't know what it was, one hits, two hits,
but I remember sitting on the wall and you could hear what was happening in
the room and it got scarier and
scarier as you got closer to the front of the line and you knew it was,
you knew it was your turn to go in. That's why I got tennis elbow, man. Yeah.

(01:09:48):
And I think you even have a, you had a special, you might've had a special paddle.
Do you remember that? I had one that looked like a bat.
Was I the one? I thought I thought it was something with Holstroth in it I could
be wrong No, I never had that,

(01:10:09):
Man, what a different time, huh? What a different time.
I never went back in that room, though. I should tell you that.
That's not true of all the people that went to Shreve. Right.
Some of them been in there several times.
But it straightened out a lot of them. Yeah. Worked for me.
I didn't want to be called. I didn't want to do anything that would have me

(01:10:31):
called to the principal's office. You were a good kid. Yeah. Good mama.
Great mama. Yes. That's a big part of it. Yes.
What's up you have any principal stories or even teaching stories i hear some
one of our aunts taught in new orleans and i've heard some horrific stories
of of what goes on in there and there's you know just lack of discipline and

(01:10:56):
not really the truth of the matter is,
every school i've been in and i went in some that were pretty tough but i can
my one take being a principal is, I was a teacher and principal for 34 years.
I can't name you five bad kids.
Kids are not bad. Parents don't know how to handle and they don't discipline

(01:11:21):
kids and they don't teach them the right thing.
If a kid's got good parents, if he's got a good family structure,
he won't do anything wrong.
If he doesn't have that, he'll do anything wrong because he's,
I was, as I was growing up as a kid, I knew I was accountable all the way from

(01:11:44):
my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my mama, my daddy, my grandma, everybody.
I was accountable to a whole family. I was not accountable.
I was responsible and accountable. Not that I was perfect.
I sure as hell wasn't. But I think that's what's lacking with kids today.
As far as Shreva School, I thought it was a great school. I thought it was a great kids.

(01:12:06):
I can't say that it was wild, it was not. They were disciplined, they were.
What you expect kids to be doing. So all my experience with all of those kids
have been good experiences, good communities.
Loved every minute of it. I wonder how much it's changed.
I wonder what it'd be like if you went and sit in a principal's office at Drew

(01:12:29):
School today. I'd probably get fired.
I think the kids' families have changed. You don't have the family structure you used to have.
And that's the key to kids, you know.
You look what's happening in those big cities. 70% of them don't have mom and

(01:12:50):
daddy and don't know what's going on.
They're roaming the streets at 1, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
You see a kid 15 years old shooting somebody at 3 o'clock in the morning.
Why is he out at 3 o'clock in the morning?
When you were 15 years old, you weren't going to be out at 3 o'clock in the morning, I promise you.
So you couldn't even think about going wrong.
That's true. I think that's the real issue with what's the family structure is broken down.

(01:13:15):
And until that gets straightened out, it's not going to get better.
We're lucky that we live in communities where pretty much we had good family
structures. That helps.
But as far as the kids, kids are not bad. They need direction.
Another thing I've always wondered about, Paul, is these days it's rare for

(01:13:35):
men to get into teaching. In fact, growing up, I would say most of my teachers
were women, but there were a few men.
Most of them were coaches, though, that were just teaching because.
That's changed dramatically. When I started, I'd say probably better than 50%
of the teachers were men. Yeah. Had a lot of men teaching.

(01:13:59):
The hierarchy to the principalship and assistant principals were mostly men.
Now, I'd say the majority of them are women, for sure. So that's changed.
As a matter of fact, I got to compliment my daddy, too. He was made principal
of Thibodeau Junior High, and he was instrumental in appointing the first assistant

(01:14:22):
principal, a woman, as assistant principal of a junior high school.
Jeez. He did that. Her name was Miss Heard Carnegie, the Carnegies, Skipper Carnegies.
I guess Because they ain't great. But anyway, yeah.
It's different. So I don't think that's the reason for the lack of discipline that you have.

(01:14:47):
Yeah, yeah. I think it's parental breakdown.
That's the cause of the chaos.
What do you do to fix it? Go to church. I think...
Federal government, and I'm going to get into politics here,
but I think the federal government early on started trying to help people.

(01:15:11):
And when I was growing up, there was no federal government to help me.
The only thing that could help me were my parents, my grandparents.
Now, you don't have that, so what do you have to help you?
The federal government, and there are a lot a social program so
therefore you don't rely on family you're not dependent upon a

(01:15:33):
network of people to help you you're depending on
the federal government to give you something that i
think is the thing that's done the most to
destroy the family because if you
can depend on uncle sam to give you a check instead of
grandpa growing you some beans that destroys
the family the federal government has destroyed our family

(01:15:55):
or has helped to destroy the families yeah i
think it's a good example of like good intentions
gone wrong you know yeah i don't think anybody intended for
that to happen right there was like kids need
to eat so therefore let's help them well then it
gets to be well then the whole family needs something to eat so let's
help them but sooner or later then those

(01:16:17):
people and and there's nothing wrong with
those people except that they then become dependent
on a government instead of a family as
a network of support you need the family without a family you don't have a much
of anything and i'll stress that with you i don't know how many times oh yeah
the biggest thing you got in the whole world is your family without that if

(01:16:39):
you don't have that you don't have anything that's a fact yeah if you have too
much help you don't need much skill.
True you don't need to learn you don't need
to but then you learn not
to be like i don't like
the federal government gives me something i don't have to contribute anything

(01:17:00):
to it when i was growing up when at that point in time we needed food i depended
on my grandpa to provide me with food but i had to contribute to that i had
to peel some beans i had to peel some peas i had I had to put up cans.
I had to plow. I had to cut the weeds, you know, stuff like that.

(01:17:20):
So you had to be a contributor to it. Now you don't have to be a contributor.
Don't even have to pay taxes because you'll get, you know, you'll get money back.
So it's the federal government has, with all the best of intentions, created a problem.
Yep. Okay.
So in case y'all couldn't tell from this podcast, One thing that I hope you

(01:17:42):
all did get to understand is that my grandpa is a truly a jack of all trades.
And I think that that's become lost in later generations as society pushes us to specialize.
So like the way to the way to succeed now or the key to success is becoming
like really good at one thing.
But Papa is like a rare combination of being really intelligent and really hardworking. working.

(01:18:07):
And as you've heard, he can, you know, run a school from an administrative standpoint,
but he can also teach any of the classes.
He can fix anything that breaks in the school, or he could rebuild it from the ground up by himself.
The design, the carpentry work, the plumbing, electricity, all of it.
And it turns out he could also drive all the buses if he needed to.

(01:18:28):
But growing up with you, even into adulthood, you've passed on like not just
these individual skills,
which are useful and important, but more importantly, the mindset that I can
do anything that I set my mind to, whether that be build a shed in my backyard,
remodel apartments, or run a successful business.

(01:18:48):
So I have three questions to finish up this podcast.
The first one is what advice do you have for me going forward?
I'll give you something. Not a teacher teacher, but somebody told me,
every problem in the world has a solution.
Every problem. Not just a math problem. Any problem.

(01:19:12):
And if you can't solve it, it's because you're too stupid.
God, boy, way to just put the pressure on, huh? I like it, though.
No, every problem has a solution. If you can't figure it out,
work hard enough so you get it. Till you finally solve the problem.
If not, then you're too stupid. I like it. All right.

(01:19:33):
All right. So my kids are still really young, but if you can imagine 20 years
from now, what advice do you, would you have for them?
I think they need to be family-oriented, as I think they are.
The most important thing in the world for them are their brothers,
their sisters, their mamas, their daddies, their grandpas. Those are the most important things.

(01:19:56):
Because this world is changing and it's evolving in such a way that with AI,
we don't know where things are going to eventually evolve.
They need to be flexible. They need to be hardworking. They need to have a sense
of responsibility to family, period. Awesome.
And more generally what do you

(01:20:18):
think is important to pass down like what you
answered that question yeah what's important to
pass down the later generations is that yeah because
you can't at this point in time in my time it was easier to predict outcomes
or to pick what predict what's going to happen i grew up in a time when you
didn't even have jet engines you didn't we didn't have cell phones we didn't

(01:20:41):
have television we didn't have electricity we didn't have water we We didn't have gas.
We didn't have any of those things. Now they've got all of that.
It's a taken for granted thing. But then they've got to be flexible in not knowing
the outcome even because, again,
with this, things are going to evolve right now at such a rapid rate.

(01:21:04):
I don't think you can make predictions about the future, about what in terms of a career.
Things are going to change.
Yeah, what if you go into business, into the cooler rental business, you know?
Yeah. Invest all your money into that, and the next thing you know,
everybody's got one in their house. Yeah.
But we, like right now, you got more computer power in my cell phone than NASA

(01:21:31):
had when it sent out the first spaceship. Yeah. You know?
You don't know how things are going to evolve with this AI. I'm telling you
right now that I believe that things are going to evolve at such a rapid rate
in medicine, especially medicine, I would think.
With all the money that's going to be poured into research.
In terms of progress that they're going to make with the human experiences,

(01:21:55):
it's going to be tremendous.
You're lucky to be living at this point. I wish I could live another 20 years
to see where we're going to be.
You know, but I'm not. You never know how old my mom is.
I'm in the last decade of my life. I mean, you know, that's a fact.
And that's okay. I don't have a problem with that. But it'd be interesting to
see, like your kids, you know, the world they're going to be exposed to It's

(01:22:19):
not the world that you're going to see right now, I promise you.
You already see it happening like day by day. Yeah.
And it's going to happen with this AI and the money that's being poured into
it, especially in medicine.
Man, things are going to change at such a rapid rate that you're not going to believe it.
Disease, I think people are going to live a heck of a lot longer in that sense

(01:22:39):
because the genetic component of diseases is going to be eliminated, I promise you.
You know, to where people are going to live for a lot longer period of time.
Hopefully that comes sooner than later then. Yeah, it does. It does.
What else you got, Shane?

(01:22:59):
How do we get everyone in the world to listen to this?
They need to hear it, man. There's some things in here that everyone needs to hear.
And to know that we are, you know, You know, Papa's old, but he's not that old. He's almost 85.
And just the amount of things that he has seen and experienced is unbelievable.

(01:23:20):
You know, if you go back 85 years ago, this world doesn't even look remotely the same.
No, you don't. Like I said, we didn't even have television.
Electricity. What would you have plugged it into? The problem with electricity,
it was abundant and it was there. The problem is with World War II,

(01:23:41):
every house that has electricity needs a step-down transformer.
They were building tanks. They couldn't build transformers. So you didn't have
the infrastructure to support all of that.
Yeah. You know? When did y'all get electricity? Shortly after World War II?
After World War II, Dad was the first electrician I knew. He came down there
and he ran one wire right down the middle of the house.

(01:24:02):
And he pulled the pull chain light. I bet that was cool. Was it insulated wire?
Yeah, it was insulated. Okay. Yeah, it was insulated wire. Then Grandpa got
all excited because he had an electric bill.
That was $3 a month. Hey, that's a lot for just a light.
It's not you running the AC. No, no, no. That was the first electric appliance

(01:24:24):
we had was an electric toaster.
You put the toaster in, and then it heats it up, and you had to be careful.
You burn the bread, and you burn the house.
Do you remember that light coming on for the first time?
Really that he had seen lights in in other buildings
but he just didn't have it at a house but in your house man
it's like that's something yeah but that

(01:24:46):
wasn't that wasn't a big thing for me no i don't remember
that all i know is we had it geez did everybody complain all summer long that
they were hot oh we uh we sat we had we sat on the porch mostly you know just
because i hear I hear a lot of I'm hots at my house, and it's not hot.

(01:25:09):
You need a porch. Yeah.
This is awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks so much,
Paul. Thanks for having me. You sound very sharp.
Getting dull about it today, Shane. I can't tell. I can't tell.
This is awesome. Really, really cool. Appreciate the time with you guys.

(01:25:31):
Yeah, so much fun, Paul. Love talking to you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. That's it.
So these days, Papa is getting a little older. He's actually battling cancer right now.

(01:27:16):
Music.

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Ep. 5 - Earl Clement: Jack of All Trades

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 5 - Earl Clement: Jack of All Trades