Farm-worker family had their share of challenges
“I’m originally from Louisiana, a little town called Mamou. Everyone called it Big Mamou. As I was growing up, our family worked on the farms. We were in the fields picking sweet potatoes, cotton, soybeans, peanuts, watermelon. You name it, we did it. And everything was by hand. I missed so many days of school because of that, sometimes two or three weeks at a time. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t graduate or learn as much as I should have about certain subjects. I had to work to help our family.
“We didn’t even have indoor plumbing where we lived on the farms. We used an outhouse. We didn’t have a real bathtub, either. I remember in the winter, we’d dig a 3-foot hole in the ground, lay some bricks or blocks around it, throw some wood in the hole, light it, and then set a big, round galvanized tub on top. They had a well out there, and we’d hand-pump that water and then pour it into the tub. When the water got good and warm, we’d take rags or gloves to grab the two handles, and we’d carry that baby into the house. As kids, we’d bathe in that tub, on our knees or standing up.
“Looking back on those days, I guess it was kind of a hard life. But back then, we didn’t see it that way. It was just the way we grew up. It was just how living was.”
— Albert Jack
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