Posts tagged ‘Eunice Louisiana’
Basile Mardi Gras Association 2014
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Basile Mardi Gras Association
Mardi Gras Season ~ 2014
The Saturday evening immediately prior to Mardi Gras in the town of Eunice in St Landry Parish out on the Cajun Prairie of southwestern Louisiana the Jambalaya Cajun Band and the Basile Mardi Gras Association descend on the Liberty Theater for some music, dancing, history and Mardi Gras shenanigans.
Mardi Gras in the small towns of Acadiana is still a traditional family affair deeply rooted in one’s Catholic religion and heritage, the Cajun music, and the history of one’s Cajun community .
The final celebration of friends, community, music & dance and food prior to the start of Lent.
The Cajun communities of Acadiana introduce their children and youth to the history, culture and ways of Mardi Gras at a young age. The Cajun culture: language, food, music & dance and history are passed down and along by word.
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Crawfishin’ With Michael Brown
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Around the perimeter of 14 acres of low-lying-flooded southwestern Louisiana farmland moves the weekend crawfishermen pushes his floating harvesting rig.
Seeing the guy with the camera he hollers questioningly: “Reporter?”
The negative reply and he responds knowingly: (unvoiced but implicit: HA!) “Tourist!”
This met with voiced laughter from the guy with the camera.
Michael Brown of Eunice, Louisiana in St Landry Parish ‘schools’ the ‘guy with the camera’ in a gentle fashion on crawfishin’, crawfish, Lent and Mardi Gras. 
Lineage and bonafides are established: Brown of original German settler descent.
Thoughts and views are shared on Louisiana public education & parental responsibilities.
Stories are told of Louisiana politics and the politically adept uncle.
Crawfish slides under the Catholic Lenten prohibition on eating meat so the Cajuns chow down and a seasonal market exists.
The crawfish harvest season so far has been challenging: unsettled, cold. Like all farming crawfishing turns on the weather.
This season the per pound cost for crawfish is high – over $3.00.
Saturday Morning Jam ~ Savoy Music Center
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Its 9 AM the Saturday morning of Mardi Gras weekend at Savoy’s Music Center outside of Eunice in St Landry Parish Louisiana.
And its raining: pouring buckets, coming and going in sheets and waves, never truly letting up.
Tornado and flood warnings are being broadcast and still they come: Cajun musicians, young and old alike, multiple generations and an audience that appreciates the music and musicians of Acadiana.
The front room of Marc Savoy’s Music Center quickly fills up with damp musicians and a damp but eager audience
Good warm boudin, fresh beignets and hot coffee are on hand but they are not the real attraction.
Miss Esther Lejeune
Milton Vanicur ~ 94 Years Young
An accordion player (never more than one center stage), folks that can both sing and recollect the words, fiddle players, guitar players, the youthful and gifted piano player, a pedal steel player, a triangle player or two (nobody was enforcing the rule of no more than one); all up front.
No amplification; no amplification needed!
The audience came and went very little and swelled quickly to fill the chairs and space in the room. Locals and folks from away. Musicians got seating preference. There seemed to be an unstated recognition among the musicians of one’s talent and skill by whether one was accorded up front facing the audience seating in the music circle. You earned your seat and access to it. Deference was paid in kind and subtle ways to those musicians that had put in their time, so to speak, and knew the old French Acadian tunes, and, most importantly, knew the words: a culture being cultivated, celebrated and kept alive through its music.
Later: a harmonica player floated around on the fringes of the crowd, an out of place trombonist stood in briefly, a stand-up bass player, a banjo picker, a couple of concertinas.
Marc Savoy
Milton Vanicur’s grandson
Freddie Hanks ~ 84 Years Young
Last year’s Savoy Jam images, a different weekend.
Lejeune’s Sauage Kitchen ~ Eunice, Louisiana
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Three thousand pounds of pork and beef processed weekly.
Three thousand pounds of sausage and tasso smoked weekly.
Three thousand pounds of tasso, pork sausage, pork and garlic sausage and mixed sausage sold face to face across the counter weekly to customers in the community and beyond .
The Lejeune Family Sausage Kitchen
108 Tasso Circle
Eunice, Louisiana
In the family for generations.
Nita and Kermit Lejeune : 35 years
Ryan Lejeune : 35 years
John and Lechia Lejeune : 20 years
Nick Guidry
The Lejeune family secret: only the best ingredients, cleanliness, real wood, time, hard work, word of mouth…
and last but not least pride in product and pride in the family name.
This is a small family business that supports an extended family of three families and pays a living wage to an employee as well.
Interesting process and quality great tasting products.
Special order processing and smoking – your venison sausage.
Very friendly folk, very proud of their business, their product and who they are and what they do.
Cutting, trimming, weighing and grinding.
Green sausage in the fore ground.
John with the dry seasoning measured and mixed by Lechia.
Wetting the dry seasoning.
Adding the wet seasoning.
Tight clean 3-man work space.
Ground, seasoned and mixed bulk sausage on its way to the cooler to ‘set and season’.
Green sausage in the foreground.
Into the cooler.
Nick having filled the sausage stuffing ‘piston’ with bulk sausage that has ‘set’.
Bulk sausage into casings as green sausage.
The end of a ‘piston’ run.
Sausage stuffing ‘horns’ from back in the day.
Antique wood splitting ‘machine’ from back in Kermit Lejeune’s day: pecan, hickory and oak smoking woods.
Smokehouses – two of three.
Ryan with smoked tasso – ‘Cajun ham’
Pounce : Cajun pork roasts!
End of the day ‘smoke’ out first.
Sausage comin’ out of the smoker and on it’s way to the cooler.
Cooler packed with tomorrow’s sales.
Tomorrow’s fresh ‘smoke’ wood.
Boxed and on display the next day after cooling overnight.
Cajun commerce!
Get yourself down to Lejeune’s Sauage Kitchen!
Thank you Ryan and John Lejeune!
Nita and Kermit you raised your family well!
