Pioneers: Charley D. Dean, Winn Parish, LA Submitted by Peggy Chandler Beaubouef, 2656 Hwy 1232, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** SOURCE: "the sassafras", Vol. 3, No. 1, 1984-85, published by the Calvin Folklore Society. (Permission to use granted submitter by Linda Dupree, sponsor.) [NOTE: The Calvin Folklore Society was a student organization of Calvin High School dedicated to the preservation of oral traditions -- the local folklore of the area. Articles in "the sassafras" were written by the students after research and interviews with older citizens of the area. Faculty sponsors were Linda Dupree and Steve Bartlett.] MR. CHARLEY D. DEAN by Jeff Bryant PHOTO: Charley Dean in 1906 with brothers Abb and Ozie and their oxen. "Some people hollered at them, but it was easier to talk. Folks would say, 'Get 'em scared of ya, get 'em scared of ya.' I wanted my team to love me. I didn't want them scared of me." So speaks 91 year-old Charley D. Dean who broke and worked oxen both in farming and logging. Mr. Dean, who is blind now, loved the great, powerful animals and they loved him in return. He took steers wild out of the woods, five or six years old, yoked them together and broke them as he worked them. With a short rope around the neck of one of them and his whip laid across the neck of the other, he could make them respond to a gently "whoa haw" or "whoa gee" and do his bidding whether he was hauling piling along the Ouachita River or plowing cotton at his home in Winn Parish. He said that you could just look at a steer and tell whether it would make a good lead ox. If it was "dish-faced", that is, if it had a sunk-in place between the eys and horns, "you can learn them anything. But you take one that's got a bulge there, and you can't learn them nothing!" Mr. Charley usually worked three or four yoke to a team - a yoke being two oxen yoked side by side. The first yoke was the leaders and these animals had to be quick to obey commands. The wheel yoke were the ones closest to the wagon with the tongue between. Mr. Charley said that a good wheel steer will take great care to prevent the wagon from rolling over a stump or bumping into a tree because this jarred the tongue and consequently the steer felt the jolt. Mr. Charley said that since he was a young boy he had a touch with the animals. "I broke 'em for my daddy and for other folks, too." One team he especially remembers had two steers - Rock and Rollie - as the lead yoke. He tells the story, "I broke them myself. Nobody never did fool with them but me. They belonged to Fred and Crick Martin and they had them mortgaged to Mr. Jim Brewton. I had a job locked up because the Martin boys couldn't handle them and neither could Mr. Jim and they all knew it! I had drove them about a year hauling logs out of the Ouachita hills down to the boats on the river to be floated down to Columbia. I could work with the ox team where they couldn't work with a mule team. I'd carry a load to the top of one of them hills, unhook the first three yoke just leaving the wheel cattle. Then I'd push the wagon to get the load started. The oxen would guide it and sometimes they'd get pushed. My steers were never scared of anything - trains, cars, nothing bothered them. But one day as I was unloading down by the river, a tugboat came up, popping like a motorcycle. I noticed that one of them kept his head turned watching that boat get closer. When the boat got even with him with that propeller churning up the water, he just couldn't take it. I finally caught up to them at the lot! I never beat my steers, and all the time I worked with them, there was never a whip mark on 'em. One day when I was working on the Ouachita River, my baby got sick and I had to come home and lose about a week's work. I went back over there and my boss called everybody over and said, 'Look here. Them steers know him!' And they did. They was turning around trying to smell me and I rubbed them both in the face." Here Mr. Charley halted in his story and as tears slipped quietly down his cheeks, he was lost in a century of hard times, hard work and the love of two steers called Rock and Rollie.