03/07/2022
My family was from the Bayou Chene area... have a dozen tapes of old timers talking about life there...expecting to publish a Tom Sawyer type book sooner or later based on life in those days...if you want to know about life in the basin in those days just ask...C-Man
Circa 1918 photo
Bayou Chene and Mr. Boudreaux
© 2006, 2022 Louisiana Crawfish-Man
BACK IN THE 1920’s there once was a two hundred-year-old village of 1600 residents called Bayou Chene, located in the middle of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Swamp. Today, that village sleeps quietly under years of mud and silt that has blanketed this lost civilization evident with only the church steeple barely poking up from the ground at the time I was a young boy in the 1950’s. Over my lifetime, many stories about Bayou Chene were handed down to me because this was also the place where my dad was born.
This American Atlantis, you could almost say, was buried alive after the great flood of 1927 forced its inhabitants to move out of the swamp before the Corps of Engineers opened floodgates to relieve pressure on the Mississippi River. The major uniqueness of Bayou Chene was that there were no roads leading in or out. It was an island swampland surrounded by bayous, lakes, alligators, snakes and creatures of the night. Rugged people who were mostly loggers and those who lived off the land populated it. The abundance of cypress trees, fish, wild game, and Spanish moss beckoned those who were able enough, to embrace livelihoods that kept their families fed. They chopped trees for lumber, trapped animals, caught fish, sold honey, picked moss and planted gardens from their own backyards. Illegal whiskey stills were scattered about in secret locations sealed off from the rest of the civilized world by meandering bayous, giant oaks and cypress trees laced with tangled vines of Spanish Moss which hid their “moonshine” operations.
They had no electricity, natural gas, running water or any of the modern day conveniences we take for granted. They had no utilities bills, car notes, house notes or traveling salesmen hounding them for business. They paid no taxes and really didn't know people had to pay taxes. But they did have churches, a school, general stores, saloons, a dance hall and a post office where mail was delivered by boat twice a week. School children who lived deeper in the swamps were transported to and from school by the school boat. Crime was unheard of in this isolated wilderness, therefore they had no need for jails, policemen or politicians that usually run communities, instead they took care of problems themselves.
Steamboats, or "sternwheelers", often ventured to this secluded paradise to retrieve lumber and to trade goods. Village residents got supplies at Cy Case's General Store but the families who lived deeper in the swamps often listened for the sternwheeler "Monarch" run by Mertile Theriot from Morgan City, who regularly traveled their way to trade groceries. When they heard the sound of the boat's whistle coming through the woods, men, women and children got in their dugout canoes and pirogues with fish, moss, honey, hides and even "home brew"and headed to his boat to trade for their necessities.
Because they lived off the land, these St. Martin Parish “swampers” often ventured into nearby New Iberia, Loreauville and St. Martinville to trade goods or to catch a Saturday night movie or dance. Besides the Henry Wade Tent Show that floated up on a barge every couple of months with silent movies, "Continue Shows" and roasted peanuts for five cents a bag, most entertainment was by local musicians or storytellers welcomed in just about anybody's home on Saturday nights at a time when dancing and home cooked food were highlights of their lives.
They were the Verrets, Cases, Stockstills, Theriots, Carsons, Diamonds, Kelleys, Landrys, Latiolais, Dugas, Edlers, Burns, Hortons, Gauchs, Senecas, Chauvins, Carpenters, Simoneauds and Boudreauxs, just to name a few. Most of their ancestors migrated to the region from lumber communities across the United States, bringing the English language with them. Although the French speaking Acadians settled south Louisiana, English, not French, was the spoken language in their village. Old timers told me that when the spelling bees and rallies were held in St. Martinville, the Bayou Chene kids who arrived by boat, took home all the trophies because the Cajun French speaking students from St. Martinville could not compete with the English speaking students from the swamp..
My grandmother, Ma-Mom Courville, who lived at nearby Lake Dauterive, about an hour’s boat ride from Bayou Chene–depending on the speed of your boat motor–was one of the premier cooks of her time. Her legendary dishes often began at 2:30 a.m., in preparation for the meals of the day, never knowing how many friends, relatives or strangers would eat at her table. She never turned away a friend or stranger, especially someone down on his luck.
Life in my early years found me in Ma-Mom’s kitchen helping shuck corn, peel snap beans, skin catfish or just stirrin’ from her big black pot when instructed to. Sometimes when she cooked, I would see her sprinkle something in her pot that she got from a little glass jar. One day I asked her about the stuff in the jar. She told me it was a recipe from an old man who lived in Bayou Chene who was one of the best cooks in the Atchafalaya. When he came out of the swamp to trade he would always stop by to visit her family. Their neighbors would usually come by when they learned that he was there, so they could trade for his special seasoning. Everyone, including my grandmother, loved the flavor of his seasoning!
The old man planted just about everything imaginable in his large swamp garden including a variety of herbs and spices. After harvesting the ripened plants, he ground, mixed and packed them in jars to use when he prepared many swamp meals for his family and friends. He called it his Bayou Chene Seasoning. The old timers told me that when someone ate meals at his house, the food was so good— it knocked them off their feet! They would say in Cajun French, “Sã-var Foo-et Pãhrtãr!”
Quite the yarn teller, the old man always spun boyhood tales of he and his pal, Sha-Boo, like the time they took an awful lickin' when they accidently came across moonshiners making whiskey somewhere deep in the swamp and were kept in a cage hung above a snake-pit full of water moccasins ; hiding in a church confessional –overhearing confessions from unsuspecting neighbors–who chased and shot them with buckshot; caught-up in the middle of a family feud over 'wet moss' so explosive that he would animate across-the-bayou shouting of "A'hm gonna' cross over and shoot from the little one on up!" where the angry men paddled pirogues as they fired shotgun blasts at each other's families; buried treasure stories so convincing you would swear that he and Shaboo had found but somehow lost the treasures because of unbelivable incidents; nighttime alligator hunts using dynamite that blew them to "Kingdom Come" because they lit short fuses– but they somehow survived; and an amazing adventure you just wouldn't beleive iffn' I told you–so mischievous I reckon it probably would make Aunt Polly sit up in her grave grasping for a hickory switch afeard Tom had just run by–about the time they ran away from Bayou Chene and stowed on a steamboat going up the Mississippi in search of $50,000 stolen from an 1880 Missouri bank robbery–buried in a cave by one of Jessie James' gang who lived the last years of his life hiding out in the swamp–but right before he died, he told the boys where he hid the loot. At the end of his stories the old man's eyes would always light-up and he would say, " Honest ta' God, 'dis is a true story!"
Although he lived a long life and died at age 88, before he passed away, he did leave some of his recipes and a wealth of stories to my grandmother’s family. Time has fogotten the old man and Bayou Chene, but their stories lived on through my dad, my grandmother and me.
Ma Mom said she never did know his first name, but his last name was Boudreaux. Most folks called him " Mister Boudreaux".
But his friends just called him Slap.
SÃ TOO ( cest tout )
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
© 2006, 2022 Louisiana Crawfish-Man & Little Cajun Books
Louisiana Crawfish-Man and Slap Boudreaux are characters in
The 17-Book “Tales From the Atchafalaya” Collection of children’s stories.
Slap Boudreaux and Louisiana Crawfish-Man are Rregistered Trademarks.
" The Boyhood Adventures of Slap Boudreaux & Shaboo Verret " in progress...
