Eenie Meenie Mee Maw Mo

Here is a photo that I got from uncle A. J. last month.  I think it is from the earlier 1930s.  The person with the child in her lap is my paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  When I got those photos from A. J., I realized there were more photos of my dad’s siblings when they were children than I had ever known.  I had seen a few of them ever since I was a youngster.  I remember seeing some of my dad when he was just a toddler wearing a dress and thinking that was strange.  Other people in my generation must have thought the same thing, because nowadays most people dress their children to match their gender.

After I got home with the photos and scanned them all, I shared a few previews with some of my cousins.  This always leads to them sharing some of their photos as well.  Yet more childhood photos of those Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. family members!  We are going to have to get together and study these photos thoroughly, because they are not all dated and labeled.  Like this one.  No names, years, or locations.  I’m sure none of you neglect to label your photos, especially after I have encouraged you to label them.  (On a side note – I could have sworn that I labeled every photo that went into my photo albums.  But I would have been lying!  I thought I did, but several times I have gone to one photo album or another and looked on the back of a photo to find a date.  And I found nothing.  Well, not nothing.  I did put the frame number from the roll of film that I took.  But what good is that if I don’t know when it was taken???  I digress.)

So this photo is of my wonderful Mee Maw who definitely knew who she was holding in this photo!  But she’s not talking.  I don’t think it’s Marie, since there is an older child showing in the photo.  Maybe it is A. J. and that is Marie sticking her foot into the photo.  Of course it could be Hubert, Germaine, Bobbie (my dad, Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.), or Wana.  They were all born pretty close in age to one another.  It couldn’t have been the younger ones, because of who else is in the photo.

On the far right of the photo is Mee Maw’s mother-in-law (and double half 2nd cousin once removed) Marie Celeste Leveque Landry who died February 10, 1934.  Though she lived in Lake Charles from about 1890 to 1925, she was living in Lafayette with uncle Seb in 1930 (according to the census;  She was buried in Lake Charles.)  But I’m sure she had to come visit her little darlings in Lake Charles.  I’m sure she knew their names as well.

But we don’t.  For me, I like to think that it was my daddy.  It looks like some of the photos I’ve seen of him at that age.  But my cousin Shirley might think that it looks like her dad.  Tricia would say that it was definitely Wana.  Daphne will pull out her copy of the same photo and will show that it was labeled as Germaine.  Whichever one it was, it was a Landry child being cared for by their loving mother.  And that represents all of her children.

I still say it’s Bobbie.  (And that cool stroller was his as well!)