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Jim Bradshaw

Did they celebrate Emmeline’s birthday?

Tue, 10/25/2022 - 9:38am

Even the New York Times took notice of the “literary birthday” at the end of October 1967 of Emmeline Labiche, “heroine who made her name … in real life and then gained immortality in the lines of a poem.” Some people claim she and her sweetheart Louis Arceneaux were the real-life models of Longfellow’s Evangeline and Gabriel, but the Times did it right in making it a literary birthday, not a real one.

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Jim Bradshaw

Mowata, the other story

Tue, 10/04/2022 - 10:56am

Several weeks ago, I reported the oft-told story that the Mowata community in Acadia Parish got its name because nobody could find a board long enough to print the original name of Morewater.
I have long suspected that the story was suspect, but had never heard anything to contradict it. Erich and Kathryn Loewer have heard another version, and it seems a lot more likely.

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Jim Bradshaw

A promised parade celebrating paving

Wed, 09/28/2022 - 9:47am

The first paved streets in a town were cause for celebration of the end to mud in the winter and dust in the summer, and because they were the sign of a progressive community.
For example, when Opelousas paved its first streets in 1914 car owners called for “a mammoth parade” of every automobile in the area. The idea almost caught on, too.

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