Category: Landry

Last Christmas I noticed that I had neglected talking about the history of Christmas traditions in my family when I was growing up.  So I decided to remedy that.  I wrote two posts last year at Christmas time and this is the second one I’m doing this year.  I planned this one last year after seeing a photo of the manger scene from the Catholic church that our family attended.  I got the photo from one of our neighbors back then.  (Thanks, Lionel K. for the photo.  I’m not sure where the photo came from because I saw it again this year and Mike C. was credited.  Again, thanks.)

OLHC Christmas manger scene circa 1965 in Jennings, Louisiana.

Here is what the original photo looks like.   This was the manger scene that was set up every year at the side altar of Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Jennings, Louisiana.  This is a large stone church that was built in 1916.  It has beautiful stained-glass windows in it that capture your attention.

But during the season of Advent leading up the Christmas, the thing that got people’s attention (at least it always got mine) was the manger scene that was set up to the side of the main altar.  I’ve heard (via Facebook) that the person responsible for the figures and background was a Mrs. Annette Hebert, with the possible assistance of the Ladies Altar Society.  I don’t remember her, but I am a fan of her work.

But this photo doesn’t look like the way I remember it.  Sure, it has the manger with Mary and Joseph in it.  At midnight mass, part of the processional was bringing the figure of the baby Jesus to the manger.  Later on the three wise men would make their way to visit the baby Jesus.  There are people standing around on the mountainside looking out to see what was going on.  (It probably wasn’t meant to be a hill or mountain, it was to show things in the distance.  It was always a mountain to me!) 

My version of the photo from 1965.

But when I was a kid, I remember being in awe of it when we went to midnight mass.  So I edited the photo to better represent the way I remember seeing it.  I tried to get it to convey the feelings I had back then when my family and I would stand around it and point out things we could make out.  So I brought myself back to that time and place as I worked on the photo.

“Look,” I said, “there’s a kid up on the mountainside!”  Karen commented on how much she loved Mary’s blue dress.  My mom was so glad she never had to give birth in such a crude environment. 

Jodie said, “Look, that guy is playing the flute.”  My dad would just nod in agreement.  There were so many details to see among the twinkling lights and people standing about.  As I came out of my reverie, I found that I had tears in my eyes.  I had to say goodbye again to my parents and two sisters.  I figured that I got the feeling of the photo right if it did that to me!

The image isn’t much to look at on a glance.  For best effect, it helps to look at it in as large of a format that you can in a darkened room.  Then you can start to make out some of the details – the darkened church walls, the dim light coming through the window, the glowing lights scattered about, the figures standing around telling their story.

But you don’t really have to.  This is about me and my family’s memories.  I’m sure you all have your own.  And we can always make more.  So love the people around you and show them kindness.  But most of all, have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Rob, Karen, Jamie, Jodie, Van, and Al Landry on Christmas morning in 1966 in Jennings, Louisiana.

I’ve been planning on posting this photo for a while now.  I realized last year that I hadn’t posted any Christmas photos from my own childhood.  I posted a few photos last year and decided to wait until this year for this photo.  I was actually going to use it next week, but I was pressed for time this week and this photo has already been edited to my liking.

Let’s go back to 1966 when little Van Landry was all excited about Christmas.  I was only six years old, so I probably didn’t stay up for Midnight Mass like some of the older siblings did.  After spending Christmas Eve in Lake Charles with all of my Landry cousins, we made our way back to Jennings for the night.  We may have driven around a few places in Lake Charles to look at some of the lights and decorations for the season.  I remember doing that a time or two.  We would usually get back to Jennings pretty late and it would be time for bedtime.

But how could we go to bed?  Santa was coming tonight!  It was too exciting!  I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but before you know it I was sleeping.  I always missed my chance to sneak into the other room and catch him in action.  The next thing I knew, I was waking up to the sound of Perry Como’s “Little Drummer Boy” or Fred Waring’s version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”  Those songs and many more were regular Christmas morning fare in the Landry household at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana.  For some reason I also associate the music from “Peter and the Wolf” with Christmas as well.  I didn’t listen for very long, because when I became fully aware, I had to go see what treasures I had!

We usually had a few gifts and a stocking full of goodies.  Our stockings were actually one of our dad’s socks!  In the sock would be an apple, an orange, some nuts and some candy, and for me there would be a matchbox car.  Of course we’d want to open our gifts immediately, but our dad wanted to take a photo of us with our gifts beforehand.  Why this delay in our immediate gratification?  But we went along.  My dad got out his fancy Polaroid camera, got us organized for the photo, told us to say “cheese,” and snapped a photo of us smiling.

Christmas morning – Take 2

At least he thought we were all smiling.  When he took the photo, I decided to make a funny face to show the excitement I had for the day.  As he saw the developed photo after waiting a while, a look of dissatisfaction came over his face.  He fussed at me for ruining the family photo and decided to take another photo of us.  I tried to behave myself the second time, but you can see that I’m still laughing about the fun photo I took the first time.  I distinctly remember him fussing at me and it seems like it would have sobered me a little.  I don’t see any sign of it in the second photo.

I still like the first photo the best.

Jamie, Jodie, Al, Karen, Van, and Rob Landry circa November 1966 in Jennings, Louisiana.

I went looking for a photo that related to Thanksgiving, and this is what I came  up with.  I don’t think it is from a Thanksgiving, but the estimated date for it is November 1966. So it’s kinda close to the time of Thanksgiving from 55 years ago.  And since I’m always thankful for the large family that I grew up in, I thought it was appropriate.  Plus it’s just a good photo of us kids back in the day. 

So this is me and my siblings at our family home at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana.  From left to right is Jamie, Jodie, Al, Karen, Me (Van), and Rob Landry.  Our parents were Bob and Betty Landry.  We’re sitting in the den of the house.  I know that because it has paneling on the wall and I think it was the only room in the house with paneling until a few years later.  Plus it has the rattan couch that we are sitting on.  That couch was in the den against the east wall until we got the pool table at a later date. 

The other thing that brings back memories is the Boy Scout uniform that my brother Rob is wearing.  I remember that he went to a place called Camp Edgewood with the Scouts.  It is somewhere between DeQuincy and Ragley, Louisiana.  I remember the whole family riding in the famous Country Squire station wagon to go pick him up.  My dad was driving, of course, but the memorable part of it was that it was misty and chilly outside and the windshield was fogging up.  He and someone else – my mom, I think, who doesn’t like fooling with buttons and such – were trying to get it to clear up.  Nothing worked and my dad eventually ended up rolling down the side window and sticking his head out to see where we were going.  It seemed a bit concerning at the time, but seems funny now.

The uniform also reminds me of going to pick out Christmas trees after Thanksgiving.  I think the scoutmaster was Arthur Sneed.  At least he is the person that I think about when I think about getting Christmas trees back in the 60s in Jennings.  The Boy Scouts were somehow connected to providing Christmas trees.  He and my dad would always chat and have a good laugh.  I would sometimes wonder why he didn’t laugh that way around us.  I recently went to a funeral for a classmate who was from the Sneed family.  One of the first things I noticed were all of the people that had on Scout uniforms.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – for the Sneed family and the Landry family.  There is something reassuring about that.

Landry family get together in Galveston, Texas, November 2021.

For the Landry family I am referring to the ukulele seen in this photo.  My youngest sister Jamie is playing the uke in this photo.  We all learned how to play the ukulele and/or the guitar and a band instrument when we were growing up.  What do you expect?  Our dad was a band director!  The family recently got together in Texas for the marriage of her youngest daughter.  And of course, we had our ukuleles and guitars to play.  Al had gifted me a ukulele for my birthday a few weeks ago (thanks again!) and encouraged me to bring it.  So there was some singing and playing going on at our get together. 

We also played some card games.  It was more enjoyable to me than usual.  Not just because I won – that helped.  It was also because there wasn’t much arguing over rules.  Someone listening from the outside might not have noticed much difference.  We can get rather loud when we are playing games!  Our family has a habit of talking over each other at times, and when we play games it is even more pronounced.   I love it!  And I’m thankful for it.

I hope you are able to find things to be thankful for.  Happy Thanksgiving 2021!

Jodie Landry circa 1970

I thought I’d write a story about my sister Jodie since today is her birthday.  She was born 68 years ago today, but only lived for 36 years.  When I realized that it was her birthday, I decided to write a post about her.  I then remembered this photo that I had worked on a few weeks ago.  It’s a fun photo of her from 1970 and it brings up so many memories for me.

It’s a photo of her playing the guitar in the den of our house at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana.  The guitar was my dad’s and it usually would hang on the back wall next to the ukulele that you can see behind her.  She’s sitting on a rattan chair that we had back then.  On the other side of the room was a matching couch.  In the middle of the room was the pool table, which you can see the edge of in the photo.

It was around this time that things were changing in the Landry household.  Before this time, the family consisted of Bob, Betty (nee Bucklin), Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van (me), and Jamie Landry.  We all lived together in a three bedroom house with one small bathroom.  Around this time we started to accept others into our circle.  Mainly I was thinking about Jodie’s boyfriend at the time.  She started dating him sometime around her junior year in high school.  I call this post “A First Date” because I remember her first date with him.  But I don’t think it was her first date ever.  Since her boyfriend at the time is still alive and I don’t have permission to identify him, I’ll just refer to him as FD (First Date).

Let me set up the scene.  Before this first date occurred with FD, there had been a thunderstorm or heavy rain in the area.  The only reason I know that is because of what happened when we had heavy rains on our street.  We had a ditch across the front of the yard and it would be full of water after a rain.  So I used to go out and play in the ditch and catch little crawfish.  I had two hard, clear plastic containers that we had gotten at Christmas time.  They were just the packaging for gyroscopes that Al and I had bought each other without the other one knowing about it.  They worked perfectly for keeping crawfish.  So I had a few crawfish in  the two containers and I left them at the end of the sidewalk at our house.  The sidewalk was from the front door to about six feet from the edge of the road.

This was on the day of the first date.  I must have known about it because Jodie was getting ready for it and we all knew what was going on in our house.  So FD came to our house to pick up Jodie.  He must have come in the house and talked to my parents.  Then he walked Jodie out of the house through the side door.  At least that’s what I picture now.  And then something got into me to say something encouraging to the departing couple.  So I opened the front door, leaned out, and shouted, “Y’all kiss!”

I never really knew what Jodie or FD thought about this.  I’m sure my sister was somewhat embarrassed that her bratty younger brother would do such a thing.  I probably thought it was funny at the time, and it still makes me laugh to this day.  Maybe it helped them break the ice if there was any ice occurring.  Funnily enough, it didn’t scare him away.  I would think it would be intimidating to meet a family of eight people who are a tight knit family that aren’t used to “intruders.”  Maybe he didn’t see it that way.  We weren’t scary people, after all.

Anyway, at the end of the first date I wasn’t there to grill them or inquire about details.  I was probably asleep in bed or something.  So I woke up the next morning and decided to go check up on my crawfish.  Can you imagine my disappointment when I discovered that they were gone?  Gone!  And the containers that they had been kept in were broken!  Why would someone do such a horrible thing to a young innocent boy in the small town of Jennings?  It was criminal!

I went and told my mom about it and she let me know that it wasn’t done maliciously.  When FD had brought Jodie home from their first date, he walked her from his car to the house on the sidewalk.  And we all know what was sitting at the end of the sidewalk – my crawfish.  He didn’t see them in the dark and stepped on them and sent my crawfish scattering.  At least that’s what I’ve always told myself.  I never looked too closely to see if there were any little carcasses from any injured crawfish trying to crawl to safety.   So the crawfish fled back to their little crawfish families and I got over the loss of their company.

So Jodie and FD started dating and I think he may have even taken this photo.  He was a guitar player and a singer, so he got along well with the rest of us.  I remember a lot of singing, fishing, and making ice cream with the family during that time.  It was the first step in the move to a wider family group.  They didn’t stay together, but it was the start of a change that led to brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, nieces, nephews, and more.

One of my sister Jodie’s good friends from back in the day shared an old photo that I had posted a few years ago.  It was a photo from 1967 of the Northside Jr. High School band party that my dad held at our house every year.  Those were lots of fun when we were young and we could hang around all those older kids.  My mom would make cookies and other snacks, and there were games to play and people to talk to.  The picture from 1967 was really good, but I had cleaned it up and enhanced it since I had originally posted it.  So I went back to my 1960s photo folder and found the new and improved version and shared it.

Jodie, Karen, Al, Rob, Van, and Jamie Landry at Hodges Gardens (south of Many, Louisiana) in May of 1967.

But when I was looking for that band party photo, I came across this photo from the same year.  I had cleaned it up and enhanced it around the same time.  It’s such a great photo of the Landry kids when we really were kids.  And it’s in living color.

Now let me tell you who we all are.  First off, we were the six children of Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Starting on the left, we have Jodie who was the oldest.  She had just become a teenager the past October.  She would be starting high school at Jennings High School later in the year.  Next in the photo is Karen, who is the only one out of order as related to birth order.  She was the third child and younger than Rob, my oldest brother.  He’s the tallest one in the photo, but he didn’t stay the tallest for much longer.  You can see his face even though Al is standing in front of him.  That would change.  Al ended up being the tallest of us all (including our father).

And next in line is me.  My name is Van and I’m the cute little boy in front with the striped shirt.  When I was this age, my mom always said that I was supposed to end up being the tallest.  It was some scientific truth or something.  They measure children at birth and compare it to their size at two years old and then predict their ultimate height.  I was supposed to be 6’4″ tall.  I never liked the sound of that, so I decided to stop at 6’0″.  And I did.  Mind over science wins every time!  I never minded that I was the shortest brother.  Plus I knew that Rob wouldn’t have been happy if both of his younger brothers would look down on him.  It’s the least that I could do.

The Landry kids standing in front of the Country Squire car. It was the perfect car for a family of eight. My mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car.

Speaking of not being happy, that brings us to Jamie.  She looks a bit sad.  This must have been her blue period.  It started the previous Christmas and looks to have continued to this point.  Looking at subsequent photos, she seems to have recovered. But she looks unhappy in both of the photos.  She was the youngest of the six kids and there was less than nine years separating Jodie and Jamie.

I had to post this second photo because it has the old wood-panel station wagon that we had during this period.  Even though my mom is shown in the driver’s seat, she wasn’t the one driving.  She didn’t learn to drive until she was 36, which was about two years later.  I remember sitting in the back seat of that car with Jamie when a woman named Mrs. Langley taught my mom to drive.

These photos were taken at Hodges Gardens.  I always remembered it being in Many, Louisiana.  I looked it up and it is actually in Sabine Parish about 15 miles south of Many.  There were lots of rose bushes and other flowering plants on the grounds.  It was closed a few years ago after spending a few years as a state park.

But our family went there when it was a relatively new place with lots of flowers around.  Good memories.