Thunderbird Beach in 1961

I’ve been thinking about posting about Thunderbird Beach for a while.  I finally got around to cleaning up the photos from the time that our family visited “The Baton Rouge Riviera.”  These are some photos from early in my life.  This was way before our family was the entertainment at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  It was before I got my first pair of contact lenses.  In fact, it was before I even wore glasses.  It was several years before our visits to Six Flags Over Texas and Astroworld.  We hadn’t yet visited NASA after the first moon landing.  It was even before we had our baby sister Jamie.  That’s a long time ago!

I have some vague memories from way back then.  I remember sitting in the back of that Volkswagen van when it was in the driveway of the house we lived in back then at 1317 Clover Drive in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I don’t remember the curtains that are in the back that you can see in this photo.  My brother Rob said that my mom made them and put them up back there so we could change clothes after swimming and such. 

These photos were taken on July 22, 1961.  I don’t know where that date comes from, but I don’t think I made it up.  My mom and dad were pretty good about putting that kind of information on photos from back then, but I can’t find the source of that date right now.  But it looks right from the ages of us kids in the first photo.  I was the little boy in the arms of my mom.  My name is Van, and my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  I would have been nine months old at the time.  My older siblings from left to right are Karen, Rob, Al, and Jodie.  The family lived in Lake Charles at the time, so it would have been quite a trek to go to Baton Rouge back then.  It was before Interstate 10 was completed.

When we went to Baton Rouge then, we took the ferry across the Mississippi River.  There isn’t a photo of that from this trip, but there are some from other trips.  My dad had gone to LSU and got his Master’s degree from there in 1960, so he was familiar with the area.  If it had been up to my mother to go there, it wouldn’t have happened.  She wasn’t keen on driving in unfamiliar places.  She didn’t even get her driver’s license until around 1969.  But she knew how to accessorize a van to make it multifunctional!

When I asked Rob what he remembered about Thunderbird Beach, he mentioned the carousel.  I didn’t think I had a photo of that, but it’s in the second photo right behind his head.  I always tend to focus on Rob and Jodie with their rafts, Al standing out by the road looking back at the camera, and Karen helping Mama to push me in the stroller.  And then I would look at the sign identifying the place as Thunderbird Beach – Swimming – Dancing – Concessions!  There was something for everyone.

This third photo is my favorite.  It’s such a good photo of everyone and you can see our faces better because we’re not as far away from the camera.  Karen looks like something has caught her attention and she looks very interested in what she sees.  I wonder if it was the large slide at the park.  If it was, it’s because she hadn’t learned yet that she and slides do not get along.  I can still remember seeing her roll out the end of the big slide at Six Flags.  She was not too happy.  

I remember this little train that went around the park.  For some reason it made a lasting pleasant memory for me.  It wasn’t very big and it didn’t go very fast, so it couldn’t have been that exciting.  But for a little boy just learning about the world, I guess it was interesting enough.  Jodie looked pleased to be sitting and holding on to me so I wouldn’t fly out of the train.  She was always helping Mama to watch out for us.  That’s how she ended up being called “Little Mama” by the younger kids.

It wasn’t long after this that we got in a wreck and the Volkswagen was replaced by a Ford van.  I think we returned to Thunderbird Beach a time or two more.  I can’t imagine that I remember that train from just one trip when I was nine months old.  I did find another photo of the carousel from a year later.  But there weren’t all the great family photos like there were for this trip on July 22, 1961.  What treasures.