Author: Van

Betty Lou Married Bob in 1952

Leave a comment

This coming Tuesday is the 70th anniversary of my parents’ wedding.  If you’ve been reading my posts, you know that I’ve posted a few stories about the events that occurred leading up to their marriage on November 1, 1952.  For those that haven’t been following along this wonderful journey, now you know.  You’ll also want to know that my parents were Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry and Betty Lou Bucklin.  And back in 1952, they were the cutest little couple.

Betty Lou Bucklin married Bob Landry on November 1, 1952, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

See what I mean?  They’re adorable.  They look so happy, and they were.  I’m pretty sure this was taken on their wedding day.  Their clothes and hair are identical to the photos that were taken in front of the church after their wedding.  My mom is not wearing a white gown that is now much more typical to weddings these days.  They must have had them back then, though.  The one wedding photo I have of my ancestors is for my dad’s Patureau grandparents in 1888.  My great grandmother was wearing a fancy white gown in that photo.

But my mom was much more down to earth than that.  She was not concerned about anything fancy.  Part of that was because she grew up with not very much extra money for anything.  She always seemed to be fine with that, though.  This worked out well for my dad, because he was not a doter.  My mom was low maintenance, but she still wanted some attention.  Their relationship worked.

But their time together as just the two of them was short lived.  Their first child Jodie was born three weeks before their first anniversary.  Their sixth and final child Jamie was born a few months before their 10th anniversary.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I wanted to talk about 1952, not 1962.

As I was saying, my mom wore a reddish brown dress suit, while my dad wore a brownish grey suit. It’s difficult to explain the colors.  I have a photo of them on their 2nd anniversary in the same outfits, but I’m not going to post it.  I’m committed to posting only this one photo for this story.  The wedding was at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  My dad had joined the Air Force earlier that year, so they were married when he came home for leave.  He had been in San Antonio, Texas, but they would set up their first home at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

I’m not sure who all was at the wedding on that day 70 years ago.  Surely their parents were there, though I don’t have any photos to prove that.  In the few photos I have, I only recognize Daddy’s older brother A. J. and his youngest sister Frances.  The wedding reception was at his sister Marie’s house in Lake Charles.  In a letter from my dad’s mom (Germaine Erie Patureau Landry) dated October 1952, she says that they “will have a wedding cake and green punch and coffee for those who like.”  That green punch must be a family thing.  I wonder if it is the same thing that was at my sister Jodie’s wedding in 1973.  It was a homemade affair and the punch was made from lime sherbet and 7-Up.  I always liked it, but green punch doesn’t really sound appetizing.

Now that I’m sitting down to write all of the details of that day, I realize that I don’t have that many details!  I have a blurry photo from the wedding reception and it supposedly shows the wedding cake.  It is difficult to make out the cake.  You’ll have to take my word.  Like I said, I’m only posting one photo!  But I know a lot more details about the rest of their story.  They set up home in California where they had Jodie.  They later moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Rob was born. In 1956 they moved back to Lake Charles where Karen and the rest of us were born.  Al  was born in 1959.  I (Van) joined the group in 1960 the day before their 8th wedding anniversary.  Jamie was born in 1962. 

They had a good long happy life together.  I was a witness to much of it.  I was very fortunate.

 

The Jack of Hearts for Halloween

Leave a comment

My mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry in 2007 with a silhouette that she made of me in 1970.

My idea for the post this week is a little odd.  I came up with the idea when I was getting ready for work this morning.  I thought it was a good idea then, but maybe I was just tired.  Now I’m tired after a long day and don’t feel like coming up with something different.  That just makes me sound old.  I suppose I am, because I’m talking about something that happened to me over 50 years ago.  That’s right.  It was over 50 years ago that I was the Jack of Hearts for Halloween.

Doesn’t that sound fun?  You get to be a character from a deck of cards and everyone knows what it is. Yeah, well I didn’t think it was that fun at the time.  I think it was my mom’s idea.  Or maybe it was a costume that was passed down to me from one of my siblings.  The costume consisted of two large pieces or cardboard – one for the front and one for the back.  It was either painted white or it had white cloth glued to it.  Then a jack of hearts was painted on it. 

That sounds pretty good.  I think the part that I didn’t like about it was that I wore black tights underneath it.  I think that was another idea from my mom.  I just remember not liking the whole thing.  I must not have complained too much and didn’t throw a fit, because I wore it when I went trick or treating.  I was just glad that it was dark outside at the time.  It kind of reminds me of the scene from “A Christmas Story” when the mom insists that Ralphie puts on the rabbit costume that he got from an aunt.

There is no photo to go along with this sad story.  I probably avoided being in any of the photos.  Or maybe there is a photo out there that I’m not aware of.  I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, so if my siblings have a photo of me in the costume, I’ve never reminded them of the event.  Who knows?  Maybe a photo of the Jack of Hearts will show up one day.

But I do have a scan of a drawing that my mom drew of me from around the same time.  Sometimes when we were watching TV or something, my mom would get out her pencil and paper and draw a little sketch of whatever or whoever was around.  This time the subject of the sketch was me.  It’s a nice little sketch of me that I got from my mom a few years ago.  But right now I can’t find the scan or the original sketch, which is extremely aggravating since it is the main photo I wanted to post tonight.  I’ll post it once I set my eyes on it.

In the meantime I’ll post this photo from 2007.  The family got together for Christmas that year as usual.  For some reason my mom brought out the silhouette that she made in 1970 of me.  I’m thinking that the sketch and the silhouette were from around the same time.  I don’t remember seeing the silhouette when we cleaned out my parents’ home in 2016, so I think it has been lost.  At least we have this photo.

What a post – a sad story about a little boy in a sandwich board costume, a sketch that is misplaced, and a blurry photo of my mom with a lost piece of her artwork.  I’m glad I could keep you so well entertained!

Found it!

A Letter From Pee Paw and Banns in 1952

Leave a comment

This post is another one in the series leading up to the 70th anniversary of my parents’ marriage.  I didn’t really think this all out ahead of time, I just post one here and there if something comes up.  I wasn’t planning on writing another one before the anniversary of their wedding, but I ran across these items when I was looking for something else.  I don’t even remember what I was looking for.  I think I may have been looking for a photo to add to a gift for a little cousin’s first birthday party.  I never found the photo I had originally thought of, but I found something appropriate.

Letter written on Oct. 13, 1952, to Robert Joseph “Bobby” Landry, Jr.

But when I found this old letter from exactly 70 years ago today, I knew I would have to include it in this week’s post.  When I first started reading it, I thought that it was from my grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry – better known as Mee Maw.  Most of the letters that were from Lake Charles to my dad – Robert Joseph “Bob” or “Pluto” Landry, Jr. – were from his mother or sisters.  As I read the short little sentences – “Rec’d your letter – glad to hear from you… I was off last week – back to work this morning.” – it was a bit different. 

It also had a few references to ball games – “I wish I could have seen the games on TV… L.C. & Sulphur play on Thanksgiving. McNeese surely has a fine team – they are going places.”  I wondered who had written the letter, but Mee Maw liked to watch baseball and I think other sports as well.  There were also references to family members like Aunt Zim and Mildred who had been having medical issues at the time.  Aunt Zim was doing okay and Mildred was doing better.  “All are well at M. T. and Germaine’s.”  M. T. would have been my dad’s sister Marie Therese.  We knew her as Aunt Marie.  Germaine was his other older sister.

I was still wondering who wrote the letter as I got to the last page.  The handwriting reminds me of my dad’s writing, but I knew the letter was to him.  I was pleasantly surprised when the letter was ended with “Will sign off now.  Love from all to you.  I am your Devoted Father – R. J. Landry”  It was from Pee Paw and I don’t remember ever seeing his writing before.  I should have guessed who it was earlier.  Maybe when he talked about watching a series of games and he said, ” I won $5 from Joe Shimimi.”  I’m not sure of that last name, but he must have been a betting man.  My grandmother never mentioned betting money and she also never talked about the beginning of squirrel season.  My grandfather was a hunter and fisherman.

Wedding banns for Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin were published in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on Oct. 19, 1952. Obviously no objections were made.

I had a group of letters that I wasn’t familiar with, so I had to look to see what the other letters were about.  There was a letter from Mee Maw that talked about some of the plans for my parents’ wedding.  Aunt Marie was going to have the wedding cake and reception after the wedding at their house.  While it is an interesting letter to read, I was more excited to see the other side of the letter.  Mee Maw had written the letter on a church bulletin because they had posted the wedding banns for Robert Jos. Landry and Betty Lou Bucklin – mom and dad to me and my siblings.  Their names are on the bottom line on the page.

Wedding banns is an old tradition.  An announcement is read or posted for three weeks in a row at the parish church of the couple intending to get married.  It is to let people know about the approaching marriage and it gives everyone an opportunity to state any objections they have to the marriage.  As my mom would say, “Speak now or forever hold your peaceables.”  When I look through old church documents, I’ve seen wedding banns back in the 18th and 19th centuries.  I don’t know if they still call it that or not.  I just looked it up and I see that the Catholic Church requirement for the banns was removed in 1983, but some places still maintain the tradition.

So Bob and Betty Lou would get married at the Immaculate Conception Church.  It doesn’t give a date, so I guess it wasn’t an open invitation to the wedding.  But it wasn’t far off.  The date quickly approaches.

The Patureau Family After 1864

Leave a comment

Grampa Max – Vincent Maximilian Patureau circa 1890.

Don’t worry, this is not a detailed history of the Patureau family since 1864.  That would take way too long and way too much space.  This is just a continuation of a post that I wrote at the end of last year called The Patureau Family Photo Circa 1864.  I’m actually surprised that it was that long ago that I posted the photo.  It seems like I just recently posted it.  In that post I talked about the Ferdinand and Emma Landry Patureau family in 1864.  That’s who was in the photo.  It was before they had my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian – AKA Grampa Max. 

Pierre Oscar Patureau on Sept. 11, 1888

But he wasn’t the only one that hadn’t been born yet.  They had five more children and they all lived into adulthood.  The first one was our Max, followed by Pierre Oscar, Joseph Alcide, Abel Omer, and Marie Victorine.  They all went by their middle names.  Almost all of their children did.  What’s up with that?  That 1864 photo of the family came from the Pierre Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas.  That collection originated from the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Emma – Victorine. 

Joseph Alcide Patureau circa 1890

Victorine must have started that collection early.  I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that she started in the 1890s.  She got married in May of 1892 when she was 18 years old.  She was married just a few months after the death of  Emma. (Ferdinand had died in 1877.) One of the things she must have gotten around this time was the bed that I am now in the possession of.  When she and Willie Cropper first got married, they lived in Plaquemine – possibly at the old Patureau home.  They moved to White Castle around 1899 and lived there for a few years.  She must have had some of these old photos and the bed with her then, because if she hadn’t, they would have been destroyed by a fire. On March 18, 1900, there was a large fire that destroyed all of the buildings on the Patureau property.  I wonder if there was other furniture that had come from France with the family?  I only know about the bed and I’ve only known about it for about four years.

Abel Omer Patureau circa 1890.

That collection of photos, letters, and such was passed down to Victorine’s daughter and then to her granddaughter.  Then it was donated to the Tyrrell Historical Library.  Besides having the photo of the Patureau family in 1864, there were several individual photos of the family members.  I already had the photo of Grampa Max, but I did get these other photos of his brothers Pierre Oscar, Joseph Alcide, and Abel Omer.  You may recognize Alcide and Omer from the old photos of Kelly’s String Band.  They were both members.  I like these photos of the younger Patureau brothers.  I can definitely detect a family resemblance.  The oldest brother Louis Leobon was fifteen to twenty years older than these brothers.

The ironic thing is that in that wonderful collection of family photos that was started by Victorine, I was not able to find one good photo of Victorine herself.  I should clarify that and say that I didn’t find any photos that were identified as Victorine.  There were some unidentified photos that could have been her.  Oh, yeah, and then there is the one of her when she was no longer alive.  There is a photo of her in her casket. It’s actually a nice, clear photo.  It’s an open casket with several sprays of flowers surrounding it and a gleaming cross beside it.  I’m just not a fan of postmortem photos.  Call it a quirk of mine.

So I would appreciate it if someone could share a photo of Victorine with me if you have one.  Preferably young and alive.  Old and alive would acceptable.  The only prerequisite is that it was taken when she was upright and breathing.

The Godmothers’ Godmothers of 1952

One comment

I’m not so sure I like the title of my post this week, but it’s the best thing I could come up with for the unusual situation that it refers to.  1952 was the year that my parents were married, and I’ve posted stories related to that during the past two months.  (Meeting the Parents in 1952 and A Letter From Home in 1952)  Seventy years is an important milestone and even though my parents are no longer alive, I think it is appropriate to acknowledge such an important part of my own family history.

The other two posts talked about  the earlier part of 1952.  My parents – Bob Landry and Betty Lou Bucklin – got engaged and they went to their parents’ homes to meet their future in-laws.  My dad also joined the Air Force and went to basic training in Texas.  He would later be stationed at Edwards Air Force base in California.  They wrote letters to each other that they saved until some of their nosy children (my sister Jamie and I) found them and read them.  And we laughed and laughed at the sweet messages that they sent to each other.  This led to the letters disappearing, and for the most part never to be seen again.  I’ve shared the letters that we were able to find. (Love Letters Lost)

Well, one of the other things that happened that year was that my mom decided to become a Catholic.  I don’t know that this was a prerequisite for Daddy to marry her or not.  He had stopped dating her a while because she was a Methodist and the Landry family were devout Catholics.  But she was too irresistible to him and they started dating again and became engaged.  Maybe she decided to become Catholic because it was so important to him and he wanted to get married in the Catholic Church.

Sisters (and godmothers) Sylvia and Betty Lou Bucklin in the early 1950s.

So she went through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) or whatever the process was back then.  But she did not go through it alone.  Her older sister Sylvia had married Ronald Pilcher in February of 1951 and he was a Catholic also.  She must have decided to become Catholic as well, because my mom always talked about them going through the classes together.  Sylvia was married with a child in Lafayette at the time and mom was living at home with her parents in Hathaway. At least it looks like that from the pictures she sent her beau when he was away.  The photos of Betty Lou show her with her younger siblings on their parents’ property in Hathaway.

My mom must have gone to Lafayette to go through the process.  It’s the only thing that makes sense.  One of the things that happens is that those in the class are baptized if they have not been previously baptized.  Those who have been baptized in other faith (such as Methodist) are not rebaptized.  But they do make some of the same professions that are made during a baptism.  Usually there are godparents present who also profess to be an encouragement in the faith.  So in an unusual turn of events, Sylvia and Betty Lou were allowed to be each other’s godmother.  I never heard anything about godfathers when my mom talked about this part of her life.  She was always so tickled with the fact that Sylvia was her godmother and she was Sylvia’s.

This picture may have nothing to do with the RCIA or the process they went through.  I like it because they look so chummy in the photo.  Sisterly love.  I always think of the story of the mutual godmothers when I see it.  Now maybe you will too.

Alcide ‘Met the Elephant’ – WARNING – Graphic Content

Leave a comment

For some reason I was thinking about the other Van Landry out there.  I have a cousin with the same name as mine and I’ve never met him.  Thinking of that led me to thinking about our common ancestor Simon Alcide Joseph Landry.  He was known by the name Alcide.  Not that I ever knew him.  He died before my father was even born.  My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and he was known by many people as Bob.  His father, of course, was RJL, Sr.  He was known as Rob. Rob was the son of Alcide.   So when I was thinking of what I would say to the other Van about our common ancestor, I remembered a story I read about Alcide from another cousin Thomas Richey.

Alcide Landry as an adult circa 1890 or so. I wish I had more than this one photo of him.

Thomas Richey (let’s call him TR) actually descends from Alcide’s older brother Trasimond.  I descend from both of the brothers.  TR wrote a book about the experiences of our great great grandfather Trasimond during the Civil War.  Trasimond and Alcide were from southern Louisiana, so they fought for the Confederacy.  The name of the book is “Tirailleurs” and it is about the Acadians of Company H who were mainly from Brusly, Louisiana.  Of course, the main ‘star’ of the book was Trasimond.  But there were several stories about Alcide as well.  I don’t know where TR got all of the amazing details that are in the book.  He quotes old letters, diaries, and other writings from the time.  I’d like to meet him one day.  I’ll be quoting some of his book in this post.

The story I was thinking about occurred in the early morning hours of August 16, 1864, eight miles from the center of Atlanta, Georgia.  Young Alcide was sleeping in the trenches when he was startled awake by the shout of “Attaque!”  It was a trench raid and Alcide grabbed his Bowie knife.  “He looked up to see a Yankee lieutenant with his saber blade crashing toward Alcide’s head.  Alcide raised his arm to protect himself, his knife deflecting the saber stroke into the dirt.  The Yankee officer aimed a pistol in his left hand at the young Rebel private.  Alcide swung the Bowie knife and crushed the Yankee’s left hand.  He then pulled back the knife and plunged it into the Yankee’s belly.”  The knife was buried in the spine of the Federal who slumped forward, dead.

“Alcide stood panting and pale.  Sweat poured into his eyes.  This was his birthday.  He was nineteen years old – and still alive… Alcide had ‘met the elephant.’  He was no longer a new recruit…for the longest time, Alcide stared at the Union officer’s dead face.  He wondered why this poor dead Yankee would want to kill him.  He felt saddened and guilty over the man’s death.”  He reached over and pulled the cap down over the dead Yankee’s eyes and thought, “Meilleur vous que moi.” (Better you than me.)

What an intense story!  I can’t imagine facing such a situation.  We mostly live in a very peaceful time.  But during the Civil War, things could get pretty brutal.  Since I descend from Alcide, I am very pleased with the outcome of the confrontation.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.  Like Alcide, I wonder about the story of the Yankee soldier’s life.  In this book told from the southern perspective, the Yankees are the anonymous others.  It reminds me of ‘Star Trek.’ When those unnamed characters with red shirts beamed down to the dangerous planet with Captain Kirk, you knew they weren’t going to last long.  Sure enough, the next scene would show some unforeseen threat take the life of the forever unknown crew member.

The Yankee soldier that Alcide killed shares that fate.  We don’t know who he was.  I don’t even know where he was from.  Could he have been from Massachusetts, where my mom’s Bucklin family lived for generations?  Or maybe he was from Pennsylvania, where her Phenice line was from?  I don’t think we’ll ever know.  I’m sure he was from a family, though.  There could be some other family historian looking at an old great uncle or cousin in their tree and wondering, “I wonder what ever happened to him?”  Oh, the woes of war.

Betty Lou: Pretty in Green

Leave a comment

Last week I mentioned that my mom and our next door neighbor were in the same graduating class from Hathaway.  I looked through my posts to find the photo of their Hathaway High School graduating Class of 1951.  But I didn’t find it.  I’ve never posted the photo before.  The group photo that I did post with both of them in it was a photo of the Hathaway Hornets basketball team from 1948.  So I thought I might post their graduation photo this week.

Betty Lou Bucklin (later Landry) in 1948 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

But then I came across this old photo.  I posted a similar photo of her two years ago.  She was wearing the same dress and her hair was similar, so I’m thinking it was from the same time.  The one I posted before was definitely a school photo that was taken in 1946.  So little Betty Lou Bucklin would have only been thirteen years old when this photo was taken.  She looks much more mature than that.  My mom in her later years wrote on the back of this photo that she was fifteen years old at the time. 

Oh, wait.  I just realized something.  I have a black and white version of this photo and it looks like it came from a textured photo.  My mom is actually wearing this same dress in a photo with her siblings that I’ve posted before.  The date of that photo was 1948, so that goes along with Mama’s writing on the back of the photo.  So she either took an individual photo with the photographer on the same day they took the family photo, or there is another version of that family photo out there.  Because it is not a crop of the family photo I have.  She has her head turned in that photo.

My mom must have liked this photo, too.  She had an 8 x 10 enlargement made of it.  I think she did that in the 70s when she was hand-tinting black and white photos.  There are two enlargements of her that I think she used to practice her skills.  So when I came across those photos last weekend, I thought it was time to make the dramatic combination of them and hopefully come up with something I could use as a post.  I liked the colors she used in the tinting, but it was cropped too much for my taste.  So I used the cropping from the black and white photo and the coloring from the hand-tinted photo.  I tried to stay true to the colors that she used.  But I also wanted to darken the background to give it a more dramatic look.

Of course I cleaned up the photo and sharpened it a little.  And Voila!  Here is the final result.  I am very pleased with it.  She looks so striking in the photo.  It’s a keeper.

Trees of My Youth

One comment

No, I’m not talking about family trees.  I’m talking about trees – like the ones your find in the forest.  But these are not just any trees, they are trees associated with many memories from when I was young.  The main reason I’m talking about that is because I wanted to post a favorite photo from my childhood.  I actually thought I had posted it before.  But when I searched my postings, I didn’t find it.  I thought I may have posted a photo of the tree from the photo in one of the photos from my snow post from last year, but I didn’t post that one either.

The mimosa tree at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana, in May of 1967.

This is the photo I’m talking about.  Isn’t it great?  It’s a photo of me and two of my siblings in the mimosa tree at our home in Jennings in 1967.  We lived in the yellow house at 758 Lucy Street.  We had moved there in 1964.  Later we would put wood siding on the house, but at this time the house was still yellow.  Not that you can see it in this photo.  At first glance you notice our dog Princess at the base of the tree and me sitting in the tree above her.

But then you look closer and you can see my younger sister Jamie to the right and my older brother Al a little higher up on that same branch.  All six of us kids used to play up in that tree.  Even other kids from the neighborhood played in the tree.  One time we had a few too many people in the tree.  I was on a branch with one of my Minter neighbors and the branch cracked beneath us.

So many memories of that tree.  I remember talking with my brother Rob and his friend Celia Joe under that tree.  I remember my sister Jodie and her friend Pam speaking their secret language under that tree.  Now that I think about it, they may have been speaking pig Latin and I didn’t know what it was yet.  Karen, Jamie, and I (and maybe Al) used to climb up in the tree and pretend that the seed pods were money, so we collected as many as we could.  We were rich!

The Landry family in 1963 in Jennings, Louisiana.

One of my first memories associated with trees is from around 1963.  That’s when we lived out in the country!  Actually we lived just north of the I-10 in Jennings on Highway 26 in a two story house we rented for two years.  On the west property line near the house was a fig tree.  I’m not sure if it is the same fig tree you see in this photo which I have shared before.  But I remember a baby bird falling out of a nest in the tree and someone told me not to touch it.  If I would touch it, the mama bird would smell me on the bird and not want anything to do with her little baby bird anymore.  Something I believed without questioning for the longest time.   Birds are very devoted to their young, even if they do smell of stinky little boys.

I don’t have a photo of one of my favorite trees.  It was a tree my grandfather Bucklin had in his yard.  My grandfather Fred Bucklin was a nurseryman and one of his specialties was grafting.  He did that a lot with citrus trees.  He would graft the better tasting trees onto the hardier root stocks.  The tree that was my favorite was one that had several different citrus fruits on the same tree.  He had grafted parts of a lemon tree, a lime tree, a tangerine tree, and a grapefruit tree all on the same trunk.  I’m not exactly sure of the types of fruit, but I know there were four of them.  So it produced all four different fruits.  I always enjoyed eating those fresh citrus fruits from their trees out in the country in Hathaway.

Another memory that came up this week is associated with trees.  When we moved to Jennings in 1964, the neighbors to the east of us were the Theunissens.  The mother Carol was a fellow 1951 graduate of Hathaway with my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  They had some large tallow or china ball trees in their back yard.  I have a memory of them having a rope line from one tree to another and we were zip lining across the yard.  It’s a “memory” that I’m not sure is real.  Maybe one of the Theunissens will verify that one way or the other.  I’m very curious.

What I am sure of is that my brother Al and I helped the neighbors on the other side of us – the Hotards – build a clubhouse at the base of their big pine tree in the back yard.  No girls allowed!  I remember climbing that big pine tree, too.  What a mess!  You get that nasty pine sap on your hands and it is so difficult to get it off.  We had a few big oak trees in our yard through the years that I liked to climb as well.  No sap to worry about.  When I was older, I even climbed up there with my little 3-year-old niece Sarah.  We went far higher than we should have, though nothing bad happened. 

Before I go, I thought I’d mention the historic event that happened today.  Queen Elizabeth of England died after over 70 years of reign.  She lived to the ripe old age of 96 – a good long life.  Though I have made fun of devotees of the monarch through the years, I do think she was a respectable person.  She did a lot of positive things for the world. So I tip my hat to her.  And really, when people think back on this day, they are going to remember it as an end of an era because of her death.  Maybe my story about trees will come in a close second?!

Star Social Club Initial Ball of 1902

Leave a comment

That title seems like a mouthful, but it says what the topic of this post is pretty well.  The only thing it doesn’t tell you is that the event took place in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  To be a bit more accurate, it was in Crescent, Louisiana, a small community down the bayou from Plaquemine.  Someone posted some information about the Star Social Club on the Plaquemine Facebook group a few weeks ago.  I had to make a comment about it because my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian “Max” Patureau was one of the founding members of the club about 120 years ago.  My paternal grandmother Erie Patureau was just a young girl at the time.  She was one of Grampa Max and Gramma Marie Therese’s ten children at the time.

Invitation from 1902 to the home of Mr. V. M. Patureau

I wasn’t the only one who commented.  There were a few comments that were kind of interesting, but then I came across an amazing one.  It had this old invitation or ticket to the event from the initial ball for the Star Social Club in 1902.  That’s what you see here.  Of course I commented on this old piece of memorabilia with a reference to my very own Mr. V. M. Patureau.

Surprisingly, I heard back from the person in possession of the card and he said that he wanted to give it to me.  I told him I’d happily accept it!  He got it from a friend who found it in some of his old family papers.  I suppose the name V. M. Patureau didn’t mean as much to them as it does to me.  So I told him my address and now the invitation is mine.  Thanks, Mike C!

Article from the May 24, 1902, Weekly Iberville South.

Of course I had to look to see if I could find out the date of this “initial” ball.  Tommy Landry was my grandmother’s first cousin, and in his book about the Landry family, he had an invitation from a December 27, 1902, ball for the club.  So I figured the initial ball was probably from the year before.  After looking through that book, I looked at some old newspaper clippings that I had saved.  It didn’t take me long to find out the date.

In this newspaper article from the Iberville South in May 1902, it gives the date of the initial ball as May 24, 1902.  It, too, mentions that the event took place at the home of my great grandfather.  So it looks like there were two balls in 1902.  I don’t know if they had two balls every year or not.  I suppose it could be that they decided to have two that year because they had actually built the Star Club Hall during that year.  The invitation for the December ball says that it was in the hall.  I’m thinking it was newly completed and they wanted to celebrate that with a ball.  Why not?

But that first ball must have been special.  There probably was a bit of excitement in the air at the Patureau household that third week in May of 1902.  I’m pretty sure their house wasn’t very old at the time.  I saw some writing recently that talked about a large fire that destroyed all of the buildings on the Patureau homestead on March 18, 1900.  It’s a good thing the Patureau bed was with Max’s younger sister Victorine, or it might have been destroyed as well.

So the Patureau home was a newish two years old at most.  I wonder if little 7-year-old Erie Patureau was excited about having a ball occur at her childhood home?  It seems likely that she would have.  The event was the talk of the community.  It was in the local paper after all!  Besides the piece of the newspaper you see here, there was another reference to it on the same page.  It said that the Club would be entertaining that night and that  “No doubt the affair will be a pleasant one.”  I’m sure the family was making sure their home looked the very best for the event.  There was to be dancing and eating and socializing and much merriment.

It makes me think about the scene of the ball from “The Sound of Music.”  Not that the ball in little Crescent would be as grand as that one.  The main part I think about is when the children in the movie sing “So Long, Farewell” as they head off to bed.  I picture little Erie singing, “Adieu, to you, and you and you and you…”  I’m sure that did not happen, but I still think it must have been a memorable event from her childhood.

On left is the Patureau home and on the right is the Star Social Club Hall. I’m not sure who all the people are. This is looking south down Patureau Lane.

The Irish Washerwoman by HC in ’43

Leave a comment

I told everyone that I was going to share something special from my mom’s side of the family this week, and I definitely think that this fits the bill.  It is a recording of my great grandfather Harry Clifton Phenice playing the song “The Irish Washerwoman” on his fiddle on June 12, 1943, in Hathaway, Louisiana.  At least that’s what the woman in the recording says at the beginning of the group of songs that are on the disk I have.  It probably is on that date, but it could have been from another recording session around the same time.

Harry Clifton Phenice circa 1949. I wasn’t planning on posting a photo, but I thought I’d go ahead and post this rough one. I have another one of him from the same day where he is smiling.

Harry, or H. C. as he was mostly known, was my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin’s father.  He was born in Pennsylvania, grew up in Kansas and Nebraska, and ended up in Louisiana as an adult.  He was married to the most recent immigrant of my ancestors – Daisy Henrietta Keys Phenice from London, England.  She came with her mother, brothers, and sisters to the United States in 1887 at 11 years of age.  Her father Henry Keys had played the violin or fiddle and I think that her mother had played the piano.  The only portrait of Martha Ann Cook Keys shows her with her hand touching a piano.  Henry died before the family moved to America, but his violin came with them.  The violin is still owned by a family member to this day.

So Daisy was around music most of her life.  That continued when she married H. C., who was a fiddler like her father.  I wonder if they played any of the same songs.  “The Irish Washerwoman” is known as an Irish song (hence the name!), but some people claim there are English origins to the song.  The song has been around since 1785, so her father could have known it. 

She was fond of her husband’s fiddling, at least according to family lore.  Once he went to play in a local music contest and she asked him what he would play.  He told her that he hadn’t decided yet.  He would make up his mind once he got there.  Well, come to find out, he played a slower song and lost the competition to Daisy’s brother Leonard.  Daisy said that he would have won the competition – over her brother playing with their father’s violin – if he had played something more lively like “The Irish Washerwoman.”  That’s the story told by my grandmother’s younger sister Marguerite in some of her writing.  I’m sure Marguerite nor Daisy were biased in any way when judging musical talent!

I love that we have recordings of my great grandfather playing his fiddle.  It’s only because of his son Sylvan’s interest in radio and sound systems.  He cut those old records back in the 40s and they’ve been preserved in one form or another since then.  I know for sure they’ve been on reel-to-reel tape, cassette tapes, computer disk, and now on iPhone recordings.  That’s probably why they are a little rough around the edges.  But you can still hear the lively tune and you may even be tempted to dance a little jig!  Accompanying H. C. on the fiddle is his wife Daisy on the piano.  The way she plays reminds me of the way my mom played when our family sang at Shakey’s and other get togethers. 

The recording starts out a little slow, but then H. C. starts playing.  The fiddle playing is really interesting.  He seems to play around with the rhythms of the song.  I can’t really explain it well, you’ll just have to listen.  I wish I had a photo of him playing the fiddle.  That would be nice.  I wonder what ever happened to that fiddle of his?  That would be nice to find out.

But for now, enjoy the sounds from the past.

 

1 … 18 19 20 21 22 … 58