Oxen Driving, Drum Majoring Filled Early Years Of Jay Freeland

Golden Anniversary Edition of the Crowley Daily Signal Pub. 1949, page 81

By Jay Freeland

When I was about 16, back in June of 1894, I was mighty busy working for Charlie and Tom (Freeland) at Prairie Hayes driving oxen in connection with their rice cultivation. We used to haul rice to Crowley with three yoke of oxen. My parents, Dr. and Mrs Charles Freeland, came down here with me from Rogers, Arkansas. His health had failed and Charlie and Tom, having been here for a few years, wanted him to come, thinking a change of climate would be beneficial.

I went to school to Professor J. H. Lewis at the old college when Henry Kaplan (newphew of Mr. A. Kaplan) Ella Caston, Sadie Miller, John McIlhenny, Frank Naftel, Estelle Clark. Blanche Ellison and many others were pupils. At lunch period we used to hunt up Henry Kaplan because he always brought cheese in his lunch and with the sweet potatoes I would bring and biscuits or other edibles brought by the other country boys, we'd manage to have a real good feed before noon was over. "Louise" Williams had just graduated when I was in school.

And I played in the band which was pictured recently in The Signal, too, with Professor Scarborough and Charlie Crippen. I was drum major at that time. I remember Mr. Duson hired a train from the Southern Pacific and paid them $700 for the excursion to Port Arthur and back where we gave a band concert. We sold tickets at Midland, Jennings, every stop, and there were two carloads of people leaving from Crowley. We bought ham and buns and made sandwiches to sell on the train and did everything we could think of to make more money. I guess we cleared about $400 over our expenses, which was mighty welcome because we were in debt for our instruments and uniforms and the Port Arthur excursion proved to be the answer to that problem!

There was no rice market in those days and I remember us loading a car of rice that we couldn't sell here, couldn't sell in New Orleans, this belonging to the Freeland brothers, and finally we shipped it to Dan Talmadge and he required that Tom and Charlie pay the freight and we ended up with them getting nothing at all for a whole year of hard work that very wet year and the whole crop brought nothing.

The same band made a trip down to Grand Chenier about that time, too, a lot of people making that excursion too. Excursions, in those days were the big excitement in the entertainment category. Those were the times when the Riley Hotel was operating about where the press room of the Crowley Daily Signal is now.

In those tough crop years I remember that the Dan Blum store, (Roos and Blum) were kind and understanding enough to give the Freelands limited credit while things were going badly.

I worked on a farm right next to Bob Black's old farm property. To get to school I'd walk the distance, most of the time, barefooted, to school and back.

In 1901 Miss Jessie Barr, daughter of John Barr of Iowa, and I were married. She visited down here and we were married in Marucs, Iowa. She was my childhood sweetheart and had visited at Akey Miller's several times. We first lived out South of Crowley during which time I bought a little farm about four miles south of Crowley where we remained about 23 years, then to our present place where we've been about 25 years. I remember when Jessie and I got in after our wedding, r. Duson had arranged for Charlie Crippen to meet us at the train and take us home in a three-seated surrey. That was a high style then and a fine beginning to our married lives!