Interviewer(s): S. Wiltz. Lafayette, LA

Affiliation: University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Mr. J. C. Chargois was born in 1924 in Lafayette and was the third child of Kezz and Louise Chargois. His father was the first city marshal in Lafayette parish in the late 1920s. His grandfather and later his father owned a plantation and opened 450 acres of land that included four springs, which serviced as Lafayette's only swimming pool. After graduating from Lafayette High School in 1942, he went work for the Southern Pacific Railroad where he started out as a clerk on the road and later became a crew caller and worked in the time keeping department. During that time he also went to college at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI). When his department at Southern Pacific was relocated to Houston in 1963, he went to work for Doutree's Furniture as a designer; he went into the decorating business for himself in 1968. He provides a detailed description of downtown Lafayette in the 1930s and 1940s. Then he discusses the influx of oilfield people (early on called "oilfield trash") and the departure of the railroad.