Easter in Jennings in 1964

I’m sure some of you recognize this old Easter photo.  I actually posted it ten years ago on Facebook (April 2015).  That was a few months before I started doing the weekly blog that I now do every Thursday.  This time it looks a bit different.  I decided to edit it a bit.  People do that on Facebook all the time.  There’s an editing group that people post photos to with various requests.  Usually, when they request to remove people, I think that they’re making a fake photo.  Revisionist history.  Misleading people.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing right now!  I never liked the fact that one of our old neighbors was in the center of the photo and Jamie was off to the right by herself.  The grouping was all wrong.  I’ve thought of editing it previously, but I’ve always resisted before.  But not today!  Today Jamie has had some slight editing and has joined the group.  Sure, you can’t see her shoes, but the photo now looks so much more balanced.  It tells the story better, because the story is about cousins getting together for the holidays.

The photo was taken on March 29, 1964, in Jennings, Louisiana.  That was the date for Easter that year.   We were living just north of Interstate 10 in a two-story house that we were renting.  I always thought that we rented from a Mr. Sonnier.  I remember him stopping by the house sometimes in an old pickup truck.  (Al cut his finger on something in the back of that truck once.  Ask him to see the scar next time you see him.)  But Mama said in her memory book that it was the old Dupre house.  I’ve shared photos of that old house before.

I know it was at that house, because you can see the big barn behind us.  That barn was behind the old two-story house.  It was a red barn with rusty tin sides.  We used to rub our hands on the doors and our hands would turn red.  We also liked to peek inside because there was a small airplane in there.  It was just the skeleton of the plane.  It looked like it wasn’t quite finished being made yet.  But I don’t remember anyone working on it or anything.  Uncle Austin was away in the military and he was the only one we knew that could have done such a thing.

My family consisted of my mom and dad – Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry – Bob and Betty, and us six kids – Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van (me), and Jamie.  We moved to that house from Lake Charles in 1963 and were only there for about two years.  But there were so many memories from those times – wasps in the sand pit, running along the canal next to the property, witnessing human trafficking, watching the military convoys pass by, making powder puffs from thistles, riding the murderous horses in the fields, etc.  It was a great place to live.

There are a few other photos from that day.  I think we went to church first, and I think that the Pilchers went along with us.  The Pilchers are connected to us because the mom was my mom’s older sister Sylvia Bucklin Pilcher.  They lived in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Sylvia was married to Ronald Pilcher, and they had five children – Larry, Paul, Toni, Lynn, and Kevin.  Mama and Aunt Sylvia grew up Methodist.  They both married a Catholic man and converted to Catholicism.  Mama always claimed that she and her sister were each other’s godmother.  

So this photo is a photo of a large part of the Bucklin cousins at the time.  Betty and Sylvia had two younger sisters named Alma and Loris.  Alma and her then husband Chuck Seal only had one child at the time (Rhonda, later to be joined by sister Charla).  Loris and her then husband Ernest Woolley had three sons (Brent, Keith, and Glen).  The four Bucklin girls had a younger brother Austin who would later marry Margaret New.  They would have four children – John, Dale, Anita, and Mary.  I wish this photo had included all of the cousins that had been born at the time.  I don’t know how it came about that there were just these two families.

The photo just has the children of Sylvia and Betty Lou.  From left to right we have Lynn, Karen, Toni, Al, Van, Jodie (in front), Jamie, Rob, Kevin, Paul, and Larry.  What a group!  Most of us are looking at the camera.  Lynn and Karen are not.  They look very preoccupied with seeing what Karen has gathered in her Easter basket.  Obviously, there was some egg hunting going on that day.  There may have been some egg pocking going on as well.  We always had to see whose egg was the strongest!

I can’t let this Easter post end without sharing a poem my mom wrote years ago.  Sure, I shared the poem ten years ago when I shared the original photo.  But the poem was written more like fifty years ago.  Back then the poem was only four lines long.  I added two lines in the middle ten years ago to finish it up.  I call it “Betty Lou’s Easter Poem.”  Here it is:

That crummy, dummy Easter Bunny left no eggs for me.

That crummy, dummy Easter Bunny hopped right by with glee.

I tracked him to my neighbor’s house and stood outside his door,

and when I saw that Bunny head, I knocked it to the floor.

I tied up all his whiskers and macraméd his ears.

I sat down in my rocking chair and drank three beers.

Happy Easter everyone!