Memoirs of a Cajun Boy

MEMOIRS OF A CAJUN BOY

by Allen John Rogers

CHAPTER 1 MY FIRST MEMORIES -- LIFE ON BAYOU TECHE (Part 1)

I do not remember March 1, 1930. My birth certificate gives my place of birth as St. Mary Parish, Ward 3, Oaklawn Plantation near Franklin, Louisiana. Full name is Allen John Rogers, white male, legitimate and born on March 1, 1930. Contrary to what is said on my birth certificate and adding to my confusion, my oldest brother tells me that I was born on Oxford Plantation near Franklin, Louisiana in a cabin in the working quarters called Campy Down. Campy Down was located on the north side of Bayou Teche. [To settle the issue I looked up my family in the 1930 census. At age two months I am living with my father, Harris Rogers and mother Helen (Landry) Rogers and brothers Clarence and C. J. (Cullen Joseph) on Kemper Down Plantation. That's probably where the Campy Down comes from.]

I remember mama later telling me that when I was born it was so cold that ice had formed on the banks of Bayou Teche. According to my birth certificate, a midwife named Hannah Williams helped to deliver me into this world and signed my birth certificate. Many years later, I learned that my parents were both descendants of Acadian families; Roger Caissy and Marie Francoise Poirier on my father’s side and Rene Landry and Marie Bernard on mother’s side. At the time I was born, daddy worked on the plantation as a hostler, he took care of the horses and mules. I was the third male child in a family that would eventually include my mother and father and seven boys. There would be no female children in the family. The oldest two children, Clarence and Cullen, had been born in Patterson where daddy worked for the Harry Williams Lumber Company. Howard was the fourth child and he was born in Franklin when my parents were living in a house rented from Mr. Caffery. Soon after that, the family moved to the north bank of Bayou Teche across from the town of Patterson.

My parents both spoke French. However, I was never to learn the language. The state legislature passed a law banning the French language in the public schools. My parents said that they had had a very hard time going to school because having grown up with the French language, they could not learn in French in the schools, only English. My parents did not speak in French when we were around, so we could not learn. However, I was able to learn some words. Of course, the words I immediately latched on to were the cuss words that I would hear when they thought they were hiding from us so they could speak French to each other.

The earliest memory of life that I can recall was when we were living on the banks of the Teche. I was 3 or 4 years old. I will never forget living on that side of the river. It was wild country. We lived in an old cabin about a hundred yards from the river. There were three water oaks lining the bank in front of the house. I loved the smell of those water oaks and the river itself, which was full of all kinds of life. Animals and plants that one does not find in the city abounded. Water hyacinths were everywhere in the river and when in full bloom, they were beautiful. I was to learn later that they were not native to our country, but had been brought in from China and were to become a bane to the waterways.

On the side of the house was a large wooden hogshead cistern. Gutters fed the cistern collecting rain from the eaves of the roof. Both the cistern and the house sat on pillars because of high water. A ladder leaned along one side of the cistern. I would go up that ladder sometimes to see what was in the cistern. I could see funny little bugs on the surface of the water. I was to learn later that these were mosquito larvae. Of course, it was forbidden for kids to climb up the ladder and mama scolded me once when she caught me. I think that the most durable part of that old house was that galvanized tin roof. Planks made up the house walls and in some places, you could see through; a sort of natural ventilation we lived with. There was a fireplace in the living room and I remember that we would roast sweet potatoes by pushing them under the ashes. Those roasted sweet potatoes were the best I have ever eaten, sweet and syrupy with a flavor of caramel. The kitchen stove was made of cast iron and burned wood. We used green coffee that mama would roast it in the oven and grind with a cast iron coffee grinder. Mostly, mama saved the used coffee grounds to put on the plants in the garden. I have even known my father back then to use the coffee grounds as smoking tobacco because tobacco and just about everything, was hard to get.

We slept on mattresses made from ticking stuffed with dried Spanish moss. My parents would pull the moss from the trees and let it dry in the sun until it got to the consistency of steel wool. At that point, the once gray green moss would look like curly black horsehair. Mama would sew up the ticking and then they would stuff it with the dried moss.

We lived directly across the bayou from the Patterson Bank. The way we went to Patterson public school was to paddle our flatboat across the river to the landing at the Patterson Bank. Mama took us across sometimes, but usually Clarence or Cullen would paddle the boat. I went to school a year earlier than I was supposed to go. I do not remember why I started early, but I was only five years old and supposed to be six to start. However, I did not have any trouble learning. There were three of us going to school when I started, my oldest brother Clarence (we called him Pat), my second oldest brother Cullen and me. Howard was too young and Jimmy had just been born.

Clarence broke his arm at school one day and Dr. Aycock had to put it in a cast. Clarence told me that later when Dr. Aycock's nurse, Mrs. Guillot, cut the cast off of his arm, she scolded him for having a dirty arm and told him to go home and clean it up right away.

Daddy worked for Mr. Benard on a dairy farm. He worked from before sunup until to after sundown. It was hard, dirty work. He learned to hate cattle because he had to be with them from milking time in the morning until he put them to bed in the barn at night. They would constantly be found stuck in the mud along the riverbank where they would go to eat water hyacinths that grew everywhere in the river. He rode a horse around the farm and he had to throw a rope around the cow's neck and pull the beast out, usually cursing a lot while he was dragging, and all the time the beast would be howling.

I remember that his horse was an old swayback called Silver. In Silver's old age, he would hiccup and pass gas at the same time. To a little old Cajun boy like me, the effect was hilarious and I would break into gales of laughter when I heard him. My older

brothers, Clarence and Cullen helped in the dairy by cleaning the dairy equipment, mostly milk bottles and the cream separator. I remember visiting them there and the strong smell of the HTH disinfectant that they used to clean the bottles and machinery. I do not think I will ever forget the smell of that powerful disinfectant along with the smell of the milk and cream.

One of Clarence’s jobs was to patrol the fence for daddy looking for damage and breaks in the fence. Daddy would come along later on his horse and fix the damage.

The day came when old Silver died. Daddy and some of the dairy workers put Silver on a buckboard. I went along and rode with daddy on the buckboard seat. He took Silver out to the far end of the farm property and we left him out in the field to let the buzzards do natures work.

I loved to play on a small levee on the bank of the bayou. Someone had built it there in the vain hope that it would stop the annual spring floods. I remember playing there and hearing the cry of birds echoing in the empty storage tanks on the plantation next to where we lived.

I can still smell sweet perfume of the little pink flowers that grew on the levee. They looked like little pink balls formed from spikes that came from the center. The leaves would react to touch. If you stroked your fingers down the center of the leaves, they would close up. As all children do, we gave them a name: "sheewee" flowers.

The Conrad rice plantation was located next to Mr. Bernard’s property. Mr. Bernard had constructed an aqueduct to carry water from a small canal connected to the bayou to water the animals and to supply water to clean the stables and dairy. To get the water into the aqueduct, they used an old two-cycle single piston Lister engine driving a pump that pumped the water from a canal next to the aqueduct. The Conrad plantation owners used the canal to bring water to their rice fields adjacent to the Bernard property. Although we were not supposed to play there, Mr. Bernard’s aqueduct commanded our attention quite often, especially my two older brothers. Daddy had forbidden them to go anywhere near the canal or the aqueduct. However, one day they were playing near the aqueduct when they dropped daddy's cane knife in it. The water rushing down the aqueduct promptly swept the knife away. They both swore that it had fallen into the canal while they were bringing it home. They both knew that he would be mad at them if he found out they were playing where they weren't supposed to be. Daddy did a lot of diving in the canal and looking for his cane knife, but of course, he never found it. Clarence got a spanking for that little escapade.

Early one spring, a powerful storm came up. This would probably have been in 1934 or 1935, when mama was pregnant with Jimmy. We had no telephone or radio to warn us in those days. I think mama sensed that the storm was going to be bad, so she made us all dress and we went across the field to spend the night at the house of the Lemuel family to wait out the storm. It was dark, rainy and stormy walking all the way. I remember crying a lot and mama in her frustration slapping me a couple of times to keep me quite.

The morning after the storm, we went back home. I remember that the house was still standing but there was stuff scattered all over the kitchen. The wind had apparently blown open a window and I remember that there was a big box of Lucifer matches scattered all over the floor. By this time, we knew that it had been a hurricane. The wind had blown windows out of the house and trees were broken. However, there was no major damage to the house and the three water oaks in the front were not damaged.

The next day the water rose over the land. The little levee was no match for the Atchafalaya River and Bayou Teche River carrying the storm surge. It was a good thing that the house and the water cistern were on pillars and out of reach of the water. There was only about 2 to 3 feet of water over the land. Daddy waded out to the dock and brought the flatboat up to the house. For the rest of the flood we kept it tied to the back door.

Mama would put on her boots and wade out to the chicken house to pick up the eggs and feed the chickens. She was out in the chicken house one day and a big garfish slapped her on the leg with his tail. It was a good thing she was a sturdy woman, because it really shocked her and left a bruise on her leg.

One day, after the floodwaters had gone down, a couple of Mr. Bernard's sons found a garfish stranded in a ditch and decided that they would kill him with a baseball bat. This enterprise proved to be one that the boys found more difficult than they had envisioned. The garfish was about 10 feet in length. It must have weighed at least 150 pounds and it simply was not going to allow two guys with a bat having their way. It put up such a fight that the boys finally decided to abandon the field of battle. They were a sight to see, covered from head to toe with mud and bruises. Score one run for the garfish and three strikes for the Benard boys!

Whenever one of the cows would stop giving milk Mr. Bernard would kill and butcher the beast. Quiet often, daddy would come home with such exotic forms of food as tripe, udder and spinal cord. Sometime we got some liver, which was always a treat, and many times, we had the bounty of beef meat of various cuts.

Living on that farm was very hard. It was especially hard because it was during the depression. My mother who had had some money in a bank lost it all when so many of the banks collapsed in 1929. We were poor as far as cash was concerned, but rich in spirit. My mama could go to the grocery store across the river in Patterson and get a bushel basket full of groceries for just a dollar. Quite often, the grocer would give us kids lagniappe, a BB Bat or some other candy. I remember eating one of those BB Bats and getting very sick. However, there were times when we went to bed hungry. One of the things that kept us kids from starving was that we had a cow, which gave milk. We also raised chickens, had a pig and a garden. Somehow, my mother, father, and older brothers managed.

One winter during the Christmas season daddy killed the pig. Many of our cousins came to assist in the boucherie. I remember mostly that kin from the Landry side were there and I believe grandpa Rogers was there, too. It was my introduction to red boudin, white boudin and cracklings. It was a lot of work for the adults and a lot of play for us kids. They salted most of the pig down in a big crock. Some forty years later, I was to take part in another boucherie. Again, it was on the Bayou Teche not far from where I had lived when I was a child. My sister-in-law who had remarried when my younger brother Ray died called and asked if I wanted to help. This was the time when I found out how much work there was to butchering a pig. The setting was just as wild but the house was a more modern one, but still old. We spent all day cutting up that hog, making cracklings, and reminiscing about the old days.

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