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.