Times Of Change

Today is the second anniversary of my dad’s death, so I thought I would write something in his honor.  I was thinking about it this week, and one evening I came across this photo.  It was from a slide that I took on December 23, 1978, at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I posted a photo from this same evening a while back.  The other photo is a photo of my mom and dad along with me and all of my siblings.  It wasn’t often that all of us were there together, so it’s a special photo.  Any time I mention to someone that my family used to sing together at Shakey’s in the late 70s, I’ll invariably show them that photo.

But this photo is different.  It shows the family members who are no longer with us.  Jodie died in 1989.  It’s hard to believe that it will be 30 years this year.  Then my mom and dad died two years ago within five days of each other from natural causes.  As far as performing at Shakey’s, Mama and Daddy were there more often than the rest of us.  Jodie or Rob were probably there the least.  You can also see my dad’s brother Hubert Landry in the yellow shirt and his wife Mildred Sutherlin Landry next to him.  Uncle Hubert would play the harmonica with us pretty often.  Uncle Hubert and Aunt Mildred are no longer with us as well.  Aunt Mildred died in 1990, less than a year after Jodie, and Uncle Hubert died in 2006.

All of those changes happened after our time at Shakey’s.  We started playing there in June of 1976 and finished up five years later in August of 1981.  Those were times of big changes in the Robert Joseph Landry, Jr./Betty Lou Bucklin Landry family.  In 1976 there were still five of us living at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings.  There was Mama, Daddy, Al, me (Van), and Jamie.  We were the youngest three of the six children and the following school year was the only time that there were three Landry children in high school at the same time.  Al was going to be a senior, I was going to be a sophomore, and Jamie was going to be a freshman.

Also at that time, Jodie was married to her first husband.  They were in Lake Charles at McNeese when they first got married, but later moved to Texas to go to Texas A & M.  They must have moved by this time, otherwise we would have seen them more often at Shakey’s.  Rob was single and in school at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  Karen was single also, but she was at McNeese.  She was able to be at Shakey’s frequently, too.  In fact she got a job there and worked there during the week as well.

By the time 1981 came around, Mom and Dad had become empty nesters.  Al graduated in 1977 and followed Rob up to Tech.  I graduated in 1979 and went to McNeese.  How could I give up performing at Shakey’s on the weekends?  Jamie graduated in 1980 and also went to McNeese.  I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it.  My mom didn’t work outside of the home and my dad was a band director living on a school teacher’s salary.  I seem to recall there being five of us in college at the same time at one point.  Performing at Shakey’s was a way to make ends meet.  I always just thought of it as fun.

A big change for the family during that time was that Jodie went through a divorce.  In some ways that doesn’t sound like a huge thing.  You see it all of the time.  But it wasn’t something that happened in OUR family.  That’s what other people did.  It wasn’t something Jodie wanted for herself, but it happened.  I know she had a bit of anxiety breaking the news to Mom and Dad.  This photo and the photos from that same evening remind me of that situation.  Seeing how Jodie went through that helped me and probably other siblings in breaking troubling news to our parents.

Rob’s first marriage was in 1980.  (He improved that situation a few years later.)  Karen and Jamie met their future spouses during that time as well.  And eventually, so did Jodie.   She even got married during that time.  Al and I were in college.  I actually missed the last month or so of the family performing at Shakey’s.  I was working at AstroWorld in Houston during the summer of 1981.  I’m not sorry I missed it, because I got to see Jodie more often and see her going through her last few months of pregnancy.  I was going to be an uncle!

So the years 1976 through 1981 saw my mom and dad through the last years with children in the house and then on to empty nesters.  Then the following month they became grandparents when little Christopher Rhodes made his grand entrance into the world.  He was the first of the twelve grandchildren enjoyed by Grammie and Pappy.  It was a start to the last era in their lives.  They had some good years.