Bayou Water

Bayou water flows in my veins. 

I was raised in the bayous of Louisiana back when it wasn’t a vacation to take boat rides through the swamps and watch an alligator slide off the muddy bank and the white heron fly over the murky waters of Cajun country.

 Back in the 1950’s, if you were in the bayous, you were there to make a living catching crabs, fish, or crawfish, and you were part of the bottom feeder class--as far as townspeople were concerned.

When I decided to become a children’s book writer, I wanted to write what I knew about--and that was Louisiana bayou country. 

My first Middle Grade fiction novel, The Legend of GhostDog Island is about a young girl living on the bayou in 1956. After hearing about a legend that a creature is living on a nearby swamp island that steals the souls of dogs during the full moon, she becomes involved with trying to find the truth behind the legend…before it gets her beloved beagle.

Artwork and Comments from Ms. Reilly's fourth graders

I recently had the delightful experience of having my manuscript for The Legend of Ghost Dog Island reviewed by the fourth graders of Ms. Karen Reilly’s Yorktown Elementary Literature Circle.  The children drew pictures and made valuable and honest comments. I like to thank each and every one of them for their wonderful contribution, and share their drawings and character comments here.

Alexis L.

This drawing by Alexis L. shows the Landry family as they travel to their new bayou home. In her comments she says Nikki, the main character, is curious because she wanted to know about Papa's legend stories and what was on the island. She also though she was responsible because she looked after her little brother, and calm because she didn't scream when her dad told her about the legend. Nice job, Alexis.

Emma R.

Emma R. did a wonderful job drawing Nikki and Snooper. She felt that Papa was strong because of his big strong hands and they way his arms bulged when he picked up the crab crates. She thought he was caring because he asked Nikki what was on her mind and the way he reassured her about the island. He was also responsible because he made sure he put food on the table and did his job no matter what. Nice drawing, Emma.

Grace D.

Grace D. drew a very colorful boat with flags. She thought Nikki was curious about what the sound on the island was and what Papa was going to tell her about the bayous. She thought she was also dirty because she didn't change her muddy pants, but she was brave to get out of the house and when she listened to the legend story. Wonderful, Grace.

Julia H.

Our next picture is from Julia H. She has Nikki sitting on the deck with her dog, Snooper. She even has ghostly dogs howling and hovering over the island. Whoa! Great imagination, Julia. Julia felt that Nikki might have been scared when she pulled the covers over her head after hearing the sound on the roof and the shadow across the window. She might have been curious about the article on the storekeepers wall and when she asked her father about his Cajun French language, and polite when asking for something from the storekeeper. Love the ghosties, Julia.

Meagan F.

Here is a nice detailed picture of Nikki's houseboat, by Meagan F. Nikki is sitting on the back of the deck with her feet hanging over the dangerous bayou water. That may even be a snake swimming nearby and a ghostly dog howling from the trees. Meagan felt Nikki was calm when she thought something was watching her from the bushes. She was brave because she didn't cry and when she opened the mysterious blue bottle she found in the water. But Nikki was judgemental when she thought the city dwellers in her new town wouldn't welcome her. Nice detail, Meagan.

Michael M.

Michael M. drew a nice simple stick picture of Nikki with Snooper, and an island tree. Michael thought Nikki was curious about the noises from the island and the shadow in the window, and that she was brave about the whole thing. He felt that Nikki might have been rude when it came to her comments about hating Morgan City. Love your simplicity, Michael.

Nasia B.

Nasia B. drew a nice picture of Nikki and Snooper in a pirogue. She wrote character traits for Jesse, Nikki's little brother. She felt he was young based on Nikki's comments that he was four years old. She felt he might have been bad, because Nikki had said he was "peskier than a fly at a crawfish boil," and that he repeated everything Nikki said. But he was scared when he grabbed hold of his mama's leg and buried his face in her apron when he heard the howling sound, and again when something moved in the back of the truck. Great picture and comments, Nasia.

Neelia L.

Neelia L. drew pictures of a storm and a ghost dog. Pretty scary. Neelia thought Nikki was curious when she wanted to know what the howling was. But she was brave when she dangled her feet over the edge of the boat with alligators and other wild living things in the lake and swamp. Nelia also thought Nikki was messy because she doesn't care if her clothes are muddy. Nice and spooky, Neelia.

Reyna M.

Reyna M. has a picture of Nikki who appears to be scared and Mama and Jesse and Snooper nearby. and are those eyes in the bushes? Reyna felt Nikki was curious when she jumped up with bumps as big as balls from a chinaberry tree all over her skin and felt like something was watching her. She was also messy because she didn't care if she had mud all over her clothes. But Reyna thought Nikki was selfish when she thought most city dwellers weren't too welcoming to her kind--being on the wrong side of the levee and all. Love the facial expressions on your characters, Reyna. Oh, and thank you for your additional notes to the author on the back of your sheet. As you can see my book DID get accepted for publication. I hope you get to read it in full.


I'd also like to thank Ms. Reilly for the wonderful job she is doing with the students. Their Literature Circle Booklets show that they have really analyzed the story.

The Legend of Ghost Dog Island—Coming out this November from Musa Publishing.

For all the men and women in our armed forces

Mothers are Special

God made mothers in a special way.

He gave them the extra patience a mother needs when babies cry and have tantrums, and decide that throwing their food is more fun than eating it.

He gave them extra strength to endure the pain of childbirth, yet love the tiny creature that caused it.

 He gave them extra stamina to stay up all night rocking a sickly child when all others are sound asleep.

But most of all he gave them the extra capacity for unconditional love. They are able to love their children that have gone astray when all others have given up on them.  

He has blessed mothers that they are able to nurture a child that doesn’t belong to them.

And we mustn’t forget that grandmothers are double special!

Happy mother’s day to all women!

Happy Birthday Louisiana

Happy Birthday, Louisiana

The Old Bus

from Stories of Bayou Life

The one place I remember living in my young life as a fisherman’s daughter was the bus on the levee in Morgan City, Louisiana, in the 1950’s.

There were six of us living in an abandoned Greyhound bus. My parents, my step-brother, and my other two siblings. I will say it was cozy, but I don’t remember feeling crowded. Mama had a kerosene stove in the front next to where the bus driver seat was. It was fun opening the folding doors. We had mattresses piled at the back end of the bus that we laid out on the floor at night.

This was in the days before welfare as we know it. In today’s world of government control over family life, I can imagine that we would have been taken away from our parents to live in foster care with strangers. But, we had everything we needed in that little bus, included the love and care of our parents. We eventually moved into better housing, probably a houseboat or trailer, but we always stayed together. All of my siblings and I grew up to be hard working citizens, which is proof that living in poverty does not have to make you dependent on the government. Would being on government support have made us lazy and not motivated to do better? One can only speculate.

The Hermit Crab

from Stories of Bayou Life

I grew up living on the gulf coast, but when our family first moved to Cameron, Louisiana, in 1957, I met the funny little hermit crab for the first time.

My brother and I walked along the sandy coast in our bare feet on a hot June day. We saw the strangest thing. Shells were moving across the sand. When we approached them, the legs that had propelled them, withdrew into the shell. The strangest thing to me was that the shells didn’t seem to be of any specific type. I was eleven, and of course, I had to ponder on that. It was as if some pointy-legged thing had crawled into the shell and borrowed it to hide in. I had to figure this out.

I had nothing to carry them in, so I gathered a few of them in the skirt of my dress. My brother stuffed some into his pockets. Carrying as many as we could, we hauled them back home.

We set them down on the front porch and began our experiments.  We tried to get them to come out of their shells. We learned if we turned them over, they'd come almost all the way out to right their shells. We had races with them, drawing a circle with chalk and seeing whose would leave the circle first. They were very entertaining at a time when we had no television. Well some folks did, but we didn't. We had to make our own fun. And, once Mama told us what they were, our hermit crabs were lots of fun. 

 That night, we put them in a box on the table. Surely they'd be safe there until we could play with them again in the morning.

But when morning came, the box was empty. Where did they go? We soon found them in every corner of the house, under furniture, and in shoes. Some of them had died in their attempt to find water.

We learned a valuable lesson. Don't take a creature out of its habitat no matter how fun it is to play with. We could walk to the beach and play with them in their home, but not ours.

About hermit crabs:

 Hermit crabs are not born in those shells. They use them to protect their bodies. When they outgrow the shell they are in, they look for a bigger one, and crawl in. That is why they are called hermit crabs. There's a lot more information on Wikipedia. Watch the video of a hermit crab changing shells. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jZe_VGLRYI

 Some people buy these crabs for pets, and keep them in an aquarium. But before you do this, be sure and get familiar with the care and feeding of them.

Hurricane Audrey

from Stories of Bayou Life
Hurricane Audrey, 1957, Cameron, Louisiana.

Water and more water

 It was June of 1957. We had evacuated to the one building in town that seemed sturdy enough to withstand the winds and water that were quickly coming ashore the small southwest Louisiana town.

 The water came in, not with a crashing blow, but swiftly and with purpose, lifting houses from their foundations, ripping propane tanks from their anchors, and shooing people from their homes like they were mere ants. And the water kept coming.

 Houses floated by with people on the roofs, shouting for someone to help them. People floated by on mattresses, waving and crying. No one in our building could help them. We had no way to reach them from the third floor where we were all stranded at the mercy of Mother Nature…or God.

 It would be 24 hours before the water receded, leaving an unimaginable pile of mud, upside down houses, cars parked on top of each other, and even boats in trees. We were still stranded, as power lines lay like one of those games kids played on the school ground, where they made designs between their fingers with a piece of string.

 Food was brought in by men that were brave enough to go out and loot the demolished grocery stores. We finally  had something in our stomachs, since we’d arrived with no thought of having to bring something to eat, but merely to save our lives.

 Another day passed, when we were herded out of the building like cattle on their way to slaughter, over ramps that had been placed over the debris for our safety.

 It would be a long time before the town of Cameron, Louisiana would repopulate, and the citizens that survived there in 1957 would get back on their feet. But come back they did, with only the help of family and friends, they came back strong.

Selling Crabs - a story short

One of my story shorts about life on the bayou in the 1950's.  They are from my childhood memories, injected with a little fiction to round them out. This one was one of our summer jobs on the levee.

Selling Crabs on the Levee

“Here comes a car,” I told my brother, George, who jumped to pick up a pair of metal tongs.

We’d been standing on the road beside the levee all afternoon trying to sell a bushel full of crabs for Dad, and as soon as it was empty, we could go play.

These crabs were too small for the restaurant where he usually sold them. But, they were still pretty good eating.

Standing next to our sign propped against a stick, boasting ‘fresh crabs, 50 cents a dozen,’ we must have looked pretty shabby—a couple of grade schoolers, barefoot, with baggy clothes.

The car pulled over. A heavy set man stepped out with a grin on his face and looked into the basket of squirming crabs, bubbles oozing from their mouths.

“They’re kinda small.” He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels. “I’ll give you forty cents.” He shook out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips.

We looked at each other. “We gotta git fifty for ‘em. Daddy says,” George told the man.

“They’re really fat crabs,” I said. “Good and heavy. Wanna feel one of ‘em?”

The man lit up his cigarette, took a long draw, and threw the match on the ground, as he bent over the wooden basket, eyeing the blue critters, who were looking warily back at him with their pincers all aimed up.

George reached in with the tongs, grabbed one, and held it out. “Grab it by the back, or it’ll get ya good.”

“I know how to handle a crab,” the man said with his cigarette wiggling up and down as he talked. He held out his hand and took the crab by the back of its shell, as George let go. “He is pretty heavy. Guess I’ll take a couple doz…” His fingers slipped from the damp shell, and the crab fell to the ground.

We all jumped back, watching for where it would go. It happened to run sideways—like crabs always do—toward George’s bare foot.

“Watch it!” I pushed him out of the way, knocking over the bushel of crabs. “Oh no!”

Crabs began to scurry every which way, trying to get away from us—and the man that wanted them for supper.

“I ain’t got time for this nonsense!” The man flipped his cigarette toward the lake, jumped into his car, and drove away.

It took us the rest of the afternoon to get all those crabs gathered up and back in the bushel, while a few cars slowed down, folks gawking at us as they passed. No one stopped to help, or to buy any.

As the sun got low, we carried our basket back over the levee to where Mama would fixing supper in our small shack by the bayou. We made our way out to the end of the pier and dumped them into the gumbo colored water—to live another day.

Family

This Christmas season I am reminded of family and what makes us who we are.

I have spent almost half my life doing family research. I have come to learn so much about the people that made me who I am.

My family came to this country from Canada, France, Spain, Sweden, and Italy to make a life in this country and, by the grace of God, ended up in Louisiana. Some came by force and some by choice. They struggled to overcome many odds. They had many children, and lost many children. They built land out of swamps and fought the hurricanes that bombarded the gulf coast seasonally like clockwork. They fished the bayous and grew sugarcane. They sold vegetables on the streets of New Orleans. They plucked, shucked, and sold oysters from the gulf.

A family structure can be strong…or weak. I am glad to be part of a family that is Cajun strong. God bless my family. I would not be what I am without all that came before. 

Swamp Folk

Just got back from Pierre Part, Louisiana visiting my brother and his wife. Ran into Troy Landry, from the Swamp People series on History Channel, at the local gas station. CHOOT EM!!!

Amazing Grace sung in Cajun French

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cDRoKY6QEaI

St. Mary Parish, Louisiana video with song by Aaron Neville

Photos from St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. Mostly from Morgan City. Home of Nikki Landry in the Legend of Ghost Dog Island.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDJZNq6Mh4&feature=player_embedded

Ellabug by Gregory Turner-Rahman



Bayou Ellabug and her cousin, Gerard the Gator

I am please to welcome Ellabug to Tales from the Bayou.  She visits us today riding on the back of her cousin, Gerard the Gator. Hello Ellabug!!!!

Don't you just love the picture her creator, Gregory Turner-Rahman did especially for her visit to my blog? I am so honored.

Ahem.  So, now what she came here for...a stop on her blog tour.

About Ellabug:  Ellabug is a delightful picture book story of a very lovable young ladybug, Ellabug, who lives with a diverse family—VERY diverse. Her dad’s a rat and her mother’s a chipmunk. All of her relatives seem to be of a different species from her.

 As Ellabug wonders about other families and wanders off to explore them, she finds a colony of ants. They are all alike. But being alike isn’t all there is to being in a happy family. Ellabug realizes that she wants to go back home, but where is she? Will Ellabug find her way home?

Gregory Turner-Rahman has done a wonderful job of both writing in rhyme and creating the beautiful illustrations for this book.

See Ellabug's video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-U48dm2Zt4-Rahman

About Gregory: Gregory Turner-Rahman is currently a professor at the University of Idaho and teaches history, how to create art on a computer, and how to think and communicate visually.

Hello Greg and welcome to my blog. I have a few questions for you that our visitors might like to know.

Where did you come up with the idea for Ellabug, especially her unusual family?

I made up Ellabug when my eldest daughter was very young. We’d read together every night. Actually, we still do – it’s always the best part of my day! She's a teenager now so she probably won't admit to this but when she was small she too loved that time together and wouldn’t want to go to bed. She would try to delay the inevitable by asking me to tell her a story. Ellabug was one of the more polished creations.

This story resonated because my daughter had entered daycare and we began to worry that she saw herself as different from the other kids. We are a multi-racial and multi-cultural family and she started to notice this at very early age. I thought the multi-animal family would be a fun way to talk about the issue to younger kids.

The story revolves around Ellabug’s family and its uniqueness so there is not a lot of action for a big part of the book – it’s a protracted introduction to the characters that surround her. Subsequently, I worked to make it interesting and all the animals truly individuals. Each one is meant to be scruffy and loveable like a well-loved stuffed animal.

I had so much fun creating the family I wanted to use the sketches from initial versions of family members in the final book. I thought about having the pictures of the extended family on the walls of Ellabug's house or as the endpapers (see below). In the end, it seemed like overkill. Although, I must say, I really love the duck with the combover.

Do you have any other books out that we might be able to check out?

Not just yet. Ellabug was my first publication. I do have several new stories in the works. I am starting the drawings for a story called Mike? that also addresses the issue of identity but in a very different way. Keep an eye out for it.

I see you did the art as well as the story. Which came first?

The story really did come first. For me it has to. It gives direction for the artwork. If I get too far along without having resolved the story then both sides of my brain claim dominion over the project. If the story is done, the left brain can relax and feel chuffed while the right brain struts its stuff.

Why did you decide to write Ellabug as a rhyming picture book?

Ok, so you know I created these stories for my daughter - what I am not telling you is that I was really awful at doing it. I couldn’t conjure them up on the spot. So, I’d often squirrel myself away and think up a quick little synopsis for the next night’s story. Ellabug was probably one of the first and it rhymes so that I could remember it. It worked so well that some 7 years later I was able to put it on paper.

Would you like to ask our visitors a question?

Is it important for a children’s book to have a message?

Please leave a comment for Greg or just say hello!

Purchase Ellabug or learn more about Ellabug and Gregory Turner-Rahman at:
http://www.amazon.com/Gregory-Turner-Rahman/e/B003I2B71I
Ellabug is published by Diversion Press
http://www.diversionpress.com/home

Pierre Part, Louisiana

Pierre Part is the setting for my children's Middle Grade fiction, The Legend of Ghost Dog Island.

Pierre Part was founded by Acadian French settlers after the Great Upheaval of 1755, during which much of the French population of Acadia was expelled by its British conquerors. The town remained isolated from most of the world since it is surrounded by water and was not accessible by land until the mid twentieth century. Before the Great Depression the inhabitants of Pierre Part were fisherman. After the Great Depression many men of the town were forced to find work in other fields including logging, levee building, and the growing petroleum industry in Louisiana. Fewer people continue the traditional ways of fishing and living off the land with each generation.

The people of Pierre Part are predominantly of French ancestry, of families who either came directly from France or those who came from Canada (Acadia), and before that, France. Until the early- to mid-twentieth century the people almost exclusively spoke Cajun French at home. This caused the people of Pierre Part and the rest of the Cajun community to labeled as "backwards" or "ignorant" by outsiders, and in many cases from the 1910s to the 1970s, students whose first language was French were punished corporally in school for speaking it. By the 1970s onward extremely few children were taught Cajun French as a first language since the previous generations were taught to be ashamed of their heritage. In the 1990s an effort was made to reintroduce French into the school systems. This became somewhat controversial as the French taught in school was not Cajun French. Many of the teachers brought in were Belgian, French, and Canadian who taught their own dialect of French. However, there are still many who contend that the "Standard French" taught in French Immersion classes at Pierre Part Elementary School is the best chance that local Cajuns have at preserving their language and culture, since there is no written standard for teaching the Cajun dialect of the French language. In 2010 the show Swamp People started recording their show here.

Article facts taken from Wikipedia 4/2/11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Part,_Louisiana