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K: They practically own Okeechobee County.
M: They started off with that, and then they got in the shipping business. One
of the girls married an old Yankee who was hiding in the mangroves down
there during the Civil War, and he could out-maneuver them and to get
Yankee boats coming in on him. He was captured when he was slipping in
there around. He knew in and out, one thing or another, and that's one
reason why they talked him into shipping in cattle. That's where they
got in that boat business. That was the backbone, the cow, the cowman,
that was money.
K: Yeah.
M: It was something else, I tell you. Now,over in Taylor County, I'll tell you
what Mr. Spencer, head of the extension service, told me. He said, "We met
over in the theatre." There were hookworms and malaria. Perry, in Taylor
County, was the first county that ever had a health unit. People used to
think that at a certain time of year it'd kill some people. They used to
log over there, and send it to East Port in Jacksonville and mill it, but
they moved the mill to Perry between '28 and '39. The big logging
camp down at Carver had three thousand men on the payroll, but there weren't
fifteen hundred of them working at one time.
K: Were they all sick?
M: Yeah, puny, and one thing and another. So they established a health unit.
Go over there today and go through the graveyard. If a family raised one
child out of five back there, it was doing good. If it had raised two, now
that was something. You ought to go over there and see the infants laying
by the people. There were hookworms and malaria.
K: Did the extension service have anything to do with migrant workers?
Were they responsible for anything?
M: In its infancy it probably was, but I don't know who handles that now. I've
been reading Anderson, and he's given it a gloomy picture.
K: Yeah, it's pretty bad all right.
M: Well, I've seen it when I worked in Lake County. A. Doodles & Sons, the
same ones that we were talking about, put in to abolish Chase and Company
one time, because it wouldn't finance him. They went broke, went back north,
and came back again. I talked to the farmers and gave them plants, and told
them to wait until the crop was made, but they got on their feet. When I was
down there, I thought they were wonderful people to the extent that I knew
them. See, they had a farm at Lake _. I knew the ex-county agent that
operated it, and I'd take the samples, fertilizer and all. They had one at
Lake Hart and at Avida. I knew that operation was headquarters, but I never
did go down to the Everglades or Cocoa. They had a big ranch, but I admire
them putting in the church and community house. At that time it was a co-op.
I guess it still is, too.
The old folks'home, and that church were all obtained by (Doodles?), orphanage
and everything. I guess it's still operating the same way. I thought that was
good.