"Cowboy Up" AKA The Running Man

J. Berton the Cowboy

AI generated rendition of J. Berton catching a cow.

My granny Audrey Daigle loved telling stories about my grandfather, J. Berton. If you knew her, you knew she could find humor in just about anything. She laughed at other people’s misfortunes, but not in a mean way. If you fell down she would probably laugh, if she fell down she would most certainly laugh and probably twice as hard.

She always said, “There ain’t no use crying about it, that won’t change a thing.”

And one of her favorite stories to tell was about that one time J. Berton was being a “cowboy.”

We grew up with cattle around. I’m not sure when he first got cows, but as long as I can remember, they were in our pasture.

Our house and my grandparents’ house were about a quarter mile off the main highway. Back before the parish paved the roads, ours was shell and dirt. Those cows loved lying in the road where it held the warmth from the sun.

They also left giant, wet piles of manure for us to drive through. You’d head down the road and get the whole undercarriage of your car covered in it.

Boy, do I not miss those cows.

J. Berton was a self-proclaimed cattle farmer, but he didn’t have a horse. What he had was a big red Ford tractor.

Whenever those cows heard him crank it up and drive through the pasture toward the barn, they’d all come running. They knew that tractor meant fresh hay and feed.

But apparently, at some point, J. Berton decided to try his hand at using a rope.

Granny said he would practice lassoing the cows. One time, he was out in the pasture, just swinging that rope around, when he threw the lasso and actually caught one around the neck.

Well, J. Berton certainly wasn’t expecting that.

Neither was the cow.

Granny said that cow took off like its tail was on fire. The slack in the rope tightened, and the next thing she saw was J. Berton getting yanked right out of his shoes and dragged away.

Apparently, he had tied the other end of the rope to his wrist.

When that cow left, he went with it.

His shoes stayed right where he’d left them.

Audrey always said she never saw J. Berton play cowboy with a rope again.

“A Letter Worth Keeping”

This past weekend, I was doing some fall cleaning, going through boxes of things I had packed up and carried around for the last twenty-five years.

Birthday cards from when I turned thirty. Cards from our wedding. Random letters and little notes from people I hadn’t thought about in years.

Apparently, my idea of cleaning has always been putting things in a box and letting my future self deal with them.

Well, my future self finally opened the boxes.

Among all those things I kept, I found a letter from Mrs. Virgie LeBleu, thanking me for helping honor her husband, Mr. Conway.

I had kept it all these years. Reading it again took me back home to Cameron Parish.

Back to Granny and Papa. Back to Mr. Conway and Mrs. Virgie. And back to a time when many people may not know or remember that leaving Cameron Parish required a little planning and a whole lot of patience.

If you were going to Lake Charles, you had better pack a lunch.

Maybe two.

Growing up in lower Cameron Parish, crossing water was part of going anywhere. We had to deal with rivers, canals, bridges, and ferries. You could have somewhere to be and leave the house on time, but that didn’t mean the ferry or draw bridges were going to cooperate with your plans.

Growing up in a rural parish, going to “Town,” as we called Lake Charles, meant getting to the Gibbstown Ferry and sitting in a line that sometimes seemed to stretch on forever.

Doctor’s appointment. Shopping. Going to the movies. It didn’t matter. You waited your turn.

Then, coming home, you got to do it all over again.

I guess those ferry lines were some of my first lessons in patience. I can’t say I always appreciated the education.

I remember going with Granny Audrey and Papa Berton to Monkey Island to visit Granny’s niece, Robbie Bourg, and Bennie. We waited for the ferry going over, then waited again to get back home.

Years later, when I worked for the Sheriff’s Department and patrolled western Cameron Parish, I was still crossing the ship channel on the Cameron Ferry.

By then, I had plenty of experience waiting. That didn’t necessarily mean I liked it any better.

As a child in the 1970s, I remember always having to take the Gibbstown Ferry to go to “Town" . Then, somewhere along the way, there was a bridge.

I don’t remember watching it being built. In my memory, one day we were waiting on a ferry, and the next we were driving across the Intracoastal Canal.

Of course, a bridge doesn’t just appear. Somebody has to recognize the need, push for it, and keep pushing until something gets done.

Mr. Conway was one of those people.

Conway LeBleu was a state representative who served Cameron Parish and parts of Calcasieu Parish from 1964 to 1988. But to me, growing up, he was Mr. Conway.

He and his wife, Mrs. Virgie, were good friends with my grandparents. I remember him being so nice and kind to me, and I remember feeling that he looked out for the people back home.

As I got older, I understood more about what that meant.

Those ferry crossings affected people’s everyday lives. They also mattered when a hurricane was coming and everybody needed to get out. In Cameron Parish, a dependable way across the water was something families had reason to care about.

Mr. Conway understood that. He helped advocate for getting the Gibbstown Bridge funded and built, along with the Ellender Bridge.

As a child, I enjoyed the convenience without knowing much about the work behind it. Years later, I could appreciate the people who had helped make it happen.

Mr. Conway passed away in 2007.

Several of us thought naming the Gibbstown Bridge after him would be a fitting way to honor his service. People would cross that bridge every day. His name belonged there, on something that had helped the community he cared about.

I learned early on that if you want something, sometimes you have to take the initiative and ask for it. So that's what I did. I asked for it.

So in 2008 I wrote a letter to my state representative, asking for help getting the bridge renamed in Mr. Conway’s honor.

In 2009, the Louisiana legislature approved the request and the Gibbstown Bridge officially became the Conway LeBleu Memorial Bridge.

I was glad I had helped. Mr. Conway had done something that mattered for the people of Cameron Parish, and now his name would remain part of the place he had served.

Not long after I received a letter in the mail. Mrs. Virgie wrote to thank me.

She had lost her husband. Helping preserve his name meant something to her, and she took the time to let me know.

That was the letter I found in the box.

When I first received her letter, I knew it was worth keeping. But reading it again years later gave me time to think about everything behind it.

I had written a letter because I wanted someone to be remembered.

Mrs. Virgie had written one because she wanted me to know she was grateful.

Neither of us could have known that, years later, I would be sitting among old birthday cards and wedding notes, reading her words again.

By then, her letter had become part of my own history. It brought back people I cared about and reminded me that something I had taken the time to do had mattered to someone else.

You don’t always get to know that.

Sometimes you help, do what you think is right, and move on. Life gets busy. Years pass. The memory settles somewhere in the back of your mind.

Then you open a box.

I started that weekend trying to decide what I could get rid of. Mrs. Virgie’s letter reminded me why I had held on to so many of those things in the first place.

There was a person behind that piece of paper. A friendship with my grandparents. A man who had been kind to me when I was little. A community he had worked to help. And a wife who wanted me to know that remembering him had made a difference to her.

Years ago, I helped put Mr. Conway’s name on a bridge.

This past weekend, Mrs. Virgie’s letter brought all those memories back to me.

When she wrote it, she wanted me to know that something I had done mattered to her. All these years later, her words mattered to me.

I don’t think she could have known how much I would appreciate that letter one day.

But I’m glad she wrote it.

And I’m glad I kept it.

So I kept it.

Again.

At least you ain't Aunt Tillie

Aunt Tillie could tell you about nearly drowning in a hurricane, fighting off a monkey, or spending two days in an overturned car like she was telling you about going to the grocery store.

Just another day in the life of Aunt Tillie.

Tillie Murphy Mudd was my great-great-aunt on my Granny Audrey Savoie  Daigle’s side of the family. She was my Grandma Cooney’s sister, a Murphy on her father’s side and a Quinn on her mother’s side. Born in 1911, she died in 2005 at the age of 95.

When I was growing up, we would go to her house every Easter to hunt eggs. Back then, she was simply Aunt Tillie, the lady whose house we went to for Easter or came over to Granny's for Sunday lunch. It took me getting older to appreciate just how much life that woman had survived.

Granny often talked about Hurricane Audrey striking Cameron in 1957. She told us about the people who were washed away (over 500 perished), the families who lost loved ones, and the ones who somehow lived to tell about it.

One of those survivors was Aunt Tillie.

She and her mother, Annie Laura Quinn Murphy, were riding out the hurricane in their house in Cameron. Tillie said they woke up to the wind blowing and the Gulf coming toward them from the south. By the time they realized they needed to leave, water was already covering the road.

There was no getting out in the car.

They stayed in the house and prayed.

Then the wind and water lifted the house off its foundation. For a while, it floated. Then it broke apart.

Tillie tried to stay with her mother, but the storm pulled them away from each other.

She remembered waves washing over her and grabbing for anything that might keep her afloat. Somewhere in all that water and wreckage, she caught hold of a floating door.

As the storm carried her inland, she became tangled in barbed wire from a fence. There were branches and debris all around her. She remembered seeing snakes and dead animals—nutria, alligators, and cows.

Tillie floated about twelve miles north of where her house had stood, all the way to the Intracoastal Waterway. A rescue boat finally picked her up, and she was taken to St. Patrick Hospital.

Granny said that two days after the storm, her and Papa went to the hospital looking for survivors.

They walked right past Aunt Tillie’s room.

They did not recognize her.

She was so badly cut, bruised, and swollen from the wire and debris she got tangled in, that her own family could not tell who she was. Granny said it took another two days before Tillie could speak well enough to let the hospital staff know her name.

Her mother, my great-great-grandmother Laura Quinn Murphy, did not survive.

I think about that part now. The Aunt Tillie whose house we visited for Easter had been pulled away from her mother, in that very yard, in a hurricane and carried miles inland through barbed wire and wreckage. As a child, I knew the story. I don’t think I understood the weight of it.

Years later, Tillie was visiting her daughter in Houston and babysitting her granddaughter when she saw a monkey out in the yard.

Now, most people see a strange animal in the yard and leave the door shut. But Tillie called her daughter, who told her it was the neighbor’s monkey.

Apparently, that made opening the door seem reasonable.

The monkey came inside and went wild.

Tillie tried to protect her granddaughter and get it back out of the house. The monkey fought her the whole way, biting, scratching, and pulling her hair.

She said that money tore her up but all she could think at the time was to protect her granddaughter.

In fact, Aunt Tillie said fighting that monkey was worse than going through Hurricane Audrey wrapped in barbed wire.

That is quite a statement coming from someone who had done both.

But the craziest part was what they learned afterward.

It wasn’t the neighbor’s monkey.

It was another monkey.

I have always wondered - how was it possible  that so many people in Houston, Texas had pet monkeys that you could get them mixed up.

Then, when Tillie was in her late eighties and living in Bryan, Texas, she had another ordeal.

She was driving to the store one day when her car went off the road and flipped into a ditch. Apparently, the ditch was so steep and deep that nobody knew she was down there.

She wasn’t found for two days.

Two days in an overturned car, in her late eighties.

Aunt Tillie lived through things that would have been enough for several lifetimes. Yet she could tell you about them so matter-of-factly that you almost had to stop her and think about what she had just said.

So whenever you’re having a bad day, remember Aunt Tillie.

You could be wrapped in barbed wire, fighting a monkey, or lying upside down in a car somewhere.

It could always be worse.

And somehow, Aunt Tillie lived long enough to tell us about all three.

Sundays

While growing up, Sundays were always the best.

I’d wake up that morning and slowly make my way out of bed. The first order of business was off cause getting to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

But before I ever got there, I could already smell Sunday lunch.

Granny had been at it awhile.

Some weeks, she’d announce ahead of time what she was going to cook. Other weeks, she’d leave us guessing. Walking down that hallway, I’d try to figure out what was on the stove.

Gumbo was easy.

You could hear her working the pot before the smell of the Cajun Trinity hit you- the wonderful aroma of onions, bell pepper, and celery being sauteed down in a pot. The sound of the chicken browning in the hot oil—that crackling and popping that let you know something good was underway.

She’d stir and turn the pieces, scraping the bottom of the pot as she went.

Those were the sounds of Sunday morning.

By the time I made it into the kitchen, Granny would be standing there in her apron, with three or four dishes going at once. Gumbo, jambalaya, a roast, fresh vegetables, fried shrimp, or spaghetti -whatever she had decided on that week.

And if you didn’t like what everybody else was eating, she probably had something cooking for you, too.

She’d make a main dish for the family, then one or two more for the picky eaters. Preparing a whole Sunday lunch was apparently not enough work. She had to make sure everybody had something they liked- nobody was ever going to go hungry on Sunday at her house.

That was Granny.

Cooking was how she made people happy, and she put a lot of work into making us happy.

I can still picture her standing at that stove. The apron. The pots. Her stirring one thing while something else cooked beside it. Creole seasoning, butter, onions, bell pepper, and celery went into so much of what she made.

A written recipe rarely entered into the situation.

She knew what she was doing.

And then there were the desserts.

She made this fluffy cake with a vanilla flavor and cinnamon that I loved. Ask her about it, and she’d tell you it was just a box cake.

Well, that wasn’t the whole story.

It might have started in a box, but Granny added flour, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and whatever else she figured it needed.

How it started was never how it ended.

She also made fig cake and syrup cake. To this day, I still have no idea how she made those. I remember eating them just fine. Making them is another matter.

But the dessert everybody fought over was her milk pie.

“Tart a la Bouille,” as we called it in Cajun French.

I can still see her with that rolling pin, flattening the sweet dough for the crust and the top. Even the leftover dough had a purpose. She’d turn it into tea cookies.

She worked her magic with flour, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg

Then there was the custard for the milk pie.

She made it in a double boiler, stirring and keeping the temperature just right until it was ready. I knew it took some doing, but watching her, you’d think she had never had a batch give her trouble in her life.

We’d all want whatever custard was left over.

Then, once the pie was finished, we’d fight over pieces of that, too.

For a woman who spent so much time making sure everybody had enough to eat, Granny could sure make a family argue over dessert.

That’s what I remember about Sundays. Waking up tired. Making my way down the hallway. The smell of lunch already cooking. Chicken popping in the pot. Granny in her apron, getting everything ready for us.

It was just what happened every Sunday.

Even to this day I just want to wake up on a Sunday morning and hear that spoon scraping the pot just one more time..