Category: Bucklin

I was tempted to call this post “My Sixth Advent” as a follow up to a post from five years ago.  That’s when I had a dream and someone told me to tell them about my fifth Advent.  In the dream I knew that they were talking about my fifth Easter.  As I said back then, I know that Lent comes before Easter and Advent comes before Christmas.  I knew what they were talking about because it was in my dream.  In my post I said that I didn’t have any photos from my sixth Advent, which would translate to Easter of 1966.  Actually, I don’t have a photo to prove what I was talking about in that post, but I do have a photo from that Easter sixty years ago, and that’s what I’m sharing today.

I decided to not be too confusing with the title, so I went with “Bucklin Cousins at Easter 1966.”  The funny thing about that is that nobody in the photo has the last name Bucklin.  But all of our moms were daughters of Fred and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin from Hathaway, Louisiana.  Specifically, only the first three daughters are represented in this photo.  That would be Sylvia Bucklin born in 1931, Betty Lou Bucklin born in 1933, and Alma Bucklin born in 1935.  They had a younger sister named Loris born in 1937 and a younger brother named Austin born in 1942.  Loris and her husband Ernest Woolley had their three sons by this point, but they aren’t in this photo.  Austin and Aunt Margaret would start their family a few months later.

It’s not the best photo, because it is a bit blurry.  But it’s a great photo because we were just cute young kids on April 8, 1966.  It’s got all six of us Landry kids, three of the five Pilcher kids, and one of the two Seal kids.  It was taken at the home of Sylvia and Ronald Pilcher in Lafayette, Louisiana.  They lived on Leonpacher Drive.  I remember walking down their road on some of our visits and I remember it being a somewhat rural area at the time.  I haven’t been there in years.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and my dad was Bob Landry.  We lived in Jennings at the time, so it wasn’t very far of a drive for us to visit.  Aunt Alma and her husband Chuck Seal lived in Florida, so they had a longer drive to make.

I will use the numbering system similar to the Borg from Star Trek.  Although the Borg were not known by the Star Trek universe of 1966.  It was much more associated with the Starship Enterprise, which was, by the way, built by one of my mom’s Bucklin first cousins.  His name was Mel Keys.  He, too, had a Bucklin mother.  So, the Landry children will have the designation L, followed by their birth order, and end with “of 6” since that’s how many there were of us. 

On the first row we have Rob L2 of 6, Van L5 of 6, Jamie L6 of 6, Kevin P5 of 5, and Rhonda S1 of 2.  Kneeling down behind them are Al L4 of 6, Toni P3 of 5, Jodie L1 of 6, Karen L3 of 6, and Lynn P4 of 5.   That looks kinda weird, but it does show you who everyone belongs to.  I’ve considered changing it, but as you can see, I haven’t.  And I won’t, because I’m stubborn like that.  As you should be able to tell, P1, P2, and S2 are missing.  Hopefully, they were having a fun time looking for Easter eggs or eating some Easter candy.

I wasn’t going to mention my mom’s Easter poem, but then I considered changing my mind.  And I did, because I’m stubborn like that, too.  Here is the poem she wrote long ago.

 

                  Betty Lou’s Easter Poem

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.

I’ve shared this photo before, but that was over ten years ago.  It was a few months before I started doing this weekly blog.  It was a photo I had seen for the first time just a short time before.  Actually, the date that I first saw this photo was on May 23, 2015.  The reason I remember it is that I referred to my My Photos folder on my computer.  It’s my virtual memory along with the photos that are stored in there.

The day I saw it was the last time that I went out on an adventure with my mom and dad.  They were slowing down a bit and a few months later we agreed that it would be best that they move into assisted living.  In May, though, we made plans and met up with mom’s first cousins Louise (and her son Joseph) and Ray Bucklin.  We explored around the Hathaway/Raymond/China area which is where the Bucklin family settled when they moved south in the 1880s.  That would have been my mom’s and her cousins’ great grandparents.

Anyway, after exploring a bit, we went back to the old Herbert Bucklin home place.  That was Louise and Ray’s dad.  My mom was the daughter of Herbert’s brother Fred.  Grandpa and Grandma lived just down the road a bit from them in the area that I refer to as Hathaway.  Fred and Herbert’s brother Clarence lived between them in what Clarence’s daughter refers to as Raymond.  I’m sure there are others who would call the same area China.  After all, it’s where China cemetery is located.

After talking a bit about family history and reminiscing, Louise brought out some old letters and photos.  She has been collecting them for years.  I had not seen a lot of the items, including this old photo from 1941.  It shows a gathering of two families who had known each other for a while – the Bucklins and the Clements.  You know about the Bucklins because that was my mom’s maiden name and I refer to it often in these blogs.  But the Clement name you would not be familiar with in connection to me.  Jennings had a Clement family that was known because a man named Jules Clement discovered oil in Jennings in 1901.

I don’t think this family was related to that Jennings Clement family.  The Bucklins met this Clement family around 1911-1914 when they lived in Prairie Grove, Arkansas.  The Bucklins only lived there for a few years, but they kept in touch with the Clement family at least until 1941.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have this photo of the two families together.  I have copies of four other photos taken that long ago day on the beach in Cameron, Louisiana.  This one is by far the best.  It has my mom and her sisters and parents included in it. 

My mom Betty Lou is the girl in the plaid dress with the white collar at the front on the left.  Next to her in the striped dress is her younger sister Alma.  On the other side of Alma is their older sister Sylvia with her hand on her hip while sipping a drink.  Next to her is either their cousin Harley Bruchhaus or a Clement boy.  And then you come to younger sister Loris in another vertical striped dress.  She seems preoccupied with something they are drinking.  Several drinking cups can be seen.  On the far right is their Uncle Roy’s wife Effie Hetzel Bucklin.  Standing next to her is Uncle Herbert’s wife Dora Koll Bucklin.  I’m sure my siblings and cousins don’t want to miss seeing Grandma (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin) and Grandpa (Fred Bucklin).  You can see them in the shadows in the back on the right.  They are between the upright stick used for the tent and the cloth that is hanging from the edge of the tent.  See them?  Look closely!

My mom was not too thrilled to see this photo.  For many years she had told us about a time she went swimming and felt like she almost drowned.  She had gone out too far and couldn’t seem to get back to the beach against the tide.  She said she was bobbing up and down in the water, waving her hands, and laughing nervously.  They thought she was playing at first and then they realized she needed help.  It scared her and she said that she disliked the water after that.  It brought up those bad memories for her.

I still think it is a charming photo.

I don’t really know that much about this photo.  I’m pretty sure it is a photo of my maternal grandfather Fred D. Bucklin and his brother Clarence circa 1928.  The photo came from Clarence’s daughter Carla, so I think that information is reliable.  Who else is going to have old family photos except for the descendants of the people involved?  Not that the identity of those photos is always known.  But most of the photos from the 1920s are pretty well identified.  In the Bucklin and Hine collection of old photos, the generations before my grandfather are often not identified.

Mainly, I just like this old action photo taken about 100 years ago of my family.  It looks like Fred and Clarence are making hay on the old Bucklin family farm.  The Bucklin farm in Louisiana had started 50 years previously when their grandparents James Bucklin and Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin had moved their family south from Iowa.  James was a Massachusetts native, while Mary Ann was an Irish immigrant who came to the US during the Great Irish Potato Famine.

The family came to Louisiana in 1884 and were able to get three sections of land to homestead around Hathaway, Louisiana, in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Most of this was passed down to the descendants of their son Louis, mainly because none of their other children have any descendants.  Louis was the father of Fred and Clarence, and he was involved with the day-to-day farm life for many years.  He kept a lot of journals talking about some of his activities.  He married Addie Hine in 1898 and they worked the farm.  Addie gave birth to a dozen children, so that kept her busy for a while.

Louis died in 1927, and that left the farm to Addie and the children.  So this is a photo of Fred and Clarence helping their mom to keep the farm going.  They were doing that by making hay on this old Wallis tractor.  Or maybe they were just posing for some interesting photos when they were youngsters.  It’s been known to happen.  Just look at these old photos of me and my sisters from 1978.  That’s what we were doing.  You can pretty much tell this because we were definitely not dressed for work.  We were just riding around the countryside taking photos.  We saw this old tractor and thought we’d take some photos.

The funny thing about these photos is that they were taken not far from the older photo.  And also, the Case tractor in the photo has a shared history with the Wallis tractor.  They had the same parent company.  We weren’t thinking of any of that, though.  We didn’t know about that old photo.  I didn’t discover that until a few years ago.  We were just playing around on an old tractor in the field and being silly.

But I really don’t think that’s what Clarence and Fred were doing all those years ago.  Just look at them.  They were doing serious farm work.  That Wallis tractor belonged to their mother.  You can tell they were serious by the overalls that they were wearing.  That’s the only thing I remember my grandfather wearing in all the years I knew him.  This is also around the time that they were getting involved with growing all types of trees, shrubs, and flowers.  It wouldn’t be long before they would set up their own nursery business called Bucklin Brothers.  The area around Jennings and Hathaway were familiar with the name, because their Uncle Joe and Uncle Ed had run a nice men’s clothing store in downtown Jennings called Bucklin Brothers in the first decade of the 1900s.

Like the first venture, it didn’t last too long for reasons not known.  There are still a few Bucklins in the Jennings area.  There are even some Bucklin descendants who farm in the area.  The Bucklin family farm has never been divided.  Some of my cousins have 1/8th interests.  My line had larger families, so I own 1/240ths interest.  One of these days I’m going to figure out what that means.  Maybe.

 

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.

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.

 

This title is making me laugh.  It probably shouldn’t.  I sometimes laugh inappropriately at things.  But I can’t help it, I find so many things funny.  And it’s not funny that later in life, my great grandfather Louis Bucklin lost one of his eyes.  I’m pretty sure it was a result of a farming accident.  He was a farmer after all.  He was also a writer.  He kept journals for many years.  I have not read them all.  I don’t think that I’ve seen them all.  I’ve only seen a photo of a grouping of old journals that he wrote, and it looked like there were a lot of them.

He wasn’t too revealing about his personal life in those journals.  He didn’t write about the young girl he was interested in who was living in Leeds, Iowa, in 1893.  I only know about that because he must have saved the letter that she wrote to him to break up with him.  That letter didn’t stay in the Bucklin family, but it somehow was kept in the Keys family.  Fortunately, his son married into the Keys family and the letter survived until it came back to me.  It led to all kinds of discoveries about Louis and his brother Joe.  I’ve written all about that previously.

Louis also didn’t write about his interest in Addie May Hine, who later became his wife.  All he really said in his journals was that Addie had come to the house to help his mother Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin do some household chores.  I guess that’s something.  She did merit a mention.

The journal also comes in handy when people ask questions about some of the history of the Hathaway, Louisiana, area.  He mentions a few people and some events that happened.  He was in a play in Jennings, Louisiana, on May 20, 1894.  I don’t know the name of the play, but he felt it would have gone better if they had been more organized and better practiced.  He pointed out blunders by a Hoag and a Macmartin.  A few weeks later he talked about an impromptu Fourth of July celebration in China, Louisiana.  China is another small community north of Jennings.  He was particularly impressed with the speeches of Mr. Powell and Mr. Eaton.

I don’t know when Louis lost his eye.  I don’t know if that information is in one of his journals or not.  I’m also not sure when this image of him was done.  I’m thinking that it is a drawing that was made when he was in his twenties or thirties.  Unfortunately for us, there aren’t many photos of him to compare it to.  He was very good at avoiding the camera.  I’ve never been that fond of this picture, but since there are so few of him, I’m using it.  Some of his features in this image remind me of my grandfather, which points to me that it might be pretty accurate.  

I do know that his eyes were blue, because that was the color of the glass eye that was made for him to replace the eye he had lost.  Somehow one of his grandchildren came across that eye in Addie’s bedroom years after Louis died.  I’m hoping that she was snooping a bit.  It would be a bit strange if it was out on display or set up as if it were looking at her.  There I go laughing again.  Because as strange as the idea of having it on display sounds to me, I would really like to see that eye.  I’d even be tempted to post a photo of it for everyone to see!

And to go a step further, I’d like to have that eye in my collection of family heirlooms.  I have a display case for all of my rocks and minerals.  There are already a few glass pieces in it.  I think that eye might look good on display.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  If this ever were to happen, I do know that the reaction I would get from people would make me laugh.   No maybe about that.