Patureau and Parasol

I always try to be creative and unique with the titles of my posts.  They are easier to find that way when I later go searching for them.  Maybe I should say that I try to make my posts easily searchable by their titles.  I’m not sure I succeed with either one of those descriptions.  But I do it.  I keep writing posts and I keep coming up with titles for them.  I’ve been doing that every week for almost ten years now.  Ten years!!  That’s 544 posts in that time.  And 544 titles.  I’ve been thinking about that the past few days.  It’s time for me to get serious about putting some of them together to make some books for the different family groups.  I’m not getting any younger.

Here is a photo of my paternal grandmother from around 1921.  Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau, but most of her friends just referred to her as Erie.  You know, like the lake.  She was born in Crescent, Louisiana, in 1895.  Crescent is a small community near Plaquemine along Bayou Plaquemine.  She grew up there along Bayou Road until the family moved to Lafayette in 1912.

In Lafayette she went to college at SLI and became a teacher.  She and her sisters taught in Lafayette a few years.  Then she decided to get married.  I’m not exactly sure when she got engaged.  She was married in November of 1921, so she probably got engaged earlier that year or the previous year.  And I think that’s around the time that this photo was taken.

This photo leaves me with more questions than answers.  The two girls are wearing large coats, so if I’m right about the time frame, this was probably taken around January or February of 1921.  I’m saying it was in Lafayette because that’s where Miss Patureau was living at the time.  But what’s with the parasol?  I would call it an umbrella, but it’s not raining and they are using the apparatus to (unsuccessfully) block the sun.  And I’ve never before seen a photo of someone wearing a big coat and carrying a parasol.  I looked!

And who is that girl holding the parasol?  It could be a friend, or it could be family.  The more I look at it, I think she looks like Erie’s younger sister Sylvie.  But when I look at it closer it doesn’t seem to look like her.  Just like with Erie; when I look at her in this photo it makes me think of my sister Karen.  There’s just something about it that seems Karenish.   The girl in the photo could be anyone.  I don’t think she was identified on the back of the photo.  It came from Box 301, and when I was taking photos of those pictures, I would photograph the back of it had identifying writing on it.  So she is a mystery for now and maybe forever.

But we know our dear sweet Mee Maw.  That’s who Erie became when she got older. But back then she was just Erie.  Excited about starting a new part of her life when she married that Rob Landry guy.  Counting down the days.  And making sure to protect her fair skin from the cruel winter sun.