Boudreaux, Shewolf (Jean) - interviewed by Barbara Esrig and Kate Ellison / Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project / Duke Digital Repository

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Okay, today is

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February 19th, 2013,

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and I'm speaking with Shewolf.

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Shewolf, let me start off with asking you

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where you were born and,

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where you were born.

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Well, I was born

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on Desire Street,

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where the streetcar doth runneth, used to run.

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(interviewer laughing)

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In New Orleans, 1932,

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which makes me 80.

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And I'll be 81 in March.

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Okay.

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Okay?

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And what was your name that you were born with?

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Oh, Jean Boudreaux.

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Tell me about Boudreaux.

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Boudreaux, B-O-U-D-R-E-A-U-X,

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in case you're writing it, 'cause it's hard to spell.

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Boudreaux.

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My father was French, my mother was German,

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and Boudreaux's the family name.

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And were they both from New Orleans?

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My mother was from New Orleans,

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my father was from someplace in Mississippi.

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He came to New Orleans to work,

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and they got married,

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ran off and got married

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so it wouldn't cost the family any money,

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I remember them telling us that.

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And then my mother's father

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made 'em have a church wedding when they got back.

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(interviewer laughing)

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'Cause they were Catholic,

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and that was the end of the Catholic.

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They made the kids do their communions,

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the first and second communions,

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and then they said, "Okay, you're on your own now."

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(all laughing)

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And what was it like in New Orleans growing up?

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Mmm, it was very nice, actually.

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It was, in the '30s and '40s, you know,

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it was just an easy place to live,

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it was clean, it was safe.

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I mean, I used to go, when I was a teenager,

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I used to get on the bus at my house

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at eight o'clock at night and go across town

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and visit my friends, and get back on the bus

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and come home 10, 11 o'clock at night as a teenager,

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with no fear of anything, you know?

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It wasn't like now, I wouldn't do it now, you know.

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But at that time, it was nice.

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And the beach was open, Lake Pontchartrain was open,

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and you could swim in Lake Pontchartrain,

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it was not polluted.

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I don't know, I hadn't thought about it for a long time,

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but it was pretty nice growing up there.

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I grew up in the Ninth Ward, which became

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very notorious as a hard place to live,

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but my dad was

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the kinda guy that went to work.

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No matter what, he went to work.

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In the Depression, he lost his job, he had one in two days.

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He was a homemade mechanic, a homemade carpenter,

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a homemade everything, you know.

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And he'd just go get him a job.

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And he was just a working guy, that's all,

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he just worked all the time.

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So he was able to get,

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what do you remember about the Depression?

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I remember the Depression as being,

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I don't remember being poor but I was poor.

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I mean, now I know, we were very poor.

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But the way that we ran the family, I mean,

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the family was run in such a way

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that we never owed anybody anything,

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we never bought anything that we didn't have the money for.

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And the only thing my parents owed money on

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was the mortgage for the house.

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They would save up enough money to buy a car,

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they would save up enough money

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to buy whatever they were gonna buy, and that was it.

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And I remember, as a kid, we always had food,

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we had clothes but, you know, nothing special,

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nothing fancy or nothing we didn't actually need, you know.

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And I remember, growing up, that

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the one thing I remember about being poor was that,

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I remember as I grew up,

3:58

to have a box of Kleenex was a big, big luxury.

4:00

(interviewer laughing)

4:04

Yeah, we never had Kleenex.

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You know, we always, handkerchiefs that you can wash

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and all this kinda stuff, so.

4:10

I remember when I got my first job,

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the first thing I did was buy a box of Kleenex (laughs).

4:14

That's funny.

4:18

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

4:20

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Politics, hmm.

4:25

I don't relate my childhood with politics at all.

4:31

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Okay.

4:34

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The only thing I can remember about being a kid

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was that it was not kosher to

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associate with the blacks,

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you know, it was an anti-black community.

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I mean, it was all-white and everything.

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And it was just the way you lived,

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it wasn't that the family had anything against black people,

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but you just didn't go to school with them,

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you know, at that time, you know,

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they were a class of their own.

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But I do remember, there was one black family

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in the neighborhood, around the corner, you know,

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down there, we knew they were there and that was it.

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And what I do remember is that at one point

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when I was a teenager, my dad had a riding stable

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out on Lake Pontchartrain,

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he bought this from a neighbor.

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'Course, he got screwed, but my dad was like that.

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Anyway, he bought this riding stable,

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and we had these horses and we'd go out there

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and we'd, on Friday night he'd take my mother and me

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and my two brothers, and we'd go out to the stable

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and we'd ride with the crowd down to this restaurant.

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And then we'd turn around and come back,

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and you know, that was our big outing.

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But I remember my dad hired this little kid,

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boy, about so big, who was black.

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And what I remember was,

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he said something about

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hiring him or having him work there at the stable,

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and there was no black people around,

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it was all white, you know, all white.

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And so he stood out like a sore thumb.

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And I remember, and I don't know what I asked my dad,

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something about him, but I remember my dad saying,

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"Well, now be good to him because his mother is white."

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(interviewer laughing)

6:20

"And he doesn't fit in anyplace else.

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"You know, nobody wants him."

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And my dad had a soft heart but he acted like he didn't,

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you know, he is like the tall,

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staunch, quiet,

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John Wayne-type guy, you know.

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But underneath it all he was just a softy.

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But the only thing I remember about, you know,

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racial stuff at that time, was that.

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

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(laughing) Yeah.

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Have you always considered yourself a Southerner?

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Oh yeah.

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Oh yeah, I was born and raised in the South.

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And even though I lived a lot of other places,

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well I remember going to school in Cleveland,

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at the University, and I was, I'm jumping way ahead.

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It doesn't matter, I guess.

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But I remember going to school

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as a teaching assistant,

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you know, on a scholarship or assistantship.

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Assistantship, that's what it was.

7:25

I was on an assistantship, and I remember

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when I got to the Case Reserve campus

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and I went in to the building

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and we started our classes and all this kinda stuff,

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I remember being treated by the Northerners

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as if I ate mud, and was stupid, and you know,

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all these kinds of things we talk about all the time.

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And I remember specifically,

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the attitude, you know, you just,

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you don't remember the dialogue necessarily,

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but I remember the attitude that,

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of this Southerner, you know, they'd say,

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"Where are you from?"

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I'd say, "Louisiana," and they'd go, "Oh,"

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and you could see the faces, you know, going.

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And I remember, about halfway through the first semester,

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when the first grades came out.

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And mine was A, I did really good work.

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And the attitude changed overnight.

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They was like, "Oh, you're from the South,"

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(laughs) "but you're not stupid!"

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I remember that very, very, very clearly,

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like it was yesterday, you know.

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Yeah, I lived in Cleveland, Ohio.

8:25

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But where did you go to undergraduate school?

8:27

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I went to undergraduate school

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in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the South,

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then I went to

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graduate school in West Virginia,

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I took a master's in, I don't know,

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education, psychology, speech,

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you had mixed up stuff then.

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And then I went for my doctorate at Cleveland,

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and then I went to work at

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Our Lady of the Lake College,

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a Catholic school in Texas, San Antonio.

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And that was a hard job, let me tell ya.

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And then I went to work at

9:11

the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

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And what was that in?

9:17

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Speech and hearing.

I did speech and hearing.

9:20

And then I went to,

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oh, and then I came back to Louisiana,

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and I went to work

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as a professor at Southwestern,

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Louisiana University but Southwestern at the time,

9:34

at Lafayette, and that was my political career.

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That was my political experience,

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that was my feminist lesbian political experience.

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Because when I hit-

9:47

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And what year was that?

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Huh?

9:48

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What year was that?

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That was around '69 to '72, someplace in there, okay?

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I was at the University of Arizona,

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and my old professor, who was head of the department

10:00

at Louisiana University in Lafayette

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had contacted me, or I don't know how the arrangement went,

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but he had a job opening and he wanted me to take it,

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and so I came to the campus, oh, this was my first episode.

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I came to the campus, and I did a workshop for him,

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on the stage, in the auditorium, you know,

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for all the speech and hearing people.

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And I arrived, and did my presentation in a pantsuit.

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(interviewer laughing)

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Now this was back in the late '60s, okay?

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And no woman on the campus at that time

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had ever dared to wear anything but a dress.

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Now, it seems funny, but at the time it was, you know.

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Well, I never thought much of it,

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at the time it was common for me, you know,

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ordinary for me from Arizona.

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And so I did my presentation in a pantsuit.

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Well, you know, it was like (gasps).

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And I didn't know what they were ogling about.

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(interviewer laughs)

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So the presentation went off fine,

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and after it was over and we went to lunch

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and all this kinda stuff, he offered me this job.

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And I said, "Well, I'll think about it."

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You know, "It sounds good."

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And we negotiated back and forth.

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And finally, they gave me, I said,

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"I won't come with less than a full professorship,"

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'cause I was in line for one there.

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So he gave me that, and then I wanted the salary,

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so he gave me that, and something else.

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Oh, and with a full professorship

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you got to be a member of the graduate council.

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Okay?

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And the graduate council ran the university at that time.

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Okay, so anyway, that was all fun.

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So I took the job a year later,

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and I came and I took the job,

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and the first thing, the first message I got

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from my boss was, via somebody else,

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"Don't wear pantsuits on campus."

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(interviewer laughs)

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Well, I ignored that, you know,

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and wore what I wanted to wear, and nobody said a word.

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Had you come out by then?

12:03

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No, no, no, heavens no.

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(interviewer laughs)

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In the '70s, are you kidding?

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University, uh uh.

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In the South?

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Uh uh.

12:10

But the interesting thing was,

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as soon as I got to the campus,

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I somehow connected with

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four other women on the campus

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who were all straight, well, one was semi-straight

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and the other three were straight.

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But they were heads of departments

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and heads of divisions and stuff like that,

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and I was a full professor, so my tenure was safe.

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You know, they couldn't throw me out.

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The other four women, one of them was tenured in,

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and the other three were not,

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so they were a little bit shaky.

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Well, the five of us got together once a week and plotted.

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(interviewer laughs)

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And plotted.

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And we didn't know we were plotting at first,

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we just got together because we didn't like the way

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things were on the campus, you know,

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the women were all underpaid, they were all under-promoted,

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and women were like this on the campus.

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And so the first thing we tried to do

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was to have a meeting of all the female faculty.

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Which, at that time, wasn't more than 50 women,

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you know, and they had like,

13:11

200 faculty.

13:12

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All in a...

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And maybe, I'm guessing at this,

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I don't know the exact numbers.

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But I know it was less than a quarter of them.

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Anyway.

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But we called the meeting, and the five of us

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were all there waiting to have the meeting,

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nobody showed up.

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Not one faculty member came.

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They were too scared!

13:30

You know?

13:31

You couldn't organize, you couldn't,

13:32

nobody knew anybody's salary,

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it was, you know, taboo.

13:36

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I was just gonna ask you

how many people got paid.

13:39

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Nobody knew

anybody's salary, oh no,

13:40

you couldn't know what, you couldn't even talk

13:41

in the department about what you were getting, no salaries.

13:44

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Were you told

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not to do that?

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Mhm.

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Were you told

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not to do that?

13:50

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Well, you know how it is.

There's rules that are written,

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there's rules that you follow,

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whether they're written or not.

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And so, this was just, I don't know,

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I hit the campus, nobody talked about salary

13:59

unless it, you know.

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And if I asked somebody what they made,

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they'd say, "Oh, well I get (mumbles)."

14:04

Change the subject,

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or whatever.

14:08

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And how much were you

making as a full professor?

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Do you remember?

14:10

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Oh, God, maybe,

$3600 or something like that?

14:17

It was low, anyway, it was low.

14:20

But it was low in comparison with what the men were making.

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The men were about 40% higher

14:24

than we were making, at the time, okay?

14:26

And we didn't know this as a fact, we just kinda,

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the five of us would get together and talk,

14:34

and we'd know a little bit about,

14:36

and then, you know, one of them had a husband

14:37

and she knew what he was making,

14:39

and one of them had a boyfriend, and you know,

14:41

we'd piece together.

14:44

So we said, "Okay, the first thing we need to do

14:45

"is find out what people are making."

14:47

So we went to public records,

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or wherever you go for this stuff,

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and one of the gals that was in our five-finger group

14:52

was head of the computer department.

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Now, there wasn't any computer department as such,

15:01

but she ran the computers for the university,

15:05

so she was the right-hand to the president.

15:08

Okay?

15:11

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Mhm.

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Because at that time, to get a computer system

15:12

into the university was the first step.

15:16

There was no department

15:18

at the time.

15:20

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Right, right.

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Okay, so, and then one of the gals

15:21

was head of the business department, and you know,

15:24

they all had some good talents.

15:27

So the first thing we did was get a hold

15:29

of the faculty salaries, and make comparisons and do some,

15:31

so we found out was

15:36

how underpaid everybody was,

15:39

and all this kinda stuff, and so, you know,

15:41

that's when we called the meeting and nobody showed up.

15:44

Because word had gotten round the campus

15:47

that, you know, something was going on.

15:48

Well it just so happened

15:51

that the president of the university

15:52

was a guy that I had gone to school with.

15:55

And so he was kinda nice to me, you know,

15:59

and I was nice to him, and we were just kinda like, okay.

16:01

You know, we were friends,

16:05

so to speak.

16:06

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Gone to school, like,

back when you were a kid, or?

16:07

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No, no, no,

16:10

when we went to college.

16:10

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When you went to college.

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Yeah.

16:12

'Cause we'd both went

16:13

to that school.

16:14

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That school.

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And then he worked his way up

16:15

to becoming the president of the university.

16:17

And when I went back there to teach, you know,

16:19

20 years later or whenever it was,

16:21

he was the university president.

16:23

And so I could go in his office and talk to him

16:25

when I wanted to, you know,

16:27

and so that helped a little bit.

16:28

But it was strictly a professional relation.

16:30

And he was using me, and I was using him, and we knew it.

16:33

You know.

16:36

So anyway, let's see.

16:37

We called the meeting, it didn't happen.

16:40

We got the information together.

16:41

So, we met for several months trying to figure out

16:43

what in the hell could we do.

16:47

We went to the administration and we said,

16:49

"We think there's some discrepancies in your,

16:51

"you know, salary things, and so forth,

16:55

"and we'd like you to do something about it."

16:57

Well, we sat back and of course

16:59

nothing happened.

17:01

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Nothing happened.

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So we took all our information, we put it all in writing,

17:02

and we sent it to the attorney general.

17:05

I think that's where we sent it.

17:08

To the equal employement.

17:09

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Of Louisiana?

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Whatever that-

17:13

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In D.C.?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:15

Whatever the office was

17:17

at the time.

17:19

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Equal Opportunity.

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Yeah, Equal Opportunity, that was it.

17:21

We sent it to them.

17:23

Of course, nothing happened, then all of a sudden,

17:25

one day we get the call, "Come to the president's office,

17:27

"we have some people visiting us." (laughs)

17:30

(interviewer laughs)

17:33

And so they came, and they visited the president's office,

17:33

and within one year, everything changed.

17:36

They raised the salaries, they did new investigations.

17:39

And we pointed out to them that

17:42

it wasn't just the salary level,

17:44

it was the fact that women were staying instructors

17:46

for five years where men were staying instructors for two,

17:49

or something like that.

17:52

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Right, right.

-

That's not exact.

17:54

But you know, it was that kinda stuff.

17:55

And so it changed, it was slow.

17:56

It took them two years to do it, but they got, you know,

17:58

they got it, 'course our salaries went up too, you know.

18:00

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Were you pegged as troublemakers?

18:04

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Oh yeah, oh god yeah.

18:06

Yeah, yeah.

18:08

I ran, the year before I left,

18:09

I ran for department head and I sure didn't get it (laughs).

18:13

(interviewer laughs)

18:18

I sure didn't get it.

18:19

He put a male, a young,

18:20

attractive, white male,

18:23

history professor in as department head.

18:27

I mean, as dean of the college.

18:29

I mean, I knew he was gonna do it,

18:35

but I had to do it, you know.

18:35

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Yeah, yeah.

-

But anyway.

18:37

The career there was good, but I was so tired of it.

18:38

I was department head for seven years,

18:41

and that was it, I quit, I left.

18:44

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So what year was it that, and what about your feminism

18:46

during the early '70s, or during that time?

18:49

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That was it, I was in academia and that was it.

18:53

I didn't do anything else to speak of.

18:56

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And were there any other pants-wearers

18:58

after you were in there?

19:01

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Any what?

19:03

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Any other pantsuit-wearing-

19:04

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Oh, the pantsuits came in,

yeah.

19:07

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They came in.

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It caught on.

19:09

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You started it.

19:10

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Slowly and gradually,

they came in, yeah.

19:11

But they were coming in all over, you know,

19:12

it wasn't particularly.

19:15

But in the South, it was hard for women to wear pants,

19:17

that was just not, you know,

19:19

you were a lesbian, or you were a dyke,

19:22

or you were a nunu, or you were mannish,

19:24

or, you know, you had all these terms and stuff.

19:28

And nobody ever said anything about me being a lesbian

19:30

until I ran for the deanship, and then it came out.

19:33

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So when did you come out?

19:36

What year did you come out?

19:37

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Where?

19:40

Come out to whom?

19:41

To what?

19:42

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To yourself?

19:43

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Oh, to myself I came out probably as 11.

19:45

I had a girlfriend at 11.

19:48

Oh, the way I got out, when I was 11,

19:51

there was my mother's best friend's daughter,

19:55

used to come over to the house and stay with us,

19:59

with my two brothers while they went running someplace.

20:02

And I was 11 or 12, maybe 11, she was 12 I guess.

20:05

Anyway, the one, two, three, four,

20:08

the four of us would stay at the house,

20:12

and my mother and father and the other couple,

20:14

you know, her mother and father,

20:16

would go someplace for an hour and then they'd come back.

20:18

And you know, we were pretty safe and everything.

20:20

And so she would stay over sometimes,

20:22

and that one night that she stayed over,

20:26

and I thought she was just something else, you know.

20:28

And I don't know what I did, I might've

20:31

touched her hand or something,

20:34

I did something, I don't know.

20:35

But anyway, the next morning she went and told her mother,

20:37

(laughs) and they didn't come visit anymore.

20:39

-

Wow.

20:42

-

Now, what she told, and what the mother told my mother,

20:43

my mother just came in and told me

20:47

that Elaine won't be visiting us anymore.

20:48

I said, "Okay."

20:50

And that was it, my mother never said a word.

20:51

She always acted like she never knew anything.

20:58

But how she could not know, because

21:01

all I ever brought home was girls, I had one boyfriend,

21:03

and you know what it was like.

21:06

So anyway, that was my outing.

21:08

-

So you never married?

21:10

-

No.

21:11

-

And in high school,

21:13

did you have girlfriends

21:15

in high school?

21:16

-

Mhm.

-

And-

21:18

-

I had girlfriends

in elementary school, high school, college,

21:19

and thereafter.

21:23

-

And what about the politics of being a lesbian

21:24

in-

21:27

-

The what?

-

The politics of being a lesbian in,

21:28

what, the '50s, or '60s?

21:32

-

Oh, in the '50s and '60s, there was,

21:34

there was no such thing as lesbian.

21:38

I mean, we didn't even know the word.

21:40

-

So when you said that you had a girlfriend,

21:41

what'd that mean?

21:44

-

I had a girlfriend,

we were the only two.

21:45

We were the only ones.

21:46

There was no other ones.

21:46

We were it, you know.

21:48

-

And how did you define yourself

21:50

with her?

21:52

-

We didn't.

We were just, you know, I was in love with this woman,

21:53

she was in love with me, and we were girls, you know.

21:56

And we'd get together, and that was it.

21:58

-

And did you kiss or anything?

22:00

-

Oh yeah.

22:02

(everyone laughs)

22:03

Of course.

22:05

Kiss and cuddle and stuff.

22:08

-

But you didn't really,

but were you reading things like Well of Loneliness

22:11

or did you read any-

22:14

-

Say what?

-

You know, the book

22:15

Well of Loneliness?

22:16

-

Yeah, I read that.

-

Were you reading any books,

22:18

or did you name-

22:19

-

Well of Loneliness

was the book.

22:21

-

And how old were you when you first read that?

22:23

-

Hmm?

22:26

-

How old were you?

22:26

-

God, I don't know.

22:28

-

I mean, growing up

22:30

in high school.

22:31

-

Teenagers, I guess,

or older maybe, I don't remember, 20s maybe.

22:33

Something like that.

22:37

-

So you didn't have a name

for you loving this girl?

22:39

-

No.

22:43

-

Wasn't a name for it yet.

22:44

-

It was just,

you know, magic.

22:47

(everyone laughs)

22:48

-

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

22:50

-

Well, only thing I can remember

22:54

is that when I was growing up,

22:56

and I liked women,

23:00

that from, let's see,

23:03

sometime around high school I had a boyfriend.

23:08

And he was a guy who

23:10

wouldn't get sexually involved with you,

23:14

because his mother wanted him

23:15

to go to medical school.

23:18

And she didn't want him to get involved with anybody,

23:21

you know, and all that kinda stuff.

23:24

So it worked out for me real well.

23:25

He was a real sweet guy, and I really cared for him,

23:27

I really cared for him.

23:30

But what I remember is that during that time,

23:33

it was totally taboo, as far as, you know,

23:39

women or men being together.

23:43

I mean, that was, and I can remember

23:46

in maybe first year of college,

23:50

I can remember,

23:54

if you went to the library to get books on homosexuality,

23:56

you had to go, you had to be a psych major,

24:00

so I became a psych major.

24:03

(interviewer laughs)

24:05

You had to be a psych major-

24:06

-

The DSM, probably,

was on the list.

24:08

-

Yep, and you

had to go to the librarian, and they had to get the key,

24:10

and they had to open the cabinet.

24:11

This was serious business.

24:13

They had to open a cabinet and get those books out for you,

24:14

and you had to check them out,

24:17

and you had to sign as a psych major.

24:18

Otherwise they wouldn't let you have the books,

24:20

you couldn't read them.

24:22

Now it seems like weird, but at the time

24:24

it was perfectly normal, you know.

24:26

Everything's perfectly normal (laughs).

24:28

-

So when was the first time that you got together

24:29

with other lesbians?

24:32

-

When, as a group of lesbians?

24:34

You mean like, we all know who we are, that type of thing?

24:36

Oh god, the first time?

24:40

Jesus, I don't know.

24:43

-

Or, about the first time.

-

Roughly.

24:45

-

Huh?

24:46

-

Roughly.

24:47

-

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

24:48

-

I don't know.

I can't tell you that.

24:49

-

Late '70s?

-

All I know is that, well let's see, I had,

24:51

Sandy and I lived together for 10 years.

24:58

-

Which 10 years, then?

25:02

What years were those?

25:03

-

That's what

I'm trying to remember.

25:04

That's my guidepost, I'm trying to go back and tell you,

25:05

because I was with this woman here,

25:08

and this woman here, and this woman here.

25:09

And this was, um.

25:11

-

Where were you living?

25:19

-

Well, wait, I'm trying to remember.

25:20

I was in Lafayette, but see, I was in Lafayette

25:22

teaching for, like 15 years.

25:25

And part of that was, (mumbles),

25:29

all right let's say, roughly, late '60s to late '70s.

25:34

Okay?

25:40

We had friends that we knew were lesbians.

25:43

And before that,

25:48

before that I think in the '50s

25:50

it was always a single person.

25:52

It was, you know, I didn't know anybody else.

25:55

We didn't know anybody else.

25:57

We always thought, like I said, we were

25:58

the only ones.

25:59

-

The only ones.

Right.

26:01

-

Yeah.

But in the '70s, then, we started having

26:02

little, you know, dinners and stuff

26:07

at people's houses and stuff like that.

26:09

And the '80s, it increased.

26:11

And then in the '90s,

26:14

oh wait, no,

26:16

I retired in the '80s, didn't I.

26:17

Oh wait, let's go back.

26:20

Yeah, okay.

26:22

In the '70s and '80s, in the late '70s

26:24

and through the early '80s,

26:27

all through the '70s and the first part of the '80s,

26:31

I created a potluck thing,

26:36

okay, in Lafayette.

26:40

In the South, this was in the South now.

26:44

They didn't have groups, they had two, three friends here,

26:46

two, three friends, they didn't have

26:51

any big group of lesbians, I remember that.

26:52

And I remember when I moved to

26:55

this one town, what town was that?

27:00

Was that Lafayette?

27:01

Anyway, moved to I think it was Lafayette.

27:03

When I first moved there,

27:05

must've been '69 I went to work there.

27:07

Or '70 (mumbles).

27:10

I remember, I went to, I didn't know anybody.

27:13

Nobody, much less a lesbian, I didn't know anybody.

27:17

Did I have a girlfriend at that time?

27:22

I must've had a girlfriend at that time.

27:22

I don't know.

27:26

Anyway.

27:27

I remember going to the hospital and looking at the program

27:29

to see what kind of groups they had.

27:34

You know how hospitals have these invitational groups,

27:36

and newcomer's group,

27:39

and all kinda stuff.

27:41

And so I found a newcomer's group,

27:44

and I went to the newcomer's group

27:46

and the woman that was leading the group was a lesbian.

27:47

'Course, I didn't know that when I went there.

27:51

But I went to the group and after the group,

27:53

she said, "Can you stay a minute?

27:55

"I wanna talk to you about something."

27:56

And she spotted me, I guess, right away.

27:57

(interviewers laugh)

28:00

And so we went in the back

28:01

in her office.

28:02

-

It was the pantsuit.

(interviewer laughs)

28:03

-

Yeah, probably so.

28:04

And after it was over we went in the back,

28:06

we got to talking and finally figured out,

28:07

you know, who we were.

28:09

And so I said, "Well, do you have a potluck group?

28:10

"Do you have a, you know."

28:13

She said, "No, we don't have anything,

28:15

"but we should have one."

28:16

And I said, "Okay, well let's do it."

28:20

And she said, "Okay, let's do it."

28:21

Said, "Okay," I said.

28:22

And she knew three or four people,

28:24

and somehow I knew three or four people,

28:27

but I think they were people from long time ago,

28:29

when I used to live in New Orleans or something like that.

28:32

But anyway, between the two of us,

28:35

we got together about 15 women,

28:37

and invited them all to her house for a potluck

28:40

and we started,

28:42

what was it, Saturday night?

28:46

I think it was a Saturday night at 5 o'clock,

28:49

at somebody's house, bring some food.

28:52

And that was all the rules and I said,

28:54

"Let's not make any rules or regulations, let's just do it."

28:56

And she said, "Okay."

28:59

And I said, "All you have to do is know

29:00

"where the next party is," you know.

29:02

And we had that going for eight years.

29:04

Consistently, every week,

29:07

every week, consistently.

29:11

-

Did you add on people?

-

We'd add them all, oh yeah, we had about 60 people

29:13

by the time.

29:15

-

Wow.

-

Somebody decided, one of the couples decided

29:17

that it was their turn, they were gonna have it, okay,

29:20

but they decided instead of having it on Saturday,

29:23

they'll have it on Sunday,

29:25

and instead of having it at 5 o'clock,

29:26

they'll have it at at three, 'cause they had a pool,

29:27

and they wanted to invite a couple

29:30

of their gay guy friends down the street,

29:31

and they ruined it.

29:33

Because half the people didn't know where to go,

29:35

when to go, and all that kinda stuff,

29:37

and they looped off into another whole group of their own

29:39

and kinda scorched ours.

29:42

But for eight years we had a wonderful group going,

29:43

and new people in town would come, you know,

29:46

and it was like you have now, you know,

29:47

you have the potlucks now.

29:49

But that was in the '70s,

29:52

the early '70s, yeah.

29:55

-

And how did you get involved with the whole land-

29:59

-

Oh, the landyke thing, ugh.

30:03

(interviewer laughs)

30:05

Well, let's see.

30:07

About 1989.

30:11

1987, '88, or '89, someplace in there.

30:16

That doesn't sound right, wait a minute.

30:24

Before I retired from teaching,

30:29

I took a trip out to California one summer.

30:32

And I retired in '85 or something like that,

30:37

so it must've been early '80s,

30:39

but I didn't come out with a directory for a long time.

30:42

Anyway.

30:45

I got in my truck,

30:47

put a mattress, a peepad, pot,

30:50

and a cooler in the back of my truck,

30:53

and I drove out to California.

30:55

-

Now, you were still a professor?

30:58

-

Well, yeah, but I was the summer,

30:59

I was off for the summer.

31:01

(phone ringing)

31:02

-

Oh, excuse me just a minute.

31:03

Can you grab-

31:04

-

By yourself?

31:05

-

Yeah, and I drove out to California,

31:06

and I had one friend, Lisa,

31:08

in Chico, Paradise.

31:10

And so I went out to visit her,

31:13

and on the way out I stopped at every place I could find,

31:16

you know, and-

31:19

-

Every place what?

31:21

-

That was lesbian-manned?

-

Well, women's places, see.

31:23

Because I had done some communicating,

31:24

I had written some letters, I didn't have email at the time.

31:28

-

Right.

31:30

-

Okay.

31:31

So I did some letters,

31:32

-

Lesbian Connection maybe.

-

I made some phone calls, huh?

31:33

-

Lesbian Connection?

31:34

Lesbian Connection,

31:36

-

I didn't have it then,

I don't think.

31:38

-

I remember they,

even had that.

31:39

-

I don't think

I had it then.

31:40

-

But, 'cause they

had a listing.

31:40

-

I may have had Lesbian Connection,

31:41

and I may have contacted some dykes.

31:43

I don't remember.

31:45

All of-

31:47

-

So it wasn't

necessarily lesbians that you were,

31:48

people that you were staying with.

31:50

-

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

31:52

-

It was.

-

These were all lesbians, and they were all

31:53

semi-landyke places, you know.

31:56

I mean, some of them were not open to the public at all,

31:59

and some of them were just women I knew or something.

32:02

One of my major contacts

32:06

was Jae and Lee at Outland, okay.

32:08

And another contact was Sonia Johnson,

32:12

at Fire,

32:16

Fire.

32:20

-

Remember the name

of her business.

32:21

-

Something fire,

was the name of her place, okay.

32:24

Jade, yeah.

32:25

-

What state was that?

-

Sonya Johnson and Jade were in New Mexico.

32:27

And Jae was in, Outland's in New Mexico, isn't it?

32:32

I forget now.

32:35

-

Yeah, it is.

-

But anyway, those two I knew,

32:37

and I was gonna see them on the way back.

32:38

On the way out.

32:41

Now, here's two trips.

32:43

-

Let me ask you.

-

Huh?

32:45

-

Let me ask you one question.

32:46

So you went from sort of organizing

32:46

these women's potlucks, and then-

32:51

-

Oh, that was in Lafayette.

32:53

That was early, that was '70s, yeah.

32:54

-

So in between that time and this time,

32:57

what kind of organizing were you doing

32:59

in terms of lesbian feminist stuff?

33:01

-

Well, our potluck stuff was mostly,

33:05

we'd get together and talk about stuff.

33:08

Oh, and then we had a couple,

33:10

we had a couple of those consciousness-raising groups,

33:12

we did a couple of those.

33:17

Stuff like that but nothing, you know.

33:23

-

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

33:25

How did you-

33:28

-

Ahh, networking

was by written letters.

33:30

You'd write to somebody, and if they write back,

33:33

then you can write to them again, and get some info,

33:35

write to them again.

33:38

Spent a lot of postage money but then it was cheaper then.

33:39

It was mostly, I didn't have a computer at the time.

33:43

I didn't know anything about it, psh,

33:46

we'd never have a computer!

33:47

-

Right (laughs).

33:49

-

At that time, it was like, no computers!

33:50

(interviewer laughs)

33:51

Phone calls were too expensive, you couldn't.

33:52

Well, you'd make a couple of phone calls,

33:54

but you don't make too many.

33:55

But it was mostly

33:56

-

But you knew somebody

who knew somebody?

33:57

-

Postcards

and things like that.

33:58

Huh?

33:59

-

So you'd know somebody who knew somebody in Arizona,

34:00

or, is that how?

34:02

-

No, no.

You'd just-

34:05

-

How did you know the people?

34:06

-

Okay, I started out,

I started out with this book called Land,

34:09

Lesbian Lands.

34:13

I started out with this book.

34:14

-

I started with her, yeah.

-

They had five places in it,

34:16

I think one of them might've been the Pagoda,

34:18

I'm not sure.

34:21

But one of the-

34:23

-

The Pagoda's in there.

-

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

34:25

-

Mhm.

34:27

-

Okay.

Well, it might've been the Pagoda,

34:28

and then was WomanShare in there?

34:29

From Oregon?

34:34

-

Yeah.

34:35

-

All right.

34:36

Well, those two, and then,

34:37

there were only two that were still in existence.

34:39

The other three were just discombobulated someplace.

34:42

But anyway, I started out with those,

34:46

and they would give me information about other places,

34:48

and then if I'd go to Oregon, then they'd say,

34:51

"Well, there's a place down the line,

34:54

"we've never been there, but it's only 60 miles,"

34:56

or something like that.

34:58

-

Okay.

-

And so I went out there.

34:59

Now, I made two trips to California.

35:01

I made more, but I mean I made two trips to California

35:05

in relation to the directory thing.

35:08

And I get them mixed up sometimes,

35:11

so I'm gonna tell you about both of them,

35:13

but I don't know which one it was.

35:16

The first trip I made out there,

35:18

I know I went out there in my truck and,

35:19

you know, all that kinda stuff.

35:21

And the second trip I made out there,

35:23

I had a pop-up tent

35:26

that I pulled behind my truck.

35:31

And I remember it because after I got out there,

35:33

and I was in Oregon, and I got up one morning,

35:38

and it took me three hours before I could leave

35:42

because it was so wet, you know, the dew.

35:44

And so I told my friend Lisa, I said,

35:48

"I can't put up with this!"

35:50

And she said, "I'll buy it from you,

35:53

"how much did you pay for it?"

35:54

And I told her and I sold it to her right there.

35:55

So I immediately turned around and came back,

35:58

and planned a trip to Florida,

36:01

and I planned the trip all the way around Florida like this,

36:03

and at the same time, I was in communication

36:06

with the Casita factory in Texas.

36:10

And ordering a Casita, you know.

36:14

And in the meantime, while I was ordering the Casita,

36:17

I got wind of this friend of mine in Florida,

36:21

in Jacksonville said, "Hey, this guy

36:24

"down the street's got a Casita that's pretty new,

36:26

"and it's for sale, and blah blah blah blah blah."

36:29

And he sent me pictures, and you know,

36:31

I went through all this rigamarole, and I got the pictures.

36:33

And so I planned this trip to Florida,

36:36

and I planned it to the point where

36:38

I made a weeks-long reservation

36:40

in this one RV park

36:43

so that when I got this Casita,

36:45

I could drive it down there and I could stay there, right?

36:47

I mean, I had it all laid out.

36:50

Well, I got to Jacksonville, stayed with my friend

36:52

for a while, and talked to this guy.

36:55

Went to see his rig, and so I said,

36:57

"Okay, well, it looks like what I want."

37:01

And he had said, "I'll set it up for you,"

37:04

and all this kinda stuff.

37:06

And I said, "Okay, bring it over to such-and-such place,

37:07

"and open it up and let me see it,

37:10

"and I'll buy it from you."

37:12

And he said, "Well, okay,

37:14

"but we gotta go to the bank first."

37:15

And the red flag went up, you know,

37:18

and he hadn't paid it off, see.

37:20

He still had a mortgage on it,

37:23

and he wanted me to sign the thing to buy it

37:25

before I got to see it set up and all that kinda stuff.

37:29

So I kinda backed out of the deal, but.

37:32

I backed out of the deal and here I am in Florida

37:34

with a reservation, get down Ginger.

37:37

With a reservation for,

37:39

and I was also meeting a woman there.

37:41

At the time, that's another story (laughs).

37:44

That's not for this.

37:47

I'll tell you guys, but it's not for this thing.

37:50

Oh, let me finish this.

37:53

But my trips out to California,

37:55

on the way out to California and on the way back,

37:58

I stopped at Jay and Lee's place in Outland.

38:01

And I remember talking to Lee about,

38:04

"You know, I've got all this information

38:08

"about these places," and I said,

38:09

"I think I'm gonna print them all up,

38:11

"and, you know, make them known."

38:13

And Lee said, "Well, why don't you just

38:16

"send them to us and we'll put them in Maize."

38:20

And I said, "Okay, I'll think about that."

38:22

And she said, "We'll print them, you know,

38:24

"and all that kinda stuff,"

38:26

and I said, "Okay, I'll see when I come back."

38:27

I said, "Well, but I'm thinking kind of of having

38:28

"a, you know, one of my own."

38:30

And then the next trip out, there were two gals in Oregon

38:32

who contacted me and said,

38:37

"We wanna do a book on lesbian lands,

38:39

"and we'd like to coordinate with you

38:42

"and maybe get together."

38:44

And I said, "Well, that would be a lot less work."

38:45

You know.

38:47

So I went out there and visited with them,

38:48

and we talked and we had a couple of meetings,

38:51

and we discussed it.

38:53

And the more I talked with them,

38:54

the more I felt like what they wanted to do

38:55

was to have me look at all these lands,

38:59

and have them look at the ones in the West,

39:02

and then put all our notes together

39:05

and then critique the lands.

39:08

-

Hmm.

-

And say what was good about this one,

39:10

and what was not so good about that one,

39:12

and you can imagine going to Spiral and saying,

39:14

"Lemme see what's good about Spiral and what's not so good."

39:16

And I backed off.

39:19

I said, "No, that's not exactly what I had in mind,

39:21

"I wanted to do an objective, informational book,

39:23

"and let people find out what they want to themselves,

39:28

"but here's where you go, here's who you can contact,

39:31

"and here's the basic philosophy of the thing."

39:33

And I explained to them what I wanted to do.

39:36

And they explained to me what they wanted to do,

39:38

and I said, "Well," and in the end

39:40

I decided, "Well, I think it's best

39:41

"if you do yours and I'll do mine,

39:44

"'cause they're different things."

39:45

So, they never did do anything that I know of,

39:46

I've never seen anything come out of it.

39:48

-

Right.

39:50

-

Yeah, but.

39:51

It was a good decision, I was glad I made that decision.

39:52

So anyway, on the way back, when I talked to Lee

39:55

and I told Lee, I said, "Well,

39:57

"I'm thinking about maybe doing Shewolf's book,

40:00

"you know, doing my own book."

40:02

And she said, "Well, that would be good too, you know."

40:04

Well that was the first edition,

40:06

and that was like 28, well you can count them,

40:09

but I think there were about 28 places in it.

40:12

-

There were 50.

40:15

-

50?

40:17

-

There were 50.

-

In the first book?

40:18

-

And there were 20 that are in the South.

40:19

-

Oh, okay.

40:21

-

Parts of the South.

-

Well maybe I got the numbers mixed up.

40:23

50, oh, that's pretty good.

40:25

50.

40:27

-

Yeah.

-

Well see, now I have over-

40:28

-

You were named Shewolf.

When were you named Shewolf?

40:31

-

Shewolf was a name that came to me

40:34

in a vision quest

40:38

I was on, in Florida actually.

40:42

I had become a member of the UU Church,

40:50

first church membership in my life,

40:53

(interviewer laughs)

40:55

where the hell was I?

40:59

Must've been Louisiana, because my friend,

41:01

what the hell was her name?

41:06

Call her Julie, I can't remember what her name was.

41:09

But anyway, my friend Julie, who was straight,

41:11

and I went to a YuYu workshop break in between,

41:14

they had these week-long workshops

41:18

between Christmas and New Year's,

41:21

and neither one of us had a girlfriend

41:25

or a boyfriend at the time, and so we said,

41:27

"Let's do something," you know.

41:28

And so we drove from Louisiana to Florida,

41:30

and it was the year of the freeze that I-10 closed.

41:34

And I can't remember when it was, but '70s.

41:40

It had to be in the '70s.

41:43

And so we drove over there, and we were

41:44

supposed to be there two days before the Christmas dinner.

41:47

And we got there the day of the Christmas dinner,

41:50

about an hour before they ate,

41:53

because we got frozen off and we had to stop

41:55

at the motel and, you know, wait and go in.

41:58

But anyway, during this workshop thing,

42:00

they had the circle, they did the big circle,

42:05

and they had a woman and a man who did

42:08

the Native American circle,

42:10

and you had to choose a name to be in the circle with,

42:12

you've been through all of this, I'm sure.

42:16

-

No, not too much.

42:17

-

But this was my first,

this was my first adventure with this.

42:19

It must've been early '70s, this must've been early.

42:25

(tapping on table)

42:28

God, no, I mean it doesn't sound like I was there.

42:29

Well, anyway.

42:32

So we went to this thing and my friend's sitting over here,

42:34

and he says, "You know,

42:37

"if you don't think of a name, just pass."

42:37

And so I'm sitting there ready to pass,

42:39

and my friend says Sky or something like that,

42:42

and I go, "Shewolf!"

42:45

Because just at that minute, a white shewolf

42:46

appeared on the rock in front of me.

42:51

I got goosepimples, you know, just.

42:53

And I said Shewolf, and then I looked and I said,

42:55

"Who said that?"

42:58

You know, that was the feeling, like, "Who said that?"

42:58

(interviewer laughs)

43:01

So that's where the name came from.

43:02

Well, I ignored it, went back home,

43:04

visited my friend in New Orleans at the time,

43:07

and you know, I was telling her my experience.

43:09

And she says, "Oh, wait a minute!"

43:12

So she runs in the other room and comes back,

43:13

and she has this big book.

43:15

And she's into all this symbol stuff and everything,

43:17

and so she said, "Shewolf is the pathfinder."

43:20

Well, that was the year before, during, or after

43:25

I went out to California and started finding

43:29

these paths to these different places, so it fit.

43:31

I mean, it was all Greek to me, but you know.

43:35

(laughs) It happened.

43:37

So that's where Shewolf came from.

43:39

And at the time, you see, I hadn't retired.

43:41

I was still a university professor.

43:43

And so at the time I needed a name under which to write,

43:45

'cause I was writing for different magazines at that time.

43:48

And so I took the name as a penname,

43:51

and I took it as a regular name, you know.

43:53

And since I came to Florida, I've been Shewolf.

43:58

Exclusively.

44:02

These people in this town don't know my real name.

44:04

-

Right.

44:08

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

44:10

-

No, no.

44:12

People out of state have no idea what my real name is.

44:13

(everyone laughs)

44:16

Unless they had to write me a check for some reason.

44:17

One gal in New Zealand knows my real name (laughs).

44:20

Yeah.

44:23

-

So you started saying that on your first trip out,

44:28

you went to California and you met some folks

44:31

in California?

44:35

-

Mhm.

44:37

-

'Cause you've been mostly talking about Oregon.

44:37

-

Well, Oregon has all the

44:40

wimmin's lands.

44:41

-

Oregon, oh,

all of them out there.

44:43

-

California didn't have any.

-

Okay.

44:44

-

But Oregon had

quite a few,

44:47

'cause WomanShare.

44:48

-

Oregon Women.

And Roseburg, Oregon is a big lesbian area.

44:51

And so Oregon became a target area, you know.

44:56

When you'd go West, you'd go to Oregon, because at the time,

44:59

I guess they had six or eight places, at that time.

45:04

And then I went up to the Dakotas

45:08

and went across that way one time,

45:10

and I went across and went this way.

45:12

I probably made four trips out to California,

45:14

in all.

45:16

-

So you were just

drawn to that part of culture,

45:18

of life,

45:22

of going back to the land?

45:23

-

Oh, yeah.

-

Living simply.

45:26

-

Yeah, because you see, my dad,

45:27

my dad had bought this 100 acres in Louisiana

45:30

when I was a kid.

45:34

-

Uh huh.

-

And so I'd go out there every once in a while with him

45:36

and, you know, we'd see that.

45:40

But I lived in cities all my life,

45:41

and so the land was like mmm, you know,

45:43

something wonderful.

45:45

When I was thinking about,

45:49

oh it was a long time, I went to a,

45:54

when my dad retired, oh god, this must've been,

45:59

yeah, back in the '60s, I guess, my dad retired.

46:03

He really couldn't afford to retire,

46:06

and so I bought the land off of him.

46:09

I said, "Well, dad, you wanna?"

46:11

He says, "I'm gonna sell this," and I said,

46:13

"Okay, sell it to me."

46:14

And so he and my mother gave me a good payoff,

46:16

you know, a good interest rate and stuff like that.

46:21

And so for 20 years, I paid my mother and dad

46:23

for the land, and so then when I retired, I owned the land.

46:27

-

And where was that land?

46:31

-

Louisiana.

46:32

-

Was that Woman Land?

46:33

-

Woman Land, yeah.

That was Woman World.

46:36

-

So that's the piece.

Woman World, yeah.

46:38

-

Woman World, yeah.

It was north of New Orleans.

46:39

-

And when did that start?

-

Huh?

46:41

-

When did that start?

46:42

-

About 1969,

46:45

until

46:49

19

46:50

85,

46:55

roughly.

46:58

-

And you bought it in '69?

46:59

-

Oh, I bought, yeah, started buying it

47:01

in '69.

47:03

-

And you going there

with your friends.

47:06

-

Yeah.

-

And working on it?

47:07

-

I was teaching in Lafayette, okay.

47:10

It was about 100 miles to the land.

47:13

Now, when I first bought it, I-10 wasn't built.

47:16

And so it was a three-hour drive.

47:20

On Friday night, me and my girlfriend

47:23

would go over there, bed down, and then get up Saturday,

47:25

work all day Saturday and Sunday on the land,

47:28

and then it took a lot of work.

47:31

And then Sunday night we'd drive back.

47:32

Well, while we were doing this, they built I-10.

47:35

And so it got to be a two-hour drive

47:39

instead of a three-hour drive, and that was,

47:41

you know, a big deal.

47:42

But I raised Black Angus cows,

47:44

on that land, that's what I did.

47:47

-

And how many acres did you say it was?

47:53

-

100.

47:55

-

And how many buildings

47:56

did you build?

47:58

-

Well, I had a house,

I had an old Jim Walter house

48:00

that my dad had started for my brother,

48:01

my brother and his wife decided

48:04

they didn't wanna live there,

48:06

so they gave it up and everybody,

48:07

you know, everybody would buy it out,

48:10

my dad bought it back from my brother

48:13

and then my brother decided they didn't want it

48:15

and everything, and it never got finished.

48:19

It was the house that was not quite finished.

48:21

'Cause my dad did a lot of carpentry,

48:24

and he did a lot of work on it,

48:25

my mother did some work on it,

48:26

but the Jim Walter basically built it.

48:28

-

What is that Jim Walter?

48:30

-

Jim Walter is a builder, Jim Walter is a company

48:31

that has-

48:35

-

It's like pre-fab.

-

No, it's not pre-fab at all, it's stick-built.

48:38

But it's built by a local company

48:41

that is a franchise of Jim Walter.

48:44

You have Jim Walter homes all over the country, okay.

48:46

But each Jim Walter agent is a local agent.

48:49

And they have a local crew.

48:53

And so you contract with them and they have a plan,

48:55

and all that kinda stuff, and you pay them so much money,

48:58

and they come out and they do the foundation,

49:00

but the thing was, my dad knew so much about building,

49:03

that he made them do-

49:07

-

Do it right?

-

He made them put it higher on the ground,

49:10

he made them use two-by-sixes instead of two-by-fours,

49:12

he made it like a brick shithouse, you know.

49:16

He really made them build it right.

49:18

And then, when he was, I don't know,

49:22

maybe 80, 70% finished with the house,

49:23

my brother had got married this girl,

49:26

and they decided, "Well, they'll buy it,

49:29

"they'll move out there," you know.

49:31

And so my brother put some money into it to finish it.

49:33

And then right before the wedding, she decided,

49:38

"I don't wanna live out in the country!

49:40

"It's too far from my mother and my father!"

49:41

They were young kids, you know.

49:44

And so my dad took it back, gave them the money,

49:46

you know, and all this kinda stuff.

49:49

(coughs)

49:50

So anyway, I got the land with this house.

49:52

And the barn that the hurricane

49:56

had taken the roof off at one time

49:59

and put it on the ground (laughs).

50:00

Oh, it's funny.

50:02

So, that was it.

50:04

-

And then you raised

50:05

the Angus-

50:06

-

Black Angus,

for about six years.

50:07

-

For meat?

50:09

-

Well, it was supposed to be for meat,

50:10

but it turned out that,

50:12

I ended up with a bunch of baby bulls,

50:16

what I sold was, I was selling them to

50:21

the local agriculture agents.

50:24

There were two agriculture guys, two agents,

50:29

that came out and looked at my herd

50:32

and they liked them, 'cause I had some really good stuff.

50:34

And they bought the little bulls,

50:36

and so I went in-

50:38

-

Studs or something.

-

Yeah.

50:40

And so I really never slaughtered any of my cattle.

50:43

We had slaughtered, we had started off,

50:47

before we had the Black Angus, okay.

50:51

We started off by going to the dairy

50:54

and getting these little four-year-old calves, okay.

50:56

And bringing them home, and Sandy and I

51:01

used to go to the auctions, we'd go to the auctions

51:04

and we'd sit up there and we'd bid on,

51:07

it was Target Blue Ranch, it was Target Blue.

51:09

And we'd go and we'd bid, we didn't know

51:12

what the shit we were doing (laughs).

51:13

But we'd bid on them, and we got these little calves,

51:15

and we took them home and we bottle-fed them

51:17

for six weeks or so 'til they got on grain, you know.

51:19

And then they got big enough, and then

51:22

they got three or four months old,

51:24

and they were ready for slaughter,

51:26

so we took them to the slaughterhouse,

51:28

and they made meat, you know,

51:30

and they gave us these boxes of frozen steaks and stuff.

51:32

And then we took them home and we put them on the table

51:36

and we couldn't eat them.

51:38

(laughs) We couldn't eat them!

51:39

We just both sat there and looked at them,

51:42

and so I don't know what we did.

51:44

We gave it all away or did something with it

51:46

but we never did eat the damn things.

51:48

-

So how many women eventually lived on this land?

51:50

-

Well,

51:54

that was like a fruit basket turnover.

51:57

(interviewer laughs)

51:59

That was a real-

52:00

I did carpentry, okay?

52:03

So I got into the workshops

52:06

teaching lesbians, it said women but it was lesbians,

52:09

teaching lesbians basic carpentry, so they could go back,

52:14

the idea was they would come, they would learn basic skills,

52:17

and they would go back to their land,

52:20

and they would build their own little cabins.

52:22

Because you know, it was easy to build a little cabin

52:25

if you had outdoor toilets and you had running water

52:28

and all this kind of stuff, you could build a basic cabin.

52:32

Well, I had workshops, about four or five a year,

52:35

for about 12 years.

52:39

And the people would come to the land,

52:42

and they would live on the land.

52:44

They would live in the woods, they would, you know,

52:46

take care of themselves, pretty much.

52:48

They set up a kitchen.

52:50

Every time they came, they set up an outdoor kitchen,

52:51

and all this kinda stuff.

52:53

And we would teach them, then I had a couple of gals

52:55

that came and helped me teach, you know, sometimes,

52:57

and sometimes they would just learn how to make

53:00

sawhorses, different kinds of sawhorses.

53:05

Some that folded up, and all this kinda stuff.

53:08

And so that was my big purpose in being there,

53:10

was to get women to come.

53:14

The idea was that women would come

53:16

and they would stay there, and then they would come back

53:18

and they would live there, and you know the old routine.

53:20

Well, they'd come, they'd eat, they'd sleep,

53:23

they'd go to the workshops, they would.

53:26

I was paying for the food most of the time,

53:28

and I used up about $50,000

53:30

just having workshops

53:33

because people couldn't pay to come to them, you know.

53:35

They would just come, and I had several women

53:39

that came and lived on the land,

53:42

because they would have an RV, or they would have this.

53:43

Had a couple of gals that came there

53:46

that signed up for two years to, and I was gonna-

53:48

What I was trying to do was cordon off land

53:53

so that women would have two or three acres of land

53:57

to live on forever.

54:00

But it never really worked out.

54:02

It just, they all had reasons for coming

54:03

and reasons for leaving and it was just,

54:07

I mean you could analyze each one, each one was different.

54:11

Each person that came was totally different.

54:13

Some of the women, most of the women that came

54:16

were pretty nice gals that did a good job, and, you know.

54:18

But they had issues, they all had issues,

54:22

they all had-

54:25

(cheery ringtone)

54:26

What is that, yours?

-

Yeah, that's mine.

54:27

-

Okay.

So Woman World started out being a landyke place

54:28

where people could come and live,

54:33

but it turned into a workshop place

54:36

where people came and learned stuff and left.

54:39

And after a while I gave up trying to make it into one.

54:41

I just said, "Okay, come and live your life here

54:44

"as long as you want to."

54:47

They would come for one or two or three weeks,

54:49

and then they'd go.

54:50

You know Zalina?

54:52

-

Uh huh.

54:54

-

She came with three other,

54:55

two other gals,

54:59

and the four of us built a yurt on top of a platform.

55:01

And she would teach belly dancing,

55:06

she would do belly dancing every night

55:08

for our entertainment,

55:10

and Red cooked like a dream.

55:12

I mean, she cooked tofu and all this healthy foods,

55:15

you know, and the first time I ate tofu

55:19

was when she came and cooked for us.

55:20

And they set up an outdoor kitchen

55:22

and Susan, I haven't heard from Susan in a long time.

55:24

She's out in California now.

55:29

But anyway, the four of us had three weeks of joy,

55:31

you know, it was fun.

55:34

-

Calla?

55:37

Did Calla come through there?

55:38

LauRose and Cala?

55:40

-

Cal?

55:42

-

Cala?

55:43

-

Cala.

55:44

-

You know who I'm talking about?

55:46

-

No.

55:47

Did she have another name?

55:49

-

Yeah, but I don't know it.

55:50

-

Well Xylena was something else then, she's, I don't know.

55:52

I re-met her here about three years ago

55:57

and she came up to me and said,

56:00

"Hey Shewolf, I'm so-and-so, remember me?"

56:02

And I said, "Hmm."

56:05

And then she told me her other name,

56:08

and then I remembered who she was.

56:09

I said, "Belly dancer!"

56:11

And she said, "Yes!" (laughs)

56:12

We had some good times, we had some great times.

56:15

I had 17 years there.

56:17

-

Ahh.

56:18

-

17 years there?

-

17 years of Woman's World, yeah.

56:20

-

And how did that, were there any rules?

56:22

-

What?

56:26

-

Were there any rules?

56:27

-

Rules?

56:29

-

Yeah, or was there any that's vegetarian?

56:31

-

No.

56:36

-

No?

-

There was no dietary restrictions.

56:37

The only restriction I had was that

56:42

you couldn't smoke in my house.

56:44

And I don't know, just sensible stuff I guess.

56:49

I don't remember.

56:53

-

But nobody really stayed long enough

56:56

that you could say that you were creating community there?

56:58

'Cause people came and-

57:04

-

Yes and no,

because we had three gals that came

57:07

and stayed long enough to have a community, but.

57:09

About the time when you would start having

57:13

the problems of community, you know,

57:15

the infighting and all that kinda stuff,

57:16

they were on their way out so nobody was there that long.

57:19

I had a girlfriend who stayed with me for several months,

57:24

and then I had a friend of mine who stayed over,

57:27

just, you know, visited and stuff like that.

57:31

It was never like a long-term community,

57:36

like Spiral

57:40

or Pagoda or Sugarloaf

57:43

or any of those places where there were

57:46

four, five, six women at one time, continuous.

57:48

It was never, it never turned out that way.

57:50

I think a lot of people were afraid of the South,

57:53

and I think a lot of people were afraid

57:56

to come to Louisiana.

57:59

Unfounded fears, I mean, the first thing

58:03

you'd hear from people when you'd write to them

58:05

or something like that was, "Do you have alligators?"

58:07

I mean, they were scared to death

58:10

that you were gonna have alligators jumping all over them.

58:11

The stories that went around about alligators

58:14

and stuff like that, I mean,

58:17

there were more snakes than there were ever alligators.

58:18

(interviewer laughs)

58:21

And it was really unrealistic stuff.

58:23

I went to lots of conventions,

58:27

I went to National twice.

58:31

I did a workshop

58:34

at National.

58:34

-

National what?

-

National Women's Music Festival

58:36

in Indiana.

58:38

-

Bloomington?

-

The festival, the first women's festival.

58:40

And I did workshops, and I did workshops at Michigan,

58:48

I did workshops at Southern,

58:52

Silver Threads and all these places.

58:55

And invariably, when I would do workshops

58:58

about women's lands, the questions they had

59:00

were just unreal!

59:05

And the questions they had about the South

59:07

were just unbelievable!

59:09

The stuff they thought that was going on in the South,

59:12

it was like, "Well, no!

59:14

"We don't have alligators on the road!"

59:16

You know, and stuff like that.

59:19

That was the big thing, the alligator.

59:20

They must think that we have alligators

59:23

running all over the place!

59:24

Have you seen alligators since you've been here?

59:27

-

Yeah, but you have to seek them out.

59:29

-

Yeah, you have to go look for them!

59:31

-

Yeah.

59:33

-

Jesus.

59:34

My brother was-

59:35

-

Well, this is why

we have to do this project.

59:36

-

Well, yeah!

-

People will understand what the South is like.

59:39

-

Yeah, that it's not like that.

59:42

I'm sorry, we got off the subject.

59:45

I don't know where we were.

59:46

You wanna go out, okay.

59:48

(interviewers mumbling)

59:50

-

Diana Rivers?

59:54

Were you friends with Diana Rivers?

59:56

Did you go to the land in Arkansas, Diana Rivers?

1:00:00

-

Yeah, I know Diana Rivers.

1:00:04

-

Were you there in Arkansas?

1:00:05

-

I wasn't there, I never quite made it there.

1:00:07

I met Diane out West some place, accidentally.

1:00:11

And then five years later,

1:00:17

I either ran into her

1:00:21

or just heard that she had created this place

1:00:23

up in Arkansas, and I talked to her a couple of times,

1:00:26

and we've emailed back and forth.

1:00:29

They have quite a good setup up there,

1:00:34

as far as you know, people and land and stuff.

1:00:35

But they have problems

1:00:38

just like everybody else has problems, you know.

1:00:39

There isn't a community out there

1:00:43

that doesn't have its problems.

1:00:45

But my whole thing about going around

1:00:47

and visiting all the lands and stuff,

1:00:50

I always sat in on their community meetings, you know.

1:00:52

And listened to all the dialog.

1:00:55

And the thing was, I never carried tales

1:00:58

from one to the next.

1:01:00

I never, you know, became the gossip

1:01:02

that would carry things around.

1:01:05

And so most of the people were willing

1:01:08

to let me sit in on their meetings,

1:01:11

because they knew I wasn't gonna,

1:01:13

I wasn't gonna criticize them,

1:01:15

I wasn't gonna take sides or, you know,

1:01:16

try to influence them in any way.

1:01:18

And so, consequently, I got to hear a lot (laughs).

1:01:21

-

You come to any conclusions about

1:01:25

why it has seemed so difficult?

1:01:29

Why conflicts come, and-

1:01:31

-

Well, yeah.

Lots of them.

1:01:37

It's like, when I first started out on this project,

1:01:38

when I first started out looking at lands and stuff

1:01:42

and started trying to make a community at Woman's World,

1:01:44

my little wise friend in California,

1:01:48

who was about 10 years, 15 years younger

1:01:51

than I was at the time,

1:01:54

she looked me in the eye and she said,

1:01:56

"You are not gonna get,"

1:01:59

let's say five, I said, "I'd like to have five lesbians

1:02:05

"you know, to start a program."

1:02:08

She said, "You are never gonna find five lesbians

1:02:09

"who wanna do the same thing at the same time

1:02:12

"in the same way, forget it!"

1:02:15

(interviewer laughs)

1:02:17

And I ignored it for 20 years, but she was right!

1:02:18

She was right.

1:02:23

Everybody has the feeling that,

1:02:24

if you build it, they will come.

1:02:26

T'ain't true.

1:02:30

Everybody has the feeling that,

1:02:31

they know how they want it.

1:02:35

They want vegetarian, they wanna grow their own foods,

1:02:37

they want to be healthy,

1:02:40

they want to live on the land,

1:02:44

they wanna get off the grid.

1:02:46

They want to-

1:02:48

-

Have a feminist-

-

Have a feminist group.

1:02:51

They want to cut themselves off from the mainstream,

1:02:53

they want to be anti-male, you know.

1:02:57

They want to be feminists.

1:02:59

And they want to do this without any money.

1:03:01

(interviewer laughs)

1:03:05

Okay?

1:03:06

They wanna do it, that's right!

1:03:06

Because the people who are the most,

1:03:08

the women who are the most dedicated to doing this

1:03:10

never had any money.

1:03:14

They never, ever had any money.

1:03:15

The few that had money went out and bought their own land,

1:03:18

they set up their own place, and they said,

1:03:21

"Y'all come," and nobody came.

1:03:23

And it's the same all over.

1:03:25

One of the reason Oregon was successful

1:03:30

in having so many places, I think,

1:03:33

is because at the time, it was a real,

1:03:35

real protection thing.

1:03:40

That they were afraid, they were really afraid.

1:03:43

Well, when I was up there two lesbians were killed.

1:03:46

And it's just because they were lesbians.

1:03:49

They killed them.

1:03:52

They just, you know.

1:03:54

But it was a real protection.

1:03:56

And back in the '40s and '50s and '60s,

1:03:58

when some of these places formed,

1:04:02

they formed for protection, they formed

1:04:04

to keep other people from beating them up

1:04:06

or killing them or, you know, razzing them,

1:04:08

or whatever they were doing, and particularly in the South.

1:04:11

Even though Oregon was the worst, I think.

1:04:16

Mississippi, Mississippi was the South.

1:04:21

Well you know the story of Brenda and Hannah, or...

1:04:24

-

Brenda?

1:04:29

-

Brenda and...

1:04:30

-

The Hensons.

1:04:33

-

The Hensons, yeah.

1:04:34

Brenda and...

1:04:36

-

What's her name, go on!

1:04:38

(interviewer laughs)

1:04:39

-

Brenda and what's-her-name.

1:04:41

-

It'll get to-

1:04:42

-

Wanda, Wanda.

-

Right.

1:04:44

-

That's right.

-

Wanda and Brenda.

1:04:45

And Brenda's the one that's gone now, right?

1:04:46

-

Yeah.

1:04:49

-

Yeah.

1:04:50

Brenda died, I think.

1:04:51

But anyway, the stories that came out of there,

1:04:53

are typical of things that were happening

1:04:58

all over the country, it's just that

1:05:00

they weren't verbal about it.

1:05:02

They didn't go to the attorney general and complain,

1:05:04

they didn't go to see Oprah, you know,

1:05:07

they didn't do these things and so nobody knew about them.

1:05:09

But the story of Sister Spirit,

1:05:15

is the story of a lot of places that never got published.

1:05:18

I hope you get some of that in your, in the write-up.

1:05:23

Is anybody gonna interview Wanda?

1:05:28

-

Well, they're pretty well-documented.

1:05:31

Their story has been written.

1:05:33

-

Yeah, but is it gonna be in Woman-

1:05:35

-

No.

1:05:37

-

No?

-

Well, what we're trying to do

1:05:38

is get hold of the stories that aren't yet written.

1:05:41

-

Right, yeah.

1:05:44

-

That, you know, fill in what's missing

1:05:46

so that people know how active and lively

1:05:49

things are in the South.

1:05:53

And were, you know, right from the beginning

1:05:55

of this wave of feminism.

1:05:57

You know, in southwest Louisiana,

1:06:01

potlucks were being organized

1:06:03

and women were getting together,

1:06:05

you know, and you created the situation for yourself

1:06:10

where you have some land and you tried

1:06:15

to create all these things there,

1:06:17

create the opportunity for these things.

1:06:19

-

Yeah, nobody would know about that.

1:06:22

Unless you wrote it.

1:06:24

-

Right, so we're writing it now.

1:06:26

-

Right.

1:06:28

(interviewer laughs)

1:06:29

-

These are the untold stories.

1:06:30

(interviewer laughs)

1:06:31

-

Say what?

1:06:32

-

These are the untold.

1:06:33

-

Oh, the untold stories.

Have you read that little book that Joy Griffith put out,

1:06:36

15 Minutes of Fame?

1:06:39

The lesbians?

1:06:41

-

I haven't.

1:06:43

-

You haven't,

oh, it's good.

1:06:44

She's got volume one out, and she's getting ready

1:06:46

to put out volume two pretty soon, so.

1:06:48

It's just little vignettes about different women

1:06:51

and what they did, you know, their spotlight,

1:06:55

and then, that was it.

1:06:58

Old lesbians, it's old lesbians.

1:07:00

-

Were there any interesting stories about the directory,

1:07:03

like making the directory?

1:07:06

-

Interesting stories about?

1:07:10

-

Like collecting, when you were collecting

1:07:12

the information originally.

1:07:14

-

Oh my god, yeah.

Tons.

1:07:16

-

How was that?

-

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

1:07:17

-

Well, it doesn't matter where you begin.

1:07:20

(Shewolf laughs)

1:07:21

Well, let's see.

1:07:24

Well, I had to have a lot of cooperation

1:07:31

from a lot of lands to put this together.

1:07:35

Because after the first, well, three editions I guess,

1:07:39

after the first three editions, I wasn't traveling around.

1:07:43

The first three or four editions

1:07:47

is information that when I traveled around

1:07:50

and got information.

1:07:52

In fact, the first and second edition, I think,

1:07:53

had little excerpts at the bottom

1:07:56

about my visit to that land and things like.

1:07:58

But after that, after the internet came out

1:08:01

and all this kinda stuff,

1:08:03

I started getting more information,

1:08:04

but I got it via-

1:08:06

-

How many editions

were there?

1:08:08

-

Six.

1:08:09

-

Six, okay.

-

The newest one is the sixth.

1:08:11

And you don't see it, see my new edition?

1:08:12

No, the white one, this one.

1:08:15

If you'll go in my room right here,

1:08:19

I'm gonna leave this one here but go in my room,

1:08:23

back here, on the right hand side right there

1:08:25

on that counter, you'll see.

1:08:29

See, when I put out an edition,

1:08:31

I send about 100 of them out

1:08:33

to the lands themselves.

1:08:37

That's their reward for sending me the information.

1:08:38

So they get a free copy of this.

1:08:42

And look at the difference between the first one

1:08:44

and the sixth one.

1:08:48

-

Do you think that there's a lot more

1:08:50

women's land right now?

1:08:52

-

No, there's not a lot more, but there's a lot more.

1:08:53

It's like, every edition you lost several.

1:08:59

And then you, let me see if this one's corrected.

1:09:03

I have about three errors in it that I corrected.

1:09:07

Just gonna write on here.

1:09:10

The Pagoda, for example, WomanShare in Oregon,

1:09:11

Sugarloaf, and Long Leaf actually,

1:09:15

are old enough that they've been in every edition,

1:09:19

or if they sent their information in.

1:09:22

-

Right.

1:09:26

All right, so there is,

1:09:32

how do I put it?

1:09:39

Like and different from each other

1:09:40

and from other types of land communities?

1:09:44

-

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

1:09:47

-

How are they like and different from each other

1:09:48

and from other types of land communities?

1:09:51

-

You mean the lesbian land communities?

1:09:55

-

Mhm.

1:09:57

-

Well, this is under RV.

1:10:00

You know, we haven't even really gotten into the RV.

1:10:02

-

Oh, RVing Women's stuff?

1:10:06

-

Yeah.

1:10:08

-

That's a whole different

1:10:09

story.

1:10:10

-

It's a whole

different story, but it's your story.

1:10:11

-

Well.

1:10:13

-

And if it happened, did it happen prior to 1994,

1:10:14

do you think?

1:10:17

Prior to the first edition?

1:10:18

-

Oh yeah.

1:10:22

-

Coming out?

And it happened in the South,

1:10:26

as there was a lot of Florida stuff.

1:10:27

-

Well, RVing Women is, was, is still,

1:10:30

an organization that Zoe and Lovern started.

1:10:35

They started it,

1:10:42

I don't know when they started it,

1:10:47

back in the '60s, I guess.

1:10:48

And the stories are connected to Carefree in Florida.

1:10:53

Zoe and Laverne started, first of all,

1:10:58

they had RVing Women, which was an organization of women

1:11:02

traveling around in RVs, not necessarily lesbian,

1:11:05

but women.

1:11:09

Well, they went under the guise of RVing Women

1:11:11

for many years, and then in Tallahassee,

1:11:15

at the national convention of RVing Women,

1:11:19

the issue came up, and it came up just like it did at NOW,

1:11:23

you know, in Houston.

1:11:28

The issue came up, and four women who were straight,

1:11:30

sitting in the front row, I was emcee for that.

1:11:34

So I remember it.

1:11:37

-

What year is this again?

1:11:38

-

Oh, god.

1:11:40

I don't know!

1:11:41

(interviewer laughs)

1:11:42

-

Decade?

1:11:43

-

I'm sorry, but I just don't remember what year it was.

1:11:44

'60s, '70s, something.

1:11:48

-

Okay.

1:11:49

-

It was in your scope.

1:11:50

Somebody can look it up and find out when it was.

1:11:52

Where was I?

1:11:56

-

So you were emceeing-

1:11:57

-

So you were emceeing,

four straight women

1:11:59

in the front.

1:11:59

-

I was emceeing

the RVing Women's convention at Tallahassee that year,

1:12:00

and there were four women sitting in the second row,

1:12:04

not second row, no, they were back.

1:12:08

They were sitting back, they were in the back.

1:12:11

Like, seventh or eighth row.

1:12:13

And something was said on the stage about lesbians.

1:12:15

I don't know what it was, but there was some

1:12:19

little remark about it,

1:12:21

and these four women indignantly got up and left,

1:12:23

and said, "We're not gonna be part of this anymore,

1:12:26

"because we're straight, and you know,

1:12:28

"we don't wanna blah blah blah blah blah."

1:12:30

And so they left.

1:12:32

Well then, the issue was brought up,

1:12:34

and the issue was, listen.

1:12:35

75% of this organization is lesbian,

1:12:38

quit trying to hide it!

1:12:41

So, they gave up.

1:12:44

(interviewer laughs)

1:12:45

And they said, "Okay,

1:12:46

RVing Women is RVing Women, it's open to all.

1:12:46

-

Open to all women, including

1:12:50

and especially lesbians.

1:12:52

-

All women, yeah.

Blah blah blah.

1:12:54

-

Learning the 75%

who are members.

1:12:55

-

Yeah, yeah.

Well, shortly before or after that,

1:12:57

Zoe and Laverne took the RVing Women's list

1:13:00

and sent out invitations to everyone on the list

1:13:06

to come to Arizona and look at the Pueblo.

1:13:10

The Pueblo was an RV park that they had purchased,

1:13:14

okay, and were very gradually

1:13:19

letting all the tenants leave,

1:13:23

because their leases were up.

1:13:26

And as they would leave, they would sell,

1:13:28

to some lesbian, one of the spaces, okay?

1:13:31

You know the story of the parks out there?

1:13:35

Well, you do, but you don't.

1:13:39

Okay, so as they would fill up the park,

1:13:40

they would fill it up with lesbians.

1:13:43

The whole place was nothing but lesbians.

1:13:44

And each lesbian owned a little space,

1:13:46

and they would park their RV there,

1:13:49

and they could live there or just vacation there.

1:13:51

Whatever they wanted to do.

1:13:53

And then the Pueblo is in Apache Junction,

1:13:54

on Southern Avenue.

1:13:59

Has a swimming pool, a clubhouse, a really nice place.

1:14:01

As they were just about to fill that place up,

1:14:06

the park across the street,

1:14:11

which is called Superstition Mountain Resort, SMR,

1:14:12

came up for sale.

1:14:16

And they did the same thing, they bought it,

1:14:18

and started selling.

1:14:20

So now you have two parks, which are strictly lesbian.

1:14:21

If somebody's mother lives there, she's straight,

1:14:25

and that's about it, but it's all in.

1:14:28

All I can tell you is, on New Year's Eve,

1:14:32

each one has their own party,

1:14:35

and then for $5 at midnight, you can cross over

1:14:37

and go to the other party.

1:14:40

(interviewer laughs)

1:14:41

And there's at least 500 lesbians there.

1:14:42

-

How many do you think are Southern?

1:14:45

-

Southern women?

1:14:48

-

Mhm.

1:14:49

-

Have no idea, there's no way to know.

1:14:50

They come from all over the country.

1:14:51

-

So what about Carefree?

1:14:53

-

I was there, and I'm Southern,

1:14:55

and there were a lot of Southern women there.

1:14:57

But they came from all over.

1:15:00

But the two women who started this, okay,

1:15:01

sold out and now the people own it themselves.

1:15:05

And two of the people who went to visit there

1:15:09

were Gina and Cathy.

1:15:11

And Gina and Kathy, coming home from one of their trips

1:15:14

one day, back to Florida where they lived,

1:15:17

decided, "We could do that!"

1:15:21

And so they went to north Fort Myers,

1:15:22

they bought a piece of land,

1:15:26

I saw the land before they built on it,

1:15:28

because I was coming over here to make my trip.

1:15:30

Remember?

1:15:32

I was trying to make

1:15:33

my trip-

1:15:34

-

Yeah, trip circuit.

-

Yeah.

1:15:35

And when I was making my circuit,

1:15:36

Gina called and said, "Why don't you stop by

1:15:36

"and I'll show you this," I said, "Okay."

1:15:38

So I stopped by, we had breakfast,

1:15:39

and then we went out and looked at this land.

1:15:42

And it was just a piece of swamp (laughs).

1:15:45

But it was like, 25 acres of swamp

1:15:48

or something like that.

1:15:51

And she said, "What do you think?

1:15:52

"What do you think?

1:15:53

"We're gonna tell all the women to come,

1:15:54

"and we'll build them houses,

1:15:55

"but we're gonna build a nice RV park,

1:15:57

"we're gonna build a nice RV park for women, by women.

1:16:00

"It's not gonna be a park that you buy, you know,

1:16:03

"and then fit all the women in.

1:16:06

"It's gonna be one built for them."

1:16:08

So I asked them two questions.

1:16:11

I said, "Well, my first question is,

1:16:12

"how are you gonna make it exclusively lesbian?"

1:16:13

And they said, "Well, what we're gonna do

1:16:16

"is we're gonna sell these lots

1:16:18

"to anybody who wants to buy them.

1:16:20

"Anybody can come in, because that's the law, you know.

1:16:22

"But we're gonna have a clubhouse in the middle

1:16:25

"that's only open to women who apply.

1:16:27

"We're gonna approve them."

1:16:33

And she said, "Our lawyers said we can do that.

1:16:35

"Legally, we can have a clubhouse

1:16:38

"that is exclusively for our members."

1:16:40

And so the way it worked out, I'm gonna jump ahead

1:16:44

because I'm gonna tell you what happened.

1:16:47

The way it worked out, 'cause I was out there,

1:16:48

a man and his wife would come in,

1:16:51

because it was a beautiful park, it still is.

1:16:53

A man and a wife would see the sign,

1:16:56

and they'd come in, they'd say,

1:16:58

"Well, we want to look at the lots."

1:16:59

And so they'd drive around, they'd look at the lots,

1:17:01

and they'd say, "Oh, yeah,"

1:17:03

then they'd look at the clubhouse,

1:17:04

"Oh, this is nice," and everything.

1:17:05

And so they'd just say,

1:17:06

"You have to sign on the dotted line."

1:17:07

The wife would look around,

1:17:11

and would see all these women here and she'd say,

1:17:13

"No, honey, this is not where we wanna be."

1:17:15

(everyone laughs)

1:17:17

She would figure it out real fast,

1:17:20

even if they weren't lesbians,

1:17:22

there were too many women here for my husband.

1:17:24

(everyone laughs)

1:17:27

So they never had that problem, never had the problem.

1:17:27

But they-

1:17:30

-

What's their name?

-

Kathy and Gina.

1:17:32

-

No, but what the name

1:17:33

of the-

1:17:34

-

Carefree Resort.

-

Okay, okay.

1:17:36

-

And it's in the book.

1:17:37

You'll see it in the book.

1:17:38

And when you read the book, you'll see Sugarloaf

1:17:40

and Carefree, and Pagoda, and WomanShare,

1:17:43

and all these places, you know.

1:17:46

They had a couple of Texas places,

1:17:49

but they never stayed alive.

1:17:50

They were in some of the earlier ones.

1:17:52

But anyway, that's the connection.

1:17:55

RVing Women started out, and then they had these two parks,

1:17:57

and then two of the women came and built Carefree.

1:18:02

And Carefree is the only place that was built,

1:18:06

was the only place that was built strictly for us.

1:18:09

Now, Rainbow Vision in New Mexico is built for us.

1:18:12

Very expensive.

1:18:17

-

And Carefree was in existence at the time

1:18:20

of the first Shewolf directory?

1:18:24

-

Well, if it did

1:18:33

-

If it was,

it would be in there, right?

1:18:35

-

Look and see

if it's in there, that's the only way I can tell.

1:18:36

(interviewer laughing)

1:18:38

-

Let's see, I can remember back.

1:18:40

Too bad I didn't document all this myself,

1:18:44

so I'd remember the dates.

1:18:46

-

It's not in

1:18:49

the first edition.

1:18:50

-

Not in the first one?

-

I remember seeing it though.

1:18:51

-

Hmm.

It must be in the second one.

1:18:54

It might've been built during the time of the second one.

1:18:57

It's only about, it's not 20 years old.

1:18:59

We're 2013, so,

1:19:04

'90, '80, no, it's not 20 years old, so.

1:19:08

-

How many places in the South right now

1:19:13

have RV communities?

1:19:18

-

I don't know.

1:19:21

-

You don't know?

1:19:22

Do you think that-

1:19:24

-

How would I know that?

-

Any lesbian land places?

1:19:25

-

Lesbian land.

1:19:26

-

Huh?

1:19:27

-

Lesbian land, lesbian RV communities.

1:19:28

-

Lesbian RVing communities, Carefree.

1:19:31

-

That's all?

1:19:35

-

That's all I know of.

I mean, I don't know.

1:19:36

-

I don't know of any either.

1:19:38

But you would know more than I would.

1:19:39

-

Yeah, there's RV parks around.

1:19:40

See, my directory doesn't have RV parks, as such.

1:19:45

That's a whole nother thing.

1:19:48

There's an organization called Rainbow RV,

1:19:51

which was started by two women up in Canada.

1:19:55

And it's very popular in Florida.

1:19:58

There's a lot of members in Florida.

1:20:00

And it's men and women.

1:20:02

But it's gay and lesbian only.

1:20:04

And it's pretty active.

1:20:06

And they list a lot of parks, in their directory,

1:20:09

they will list a whole bunch of parks

1:20:13

that are gay-friendly, or gay-owned,

1:20:16

or you know, that kind of thing.

1:20:18

-

And how do you think the RV communities

1:20:20

are different from the landyke communities?

1:20:22

-

The RV community is different from what?

1:20:26

-

From the other women's land,

1:20:28

lesbian land communities.

1:20:31

-

RV communities and lesbian lands

1:20:35

are totally different things,

1:20:37

there's no resemblance whatsoever.

1:20:38

(interviewer laughing)

1:20:40

I mean, RV communities are RV communities.

1:20:41

They're people who live in RVs.

1:20:43

-

Mhm.

1:20:46

-

Lesbian lands, they can live in anything.

1:20:47

From shacks, to RVs, to mansions, you know.

1:20:50

There's no relationship to one another.

1:20:54

-

What ideas did you have

1:20:57

when you-

1:20:58

-

Carefree just happens

to be both, that's all.

1:21:00

-

Yeah, and that's the one that

1:21:02

I've heard-

1:21:03

-

And then there's

another community in Boone, Boone, North Carolina.

1:21:06

The Carolinas in our scope?

1:21:09

-

Yeah.

1:21:12

-

Okay, well, Boone, North Carolina

1:21:12

has the offshoot from Carefree.

1:21:15

Carefree now, Gina and Kathy, have now gone

1:21:17

to North Carolina and built a community

1:21:20

in Boone, North Carolina, and it is chalets.

1:21:23

And more expensive.

1:21:28

But it's gay and lesbian.

1:21:29

And they let them in in there,

1:21:31

so they made it gay and lesbian.

1:21:32

Oh, and Palms of Manasota,

1:21:38

right outside of, what is it.

1:21:42

It's down there by Tampa and Sarasota and, you know.

1:21:48

But Palms of Manasota started out

1:21:52

as a gay and lesbian housing place, you know,

1:21:56

where they built little houses.

1:22:00

The guy that started it put the money into it,

1:22:01

and built these nice little houses.

1:22:03

And at one time, they had half men and half women.

1:22:05

I don't know what they have now.

1:22:09

-

In Gulfport?

1:22:11

-

Because the guy died.

Huh?

1:22:12

-

In Gulfport?

1:22:13

-

No no, that's totally different.

1:22:14

That's a totally different-

1:22:15

-

The sawmill?

-

Huh?

1:22:17

-

The Sawmill?

1:22:18

-

Sawmill is over here on the East Coast, farther up.

1:22:19

It's not there, no.

1:22:23

Sawmill is a campground.

1:22:24

-

Yeah.

1:22:26

-

It's an RV park.

1:22:26

And it's mostly men, yeah.

1:22:27

You've been there, haven't you?

1:22:29

Yeah.

1:22:31

That's an RV place, Sawmill.

1:22:34

But it's mostly men and it's mostly,

1:22:36

it's not a feminist place at all.

1:22:39

And in fact it's a little macho.

1:22:41

-

Yeah.

1:22:44

-

Yeah.

-

Anyway, getting back to our subject (laughs).

1:22:46

-

I keep forgetting that you're looking

1:22:48

at Southern feminist lesbian activism (laughs).

1:22:50

-

Yeah.

1:22:54

-

I was trying to go back.

-

Yeah, and so.

1:22:57

I mean, we covered a lot of things,

1:23:02

I mean you pretty much started feminism

1:23:05

at the college that you were at.

1:23:09

In Southwest Louisiana.

1:23:11

-

Oh, yeah.

-

We did.

1:23:13

-

Because-

-

The five of us did, yeah.

1:23:14

-

The five of you.

Yeah, yeah.

1:23:16

You were an instigator there.

1:23:17

And then you created this land where you drew women

1:23:21

who wanted to learn carpentry skills.

1:23:25

-

Woman World was.

1:23:29

And we still have, I still hear from women

1:23:31

who were there, learned something and went out

1:23:36

and built the little things, and then

1:23:39

they made crews and they ran around with their crew.

1:23:41

I tried to get together some crews,

1:23:43

because, oh here's another thing.

1:23:45

Are you familiar with Andrea

1:23:49

and Leaf, are their names?

1:23:54

-

Yeah, Leaf and Drea, mhm.

1:23:57

-

Yeah, you know them.

They created the Missouri,

1:24:00

is Missouri in the Southern thing?

1:24:02

Yeah.

1:24:04

They created the Missouri thing,

1:24:05

the Neighborhood.

1:24:09

-

And they're

gonna write about that.

1:24:10

-

They're gonna

write about it, good.

1:24:11

-

I think it's Kansas City.

-

Kansas City, yeah.

1:24:13

-

Yeah.

1:24:14

-

They-

1:24:15

-

They're gonna write.

-

When I met her at National many years ago,

1:24:17

we talked about having my crews go up there

1:24:21

and help them, you know, renovate those houses.

1:24:25

And we would've done it, except I couldn't get any crews!

1:24:27

(interviewer laughing)

1:24:30

Everybody was out doing something, you know?

1:24:31

It's funny.

1:24:33

-

They all

had their own commitments.

1:24:34

-

But, did you go their anniversary thing in Atlanta?

1:24:35

-

Uh, yes.

1:24:39

-

Didn't you?

1:24:40

-

Their sort of rededication?

1:24:42

-

Yeah.

1:24:43

Turn that light out, would you, so I'll know she's in?

1:24:44

Thank you.

1:24:46

Yeah, Bonnie and I went to it.

1:24:47

Their rededication to themselves, or anniversary,

1:24:51

it was like 25th anniversary or something.

1:24:53

-

Yeah.

1:24:56

-

Yeah.

That was fun.

1:24:57

-

It was beautiful.

-

I think Corky went, didn't she?

1:24:58

Yeah.

1:25:01

Yeah, I think I wrote something or read something for them,

1:25:02

I can't remember now.

1:25:07

-

Are there any other questions that you can think of?

1:25:11

-

Is there anything else that you'd like to say,

1:25:15

in terms of-

1:25:18

-

Oh, yeah, a lot.

(laughing)

1:25:20

-

What would you like-

1:25:21

-

Do I have to start all over?

(laughing)

1:25:22

-

In terms of Southern lesbian feminist activism.

1:25:24

-

Let me see what some of the,

1:25:29

I'm trying to-

1:25:32

-

You were gonna tell me

a story.

1:25:33

-

Did you read

the little articles that the women wrote about 30 years ago?

1:25:34

-

You know, I've read-

1:25:40

-

Probably haven't

read them yet, hm?

1:25:42

-

Yeah.

1:25:43

-

You should read those when you get a chance.

1:25:44

Alex Hopkin and Susan Wiseheart, and some of these women

1:25:48

wrote a little article for me

1:25:51

on what it was like 30 years ago and now,

1:25:54

how is it different?

1:25:58

And those I think would be very interesting

1:25:59

in our whatchacallit, because let's see.

1:26:02

Jen is here in the South,

1:26:07

Alex is in New York,

1:26:12

Susan's in Missouri, Missouri?

1:26:14

I don't know where she is.

1:26:17

Vanya's, I don't know.

1:26:22

You'll have to look and see.

1:26:23

-

Vatya's up north.

-

I can't remember, huh?

1:26:25

-

She's up north, Vatya.

1:26:26

-

Yeah, okay, here we go.

1:26:27

-

Rebecca.

1:26:31

-

Of course, Allepon Village,

1:26:32

I'm sure you'll have documented quite well.

1:26:33

-

Yeah, they're on there.

1:26:36

-

Dancing Rabbit,

I don't know a lot about them except what's in the book.

1:26:38

Caulk Hill.

1:26:42

That's a good writer.

1:26:43

Laughing Waters.

1:26:45

OLHA, O-L-H-A is what you were talking about,

1:26:48

Diana Rivers, up in, yeah.

1:26:52

Sola Circle Sanctuary, okay.

1:26:55

-

How about Meryl Mujrum?

1:26:57

-

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

1:27:01

-

She's really-

1:27:05

-

She's a kick, I love her.

Carefree, oh, Lake Annie WomanSpace.

1:27:08

Well, that's new, that's this past year, so.

1:27:10

Laughing Eagle's been around, what,

1:27:13

eight or 10, 12 years?

1:27:16

Long Leaf, Moon Haven, Moon Haven's been,

1:27:19

I don't know how long Flash has been there.

1:27:21

Pagoda.

1:27:24

Pagoda would have a history.

1:27:26

Now, you should talk to Rainbow and get the history.

1:27:27

'Cause she's got a lot of that written down.

1:27:30

-

Right.

1:27:32

-

Yeah.

1:27:33

Something Special.

1:27:35

I don't know when they started, but they've been there

1:27:38

a while.

1:27:41

-

I think

they're gonna be covered.

1:27:42

-

Good.

-

Because, Barbara Ester has showed up again,

1:27:43

and she, you know, was involved with those folks.

1:27:47

-

The Whimsy would be a good one too.

1:27:51

Davy's still there.

1:27:54

What's her partner's name, what was her partner's name?

1:27:59

Anyway, her partner died, but Davy's still there.

1:28:04

And they have some really good documentation

1:28:08

on stuff.

1:28:13

Especially feminist, and somebody should interview

1:28:14

Davy at the Whimsy.

1:28:20

-

Where is that?

1:28:22

-

W-H-I-M-S-Y, Whimsy.

1:28:23

It's southern Florida, southeastern Florida.

1:28:27

-

And what's her name?

1:28:33

-

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

1:28:35

-

First name?

1:28:37

-

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

1:28:38

All the details.

1:28:42

-

Okay.

1:28:42

-

But they've been part, they were part of the

1:28:44

feminist national

1:28:49

civil rights network,

1:28:53

for years and years and publications,

1:28:57

and a lot of stuff.

1:29:00

Clearing house, they were a clearing house

1:29:01

for years and years and years.

1:29:03

When Rusty, Davy and Rusty, Rusty.

1:29:05

Rusty passed, yeah.

1:29:09

But Rusty was very, very active,

1:29:11

and Davy was right beside her.

1:29:13

They would have documents, they have a whole library,

1:29:17

I'm sure, full of all kinds of stuff

1:29:20

that somebody could research-

1:29:21

-

We should

get in touch with them.

1:29:23

-

Good, good.

1:29:24

Yeah, I would get in touch with them.

1:29:26

And so this thing's gonna be pretty big

1:29:29

when they finish with it, huh?

1:29:31

-

It is.

1:29:32

(interviewer laughing)

1:29:33

-

Who's gonna publish it?

1:29:34

Are y'all gonna publish it yourselves?

1:29:35

-

Well, it's gonna be documented in,

1:29:36

I mean, the archives are going to Duke.

1:29:39

And it's gonna be published, we have a publisher.

1:29:43

-

You do?

1:29:47

-

Yeah.

-

Well, we have Sinister Wisdom.

1:29:48

-

Well yeah, but that's just one section.

1:29:50

-

Right, but I think that there is.

1:29:52

-

I mean, the idea with Sinister Wisdom

1:29:54

is to cover a little bit of as much as we can

1:29:57

that we can pull together for right now.

1:30:02

-

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

1:30:05

-

Well, I don't know, no.

1:30:09

And at this point, I don't know.

1:30:11

-

Okay, all right.

1:30:13

-

You wanna do another interview sometime, we can.

1:30:14

You know, if you find holes or something like that

1:30:17

and you wanna talk some more later, that's fine.

1:30:19

I just-

1:30:21

-

Okay.

-

I can't think right now.

1:30:23

-

Well, thanks.

-

You're welcome.

1:30:24

-

Because this is

a huge amount of information.

1:30:25

-

It's been 80 years of living,

1:30:28

and a lot of stuff happened, you know.

1:30:29

(interviewer laughing)

1:30:32

I'll think of 12 stories I didn't tell you after you leave.

1:30:36

Well, turn it off and I'll tell you the story.

1:30:39

Boudreaux, Shewolf (Jean) - interviewed by Barbara Esrig and Kate Ellison

Transcript

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Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture

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