Estherwood and the pirate Estherwood had two names before it became Estherwood: Tortue, after the Attakapas chief Celestine La Tortue, and Coulee Trief, for Jean-Baptiste Trief, a mysterious man believed to have been one of...
Even Floyd's couldn't go on forever Rod Bernard is one of a lot of folk who mourn the closing of Floyd’s Record Shop—an Acadiana institution if ever there was one.
Floyd Soileau’s record shop and his Flat Town Music Co. founded in 19...
Long time between Christmases It was just a week before Christmas in 1940 when several hundred young men from Lafayette, New Iberia, Breaux Bridge, and other parts of Acadiana boarded a train that would take them to Fort Blandi...
St. Nick celebration changed over years Before Roberts Cove began throwing its annual Germanfest in 1995, the St. Nicholas celebration each Dec. 6 was its most publicized tradition and is one that is still held dear in the community. It...
Sailor was among first casualties The governor and a host of other dignitaries were at the graveside when 23-year-old Sidney Gerald Larriviere was buried in November 1941 in Youngsville. He had been killed a month earlier in the fr...
"Green Fire," a new movie about Aldo Leopold During the summer of 1995, Kansas State University offered a month-long Institute on Environmental History. They sent me an invitation to apply and I accepted, for three reasons:
First, my teachin...
Voting tales It is said that politics is the most-followed spectator sport in Louisiana — though lots of people would argue about the "spectator" part.
At least in the good old days, everyone participated, some...
Where was Bowie knife made? Campbell's Ferry isn't much more than a memory now, but it has been argued that the river crossing in Vermilion Parish is the real birthplace of Jim Bowie's legendary knife.
The ferry (name...
It began with a fiddle You'd never guess it today, when half the world comes to south Louisiana to listen to the sounds of a Cajun fiddle, zydeco accordion, or saxophone wailing out a swamp pop lick, but there wasn't a g...
Chenieres have romantic history The word cheniere is unique to the Cajun coast, as are the little islands it describes. The word comes from the Acadian word chene, meaning "oak," and describes groves of live oak trees bent by the...
Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée may have been first The earliest European community in what is now Acadia Parish was probably on Bayou Plaquemine Brulee. Some historians say this was the earliest American settlement in south Louisiana (the other ear...
St. Mary native raced Nellie Bly around the world When Nellie Bly died in 1922, the New York Evening Herald called her "the best reporter in America." She pioneered investigative journalism, feigning insanity to get herself committed to an asylum...
