An excerpt from White River Memoirs: The Spoken History of a Liquid Legend, by Chris Engholm in partnership with the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History
Interview with:
Albert Bush
Locaion: Des
Arc
Date: August 14, 2012
Interviewed by Chris Engholm
Chris: How are you doing?
Albert: Oh…fair. What you want to talk about?
Chris: I’m working with a museum in Springdale, which is up
north near Bentonville, and we’ve received a little grant of money for me to
travel around and talk to people who have memories of the White River…fishing
on it, playing on it, or working on it.
Albert: Well, I
was born on it.
Chris: Really?
Albert: Yea, I was born in a houseboat on White River.
Chris: There
don’t appear to be many houseboats left on the river?
Albert: No, I got rid of mine, let’s see, last year and gave
it to my nephew. I had others for
years and forgot to save them. Me
and my wife grew up there around that houseboat. Raised a couple of fine boys, one of them is a policeman
over in Little Rock – I wish he was closer.
Chris: Tell me
about the river back then.
Albert: The
river was something. Every part of
people’s lives were involved with the river here. And probably other places too. You talk to people in Clarendon and it’s the same way. It was a livelihood. There were boats run by Lewis Sanders
and Ralph Sincks[]. The big money
that kept everyone alive was the shell boats they ran up and down the
river. And then they hauled
timber. Had them old paddle-wheel
boats.
Chris: Sounds wonderful.
Albert: The one
we hate to see come up river was the Mary Woods. That sucker up waves higher than the ceiling there and you
out there in one of those jon boats, and you find you a hiding place. It’d blow the whistle and let you know
to get out of the way.
Chris: What
kind of boats were you in?
Albert: Just
fishing boats, like this one here beside the house. But made out of wood.
That’s before aluminum boats came up. Most people built their boats. They’d kept cypress lumber and stuff and build them.
Chris: Were they made out of cypress?
Albert: Yea.
The water don’t affect it much. I mean you can run cypress years and years
without it rotting. The houseboats
were built on tooey[] cypress, the bottoms and all. They were built like a big boat with a house on top of
it. And some of them used Choctaw
logs. They’d have two or three big
logs, they call them Chocktaw logs.
That’s a kind of a wood, great big, I’ve seen them probably as big as
five feet through. And I mean that
houseboat would stand up in the water.
It was really hard to sink that wood, and it would last 50 or 60 years,
I guess. A lot of people had them.
Chris: What did the riverbank look like?
Albert: The
fish markets were on the river then.
With people waiting at the river, parked down there. They had fish markets all down the way,
Johnny Dopps[]—his family, his daddy---that’s the way they made their living
there after they quit farming.
That was White River back then.
Chris: What was
the river like as a backyard as a kid growing up?
Albert: There’d
be fifteen of us then, you know, get out of school…I went to school in Des
Arc. After I got married I went to
the Navy. I worked over in Little
Rock or years. Came
back soon as I could. I
couldn’t believe the changes. All the
timber was being cut.
Chris: This was
in the 1960s?
Albert: The
1950s was probably the beginning because just after I got out of the Navy in
1959, I noticed all the timber was
leaving, all downs the river banks and on both sides. I was out in my boat anchored out fishing and this
farmer come by. There wasn’t
nothing left. The bank had
done caved in about seventy or eighty feet, and he had a bean field up
there. But they’d cut the
timber, see, clean to the bank.
Chris: They had
cut the trees right to the river.
Albert: And
then they didn’t have nothing to hold the bank, and boy, it comin’. The flood come up and here it
comes. Caved in. He said, ‘I ought to have left
some of those trees up there.’ And
I said, ‘It’s too late, now.’ The
way we have a flood every year, you couldn’t plant trees, see, just about every
year. I said, ‘You couldn’t plant
them fast enough to make any difference.’
Not there on the bank. Out
a little further you could.
It’s sad watching all that happen.
Chris: It
happened fast, too.
Albert: Really
fast. I remember when they started
putting that purple paint on the trees.
They brought in deers – spotted deer – down here and it was the worst
thing for the people. I
could not believe how greedy the people got about hunting. If they caught you on their land,
they wanted to charge you three or four hundred dollars for trespassing on
their land. And before that we
could hunt, we could do anything on their land. We never caught more than we needed; we’d catch what
we wanted to eat and go home.
Chris: But then
the purple paint on the trees was there to keep everyone out.
Albert:
Yep. (Remembering) …Them
rabbits at night, I’m telling you, that was fun. Not deer. We
didn’t have no deer back then. The
Game and Fish Commission brought them in. They brought in deer…and then for some reason – and I
don’t who had this big idea – but they brought in beaver. Well, it didn’t take the beaver long to
become really populated, and they started going up in there and into the
ditches and blocking the drains going to the river, and the farmers flooded. So they said, ‘We’ll get alligators to
take care of the beavers.’ You
ever seen that cartoon? I think it
started out with a mouse. And then
they got cat, and then the dog…and it ended up an elephant. Well, that’s the Game and Fish
Commission right there.
Chris: It could
be its logo.
Albert: And now
they’ve introduced bear, and I’m kind of scared to take my grandkids in there
to go hunting. Man, we’ve got bear
everywhere. Black bear. I was up there at Old River Lake, which
they’ve got it posted so bad that you can’t go in there unless you got a flood. When you’ve got a flood, you can go
anywhere in a boat, the law says you can go in by boat. So I was up there one day crappie
fishing. I and heard these four
dogs, and they was chasing this bear just right in this big thicket out there
where I was fishing. You couldn’t
see out through it, it was so thick.
Well that bear got in that thicket, and then they bait him. He stopped. He
said, ‘well, I’m going to take care of myself I guess,’ backed up some way in
that thicket. And I could hear him
roar when the the dogs would try to get him. And I could hear the bear go after the dogs. After all I started to think
about going out there and I though, ‘You’re crazy man. That sucker is mad. He’s likely to rap you upside the
head.’ But about three days later
I went back up there. All the
stink you ever heard of. After
awhile I see those dogs. They were
a brave bunch of dogs but that bear killed every one of them. And I mean it stunk bad.
Chris: Were
these wild dogs?
Albert: No, no,
just people’s dogs. They get out
and go hunting. Two or three of
them get together and go up and down the bayou there. And they run into that bear and ‘Boy, look what we
got.’ And he killed every one of
those suckers. He’d let out a roar
and he’d bite or slap one of them.
Black bear is all up and down White River now. Most of them were placed in the refuge south of
here. Now the problem is
alligators. We’ve had two or three
up here. There are so many kids
who use the river and bayou for recreation. It’s got so bad you don’t want to swim in the river. The water’s got so bad you don’t want
to swim in that river. It’s green
and it smells like a sewer. It
brought tears to my eyes, boy.
Chris: And the
Army Corps website says water quality is fine.
Albert:
Balony. There are no more
mussels shells. All dried up. Ain’t none left. They all gone. Further down south, they probably
already gone too down there.
Pennywinkles. A snail is
what he is. And they got a little
curly house he lives in. There was
all kinds of really good stuff in that river. We had gars that weighed 280 pounds. You won’t see none of them either. You won’t see very many white catfish
anymore. Now we got bullheads and
willowcats…flatheads and bluecats.
That’s about all that’s left.
Chris: What is happening with these giant carp that are
jumping everywhere?
Albert: Oh God,
man. Them old bigheads will knock
your brains out. One of them
suckers hit my seat and I bet he was sixty pounds. I’m glad he hit that seat instead of my head, or he’d knock
me out of that boat. And one time
out on the bayou, one came flying over the back of the boat, right across my
lap. That’s a crazy sucker, some
kind of Chinese stuff.
Chris: Asian
carp.
Albert: Someone
put them loose in here, and now they’re ruining the sport.
…if they don’t do something about that Red. The Little Red River is what’s messing
us up. It comes down from Heber
Springs and when that water hits White River it’s ice cold. When it hits the fish, it throws them
into shock. When it hits the
shells, I guess it kills them.
And now we ain’t got nothing left on the bottom of that river. Nothing. Except that old foreign muscle they call a zebra. It latches onto boats and come on in
from China or some place. The biggest
problem is the dam. And they
got them on account of trout. That
ice water coming out is what keeps them trout alive. Game and Fish is in on that one. Boy, something ought to be done about that. I ain’t got brains enough or I’d fight
them.
Chris: You were
born on the river and grew up here.
Were you a commercial fisherman?
Albert:
Yea. I fished for sturgeon
and catfish mostly, and mostly on trot lines. But I had to give it up. Pulled both my shoulders out. Had to give it up.
That’s the only job I could sit down and do. You sit down in the boat and that where you run all your
stuff.
I was born on a house boat at the foot of Bean Creek here,
and raised right over here on the next block. My daddy worked down at the old saw mill they had here
then. They’d brink logs down the
river, snake them up by steam power to the saw mill. There was a man named Stewart bought virgin timber land here
for fifty cents an acre back in the thirties. He bought all the timber up and down the river. [Check with Neva about this]
Chris: Is
sturgeon an edible fish?
Albert: You get
the caviar. They didn’t too good
that past two years. I look for
that to stop too on account of the river situation with the water.
Chris: So just in the last two years, you see a decline in
the number of sturgeon.
Albert: Oh
yea.
Chris: Before
that, sturgeon were here?
Albert: Lord
yes. When I first started – this
was twenty years ago -- it wasn’t nothing to catch two hundred sturgeon in a
day on a trot line.
Chris: So the
night before you’d put out a trot line and let it sit all night?
Albert:
Yea. All night. And maybe a couple of times the next
day. You’d go run it and bait
it. That’s the way you fished
them.
Chris: And you
could catch two hundred sturgeon?
Albert: Hell
yes. I’ve caught that much on two
lines. But nowadays, if they get six or seven a day, they’re really doing
good.
Chris: How
would you market the roe?
Albert: Back
then, there was a guy in Devall’s named Underwood. Him and his brother run a place up there. They’d process the sturgeon. I would take the eggs out and take the
eggs to Underwood. Then they’d
process them. Now, W.O. Prince in
a place south of us about twenty miles, does all that and has a big market down
there on the Cache River.
Chris: Is that
the place with the catfish restaurant too?
Albert:
Yea. And in that town is a
post office and a store. We know
it by the store and not the town. [The town is Brasfield, on Route 70] He’s still in the business. I’ve been out about three
years.
Chris: But you
still go fishing for recreation?
Albert: O
yea. In October of last year, I
caught a big cat. I’d been wanting
– before I die -- to catch one of those big things over fifty pounds, on rod
and reel. I was up to forty-four
pounds. Then last October I caught
a fifty-six pounder. So I made it
over fifty pounds.
Chris: You did
it!
Albert: But
this year I caught something even bigger, at about the same place I caught that
old catfish. About two months ago.
This dude got on there and I
pulled up on him. I use
150-pound test line and 9-0 hooks; that’s the way I fish. And I went to pulling on this dude, and
I couldn’t move him. So I said,
‘What in the world,’ and just kept pulling and pulling. When I finally got him up, he
come off the bottom, he’d come up a little, and then move out again. I really pull hard, get him back, get
him up a little bit more. That
fight went on for about thirty-five or forty minutes.
Chris: Were you
anchored in the current at this point?
Albert: Yea,
and I pulled and pulled and it wasn’t fighting like no catfish. I wanted to see what this sucker
is. I finally got him up and his
head was about a foot wide. And
his body was about a yard wide.
Chris: My God.
Albert: He was
a loggerhead turtle. And he was
about seven inches across his feet.
And them claws were at least three-and-a-half or four inches long. What he was doing when he was on the
bottom, he’d latch on, see, and
he’d start moving out and I’d pick him up and get him up there at the
boat. And they’ve got flippers,
like a catfish with four tails! He
whooped me, boy. I pulled
something loose in my back. And
then I got inflammation and my muscles pressed in on my nerves, and my muscles
down my back all died, on both sides of my back from the neck down. The injury to a disc was right between
my shoulders. It hurt all the way
down. So I’ve been fighting a
battle, and been in for shots every two weeks. I couldn’t do anything and the pain was just so terrible. So I finally took an MRI and he seen
it; I had about five place besides that one. I’ve had a rough time up to a month ago.
Chris: And all
because of this turtle.
Albert:
Yea. That turtle whooped my
hide end, boy. But I had to see
what it was. And if I knew what it
was I’d just cut my line. When I
got him up I just took my scolar-secor[] hook – it’s made like a screw driver
and you get it on your line and snap it off something – and I’d catch the hook
when his head turned so he couldn’t bite me or get his claws into the underside
of my arm, to get him off. The
third time I got it loose. But he
had whooped me, boy, I’ll tell you.
The pain was just getting worse and worse. Finally, my doctor over there did the work. I got a spot on my right lung; it ain’t
moved in five years, but he was wondering where all this pain was coming
from. He did an MRI and spotted it
right away. Sent me to a
specialist and he’s helping me.
Chris: So you are rehabbing for a few months before going
after the next river monster?
Albert: I do
that out in the yard with the tiller.
Chris: And
maybe don’t set any more goals for catching sixty-pound creatures out of the
river.
Albert: No, no,
that one was big enough.
-end-
