Part 4, You should have seen this coming

In my recollection process, "Kid Time" was pretty easy to remember. As an example of that, I remember the day we received a new sand box at the kindergarden. It was 1953. I remember Lloyd, the custodian, installing it and bringing the sand in by wheel barrow. We couldn't wait for him to finish it because we could bring little toy soldiers with us every day and play war during recess. I didn't know it at the time but they put the sand box in to stop us from playing war in the dirt and tracking it in the house that was used as St. Joseph's kindergarten.

Daddy had a 4 door, green Packard that was a 1954 and it was really something neat as it had air conditioning. I don't recall ever riding in a car with air condiioning but I do recall the "wing windows" at the front of both doors as we could swing them out and get a big blast of air when it was really hot.

One car that Daddy had came with a round air cooler that you could roll up in the window and get cool air from that. The faster we went, the cooler it was.

I was born in November of 1948 and since the new cars always came out in September of the year, it was easy to recall that I was only four years old with a month and four days to go until my 5th birthday.

My "kinny gardin" teacher is still alive and I visit with her son Mike from time to time. She was my favorite because she migrated from England after the 2nd World War and had the most comforting accent imaginable. For those of you who lived in Broadmoor and went to Byrd High School, she is Mike McCullough's mom.

Somewhere in this time line, the camping trip ended and spring time brought that wonderful weather with it and I was off on my trip to visit Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade.

I vividly remember the trip. It's 120 miles to Alexandria from Shreveport. Just south of Alex, as we called it, there was a little town called "LeCompte". Local folk lore said it was named after a famous, locally owned race horse named "Lickem Pete". There was a resturant there named "Lee's" and it's still operating today. We always stopped there as we still had another 70 miles to go before we could meet Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade near Opelousas.

After we left the resturant, the next town, only a few minutes from Lee's, was Meeker where we would turn right and head toward Turkey Creek. Yeah, Turkey Creek. There must have been some sort of a refuge there because there was a sign on the roadway that had a picture of a bear. When we asked Daddy what the sign was about he said that we had to be real, real quite because if we didn't, the bear would get us. That was when nap time came and we either had to try and nap or simply shut up. I guess they didn't use "Mother's Little Helper", Benedryl, back in the 50's.

Once we made it past Turkey Creek, the Lafluer farm in Prairie Rhonde, was not far. Aunt Glade's maiden name was Lafluer and through the years, we went there many times. Doctor Lefluer practised out of his house and he had a small clinic that he built near the entrance to the farm that ended up being so famous, artists painted it as a part of Cajun life in the rural areas of South Louisiana. That picture is common place in several resturants and offices in that part of Louisiana and I always tell folks that I played there as a kid.

The house, to us, wasn't a house. It was clearly a mansion. Larry Lefluer retired, moved back to the farm and is currently restoring it. It is a beautiful place and demands a certain amount of awe as it was quite the "thing" before, during and after World War II.

In any event, we met Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade and before long, I was off to Crowley to spend time there. I didn't know it at the time but my Uncle Raymond had the same career path that my Uncle Woodrow and Uncle Charles had chosen. The same career path that I took for 37 years. He became a manufacturer's rep and a distributor of industrial supplies, a great way to make a living.

The family used to laugh about my first night I spent in Crowley because, other than Uncle Raymond, I was the only male in the house. There was Glade, Madeline and Andrea, so we were outnumbered 3 to 2. Aunt Glade filled the tub with hot water and told me that she would leave and let me take my bath in private. She shut the door but was unaware that my shoes had double knots in them and I couldn't take them off. I sloshed the water around the tub with my hands to make it sound like I was taking a bath, and after a while she knocked at the door and asked if I had finished. I told her yes. When she came in , there I was with a my shoes still on, dry as they could be. I can still hear her laughing.

The next morning, the Uncle / Nephew trip that I remember to this day, began. Uncle Raymond took me to Rayne and Kaplan, Louisiana where huge rice driers were located. We went inside, met his customers and began a tour of the plant to teach me what it was all about. It amazed me.

After touring two plants, we went back to a machine shop in Crowley that was owned by a Mr. Hoffpaur and located in the garage at his house. I saw lots of rice drier stuff that he made there and that Uncle Raymond sold throughout South Louisiana. Then came lunch, a meal I've never forgotten.

Just south of the Court House in Crowley, on the main street, there was a cafe on the east side of the street. (Winston, it was near the recording studio) It was a very strange place to me as most of the patrons were speaking Acadian French and I didn't have a clue what was going on. Despite that, Uncle Raymond did and he ordered lunch from his waitress.

When the raw oysters came, I thought I was gonna die. It looked like snot to me except it was still in the shell. Uncle Raymond told me that he was going to teach me the most important thing in the world to know about Cajun food. It was the sauce that counted. He took a bowl and began pouring stuff into it that I liked. First there was castsup, then Lee and Perrin, tabasco, lemon juice and then finally, something He called the "Coupey De GrassY'. It was horse radish.

He took an oyster, put it on a saltine cracker, covered it with his sauce and put it away like it was prime rib. He gave me a cracker without an oyster on it, put a dab of his sauce on it and I gave it a try. Even though it had a bite to it, I loved it because I was eating Man Food and it had catsup in it.

Before I knew it, he made me his oyster over cracker special and I went through the oysters like a pro. I've been eating oysters that way my entire life.

After a week of that daily regimen, it was time to go home. I didn't know it at the time but I had been taught by one of the masters, how to tour a plant, observe every component in the plant and store room and how he made a living as a supplier to each and every plant. We didn't know until his passing how financially successful he'd become but he was a winner in every sense of the word.

We met Daddy in Alexandria and before I knew it I was back home and in the kitchen digging out the catsup, horse radish and all the other goodies needed to make the sauce. My little sister Linda and I tested it on crackers and she loved it, too. When Daddy came in from work, since we didn't have any oysters, he broke open the sardines and we went at it like the big people did.

Now, before I close and prepare the next meeting of the Uncles, I want to make a point as it relates to "You should have seen this coming".

The point is this, my Uncles weren't the kind of uncles that patted you on the head during Christmas or family reunions. They were the kind that took part in your life and made sure that you spent as much time as possible with them so you could learn about life, work, family and, unbeknownst to them, war.

I've left out some stuff about Uncle Raymond as it relates to his fight for the Golden Gloves boxing championship, but suffice it to say, he was a man's man and I couldn't see him ever having to ask anybody to help him with "those bullies". He loved my brother Leland and I and this wasn't the last time we spent time with him. It was only the first.

Standby for World War II.




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