| Summary: | (5:10) Mr. Lacher talks about some of the conditions he encountered while diving. This interview was conducted as part of a joint project of the Music Preservation Society and the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. This project focus was oral history interviews with area residents who had lived or worked on the Tennessee River.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Tony Lacher
November 19, 2007
Waterloo, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 5 of 5
Rhonda Haygood: Did you ever run into snakes? I know you mentioned the catfish. Did you have any trouble with snakes or anything like that?
Tony Lacher: No, uh, they would dive down but they would run away from you.
RH: Oh really?
TL: Uh huh. I’d dive up in some of those little sloughs and little hollows you know and you’d go up through there and they’d jump off the limbs and stuff in the water. But see a snake has to have air. They can’t stay out there under a stump or anything like that very long unless there is air in it. A pocket under it or something cause they have breathe air, the snakes do. So actually there’s not any danger from snakes out there unless you’re close to the bank where they-
RH: I started to say, if you’re up around the stumps or something maybe?
TL: Uh huh. Yeah. Uh huh. I’ve heard of them cottonmouths getting after a few of them but they never did bother me.
RH: Really?
TL: But they’ll, they’ll run you when they got little ones.
RH: Do you have any special stories from your experience on the river? Anything unique that happened to you that you?
TL: No, I don’t guess. That catfish running up my britches leg that day. [ laughter]
RH: That’s a pretty good story.
Patti Hannah: That’s a good story.
TL: He got to right there before I caught him, right above my knee there.
PH: Oh, no.
TL: But uh, and that catfish was pretty good size that hit me in the chest that scared me. Now that actually that scared me. Boy, I done back like that and there went my goggles and my mouth piece and everything. And one day it actually didn’t scare me but I was diving probably in about seventeen foot of water and uh, had about fifty foot of hose and rope on my boat and I let, I didn’t tie it up and let all of the line out. And I dove back out of the boat after I sorted my shells and graded them and turned the, you know, you go through them and sort them and the ones that not legal you have to put back in. And uh, I’s in a hurry I reckon and I dove back out there and all the air I had was what was left in my compressor, in my tank [ laughter] and I didn’t crank my compressor. [ laughter]
RH & PH: Oh, no!
TL: So I got down there and I started working and I sucked on that thing three or four times. And it just kept getting harder and harder and I said, “ Well something, that thing went dead or something, doggone, I didn’t even crank that thing.” And I turned around and started pulling that boat towards me and I was about ready to drop that lead belt and go up before I pulled that boat to me because I had out so much line.
PH: Yeah.
TL: But it actually, it actually wasn’t, I could have dropped my lead belt, you know, at any time. But if, if a person got scared and didn’t break his lead belt in time and got a mouth- full of water, well that’d be, that’d be all of it, you know. You just have to, you just have to stay kind of of calm when something like that happens. And do the right thing, because one mouth- full of water that’s all it takes.
PH: Oh, no.
TL: Especially if you’re by yourself.
RH: Yeah.
TL: My wife went with me a few times. She sat in the boat. If I was out there in a diving in around in the channel she watched for barges and stuff like that. But if you’re diving in that channel you have to come up and look for them barges every once in a while if you’re by yourself.
RH: [ laughter] It just sounds so dangerous.
TL: No, not really. I’ve been out there and it thundering and lightening and raining.
RH: Your wife is a very strong lady!
TL: Yeah. Well she worried about me running that heavy equipment, working on them slopes and dozers and graders and all, too.
PH: Why does she have to watch out for the barges? Do they come too close or
TL: Well, the river, if you’re diving in the river channel, you know, no they was, I never have had one that was. They would get on the other side of the river actually if they saw you diving on one side of the channel PH: Yeah
TL: But their waves is what ah
PH: Oh, okay.
TL: You have to – it boy you feel it pick you plum off the bottom when those barge waves would hit your boat
PH: Oh, no.
TL: It would rock you plum up off the bottom, you know.
PH: Yeah
TL: But they was, all your boat operators was, I never had any problem. The only thing that ever gave me any problems that really aggravated me about anything like that was a lot of times them jet skis would come out there and go round and round you and you down there diving.
RH & PH: Ohh
TL: But they’re not supposed to get within so many feet of you when you’re diving, but sometimes I think some of them get a little close but. I got aggravated a time or two at a couple of them but. In all everybody was awful nice or was to me, you know.
PH: Oh good
RH: That’s good
TL: Everybody always treated me fair out there too.
PH: All right
TL: But, if they’s one of them barges comes up through there though and happens not to see you well, you know, I always wanted somebody in the boat with me if I was going to dive in that channel out in the middle of it.
PH: This is great. Thank you.
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