Perrin’s ‘Vermilion Parish’ is more than a book. It’s alive Warren A. Perrin’s “Vermilion Parish,” came out June 20, and an advance copy found its way to the Meridional office. I welcomed the opportunity to review it. Maybe I should admit leaping.
However, ...
Of fastballs and turtle soup
Baseball buffs will know Satchel Paige as the ageless pitcher who didn't get his chance to play in the major leagues until he was in his 40s because the color line had not yet been broken. Even the...
Courthouse fire helped create Acadia
A fire on March 22, 1886, that destroyed the St. Landry Parish courthouse in Opelousas is at least partially responsible for the creation of Acadia Parish.
There had been an attempt some 15 years ...
Chataignier gets name from a tree
The Evangeline Parish town of Chataignier is named for a tree that isn't seen there very often anymore. It was a small tree, more commonly called a "chinquapin," that once dotted the surrounding pr...
Gold Medal Syrup took the prize
Alexandre Mouton, grandson of the governor and nephew of the general, made the best cane syrup in the world. At least that's what the judges at the St. Louis World's Fair said in 1903. They gave it...
Poppies reminders of valor At the end of World War I, the poem “In Flanders Fields” by Lt. Col. John McCrae of the Canadian army became something of a national reminder of the valor of the young men who fought and died in Fr...
A flood by the numbers Numbers are daunting for many of us.
For instance, what does 1.5 million cubic feet of water per second really mean?
Or 114,000 cfs, for that matter?
The former is what the Corps of Engineers said ...
Another good story untrue
It's hard to let go of stories linking us to heroes, such as the one that has circulated for years in Acadiana about one of Robert E. Lee's daughters dying at Avery Island. But it's almost certai...
‘Rising Tide’: A quasi Book Report” July, 1951, and rain of almost Biblical proportions had turned the flood plain of the Kansas River, the “Kaw River Valley” we called it, into a shallow lake. Headlines in the local newspaper, scre...
Charles Morgan saw opportunity
The town of Brashear City changed its name to Morgan City in 1876 in tribute to Charles Morgan, a Yankee transportation magnate who saw that the combination of a railroad leading from New Orleans a...
Booker T. Washington toured Acadiana
On April 14, 1915, one of the most influential black men in U.S. history toured south Louisiana, stopping in New Iberia, Lafayette, and Crowley.
Booker Talliaferro Washington, founder of the famous...
Mervine Kahn's was place to shop The Mervine Kahn store was one of the largest and fanciest in south Louisiana for many years but the Rayne landmark was opened almost by accident.
Kahn and Michel Schmulen were on their way to ope...
