- Okay, today is February 19th, 2013, and I'm speaking with Shewolf. Shewolf, let me start off with asking you where you were born and, where you were born. 

- Well, I was born on Desire Street, where the streetcar doth runneth, used to run. (interviewer laughing) In New Orleans, 1932, which makes me 80. And I'll be 81 in March. 

- Okay. 

- Okay? 

- And what was your name that you were born with? 

- Oh, Jean Boudreaux. 

- Tell me about Boudreaux. 

- Boudreaux, B-O-U-D-R-E-A-U-X, in case you're writing it, 'cause it's hard to spell. Boudreaux. My father was French, my mother was German, and Boudreaux's the family name. 

- And were they both from New Orleans? 

- My mother was from New Orleans, my father was from someplace in Mississippi. He came to New Orleans to work, and they got married, ran off and got married so it wouldn't cost the family any money, I remember them telling us that. And then my mother's father made 'em have a church wedding when they got back. (interviewer laughing) 'Cause they were Catholic, and that was the end of the Catholic. They made the kids do their communions, the first and second communions, and then they said, "Okay, you're on your own now." (all laughing) 

- And what was it like in New Orleans growing up? 

- Mmm, it was very nice, actually. It was, in the '30s and '40s, you know, it was just an easy place to live, it was clean, it was safe. I mean, I used to go, when I was a teenager, I used to get on the bus at my house at eight o'clock at night and go across town and visit my friends, and get back on the bus and come home 10, 11 o'clock at night as a teenager, with no fear of anything, you know? It wasn't like now, I wouldn't do it now, you know. But at that time, it was nice. And the beach was open, Lake Pontchartrain was open, and you could swim in Lake Pontchartrain, it was not polluted. I don't know, I hadn't thought about it for a long time, but it was pretty nice growing up there. I grew up in the Ninth Ward, which became very notorious as a hard place to live, but my dad was the kinda guy that went to work. No matter what, he went to work. In the Depression, he lost his job, he had one in two days. He was a homemade mechanic, a homemade carpenter, a homemade everything, you know. And he'd just go get him a job. And he was just a working guy, that's all, he just worked all the time. 

- So he was able to get, what do you remember about the Depression? 

- I remember the Depression as being, I don't remember being poor but I was poor. I mean, now I know, we were very poor. But the way that we ran the family, I mean, the family was run in such a way that we never owed anybody anything, we never bought anything that we didn't have the money for. And the only thing my parents owed money on was the mortgage for the house. They would save up enough money to buy a car, they would save up enough money to buy whatever they were gonna buy, and that was it. And I remember, as a kid, we always had food, we had clothes but, you know, nothing special, nothing fancy or nothing we didn't actually need, you know. And I remember, growing up, that the one thing I remember about being poor was that, I remember as I grew up, to have a box of Kleenex was a big, big luxury. (interviewer laughing) Yeah, we never had Kleenex. You know, we always, handkerchiefs that you can wash and all this kinda stuff, so. I remember when I got my first job, the first thing I did was buy a box of Kleenex (laughs). That's funny. 

- And what were the politics like in your house growing up? 

- Politics, hmm. I don't relate my childhood with politics at all. 

- Okay. 

- The only thing I can remember about being a kid was that it was not kosher to associate with the blacks, you know, it was an anti-black community. I mean, it was all-white and everything. And it was just the way you lived, it wasn't that the family had anything against black people, but you just didn't go to school with them, you know, at that time, you know, they were a class of their own. But I do remember, there was one black family in the neighborhood, around the corner, you know, down there, we knew they were there and that was it. And what I do remember is that at one point when I was a teenager, my dad had a riding stable out on Lake Pontchartrain, he bought this from a neighbor. 'Course, he got screwed, but my dad was like that. Anyway, he bought this riding stable, and we had these horses and we'd go out there and we'd, on Friday night he'd take my mother and me and my two brothers, and we'd go out to the stable and we'd ride with the crowd down to this restaurant. And then we'd turn around and come back, and you know, that was our big outing. But I remember my dad hired this little kid, boy, about so big, who was black. And what I remember was, he said something about hiring him or having him work there at the stable, and there was no black people around, it was all white, you know, all white. And so he stood out like a sore thumb. And I remember, and I don't know what I asked my dad, something about him, but I remember my dad saying, "Well, now be good to him because his mother is white." (interviewer laughing) "And he doesn't fit in anyplace else. "You know, nobody wants him." And my dad had a soft heart but he acted like he didn't, you know, he is like the tall, staunch, quiet, John Wayne-type guy, you know. But underneath it all he was just a softy. But the only thing I remember about, you know, racial stuff at that time, was that. 

- So, you've lived other places besides the South. 

- (laughing) Yeah. 

- Have you always considered yourself a Southerner? 

- Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I was born and raised in the South. And even though I lived a lot of other places, well I remember going to school in Cleveland, at the University, and I was, I'm jumping way ahead. It doesn't matter, I guess. But I remember going to school as a teaching assistant, you know, on a scholarship or assistantship. Assistantship, that's what it was. I was on an assistantship, and I remember when I got to the Case Reserve campus and I went in to the building and we started our classes and all this kinda stuff, I remember being treated by the Northerners as if I ate mud, and was stupid, and you know, all these kinds of things we talk about all the time. And I remember specifically, the attitude, you know, you just, you don't remember the dialogue necessarily, but I remember the attitude that, of this Southerner, you know, they'd say, "Where are you from?" I'd say, "Louisiana," and they'd go, "Oh," and you could see the faces, you know, going. And I remember, about halfway through the first semester, when the first grades came out. And mine was A, I did really good work. And the attitude changed overnight. They was like, "Oh, you're from the South," (laughs) "but you're not stupid!" I remember that very, very, very clearly, like it was yesterday, you know. Yeah, I lived in Cleveland, Ohio. 

- But where did you go to undergraduate school? 

- I went to undergraduate school in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the South, then I went to graduate school in West Virginia, I took a master's in, I don't know, education, psychology, speech, you had mixed up stuff then. And then I went for my doctorate at Cleveland, and then I went to work at Our Lady of the Lake College, a Catholic school in Texas, San Antonio. And that was a hard job, let me tell ya. And then I went to work at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. 

- And what was that in? 

- Speech and hearing. I did speech and hearing. And then I went to, oh, and then I came back to Louisiana, and I went to work as a professor at Southwestern, Louisiana University but Southwestern at the time, at Lafayette, and that was my political career. That was my political experience, that was my feminist lesbian political experience. Because when I hit- 

- And what year was that? 

- Huh? 

- What year was that? 

- That was around '69 to '72, someplace in there, okay? I was at the University of Arizona, and my old professor, who was head of the department at Louisiana University in Lafayette had contacted me, or I don't know how the arrangement went, but he had a job opening and he wanted me to take it, and so I came to the campus, oh, this was my first episode. I came to the campus, and I did a workshop for him, on the stage, in the auditorium, you know, for all the speech and hearing people. And I arrived, and did my presentation in a pantsuit. (interviewer laughing) Now this was back in the late '60s, okay? And no woman on the campus at that time had ever dared to wear anything but a dress. Now, it seems funny, but at the time it was, you know. Well, I never thought much of it, at the time it was common for me, you know, ordinary for me from Arizona. And so I did my presentation in a pantsuit. Well, you know, it was like (gasps). And I didn't know what they were ogling about. (interviewer laughs) So the presentation went off fine, and after it was over and we went to lunch and all this kinda stuff, he offered me this job. And I said, "Well, I'll think about it." You know, "It sounds good." And we negotiated back and forth. And finally, they gave me, I said, "I won't come with less than a full professorship," 'cause I was in line for one there. So he gave me that, and then I wanted the salary, so he gave me that, and something else. Oh, and with a full professorship you got to be a member of the graduate council. Okay? And the graduate council ran the university at that time. Okay, so anyway, that was all fun. So I took the job a year later, and I came and I took the job, and the first thing, the first message I got from my boss was, via somebody else, "Don't wear pantsuits on campus." (interviewer laughs) Well, I ignored that, you know, and wore what I wanted to wear, and nobody said a word. 

- Had you come out by then? 

- No, no, no, heavens no. (interviewer laughs) In the '70s, are you kidding? University, uh uh. In the South? Uh uh. But the interesting thing was, as soon as I got to the campus, I somehow connected with four other women on the campus who were all straight, well, one was semi-straight and the other three were straight. But they were heads of departments and heads of divisions and stuff like that, and I was a full professor, so my tenure was safe. You know, they couldn't throw me out. The other four women, one of them was tenured in, and the other three were not, so they were a little bit shaky. Well, the five of us got together once a week and plotted. (interviewer laughs) And plotted. And we didn't know we were plotting at first, we just got together because we didn't like the way things were on the campus, you know, the women were all underpaid, they were all under-promoted, and women were like this on the campus. And so the first thing we tried to do was to have a meeting of all the female faculty. Which, at that time, wasn't more than 50 women, you know, and they had like, 200 faculty. 

- All in a... 

- And maybe, I'm guessing at this, I don't know the exact numbers. But I know it was less than a quarter of them. Anyway. But we called the meeting, and the five of us were all there waiting to have the meeting, nobody showed up. Not one faculty member came. They were too scared! You know? You couldn't organize, you couldn't, nobody knew anybody's salary, it was, you know, taboo. 

- I was just gonna ask you how many people got paid. 

- Nobody knew anybody's salary, oh no, you couldn't know what, you couldn't even talk in the department about what you were getting, no salaries. 

- Were you told not to do that? 

- Mhm. 

- Were you told not to do that? 

- Well, you know how it is. There's rules that are written, there's rules that you follow, whether they're written or not. And so, this was just, I don't know, I hit the campus, nobody talked about salary unless it, you know. And if I asked somebody what they made, they'd say, "Oh, well I get (mumbles)." Change the subject, or whatever. 

- And how much were you making as a full professor? Do you remember? 

- Oh, God, maybe, $3600 or something like that? It was low, anyway, it was low. But it was low in comparison with what the men were making. The men were about 40% higher than we were making, at the time, okay? And we didn't know this as a fact, we just kinda, the five of us would get together and talk, and we'd know a little bit about, and then, you know, one of them had a husband and she knew what he was making, and one of them had a boyfriend, and you know, we'd piece together. So we said, "Okay, the first thing we need to do "is find out what people are making." So we went to public records, or wherever you go for this stuff, and one of the gals that was in our five-finger group was head of the computer department. Now, there wasn't any computer department as such, but she ran the computers for the university, so she was the right-hand to the president. Okay? 

- Mhm. 

- Because at that time, to get a computer system into the university was the first step. There was no department at the time. 

- Right, right. 

- Okay, so, and then one of the gals was head of the business department, and you know, they all had some good talents. So the first thing we did was get a hold of the faculty salaries, and make comparisons and do some, so we found out was how underpaid everybody was, and all this kinda stuff, and so, you know, that's when we called the meeting and nobody showed up. Because word had gotten round the campus that, you know, something was going on. Well it just so happened that the president of the university was a guy that I had gone to school with. And so he was kinda nice to me, you know, and I was nice to him, and we were just kinda like, okay. You know, we were friends, so to speak. 

- Gone to school, like, back when you were a kid, or? 

- No, no, no, when we went to college. 

- When you went to college. 

- Yeah. 'Cause we'd both went to that school. 

- That school. 

- And then he worked his way up to becoming the president of the university. And when I went back there to teach, you know, 20 years later or whenever it was, he was the university president. And so I could go in his office and talk to him when I wanted to, you know, and so that helped a little bit. But it was strictly a professional relation. And he was using me, and I was using him, and we knew it. You know. So anyway, let's see. We called the meeting, it didn't happen. We got the information together. So, we met for several months trying to figure out what in the hell could we do. We went to the administration and we said, "We think there's some discrepancies in your, "you know, salary things, and so forth, "and we'd like you to do something about it." Well, we sat back and of course nothing happened. 

- Nothing happened. 

- So we took all our information, we put it all in writing, and we sent it to the attorney general. I think that's where we sent it. To the equal employement. 

- Of Louisiana? 

- Whatever that- 

- In D.C.? 

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever the office was at the time. 

- Equal Opportunity. 

- Yeah, Equal Opportunity, that was it. We sent it to them. Of course, nothing happened, then all of a sudden, one day we get the call, "Come to the president's office, "we have some people visiting us." (laughs) (interviewer laughs) And so they came, and they visited the president's office, and within one year, everything changed. They raised the salaries, they did new investigations. And we pointed out to them that it wasn't just the salary level, it was the fact that women were staying instructors for five years where men were staying instructors for two, or something like that. 

- Right, right. 

- That's not exact. But you know, it was that kinda stuff. And so it changed, it was slow. It took them two years to do it, but they got, you know, they got it, 'course our salaries went up too, you know. 

- Were you pegged as troublemakers? 

- Oh yeah, oh god yeah. Yeah, yeah. I ran, the year before I left, I ran for department head and I sure didn't get it (laughs). (interviewer laughs) I sure didn't get it. He put a male, a young, attractive, white male, history professor in as department head. I mean, as dean of the college. I mean, I knew he was gonna do it, but I had to do it, you know. 

- Yeah, yeah. 

- But anyway. The career there was good, but I was so tired of it. I was department head for seven years, and that was it, I quit, I left. 

- So what year was it that, and what about your feminism during the early '70s, or during that time? 

- That was it, I was in academia and that was it. I didn't do anything else to speak of. 

- And were there any other pants-wearers after you were in there? 

- Any what? 

- Any other pantsuit-wearing- 

- Oh, the pantsuits came in, yeah. 

- They came in. 

- It caught on. 

- You started it. 

- Slowly and gradually, they came in, yeah. But they were coming in all over, you know, it wasn't particularly. But in the South, it was hard for women to wear pants, that was just not, you know, you were a lesbian, or you were a dyke, or you were a nunu, or you were mannish, or, you know, you had all these terms and stuff. And nobody ever said anything about me being a lesbian until I ran for the deanship, and then it came out. 

- So when did you come out? What year did you come out? 

- Where? Come out to whom? To what? 

- To yourself? 

- Oh, to myself I came out probably as 11. I had a girlfriend at 11. Oh, the way I got out, when I was 11, there was my mother's best friend's daughter, used to come over to the house and stay with us, with my two brothers while they went running someplace. And I was 11 or 12, maybe 11, she was 12 I guess. Anyway, the one, two, three, four, the four of us would stay at the house, and my mother and father and the other couple, you know, her mother and father, would go someplace for an hour and then they'd come back. And you know, we were pretty safe and everything. And so she would stay over sometimes, and that one night that she stayed over, and I thought she was just something else, you know. And I don't know what I did, I might've touched her hand or something, I did something, I don't know. But anyway, the next morning she went and told her mother, (laughs) and they didn't come visit anymore. 

- Wow. 

- Now, what she told, and what the mother told my mother, my mother just came in and told me that Elaine won't be visiting us anymore. I said, "Okay." And that was it, my mother never said a word. She always acted like she never knew anything. But how she could not know, because all I ever brought home was girls, I had one boyfriend, and you know what it was like. So anyway, that was my outing. 

- So you never married? 

- No. 

- And in high school, did you have girlfriends in high school? 

- Mhm. 

- And- 

- I had girlfriends in elementary school, high school, college, and thereafter. 

- And what about the politics of being a lesbian in- 

- The what? 

- The politics of being a lesbian in, what, the '50s, or '60s? 

- Oh, in the '50s and '60s, there was, there was no such thing as lesbian. I mean, we didn't even know the word. 

- So when you said that you had a girlfriend, what'd that mean? 

- I had a girlfriend, we were the only two. We were the only ones. There was no other ones. We were it, you know. 

- And how did you define yourself with her? 

- We didn't. We were just, you know, I was in love with this woman, she was in love with me, and we were girls, you know. And we'd get together, and that was it. 

- And did you kiss or anything? 

- Oh yeah. (everyone laughs) Of course. Kiss and cuddle and stuff. 

- But you didn't really, but were you reading things like Well of Loneliness or did you read any- 

- Say what? 

- You know, the book Well of Loneliness? 

- Yeah, I read that. 

- Were you reading any books, or did you name- 

- Well of Loneliness was the book. 

- And how old were you when you first read that? 

- Hmm? 

- How old were you? 

- God, I don't know. 

- I mean, growing up in high school. 

- Teenagers, I guess, or older maybe, I don't remember, 20s maybe. Something like that. 

- So you didn't have a name for you loving this girl? 

- No. 

- Wasn't a name for it yet. 

- It was just, you know, magic. (everyone laughs) 

- Were you afraid of it, or did it just feel okay? 

- Well, only thing I can remember is that when I was growing up, and I liked women, that from, let's see, sometime around high school I had a boyfriend. And he was a guy who wouldn't get sexually involved with you, because his mother wanted him to go to medical school. And she didn't want him to get involved with anybody, you know, and all that kinda stuff. So it worked out for me real well. He was a real sweet guy, and I really cared for him, I really cared for him. But what I remember is that during that time, it was totally taboo, as far as, you know, women or men being together. I mean, that was, and I can remember in maybe first year of college, I can remember, if you went to the library to get books on homosexuality, you had to go, you had to be a psych major, so I became a psych major. (interviewer laughs) You had to be a psych major- 

- The DSM, probably, was on the list. 

- Yep, and you had to go to the librarian, and they had to get the key, and they had to open the cabinet. This was serious business. They had to open a cabinet and get those books out for you, and you had to check them out, and you had to sign as a psych major. Otherwise they wouldn't let you have the books, you couldn't read them. Now it seems like weird, but at the time it was perfectly normal, you know. Everything's perfectly normal (laughs). 

- So when was the first time that you got together with other lesbians? 

- When, as a group of lesbians? You mean like, we all know who we are, that type of thing? Oh god, the first time? Jesus, I don't know. 

- Or, about the first time. 

- Roughly. 

- Huh? 

- Roughly. 

- Like in the '60s, or '70s? 

- I don't know. I can't tell you that. 

- Late '70s? 

- All I know is that, well let's see, I had, Sandy and I lived together for 10 years. 

- Which 10 years, then? What years were those? 

- That's what I'm trying to remember. That's my guidepost, I'm trying to go back and tell you, because I was with this woman here, and this woman here, and this woman here. And this was, um. 

- Where were you living? 

- Well, wait, I'm trying to remember. I was in Lafayette, but see, I was in Lafayette teaching for, like 15 years. And part of that was, (mumbles), all right let's say, roughly, late '60s to late '70s. Okay? We had friends that we knew were lesbians. And before that, before that I think in the '50s it was always a single person. It was, you know, I didn't know anybody else. We didn't know anybody else. We always thought, like I said, we were the only ones. 

- The only ones. Right. 

- Yeah. But in the '70s, then, we started having little, you know, dinners and stuff at people's houses and stuff like that. And the '80s, it increased. And then in the '90s, oh wait, no, I retired in the '80s, didn't I. Oh wait, let's go back. Yeah, okay. In the '70s and '80s, in the late '70s and through the early '80s, all through the '70s and the first part of the '80s, I created a potluck thing, okay, in Lafayette. In the South, this was in the South now. They didn't have groups, they had two, three friends here, two, three friends, they didn't have any big group of lesbians, I remember that. And I remember when I moved to this one town, what town was that? Was that Lafayette? Anyway, moved to I think it was Lafayette. When I first moved there, must've been '69 I went to work there. Or '70 (mumbles). I remember, I went to, I didn't know anybody. Nobody, much less a lesbian, I didn't know anybody. Did I have a girlfriend at that time? I must've had a girlfriend at that time. I don't know. Anyway. I remember going to the hospital and looking at the program to see what kind of groups they had. You know how hospitals have these invitational groups, and newcomer's group, and all kinda stuff. And so I found a newcomer's group, and I went to the newcomer's group and the woman that was leading the group was a lesbian. 'Course, I didn't know that when I went there. But I went to the group and after the group, she said, "Can you stay a minute? "I wanna talk to you about something." And she spotted me, I guess, right away. (interviewers laugh) And so we went in the back in her office. 

- It was the pantsuit. (interviewer laughs) 

- Yeah, probably so. And after it was over we went in the back, we got to talking and finally figured out, you know, who we were. And so I said, "Well, do you have a potluck group? "Do you have a, you know." She said, "No, we don't have anything, "but we should have one." And I said, "Okay, well let's do it." And she said, "Okay, let's do it." Said, "Okay," I said. And she knew three or four people, and somehow I knew three or four people, but I think they were people from long time ago, when I used to live in New Orleans or something like that. But anyway, between the two of us, we got together about 15 women, and invited them all to her house for a potluck and we started, what was it, Saturday night? I think it was a Saturday night at 5 o'clock, at somebody's house, bring some food. And that was all the rules and I said, "Let's not make any rules or regulations, let's just do it." And she said, "Okay." And I said, "All you have to do is know "where the next party is," you know. And we had that going for eight years. Consistently, every week, every week, consistently. 

- Did you add on people? 

- We'd add them all, oh yeah, we had about 60 people by the time. 

- Wow. 

- Somebody decided, one of the couples decided that it was their turn, they were gonna have it, okay, but they decided instead of having it on Saturday, they'll have it on Sunday, and instead of having it at 5 o'clock, they'll have it at at three, 'cause they had a pool, and they wanted to invite a couple of their gay guy friends down the street, and they ruined it. Because half the people didn't know where to go, when to go, and all that kinda stuff, and they looped off into another whole group of their own and kinda scorched ours. But for eight years we had a wonderful group going, and new people in town would come, you know, and it was like you have now, you know, you have the potlucks now. But that was in the '70s, the early '70s, yeah. 

- And how did you get involved with the whole land- 

- Oh, the landyke thing, ugh. (interviewer laughs) Well, let's see. About 1989. 1987, '88, or '89, someplace in there. That doesn't sound right, wait a minute. Before I retired from teaching, I took a trip out to California one summer. And I retired in '85 or something like that, so it must've been early '80s, but I didn't come out with a directory for a long time. Anyway. I got in my truck, put a mattress, a peepad, pot, and a cooler in the back of my truck, and I drove out to California. 

- Now, you were still a professor? 

- Well, yeah, but I was the summer, I was off for the summer. (phone ringing) 

- Oh, excuse me just a minute. Can you grab- 

- By yourself? 

- Yeah, and I drove out to California, and I had one friend, Lisa, in Chico, Paradise. And so I went out to visit her, and on the way out I stopped at every place I could find, you know, and- 

- Every place what? 

- That was lesbian-manned? 

- Well, women's places, see. Because I had done some communicating, I had written some letters, I didn't have email at the time. 

- Right. 

- Okay. So I did some letters, 

- Lesbian Connection maybe. 

- I made some phone calls, huh? 

- Lesbian Connection? Lesbian Connection, 

- I didn't have it then, I don't think. 

- I remember they, even had that. 

- I don't think I had it then. 

- But, 'cause they had a listing. 

- I may have had Lesbian Connection, and I may have contacted some dykes. I don't remember. All of- 

- So it wasn't necessarily lesbians that you were, people that you were staying with. 

- Oh yeah, oh yeah. 

- It was. 

- These were all lesbians, and they were all semi-landyke places, you know. I mean, some of them were not open to the public at all, and some of them were just women I knew or something. One of my major contacts was Jae and Lee at Outland, okay. And another contact was Sonia Johnson, at Fire, Fire. 

- Remember the name of her business. 

- Something fire, was the name of her place, okay. Jade, yeah. 

- What state was that? 

- Sonya Johnson and Jade were in New Mexico. And Jae was in, Outland's in New Mexico, isn't it? I forget now. 

- Yeah, it is. 

- But anyway, those two I knew, and I was gonna see them on the way back. On the way out. Now, here's two trips. 

- Let me ask you. 

- Huh? 

- Let me ask you one question. So you went from sort of organizing these women's potlucks, and then- 

- Oh, that was in Lafayette. That was early, that was '70s, yeah. 

- So in between that time and this time, what kind of organizing were you doing in terms of lesbian feminist stuff? 

- Well, our potluck stuff was mostly, we'd get together and talk about stuff. Oh, and then we had a couple, we had a couple of those consciousness-raising groups, we did a couple of those. Stuff like that but nothing, you know. 

- So how were you networking for this Woman's Land? How did you- 

- Ahh, networking was by written letters. You'd write to somebody, and if they write back, then you can write to them again, and get some info, write to them again. Spent a lot of postage money but then it was cheaper then. It was mostly, I didn't have a computer at the time. I didn't know anything about it, psh, we'd never have a computer! 

- Right (laughs). 

- At that time, it was like, no computers! (interviewer laughs) Phone calls were too expensive, you couldn't. Well, you'd make a couple of phone calls, but you don't make too many. But it was mostly 

- But you knew somebody who knew somebody? 

- Postcards and things like that. Huh? 

- So you'd know somebody who knew somebody in Arizona, or, is that how? 

- No, no. You'd just- 

- How did you know the people? 

- Okay, I started out, I started out with this book called Land, Lesbian Lands. I started out with this book. 

- I started with her, yeah. 

- They had five places in it, I think one of them might've been the Pagoda, I'm not sure. But one of the- 

- The Pagoda's in there. 

- One of the old, old books, is it in there? 

- Mhm. 

- Okay. Well, it might've been the Pagoda, and then was WomanShare in there? From Oregon? 

- Yeah. 

- All right. Well, those two, and then, there were only two that were still in existence. The other three were just discombobulated someplace. But anyway, I started out with those, and they would give me information about other places, and then if I'd go to Oregon, then they'd say, "Well, there's a place down the line, "we've never been there, but it's only 60 miles," or something like that. 

- Okay. 

- And so I went out there. Now, I made two trips to California. I made more, but I mean I made two trips to California in relation to the directory thing. And I get them mixed up sometimes, so I'm gonna tell you about both of them, but I don't know which one it was. The first trip I made out there, I know I went out there in my truck and, you know, all that kinda stuff. And the second trip I made out there, I had a pop-up tent that I pulled behind my truck. And I remember it because after I got out there, and I was in Oregon, and I got up one morning, and it took me three hours before I could leave because it was so wet, you know, the dew. And so I told my friend Lisa, I said, "I can't put up with this!" And she said, "I'll buy it from you, "how much did you pay for it?" And I told her and I sold it to her right there. So I immediately turned around and came back, and planned a trip to Florida, and I planned the trip all the way around Florida like this, and at the same time, I was in communication with the Casita factory in Texas. And ordering a Casita, you know. And in the meantime, while I was ordering the Casita, I got wind of this friend of mine in Florida, in Jacksonville said, "Hey, this guy "down the street's got a Casita that's pretty new, "and it's for sale, and blah blah blah blah blah." And he sent me pictures, and you know, I went through all this rigamarole, and I got the pictures. And so I planned this trip to Florida, and I planned it to the point where I made a weeks-long reservation in this one RV park so that when I got this Casita, I could drive it down there and I could stay there, right? I mean, I had it all laid out. Well, I got to Jacksonville, stayed with my friend for a while, and talked to this guy. Went to see his rig, and so I said, "Okay, well, it looks like what I want." And he had said, "I'll set it up for you," and all this kinda stuff. And I said, "Okay, bring it over to such-and-such place, "and open it up and let me see it, "and I'll buy it from you." And he said, "Well, okay, "but we gotta go to the bank first." And the red flag went up, you know, and he hadn't paid it off, see. He still had a mortgage on it, and he wanted me to sign the thing to buy it before I got to see it set up and all that kinda stuff. So I kinda backed out of the deal, but. I backed out of the deal and here I am in Florida with a reservation, get down Ginger. With a reservation for, and I was also meeting a woman there. At the time, that's another story (laughs). That's not for this. I'll tell you guys, but it's not for this thing. Oh, let me finish this. But my trips out to California, on the way out to California and on the way back, I stopped at Jay and Lee's place in Outland. And I remember talking to Lee about, "You know, I've got all this information "about these places," and I said, "I think I'm gonna print them all up, "and, you know, make them known." And Lee said, "Well, why don't you just "send them to us and we'll put them in Maize." And I said, "Okay, I'll think about that." And she said, "We'll print them, you know, "and all that kinda stuff," and I said, "Okay, I'll see when I come back." I said, "Well, but I'm thinking kind of of having "a, you know, one of my own." And then the next trip out, there were two gals in Oregon who contacted me and said, "We wanna do a book on lesbian lands, "and we'd like to coordinate with you "and maybe get together." And I said, "Well, that would be a lot less work." You know. So I went out there and visited with them, and we talked and we had a couple of meetings, and we discussed it. And the more I talked with them, the more I felt like what they wanted to do was to have me look at all these lands, and have them look at the ones in the West, and then put all our notes together and then critique the lands. 

- Hmm. 

- And say what was good about this one, and what was not so good about that one, and you can imagine going to Spiral and saying, "Lemme see what's good about Spiral and what's not so good." And I backed off. I said, "No, that's not exactly what I had in mind, "I wanted to do an objective, informational book, "and let people find out what they want to themselves, "but here's where you go, here's who you can contact, "and here's the basic philosophy of the thing." And I explained to them what I wanted to do. And they explained to me what they wanted to do, and I said, "Well," and in the end I decided, "Well, I think it's best "if you do yours and I'll do mine, "'cause they're different things." So, they never did do anything that I know of, I've never seen anything come out of it. 

- Right. 

- Yeah, but. It was a good decision, I was glad I made that decision. So anyway, on the way back, when I talked to Lee and I told Lee, I said, "Well, "I'm thinking about maybe doing Shewolf's book, "you know, doing my own book." And she said, "Well, that would be good too, you know." Well that was the first edition, and that was like 28, well you can count them, but I think there were about 28 places in it. 

- There were 50. 

- 50? 

- There were 50. 

- In the first book? 

- And there were 20 that are in the South. 

- Oh, okay. 

- Parts of the South. 

- Well maybe I got the numbers mixed up. 50, oh, that's pretty good. 50. 

- Yeah. 

- Well see, now I have over- 

- You were named Shewolf. When were you named Shewolf? 

- Shewolf was a name that came to me in a vision quest I was on, in Florida actually. I had become a member of the UU Church, first church membership in my life, (interviewer laughs) where the hell was I? Must've been Louisiana, because my friend, what the hell was her name? Call her Julie, I can't remember what her name was. But anyway, my friend Julie, who was straight, and I went to a YuYu workshop break in between, they had these week-long workshops between Christmas and New Year's, and neither one of us had a girlfriend or a boyfriend at the time, and so we said, "Let's do something," you know. And so we drove from Louisiana to Florida, and it was the year of the freeze that I-10 closed. And I can't remember when it was, but '70s. It had to be in the '70s. And so we drove over there, and we were supposed to be there two days before the Christmas dinner. And we got there the day of the Christmas dinner, about an hour before they ate, because we got frozen off and we had to stop at the motel and, you know, wait and go in. But anyway, during this workshop thing, they had the circle, they did the big circle, and they had a woman and a man who did the Native American circle, and you had to choose a name to be in the circle with, you've been through all of this, I'm sure. 

- No, not too much. 

- But this was my first, this was my first adventure with this. It must've been early '70s, this must've been early. (tapping on table) God, no, I mean it doesn't sound like I was there. Well, anyway. So we went to this thing and my friend's sitting over here, and he says, "You know, "if you don't think of a name, just pass." And so I'm sitting there ready to pass, and my friend says Sky or something like that, and I go, "Shewolf!" Because just at that minute, a white shewolf appeared on the rock in front of me. I got goosepimples, you know, just. And I said Shewolf, and then I looked and I said, "Who said that?" You know, that was the feeling, like, "Who said that?" (interviewer laughs) So that's where the name came from. Well, I ignored it, went back home, visited my friend in New Orleans at the time, and you know, I was telling her my experience. And she says, "Oh, wait a minute!" So she runs in the other room and comes back, and she has this big book. And she's into all this symbol stuff and everything, and so she said, "Shewolf is the pathfinder." Well, that was the year before, during, or after I went out to California and started finding these paths to these different places, so it fit. I mean, it was all Greek to me, but you know. (laughs) It happened. So that's where Shewolf came from. And at the time, you see, I hadn't retired. I was still a university professor. And so at the time I needed a name under which to write, 'cause I was writing for different magazines at that time. And so I took the name as a penname, and I took it as a regular name, you know. And since I came to Florida, I've been Shewolf. Exclusively. These people in this town don't know my real name. 

- Right. And people out of state, do they know your name? 

- No, no. People out of state have no idea what my real name is. (everyone laughs) Unless they had to write me a check for some reason. One gal in New Zealand knows my real name (laughs). Yeah. 

- So you started saying that on your first trip out, you went to California and you met some folks in California? 

- Mhm. 

- 'Cause you've been mostly talking about Oregon. 

- Well, Oregon has all the wimmin's lands. 

- Oregon, oh, all of them out there. 

- California didn't have any. 

- Okay. 

- But Oregon had quite a few, 'cause WomanShare. 

- Oregon Women. And Roseburg, Oregon is a big lesbian area. And so Oregon became a target area, you know. When you'd go West, you'd go to Oregon, because at the time, I guess they had six or eight places, at that time. And then I went up to the Dakotas and went across that way one time, and I went across and went this way. I probably made four trips out to California, in all. 

- So you were just drawn to that part of culture, of life, of going back to the land? 

- Oh, yeah. 

- Living simply. 

- Yeah, because you see, my dad, my dad had bought this 100 acres in Louisiana when I was a kid. 

- Uh huh. 

- And so I'd go out there every once in a while with him and, you know, we'd see that. But I lived in cities all my life, and so the land was like mmm, you know, something wonderful. When I was thinking about, oh it was a long time, I went to a, when my dad retired, oh god, this must've been, yeah, back in the '60s, I guess, my dad retired. He really couldn't afford to retire, and so I bought the land off of him. I said, "Well, dad, you wanna?" He says, "I'm gonna sell this," and I said, "Okay, sell it to me." And so he and my mother gave me a good payoff, you know, a good interest rate and stuff like that. And so for 20 years, I paid my mother and dad for the land, and so then when I retired, I owned the land. 

- And where was that land? 

- Louisiana. 

- Was that Woman Land? 

- Woman Land, yeah. That was Woman World. 

- So that's the piece. Woman World, yeah. 

- Woman World, yeah. It was north of New Orleans. 

- And when did that start? 

- Huh? 

- When did that start? 

- About 1969, until 19 85, roughly. 

- And you bought it in '69? 

- Oh, I bought, yeah, started buying it in '69. 

- And you going there with your friends. 

- Yeah. 

- And working on it? 

- I was teaching in Lafayette, okay. It was about 100 miles to the land. Now, when I first bought it, I-10 wasn't built. And so it was a three-hour drive. On Friday night, me and my girlfriend would go over there, bed down, and then get up Saturday, work all day Saturday and Sunday on the land, and then it took a lot of work. And then Sunday night we'd drive back. Well, while we were doing this, they built I-10. And so it got to be a two-hour drive instead of a three-hour drive, and that was, you know, a big deal. But I raised Black Angus cows, on that land, that's what I did. 

- And how many acres did you say it was? 

- 100. 

- And how many buildings did you build? 

- Well, I had a house, I had an old Jim Walter house that my dad had started for my brother, my brother and his wife decided they didn't wanna live there, so they gave it up and everybody, you know, everybody would buy it out, my dad bought it back from my brother and then my brother decided they didn't want it and everything, and it never got finished. It was the house that was not quite finished. 'Cause my dad did a lot of carpentry, and he did a lot of work on it, my mother did some work on it, but the Jim Walter basically built it. 

- What is that Jim Walter? 

- Jim Walter is a builder, Jim Walter is a company that has- 

- It's like pre-fab. 

- No, it's not pre-fab at all, it's stick-built. But it's built by a local company that is a franchise of Jim Walter. You have Jim Walter homes all over the country, okay. But each Jim Walter agent is a local agent. And they have a local crew. And so you contract with them and they have a plan, and all that kinda stuff, and you pay them so much money, and they come out and they do the foundation, but the thing was, my dad knew so much about building, that he made them do- 

- Do it right? 

- He made them put it higher on the ground, he made them use two-by-sixes instead of two-by-fours, he made it like a brick shithouse, you know. He really made them build it right. And then, when he was, I don't know, maybe 80, 70% finished with the house, my brother had got married this girl, and they decided, "Well, they'll buy it, "they'll move out there," you know. And so my brother put some money into it to finish it. And then right before the wedding, she decided, "I don't wanna live out in the country! "It's too far from my mother and my father!" They were young kids, you know. And so my dad took it back, gave them the money, you know, and all this kinda stuff. (coughs) So anyway, I got the land with this house. And the barn that the hurricane had taken the roof off at one time and put it on the ground (laughs). Oh, it's funny. So, that was it. 

- And then you raised the Angus- 

- Black Angus, for about six years. 

- For meat? For meat? 

- Well, it was supposed to be for meat, but it turned out that, I ended up with a bunch of baby bulls, what I sold was, I was selling them to the local agriculture agents. There were two agriculture guys, two agents, that came out and looked at my herd and they liked them, 'cause I had some really good stuff. And they bought the little bulls, and so I went in- 

- Studs or something. 

- Yeah. And so I really never slaughtered any of my cattle. We had slaughtered, we had started off, before we had the Black Angus, okay. We started off by going to the dairy and getting these little four-year-old calves, okay. And bringing them home, and Sandy and I used to go to the auctions, we'd go to the auctions and we'd sit up there and we'd bid on, it was Target Blue Ranch, it was Target Blue. And we'd go and we'd bid, we didn't know what the shit we were doing (laughs). But we'd bid on them, and we got these little calves, and we took them home and we bottle-fed them for six weeks or so 'til they got on grain, you know. And then they got big enough, and then they got three or four months old, and they were ready for slaughter, so we took them to the slaughterhouse, and they made meat, you know, and they gave us these boxes of frozen steaks and stuff. And then we took them home and we put them on the table and we couldn't eat them. (laughs) We couldn't eat them! We just both sat there and looked at them, and so I don't know what we did. We gave it all away or did something with it but we never did eat the damn things. 

- So how many women eventually lived on this land? 

- Well, that was like a fruit basket turnover. (interviewer laughs) That was a real- I did carpentry, okay? So I got into the workshops teaching lesbians, it said women but it was lesbians, teaching lesbians basic carpentry, so they could go back, the idea was they would come, they would learn basic skills, and they would go back to their land, and they would build their own little cabins. Because you know, it was easy to build a little cabin if you had outdoor toilets and you had running water and all this kind of stuff, you could build a basic cabin. Well, I had workshops, about four or five a year, for about 12 years. And the people would come to the land, and they would live on the land. They would live in the woods, they would, you know, take care of themselves, pretty much. They set up a kitchen. Every time they came, they set up an outdoor kitchen, and all this kinda stuff. And we would teach them, then I had a couple of gals that came and helped me teach, you know, sometimes, and sometimes they would just learn how to make sawhorses, different kinds of sawhorses. Some that folded up, and all this kinda stuff. And so that was my big purpose in being there, was to get women to come. The idea was that women would come and they would stay there, and then they would come back and they would live there, and you know the old routine. Well, they'd come, they'd eat, they'd sleep, they'd go to the workshops, they would. I was paying for the food most of the time, and I used up about $50,000 just having workshops because people couldn't pay to come to them, you know. They would just come, and I had several women that came and lived on the land, because they would have an RV, or they would have this. Had a couple of gals that came there that signed up for two years to, and I was gonna- What I was trying to do was cordon off land so that women would have two or three acres of land to live on forever. But it never really worked out. It just, they all had reasons for coming and reasons for leaving and it was just, I mean you could analyze each one, each one was different. Each person that came was totally different. Some of the women, most of the women that came were pretty nice gals that did a good job, and, you know. But they had issues, they all had issues, they all had- (cheery ringtone) 
What is that, yours? 

- Yeah, that's mine. 

- Okay. So Woman World started out being a landyke place where people could come and live, but it turned into a workshop place where people came and learned stuff and left. And after a while I gave up trying to make it into one. I just said, "Okay, come and live your life here "as long as you want to." They would come for one or two or three weeks, and then they'd go. You know Zalina? 

- Uh huh. 

- She came with three other, two other gals, and the four of us built a yurt on top of a platform. And she would teach belly dancing, she would do belly dancing every night for our entertainment, and Red cooked like a dream. I mean, she cooked tofu and all this healthy foods, you know, and the first time I ate tofu was when she came and cooked for us. And they set up an outdoor kitchen and Susan, I haven't heard from Susan in a long time. She's out in California now. But anyway, the four of us had three weeks of joy, you know, it was fun. 

- Calla? Did Calla come through there? LauRose and Cala? 

- Cal? 

- Cala? 

- Cala. 

- You know who I'm talking about? 

- No. Did she have another name? 

- Yeah, but I don't know it. 

- Well Xylena was something else then, she's, I don't know. I re-met her here about three years ago and she came up to me and said, "Hey Shewolf, I'm so-and-so, remember me?" And I said, "Hmm." And then she told me her other name, and then I remembered who she was. I said, "Belly dancer!" And she said, "Yes!" (laughs) We had some good times, we had some great times. I had 17 years there. 

- Ahh. 

- 17 years there? 

- 17 years of Woman's World, yeah. 

- And how did that, were there any rules? 

- What? 

- Were there any rules? 

- Rules? 

- Yeah, or was there any that's vegetarian? 

- No. 

- No? 

- There was no dietary restrictions. The only restriction I had was that you couldn't smoke in my house. And I don't know, just sensible stuff I guess. I don't remember. 

- But nobody really stayed long enough that you could say that you were creating community there? 'Cause people came and- 

- Yes and no, because we had three gals that came and stayed long enough to have a community, but. About the time when you would start having the problems of community, you know, the infighting and all that kinda stuff, they were on their way out so nobody was there that long. I had a girlfriend who stayed with me for several months, and then I had a friend of mine who stayed over, just, you know, visited and stuff like that. It was never like a long-term community, like Spiral or Pagoda or Sugarloaf or any of those places where there were four, five, six women at one time, continuous. It was never, it never turned out that way. I think a lot of people were afraid of the South, and I think a lot of people were afraid to come to Louisiana. Unfounded fears, I mean, the first thing you'd hear from people when you'd write to them or something like that was, "Do you have alligators?" I mean, they were scared to death that you were gonna have alligators jumping all over them. The stories that went around about alligators and stuff like that, I mean, there were more snakes than there were ever alligators. (interviewer laughs) And it was really unrealistic stuff. I went to lots of conventions, I went to National twice. I did a workshop at National. 

- National what? 

- National Women's Music Festival in Indiana. 

- Bloomington? 

- The festival, the first women's festival. And I did workshops, and I did workshops at Michigan, I did workshops at Southern, Silver Threads and all these places. And invariably, when I would do workshops about women's lands, the questions they had were just unreal! And the questions they had about the South were just unbelievable! The stuff they thought that was going on in the South, it was like, "Well, no! "We don't have alligators on the road!" You know, and stuff like that. That was the big thing, the alligator. They must think that we have alligators running all over the place! Have you seen alligators since you've been here? 

- Yeah, but you have to seek them out. 

- Yeah, you have to go look for them! 

- Yeah. 

- Jesus. My brother was- 

- Well, this is why we have to do this project. 

- Well, yeah! 

- People will understand what the South is like. 

- Yeah, that it's not like that. I'm sorry, we got off the subject. I don't know where we were. You wanna go out, okay. (interviewers mumbling) 

- Diana Rivers? Were you friends with Diana Rivers? Did you go to the land in Arkansas, Diana Rivers? 

- Yeah, I know Diana Rivers. 

- Were you there in Arkansas? 

- I wasn't there, I never quite made it there. I met Diane out West some place, accidentally. And then five years later, I either ran into her or just heard that she had created this place up in Arkansas, and I talked to her a couple of times, and we've emailed back and forth. They have quite a good setup up there, as far as you know, people and land and stuff. But they have problems just like everybody else has problems, you know. There isn't a community out there that doesn't have its problems. But my whole thing about going around and visiting all the lands and stuff, I always sat in on their community meetings, you know. And listened to all the dialog. And the thing was, I never carried tales from one to the next. I never, you know, became the gossip that would carry things around. And so most of the people were willing to let me sit in on their meetings, because they knew I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna criticize them, I wasn't gonna take sides or, you know, try to influence them in any way. And so, consequently, I got to hear a lot (laughs). 

- You come to any conclusions about why it has seemed so difficult? Why conflicts come, and- 

- Well, yeah. Lots of them. It's like, when I first started out on this project, when I first started out looking at lands and stuff and started trying to make a community at Woman's World, my little wise friend in California, who was about 10 years, 15 years younger than I was at the time, she looked me in the eye and she said, "You are not gonna get," let's say five, I said, "I'd like to have five lesbians "you know, to start a program." She said, "You are never gonna find five lesbians "who wanna do the same thing at the same time "in the same way, forget it!" (interviewer laughs) And I ignored it for 20 years, but she was right! She was right. Everybody has the feeling that, if you build it, they will come. T'ain't true. Everybody has the feeling that, they know how they want it. They want vegetarian, they wanna grow their own foods, they want to be healthy, they want to live on the land, they wanna get off the grid. They want to- 

- Have a feminist- 

- Have a feminist group. They want to cut themselves off from the mainstream, they want to be anti-male, you know. They want to be feminists. And they want to do this without any money. (interviewer laughs) Okay? They wanna do it, that's right! Because the people who are the most, the women who are the most dedicated to doing this never had any money. They never, ever had any money. The few that had money went out and bought their own land, they set up their own place, and they said, "Y'all come," and nobody came. And it's the same all over. One of the reason Oregon was successful in having so many places, I think, is because at the time, it was a real, real protection thing. That they were afraid, they were really afraid. Well, when I was up there two lesbians were killed. And it's just because they were lesbians. They killed them. They just, you know. But it was a real protection. And back in the '40s and '50s and '60s, when some of these places formed, they formed for protection, they formed to keep other people from beating them up or killing them or, you know, razzing them, or whatever they were doing, and particularly in the South. Even though Oregon was the worst, I think. Mississippi, Mississippi was the South. Well you know the story of Brenda and Hannah, or... 

- Brenda? 

- Brenda and... 

- The Hensons. 

- The Hensons, yeah. Brenda and... 

- What's her name, go on! (interviewer laughs) 

- Brenda and what's-her-name. 

- It'll get to- 

- Wanda, Wanda. 

- Right. 

- That's right. 

- Wanda and Brenda. And Brenda's the one that's gone now, right? 

- Yeah. 

- Yeah. Brenda died, I think. But anyway, the stories that came out of there, are typical of things that were happening all over the country, it's just that they weren't verbal about it. They didn't go to the attorney general and complain, they didn't go to see Oprah, you know, they didn't do these things and so nobody knew about them. But the story of Sister Spirit, is the story of a lot of places that never got published. I hope you get some of that in your, in the write-up. Is anybody gonna interview Wanda? 

- Well, they're pretty well-documented. Their story has been written. 

- Yeah, but is it gonna be in Woman- 

- No. 

- No? 

- Well, what we're trying to do is get hold of the stories that aren't yet written. 

- Right, yeah. 

- That, you know, fill in what's missing so that people know how active and lively things are in the South. And were, you know, right from the beginning of this wave of feminism. You know, in southwest Louisiana, potlucks were being organized and women were getting together, you know, and you created the situation for yourself where you have some land and you tried to create all these things there, create the opportunity for these things. 

- Yeah, nobody would know about that. Unless you wrote it. 

- Right, so we're writing it now. 

- Right. (interviewer laughs) 

- These are the untold stories. (interviewer laughs) 

- Say what? 

- These are the untold. 

- Oh, the untold stories. Have you read that little book that Joy Griffith put out, 15 Minutes of Fame? The lesbians? 

- I haven't. 

- You haven't, oh, it's good. She's got volume one out, and she's getting ready to put out volume two pretty soon, so. It's just little vignettes about different women and what they did, you know, their spotlight, and then, that was it. Old lesbians, it's old lesbians. 

- Were there any interesting stories about the directory, like making the directory? 

- Interesting stories about? 

- Like collecting, when you were collecting the information originally. 

- Oh my god, yeah. Tons. 

- How was that? 

- Tons of stories, I don't know where to begin. 

- Well, it doesn't matter where you begin. (Shewolf laughs) Well, let's see. Well, I had to have a lot of cooperation from a lot of lands to put this together. Because after the first, well, three editions I guess, after the first three editions, I wasn't traveling around. The first three or four editions is information that when I traveled around and got information. In fact, the first and second edition, I think, had little excerpts at the bottom about my visit to that land and things like. But after that, after the internet came out and all this kinda stuff, I started getting more information, but I got it via- 

- How many editions were there? 

- Six. 

- Six, okay. 

- The newest one is the sixth. And you don't see it, see my new edition? No, the white one, this one. If you'll go in my room right here, I'm gonna leave this one here but go in my room, back here, on the right hand side right there on that counter, you'll see. See, when I put out an edition, I send about 100 of them out to the lands themselves. That's their reward for sending me the information. So they get a free copy of this. And look at the difference between the first one and the sixth one. 

- Do you think that there's a lot more women's land right now? 

- No, there's not a lot more, but there's a lot more. It's like, every edition you lost several. And then you, let me see if this one's corrected. I have about three errors in it that I corrected. Just gonna write on here. The Pagoda, for example, WomanShare in Oregon, Sugarloaf, and Long Leaf actually, are old enough that they've been in every edition, or if they sent their information in. 

- Right. All right, so there is, how do I put it? Like and different from each other and from other types of land communities? 

- Okay, let's try again, I didn't get it. 

- How are they like and different from each other and from other types of land communities? 

- You mean the lesbian land communities? 

- Mhm. 

- Well, this is under RV. You know, we haven't even really gotten into the RV. 

- Oh, RVing Women's stuff? 

- Yeah. 

- That's a whole different story. 

- It's a whole different story, but it's your story. 

- Well. 

- And if it happened, did it happen prior to 1994, do you think? Prior to the first edition? 

- Oh yeah. 

- Coming out? And it happened in the South, as there was a lot of Florida stuff. 

- Well, RVing Women is, was, is still, an organization that Zoe and Lovern started. They started it, I don't know when they started it, back in the '60s, I guess. And the stories are connected to Carefree in Florida. Zoe and Laverne started, first of all, they had RVing Women, which was an organization of women traveling around in RVs, not necessarily lesbian, but women. Well, they went under the guise of RVing Women for many years, and then in Tallahassee, at the national convention of RVing Women, the issue came up, and it came up just like it did at NOW, you know, in Houston. The issue came up, and four women who were straight, sitting in the front row, I was emcee for that. So I remember it. 

- What year is this again? 

- Oh, god. I don't know! (interviewer laughs) 

- Decade? 

- I'm sorry, but I just don't remember what year it was. '60s, '70s, something. 

- Okay. 

- It was in your scope. Somebody can look it up and find out when it was. Where was I? 

- So you were emceeing- 

- So you were emceeing, four straight women in the front. 

- I was emceeing the RVing Women's convention at Tallahassee that year, and there were four women sitting in the second row, not second row, no, they were back. They were sitting back, they were in the back. Like, seventh or eighth row. And something was said on the stage about lesbians. I don't know what it was, but there was some little remark about it, and these four women indignantly got up and left, and said, "We're not gonna be part of this anymore, "because we're straight, and you know, "we don't wanna blah blah blah blah blah." And so they left. Well then, the issue was brought up, and the issue was, listen. 75% of this organization is lesbian, quit trying to hide it! So, they gave up. (interviewer laughs) And they said, "Okay, RVing Women is RVing Women, it's open to all. 

- Open to all women, including and especially lesbians. 

- All women, yeah. Blah blah blah. 

- Learning the 75% who are members. 

- Yeah, yeah. Well, shortly before or after that, Zoe and Laverne took the RVing Women's list and sent out invitations to everyone on the list to come to Arizona and look at the Pueblo. The Pueblo was an RV park that they had purchased, okay, and were very gradually letting all the tenants leave, because their leases were up. And as they would leave, they would sell, to some lesbian, one of the spaces, okay? You know the story of the parks out there? Well, you do, but you don't. Okay, so as they would fill up the park, they would fill it up with lesbians. The whole place was nothing but lesbians. And each lesbian owned a little space, and they would park their RV there, and they could live there or just vacation there. Whatever they wanted to do. And then the Pueblo is in Apache Junction, on Southern Avenue. Has a swimming pool, a clubhouse, a really nice place. As they were just about to fill that place up, the park across the street, which is called Superstition Mountain Resort, SMR, came up for sale. And they did the same thing, they bought it, and started selling. So now you have two parks, which are strictly lesbian. If somebody's mother lives there, she's straight, and that's about it, but it's all in. All I can tell you is, on New Year's Eve, each one has their own party, and then for $5 at midnight, you can cross over and go to the other party. (interviewer laughs) And there's at least 500 lesbians there. 

- How many do you think are Southern? 

- Southern women? 

- Mhm. 

- Have no idea, there's no way to know. They come from all over the country. 

- So what about Carefree? 

- I was there, and I'm Southern, and there were a lot of Southern women there. But they came from all over. But the two women who started this, okay, sold out and now the people own it themselves. And two of the people who went to visit there were Gina and Cathy. And Gina and Kathy, coming home from one of their trips one day, back to Florida where they lived, decided, "We could do that!" And so they went to north Fort Myers, they bought a piece of land, I saw the land before they built on it, because I was coming over here to make my trip. Remember? I was trying to make my trip- 

- Yeah, trip circuit. 

- Yeah. And when I was making my circuit, Gina called and said, "Why don't you stop by "and I'll show you this," I said, "Okay." So I stopped by, we had breakfast, and then we went out and looked at this land. And it was just a piece of swamp (laughs). But it was like, 25 acres of swamp or something like that. And she said, "What do you think? "What do you think? "We're gonna tell all the women to come, "and we'll build them houses, "but we're gonna build a nice RV park, "we're gonna build a nice RV park for women, by women. "It's not gonna be a park that you buy, you know, "and then fit all the women in. "It's gonna be one built for them." So I asked them two questions. I said, "Well, my first question is, "how are you gonna make it exclusively lesbian?" And they said, "Well, what we're gonna do "is we're gonna sell these lots "to anybody who wants to buy them. "Anybody can come in, because that's the law, you know. "But we're gonna have a clubhouse in the middle "that's only open to women who apply. "We're gonna approve them." And she said, "Our lawyers said we can do that. "Legally, we can have a clubhouse "that is exclusively for our members." And so the way it worked out, I'm gonna jump ahead because I'm gonna tell you what happened. The way it worked out, 'cause I was out there, a man and his wife would come in, because it was a beautiful park, it still is. A man and a wife would see the sign, and they'd come in, they'd say, "Well, we want to look at the lots." And so they'd drive around, they'd look at the lots, and they'd say, "Oh, yeah," then they'd look at the clubhouse, "Oh, this is nice," and everything. And so they'd just say, "You have to sign on the dotted line." The wife would look around, and would see all these women here and she'd say, "No, honey, this is not where we wanna be." (everyone laughs) She would figure it out real fast, even if they weren't lesbians, there were too many women here for my husband. (everyone laughs) So they never had that problem, never had the problem. But they- 

- What's their name? 

- Kathy and Gina. 

- No, but what the name of the- 

- Carefree Resort. 

- Okay, okay. 

- And it's in the book. You'll see it in the book. And when you read the book, you'll see Sugarloaf and Carefree, and Pagoda, and WomanShare, and all these places, you know. They had a couple of Texas places, but they never stayed alive. They were in some of the earlier ones. But anyway, that's the connection. RVing Women started out, and then they had these two parks, and then two of the women came and built Carefree. And Carefree is the only place that was built, was the only place that was built strictly for us. Now, Rainbow Vision in New Mexico is built for us. Very expensive. 

- And Carefree was in existence at the time of the first Shewolf directory? 

- Well, if it did 

- If it was, it would be in there, right? 

- Look and see if it's in there, that's the only way I can tell. (interviewer laughing) 

- Let's see, I can remember back. Too bad I didn't document all this myself, so I'd remember the dates. 

- It's not in the first edition. 

- Not in the first one? 

- I remember seeing it though. 

- Hmm. It must be in the second one. It might've been built during the time of the second one. It's only about, it's not 20 years old. We're 2013, so, '90, '80, no, it's not 20 years old, so. 

- How many places in the South right now have RV communities? 

- I don't know. 

- You don't know? Do you think that- 

- How would I know that? 

- Any lesbian land places? 

- Lesbian land. 

- Huh? 

- Lesbian land, lesbian RV communities. 

- Lesbian RVing communities, Carefree. 

- That's all? 

- That's all I know of. I mean, I don't know. 

- I don't know of any either. But you would know more than I would. 

- Yeah, there's RV parks around. See, my directory doesn't have RV parks, as such. That's a whole nother thing. There's an organization called Rainbow RV, which was started by two women up in Canada. And it's very popular in Florida. There's a lot of members in Florida. And it's men and women. But it's gay and lesbian only. And it's pretty active. And they list a lot of parks, in their directory, they will list a whole bunch of parks that are gay-friendly, or gay-owned, or you know, that kind of thing. 

- And how do you think the RV communities are different from the landyke communities? 

- The RV community is different from what? 

- From the other women's land, lesbian land communities. 

- RV communities and lesbian lands are totally different things, there's no resemblance whatsoever. (interviewer laughing) I mean, RV communities are RV communities. They're people who live in RVs. 

- Mhm. 

- Lesbian lands, they can live in anything. From shacks, to RVs, to mansions, you know. There's no relationship to one another. 

- What ideas did you have when you- 

- Carefree just happens to be both, that's all. 

- Yeah, and that's the one that I've heard- 

- And then there's another community in Boone, Boone, North Carolina. The Carolinas in our scope? 

- Yeah. 

- Okay, well, Boone, North Carolina has the offshoot from Carefree. Carefree now, Gina and Kathy, have now gone to North Carolina and built a community in Boone, North Carolina, and it is chalets. And more expensive. But it's gay and lesbian. And they let them in in there, so they made it gay and lesbian. Oh, and Palms of Manasota, right outside of, what is it. It's down there by Tampa and Sarasota and, you know. But Palms of Manasota started out as a gay and lesbian housing place, you know, where they built little houses. The guy that started it put the money into it, and built these nice little houses. And at one time, they had half men and half women. I don't know what they have now. 

- In Gulfport? 

- Because the guy died. Huh? 

- In Gulfport? 

- No no, that's totally different. That's a totally different- 

- The sawmill? 

- Huh? 

- The Sawmill? 

- Sawmill is over here on the East Coast, farther up. It's not there, no. Sawmill is a campground. 

- Yeah. 

- It's an RV park. And it's mostly men, yeah. You've been there, haven't you? Yeah. That's an RV place, Sawmill. But it's mostly men and it's mostly, it's not a feminist place at all. And in fact it's a little macho. 

- Yeah. 

- Yeah. 

- Anyway, getting back to our subject (laughs). 

- I keep forgetting that you're looking at Southern feminist lesbian activism (laughs). 

- Yeah. 

- I was trying to go back. 

- Yeah, and so. I mean, we covered a lot of things, I mean you pretty much started feminism at the college that you were at. In Southwest Louisiana. 

- Oh, yeah. 

- We did. 

- Because- 

- The five of us did, yeah. 

- The five of you. Yeah, yeah. You were an instigator there. And then you created this land where you drew women who wanted to learn carpentry skills. 

- Woman World was. And we still have, I still hear from women who were there, learned something and went out and built the little things, and then they made crews and they ran around with their crew. I tried to get together some crews, because, oh here's another thing. Are you familiar with Andrea and Leaf, are their names? 

- Yeah, Leaf and Drea, mhm. 

- Yeah, you know them. They created the Missouri, is Missouri in the Southern thing? Yeah. They created the Missouri thing, the Neighborhood. 

- And they're gonna write about that. 

- They're gonna write about it, good. 

- I think it's Kansas City. 

- Kansas City, yeah. 

- Yeah. 

- They- 

- They're gonna write. 

- When I met her at National many years ago, we talked about having my crews go up there and help them, you know, renovate those houses. And we would've done it, except I couldn't get any crews! (interviewer laughing) Everybody was out doing something, you know? It's funny. 

- They all had their own commitments. 

- But, did you go their anniversary thing in Atlanta? 

- Uh, yes. 

- Didn't you? 

- Their sort of rededication? 

- Yeah. Turn that light out, would you, so I'll know she's in? Thank you. Yeah, Bonnie and I went to it. Their rededication to themselves, or anniversary, it was like 25th anniversary or something. 

- Yeah. 

- Yeah. That was fun. 

- It was beautiful. 

- I think Corky went, didn't she? Yeah. Yeah, I think I wrote something or read something for them, I can't remember now. 

- Are there any other questions that you can think of? 

- Is there anything else that you'd like to say, in terms of- 

- Oh, yeah, a lot. (laughing) 

- What would you like- 

- Do I have to start all over? (laughing) 

- In terms of Southern lesbian feminist activism. 

- Let me see what some of the, I'm trying to- 

- You were gonna tell me a story. 

- Did you read the little articles that the women wrote about 30 years ago? 

- You know, I've read- 

- Probably haven't read them yet, hm? 

- Yeah. 

- You should read those when you get a chance. Alex Hopkin and Susan Wiseheart, and some of these women wrote a little article for me on what it was like 30 years ago and now, how is it different? And those I think would be very interesting in our whatchacallit, because let's see. Jen is here in the South, Alex is in New York, Susan's in Missouri, Missouri? I don't know where she is. Vanya's, I don't know. You'll have to look and see. 

- Vatya's up north. 

- I can't remember, huh? 

- She's up north, Vatya. 

- Yeah, okay, here we go. 

- Rebecca. 

- Of course, Allepon Village, I'm sure you'll have documented quite well. 

- Yeah, they're on there. 

- Dancing Rabbit, I don't know a lot about them except what's in the book. Caulk Hill. That's a good writer. Laughing Waters. OLHA, O-L-H-A is what you were talking about, Diana Rivers, up in, yeah. Sola Circle Sanctuary, okay. 

- How about Meryl Mujrum? 

- Yeah, Meryl's a good writer, good writer. 

- She's really- 

- She's a kick, I love her. Carefree, oh, Lake Annie WomanSpace. Well, that's new, that's this past year, so. Laughing Eagle's been around, what, eight or 10, 12 years? Long Leaf, Moon Haven, Moon Haven's been, I don't know how long Flash has been there. Pagoda. Pagoda would have a history. Now, you should talk to Rainbow and get the history. 'Cause she's got a lot of that written down. 

- Right. 

- Yeah. Something Special. I don't know when they started, but they've been there a while. 

- I think they're gonna be covered. 

- Good. 

- Because, Barbara Ester has showed up again, and she, you know, was involved with those folks. 

- The Whimsy would be a good one too. Davy's still there. What's her partner's name, what was her partner's name? Anyway, her partner died, but Davy's still there. And they have some really good documentation on stuff. Especially feminist, and somebody should interview Davy at the Whimsy. 

- Where is that? 

- W-H-I-M-S-Y, Whimsy. It's southern Florida, southeastern Florida. 

- And what's her name? 

- Davy, D-A-V-Y, Davy. 

- First name? 

- The Whimsy, W-H-I-M-S-Y, the Whimsy is in there. All the details. 

- Okay. 

- But they've been part, they were part of the feminist national civil rights network, for years and years and publications, and a lot of stuff. Clearing house, they were a clearing house for years and years and years. When Rusty, Davy and Rusty, Rusty. Rusty passed, yeah. But Rusty was very, very active, and Davy was right beside her. They would have documents, they have a whole library, I'm sure, full of all kinds of stuff that somebody could research- 

- We should get in touch with them. 

- Good, good. Yeah, I would get in touch with them. And so this thing's gonna be pretty big when they finish with it, huh? 

- It is. (interviewer laughing) 

- Who's gonna publish it? Are y'all gonna publish it yourselves? 

- Well, it's gonna be documented in, I mean, the archives are going to Duke. And it's gonna be published, we have a publisher. 

- You do? 

- Yeah. 

- Well, we have Sinister Wisdom. 

- Well yeah, but that's just one section. 

- Right, but I think that there is. 

- I mean, the idea with Sinister Wisdom is to cover a little bit of as much as we can that we can pull together for right now. 

- So, is there any other thing that you'd like to say? 

- Well, I don't know, no. And at this point, I don't know. 

- Okay, all right. 

- You wanna do another interview sometime, we can. You know, if you find holes or something like that and you wanna talk some more later, that's fine. I just- 

- Okay. 

- I can't think right now. 

- Well, thanks. 

- You're welcome. 

- Because this is a huge amount of information. 

- It's been 80 years of living, and a lot of stuff happened, you know. (interviewer laughing) I'll think of 12 stories I didn't tell you after you leave. Well, turn it off and I'll tell you the story.