Today the grass was mowed on both sides, at least to the Belle River landing, and all the trash, scraps, et al, seem to have disappeared or at least are covered by the cut grass. Obviously a few objects were too big to mow over, and I suppose will be removed later.
Nevertheless, the levee looks quite nice right now. I think the bathrooms are usable again, but not sure about that.
Although I haven’t heard anything lately of further improvements to the park, the sand which was at the Belle River walking trail on Hwy. 70 has been used to fill the part of the park on which the proposed pavilion/meeting room will be built. Last I heard, negotiations were still underway about getting electricity to the area. I will be so happy when this project continues, especially the meeting room, so we can have a comfortable place to distribute commodities, have a birthday party, maybe a baby shower, etc.
The next Food for Seniors distribution, by the way, will be on Thursday, July 28, same places, same times.
The river is still a little high here on the spillway side. I see it’s a bit above flood stage at Morgan City also. We’ve been getting sporadic rains, sometimes very heavy, at other times a bare sprinkle. The grass and weeds are visibly growing.
As I talk with my family in California, Michigan, Illinois and Florida, it seems everyone is suffering from the heat. My daughter reported 105 degrees south of Los Angeles, which is pretty bad, but I envied the 60 degree nighttime temps. My Michigan family is in misery from high 80 degree temperatures and 50 percent humidity. I dread my next electricity bill!
When I came to Louisiana back in the l960’s there were a lot of firsts for my family. First hurricane (Betsy), first terrible heat, first nutria, first hearing people speak French, almost the first teacher in my school with a degree.
I wrote letters to my parents and in-laws telling them of all the new things I was encountering, seeing, hearing, doing and they saved most of those letters, giving them back to me not long ago. I have boxes of letters which I’m slowly retyping and having bound into books for my kids.
Now and then I come upon an incident in one of those letters which I still vividly remember. One I’ll share with you because it still makes me laugh.
We were living in the spillway in a tent, cooking over a campfire. Cooking oil was a precious commodity, not to be wasted, since we didn’t have much money. A friend from Bayou Pigeon stopped and told us that the way we could tell if the oil was hot enough to fry things properly was to drop in a match which would ignite when the oil was ready.
So we did that. We sat patiently beside the fire waiting expectantly for the match to ignite, then the entire pot of grease burst into flames with a whoosh!. We finally got the fire put out, but the oil, of course, was ruined. The next day our friend told us we were supposed to have used a new match, not a used one! (We were so pitifully ignorant!)
Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be e-mailed at lcooke9417@bellsouth.net.
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