Family History

A while back I posted a photo of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. with a picture of a ship behind him. (Pee Paw and the Aquitania)  While we knew the name of the ship, we didn’t know the reason that  he was posing beside a photo of it.  This is a photo of him with a different boat.  We don’t know the name of it (at least I don’t!), but we can be pretty sure why he was posing beside it.

Pee Paw with his fishing boat in 1951.

As you can see by this photo, it is a fishing boat that he likely owned.   He looks like he is working on painting or varnishing the vessel to make it seaworthy.   I know he went fishing quite frequently and made his own flies and rods.  I don’t know if he made his own boats.  If I find out that he did, I will follow up on that with the details.

This photo was taken around 1951.  I know that because of what was written on the back of it.  It says that the photo belonged to my dad’s (Bob Landry) older brother Hubert.  It gives the approximate year and it was based on my cousin Hugh being three years old when this photo was taken.  Hugh is not in the photo (unless he was dressed up as a cow in the background, but most likely not!), so Uncle Hubert must have remembered that fact about this photo.

I wonder how many boats he had over the years?  I posted a photo of Pee Paw and my dad in a boat in 1942.  I suppose it could be the same one.  ( I have been told that it was not.  The earlier one was a flat-bottomed boat and this is a canoe.)  It looks like he takes good care of it, which should make it last a while.  He must have been proud of his handiwork, because he seems to be happy to pose with it.

But my biggest question is this:  Why is he wearing a tie and dress clothes while he is working on his boat?  Didn’t they know about comfy clothes back then?

Landry Family Band performing at Shakey’s in 1978.

Today is the second anniversary of my dad’s death, so I thought I would write something in his honor.  I was thinking about it this week, and one evening I came across this photo.  It was from a slide that I took on December 23, 1978, at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I posted a photo from this same evening a while back.  The other photo is a photo of my mom and dad along with me and all of my siblings.  It wasn’t often that all of us were there together, so it’s a special photo.  Any time I mention to someone that my family used to sing together at Shakey’s in the late 70s, I’ll invariably show them that photo.

But this photo is different.  It shows the family members who are no longer with us.  Jodie died in 1989.  It’s hard to believe that it will be 30 years this year.  Then my mom and dad died two years ago within five days of each other from natural causes.  As far as performing at Shakey’s, Mama and Daddy were there more often than the rest of us.  Jodie or Rob were probably there the least.  You can also see my dad’s brother Hubert Landry in the yellow shirt and his wife Mildred Sutherlin Landry next to him.  Uncle Hubert would play the harmonica with us pretty often.  Uncle Hubert and Aunt Mildred are no longer with us as well.  Aunt Mildred died in 1990, less than a year after Jodie, and Uncle Hubert died in 2006.

All of those changes happened after our time at Shakey’s.  We started playing there in June of 1976 and finished up five years later in August of 1981.  Those were times of big changes in the Robert Joseph Landry, Jr./Betty Lou Bucklin Landry family.  In 1976 there were still five of us living at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings.  There was Mama, Daddy, Al, me (Van), and Jamie.  We were the youngest three of the six children and the following school year was the only time that there were three Landry children in high school at the same time.  Al was going to be a senior, I was going to be a sophomore, and Jamie was going to be a freshman.

Also at that time, Jodie was married to her first husband.  They were in Lake Charles at McNeese when they first got married, but later moved to Texas to go to Texas A & M.  They must have moved by this time, otherwise we would have seen them more often at Shakey’s.  Rob was single and in school at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  Karen was single also, but she was at McNeese.  She was able to be at Shakey’s frequently, too.  In fact she got a job there and worked there during the week as well.

By the time 1981 came around, Mom and Dad had become empty nesters.  Al graduated in 1977 and followed Rob up to Tech.  I graduated in 1979 and went to McNeese.  How could I give up performing at Shakey’s on the weekends?  Jamie graduated in 1980 and also went to McNeese.  I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it.  My mom didn’t work outside of the home and my dad was a band director living on a school teacher’s salary.  I seem to recall there being five of us in college at the same time at one point.  Performing at Shakey’s was a way to make ends meet.  I always just thought of it as fun.

A big change for the family during that time was that Jodie went through a divorce.  In some ways that doesn’t sound like a huge thing.  You see it all of the time.  But it wasn’t something that happened in OUR family.  That’s what other people did.  It wasn’t something Jodie wanted for herself, but it happened.  I know she had a bit of anxiety breaking the news to Mom and Dad.  This photo and the photos from that same evening remind me of that situation.  Seeing how Jodie went through that helped me and probably other siblings in breaking troubling news to our parents.

Rob’s first marriage was in 1980.  (He improved that situation a few years later.)  Karen and Jamie met their future spouses during that time as well.  And eventually, so did Jodie.   She even got married during that time.  Al and I were in college.  I actually missed the last month or so of the family performing at Shakey’s.  I was working at AstroWorld in Houston during the summer of 1981.  I’m not sorry I missed it, because I got to see Jodie more often and see her going through her last few months of pregnancy.  I was going to be an uncle!

So the years 1976 through 1981 saw my mom and dad through the last years with children in the house and then on to empty nesters.  Then the following month they became grandparents when little Christopher Rhodes made his grand entrance into the world.  He was the first of the twelve grandchildren enjoyed by Grammie and Pappy.  It was a start to the last era in their lives.  They had some good years.

Rob, Jodie, Jamie, Karen, Al, Bob, and Van Landry in 1963 in Jennings, Louisiana

I was reminded of that fact recently.  We went to our friend Lulu’s house where her son Matthew was selling copies of a book he had just written.  I was not keenly excited about the book, because I have never been interested in hunting.  But we were wanting to support him for various reasons.  Plus the book was written about southern Louisiana by someone who grew up in the area.

Matthew read a short passage from his book (“The Duck Camp” by Matthew Wemple) about when he was a child and his father came home from hunting.  It brought back so many memories of my own that I hadn’t thought about in years.  I don’t really have that many references to hunting to jar those old memories of mine.

But his writing brought back plenty.  For one thing, it reminded me of this old photo from around 1963.  I’m pretty sure it was an instance of my dad coming home from hunting.  He’s got his hunting cap on as well as his rubber boots.  That was some of the standard hunting clothes that he had back then.  There were a few photos taken of this event.  I posted one of them on Facebook last year for Father’s Day.

Daddy hunting in 2000.

There was another article of clothing that Matthew reminded me of in his excerpt – my dad’s old hunting vest.  For some reason, I remember being intrigued with that thing.  It seemed like there were pockets all over it for various things and there were even places to store shotgun cartridges on it somewhere.

There are other vague hunting memories that I remember.  He and my mom’s dad would prepare for duck hunting by getting decoys ready.  My grandfather would make some of those decoys himself and also carved ducks that could be hung on a wall.  He and my dad would sometimes test their aim with a pistol by tossing a coin up in the air and shooting at it.  I seem to recall them actually hitting it at least once.

Bob and Johnny Landry (brothers) hunting in 2000.

Then there were the unpleasant memories associated with hunting.  They were always getting up really early on cold mornings.  Who wants to do that?  Then they’d bring all those birds home and you’d have to pluck them.  That wasn’t so bad until you had to singe them.  Not a smell that you’d want to be around too long.

Those things were enough to keep me from wanting to go hunting.  The desire just wasn’t there.  But you can see from this photo of my dad that he enjoyed it.  I can see how it can be an enjoyable diversion.  And I was glad to be reminded of those long ago pleasant memories of my dad that were lurking in my brain.  Thanks Matthew.

Bob Landry in Jennings, Louisiana. It looks like he was a pretty good shot.

Now that we are looking back at Christmas, I thought I’d take it back to a Christmas of long ago.  I’ve written at least two Christmas related stories that were about tragedies, but I’m not going to do that this year.  Our family has been hit with a tragedy this week, so I will look back to a photo that shows some peace and calm.

Germaine, Johnny, Frances, Wana, and Bobbie Landry at Christmas in 1938.

This is a photo of my dad’s family at Christmas from the late 1930s.  From the apparent ages of the kids in this photo, I estimate it to be from the Christmas of 1938.  That’s the month before my dad turned 10 years old.  I still remember how I thought it was such a big deal when my age turned from a single digit age to a double digit age.  Plus you got to use all ten fingers to show how old you were!  Oh, the joys of childhood.

And one of those joys of childhood is Christmastime.  It was such a magical time.  The expectation was so high.  And the wait was so painstankling long.  From comments from my siblings this week, I realized how well our parents protected us from the turmoil that can show itself in the world.  We all have cherished memories from childhood.

And what led to that was probably similar memories that my parents had, such as the scene from this week’s photo.  That’s my dad on the far right of the photo.  He came from a family of eight children.  The oldest three (Marie, A. J., and Hubert) are not shown in the photo.  A. J. died at the good old age of 94 last week, leaving three surviving siblings.  Those three siblings are the first three children shown in this photo from left to right.  On the left is Germaine,  who was 11 years old at the time.  Her nurturing skills were already starting, because as you can see, she seems to be comforting 2-year-old little brother Johnny in this photo.

The little girl with her head down is 4-year-old Frances Mae.  I’m not sure what she is doing.  She might have something in her lap, but my photo isn’t clear enough to make it out.  Wana, of course, is the little girl with the curly hair.  She was a happy 6-year-old who looks like she was getting ready to tell her sister a funny little story about the boy next door.  Bobbie (my dad) looks mostly happy. Or should I say content?  He doesn’t really have a big smile, but you can’t say he is sad or upset.

So there it is.  A flash into the past.  Happy times at Christmastime.  These siblings would continue to get together for Christmas for decades to come, which provided a lifetime of great memories for more people than I’ll ever know.