Erie Get Your Gun
Erie’s got her gun and is ready to take on the world. This was taken around 1963 in Lafayette, Louisiana, at a picnic hosted by her cousin Wana C. Landry’s home.
I don’t know why these last few Landry/Patureau posts are featuring guns. I have two posts named Grandfathers With Guns, so I thought I would try to give a more balanced view. Besides, I had this great photo of Mee Maw that I’ve been wanting to post for a while. So my desire to present a more balanced view finally motivated me enough to edit this photo in the way I wanted to.
Because you know Mee Maw, she didn’t go anywhere without her fruitcake tin and gun! Well maybe you don’t know Mee Maw. She was born Germaine Erie Patureau on August 6, 1895, in Crescent, Louisiana. You could actually say that the family lived in Plaquemine. They lived right on the corner of the Bayou Road and Patureau Lane. That’s right! They lived on the road that they named for themselves.
She was a child at the turn of the century (not the Millennial century, the one before that!) and it was a very rural area. They usually had to entertain themselves with reading books, eating food, playing cards, or playing music. (I will be posting some musical stories soon.) But sometimes, if they were lucky, the showboat would stop in their area and put on a show for them. There was an area not far from their home that would be used as a stage for the actors who traveled on the boat. This sounds very charming, even though it reminds me of the musical “Show Boat.”
I have to admit that I am not particularly fond of most musicals. Even though my family was very musical and sometimes we would break into song during a conversation, I always hated to see that in a movie. And when I think about “Show Boat” I cringe. But I try to look past that when I think of Mee Maw and her family enjoying the performances of the people from the showboat. (Let’s just hope they weren’t musicals!)
So why is it that I referenced another musical (“Annie Get Your Gun”) when I named this post? Yet something else to get past. I guess for the same reason I named two posts “Grandpa’s Got a Gun,” I think that it has a ring to it. So let’s get back to Erie and her love for guns.
Sorry, I don’t know if Mee Maw had a love for guns or not. It’s not something I can ever remember talking to her about. I’m surprised that I have a picture of her holding a gun. (She was really holding a gun in the photo. I only edited it to make her more noticeable and to make the background less noticeable.) We always talk about Mee Maw being so sweet, so I thought I would post this picture showing her tougher side.
Oh well, even when she’s holding a gun she looks sweet. That’s Mee Maw.