Columns

As I poke around among stories and recollections of times gone by, I am continually reminded of how isolated much of south Louisiana was before highways began to connect us, and that our isolation lasted for a good deal longer than we might expect.
That especially applies to places like Cheniere au Tiger, which still has no road, and Pecan Island, which wasn’t connected with the rest of the world by even a shell road until the 1950s. That separation created situations we can hardly imagine today.

As the new year began a half century ago in 1951 there was a big stir in the newspapers about a woman who lived “almost in the heart of Eunice” who was “in the power of a witch doctor.”
The story was first published on the front page of the Opelousas Daily World under the headline,”Voo-Doo Comes Alive In Heart of Eunice As Woman Turns To Mystic For Herb Cure.”

I don’t know why I kept it in the first place, or even how it fell into my hands, but one of the things that I haul out every Christmas season, along with the tree lights and decorations, wreaths for the door, and an old nativity set, is the December 23, 1950, edition of Collier’s magazine.
The covers barely cling to frayed pages and, just like me (I was six years old in 1950), it’s beginning to show its age. But I’ve kept it as a reminder of the simpler Christmases we celebrated when I was a boy, and of things that still are the essence of the season for me.