Gueydan Museum
The Gueydan Museum is an elegant little museum right on Main St. The ongoing exhibits all concern Gueydan itself and the history of the local area, but they have various rotating exhibits every other month on a wide variety of subjects. When we arrived, Lea Hair had created an impressive and well-done exhibit on butterflies as part of achieving her gold award for her Girl Scout troop – that display ran from July through September.
Since then, we’ve seen the Lafayette Photographic Society “Focus on People” display – an exhibit of photographs that ran in October and November; a display of brightly colored oversized paintings of all the political candidates for the election of November 2008, with additional paintings of Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, painted by Adrian Fulton (December); and then the Noel au Musee – the traditional display of Christmas trees created and decorated by local businesses (December).
January through March is the fifth annual Swamp Spirits display. An area photographer provides a photograph of something relating to the swamps, then local artists are invited to paint their interpretation of the photograph. The varied results are really interesting.
After a three-month display in Gueydan, the exhibit then travels throughout southwest Louisiana – the Deschamp Opera House in St. Martinville, the Abbeville Alliance Center, and the Vermillion Parish Library.
In later March the museum has a quilting display planned, and in April they’ll have a display of unbelievably intricate stitchery.
For being in such a small town, the Gueydan Museum is a complete jewel!
Jane’s been wonderful about inviting us to the receptions at the Gueydan Museum, and the one in January seemed particularly elegant. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting and talking to everyone, especially since we have been pretty isolated for the last few months. Much to our surprise and delight, Elray and Nancy Schexnaider were there. I couldn’t believe how good it was to see them again!
We met Joe Boatner Hebert, the man who hand carved a nearly life-size statue of Jean-Pierre Gueydan, the founder of Gueydan. Joe has an amazing talent for carving faces. Check out our photo gallery for some photos of a few of the faces he has carved, including a small “statue” of Barack Obama.
We got a chance to stay late and chat with Jane Hair and Renee Breaux, and got our first chance to get to know Darrel Bourque (he does a lot of volunteer work for the museum, and is active in the Mardi Gras Krewe).
Inauguration and crawfish boil
November was a pretty momentous month for the country, and we were caught up in the excitement along with everyone else. We had already voted by absentee ballot, and with the aid of the television in the old parsonage here (with a very weak signal) we were able to see the Palin/Biden vice presidential debate and one of the presidential debates.
When Inauguration Day arrived, we decided to watch – we didn’t want to miss such an historic occasion. We spent most of the morning and well into the afternoon sitting in great comfort on the couch enjoying watching the festivities. We learned an amazing amount of history, and we enjoyed seeing Washington DC.
Meanwhile, Jaimie Snoddy had invited us to a crawfish boil – she’d been working her crawfish ponds, and decided to have a family get-together – she’s got five siblings – Bonnie, Marcela, Danny, Leah, and Angela (who wasn’t there) – and we got to meet nieces and nephews with spouses, boyfriends and assorted kids as well.
The crawfish boil was up at Bonnie’s house on Dallas Guidry Rd; it’s on our daily route. We were astonished to discover that two of our dog nemeses (plural of nemesis) belonged to Bonnie – Gypsy and Misty. Those two characters have really given us a run for our money almost every day that we ride. But no more! Now we know their names, so we just holler at them when we go sailing by. They still chase us though… sigh…
We’d seen our first crawfish boil way back in Morgan City, but had no idea what it was. The crawfish are collected from the ponds (see our crawfish photos), and are rinsed and put live into a huge pot of boiling water, often with some spices. In this case, Jaimie put in potatoes, corn on the cob, mushrooms, boudin, and sausage, along with big packets of spice. She boiled all this first, then scooped it out when it was done and added the crawfish.
Everything is put into huge ice chests (without the ice of course). Then everyone lines up and fills up a plate. Cleaning the crawfish is an amazing and tedious job – it’s a lot like de-shelling crabs. I get a queasy stomach, so Chelsea always needs to do it (though I was fine with the crabs – go figure).
Taking mercy on us, though Chelsea was amazingly good at it, Jaimie’s brother Danny lent a helping hand. It was astounding to see how fast he was at cleaning them. It was fun to stand and chat while cleaning, never mind the fact that we got to eat a lot more!
The crawfish boil isn’t an indoors kind of thing, so even though the weather started out in the 50s, and dropped steadily, we all hung out in a big metal storage shed, with things pushed aside for tables and lawn chairs. It was a completely low-key evening, the kind we’ve come to expect and appreciate around here. Music, good food, good conversation – what more do you need in life?
Be sure to check out the photo galleries for the Gueydan Museum reception and the crawfish boil.
Super Bowl
Though we are doing a distinctly un-mainstream kind of thing with our bike ride, we feel very mainstream because we not only watched the inauguration, but we watched the entire Super Bowl last year with my sister and Dave Roper in California, and we actually watched most of the Super Bowl this year as well. We made a point of watching the half-time show with Bruce Springsteen – it was great!