Betty Strikes a Pose in 1984
For some reason I got it into my head that I was going to write about 1984. It had nothing to do with the book of the same name, and I had no intention of writing anything so heavy and dark. So when I sat down to write, I went to my computer folder to find my photos from 1984. This is the photo that caught my attention. The photo caught my attention several months ago, so I edited it and made it look its best. At the time I had no intention of using it for a blog post. I just wanted to make it look better for my collection of photos.
But how could I resist this photo? It makes me smile every time I see it. Just like I was smiling back in July of 1984 when I watched my mom strike this pose. I have to admit that I don’t really remember that day in particular. I (Van Landry) was 23 years old at the time and I was graduating from college that summer. My mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) was 51 years old at the time and she had recently welcomed her second grandchild into the world.
Actually, I think both of those grandchildren show up in this photo. Her first grandchild was Chris, who was born in 1981 before she reached her fifties. Then the second one by the name of James was born toward the end of 1983. I’m pretty sure it is Chris’s head that shows up in the bottom left corner of the photo. He was a blond when he was that age and short enough to not block the view of me and my mom. If the same setup was done today, you would only see Chris! He’s a big guy and he’s much taller now. At the bottom right are actually two heads. My sister Karen’s head is the prominent one with the curls. You can barely see past her to James’s cheek and his darker hair. He must have been playing with his toy telephone.
Mama could have been playfully showing off for her young grandsons. She only acted silly like that when she was completely comfortable and mainly it was around our family. There aren’t many photos of that. Maybe that’s why I like this photo so much. It shows something that wasn’t easy to catch. A moment of complete candor. One of my favorite memories of one of these times was from 8 years earlier.
It was 1976. The year of the bicentennial. And the situation had all to do with the bicentennial. Sure, a month before the bicentennial happened our family started performing together at the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I do tend to talk about our Landry Family Band when I talk about that time. But today I’m talking about Sunday, July 4, 1976. Yes, I had to do a search to find out the day of the week. My memory is not as good as Jodie’s used to be. She would always say what day of the week an event happened on. Granted, we had no way of checking that back then. We trusted her. She was usually very honest, unless she was pulling our leg about something.
Back to the bicentennial. I know that I marched in a big parade in Lake Arthur that weekend. Surely it wasn’t on a Sunday? Right?! Anyway, my mom was from Hathaway, Louisiana, and our family had a tradition of going out there to pop fireworks for holidays that required explosions. The bicentennial of America’s birth definitely called for a trip to Hathaway with a stop at the fireworks stand on the way! We had bottle rockets, firecrackers, sparklers, and assorted other things. Nothing extravagant, just enough to celebrate appropriately. While we were popping various things, my mom got a sparkler burning, raised it high in the air, and ran down the gravel road declaring, “I’m the Statue of Liberty!” It was hilarious.
But I don’t have a photo of it. Maybe I could edit this photo to make her look like the Statue of Liberty? I could raise that arm higher and put a sparkler in it, then make her skin a bit green. No! Wait. Someone might think she was a character from Wicked with a wand in her hand. That wouldn’t do. My mom wasn’t wicked at all. I think I will just be satisfied that I have this photo from 1984 when she was striking a playful pose for her family. It’s completely sufficient.