Bonjour. Je passé visiter avec Monica at her Bayou Town Flea Market right behind Hebert’s Main Street store au Pont Breaux. I always promise myself I won’t buy anything but the temptation is too great. Always gotta browse her flea market! Well, I found in vendor Elisabeth Besson’s booth, un chaudiérée on fer fete dan la France, had to have it, could almost smell the couch-couch. So I bought it, so, couch-couch next week! I also picked up little odds and ends I need from their 20 percent discount booth. A new flea market opened on Rees Street next door to Positive Printing. I’m told many out of town shoppers shop the flea markets and antique stores in town. And whichever boutique you’ll shop in Breaux Bridge, you’ll be richer by the new friends you’ll make there and want to come back. The shop owners work together, what one does not have what you’re looking for, they’ll usually call around to see who does. Au village samedi matin, The Coffee Break puts on a Cajun music jam session. John Allen Doré, good friend of mine, plays guitar there every Saturday. Go by and say hey to him. While you’re in town, go by Grover Angelle’s for a lip smacking delicious hamburger. In the late 1980s, a new leased driver for Tiona (company I ran for) and I picked up each a load of lead (metal) in Lake Charles destined to deliver in an area right off the Saginaw Bay in Michigan. I had no idea of the adventure I was going to experience until I passed the Saginaw, Mich., sign, which was not mentioned in the bill of lading, only the highway number and location for delivery. I thought, that’s the Saginaw Lefty Frizzel sang about! “I was born in Saginaw, Michigan I grew up in a town on Saginaw Bay My dad was a poor hard-working Saginaw fisherman Too many times he came home with too little pay.” It was excited about my find. I always tried to imagine the story in that song. And there I was so close to its banks. The delivery went to a newly built plant isolated and desolate. The population there was sparse, driving for miles without a house to be seen. I’d gotten off I-75 and ran a slightly hilly four-lane country road. I enjoyed my run. Well, while the other driver was being loaded down in Lake Charles, I could almost read this macho Américain mind thinking he was gonna put this Cajun woman to shame, put me in his back pocket and beat me on the run. After leaving LC and reaching the big road running north, we separated and lost track of each other. After I’d unloaded, I’m running back south, met him heading north with his load. I had beaten him by a few hours. Well, when he saw my rig strutting south, I could see him from the corner of my eyes he stuck his head out his window and kept waving at me till I was out of his sight. I made like I hadn’t seen him or heard him holler at me on my CB. I kept right on trucking along. I enjoyed the challenge. And I beat him back to the terminal in Butler, Mo. Till I left the company, the other drivers never let him live down being defeated by the Cajun Cookie (my CB handle). Cajun words: barn – magasin; winter – l’hiver; cold – froid. God bless! Amètie à tout. Cousine Hélène helenboudreaux@juno.com 228-1714