Remembering a Cajun boucherie

During my life time there were events that questioned whether or not our nation could survive. The Great Depression, World War H. Korea, Viet Nam and new our major political parties. I like to remember poorer but happier rimes as a Cajun growing up in South Louisiana, There are fewer of us as there was a while ago.

Join me as I slip back into my column’s Time Machine” and bring back memories of historic tunas when we Lad no electricity, phone, running water, gas or auto rep sir bills because we had no auras. We read with and fought the night with lamps burning kerosene (we called it coal oil) casting $.15 cents a gallon. We cooked on a wood stove, communicated by rural free delivery with 4.03 cent stamps, used our cistern to collect water and the mosquito larval were lagniappe. The better offs had radios powered by batteries and doctors would make house calls a $3.00 a visit and accepted eggs for payment vie had a $.10 block of ice delivered daily and everybody had at least one fisherman in the family whose seafood was shared, not Face Book sharing either.

As the greet Blue Yodler of the day Jimmie Rodgers sang “we got pigs at the trough tators in the patch, cam in the alb and hens about to hatch. A bull and a cow, a mule and a plow and there ain’t no hard times here.”

Not everybody could brag they had all that but the Cajuns weathered the Great Depression better than the nation as a whole and as the song asked “‘Who could ask for: anything more”

And we had boucheries…. Ah.! the boucheries creme de la crème. Almost every week someone, somewhere in the community, a Mend, a relative or a neighbor had a boucherie and everyone was invited. I’ll describe this joyful event in graphic details with a warning—not for the squeamish!

First, you needed a hog or two and have somebody kill them. In my family the executor was a kind and gentle person, (think Hoss Cartwright), Uncle Rosulus” Lou Lou” Callais, because he owned a hand gun.

A boucherie was a neighborhood affair with aunts, uncles, cousins and friends helping with the cooking, cleaning

and preparing of the boudin. blood (or anemic) sausage, stew, cracklings, (“gratons”) and “grillades”, (pork cutlets) Everything on the pig was eatable: ears, snout, brain, feet liver and kidneys. Everything but the squeal of the poor pig, and they would have battled that if it had been possible.

Then everybody did what they did beat. The men rendered the lard and made “gratins” in cast iron kettles over a wood fire. The ladies took the entrails (the worst job) to wash in Bayou Lafourche for boudin casings.

The grillades were stacked in S gallon white day jars and covered with lard for preservation during the winter.

The bladders were dried and inflated and given to the kids to play catch. That left the head which was given, to my maiden Aunt Sarah. Callais to make and sell hog head cheese, her only source of income. (No welfare for disabled then, which she was). She did however make the best hog head cheese which she boiled in our kitchen The smell? Terrible! The results? Delicious. She lived with us from my birth to her death a blessing to me and Mama. She then let it jell and cut it into pizza slices and after school I would peddle it door to door at 5 or 10 cent a slice. When I mentioned it was made by Aunt Sarah they would sometimes buy another piece since she was known for quality and taste.

As the day ended every guest got to take home portions of the finished product the sun was setting, God was in his throne and all was right with the world. These were people who were happy with their plight even in the Great Depression. They knew not that just a few years away the “Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse” would bring to them and the world the most destructive, despicable and disastrous war in history, BYE NOW.

Remembering a Cajun boucherieRemembering a Cajun boucherie