I Feel I Have Lost a Member of My Family

This picture is from the Shreveport Times on October 2, 2008.

This really makes me sad.

The Kate Chopin House in Cloutierville, LA, also known as the Bayou Folk Museum, is where my maternal grandmother was born. It burnt virtually to the ground yesterday.

Thankfully, I went by there and took a few pictures while I was on my grand family vacation back in July. I also have an original painting of the house hanging in the foyer of my own home.

My grandmother, deeply loved and known to all as "Mamie", was born Dora Marie to my great-grandparents, Thomas Jefferson and Marie Aline Rachal Cockfield on June 17, 1888. Along with 9 siblings, she grew up in Cloutierville, which is on the banks of the Cane River, a region rich in Louisiana history. The area was settled around 1700 mainly by the French who built Fort St. Jean Baptiste 20 miles to the north in Natchitoches, but the Spaniards, who had come up from the Rio Grande in Texas, had also established Fort Los Adeas only a few miles to the west. That explains why Mamie knew how to cook the world's best tamales! And where the Natchitoches meat pies get their origin - Spanish empanadas.

Nothing lasts forever. Except for memories. I'll add a few pictures later of the house in better days.