Month: December 2025

Landry Christmas 1958

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Can you believe it?  I almost forgot about writing a post today.  I was reminded earlier, and it slipped my mind.  Then we started watching a movie.  It was interrupted by a phone call.  When the caller asked what we were doing, I was reminded again about it.  You would think after doing this for ten years that I wouldn’t forget about my Thursday night obligation.  Not that it’s really an obligation.  I forgot about it last Christmas, too, and was two days late with my post.  Not this year.

Landry Family Christmas Eve Get Together in 1958 in Lake Charles, Louisiana

I thought I would go ahead and do another Christmas post this year since it is Christmas Day.  Merry Christmas!  It’s what I had planned all along.  Three Christmas post this year seemed right.  The first one included a photo from the 1970s.  The second one had a photo from the 1960s.  So I thought I’d follow the trend and include a photo from a decade earlier.  

This photo is from 1958 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  That’s a long time ago.  I wasn’t even born yet.  But I would soon be joining these siblings and cousins in the Landry Christmas traditions.  Back then the event would occur at my grandmother’s house in Lake Charles.  She was born in Crescent, Louisiana, which is near Plaquemine.  She was given the name Germaine Erie Patureau, though she usually went by Erie.  She would grow up in Crescent and Lafayette, get married to Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, and then reared a family in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

She became a grandmother in 1948 when my cousin Shirley was born.  We call her “The First” because she demands it.  It was at that point that my grandmother went from Erie and Mama to Mee Maw.  My grandfather was called Pee Paw and he was around for most of these earlier cousins, but he died in 1957, so I never knew him.  I didn’t think about all of those things back then.  I just knew that we all loved going to be with our aunts, uncles, and cousins at Mee Maw’s house.  You could tell that she loved all of her grandchildren very much.  I’m pretty sure I was her favorite, though.

But in 1958 I wasn’t there, so someone else must have been the favorite at that point.  It could have been Shirley.  She was the first, as we all know.  And I will admit that she is loveable. But then my sister Jodie was pretty special too.  Doesn’t she look angelic in her pink dress?  She was the first in my family.  That’s always a special thing.  Look at Doug, who is in the black shirt in front of Jodie.  He was the first in Aunt Germaine’s family.  He looks really happy.  Maybe Mee Maw told him that he was her favorite (so far!)

I think that’s what she wanted.  How could she not love all of those little kids who were her grandchildren?  She wanted them to feel special and that she loved them best.  I think she accomplished that.  She had lots of love to go around.

IPSIWHFT

Bucklin Christmas 1963

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Christmas day was spent at my grandparents’ home in Hathaway, Louisiana.

When I was a little kid, our Christmas Day was spent at our Bucklin grandparents’ place.  Their names were Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, and they were my mom’s parents.  My mom’s name was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  But I always knew them as Grandpa, Grandma, and Mama.  My mom and her parents were born and raised in Hathaway, Louisiana.  Not at the same time, obviously!  Previous generations of their families were born in various places like Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts, Ireland, and England.

We would spend Christmas Eve in Lake Charles at my dad’s side of the family.  I was only three years old in 1963, so I was too young to stay up for midnight mass.  We were living just north of I-10 in Jennings at that point.  I remember when we were opening presents on that Christmas morning.  I don’t remember what I got, I just remember thinking that the things we got came from a midnight visitor. 

And that midnight visitor had left some evidence of his visit.  There were like two empty burlap bags found outside on the ground.  We just knew they were from Santa.  When I looked up burlap bags online just now, it showed a burlap bag that had “Santa’s Bag of Coal” written on it.  But that was for naughty little boys and girls, and I was not a naughty boy!  I’m assuming that after we finished opening our presents and looking through our stockings, we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s.  It was only about fifteen minutes away.

Christmas 1963 in full color in Hathaway.

We weren’t the only ones that went there.  My mom was one of five children, and in 1963 Grandma and Grandpa had fifteen grandchildren.  It was a lively place to be back then.  You might not think that from looking at that black and white photo from the 1963 event.  I do like that photo.  I like the way my mom is looking down at me, except it wasn’t me that she was looking at!  I’m pretty sure that is my cousin Keith, the second son of mom’s sister Loris.  He was born a couple of months after me, so we were about the same size back then. 

My dad was Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. and you can see him sitting and yawning as he looked at something Jodie was showing him.  Jodie was my oldest sister.  In front of them you can see my brother Al playing with an airplane.  I’m right next to him fooling with something out of sight.  It could have been my grandmother’s sock monkey that she had back then.  I remember going to get it when we first arrived at their house.  I’ve always been a big fan of sock monkeys.  In the foreground you can see a shock of blond hair.  That could be either my sister Karen or my cousin Rhonda.  Rhonda is the daughter of my mom’s sister Alma.

Rhonda can be seen in the color photo from that same event.  She’s in the red sweater behind that amazing contraption.  What is that thing?!  And who did it belong to?  It’s vaguely familiar.  I can see the arms flying out as the yellow bullets spun around to spin its tiny inhabitants upside down.  It seems to be the hit of the party.  Standing up on the right is Brent, the older brother of Keith.  In front of him is Paul, who was one of the sons of mom’s older sister Sylvia.  He seems to be intensely working to get the contraption to operate correctly.  Across from him is his younger sister Lynn. 

I wished that I had been in this photo, too.  Maybe that was me on the left edge of the photo?  No, that looks more like Al.  But then when I compared it to the other photo, I realized it was Keith who had upstaged me yet again.  The young boy above him doesn’t look like me or Al, so I’m thinking that it was probably Aunt Sylvia’s youngest boy Kevin.

I like both of these photos, yet they are so different.  The second one is in color, is much sharper, and seems more cheerful.  The first one is black and white, is very blurry, and is definitely moodier.  Both bring up memories of being in my grandparents’ house with all of the cousins.  There was lots of laughing and playing.  There was lots of good food to eat.  I remember my grandmother’s dark roast gravy that she prepared in her black enamel roaster (graniteware?).  Plus, she made the best desserts, especially her divinity.  I wonder if there are photos of that.  

Hey, cousins, if you have any photos from this Christmas, share them with us in the comments.  I know I don’t have all of the photos.  Surely there was another photo taken on that roll of color film.  It would be interesting to see if there were photos that show the event in an even different mood.  You never know.  For now, these are the ones I have to share.  Enjoy.

 

The Carol of the Star

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I don’t usually have a blog based on music, much less an individual song, but I think this one deserves it.  I’ve actually shared the song before.  That was five years ago, and the post was about the music that my dad – Bob Landry – had directed many moons ago at the Northside gym in Jennings.  Our family moved to Jennings, Louisiana, in the early 60s.  At first he taught at Elton, but then he moved to Northside Junior High in Jennings.  I don’t really remember the two years he taught at Elton, but I remember those early years at the Northside gym.

Jennings Northside Jr. High School summer band program 1966.

I have lots of memories from the band programs there.  I wasn’t even in school yet, but my siblings and I would go to the summer band program every summer.  I think it was a way to give my mom a break from taking care of the six of us.  We would go to that old un-air-conditioned gym in the heat of the summer and think nothing of it.  It wasn’t just a gym.  There were aisles of schoolrooms on either side of it.  We would go to a classroom, take out our ukuleles (guitars for the older kids), sit in our seats, and sing and play the songs shown with the overhead projector as the fan oscillated back and forth across our slightly sweaty faces.  It was heaven!

We’d sing songs like “Down in the Valley” that only had a few chords.  At first you really had to concentrate to get the fingerings right for that C or G chord and try to sing along as you strummed the ukulele to the right rhythm.  You would improve and then it was easier to play songs like “This Land Is Your Land” that had more chords.  We even learned to sing a little Spanish with “Cuando Calienta El Sol.”  We learned about our brave military heroes from the song “The Ballad of the Green Beret.”  Those songs all evoke such memories when I hear them now. 

But the song that evokes the most memories is the song “The Carol of the Star.”  The chorus at Northside would sing that every year at Christmastime at the gathering for the end of the fall semester.  My dad made recordings of some of those concerts on an old reel-to-reel recorder.  He kept them in the kitchen closet for many years.  I’m sure the old 1959 Harry Simone original recording of the song was in there as well.  It was such a fun song to sing.  There were lots of harmonies and echoes, and the older boys got to sing the best “Bum pa dum pa dum, bum pum” part.  It’s a great Christmas song that you don’t ever hear anywhere.

This recording was made fifteen years ago.  My brother Al recorded me singing the first verse over the phone when he was in Chicago and I was in North Carolina.  He also recorded himself and my sister Jamie singing the second and third verses.  My sister Karen, and my mom and dad sang some harmonies for him before he worked his magic and combined them all together.  I don’t know how he got Jamie’s husband Allen to sing the “Bum pa dum” part.  I’ve never heard him sing!  Al did multiply it and do some editing on it.  It’s a shame that my brother Rob wasn’t in on it.

The song is very moving to me.  I like to listen to it with my ear buds in, so there is no external distraction.  When I start the song, I can hear myself singing, and then Karen joins in right beside me.  Like in olden days.  As other voices join in, I really do get transported to those early days of singing this song.  It’s like my parents are right behind me again making sure we all know the words and the melody of the song.  Sometimes it seems like Jodie was still around singing along with us, but she had died long before the recordings were made.  Her voice was similar to mom’s and my sisters’ voices.  It’s like we are all together again.

I’m sure that many of my dad’s students from back in the day have a similar experience when they hear this song.  I’m including the old recording from 1966 at Northside.  I think they did a great job for junior high school students.  When I hear it, I can picture that old gym so clearly.  When I posted this song previously, I did get comments about it doing the same for other students from then.  It’s not too soon to share it again.

Landry family Christmas 1974 in Jennings, Louisiana.

I also have to share a photo from an old Christmas in the past.  Some people won’t look at a post unless there is an interesting photo to look at.  My interesting photo is an old family photo from the Christmas of 1974.  It’s a photo Rob sent to me a while back.  He had his new Minolta camera with a timer on it.  Everyone can be in the photo!  From left to right (and top to bottom) are Rob, Al, Van, Betty (mom), Jamie, Dennis Franklin (Jodie’s first husband), Jodie, Karen, and Bob.

I hope that was interesting enough.  I think the song is more than interesting, but that’s me.  Hopefully others will find a connection to it.

 

Myrtle Phenice Bucklin in 1945

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Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin in 1945 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin in 1945 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I’ve used this photo of my maternal grandmother before, but that was 10 years ago.  I’ve decided that I can reuse some of those old photos from before if it has been a while.  This one qualifies.  Besides, it’s a wonderful photo of her.  I’ve acquired a few more photos of her in the time I’ve been collecting old family photos, but this one is still a favorite.  So, I decided to give it a fresh upgrade with the updated photo software that has developed in that time.  I didn’t really change it that much, but I did get rid of a few distracting errors on it.  It’s the new and improved Myrtle.  I hope you like it, Grandma!

And this time around I’ll write a bit more than before.  That first post using this photo was only as long as that first paragraph.  So now you get more of everything!  And the price has not gone up during the past ten years!  How many things can you say that about?  

My grandmother’s name was Myrtle Sylvia Phenice when she was born on December 19, 1906, in Hathaway, Louisiana.  Her parents were Harry Clifton Phenice (1874-1955), and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys (1876-1952).   She graduated from Jennings High School in 1925.  She went to Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI) after that and received her teaching certificate (good for life) in 1928.  She taught for two years, got married to Fred Bucklin, and then stopped teaching when she started having children in 1931.

She and Fred had five children together: Syvia in 1931, Betty Lou (my wonderful mom) in 1933, Alma in 1935, Loris in 1937, and Austin in 1942.  When Austin was a few years old, she went back to teaching.  Or so the story goes!  When I posted this photo before, Aunt Loris agreed that the photo was from 1945.  It was supposedly the first year that Grandma went back to teaching.  Aunt Loris even sent me a photo of her own class in 1945 when Grandma was her teacher.  It looked like the same age as this photo.  The photo shows that they were in the 3rd grade, which is the grade that she always seemed to be associated with.  In Grandma’s history from her memorial, it showed that she returned to teaching in 1946.  Ok.

But then I was looking at something my mom wrote on the posts that I put together for Mom’s Memories.  On page 19 she said that Grandma was her teacher in the 6th grade.  She said it was a trying year and that it was “not fun at all!”  I’ve always felt the same way about having my dad for a teacher.  Everyone else says how wonderful he was – “He was a legend.” – but I didn’t experience it that way.  Anyway, when I was looking at this other piece of information tonight, I was wondering when Mama was actually in the 6th grade. 

So, I did some ciphering.  If she was in 12th grade in 1950-1951, that would put her in the 6th grade from 1944 to 1945.   I wonder if that was correct.  If so, Grandma’s first year back wasn’t in 1945 or 1946.  When I was trying to clear it up, I looked at the 1951 Hathaway Hornet yearbook.  It was mom’s senior year, and Grandma was a teacher that year.  But she wasn’t teaching third grade, she was teaching fourth grade.  Maybe it was because Austin was in the third grade.  Or maybe it was before she settled into teaching third grade regularly.

I’d still like to know for sure if my mom had her mother as her teacher in the 6th grade in 1944.  If you have a Hathaway Hornet yearbook from that year, send me a shot of my mom in her class.  That would be an amazing thing to see.  I have some of her later class photos, but I’m always interested in seeing more.