Month: April 2017

Celeste and the Cistern

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Marie Celest Leveque Landry

Grandma Celeste visiting Lake Charles in the late 1920s.

Here is another photo that I got from the AJ Collection.  It is from around the late 1920s and was taken in Lake Charles.  That is my dad’s paternal grandmother. (Van’s dad is Bob, Bob’s dad is Rob, Rob’s mom is this woman.)  Her name was Marie Celeste Leveque Landry and she lived her whole life in Louisiana.  Let me give you some background facts about her.

Celeste was born in 1847 in Brusly, Louisiana.  Her parents were Joseph Auguste Leveque and Marie Basalite Landry Leveque.  She was the 2nd of 9 children by her father’s second wife.  Since the first wife was her mother’s sister, the children from that union were Celeste’s half siblings and half cousins – 3/4 siblings.

When she was born, the family owned a plantation in the Brusly area where they had 60 individuals enslaved and forced to work for them.  Since she was born in 1847, her whole childhood would have been in that environment.  And when the Civil War came along, many of her siblings and cousins fought for the Confederacy.  Would she have considered her childhood happy?  I wonder.

She married one of those cousins that fought in the Civil War.  She married Simon Alcide Joseph Landry on November 24, 1868, in West Baton Rouge Parish.  They had ten children together including my grandfather Robert Joseph Landry who was born in 1893.  That means that Celeste was 47 years old when she gave birth to him!  That’s pretty old.

But it’s not as old as she was when this photo was taken.  She was around 80 years old at the time of this photo.  Yet she still has a little vanity left.  Why do I say this?  Because you can see that she has taken her glasses off for the photo and is holding them in her hand.  Trying to look her best for the photo.  I can just imagine a conversation with her about this photo:

Grandma Celeste asks me, “Why are you putting that old photo on the Facebook?  I look so old in it.  You could at least remove that bump on my neck with all your fancy gadgetry.”

I tell her, “I already removed a possible bump on your cheek.  I want it to look as good as it can, but I also want it to reflect what you actually looked like then without too many changes.  I posted a photo that showed you when you were young and pretty.  Now I’m showing one of when you were older and more dignified.”

“Hmmph!” she snorts, “Old and decrepit is more like it.  At least I’m not wearing my bed clothes like you’ve done to other family members!  I wouldn’t mind if you fixed my blouse to make it straight across the bottom.”

“Like I said,” I patiently explain to her, “I like to keep it as real as possible.”

“You and your ‘really real’ shenanigans,” she says with exasperation, “If only you would treat your ancestors as well as that darned sock monkey of yours!  Now I’m making an edit of the photo myself.  There.”

“Hey,” I say as I notice her smile is gone from the photo,  “You put a scowl on your face!”

She just scowls at me and disappears with a shake of her head.

Back in Time to ’69

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Robert J. Landry, Jr. family

The Robert J. Landry, Jr. family in 1969

I’m posting this photo because Siblings Day was this week and I’ve been missing my parents recently.  I was looking for a family photo that I hadn’t posted before and thought about this one.  How is it that this photo has not been online before?  It is so quintessential Landry Family.  It was taken in 1969 and that fact caused me to reminisce about that year.  So many transitional things were happening that year beside just the obvious one of changing from the 60s to the 70s.

In January of 1969 the music group the Beatles had their last live gig together shortly before Richard Nixon became the nation’s president.  In February the population of the USA broke 200 million and it witnessed the first flight of those infamous flying machines – the 747 – that would become commercial the following year.  In March tensions about the Vietnam War lead Nixon to promise that the US would end their involvement by the following year.  April showers bring May flowers.  In this case, two computers at universities in California were able to send messages to one another and now we have the interweb.

In May of 1969 people were able to see themselves in a different way.  They were able to see color photos of the Earth taken from space.  And I’m sure as a direct correlation to that, Disney World began construction.  June was the saddest month of all to me.  The last episode of “Star Trek” was aired.  What?  No more views of that glorious Enterprise soaring through the cosmos?  (An Enterprise that I recently found out was built by my mom’s first cousin.  A mind-blowing fact for a Trekkie like me!)  Sure there was a new TV show called “Hee Haw” and the Stonewall riots were that month, but those events did not soothe me at the time.  I was a bit soothed in July when the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon and traipsed around with their dusty footprints.  I remember getting stickers of the different space missions from cereal boxes and putting them on a shelving unit in our bedroom.

August of 69 was the month of Woodstock and the Manson “family” murders.  More on that later.  In September the first ATM was introduced and in October PBS was begun.  Yes, there was a time before ATM machines and PBS.  In November “Sesame Street” was introduced to the world.  On the science front Harvard researchers were able to isolate a single gene, which is particularly notable since I am involved in genetic genealogy.  To end the year, December called for the first draft lottery since World War II.

Yet in a small town in the Deep South, there was a nuclear family that went about its daily business almost as if in a protective bubble.  I’m talking about the Robert J. Landry, Jr. family in Jennings, Louisiana.  It consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Landry, Jr. and their six children.  (That was her name!  She got letters addressed that way and she signed our report cards the same way.)  In 1969 our ages were from 7 to 16.  It was the prime time for our little nuclear family.

Daddy turned 40 at the beginning of the year and Mom was still in her 30s.  None of us had started wearing glasses nor dating anyone seriously.  It was just Mom and Dad and six kids in a three bedroom house.  That’s right.  Three boys in two beds in one room and three girls in one bed in the other.  It was as cozy as could be until one brother decided to light a match with a bunch of fuses next to him!

By the way, on the back row is Jodie, Rob, Karen and Al.  In the front is Bob, Betty, Van (me), and Jamie.  A moment frozen in time.  So different than the events in the outside world in August of that year.  When I thought of posting this photo before, it was always with the idea of posting a photo from Woodstock along with it.  And the Manson “family” was not like the family that I experienced.  As I said at the beginning, the 60s were ending and the 70s were beginning.  Change is inevitable.

A Voice From the Past – Sammy Got Run Over

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I’ve got another keepsake that I want to share with all of you.  I found this last year when I was going through some of the things I collected from my parents’ home when we cleaned it out for selling.  I’m not talking about the photo that I’m posting with the keepsake.  The photo is part of a promise that I made on here a few weeks ago.  I said that the next thing I’d post for Addie would be a photo of her smiling.

Addie Hine Bucklin

Addie Mae Hine Bucklin circa 1937

For those of you who don’t know who Addie is, she is my maternal grandfather’s mother Addie Mae Hine Bucklin.  (mother of Fred Bucklin, grandmother of Betty Lou Bucklin, and great grandmother of Van Landry)  In most of the photos I have of her, she has a rather severe look on her face.  I thought it was time to share a photo of her smiling since the story in the post is a happy one.  Yes, Sammy did get hit by a car, but he recovered quite well as you’ll hear Addie explain to you.  That’s right, you’ll be hearing the story of Sammy the dog in Addie’s own voice from around 1944.

Addie’s oldest daughter Mary was married to Sylvan Phenice.  He was a sound engineer and one of the things he was able to do was make recordings with a turntable using a cutting needle.  And I thought it was tough when I was a youngster recording conversations secretly using a reel to reel tape recorder!  Somehow he was able to record a conversation with Addie going into detail about her dog falling in the wheel track.  (It must have been a dirt road with deep ruts from the wheels of the cars and trucks.)

Sylvan’s wife Mary can also be heard in the conversation.  I wouldn’t want to get that one too excited.  Her voice would be piercing!  The other people in the recording are Roy Bucklin and his wife Effie.  So find a quiet spot, click on the link to the site that has the recording, close your eyes, and let yourself be transported back to 1944 in rural southern Louisiana.

Sammy Got Run Over – as told by Addie Mae Hine Bucklin.

I thought I’d go ahead and put the transcript of the recording on here in case there was anything you weren’t able to make out.  I am very thankful to aunt Loris who is the one that was able to recognize the voices in the recording.  Mom had it labeled, but I didn’t know which voice belonged to which person.  Thus begins the transcript:

Roy Day Bucklin:  Effie’s a gardener.

Addie Mae Hine Bucklin:  That was the morn… that was the morning that uh Sammy got out in the road and got run over.

Effie Hetzel Bucklin: (at the same time) Yeah, I’ve been trying but I’m afraid that uh it’s not going to amount…

Roy: Did Mr. Compton die?

Mary Bucklin Phenice:  Who’s Sammy?

Addie:  Our little dog.

Mary:  Your little dog?

Addie:  He followed me to mailbox and just as I got out there, there’s a, a pickup went by and he run out to bark and he got too close and it run over him.  And uh, I don’t know if it knew it hit him or not;  it didn’t stop, it just went on and there Sammy was layin’ right in the wheel-track, you know, just all drawed up.  And he commenced makin’ the funniest noise.  Now I was afraid to go and pick him up.  And uh, I stood there and looked around and I thought I heard Roy out in the shop and I said, uh.  Went and called him and I said, “Come here!” and he come, looked at him, and he said, “Oh, I’m afraid he’s done for.”  And we just stood there and watched him.  We’d speak to him and he wouldn’t let on like he heard us.

After a while, why I guess he was kinda commencin’ to get over it, and he’d raise up and look, you know, but he, you could tell that he didn’t know what he was lookin’ at.  So I looked down the road and I saw a car comin’ and I said, “Well, Roy, let’s get him outta the road.  There comes a car.”  So he picked him up and really just puttin’ him out of the track.  Well he just took him on in to the yard.  He laid there.  We’d talk to him.  Still he didn’t know what we’s sayin’.  I guess we musta stayed there fifteen minutes just lookin’ at him, you know.  And we couldn’t see any place was hurt, only just the blood dropped out of one eye – just two or three drops.  Then uh..(cough)…so like, like uh, when we got ready to go to the house, like we said, “Come on, Sammy!  Let’s go!” and he got up and followed us to the house!

Mary:  He’s alright?!

Addie:  And he laid around all day that day, though, Roy was workin’ out with the cattle and he didn’t pay any mind.  He just laid around.  After that, well he seemed to be alright.

Mary:  Shocked him, I guess.

Addie:  Broke… broke the collar off of his neck.  He had… he had a leather collar on.

Roy (interrupting): Must, he, must, car musta hit him on the neck.  That collar was layin’ where the car had hit him.

Mary:  It shocked him.

Addie: It’s a shock, I guess. Long, oh for several days he, he wouldn’t bark at cars.  He’s got over it now. He runs out.  This next time he’d catch it harder and it’d be the last of him.

Joe and Charlie Tupper

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This photo comes from the Whittington albums.  The back of the photo says Joe and Charlie Tupper (with hat) eating noon meal.   Joe Tupper Jr. said “Evidently meal time during a day threshing rice. You can see the threshing machine and bundle wagon with a man feeding it with a pitchfork in the background. They are sitting on some filled and hand sewn rice sacks! I had never seen this picture before, thank you Joseph for posting!”

Tractor in the Mud

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John Koll digging stuck tractor out of mud during rice cutting in 1929.  Ada Weaver wonders if the guy supervising is her dad, Jesse Whittington.  He would have been 23 then. Do you think he would have worn such an unusual hat?

Bucklin Home

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We got to visit with Arlene Ware, Melvin Keys, and Steven Keys when we visited Louisiana. Here are a couple old Bucklin photos Arlene had that I had not seen before. Roy and Robert Louis Bucklin standing in front of the old Bucklin house. And a photo of the house showing the screened porch.

Eenie Meenie Mee Maw Mo

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Mrs. Robert J. Landry Jr. and mother-in-law

Germaine Erie Patureau Landry, little Landry children, and Marie Celeste Leveque Landry circa 1930.

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!)