Bonjour!

I hope you’ll pick up an October issuje of Acadian Lifestyle Magazine and read an article which was published about me written by Cheryl Robicheaux. Through this article you will meet and get to know me.

Good people are the salt of the earth! Raymond Melancon is another testimonial. He came recently with his pickup, hauling a trailer loaded with tractor and equipment and tilled a garden for me.

He also removed a nuisance tree stump from my backyard, which I thought I’d have to live with the rest of my life. He also pulled out roots of a Confederate Rose, which looked like the many arms of an octopus.

Tu parle des racine creux.

While tilling the garden, he ran over a sewer pipe that I had laid in the ground when I put my septic tank back in 1976. He has a little roof over his tractor that sheltered him from the rain.

The garden is about 10 x 20 feet. Before I finished asking how much I owed him, he told me it was free. That was so kind! When I’d work in papa’s field when I was about 14 years old, I remember looking up from hoeing and thinking, “that’s a lot of field to hoe.”

If God gives me health, I’ll make good use of it.

Raymond and his wife, Melanie, raise cattle on their Twin Oaks Farms and have a crawfish pond. Raymond stays very busy; not even his severe back injury and suffering holds him down.

Raymond was telling me when Dallas, his dad, would call him and express his desire to go ride to Raymond’s cattle farm, he knew he’d get treated to a malt along the way. Dallas was borderline diabetic, so his mom, Louella, would not let him eat too many sweets.

Raymond figured a malt now and then wouldn’t kill his dad, so he’d buy him one. His mom never knew about it. He laughs when he said one day after he’d bought the treat his mom called his cell and said they had to cut the trip short and come home. And because Dallas was ill, he couldn’t drink his malt fast and did not want to throw it away so they had to take a longer route home to give him the chance to enjoy his treat. Raymond said that was his dad’s last one, because he was too nauseous to drink the one he bought after that one.

Raymond and his dad were best of buddies. They fished together, and Raymond tended to his dad while his two brothers were considered road runners with their jobs.

Raymond stayed closer to home. Dallas had a memory from as far back as his childhood.

Willis Boudreaux tells about the times when people gathered for butchering young bulls or pigs and every family would have their share of meat.

Families took turns butchering the bulls or pigs. Without electricity there was no way to store the meat, so families went home with their shares.

The hair would be shaved off of the pig, with boiling water poured over it, and sharp knives were used for scraping. Beef was skinned.

I remember mama canning beef in Mason jars.

In these busy times, many stories of courage and surviving hard times are going to go untold by our kids.

My grandkids are curious and fascinated when I tell of the “olden days.”

When I tell them of the many people here we’re related to, they’re in awe. The reason we bought this property was because I did not want to close the door to the childhood memories where my girls grew up.

Amètie à tout.

Cousine Hélène 228-1714.