Of course, it’s not just the services that define a town, it’s the people, and the people have been the biggest reason we’ve stayed here so long (okay, the food is great, the music is great, there’s always something to do, we’re in a great house, and the weather has been near perfect the last 8 weeks or so, too). I’m going to give you a cast of characters in brief, of our last few months.
TJ and Cassie – Elray Schexnaider did some work for TJ and his daughter Cassie, and when Elray found out we were going through Gueydan he told TJ that we were coming through and that we needed a place to stay. TJ and Max Hungerford are the two characters who met us on the highway and took us to lunch that first day we were here.
TJ Fontenot is well known in these parts, because he owned the biggest fuel distribution company in the area for many years, has been a supporter of the museum, and is on the board of directors of the Bank of Gueydan. Now in his 80s, he still is active and is still looking for new business ventures. Duck hunting is his absolute love. On a tour of his offices, TJ told us that even though his daughters would prefer that he move to Houston, he loves it here and will stay here forever. TJ is bright and lively, and loves to reminisce. Someone needs to get him talking and tape record him, because he would be a goldmine of history!
Cassie is his daughter and lives here in Gueydan as well. She runs the family business now, and while we don’t know too much of what they do, we understand that they have a large number of good-sized real estate ventures. Cassie is really friendly and matter-of-fact, and manages to look elegant and approachable at the same time. I’d never want to underestimate her efficiency and business skills.
Max Hungerford was riding with TJ when they found us along the road coming into Gueydan, and he became a big part of our lives. Max is the one who had the brilliant idea of putting us up in the “old parsonage” of the Methodist church, and Max is the one who was an absolute lifesaver in the early days of our visit here. He took us to see Holly Beach and the Lacassine Wildlife Refuge, he made sure we got to Wal-Mart when we needed food, and he made sure that Chelsea and I each had a small birthday celebration. When we needed something around the house, whether mousetraps or a new refrigerator, Max was right on top of it. Perhaps one of our favorites has been his custom of treating us to Sunday after-church-lunch from Johnny’s. We’re going to miss that!
One of our quick trips with Max was the Tupper Museum in Jennings. It’s a store that was open in from 1910 to 1949 in a nearby town. When the owners closed the store in 1949, the inventory stayed on the shelves exactly the way it was until 1971, when it was packed and warehoused. At some point Mr. Tupper’s grandson donated the goods to create the Tupper Museum – they’ve completely and accurately recreated the original store. It was really amazing to see the place – it was just like being in a general store, except that nothing was for sale. We spent quite awhile meandering throughout the store – Max and I swapped stories about how many of the things we remembered ourselves!
Having just crossed the border into his 60s (he looks like he’s in his early 50s), Max has been in the oil industry nearly his whole life, with at least 40 years experience. There’s probably no aspect of the oil drilling that he hasn’t seen or worked with at some point in his career. He’s now working as an independent consultant, picking the contracts he wants. Since the work pays well and is very demanding (if not exhausting), Max tends to work heavy hours for 6-10 months and then take time off. When we met him, he was just nearing the end of one of his off-work times. We think Max is pretty tired of working the oil industry, so we’ll be curious to see what the next few years hold for him.
In addition to an exhausting job, Max is the head of the board of trustees of the Methodist church, and that’s a big job too. Max doesn’t have too much down time, and we think that if he did, he’d fill it with something!
The Museum – Jane Hair was one of the first people we met in Gueydan, right after TJ and Max. I think that TJ and Max wanted to show us as much of the town as we could see in a very short time, and the museum made the short list. Jane is curator of the museum, working part time. She’s the one you’ll see when you arrive at the museum, and she’ll answer any questions you may have about the exhibits. She arranges for new exhibits, represents the museum to other museums, and handles all the paperwork and outside contacts. Seeing Jane with all her activities, you’d never guess she’s in her 70’s.
Since the museum is quieter mid-week, we took to dropping in to visit with Jane. We quickly found out that we have a lot of things in common. Jane is part English, and Chelsea and I knew a great number of British folks during our sojourn in the Czech Republic, so we had that in common. I have also visited London several times, and both Chelsea and I read a great number of British authors. All three of us share a love of reading, and we swapped books several times. Jane is the one who turned us on to Jan Karon and the Mitford series – an amazingly sweet and well-written and uplifting series of books about a small town in North Carolina.
Jane also came through like a champ by loaning a good variety of movies for us to watch. It took awhile to work our way through them, but we got to see some movie classics we’d never seen.
Jane dresses beautifully and has impeccable manners, but it didn’t take long to realize she has a big streak of adventure in her. We had mini-adventures with her heading out to Abbeville – she took us to Wal-Mart with her several times, and we were able to do some important errands, tagging along while she did hers. With Jane we had lunch at Shucks in Abbeville, a truly great meal, and one we’d never have had on our own. Elray took all of us to lunch at CCs on another day.
One of our favorite memories of Jane is the day that we headed home after a long day in Abbeville. We’d done errands, had lunch, seen the museum, and even dropped by the Courtyard Café to show her one of our favorite haunts. Just at the edge of town she asked if we wanted anything else, and Chelsea said “What about ice cream? Do you know of any good places?” Jane didn’t know any place, so Chelsea mentioned that Courtyard Café had Nippies – a flavored coffee/ice cream drink offered at 2 for 1 between 4-6pm. We were already well out of town, but Jane simply turned right around and went back for the Nippies. We loved it that she would be so spontaneous.
Jane had big problems getting her email up and running after some computer repair, so we spent some time over at the museum trying to make things work, without much success. She called AT&T but they still didn’t fix the problem. Finally, after weeks of being offline, I called AT&T myself and stayed on the phone with their Internet technicians until we got it fixed. Jane was thrilled, and then we taught her how to delete emails in bulk, and a few other tricks.
Jane came through like a champ on another occasion – I needed to have my passport renewed, and I needed to send it off immediately. Lynn Hair had already taken me into Lafayette for photos at Walgreens, but I just hated the way they looked – I should have insisted on the spot that I get another, better photo. I had already spent 10 years with a totally dismal photo on my passport, and I really didn’t want to go another 10 years hating my photo, especially when I’m going to be seeing it so much now. After church one Sunday, Jane picked us up and brought us into Kaplan for new passport photos. I love my new photos!
Glenn Gillentine, Jane’s brother, and Rene Breaux – I can’t finish with the Gueydan Museum without mentioning Glenn and Rene. Glenn is Jane’s brother, and he’s frequently found at the museum, keeping Jane company and quietly listening. Glenn is the tall silent type of guy. He listens carefully and doesn’t say much, but he’s got a really appealing twinkle in his eye. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go, and Glenn just gets up and leaves, without a word. We always enjoy a chance to say hi to him.
Rene Breaux is another character. A former mayor of Gueydan, he’s been retired for years, and is now the president of the board of the museum. Rene can be found at the museum most days, chatting with Jane, and telling stories to whomever is there. He’s another who listens carefully, and who has a big twinkle in his eye. He’s fluent in Cajun French, and is a walking history book. Like TJ Fontenot, Rene is another one who needs to be taped so his goldmine of stories can be recorded.
One of my personal favorite stories about Rene is the day that we were sitting chatting, and I used one of my favorite Roald Dahl expressions, calling myself “nearly ancient”. Rene fixed me with a silent stare for a moment and then abruptly asked, “How old are you?” When I replied “59”, he fixed me with another silent stare and then said emphatically “You’re juvenile! Do you know how old I am? I’ll be 91 this November!” Not only could I not believe that he was almost 91, but I couldn’t believe that I had actually been called juvenile!
Patti’s Book Nook is a small bookstore tucked into a corner off Main St. One of the first places we found, it became one of our favorites. Patti Gayle is now home dealing with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) so she’s not at the store anymore, and her husband Sean has taken over the daily running of the store after retiring from the oil business. Sean will always be in our hearts, because he has been so generous with letting us swap out books with him. We are voracious readers, and we have somehow managed all along our route to find sources for books, but rarely have we had such access to such a variety, in such pleasant circumstances.
One evening, in our relentless search for more books, Sean motioned over to the boxes of books that had come in and weren’t shelved yet, telling us we could likely find something there. Rather than leave the books in the boxes, we decided on the spot to shelve them for Sean. It only took a little over an hour (very focused!) to shelve 3 full boxes of books, and we had the extra bonus of knowing the store even better. Sean was delighted, because it’s a really slow and tedious job, but with two of us who know books and authors as well as we do, it went really quickly.
Sean loves to think and talk and travel, and we had many an after-hours conversation with him on a wide variety of topics. We don’t always agree on things, but it was fun to exercise our brains with him, and we think he enjoyed the chance to talk to us, since we’ve traveled extensively and we are interested in so many things, as is he.
Sean’s son James (known locally as Jamie) runs Duck Capital Computers out of the back of the shop. He’s always got a line-up of computers in some stage of repair, and he helps out in the bookstore as well, when Sean can’t be there. Jamie’s knowledge of local resources is amazing…we can count on telling him what we need and having him come up with some great suggestions. He even dropped by the house a couple of times for ideas on things we’d talked about. Jamie also went above and beyond the call of duty trying to get us the Avon picaridin insect repellent in the aerosol spray. Avon has apparently stopped making it or selling it, so Jamie wasn’t successful in getting it for us, but it wasn’t for lack of effort on his part! We couldn’t believe that he would be so determined to make it happen for us – we really appreciated it…
Passionately political, Jamie is an avowed conservative and you’d better be prepared to defend your opinions if you see things another way. We’ve had a number of spirited discussions with him!
The Methodist Church – Though we aren’t churchgoers, we are staying in the old parsonage of the Methodist Church, and we have been attending church every Sunday for 4 months now. The church building is a pretty brick building, on the corner of 5th and Main, right next to the beginning of the commercial part of town. It’s got a number of stained glass windows that glow beautifully in the late afternoon when sun is on other side of the church from us. It’s a smaller congregation in town, with maybe 25-30 attending services each Sunday. The service is simple and quiet, with lots of singing. Once a month they have “cake and blue jean Sundays”, where people are encouraged to wear blue jeans to church, and someone signs up to bring a cake, celebrating all the birthdays and anniversaries for the month. It’s a great time for the whole congregation to hang around for a short while and chat.
This is a quiet congregation, with primarily older members. There aren’t many young people and very few little ones. The congregation owns the church and the land it’s on, as well as the old parsonage next door, and the new parsonage next door to the old. Altogether they own almost a full city block. What has impressed us utterly and thoroughly is how kind they have all been to us. We are always greeted with very welcoming smiles and a few friendly words, and they have been interested in our trip (never mind their incredible kindness for letting us stay in the old parsonage!) They’ve treated us like members of the extended family.
Pastor Doug and Mona In the same spirit of the church, we’ve had the pastor and his wife as very kind next-door neighbors. We’ve helped each other back and forth like good neighbors do – we followed Doug in the car to Jennings one time for a car repair job, and in return he took us to Wal-Mart and take-out at an Asian restaurant. They’ve loaned us a soup pot and casserole pan and can opener, and took delivery of my birthday flowers, making sure I got them. We helped with unloading a grill, and we’ve gotten to do laundry several times at their house. And then, just when I needed money to get my passport renewed, Doug hired us for lawn work – cleanup after Gustav and Ike. How’s that for great neighbors?
Armand does odd jobs around town, and fishes whenever he can, selling his catch for some extra income. Chelsea met him one day out in back and chatted quite awhile. Slender in stature and dark skinned from the time he spends in the sun, Armand uses his hands expressively to describe his fishing exploits, making us laugh watching his stories. That first time we met him, we came back later in the day, opened the back door for some light, and what should we see but a bucket of freshly caught shrimp in ice on the back porch with a note (see the photo gallery)! Since that first time, we have bought fresh caught shrimp at an amazing price – $2 a pound.
Of course, we (read Chelsea) had to de-head and de-vein all those many pounds of shrimp, but Chelsea sure got good at it. That was another thing we love Jane for – she gave us simple little tool for the cleaning and de-veining that works perfectly – it really made it go a lot faster, and it’s making our short list for the trip.
One night when Fred was visiting us, Armand came by with freshly boiled crab, still warm from the pot. Fred showed Chelsea how to crack and clean, and we sure understand why crab is so expensive in the stores!
Heuetta Benoit Heuetta is the woman who took our photo at City Hall when we became honorary citizens, and we ended up chatting with her for some reason or another. We liked her immediately. She’s very friendly with a straight-shooter kind of approach. In her late 40’s now (looking at the big 5-0 pretty soon), she’s held a variety of quite responsible administrative positions in the area. If I were hiring, Heuetta is one I’d hire – she’s smart and efficient, has a good sense of humor, sees the big picture, she’s experienced, she’s got a lot of stamina, and she’s got a big heart.
In the really early days Heuetta loaned us a swiffer mop, and since then she’s loaned us clothes, gotten us to Wal-Mart, taken us for some fast food, invited us over for a barbecue of fried fish, potatoes, onions, and fried frog legs and alligator. How cool is that! She introduced us to her cousin Peggy, and let us trail along behind her at the Festival Acadiens in Lafayette, choosing food. Her husband Kenneth is a riot (you’ll be laughing within a few minutes of meeting him) and the two of them were incredibly helpful during our alligator skinning experience. We’ll really miss them, and we’ll miss our talks with Heuetta.
Dick Sirmon, one of the Methodist Church members, is a former high school teacher, now retired. Dick loves travel and adventure, and while I don’t have all the details straight, we know he teaches English to foreign exchange students – he goes for weeks or months at a time to wherever the students are. He’s heading to Russia for a church mission right after Christmas. Dick gave us a tourism map of Texas, and one day he sat with me for an hour going over the map so I could plot the Traveling Roses route in detail. He got us a route out of Louisiana and up to Silsbee Texas. Dick’s got a great sense of humor, always teasing us about something. I still remember the day we were cleaning the yard in front and he called us “slave laborettes”.
Meceal Smith and Mike Rizutto Meceal and Mike are the journalists at the Gueydan Journal and the Lake Arthur Sun Times, respectively, and Mike is the one who wrote a big feature article on us for the newspapers. They share an office on Main St only a block down the street from us.
Meceal is a riot. Bright and lively, she’s in her late 70s or early 80’s (we can’t remember which), though she looks and acts like someone in her 60s. She is full of stories, and tells them well, with lots of really entertaining colloquialisms. She is an absolute font of local information. She’s another one, along with Rene Breaux and TJ Fontenot, that someone ought to get talking and then tape record, to capture all those stories.
Mike is in his mid-late 50s, and has quite a story too. He’s much quieter than Meceal, but he’s full of his own stories. He’s now writing a book on his experiences of feeling trapped for almost 30 years by what I think is agoraphobia – a fear of being outdoors or outside. He’s now recovered, and wants to document his experiences and growth. He’s a really nice guy and really easy to talk to.
D&D Seafood is an amazing business right down on Main St. We’re not sure what all they process, but we do know they do crawfish, and they do alligator skinning for themselves and for others. You’ve got to read our blog on the alligator skinning! We were really impressed by what an efficient operation it was, and by the fact that it is truly family-owned and operated.
Marceaux’s is a good and very active local grocery store with a bakery and deli section. It too is family owned and run, and nearly everyone working there is a family member of some kind. We have fond memories of Marceaux’s because two of the women working there “donated” $1 each one day when Chelsea was short that amount. It’s a great place to run and get what we need, and we’re guaranteed to see someone we know and swap a few minutes of conversation. We always seem to cycle there right before closing to grab something or another, like more Moo-lennium Crunch ice cream.
Lougon’s is a grocery store down the street from Marceaux’s, and is a very different kind of store. They have two things they are known for – they’ll be open in every hurricane, barring being blown away or washed away; and they make fresh cracklins (pig skins with fat on, deep-fried) every week. It used to be every Saturday morning, but now they’ve had to switch it to Friday night. Those fresh cracklins are a local favorite.
Fire and police departments We are kitty-corner from the combined fire and police departments, in fact, we see them from our windows all day long if we are sitting at the computers (which is frequently all day long…). When the weather is nicer, the guys will tend to hang out in the front of the building and chat, so they see us when we go by on our bikes.
As a result of all this exposure, it’s pretty hard not to notice a lot of things about them. We hear that there is a colorful history to the departments. Some time ago, the head of the police and head of the fire department actually took shots at one another, or one shot at the other – we’ve heard different versions. Right now there’s a maybe-24-year old who is the chief of police. We don’t know if that’s good or bad, but everyone seems to mention it. He apparently likes his alcohol, and was heard to say, from the well-attended Duck Festival stage, “Isn’t this great when your police chief is as drunk as you are!”, or words to that effect.
We know that they have meetings of all the volunteer firemen every Monday night. We watch them take out the trucks, drive them around, check the sirens and check the equipment, and then hold their meeting, standing around the trucks. We watched as they prepped for both Gustav and Ike (more for Gustav) and we know what they did and why. We watched all the cots come into the building, as the guys got prepared for the “storm of the century”. We figured with all those cots and all that food and drink going in, it had to be like a sleepover. We’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall.