June 2016A Month To Remember

It started out with our grandsons birthday on June 4th (to be celebrated later this month when he moves into his new house).
Karen and Heinz came in that same day, tired from a cross country drive from Little Rock. The next day we picked up Kate Krause from the airport shuttle.
Elbert and Heinz took long bike rides every day they were here and Karen and Kate produced wonderful meals. We had burritos and tostadas and lintels that were out of this world.
Heinz painted three paintings.
Connie had us all over on Sunday night for dinner.
On the 9th, the three of them left for the airport in LA.
And...
We went to Connies once again where daughters, Kate and Linda (from Texas), grandchildren, Lauren, Kyla, Carissa and Anna-Lee, had gathered for a reunion. Connie made Grandma Legers rice and gravy which was a treat, especially for Kate.The next morning, I met the whole crew at the Ventura Harbor where we took the shuttle catamaran to Santa Cruz Island.
There, we climbed a mountain.  While at the top of the mountain, we sat on  an imbankment and I commented that my seat was like a saddle just like my bucket list. Connie, Linda, Carissa and Anna-Lee went kayaking.  They went into caves as deep as 300 feet ( I would not have liked to do that.).
On Saturday, everyone convened at our house in Casitas Springs. Around noon, someone suggested that we go to InNOut Burger, which we did. We brought home a hamburger for Elbert.
Everywhere we went, we traveled in two cars. When we got back home, Connie jumped out of the first car and went in to take Elbert his burger. I started to get out of the second car to go in and daughter, Linda said that Connie would check and that we should proceed to Ojai. That seemed reasonable.
When Connie came out of the house, she had two jackets over her arm. I wondered if she thought it would be cold in Ojai.
Kate was driving the lead car and we followed. About halfway to Ojai, Mary turned left off of the main road and we followed her. She meandered over all kinds of back roads with me protesting to Linda that this was the wrong way. Carissa, in our back seat, kept trying to call Connie who was in the lead car, to no avail, so she said. Finally, we pulled into a parking lot of what was obviously a private parking lot of a riding arena. Everyone but me got out because, they said, Anna-Lee wanted to see the horses. I protested that you just don't pull into private property and I announced loudly that I was not getting out. I finally, reluctantly got out and walked to the back of the SUV. Linda opened the trunk and the all shouted "Surprise, this is the last thing on your bucket list". I was truly surprised. They had gathered sick, shoes and jackets for the horseback ride. The surprise had been in the planning for over two years. We tode got an hour over riverbed trails. What a kiniving, lovely bunch of children and grandchildren I have. I love you one and all, Kate, Connie, Linda, Lauren, Carissa, Anna-Lee and adopted granddaughter Kyla. Shirley

MELVIN

MELVIN

When our four children were in their preteens and early teens, my husband and I moved, with them, into the country, about five miles from town.

We moved into a house that had been my aunts and that we had traded her for our house in town.  The house was larger than ours in town and met our needs much better.  And it sat in the middle of forty acres.

Besides, I was a country girl, raised in the country, loved the country and all that went with it.

We proceeded to acquire animals.  We had a horse who later had a colt, another horse, named Billy,  that had once been a cutting horse.  He was nearly thirty years old.  We had chickens and rabbits and ducks (lots of ducks, our son, Steve, learned how to hatch eggs in an incubator  and we had every kind of duck you could imagine, starting with four baby ducks that came our way at Easter time).

For the children, I felt that living in the country was a great learning experience.  We grew many of our own vegetables and they learned to eat, fried, just about anything.  I fried our green tomatoes and zucchinis and squash and cucumbers and anything else that would sit still long enough to be sliced and fried.  (So much for all those healthy vegetables).

The children had all the pets they could ever want and regular chores to keep them busy and teach them how to care for things.  They had the freedom to roam the forty or so acres around our house and to climb up into the barn  full of hay and daydream.  They had a tree house, of sorts, in which Mary, our oldest, learned to read for the pleasure of it, a lesson she carries forth to this day.

One of our favorite pets was a dog named Toby.  Toby came to us in a very round about way.  His mother showed up on our doorsteps one day, very hungry and very pregnant.  I fed her and she adopted us immediately.

One of the problems we had, was keeping my Aunt Bryant’s small herd of cattle from congregating on our carport each morning.  The mama dog took it upon herself to suggest to the cattle, in no uncertain terms, that this was her territory and not a place for their morning get together.

Because she was female and pregnant,  we could not keep her and so a friend took her home with him.

About two months later, we went to visit a cousin, who lived half way between our friend and us.  Imagine our surprise to see ‘our mama dog’ there with her five babies.

One of the puppies was a male with the markings of a collie.  Since we had collies while we were in town, and the puppy reminded us of them, he was immediately adopted by our children.  We took him home and named him Toby.

Toby was not as big as a collie, more the size of a border collie, but he was blond, with a white collar and looked, all the world, like a smaller version of our past dogs.

Before Toby came to live with us, we had acquired a black cat.  She was given to us by my Aunt Tootsie, who lived not too far away.  The cat was half Siamese and a female.  As female cats tend to do, she took off one night, looking for male companions and evidently found it because she came back the next day, pregnant.

All of this was at about the time we  brought Toby, the dog, home with us.  He and the black cat, whom we named Sabrina became good friends.  They played in the yard, which  had a four foot chain link fence (here again to keep the cattle out of our yard) around it.

When she got ready to deliver her kittens on the back porch, the Sabrina decided that Toby was not welcome in the back yard.  She relegated him to the front yard only and would bristle and hiss and rush at him if he dared to set foot in the back yard.  Once the kittens were born, there were five, she still would not let him come into her territory.  But later, when the kittens began to walk about, she relented and once again allowed Toby free range of the yard and of her family.

One by one, we found homes for four of the kittens, all black, keeping only one, a fluffy light grey kitten with white markings around his neck.  We called him Melvin.  Melvin and Toby, therefore grew up together in our back yard.  They would lie, forever grooming each other or curled into a single ball, asleep.

Toby, although small in stature, would walk up to our four foot chain link fence, gather up his muscles and hurl himself over the fence.  Neighbors complained, because in the country, a loose dog is not welcome.  But try as we might, we never convinced Toby that it was bad manners to jump the fence and go off visiting neighbors, without an invitation.

Every morning, I drove the children to school.  On this one morning, after driving them to school, I returned home and found that Melvin was nowhere to be found.  He was about five months old at the time and not in the habit of wandering off.

When the children returned that afternoon, they immediately noticed that Melvin was missing.  We all set out looking for him.  We searched the house and the barn and all of the other out buildings, but no Melvin.  In the evening, we had a downpour, but even the rain did not bring Melvin our from his hiding place.

The next morning, a Saturday, we were sitting around the breakfast table.  Everyone had a sad face, all were missing Melvin.

I had a sudden thought.  I jumped up from the table and rushed out the door and into the car.  I took off down the driveway, which was almost a mile long.  When I reached the main road, I made the customary left turn onto the highway.  The deep ditches on either side of the road still had a good six inches of water in them from the rain the evening before.

What had brought me here was a sudden recollection of a sound that I heard as I made that turn the morning before.  It was a strange sound, as if the motor on the car had hiccupped.

Along the right side of the road, I stopped and got out of the car but there was nothing there.  Then I made a u turn and started back along the left side of the road.

All of a sudden, I heard the anguished cry.  It was Melvin.  Stopping the car, I got out.  There, just a few inches above the water in the ditch sat Melvin, cold, wet and very angry, crying his eyes out.  He had evidently crawled up into the motor of the car the night before and when we went off to school, had held on until I made that wide turn onto the highway.  The centrifugal force had sent him into the ditch on the right side of the road.  Somehow, he made it up out of the ditch and to the other side of the busy highway, without being crushed.  But when he went down into the ditch on the side closest to home, he could not cross it because the water, in the ditch,  from the last night’s rain, stopped him.  He, therefore, could not get home.  There he sat, the most miserable kitty I had ever seen.  He was shivering from the cold and the shock of it all.

I wrapped him in a sweatshirt and dried him off and took him home.  Connie and Linda, our two youngest,  met us at the door, with the other two kids not two steps behind them.  There wee enthusiastic shouts and astonishment as to why I would even had gone to the highway and looked in the ditches.

It is funny how a bit of information will sit in the back of our brains and only come out in an unexpected way.  How I remembered that strange sound coming from under the hood of my car when I turned the corner that morning, I will never know.  How I applied it to Melvin, only the next morning, I will never know.  But needless to say, I did and I was the hero of our family that day.

Later, we moved back to our old house in town.  We had to give away most of our animals but we kept Toby and Melvin.  They came to reside in our sixty by one hundred foot back yard, fenced in with six foot planks, that Toby could not jump nor could he even see over the top.  Nor could I see over the top.

He never quite adjusted to town living and neither did I,but our children did.  They went on to become productive adults and though all have an affinity toward animals, none of them ever returned to country living.

As for Toby and Melvin, they lived out their lives in the back yard in town, friends until the end of their days.

Shirley Tracy Price  August 17, 2011



 
   

www.elbertprice.com

MY GREATGRANDMOTHER'S QUILT

MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER'S QUILT

When I was five years old, I was sent to live with one of my aunts for a short period of time. It seems that the child next door in the duplex where we lived, had contracted whooping cough or some other contagious disease. My mother was expecting a new baby, my sister, Carolyn, and could not take the chance of my catching the child next door‘s disease.


At my Aunt Rose’s house, besides Aunt Rose and Uncle Sidney, my cousins, Sonny Boy, Wanda and Hugh, lived, my great grandmother ‘Mamu’. At that time she must have been about 98 years old. She was very, very old.
Mamu, as we all called her, was my grandfather, Edward Bryant Calhoun’s mother. She had reached an age where she tended to forget things, little things and big things. But of course, only being five years old, I did not understand this.


One day my Aunt Rose had to go out for a short while. She left me and Mamu along, together. She told me that I was in charge and she would not be gone long. Mamu went into the kitchen and using a spoon, got a spoon full of peanut butter. She did not offer me any and I am sure that I was pissed about that. When she finished eating the peanut butter off of the spoon, she opened the clean silverware drawer, and, to my absolute horror, put the, now dirty spoon, back into the drawer with all of the clean spoons.


I sprung into action, after all I was in charge. When she went back into her room for something, I quickly grabbed the key and locked her door from the outside, making her a prisoner in her own bedroom. When Aunt Rose finally came home, she had been detained longer than expected, she found me sitting at the kitchen table, key in hand, and Mamu “safely” locked in her room.


Aunt Rose scolded me roundly, although she was quite amused, I am sure. Mamu when released from her “prison” quickly forgot and forgave me for my deed.


Mamu, in her young life, had been a very courageous woman. She lost her husband, a sailing ship caption . He carried cotton to Galveston, Texas from Cameron, Louisiana on his ship. He was overwhelmed by his crew of men, who were like pirates. They beheaded him, as pirates tend to do, and threw him overboard. His body washed up on shore and Mamu was fetched to identify him. She did so by looking at his long slender fingers. Since that day, many of his descendents have been born with his long, slender fingers. They are a family characteristic
Besides being a sailboat caption, our great grandfather also was a farmer and Mamu continued in the only way of life she knew, farming. She raised several boys and several girls on that farm.


There was also a story about the family having a retail meat store in Lake Charles. The story continues that my grandfather went to the Junior collage there. I am not sure how this story fits into the picture, maybe someone else in the family might remember it.


In those days, it was not like it is today. There was no electricity, no TV, no video games, no computers. Any water they had came from either a well or from a cistern, a large container set up to catch water when it rained.
Times were hard in those days. We, today, all live in better conditions than even the richest people did in those days.


Like most women, Mamu made do with what she had. When a piece of clothing wore out, she could not go to the nearest Walmart or Target and buy a new dress or shirt. Instead, she sewed the needed garment, by hand, because few people had sewing machines. She made dresses and shirts and underware. When those dresses and shirts and underware wore out, she cut it into small pieces to make quilts to keep away the cold in the wintertime.
Many beautiful quilts were made. Women took pride in their quilt making. It was a form of artistic expression when no other form was available to them.


Mamu spent many hours working on her quilts, usually by candlelight or by coal oil lamps, because remember there was no electric lights. Even by the time I was young, in Johnsons Bayou, where I lived, part of the time, there was no electricity.


One of Mamu’s quilts survived. Somehow, it ended up in another of my aunt’s trunk. Aunt Nobia had been forced to “break up housekeeping” as they called it, when I was about eight. She put some of her things in a big trunk.
When I was nine, my family, which included, me, my mother, Edytha, my stepfather, L.K., my sister Carolyn and brother Kelly, moved back from Orange, Texas where L.K. had worked in the war factory during World War II. He had been a tool pusher, whatever that means. We moved into a house on Pitre Street in Sulphur, La. The house belonged to my Grandmother Calhoun and we lived there until I was grown and married.


At one time, Aunt Nobia’s son, Levert and his wife, Mary Katheryn had lived there with my grandmother. This is how Aunt Nobia’s trunk had ended up there, I suppose, although I do not know for sure


Anyway out in the outside building which contained a washroom, a garage and a chicken house, sat this old, big trunk.


As a kid, I was fascinated by the trunk, having read stories about trunks and treasures and all of that stuff. The trunk was not locked and so occasionally, I would crack the top and peek at the contents.
On the very top lay a beautiful quilt top. It was small, about the size you would need to make a baby’s crib quilt. Made up of two inch hexagons, all hand stitched together. There was every color under the sun and every pattern also, red hexagons with white spots, blue striped hexagons, black hexagons with yellow flowers, you name it, and there it was. I guess I had an artist eye, even then, thought I was not aware. I was entranced with this quilt top.
It was not yet a quilt and had a long way to go before it became a quilt, but I did not yet know that.


After some years, Aunt Nobia became settled again and was able to reclaim her trunk. I confessed to her that I had peeked into the trunk and how beautiful the quilt top was. She told me that Mamu had made it and she said that I could have it.


The quilt went into my “hope chest” and remained there for many years. I would take it out and look at it and spread it out on my bed. But, alas it was too small to be a bed cover so back into the cedar chest it would go.


When Elbert and I built the house on Lake Street in Lake Charles, La, I pulled the quilt top out and lay it on the bed. Again, I expressed the thought that, if only it were bigger it would make a fine bedcover.
Elbert said that we could fix that. He knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who would quilt a top into a bedcover. We contacted her and she agreed to expand the quilt top onto a larger background. She then proceeded to do just that.
After she expanded it she then quilted it to the pattern, which means that she followed the hexagon pattern and sewed only on the seams. When she finished, it was indeed a fine work of art.


We had her make us several other quilts including one for my son Steven who is very fond of quilts.


We left Louisiana and came to California in 1984. With us came the quilt. We used it on our beds in all of the different places that we lived. With time, it began to show some wear. It needed to go up on the wall, where it could be seen, but not subjected to the wear and tear of everyday use. After all, it had started out as garmets in the 1870’s and that is a long time for a piece of fabric to survive.


Alas, we had no wall space. We are artist, remember, and every inch of our walls were and are always covered with our own art.


My youngest daughter, Linda, had professed an interest in the quilt, so I shipped it to her about eight years ago. When she received it, she called me to be sure that I did not have something dreadfully wrong with me. She was sure that I would only give up the quilt if my demise was imminent. I assured her that was not the case, that I was healthy, but could no longer care for the quilt that Mamu had made and that I felt she would give it a good home
Yesterday, she told me about the quilts new place of honor.


In Ouray, Colorado, she and Carl are restoring a house that will become their summer home. The guest bedroom has been chosen for the place for Mamu’s quilt. It will hang on the wall, in a place of honor, a piece of art, which has found it’s proper place.


Mamu would be very proud.



By Shirley Jean Tracy Price
April 5, 2008


Update, August 12, 2011:  Linda's house in Ouray was completed and the quilt was hung in a place of honor along with a painting that I did that was inspired by the quilt.

JOHNSONS BAYOU

JOHNSON’S BAYOU

When I was a little child, I lived with my grandparents. They had me from the time that I was six weeks old until I started school.


Most of the year we lived it Carlyss just about five miles south of Sulphur, La. Papa Calhoun had a house there on 100 acres of land. It was located on what is now called the City Service Park . About one half mile north of us, my Uncle Sydney and Aunt Rose Beyeaux and their children had a house also.

This was where we lived most of the year. My grandfather raised a big garden and ran a small herd of cattle. We had chickens and ducks and a couple of milk cows.
By the time I could remember we were in the midst of a great depression. Papa was a good provider and provided for all of his daughters, six in all. His only son had died at the age of 19.

My mother lived in town and I assume worked there. She would sometimes visit us on weekends. But my existence depended on Papa and Mama.

Mother’s sisters were in and out of the house as well They came for dinner often and papa supplied fresh milk for them and the cousins. He, also provided fresh vegetables and fruit from his garden.

There were always cousins, nine of us, running around. Being the youngest, I was more like running after, I could never keep up. Just when I would get to the place where the action was playing out, all of the other cousins would be off to a new adventure, leaving me to run again, only to be left behind once more.

I have a long history of fainting at the sight of blood, as did my father before me and as did my mother.  One day, Sonny Boy came in with a bad cut on his foot sustained on a homemade scooter.  I retired to the bedroom and fainted on the bed, my mother joined me, fainting as well!  Sonny said later that he wondered where everyone went.   He said he was left to tend his own wound.

In the wintertime every year, my grandparents and I, moved down to Johnson‘s Bayou, a great marsh area, right on the Gulf of Mexico. We moved a few weeks before trapping season began. I think it was in November, but I am not sure of the exact dates. We would remain there until early spring, when trapping season ended.

The first few years that I remember, we lived on a large two roomed houseboat tied up at the foot of the bridge at the mouth of Madam Johnson Bayou. The houseboat had a four or five foot screened porch that completely surrounded it. Since I was the youngest cousin at that time and do not know what came before, I imagine this screened porch was to protect from mosquitoes as well as to keep me and my older cousins from falling or jumping overboard.

We had lost a cousin some years before, albeit it, not from drowning in the bayou, but from drowning in a barrel of rain water. He was just a small child, about three, when he was caught by a screen door and pushed head first down into the barrel. He was my Aunt Nobia’s first born. His name was J.C.  His father, George Griffith was killed in a car wreck, a few years later.  My Aunt Nobia was badly injured.   Her injuries included a split tongue which supposedly changed her voice.  I remember her having a very husky voice which I assumed was caused by her heavy smoking.  Her sisters said that she was never the same after the accident.  I was too young to remember, if I existed at all at the time.  I think I must have existed because I seem to recall someone saying that Uncle George loved playing games with me.

My grandmother being overcautious, an understatement, if I ever saw one, I am sure had the porch screened so that she could have a little peace of mind. The poor woman had very few moments of peace as I recall.

Back to the houseboat. It was built on a large barge. On the back porch of the houseboat was an outhouse.  It was a two holer and opened directly over the bayou. In those days there was no thought of water pollution. Inside the house, there was a bedroom with two double beds in it. In the other room was the kitchen and living room, sort of an all purpose family room.


As was our custom in town, Mama Calhoun and I slept in one of the beds and Papa Calhoun slept in the other. Every morning, Papa got up and lit a fire in the wood stove. Then he made coffee for himself and Mama. He made me what they called coffee milk, mostly cream and sugar with just a little bit of coffee for flavoring. He brought this to us while we were in bed. Grandma would say to him “Tell me you didn’t stir my coffee with the sugar spoon”, She took her coffee black and swore that she could tell if you just passed the sugar spoon over it.

In the other room there were several rocking chairs and the wood stove. There was also a trap door that went into the barge below and in my young eyes it was this big black hole into the depths of hell. Papa would go down into it sometimes, to check the level of water in the barge and I waited fearfully for his return from that terrible place.

In the evenings, with only a coal oil lamp for light, with no TV or radio or electricity, we would sit around the wood stove and the adults would talk. For as long as I could stay awake, I was allowed to sit on Papa’s lap so long as I did not fidget. Evidently, I was a great fidgeted, because I was always being told “Shirley Jean, quit that fidgeting.

We spent a couple of weeks at the dock, preparing to go up the bayou where we would spend the winter.. The houseboat was then pulled about five miles up Johnson’s Bayou toward Sabine Lake and the Texas border. The men used, what they called a speedboat, to do this.

There were several trappers cabins that had been built there. Each was about ten feet square, just big enough for a three quarter sized bed and a small wood or coal oil stove. They were built several feet above the ground to prevent flooding and also to prevent snakes and other creatures from crawling in.  In these cabins lived trappers. These young men were farmers and had left their families back in civilization and traveled to this forbidding and inhospitable place in order to make enough money to keep those families afloat through the winter. They were lonely and missed their wives and children.




Nat Griffith was my favorite trapper.  He wheeled me about in a wheelbarrow to keep me entertained.  Aunt Bryant’s house can be seen in the background.


But, this was heaven for me. Since I was the only child there, I received most of their undivided attention. Being one who has always liked undivided attention, you can imagine how pleased I was with this situation. They pushed me along the shelled paths between the cabins, in a wheel barrow, so I wouldn’t get my feet muddy and brought me sweets when they were available. In our family album, there is a photograph of me, a skinny, skinny child of three or four, holding up by their tails, two muskrats, whose heads were touching the ground, they were so big.  And I could skin those muskrats, too, at least I think I could.

In later years, Papa built a house at the mouth of the bayou. It was the last house on the last road before you got to Port Arthur , Texas . And Port Arthur was twelve miles away, as the crow flies. I could stand on the cow pen fence and see the Rainbow Bridge from there. I spent a lot of time on top of the barn looking toward Texas and the Rainbow Bridge.

Papa owned a hundred acres. It was this land plus 2000 more acres that he leased from Ferd Pavel, that the trappers set their traps upon in order to catch muskrats and a few otters and mink.

I must have been five at the time the house was built. At first it was just a large rectangular kitchen with a big table in the middle of it. On the front side of the house was the bayou, not more than 50 feet away.  Later, papa added two more rooms, a living room and a bedroom.  The outhouse was a good fifty feet away from the main house and I do not remember how we took a bath, probably in a #3 washtub.

Between the house and the bayou, were two huge sycamore trees. On one of the trees was a swing and I spent many an hour swinging and looking out over the bayou.  I was sure that this swing had been put there for my pleasure, but since I was the youngest of the grandchildren, I am sure that the other grandchildren swung many a mile on that swing before I ever possessed it.

Skiffs and pirogues were tied up at the dock. The adults told me that I could play in the boats as long as I did not untie them. So being a resourceful child, I collected balls of string and rope. With this I extended the tethers on the boats and was able to move about, out into the bayou, without technically disobeying their rules, not that I was then or have ever been since, a really great rule follower.  Footnote to the above (I did not learn to swim until I was an adult and there were no lifejackets available).

Out the back door of the kitchen there was a short hall that went through a pantry on either side. This pantry was full of stuff, canned out of Papa’s garden in town and a big crock in which rendered pork lard and partially cooked pork chops, were layered. This came from the pigs that we raised and butchered on occasion.



When we butchered a hog , all of the women from up the road came to help. They must have received part of the meat for compensation. The kitchen would become a sausage factory of sorts. The women would render the fat from the hogs in a big black iron cauldron over a fire in the back yard. This resulted in cracklings and the lard that was used for cooking. So much for harden arteries. Then they would cut the belly of the hog and send them out to the barn to be hung on rafters. A fire was started in a large tin container and using green wood, creating great volumes of smoke. It was kept burning for days and days with constant and careful attention. From this came our bacon. Roasts were cut from the hog and distributed among the women

there to be taken home for immediate cooking. Remember, we had no electricity and no refrigeration.

What was left of the meat, they ground up in a sausage mill. Then an attachment was put on the front of the mill. The hog entrails were cleaned. These were then threaded onto the end of the mill and the pork ground meat was pushed through. Not, however, before the meat was seasoned and small patties fried for tasting of this seasoning. This was my favorite part because I got to test the patties. If I close my eyes today, I can still smell the patties as they were frying on that brisk autumn morning. Once the sausage were all stuffed they were sent to the barn for smoking along with the bacon.
The pork chops were partially cooked in hot grease and seasoned. The lard was reheated and poured in layers along with the pork chops into a huge crock and stored in the pantry. As the winter went by, Mama would dip into the crock and take out the top layer of lard and the top layer of pork chops to cook. The lard was used for all frying and baking. That crock, by the way, still exists. For many years, I had it, then Elvin Bryant, my cousin used it to make wine. When he returned it to me, I passed it on to my cousin, Bonnie Ray Lyons(nee).
On the second day of the butchering, Mama and friends would make hogshead cheese. It was made by boiling the hog head and removing all of the bits of meat on it. They added green onions and seasoning and pepper and all kind of stuff. I could not ever force myself to even taste it but the aunties all said it was good. Just don’t try to prove it by me.

Digression, digression, now back to Johnson’s Bayou
Once the house was built, we no longer used the houseboat. Papa and Mama were getting older and the semi-camping on the houseboat was probably too much for them. Papa was just a year away from his 70th birthday and from his diagnosis of prostate cancer and with that diagnosis, everything would change.

About once a month, the trappers came up out of the marshes with their muskrat hides for sale. They brought the hides in burlap bags and cardboard boxes. The hides were graded by size and condition, with the top hides rightly being called tops. The middle designation I do not remember but the smaller, less attractive ones were call kits. The reason I remember those so well, is that the trappers would conjure up a small cardboard box and fill it with kits. These were given to me for my own.



The fur buyers came from Cameron and bid on the furs. It was kind of like a reverse auction. The buyers offered and the trappers accepted or rejected. Sometimes the buyers went away empty handed, but mostly, the trappers were left holding their empty bags and looking at the meager amounts they received for their early morning, freezing trips out into the marshes to collect the muskrats.



But me, I was ecstatic. My kits were going to be sold and I would receive money for them. They did and I did and was delighted with the whole thing.

Sometimes, we would get to the bayou before hurricane season had ended in the fall. One year, a really bad storm was coming and we were there. The wind had begun to pick up and the water was rising. Hurricane centers did not exist and the only weather we knew was from what the old folks could remember of how to tell the weather from the signs.

My mother was in Sulphur, as was my father. Unbeknown to each other, they each decided to come to the bayou and bring me out before the major force of the storm hit. Daddy sent a boat by way of Port Author thru the Sabine Lake and into Johnson’s Bayou. By the time he arrived, my mother had picked me up and left by car.

My mother had talked my Aunt Tootsie in to coming by car from Sulphur through Holly Beach, along the road that paralleled the beach front of the Gulf of Mexico , in a direct path of the oncoming storm. Aunt Tootsie and Mother and Vera Faye and Junior (oops O.J.) were all in the car. They made it to Papa’s house O.K. where Papa lay bedridden from the effects of prostrate cancer.

We were so surprised to see them. No one in their right mind would have weathered such a storm. Papa was beside himself and berated his daughters roundly for their thoughtlessness in setting out in such weather and bringing Vera Faye and O.J., still young children, with them on such a perilous journey.

But, when he found out that they were planning to pick me up, turn around and go back the same way the came, he hit the ceiling. I can still remember him yelling at both of them at the top of his voice. While the two sisters cowered in his presence, Mama Calhoun said nothing. She covered her head with her apron and went crying into the other room.  This was her usual response to crisis.

The sisters prevailed, however, and we started out for Sulphur . By the time we reached the road along Holly Beach, the water was up to the running boards on the car and was sloshing into the floorboards under our feet, and night had overtaken us. That twenty or so miles must have seen like forever to our mothers. O.J. must have been about eight or nine and Vera Faye must have been around eleven or twelve but my memory puts them at a much younger age.

We left very upset grandparents back at the bayou and the wait to find out if we made it must have been agonizing for them because there were no phones to let them know of our arrival back in Sulphur.  How we managed to survive that trip, I will never know, but survive we did.

The next year, everything chanced forever. My mother married L.K. Bonsall and then, my sister, Carolyn was born at the end of October. Papa was moved to Aunt Nobia’s house on Ruth Street in Sulphur , where he died in January. L.K. took a job in the war effort in Orange , Texas and we moved there.

Johnson Bayou remained a part of my life still. Every year, the day that school was out, I went back to Johnson’s Bayou until I was fifteen. Aunt Bryant was my saving grace. She took me in and treated me like I was her own child, with love and understanding and humor.  I would spend the summer there, going back home, only the day before school started, and then kicking and screaming.  My dream was to be left with Aunt Bryant and attend school at Johnsons Bayou, but that never happened, except for a two month period, the year my brother, Kelly, was born.

The year that I was fifteen, I met Louis Leger and my life would change forever, once again.  But that is another story.

I have traveled far since those years.  I now live in California, where my husband, Elbert Price and I have lived for the last 30 years.  But Johnson’s Bayou will always remain in my heart as the place where I was the most happy in my childhood.

My Multicolored Sweater

MY MULTICOLORED SWEATER About ten years ago, I was the manager of an on the beach condo complex.  Our units were rented by the month or by the week, with summer rentals by the week only. People left all sorts of items behind.  They left pillows and blankets and diamond rings and wedding rings.  They left false teeth and medications and just about anything else you could name. We did our best to get belongings back to their rightful owners, but did not always succeed. One summer, someone left this multicolor sweater behind.  I put it up into the sand closet, after offering it to tenants for about four summers.  No one claimed it.  It sat in the sand closet for another two years and every time I opened the sand closet door, the darn thing would fall out.  I, dutifully, picked it up and put it back in and closed the doors.  But, the next time I opened the sand closet door it would fall out again.  I got to where I would just give it a hard kick back into the closet after cursing it for being so stubborn. Finally, after about six years, I decided to give it to the cleaning lady who had worked for us for years. I took the cursed thing out of the sand closet to give it to her, but all those years of kicking it had soiled it.  I decided to wash it before giving it to her. I threw it into the washer, turned the machine on hot and then threw it into the dryer. When I took it our of the dryer, it was not quite dry, so I brought into my house and threw it over the back of a chair to finish drying. Elbert came home from his gallery in Santa Barbara and said “ Wow!  That is the most beautiful sweater that I have ever seen.  Where on earth did you get it?”   I told him the story and he said “Don’t you dare give it away.  It is too special.” So, I, dutifully, wore the darn thing to the grocery store.  No less than 5 people stopped me in the isle to say what a beautiful sweater I was wearing.  So much for my taste in clothes. A few days later, I was wearing it  in the laundry room, when one of my tenants commented on the sweater and asked where I bought it.  It seems she had bought one for her husband, but in shades of gray, and she like mine much better.  She informed me that she had paid $400 for his. It turned out that it was a Coogi sweater and was hand made in Australia.  The colors were bright and many and the fabric looks as though it was made of carefully selected knit fabric. I retired from my position as manager of the condos back in 2006 and have been wearing my sweater ever since.  It still looks brand new, although, I do take more care in washing it these days. Today, I wear my sweater with pride.  It is lightweight  for spring and fall and yet heavy enough for cold winter days.  I never wear it without strangers stopping me on the street to compliment it and I always tell them the story of how I came to have such a beautiful handmade Coogi sweater from Australia and what great taste my husband has in clothes. Shirley Tracy Price June 6, 2011

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