Second Weekend in October

Raise your hand if you realize that this Friday will be the second full weekend in October and that a long time ago, on a bayou not so far way, we would all be getting pumped up for Lagniappe on the Bayou. If you don't...you can stop reading this now. For those of you who do, let's take a minute and remember what it was like to "Come and Pass a good time!" 

God, I miss Lagniappe more than just about anything else that I can think of that I have lost or grown too old to still enjoy. I miss everything. The tastes. The sounds. The smells. I miss it all.

I miss Pop Rouge Ice cream, Shrimp Buletts, the hot homemade bread. I miss Bob-Bae Carlos and all the old boys in the Jambalaya stand arguing over when to put on the next pot of white beans. I miss knowing that every year, without fail, I would find myself sitting in the rustiest folding chair in all of Chauvin for at least 2 hours watching the best lil Cajun talent show ever in Red Dog Saloon.

"Monsta wheel! Monsta wheel! Come an take a try at the Monsta Wheel! Stick around, in one hour we gonna play the dolla game and give away dat Big Ole LSU Tigah!" I can still hear that ringing out over the crowd. It seems like they always had a big LSU Tiger to give away.

I miss the cling clang sounds of the nickel toss. The sound of coins bouncing off the sides of Ash trays, Schlitz glasses and shot glasses were music to my ears. At our camp, we still have a fair beer mug with the Lagniappe logo on it that I won one day. I put a piece of freezer tape on on the bottom and wrote my name on it so everyone would know that it was mine. The tape is still there after all these years...even though the fair is not.

I miss the rides. I miss the Trabant and the Scrambler. I miss the Cobra (the scariest ride ever conceived by man, by the way.) I miss that cage swing thing that you had to push and pull back and forth to make it go around. Man, the fist time you made that thing flip you and your boys were champs! I miss the smell of those burlap sacks you had to use to go down that big yellow slide.

I miss all those palmettos everywhere. Thousands of them that people had gathered in the days and weeks leading up to the fair and had painstakingly stapled and nailed to the family stand that would be their home for the best three days of the year. By Sunday, the only things that outnumbered the palmettos on the ground were the thousands of discarded pull tabs that lay everywhere.

I miss the dollar beers. I remember the first beer I had at Lagniappe. I know that I was probably a lil too young to have it, but no one seemed to mind. I sure didn't. My brother bought it for me and told me not to tell. I didn't and he bought me another. Having a celebratory cold beer with your family for the fair was a right of passage down the bayou. I miss the yellow-orange night glow of the bulbs they used to light all the stands.

Every year Lagniappe was the same, and yet somehow different. Growing up with the fair, the thing that changed the most was the experience you had there. One year you were a kid at Upper Little Caillou that had to go home after school and you may not get to the fair until Saturday. The next, you were at Lacache and you were so grown up that, if you had a note from home, you could walk from school to the fair that Friday.

There was a time when the most important thing to me was how many ride tickets I could carry. The year that it ended, the most important thing to me was how many Miller Lites I could fit into a cardboard beer box. Actually, the men in beer stand had that part down to a science; my only worry was to not drop them.

I miss all the local bands and the Lagniappe singers. Martin Folse had Fr. Brunet on his show the other night and he made his sing some songs. One he sang was the "He- He –He- He- He -Haw- Haw –Haw-He –Haw" song that everyone knows. I don't know the words to that song but when he sang it I smiled...and then my eyes watered.

Those are the thing you don't forget.

My favorite memory was the first weekend that I was old enough to do what I wanted. Me and my friends hung out in the St. Joseph graveyard during most of the day, and chased the girls from down the bayou around most of the night. It was like that all weekend. I felt so old and I was only, like, 11 or 12. We had a blast and we didn't want the weekend to end.

It's been just over 10 years since the last Lagniappe. I still don't understand why or who decide that would be a good idea to shut it down. I know that it wasn't the residents and parishioners of St. Joseph of Chauvin. Popular thought is that it was the Diocese and the Bishops who wanted to "rid the community" of this sinful event. 

Maybe it was too much beer drinking. Maybe there were too many pull tabs on the ground. What they did was rid the community of the one thing that kept us all together. So often decisions are made with the best interest of people in mind, and the results wind up being just the opposite. The impact of losing Lagniappe in Chauvin has been immeasurable. 

Today, Chauvin is a shadow of its former self. There is nothing there to keep us working together. There is nothing there to look forward to all year long. There is no one preserving our heritage and our culture. Now, Fr. Brunet say's that church participation on the bayou is at an all time low. The place that I called home is dying and it isn't just the rising tide and the low price of shrimp that is doing it.

In my line of work, I travel the entire state. I have been to almost every fair and festival that this beautiful and cultural state has to offer. When people ask where I'm from and I say Chauvin, you'd be amazed at how many people remember Lagniappe. I still say that our fair was the best and most well run of them all. It was our identity. It was our way, our truth, and our life. Everyone pitching in. Everyone working together. Everyone. 

Today, Terrebonne has no signature community fair or festival. Maybe its time that we look at just why Lagniappe is no more. Maybe it is time to change an outdated policy. Maybe it is time for Fr. Brunet to get on that stage with his guitar and that St. Joe Black Knight colored vest and He-He and Haw - Haw again! Maybe its time we try too revive our community and our culture.

Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so; but maybe.

All I know is that I miss Lagniappe on the Bayou. I miss it so much

Norby Chabert