The Mom and Pop stores of my youth have vanished! That one mile stretch of Main Street today looks so different. A florist’s shop lives in Nanny Sybil’s house. The store across the street owned by the entrepreneurial Braquet family is gone. Sweet, saintly, mild-mannered Bertha’s house next door may still be there, but sadly, she is not.
Uncle White’s blacksmith shop is just a memory. I can still see him pounding horse shoes in his wobbly wooden tool shop. He and friends perched near a radio cheering the Yankees on to victory.
Next door at the corner of Lake Dauterieve road and Main Street, my dad’s Humble, then Exxon, then Texaco garage and shop competed with Gam’s garage on the other side of town. Dad sketched and welded prototypes of tools that would maneuver around the nooks and crannies of car engines. He taught his craft to young teens like Norman Chastant who now owns and operates a successful business farther into town. I helped AMD [my mother] with bookkeeping, a convenient task if I needed to scorch the books to hide gasoline I borrowed to fill my friends’ cars.
On the opposite side of Lake Dauterieve Road, on the same corner, my maternal grandfather, Willie Wickliff Vaughn, owned a General Merchandise store. An early version of Walmart, he sold everything from food to fashion to farmers’ tools. My grandmother made toddler clothing from those flour sacks. I wore four sack designer clothing as a child! Bebe, our neighbor, worked as an employee mostly in the fashion/clothing section of the store. If my sisters and I became rambunctious, waving a red plastic belt, she lovingly chased us out onto the sidewalk. I remember walking from my grandparents’ house across the street facing the store, holding Pop Wick’s hand, as I accompanied him while he rang up customers’ purchases or his office. He wore grey and white seersucker pants in the summer. My grandmother sat on her glass porch and sewed as she viewed the constant stream of daily life as it flowed down Main.
XXX Building Supply, about a block further, smelled like fresh wood. They managed to escape the downturn.
Aunt Tee’s Restaurant, across from LHS, our high school, served Blue plate specials, hearty lunches served with sliced white bread. I remember a bank across the street, but I don’t remember doing much business there. AMD didn’t tell me until I graduated from USL that Vin called her often to tell her I was overdrawn. She deposited more money into my account. I was mortified!
The tiny post office near Aunt Tee’s served our needs rather well. I think it is now an ice cream shop.
On the other side of the street, Champeaux’s Cleaners was very convenient. Such nice people!
Gonsoulin’s Meat Market was a marvel for carnivores! I remember my dad and Pop Jean taking things on hooves to be sliced, diced, and packaged.
I remember a bar next door to the meat market, but the name escapes me.
McHugh’s Pharmacy had no competition, and the family enjoyed a prosperous lifestyle. Billy McHugh was my Aunt Pat’s best friend. A striking brunette, articulate and outspoken, she and Aunt Pat loved Women’s Club, reading, and an occasional game of cards.
T Lee’s, a short order restaurant, also served as a gathering place for teens to play music on the jukebox.
After mass on Sundays, our family stopped into George Andrus Bar for coffee and cokes. Masso’s Café, operated by Nadege and Masso, was another favorite restaurant.
My grandmother and I shopped for beautiful fabrics and sewing notions at Granger’s Store at the end of the mile long Main Street, across from the Loreauville hospital. Mom Wick drove a Bat Mobile, a black Chevy with huge upturned wings on the back. Afraid of crashing into oncoming traffic traveling four MPH on Main, she drove with half the car on the sidewalk and half on the street. People in small towns accommodate peculiarities.
Gam’s Garage, the last business on Main, sat across from Tootie’s Beauty shop, located in a large room in her home. She took me from Buster Brown haircuts to Annie perms.
Walmart, Publix, Home Depot, Sam’s, Costco and malls make me delirious. I could spend days wandering through aisles checking all the amazing merchandise. I forget why I’m there, so I have to enter these mazes armed with a specific list. And where’s the service/ I swear I will bring an air siren next visit.
Then I have to find my car. One time I asked the mall parking lot security guy if I could hop a ride in his little truck to search for my car. After an hour of driving around, I realized I was looking for the wrong car. I had driven my husband’s car that day. I know he loved telling that story.
The Stage Manager in OUR TOWN says to Emily, “Only saints and poets realize life while they’re living it.”
Rampant consumerism and big business have ruined small town America. I have rose-colored memories of my hometown Loreauville as it was when I was a child. That one mile stretch of Main Street was a haven.
Right in so many ways. My grandmother and Mrs. Pat (or Aunt Pat like I always knew her) were always doing something together. Although I grew up in Loreauville in the 80's, I still have many fond memories of what Main Street was once like. The only thing I would add to this is the old Heritage Village Museum. I was always amazed at the nostalgia kept hidden right off of Main Street.
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