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Babineaux’s Slaughter House & Meat Market C. Hebert's Slaughter House & Meat Market Coleman's Sausage & Specialty Meats Eunice Superette & Slaughterhouse |
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Eunice Superette & Slaughter House, Inc. "[My boudin recipe is made] from memory and taste…We use 20 pounds of pork, we use 10 pounds of liver…We need a little bit more pepper, a little bit more salt…But if you drink too much beer it ends up kind of hot ‘cause it’s never hot enough when you’re drinking beer. I learned that by experience." – Andy Thibodeaux
"Some people travel with it [boudin]; some people bring it to relatives and bring it to gatherings out of town but most of it is hot. Most of it is hot and take it home and eat it; some of them don’t even take it home--they eat it in their car on the way home. People say drinking and driving over here, but I think eating boudin and driving is worse." – Willie Burson The Eunice Superette and Slaughter House is a family owned and operated slaughter house. A full-size cow statue atop the business sign signals the location to passers-by, though pork product--especially boudin--is a major seller in the retail shop. From the outside, the Eunice Superette is an unremarkable concrete building set atop a gravel parking lot. Heavy duty pick-up trucks, belonging to the thirty-plus employees, sit on the lot’s far side. The smell of livestock lingers over the area, wafting from the pens out back that hold animals for slaughter. On the inside, the rude smell of livestock gives way to the cool odor of the butcher shop. Lime green walls offer a striking backdrop to the bright offerings in the meat case. Hand lettered signs advertising weekly specials hang along a clothesline that runs the length of the counter, and the back wall supports a poster declaring, “We sell American meats only.” Butchers behind the meat case, wearing plastic hard hats and white jackets smeared with blood, offer help to customers, trim meats by request, and wrap products for carry-out. The Superette serves hundreds of individual customers each week in their store, but the larger portion of their business supports small retail outlets. As regulations have curtailed the butchering of whole animals by mom-and-pop shops in the area, they have had to turn to USDA approved suppliers for their meats. The Superette has USDA approval but, as an independent, it’s one of the smaller competitors in the market. Competition from corporate conglomerates threatens them; they can offer local products and special services, unlike bigger processors, but find it difficult to compete on price. The Boudin Trail is fortunate to have collected two interviews at the Superette. Andy Thibodeaux is a butcher who has worked at the plant for eleven years. He learned the trade at his family’s butcher shop, but moved to the Superette when the business sold to new management outside the family. Willie Burson is one of the Superette’s youngest employees, and grandson of the Superette’s founder. He grew up around the slaughter house and has worked in all areas of the business. Both men now work in the front of the house, creating specialty cuts of meat for customers and making boudin. NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interviews that have been edited for length. The Andy Thibodeaux interview appears first. Click here to jump to the interview with Willie Burson. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here for Andy Thibodeaux and here for Willie Burson. Subject: Andy Thibodeaux Mary Beth Lasseter: Hello; today is Tuesday, February 17, 2009 and this is Mary Beth Lasseter of the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m here doing interviews as part of the Southern Boudin Trail, and if you could sir, please introduce yourself? Andy Thibodeaux: Andy Thibodeaux and I work at Eunice Superette Slaughterhouse. And I’ve been here about 11 years. Can you tell me a little bit about the slaughterhouse? Well we--most of--butcher most of our animals to where all our meats are fresh. We butcher our own hogs for when we make our boudin, cracklings and stuff. And we have a big line of sausage and tasso and fresh meats available all the time. Who works here? How did they get this operation? It’s probably about 25 to 30 hired employees on a--on a busy--you know sometimes when it’s slow they have a few--a little less, but the busy season about 25 to 30 and we have men, women. I mean they’ve just been doing this for a long time; some just starting. You got to train them but that’s like anything else. Tell me a little bit about your background. How did you come to work here? My grandfather had a slaughterhouse and he passed away and the family took it over and they sold it someone outside the family and he wasn’t a good manager and he had big ideas and none of his ideas worked. And this--it come up over here he was looking for a meat-cutter. And I come and talked to Randall which was the owner, and about a week later I come to work for him and that’s kind of how I--I came. Can you tell me a little bit about your grandfather, his name and where he grew up and--and--and the slaughterhouse that he used to run? Okay; his name was Forest Fonteneau and we lived in Branch which is about 19 miles from Eunice and he was a farmer and he’d farm and he had four children. My mother was his oldest child and she worked on the side of him ‘cause his only son he had was his baby so the three girls had to work like me and like young men. They farmed and he worked at his slaughterhouse part-time and he got to where he would--he’d come home and he had people--he always had animals. He raised cattle; he raised a few hogs and chickens. And he learned the butcher business while working at these other places and he just--when people would come to buy watermelon and cantaloupes that he planted well he’d sell them a calf or a hog and he’d kind of--would butcher them at home. And--and he built a little slaughterhouse in the country and he worked--he had that place for about--I’d say about 10 years ‘til he built a bigger one on the--on the highway where it’s easy access and he’s--he’s probably--he was in the slaughter business probably about 35 years--40 years. And when I got big enough to where I could help him, my dad and uncles and cousins and all worked with him and I believe I was 10 or 12. I started--I’d go on Saturday mornings and help dad you know. He’d cut the meat and I’d carry the boxes out and the bags for the--the ladies and stuff, and the men, the older--the older people that would come by. And I just started watching him and I started boning out and I used--started using a knife about 12 and I was 14 when I started using a big meat saw. They turned me loose and I cut a sheep and boy I thought I was something then. I kind of gradually built up after that and then I started learning how to make the sausage and smoked sausage and the boudin and everything that goes along with it. Both--grandpa when he--he kind of retired a little bit but he still raised cattle and he raised sheep and stuff and he’d raise them up to where they was big enough and we’d slaughter them. And he’d make a couple of stockyards--he’d make sales and buy hogs and cattle and stuff to where we’d have the cattle and the--the pigs to butcher to supply the beef and the pork for these customers. And your grandfather learned it by practice you described. What was his educational background? Did he go to school? He went to school up until I believe the stories--he’s about the fifth grade and he--the same thing; his father was a farmer and stuff and he stayed home to--they cleared--where we’re living at it’s 40 acres and him and my great-grandfather cleared it all out by hand with axes and dynamite to blow the roots out of the ground and stuff, so it’s--he had lots of work. They built their own houses and stuff. They sold the cypress trees and they had a little sawmill and they’d haul them by horses and mules to the sawmill and they’d make the boards and stuff. And they’d go and that’s how the--the two old houses that they built are still standing today. Yes; ma’am. ----- Now is your family originally from this area? Yes, ma’am; we sure are. Well from this particular area, we’re--we live in a little community called Branch but we’ve been there shew--we’ve--I’ve been there going on 26 or 27 years now and my mother was raised there. And when she married my father we moved to town and when my great-grandfather died we--mama got the house so we moved back to the country. But my grandfather was born and raised there and the original Fonteneau(s) they’re all from the Branch area, yeah--surrounding areas, Church Point but most of them is in Branch. And does the family consider themselves Cajun? Oh yeah very much, very much; it’s still to this day that we get together and make a boucherie or something like that. Oh yeah; well we--we’ll get us a hog or something at the stockyard and put it on corn for a couple of days--couple of weeks and one Sunday we’ll get together--cousins and I and my uncle, and we kill him and we clean him up and we make our sausage and bone him out. And we’ll bring it here and have it--the pork chops and the steaks cut. We’ll ice it down on ice and we make our own sausage and stuff, just something to kind of relive what we--grandpa and them started way back when. Can you describe to me a traditional boucherie in your family, the daily schedule of what y'all do? We get up in the morning and drink coffee and we walk to the barn and we pick out the--the pig, the--the biggest one usually. And we kill him and we--before we kill him we have Do people have set jobs in this task or--? Usually it’s just me and my uncle that does it now. And we pretty much--we both know how to do it, so if I don’t feel like doing a certain thing he’ll do it or vice-versa so we kind of swap it out; yeah. Tell me a little bit if you will since we’re here on the Boudin Trail about boudin--what you know about it and how you make it? Well it’s kind of pork and rice product. We--lots of people like it; there’s about 100 different kinds of ways you can make it. Everybody has their own family recipe; everybody does it a little different but I mean it’s basically rice and pork and liver and then you’ve got your onions and your green onions and I know--from babies to 80-year old people, they all love it. I mean on Saturday mornings you can come here for about 9 o'clock you see all ages of people that comes to get it for breakfast, you know. Then we open at 12:00 and then you hit 11 o'clock they start getting up from the night before, hung over; they got to have a little grease in their stomach so they come get some boudin and fix them up so they can go out Saturday night. And everybody loves it. Is there a certain time of day when it’s best eating or certain time of year when it’s more popular? Most of the time during the fall time and the wintertime where it’s cooler ‘cause it’s cold and nothing better than a good link of hot boudin to warm you up you know like coffee. When it gets hot it’s kind of--it swells you up you know especially somebody that works outside ‘cause of the pork and the liver in it and the rice. It’s kind of a rich product, so I mean it’s--we still--there’s still people that makes it all year-long but it’s--it kind of slows down a little bit during the--the summertime. But probably eight months out of the year it’s--from fall and winter and spring is the best time. The summer kind of slows down; it’s too hot. A lot of people slow down eating pork during the summertime. ----- Can you tell me a little bit about how you like to eat boudin? I like to eat it before they stuff it in the casing, once they grind they pork and mix the rice and you put a little juice in it you know to--to--with the seasonings, kind of like a rice dressing. That’s how I like it. When you put it in the casing it’s too much--too much trouble to fight with the casing. I just like to put it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon like a jambalaya or a rice dressing type dish. How did the tradition come about or do you know of them putting the ingredients in the casing ‘cause that seems like a very difficult extra step? Um, I don’t know exactly how it got started. But it--I know it was a way--‘cause you have your--your steaks, your roasts, your chops. It was a way to use the meat that--that wasn’t used kind of like whatever you had left over from when you made your sausage and a lot of the olden days a lot of the men folk they liked to eat the heart and the liver but a lot of the ladies didn’t care for that. So they kind of--I heard stories, but I think it’s--it’s a way to use the--the parts that you didn’t have no primal use for--your primal cuts to where you--you cook--you know you cook it and then you mix your rice and your seasonings up and your onion and then stuff it in the casing. And I know a lot of the older people when they kill a hog they keep some blood and they mix blood into the--into it and make what they call a red boudin--blood boudin. And you can't hardly make it no more with--with all the regulations and stuff. But the old people would use it like that--that way they use everything; the used everything but the squeal when they kill a hog. The blood boudin is that--is it a flavor enhancer or is it for appearance? Uh both; it’s kind of a flavor enhancer and it--it--it turns it red. I mean most boudin(s) are either white or dark brown in color. But it--blood boudin makes it turn red kind of like a smoked sausage and then it--it kind of enhances the flavor on it. Is that something y'all would do when you had the family boucherie(s) or no? Yeah; we’d--I made some a couple of times. My mother before she passed away loved it and whenever she wanted it I mean that’s what I’d do to make her happy you know. Tell me a little bit about your mother. Oh she was something else there. She--I believe she was--she worked with grandpa ‘til she was--I think she was 27 when she got married and her--her grandmother had both legs cut off due to diabetes. So she would work with grandpa in the fields and take care of the animals and work at the slaughterhouse and stuff and she’d come home and take care of her grandmother and grandfather, you know at night and sleep there and stuff, so she was a good person. She always was worried about taking care of somebody; always made sure you had something to eat. I mean any--anybody that would come; y'all hungry? We always had animals. We had--I had not seen some kin--people come home for Texas on a Saturday afternoon and get back from church I had to go clean some--some roosters, so she’d make a big pot of gumbo. So it’s--oh my grandparents was like that too; everybody was always welcome. What kinds of foods did y'all enjoy at your family gatherings? Oh barbeque mostly--lots of barbeque, sausage, but being in the--the meat business all my life and grandpa and everybody, we loved to cook fish--fish or shrimp or wild game. We loved--we loved to deer hunt and stuff, so it’s mostly--if we had a choice between meat and fish we’d--we’d eat the fish. But we’d eat a lot of meat too; we’re not--we’re not prejudice. We eat just about anything we can put our hands on. ----- What do you see for the future of traditional foods like boudin? Do you see a strong future? Are--are younger kids eating it, enjoying it, learning to make it? The future on eating it is good; I mean there’s a lot of people that love--that loves it and they’re going to eat it. But the future in--in--if you know grandparents and parents is passing it down, the home recipes it would be in good shape. But it’s hard to find somebody to--to work these days in this line of business ‘cause I mean you--you make a living but you don’t get rich doing it. And younger kids is going to school more and they’re getting higher paying jobs to where they don’t have--they can work less hours and make the same amount of money as working longer hours you know. And it’s just--I really don’t know; it--it don’t look good for--like the slaughterhouse or something like that. I mean you’ve got big, big places that--that makes it but it--it--they don’t have the--it’s more commercialized you know. It’s not like down home like raising up--being raised up in making it and making it. And when--when I make it I make sure it’s kind of like back when I’d make it with my grandfather you know. If it’s not that good well I’m going to add a little bit of salt or a little bit of more pepper or something to make it right. But these big places they just got a certain way; they just throw that stuff in it and they make it and--and it goes to the vacuum-pack and they vacuum-pack it and they put it on trucks and send it to the stores--it’s gone you know. And just that’s what I think it’s going to be. ----- You described this business as being hard work. Can you tell me or describe to me a typical day for you? Well I live 30 minutes from here so I get up at 5:00 and leave the house at 5:30. We get here about 6:00--five after 6:00 and drink a cup of coffee. And on a day we make boudin we put the boudin meat cooking; we boil it for an hour. We pull it out and we grind it and we put the onions, our green onions with it, and then Miss Melinda is cooking the rice, so we get all that--all our stuff together; we start mixing it and once we get through mixing we might make 1,100 or 1,200 pounds that one morning. And then we go and start cutting; I got orders for calves and hogs to cut and wrap and freeze and that way customers can come pick it up. Or if we don’t have nothing to cut and wrap I’ll help them up front wait on customers and cut special orders and stuff like that ‘til about 4:30. Then we start cleaning up and we leave at about 5:00. Then in the wintertime we got our regular work to do; we got our boudin to do and we handle deer processing so we--after 5 o'clock when we close the front when there’s no customers, then we start taking deer meat out and we start processing deer, so we’ll stay here ‘til about 7:30--8 o'clock for about three nights a week. And the other two nights, well we just cheat and go home a little early when we can get away. But that’s typically a day. ----- Going back to your family roots from the area; you said you considered yourself Cajun. Tell me a little bit about the French language in the area and in your family. Well when I was coming up my grandmother on my dad’s side lived with us. My grandfather had died before I was born and she could talk no English. So I believe I was seven when she passed away and she would talk to me in French and I can--I can remember talking back to her. And my parents would--they’d tell me stories how she’d tell me to do different things around the house. I’d do it you know; and we--my parents both talked French. My older aunts and uncles would all talk French. But when my grandmother passed away mom and dad would--they’d talk French but when they didn’t want the kids to know what they was talking about--when they had business to talk about or family business, well they’d talk French. And--and after my grandma, Mom-Mom Alice died I kind of lost it, but I kind of--growing up I always did have--all my friends, always did get along with older people. And I had older friends and a lot of those would talk French. And I’d catch words here and there. And I had a lot of uncles on daddy’s side that still to this day don’t talk very much English. So when I go visit I can kind of catch a few words here and there to where--but we still got a lot of French-speaking people around here. We got--they’re--they’re teaching French in the--in the schools and stuff, so my daughter, the youngest one, she’s--she’s taking it. She--she can understand when--when somebody is talking to her enough to get by but not enough to--like I really would like you know to where you could sit down and enjoy stories that the old people would tell you to kind of let--let the stories live on you know when they would pass away. Do some of the customers here at the store speak French? I noticed you--in the few minutes I was here this afternoon, you had an older clientele. Yeah; oh yeah. There’s--there’s quite a few of the--the older people that come that talk French. And we’ve got a couple of fellows that works here that--that still speaks with them, so they like to come in and--and you know they can talk enough English to get by to tell you, the younger guys that’s waiting on them, but the older fellow still likes to talk French with his customers--with--they like their French language so they still like to talk the French. The--I guess it’s in their--their heritage you know; yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about the heritage of the community where you grew up? What--what is it like today and what was it like when you grew up there? Basically the same thing. We lived--we grew up in the country. Everybody got--got a horse or a few head of cattle or sheep or something, lots of rice fields, crawfish ponds, bean fields, woods all around us--or the place I’m from. And it’s pretty much the same thing. They’ve got some of the--some of the kids my age that graduated that kind of moved off but the majority of us just stayed home, I mean stayed around and took up family businesses and stuff like that. Subject: Willie Burson ----- Mary Beth Lasseter: Hello; this is Mary Beth Lasseter with the Southern Foodways Alliance doing interviews for the Boudin Trail. I am in Eunice, Louisiana and if you would please introduce yourself, sir. Willie Burson: Yes; I’m Willie Burson. I was born and raised in Eunice. I’m 28 years old and been doing this all my life. My grandfather opened this place about 40 years ago and I just come to it. I started when I was about 16 years old and been here ever since. I take care of the--the front counter and make boudin in the back sometimes and that’s about it. Can you tell me about your grandfather and the history of how he started this place as much as you know? All I know is he--he started out raising cattle and he was part owner of a sale barn and he just got into it and him and a couple of his buddies got together and opened a--a kill plant ‘cause the people wanted to have fresh meat in the town. So he opened a little slaughterhouse and then he opened a meat counter in the front and they started cutting and wrapping. Back then they did a lot of custom-wrapping and then they started making boudin and ever since then it just keeps getting better and better. [Laughs] Can you tell me what custom wrapping is for those who might not know? Some people who raise their own cattle and their own animals and they bring them here for us to slaughter them and cut them and wrap them and so they can put them in the freezer and instead of going to the big supermarkets they got their own fresh meat at home. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and growing up around this business? Well we went to school and then as soon as we got out of school we were over here and holidays we were over here. They--they asked us if we wanted a little--little job for the summers and we got started here. My cousin always worked outside but I was always on the inside. I liked to meet and greet the people, so--. Where did you go to school? At Eunice High School. And what sorts of jobs were you allowed to have as you grew up at the different ages? I worked for the--for the City, a couple of--a couple of summers as a lifeguard and I didn’t like that. It’s too hot, so I cut grass off and on during the summer like any kid would do. [Laughs] And then I just started here and working for my uncle at his farm. When you started here did they immediately put you in the kill plant or in the--the butcher shop? What sorts of work did you have here? First job I had over here my grandfather put me in the smokehouse and gave me a bucket of water and a rag and said get to wiping. [Laughs] And then after that I--I didn’t start on the kill floor. I started in the back in the processing room just boning out and then from there I went to the kill floor and from the kill floor I went to actually making the boudin. And then now I help out with making the boudin and I do all the--the custom--the retail cutting, the cutting for the customers that we sell in our display showcases--I do all that and do a lot of specialty meats. So slaughterhouses are fewer and further between these days; could you describe a kill floor to many people who may not know what that is? Well we--we see about processing animals. We--it comes through; we--we slaughter it and clean it up real good and we’ve got State Inspectors that are--that are always here watching us and you know we just--we skin the cattle and hang them--split them, chill them, and the next couple of days we start cutting them. Where are you getting your animals from? We have our own cattle on feed--at feed yards and at our--our property. Tell me a little bit about your job now making the boudin. It’s interesting; it’s interesting when I started. I never thought so many people ate boudin in my life. [Laughs] And there’s so many different kinds of boudin; everybody puts their own little twist to it. I mean we--for a small town like this I think we--we have a big boudin business. How much are y’all selling? Oh anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 pounds a week. And can you tell me a little bit about the recipe you use to make it? A whole lot of fresh meat [Laughs]--meat, rice, and onions and a lot of seasoning, a lot of good Cajun seasoning. Try and use as much local produce as we can too. Where did the recipe come from, the recipe you use here--is it a family recipe or one that a manager developed? One that a manager and an old owner developed together. And how did they teach it to you? Just handed it down, generation--this company is actually in the third generation so it’s--the recipe has been around for a while. [Laughs] And I was talking earlier today with your co-worker, Andy. He had expressed that there are fewer and fewer people going into the butcher trade because it’s a hard line of work. You are a relatively young employee here. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Well it’s a lot of--a lot of time involved you know. It’s--I get here at about 5:00--6:00 in the morning and leave here about 5:00--6:00 in the evening but I like it just you can't find many young people. It’s--it’s some heavy--heavy animals you pick up on. It’s not as easy as taking something out of a box and just going--slice it you know. We--we do it all from scratch; we pick everything up and break it down in front of the customers so they see it. It’s not something that’s been hanging up in the cooler for a month or been all around the world traveling in a box. It’s all fresh and just got a lot of time; it takes a lot of time to--to do some of this stuff. Some people think you can just bring an animal, kill it, and in an hour it will be cut, but it’s a long process. ----- Talk to me a little bit about the customers here at this store. Who is shopping here and--and maybe tell me some stories about your--your longest or most loyal customers. I have a lot of customers who come every day, every couple of days just buying--instead of filling a freezer up they just buy something for a day or two days you know. They--they’re pretty faithful; I can't--can't say they--they leave us hanging and come in once a month, once a--a year or something. They all take care of us over here. That’s our--that’s our boss over here, the--the customers; they keep us going. If it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t still be here. We do a lot of specials; a lot of them buy special and to last them a week you know like 10-pounds of leg quarters with some rice and gravy meat, a little--we mix it up for them a little bit. Jeez; I don’t know--I’m not a talker. [Laughs] Tell me a little bit about how long the retail store has been opened as opposed to the--the slaughterhouse. About the same amount of time, I mean it was just--it was real small back then. We’ve expanded a lot. When it first started it was just a real small place and now look at it; I mean it’s--we’re big. We’ve--we’ve put trucks on the road five days a week now; it’s not just over here. We--we supply a lot of little markets all around the area with--with fresh meat. Can you tell me a little bit about maybe how and why you’re supplying little markets? My understanding is that the slaughterhouses are becoming fewer and farther between. Well there ain’t many slaughterhouses left around this area. We’ve got little towns all around here; they all have some little mom and pop stores that they sell fresh meat just like us and--and we help them. We bring them cattle and pigs for them to cut and sell for their town. And we’re not the only ones that want fresh meat you know. Everybody else wants a little bit and they keep us going. So when you supply the smaller stores, you’re supplying them with the slaughtered animal but not necessarily prepped steaks. Right, right; we send it in the quarters. We--we’ll cut the animal in four big pieces and--and they’ll do the cutting. They’ll process it the way they want. They’ll make sausage and do all that good old--they’ll cook rice and gravy and cut roasts and display it just like us; they do everything themselves. We just bring the--the animal before it’s processed. ----- Are most of your customers sort of the walk-up retail customers or are they the mom and pop stores who are buying from you? Both--both; they--I have one that is a big, big wholesaler as well and buys from us and resells it to other mom and pop stores. And then we--we have a lot of smaller ones in--in smaller communities you know--little smaller towns like us. Fresh meat hopefully is coming back; I think it is. I really do. A lot of people are tired of getting stuff in boxes that’s been traveling all over the world. Fresh meat had got away for the last five years. You hadn’t seen many. The few that I have seen, lots of them are in this area. Do you have any idea why Cajun country, Louisiana has been so hospitable to boudin and small mom and pop butchers? Well the small mom and pop butchers want--want everything fresh. All this boxed meat comes in and it doesn’t have a bone and the bone is what makes the gravy they always say. You can't eat the bone but you can use it to make the gravy [Laughs] and the flavor and that’s where the flavor comes from you know--the bone. Tell me about how you like to eat boudin. Oh man I love boudin. I’ve been around it for a long time. Every Saturday that was our breakfast. My--my uncle and my mother and them would bring boudin home every Saturday. That was our breakfast. And I like it; and I like to try other people’s boudin too just to see what we--we’re competing with you know. Everybody has got a little something different to put in it, but I like it and I like--some people don’t eat the casing, the outside, but I like the casing. Now where are you getting your casing? Are y'all washing it here or do you order it separately? No; I order it separately. We--we wouldn’t be able to keep up if we--we got to do it over here. [Laughs] We order it from a company that cleans them and pre-flushes them. Can you tell me a little bit about Eunice since you grew up here--about the City? What’s it like; what do people do here? They go ride horses and four-wheelers a lot [Laughs] ‘cause there ain’t much to do in town. But they--we do have a good little community. We have--all the schools have their own little athletic teams and in the summer the kids got you know summer baseball, softball, and started doing soccer now, tennis. I like to play tennis, so that’s a good pastime, but yeah we do a lot of hunting--hunting and fishing. ----- We’re a week away from Mardi Gras. Can you tell me about the Eunice Mardi Gras celebrations and--and how this community has dances or parades? How do they celebrate? Well they have--the Mardi Gras over here, they start Thursday night over here and they have bands and street dancers on 2nd Street Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday night. They--the Mardi Gras for almost a week over here and it’s good; you know it brings a lot of tourists in. We have a few campground sites that they stay at and they just go visit all over. They go see the Museum and they go to Liberty Theater over here which is a place where they do Cajun French dances and we get a lot of tourists that come through here. They--matter of fact, this--every Saturday before Mardi Gras we get a few tour buses that actually come over here and--yeah to the yard and they sit and eat boudin in the parking lot and drink beer. [Laughs] Is--there’s a tradition of costume I believe with your parade. Do you participate in it or do you know about it? Yeah; they have--it’s a mandatory costume. It’s the--you make them yourself or you can buy them but it’s just the old raggedy clothes with the fringes on the side and the--the big capuchin, the hat, the mask. It’s the one day you can cut up and nobody knows who you are. [Laughs] So it’s--it’s interesting; we see some characters around here. [Laughs] Do you have a costume? Sure do. [Laughs] It’s--it’s about 10 years old and it’s a normal purple, green, yellow--Mardi Gras colors with a capuchin cap. I think this will be the first year I’ll skip out though. So I got--I got kids growing up now, so I’m going to bring him. Instead of me going to tear up I’m going to bring him around. Where did you get your costume originally? I bought it at one of the Cajun stores down 2nd Street in Eunice. They had an elderly lady that was making them and she made one for me. And when you--when you dress up in your costume what do you do--what do you do for the day? Oh man; I don’t know if I can say it on the radio [Laughs] here. I might get in trouble. Just give me a general description of a Mardi Gras Tuesday if you’re in costume. We wake up at about 3:30 and we actually start drinking our first beer at 4 o'clock in the morning and we start lining up because the parade and everything--the run has gotten so big on Tuesday we actually get there and start registering and getting in line at about 4:30 in the morning. And the run doesn’t start before 8:00. They--they go on about a six mile walk or horse--some people walk; some people horse ride; some people ride trailers. They go through all the countryside and they just--they--they go chase the chicken, they go dance for the--certain people, the elderly people. They--they go by the nursing home and they just--it’s a long slow ride. Some of them walk and usually they get back to town at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and they--they have a parade down 2nd Street and at about 4:30--5 o'clock they go and they cook a big gumbo. So it’s--it’s a long day; it’s a rough, rough day at work the next day though. Who is riding through the countryside? Is it a social club or is it anyone who signs up? Anyone who signs up; I believe last year we had 2,500 people sign up. They had about 1,800 horses. It’s--it’s getting pretty big; it’s getting real big. They only have about 30 trailers, so they have a lot of people walking. Are these all locals or people coming in from out of town? People come in from out of town. I’ve seen people come from Canada I met, but the majority of the people come from around the Baton Rouge area. A lot of people who grew up here who just moved away, they--they still come down for Mardi Gras. ----- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here for Andy Thibodeaux and here for Willie Burson.
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