Interviewee: Earl Leblanc Tape 4852 Interviewer: Amanda Fontenot Session 1
Transcriber: Erin Segura March 2, 2018
Translator: Jackson Butterbaugh [Begin Tape 4852. Begin Session I.]
AMANDA FONTENOT: All right.
JOANNE LEBLANC: I didn’t do anything. I just had babies, that’s all. [laughs] And I finished high school, yeah. Okay, go ahead. [laughs]
FONTENOT: [laughs] Okay. I am Amanda Fontenot. It is the 2nd of March in 2018. I am here with Earl and Joanne Leblanc and it is 11:23 a.m. Cool. All right. Quoi était l’importance de le militaire quand tu étais petit?
EARL LEBLANC: J’ai travaillé dans Port Allen quand j’ai fini l’école et in the army, you had to be … you had to, in other words, you had to be registered and you were on the registration that you were drafted, eligible. So, I knew that I couldn’t get a good job. J’ai pas cherché une bonne place pour travailler parce que les Army, j’ai pu pas travailler un bon job because we were in the service and we were … the station that, I worked in the service station because they didn’t require that you … they would hire you regardless. So, my friends, mes quatre … non, trois autres hommes a passé et ils ont demandé moi pour aller avec lui dans le service, in the service. Lui a parlé dans New Orleans avec tous les autres, quatre personnes a été dans New Orleans, était … un de les hommes, he could not pass the test, parce que, il est … son
… il a été less than 100 --
FONTENOT: Il est très petit.
EARL: Less than 125 pounds, so he had to … we went to the French Quarter, picked up some bananas and we fed him bananas and he passed the test. He weighed 126 pounds -- FONTENOT: [3:40] [laughs]
EARL: … so we all went from Port … from New Orleans, and they were going to send me directly to Sam Houston, Texas. And I said, “No, I can’t go, because I didn’t tell … j’ai pas parlé avec ma Mame et mon Papé.” Il a donné quatre pour aller dans Port Allen et aussi à Plaquemine pour dire à ma famille que je vas [être] dans … in the service. So, [coughs] we went from there to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and from there we went to Fort Riley, Kansas, by train. Mon premier … my first ride on the train was from Fort Sam Houston to Fort Riley, Kansas. And then, from there, we went to Fort Benning, Georgia for jump training. Simpson, un de les hommes qui a été avec nous-autres, didn’t want to go to [inaudible]. He was playing football, so he dropped out. We went on to Fort Benning, Georgia, and finished jump school, and then they sent us, because we had volunteered Special Forces and basic training. They sent us to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for Special Forces training. We stayed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for a year, and in 1953, the latter part of 1953, we got a mission to go to Europe as Special Forces to … at the end of World War II, we went to Europe. We ended up in Germany. One of the qualifications for Special Forces was that I needed to be with another foreign language and j’ai parlé bon français équand j’ai été dans … [laughs] in the service.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: But after that, I mean, that was 62, 62 (soixante-deux) years ago, and you … if you don’t use it you lose it.
FONTENOT: [laughs]
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: Et j’ai … I lost it. I lost it.
JOANNE: [6:37] [laughs]
EARL: J’ai pas [proche] asteur. Je comprends tout, mais je suis pas … je peux pas parler français comme j’ai … moi, like I wanted to.
JOANNE: [agrees]
EARL: When I speak with somebody else who’s speaking French, je comprends qui c’est il dit, et j’use … je vas user son français avec, pour moi … in other words, I use his language when I’m speaking to him, and I can … I can converse back and forth in French.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: J’ai parlé avec mon … les hommes qui a commencé les Special Forces dans 19 … dans 1952 (dix-neuf cinquante-deux). Ils parlent un bon français et j’ai parlé français avec lui pour deux ans que j’ai été avec lui. J’ai usé mon français avec lui et les German people, il a plein qui, ils parlent un bon français, parce qu’ils ont été avec … dans la France et dans World War II, and they took the French, in other words, and you could speak … I couldn’t understand their German, they couldn’t understand my English, but I could speak French to them. J’ai parlé français avec lui.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: C’est tout. FONTENOT: [laughs] JOANNE: [laughs] EARL: [laughs]
FONTENOT: Où est-ce que tu --
EARL: What’s that?
FONTENOT: [8:40] Où est-ce que tu, where dans l’Allemagne, in Germany?
EARL: J’ai … dans Germany, j’étais à [Bad Tölz]. J’ai … they put us in a SS-Kaserne, one of the storm troopers in Europe, in and out of the Europe theatre, there was a big kaserne, they call it Flint Kaserne. And they just mangled it … in other words, they took it apart, but it was about ten kilometers from Hitler’s headquarters in Bad Tölz, Germany.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: And … j’ai été à son … place dans Germany.
FONTENOT: So … quoi est-ce que tu … travailles dans … tu es dans la Corée Conflict. What is it that you did?
EARL: J’ai sorti des aéroplanes pour deux ans et demi. J’ai sorti des aéroplanes tout partout. [laughs]
FONTENOT: La première fois dans l’avion, tu … parachute dans la première fois?
EARL: La première fois?
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: À Fort Benning, Georgia, sept jumps. Sept … cinq --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … dans les … in the daytime --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … et deux en nuit.
FONTENOT: [disagrees] [laughs]
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: Cinq dans le daytime and two at night, one week, in one week.
FONTENOT: [11:19] Cool. [laughs]
EARL: [laughs] Et mon premier airplane ride --
FONTENOT: [agrees] EARL: … j’ai sorti. [laughs] JOANNE: [laughs]
FONTENOT: Comment est le français de l’Europe est différent pour le français de Louisiane?
EARL: Pour parler avec les hommes là-bas? Le français de Louisiana, c’est similar to the … je parle tout le temps avec les autres, mais … I forgot.
FONTENOT: [laughs]
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: J’ai pas parlé avec … I didn’t speak French for a long time --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … and when you don’t use it, you lose it.
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: So, I’ve been … lately, I go to Breaux Bridge, because I belong to a Special Forces organization in Breaux Bridge. The Special Forces is Chapter 81 and it … they have a memorial in Breaux Bridge, and there’s one at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the only two memorials, this is for Special Ops, in the United States of America. In other words, there’s two of them, one in Breaux Bridge and one at Fort Benning, Georgia … I mean, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. By the
way, the thing is on Smoke Bomb Hill, that’s where we did our training from, Smoke Bomb Hill at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before we went over to Europe.
FONTENOT: [13:34] [agrees] Cool. Well, I think we’ll take a quick break real quick.
JOANNE: Okay.
FONTENOT: [break in tape] Cool. Cool. We’re back. It is 12:11. I’m here with Earl and Joanne Leblanc. Earl is from Brooks --
EARL: Brooks, Louisiana.
FONTENOT: Which doesn’t exist anymore.
EARL: It’s between Morganza and New Roads.
FONTENOT: Cool. And Miss Joanne is from Plaquemine. Cool. All right. Well, it is the 2nd of March and this is the second half.
EARL: [agrees]
FONTENOT: Cool, cool. All right. Ton frère, dans le militaire, aussi?
EARL: J’ai … étaient quatre frères dans World War II.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: Tous dans le Navy. Tous dans le … j’ai … il a été un … [Roy] was on the destroyer, sister ship to the Kidd --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … in Baton Rouge, and Allen was on the Battleship Mississippi --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … from 41 to 45. And Joe was on the … he was an island jumper. In other words, he was more or less stationed at the different islands and what-not.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: [15:06] They met a cousin of ours, all at Pearl Harbor. It was during the war. I don’t know exactly when.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: But they were at Pearl Harbor during World War II. So … and one of my brothers did not go overseas. He stayed in the States, but he kept wanting to volunteer to go overseas and they wouldn’t let him, and I think it was because of the Sullivan brothers, all five of them got killed on one ship and they decided that being there was three of them already in harm’s way, that they would not send the fourth one.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: Now, during World War … I mean, during the Korean War, I was in service. I went to Europe and my brother was also in service. He got drafted and he went to Korea. He was driving an ambulance in Korea --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … during the Korean War. So, we, all five of us drew hazardous pay and we all came home. We were very fortunate.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
JOANNE: One [crosstalk]
EARL: Now, mon frère, Roy, il a parlé bon français. Il a été dans South Africa [et il acheté un] pour ma mère.
JOANNE: [He did something for Mamaw.]
EARL: It was a Catholic … it was a Catholic --
FONTENOT: Un livre.
EARL: [16:50] Yeah, un livre pour elle to … my mother could read and write French. She could … in other words, the … all of the book that he bought was in French. And so, I don’t know what happened to it. Over the years it disappeared or left or whatever. But, she was very proud of the book that he sent her, because it was … it was in French.
JOANNE: Isn’t that something?
EARL: So … and my sister, she was also with the military. She was at Horten Field for about five years, four years. In other words, she was working as a mechanic on the training airplanes at Horten Field during World War II. [coughs] That’s about the size of it.
FONTENOT: [laughs]
EARL: [laughs]
JOANNE: And all of the boys …
EARL: All of the sons, there’s four in World War II, two in the Korean Conflict. I didn’t go to Korea. I went to Europe. My mission was Europe in 1952, I mean, 53. [Banks] at that time had trained Special Forces enough to where we were qualified to go on a mission, and we had to go to Europe. We went to Europe in 53.
FONTENOT: Tu as un frère qui ne travaille pour le militaire parce que, une jambe blessée parce que polio?
EARL: Oh, oui.
FONTENOT: Oui.
JOANNE: Boy, she’s good!
EARL: Mon frère --
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: [18:39] … Raymond Leblanc, il a fait toutes les choses pour aller dans l'Armée, mais sa jambe a été … it was his downfall.
JOANNE: [crosstalk]
EARL: He couldn’t go because he was not physically qualified to go.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
JOANNE: [crosstalk]
EARL: He tried all he could. Now, when he passed away, incidentally, he went to work for the Calcasieu Parish, and he was a classification officer for them, and he used his French. Il a usé son français pour parler avec les hommes qui ont été dans les … in the prison with him.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: And --
JOANNE: You understood that?
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: And anyway, when he passed away, they gave him a full … [cries] a full military burial, except they didn’t put a flag on his cross, on his coffin.
JOANNE: It’s okay, baby.
FONTENOT: We’re going to take another break. [break in tape] So, this is Amanda Fontenot with Earl and Joanne Leblanc. It is 12:24 and I have just one more question. Cool. Tu as beaucoup des amis, de famille qui est dans le militaire, aussi.
EARL: Ouais, ouais. I have aunts and uncles that were in the area when we were born and raised up that while I was coming up, I was too young for World War II, but they had quite a few in their family that my Aunt Eliska Ramagos, she had seven … six sons in service.
JOANNE: [21:05] Gosh.
EARL: A couple of them got wounded --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … in the World War II. One of them died with a piece of metal in his heart.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: In other words, they never could remove it. That was Clarence. Clarence Ramagos. And --
FONTENOT: Il est ton cousin, oui?
EARL: My cousin. She was my dad’s … his mother was my daddy’s --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … sister.
FONTENOT: Oui.
EARL: And Uncle [Mack] had several sons that were in service, and in fact, Clovis was one of the guys that got together with Joe and Allen at Pearl Harbor after the Japanese had bombed over there. They got together. In other words, they were there … and we had other kin … oh, Aunt [Myra]’s son --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … Irvin, was in service.
JOANNE: Aunt Myra was who’s sister?
EARL: That was Papa’s half-sister.
JOANNE: Oh, okay.
EARL: She was a Ramagos, also. FONTENOT: [22:22] [agrees] JOANNE: Oh.
EARL: And then, Tante [Oliva] was Uncle Mack … Papa’s brother, Uncle [Abeil] --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … and he had … let’s see … Charles, Nolan and Irvin. Yeah. He had … he has three sons that were in service. He … one of them, Dickie, that stayed with us from his birth until he was five years old. He was crippled just like Raymond. But he has a … his arm was cripped. It wasn’t his leg.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: And, of course, he couldn’t go in service, but his twin brother went in service, which was Irvin Ramagos.
FONTENOT: Isn’t that something?
EARL: So … we had quite a few people. And of course, we had a lot of friends and all that were in service in Morganza. Everytime you turned around, you saw somebody in uniform.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: I was delivering papers when my brother came in with his wife on the bus and I hollered at him, “Hi, Roy!” and I took off. [laughs] He told his wife. He said, “Who is that?” She said, “You’ve been away too long. That’s your brother.” [laughs]
FONTENOT: [laughs]
JOANNE: [laughs] Oh, they were so nice, those two.
EARL: Yeah. So we had quite … I had quite … In fact, I can remember Mama receiving letters from him that you could see through the letters, because they were all censored.
FONTENOT: [24:05] [agrees]
EARL: In other words --
JOANNE: Isn’t that something?
EARL: … they had been cut out, the whole --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … the whole thing had been cut out and … because all of them, they were overseas and they … all their mail was censored.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: So …
FONTENOT: Tu as beaucoup des amis qui est dans le militaire, beaucoup de jeunes garçons qui tu connais --
EARL: Oh, ouais. FONTENOT: [agrees] EARL: Tous mes amis -- FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … their brothers, that was older --
FONTENOT: [agrees] EARL: … was in the service. FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: So, j’ai … I played with them when I was a kid.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: You know? And of course, we had the ration stamps and whatever.
FONTENOT: [25:05] [agrees]
EARL: And we would go get groceries. We would have to bring the stamps to pick up the groceries --
JOANNE: I remember [crosstalk]
EARL: … with wartime stamps.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: And I brought them many a dozen eggs to exchange for a loaf of bread.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
JOANNE: Isn’t that something?
EARL: So … and I was born in 1932, which was in the Depression.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: So, we had a hard … we had hard times.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: But the French people are --
FONTENOT: [agrees] EARL: … they survive. FONTENOT: [agrees] JOANNE: [agrees]
FONTENOT: Quand tu étais petit, tu voies ton frère et ton frère et des amis, tout le monde allait.
EARL: Oh ouais, tout le temps, tout le temps.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: [26:07] Well, whenever they came home --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … when they, you know? When you’re in service, you don’t [coughs]
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … you don’t come home very often. [laughs]
FONTENOT: Ouais. [laughs]
EARL: [coughs] Usually, the ones that I saw afterwards was the ones that were wounded, that got sent home.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: Like Clarence, the one that had the --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … he had a piece of shrapnel that ended up in his heart --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … that they never could take out, you know?
JOANNE: Can you imagine?
EARL: In other words, he died. He died with it still in his heart.
FONTENOT: [agrees] Wow.
EARL: He was in the air force.
FONTENOT: Cool. Well, I think that’s … I think that’s just about it.
EARL: [laughs] FONTENOT: So, thank y’all. EARL: Okay.
JOANNE: Thank you. [laughs]
FONTENOT: All right. It is 12:31 on the 2nd of March.
[26:58]
[End Tape 4852. End Session 1.] [Total session time - 26:58]
Interviewee: Earl Leblanc Tape 4852 Interviewer: Amanda Fontenot Session 1
Transcriber: Erin Segura March 2, 2018
Translator: Jackson Butterbaugh [Begin Tape 4852. Begin Session I.]
AMANDA FONTENOT: All right.
JOANNE LEBLANC: I didn’t do anything. I just had babies, that’s all. [laughs] And I finished high school, yeah. Okay, go ahead. [laughs]
FONTENOT: laughs] Okay. I am Amanda Fontenot. It is the 2nd of March in 2018. I am here with Earl and Joanne Leblanc and it is 11:23 a.m. Cool. All right. What was the importance of the military when you were little?
EARL LEBLANC: I worked in Port Allen when I finished school and in the army, you had to be… you had to, in other words, you had to be registered and you were on the registration that you were drafted, eligible. So, I knew that I couldn’t get a good job. I didn’t find a good place to work because of the army, I couldn’t work a good job because we were in the service and we were … the station that, I worked in the service station because they didn’t require that you … they would hire you regardless. So, my friends, my four… no, three other men passed and they asked me to go with them into the service. He spoke with all the others in New Orleans, four people went to New Orleans… one of the men, he could not pass the test because he is… his… he was less than 100 --
FONTENOT: He’s very small.
EARL: Less than 125 pounds, so he had to … we went to the French Quarter, picked up some bananas and we fed him bananas and he passed the test. He weighed 126 pounds --
FONTENOT: [3:40] [laughs]
EARL: … so we all went from Port … from New Orleans, and they were going to send me directly to Sam Houston, Texas. And I said, “No, I can’t go, because I didn’t tell … I didn’t talk with my mom and my dad.” He gave four to go to Port Allen and also to Plaquemine to tell my family that I was going… in the service. So, [coughs] we went from there to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and from there we went to Fort Riley, Kansas, by train. My first… my first ride on the train was from Fort Sam Houston to Fort Riley, Kansas. And then, from there, we went to Fort Benning, Georgia for jump training. Simpson, one of the men who went with us, didn’t want to go to [inaudible]. He was playing football, so he dropped out. We went on to Fort Benning, Georgia, and finished jump school, and then they sent us, because we had volunteered Special Forces and basic training. They sent us to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for Special Forces training. We stayed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for a year, and in 1953, the latter part of 1953, we got a mission to go to Europe as Special Forces to … at the end of World War II, we went to Europe. We ended up in Germany. One of the qualifications for Special Forces was that I needed to be with another foreign language and I spoke good French I was in… [laughs] in the service. FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: But after that, I mean, that was 62, 62 (soixante-deux) years ago, and you … if you
don’t use it you lose it. FONTENOT: [laughs] JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: And I… I lost it. I lost it.
JOANNE: [6:37] [laughs]
EARL: I [almost can’t] now. I understand everything, but I’m not… I can’t speak French like I… like I wanted to.
JOANNE: [agrees]
EARL: When I speak French with somebody else who’s speaking French, I understand what they’re saying, and I use… I’m going to use their French with them, for me… in other words, I use his language when I’m speaking to him, and I can… I can converse back and forth in French. FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: I spoke with my… the men who started in the Special Forces in 19… in 1952. They spoke French well and I spoke with them for the two years I was with them. I used my French with them and the German people, there are plenty of them who speak good French because they were with… in France in World War II, and they took the French, in other words, and you could speak … I couldn’t understand their German, they couldn’t understand my English, but I could speak French to them. I spoke French with them.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: That’s it. FONTENOT: [laughs] JOANNE: [laughs] EARL: [laughs]
FONTENOT: Where were you --
EARL: What’s that ?
FONTENOT: [8:40] Where were you in Germany ?
EARL: I was … in Germany, I was in [Bad Tölz]. I have… they put us in a SS-Kaserne, one of the storm troopers in Europe, in and out of the Europe theatre, there was a big kaserne, they call it Flint Kaserne. And they just mangled it … in other words, they took it apart, but it was about ten kilometers from Hitler’s headquarters in Bad Tölz, Germany.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: And… I went to his… place in Germany.
FONTENOT: So… what do you… work in… you were in the Korean Conflict. What is it that you did ?
EARL: I jumped out of planes for two and a half years. I jumped out of planes all over. [laughs]
FONTENOT: What was the first time in the plane, that you… parachuted for the first time ?
EARL: The first time ?
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: In Fort Benning, Georgia, seven jumps. Seven… five --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … in the… in the daytime --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … and two at night. FONTENOT: [disagrees] [laughs] JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: Five in the daytime and two at night, one week, in one week.
FONTENOT: [11:19] Cool. [laughs]
EARL: [laughs] And my first airplane ride --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … I jumped out. [laughs]
JOANNE: [laughs]
FONTENOT: How is French in Europe different from Louisiana French?
EARL: For speaking with men over there? Louisiana French is similar to the… I speak all the time with others, but… I forgot.
FONTENOT: [laughs]
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: I didn’t speak with… I didn’t speak French for a long time --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … and when you don’t use it, you lose it.
JOANNE: [laughs]
EARL: So, I’ve been … lately, I go to Breaux Bridge, because I belong to a Special Forces organization in Breaux Bridge. The Special Forces is Chapter 81 and it … they have a memorial in Breaux Bridge, and there’s one at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the only two memorials, this is for Special Ops, in the United States of America. In other words, there’s two of them, one in Breaux Bridge and one at Fort Benning, Georgia … I mean, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. By the way, the thing is on Smoke Bomb Hill, that’s where we did our training from, Smoke Bomb Hill at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before we went over to Europe.
FONTENOT: [13:34] [agrees] Cool. Well, I think we’ll take a quick break real quick.
JOANNE: Okay.
FONTENOT: [break in tape] Cool. Cool. We’re back. It is 12:11. I’m here with Earl and Joanne Leblanc. Earl is from Brooks --
EARL: Brooks, Louisiana.
FONTENOT: Which doesn’t exist anymore.
EARL: It’s between Morganza and New Roads.
FONTENOT: Cool. And Miss Joanne is from Plaquemine. Cool. All right. Well, it is the 2nd of March and this is the second half.
EARL: [agrees]
FONTENOT: Cool, cool. All right. Was your brother in the military, too?
EARL: I have… I had four brothers in World War II.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: All in the Navy. All in the… I have… he was a… Roy was on the destroyer, sister ship to the Kidd --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … in Baton Rouge, and Allen was on the Battleship Mississippi --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … from 41 to 45. And Joe was on the … he was an island jumper. In other words, he was more or less stationed at the different islands and what-not.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: [15:06] They met a cousin of ours, all at Pearl Harbor. It was during the war. I don’t know exactly when.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: But they were at Pearl Harbor during World War II. So … and one of my brothers did not go overseas. He stayed in the States, but he kept wanting to volunteer to go overseas and they wouldn’t let him, and I think it was because of the Sullivan brothers, all five of them got killed on one ship and they decided that being there was three of them already in harm’s way, that they would not send the fourth one.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: Now, during World War … I mean, during the Korean War, I was in service. I went to Europe and my brother was also in service. He got drafted and he went to Korea. He was driving an ambulance in Korea --
FONTENOT: [agrees]
EARL: … during the Korean War. So, we, all five of us drew hazardous pay and we all came home. We were very fortunate.
FONTENOT: [agrees]
JOANNE: One [crosstalk]
EARL: Now, my brother, Roy, he spoke French well . He went to South Africa and he bought a [inaudible] for my mother.
JOANNE: [He did something for Mamaw.] EARL: It was a Catholic … it was a Catholic -- FONTENOT: A book.
EARL: [16:50] Yeah, a book for her to… my mother could read and write French. She could … in other words, the … all of the book that he bought was in French. And so, I don’t
know what happened to it. Over the years it disappeared or left or whatever. But, she was very proud of the book that he sent her, because it was … it was in French.