Another catch up

Boy, it is really hard to keep up to date. The days are flying by and we are having way too much fun. Betty took us to a friend of hers who does woodworking, mostly bowl turning. He lives kind of out in the country and has been collecting cypress wood out of the bayou’s for about 30 years. He has wood stacked and piled all over his property. Cypress wood has been illegal to cut since 1927, but there are still lots of stumps out in the bayou that I guess break loose over the years.

He gave us a tour of his house, which he built including all of the cabinets and interior woodwork.   Linda ended up “winning” the bowl that he turned while we were there.

After leaving there we went to a restaurant for lunch and Linda and I had shrimp po’ boys. They were jammed packed full of shrimp and very wonderful to eat.

The outside of the building has murals painted on it, and if Betty had not told us the food was great, we would never had stopped….it is not a very attractive building and the area it is in is not real great…..but the food sure was.

After a short break we went to the town of Erath where they have a museum of Acadian culture, run by a local Cajun lawyer. It is full of history and he took time out to give us a personal history of the Acadian people. Very interesting, and somewhat sad story. There is a local legend and semi-famous singer who lives in Erath and he was at the museum when we got there. His name is  D.L. Menard and he has performed all over the world and was at the last Grammy awards having been nominated for one of his songs. You can go on YouTube and watch and listen to his music. He sang three of his songs for us including one he wrote which is the most played Cajun song ever recorded.

Saturday afternoon we went to Touchet’s Bar in Maurice, LA for a Cajun music jam session. What a wonderful time we had. The music was great. The musicians sign up to play and they change every 20 minutes or so….a lot of accordion's and all of the songs are in French (Cajun French that is) it was hard to get good pictures as we just took the point and shoot, but here are the best ones

as you can see, we are having a great time.

The bar’s motto is “helping ugly people get laid since 1976”

Today, being Sunday was another crazy day, with bloody mary’s at about 10 am. Betty had kind of a flea market and anyone could bring stuff for sale. Some nice stuff that Linda and others took advantage of, hats, jewelry, purses…..but nothing for the guys.  Beverages had been flowing for a while and continued until happy hour, when they continued to flow, along with some game that Betty started.  I think the pictures tell it all, you had to get the plunger into the toilet paper roll.

We will try and take some better pictures for you so you can have a fun break while you are slaving away at work.

love to all of you

Jim and Linda