"If what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, then just call me Arnold Schwarzenegger."

AKA "A Louisiana Hayride"

AKA "Just hanging around"

I am lucky to be alive.

No, really, I feel like a cat with nine lives. 

Growing up in Southwest Louisiana, I had more than a few misfortunes that, thank the Lord, didn’t cost me my life or a limb.

There was the time I was about 13 or 14 years old and I was riding our brand-new yellow Yamaha three-wheeler down Murphy Lane going to Grandma Coonies House. As I was speeding down the parish road, instead of watching where I was going, I glanced backward to see if any cars were coming. BIG MISTAKE.

The next thing I knew, I'm opening my eyes while lying on my back in the marsh beside the road.

Apparently, if you’re hauling ass on a three-wheeler, veer off the road, and hit a fence, the chances of you flying over the handlebars and landing in the mud are pretty damned good.

I was lucky I didn’t break a bone or even get a scratch.

No helmet. No supervision.

Those were the ’80s.

Big Josh and Granny showing off the Yellow Death Machine.

Then there was the trampoline we owned.

We all hear stories now about kids and adults breaking or dislocating something at these trampoline parks. Well, we had a rectangular trampoline in our yard. Yep, a weirdly shaped rectangle trampoline, not one of these modern round ones with a safety net going around it.

We jumped on that thing every day— we would do flips, wrestling with each other, or trying to double bounce somebody else as high as we could make them go. 

I can’t tell you how many times I fell off that thing and hit the ground. Or, even worse, one time I missed the edge and got caught in the springs, hanging upside down.

Again, not a broken bone or a scratch, but let's just say I sure am lucky I was still able to have kids.

Two Bros on Death Trap- Me contemplating my life choices while Jimmy Noe does his ventriloquist dummy impression.

Now, the fence-post driver was a totally different story.

My grandfather, J. Berton, raised cattle. If you have cows, you have fences. And if you have fences, you’re going to spend a good portion of your life fixing them.

Rotten post. Broken posts. Broken barbed wire. It was always something.

Well this one time when I was about sixteen, my dad, my grandfather J. Berton, and I were repairing the fence in our front pasture beside the main highway. We were using a two-man post driver to pound wooden fence posts into the ground.

That thing probably weighed thirty or forty pounds. One person stood on each side of the fence, and together we’d lift it and pull it down over the post.

After about six or seven hits, the post had gone about a foot into the ground. We lifted the driver for over last swing, but this time it caught on the top edge of the post.

Well, gravity and momentum do have an effect on moving objects.

Of course I was the shortest one and also standing on the lower ground. When I pulled down, that driver tilted and came right in my direction, landing right onto the top of my head.

No hard hat. No safety equipment. No OSHA standards.

Just me and about thirty-five pounds of post driver.

It didn’t knock me out, but I saw stars and spit out a few broken teeth.

J. Berton never missed a beat.

He grabbed the next post, and they got back to work.

I slowly walked home, staggering and weaving. The next day, I went to the dentist and had several teeth patched up.

Forty years later, I’m still paying for that one. Several root canals and crowns later, the fence post incident lives on. 

Modern Day Fence Post Driver AKA "The Head Knocker" 

But one incident I remember best happened when I was about seven.

J. Berton was getting ready to pick up hay from our pasture and store it in the barn to feed the cows through the winter. 

A neighbor would cut the grass, let it dry for a week or so, then come back and bale it.

The square bales would drop out of the baler in rows across the pasture. A crew of men followed with a truck pulling a flatbed trailer. Some walked alongside, throwing bales up, while somebody on the trailer lined them up and stacked them.

By the time they finished a load, there might be twenty-five or thirty bales on there.

The trailer sat about three or four feet off the ground, with the hay stacked another ten or twelve feet high. From the top of that load to the ground, it might have been twelve to fifteen feet.

When the trailer was full, we’d all pile into the back of the truck or ride on top of the hay and head to the barn to unload.

On one of those trips after filling the wagon, there I was, sitting on top of the load, living my best seven-year-old life.

To get back to the barn, we had to pass through a gate. Beside that gate stood a pine tree, probably fifty feet tall. One of its limbs stretched right across the entrance, about fifteen feet above the ground.

Now, a seven-year-old sitting on top of a load of hay doesn’t spend much time thinking about consequences, geometry, or the future.

As we slowly rolled through the gate, I reached up and grabbed that pine limb.

Physics was not yet in my vocabulary.

As the trailer kept moving forward, I did not.

That load of hay slowly moved out from under my nice, comfortable rear end, leaving me hanging from the tree.

There I was, dangling above the ground, watching my ride slowly sail off toward the barn.

To this day, I’m not sure how I managed to hold on. I didn’t slip, and I didn’t let go.

Thank the Lord.

Somehow, they got the driver’s attention. They turned around, came back, and picked me up from the tree.

Through all those adventures, I never broke a bone or went to the hospital, although I probably should have gone a time or two.. or five.

I did learn one thing on that hayride, though.

Keep your hands to yourself.

It’s safer that way.

“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.

The Storm

24 SEPTEMBER 2005

It’s been 21 years since I’ve been back home. 

Not back to Cameron Parish. I’ve been back plenty of times over the years. But back to the home where I grew up. 

 After Hurricane Rita made landfall in September 2005 and destroyed almost everything in its path, there really wasn’t much of a home to return to. 

When the forecasts started showing the eye of Rita passing almost directly over Cameron as a Category 5 hurricane, we knew it was going to be bad. We had lived through hurricanes all our lives. In Cameron Parish, hurricanes were just part of life. But we didn’t know it was going to be that bad. 

 We packed whatever we could fit into an SUV and a pickup truck. My grandparents left behind Magnalite pots. Clothes. Dishes. Pantry full of cast iron pots and pans. Tools. Fishing Rods and Reels.

Audrey Daigle standing in her kitchen summer of 2005, right before Rita's devistation.
Getting her big Magnalite pot ready to cook up something delicious.

I left all my childhood and High school memorabilia, packed away in a trunk.

When you are in the direct path of a storm and landfall is imminent, you have to decide which pieces of your life are worth saving. 

And then we left. 

More than 30 years of my memories stayed behind. 

Two days after the storm, I went back to see the destruction first hand. I had already seen the aerial footage on television. I had seen the pictures and heard the reports. But none of it prepared me for what it looked like when I saw it with my own eyes. 

Driving over the Conway LeBleu Memorial Bridge—the Gibbstown Bridge for all the old people—I started realizing just how bad it was. 

Passing over the bridge for as far south as I could see there were telephone poles leaning nearly on their sides. Mounds of marsh mud four feet high lined the highway for miles. 

Then I started seeing houses. 

Except they weren’t where houses were supposed to be. They were sitting out in the middle of the marsh, some of them miles from where they had once stood. 

That was when I knew. 

The closer I got to home, the less there was. Houses were completely gone from their foundations. Trees had been ripped from the earth. Yards looked like they had been sandblasted. Places that had been green and familiar my entire life were nothing but bare dirt, mud and debris. The strangest part was how disoriented I became. I had driven Highway 82 between Creole and Cameron more times than I could ever count. I knew every curve in that road. I knew where every house was, every mailbox, every little landmark you used without even realizing you were using it. Now they were all gone. I remember going around curves I had traveled my entire life and, for a few seconds, not knowing where I was. 

Everything looked foreign. 

At one point, I nearly drove past the driveway to our own property. 

There were no street signs. 

No mailboxes. 

No telephone poles. 

No neighboring houses. 

Nothing to tell me, This is home. I finally turned into the driveway and drove toward the place where I had spent the first 30 years of my life.

135 Daigle Road-First view of where the house used to be.

And there was nothing left but the steps that had gone up to the front door.

My grandmother Audrey sitting on the front steps of where
the home she knew for 50 years once was.

Everything else was just an empty yard. 

The 2500 sqft house was gone. 

The portable building where they cooked and held Friday night card games was gone. 

The garage that held the freezers of my grandfather J. Berton's bait shrimp and fish were gone. 

The two outdoor buildings where J. Berton kept his tools and garden equipment was gone. 

Everything. 

I remember sitting there stunned, trying to comprehend the emptiness of it. 

You spend your whole life thinking of home as a permanent place. 

Houses change. 

People get older. 

Families move away. 

But somewhere in the back of your mind, you believe the place itself will always be there. You think you can always go back.

Until one day you can't. 

For 21 years, I haven't really gone back to that spot. Maybe parts of me don't want to see an empty piece of ground and be reminded of where an entire childhood once existed. But lately I've been thinking about going back. I'm not sure if it's for Nostalgia or just to Reminisce. Not because I expect to find the house. I know it isn't there.

 But maybe home isn't always the house. 

Maybe sometimes it's just the piece of ground underneath it—and all the memories that never washed away.