In writing this story, I think it is necessary to incorporate several stories just to make one very important point. Therefore, if you think that I am rambling at times, it is for a purpose. I have found that I write very much the same as the way I think. I am very spontaneous, but this impromptu method leads to a less rehearsed version of factual material. In my mind, things are much more realistic when written this way. This is probably what gives my writing some credibility. So many extraordinary things happen in a person's life that embellishment or exaggeration diminishes the true feelings that are experienced.
There is a small community that exists fourteen miles to the south of Centerville, Louisiana on La. Hwy 317. The community that I am referring to is called "Bayou Sale", pronounced Bayou Sally. This is a remote and very unique place. Most of the people there have roots that extend back several generations. This is one place where everyone, both black and white, pull together! Bayou Sale is south of the Intracoastal Canal, and until the late '70's, a "Draw Bridge" cut it off. The canal has two very large carbon black plants just to the south. Cabot Corporation operates one plant on the west side of Hwy 317 and Columbian Carbon operates a plant on the east side of the highway. These two companies are largely responsible for the economy of west St. Mary Parish. These plants are strategically located because of the abundance of the afore mentioned natural resources The canal serves as barge transportation and the highway serves as transportation for employees and company business. There is also a railway that serves as transportation for the finished product. Natural gas is abundant and essential for the production of their product. All of these factors contribute to the highest-grade carbon in the world. This is where "Ink Grade" carbon comes from, and the tire industry is also dependent on these plants for the quality of their product.
Very few Bayou Sale residents depend on the carbon black plants or the oil and gas facilities; these people live off of the land and the marsh, and the bay that lies just to the south. In other words, they were there long before any industry was developed. These people are farmers, trappers, and commercial fishermen.
Before the high-rise bridge was built in the late `70's it was nothing to wait for an hour at the drawbridge while the canal barge traffic was being cleared. Uncertainty was an intrinsic factor that people just accepted and learned to live with on a daily basis. The thing that impressed me the most about this situation was that if one of the residents was going to make a trip into town, they checked with one another first to see if anyone else needed anything while they were north of the bridge. On many occasions, any given one of these people would use my phone to check on other's needs before heading back home. Each person who lived there was the potential beneficiary of another person's effort! The very next day the person who was on the receiving end the day before might be the benefactor the next day. Seldom does one witness such a spirit of cooperation.
One of the oldest members of the Bayou Sale Community was "Grandpa Dave Luke." He lived down Bayou Sale all of his life. He only married once during his adult life and that marriage produced about eight children. He farmed the land, trapped for fur and meat, and fished the waters within the marsh and in the bay that lies to the south of the thousands of acres of marshland that he owned. I certainly am no expert on his life, but sometime in the`50"s oil and gas were discovered on his property. He eventually became a "Jillionaire" with probably nearly a hundred grandchildren and two hundred great grand children. "Grandpa Dave" certainly could afford anything that he pleased, but he had lived through the depression of the 1920's and 1930's, and he (like so many others) did not change his lifestyle. He knew what it was like to be poor, and even though he had money now, he knew that it could be lost in a heartbeat!
"Grandpa Dave" had one daughter, "Aunt Doucet" or Mary Luke Marin and one son Stampley Luke with whom I become acquainted during my tenure in Centerville. "Aunt Doucet" became a very good friend of mine along with her husband the late E.F. Francis Marin or affectionately known as "Engelfinger!" I never got to know Stampley very well, because he continued to do his pharmaceutical business in Franklin. However, Stampley had a son named Antoine or "Bozo" who married one of my childhood neighbors, Margie Laws. Margie's father (Roland) was the son of "Cap'n Ben" Laws. He married Alfreda, but I guess I never bothered to find out what her maiden name was.
"Cap'n Ben" also had a daughter (Evelyn) who married Berwick Chauvin, the father of Mike and Buddy Chauvin. You might remember them from my "Duck Hunter" days! Now you can see what I meant about "rambling!"
"Cap'n Ben" was not a very friendly old codger, and all of the kids in my neighborhood were deathly afraid of him! He owned an old abandoned cypress sawmill on Bayou Teche. There were several old pirogues on the ground under the sawmill that had been there for years, and one day Mike Chauvin (Cap'n Ben's Grandson), Mike Gordon, and myself got up enough guts to drag them to the bayou and shove them in! We then took off downstream so we could catch them, fix them up, and ultimately use them to fool around in the bayou. We waited on the boats, but only one arrived. The one that made it was just about to sink when we captured it! The remainder of the "Armada" never made it, and as far as I know, the pirogues are somewhere on the bottom of the bayou today. We traced and retraced their course, but we never were able to recover a single pirogue. If "Cap'n Ben" had caught us, I doubt that I would be writing about that incident now!
Many years later, Margie Laws married Antoine "Bozo" Luke. The couple made their home on "Bayou Sale", and subsequently had about five children. They are both good people, and it was only natural that they would carry on the tradition of life on "Bayou Sale."
Meanwhile, I had developed a very good relationship with "Aunt Doucet" and "Engelfinger" Marin. "Engelfinger" was quite a character, and "Aunt Doucet" was the ultimate lady! "Engelfinger" owned the land where Exxon had an extensive oil field in the marsh down the bayou. For a long period of time, anyone could simply launch their boat at Exxon and fish anywhere they pleased. However, like all good things, that came to an end when someone stole some expensive equipment from Exxon. They put a heavy chain with a padlock across the road just before the landing. Therefore, if you were going to fish in the marsh near Exxon, you needed to launch a boat in the bay at Burns Point and go back into the marsh through Horseshoe Bayou.
My brother (Dr. Stirling) and I had an advantage when things reached this point. "Engelfinger" was afraid to go over that "high bridge", and since he had declared Dr. Stirling his personal physician and I his personal pharmacist. He saw to it that the folks at Exxon supply each of us with a key to that padlock, so anytime either of us wanted to launch our boat at Exxon: No problem! If we ever encountered a problem, "Just let him know!"
Now "Engelfinger" had practically wiped out his liver function from chronically drinking hot "Falstaff Beer" many years before. Ertis Miller, who worked for "Engelfinger" for years as a farm hand (and a damned good one), told me that "Engelfinger" would begin plowing in the morning. He would leave his truck on a headland with the tailgate down and a case of "Hot Falstaff Beer" neatly placed on the flat surface. Ertis said that every time that Francis completed a round, he simply tossed an empty can into the bed of the pickup and reached for another hot beer. This all transpired before each of them appeared in my life, but I have no reason to doubt Ertis' word.
Ertis Miller had earned my respect and admiration as a hard working, responsible, black man over the years, and I never had anything other than excellent business and personal dealings with him! Ertis, while on his deathbed at Franklin Foundation Hospital, owed me a small amount of money. The money was the least of my worries, but Ertis had someone call me to assure me that the sum would be paid before his death, and as I hinted before, he was a man of his word!
One day a serious discussion was taking place at the "Bayou Sale" store! Bozo called me to see if I could furnish the parties with a definitive answer to the problem. It seems as though a discussion was taking place about the difference between a milliliter and a cc. Apparently there was even a small monetary wager at stake as to the final answer. I told Bozo that he would need to listen very carefully as I was explaining the difference. I told him, "One milliliter occupied one cubic centimeter of space." There was a pause, and then Bozo said, "So they are the same thing!" I said, "Yes, exactly, it is simply two ways of expressing the same thing, one is a liquid measurement and the other is just the way to express that amount of liquid in volume." He sounded ecstatic, so I guess his money was on my answer!
Now, "Bayou Sale" has quite a rich history, and much of it transpired long before my time. I am told that at one time "Bayou Sale" was an important waterway that intersected with "Bayou Teche" and served as a convenient outlet for shipping sugar from the entire St. Mary Parish area. The mouth of "Bayou Sale" was an integral place to ship inland sugar through "Bayou Sale Bay" and then into the Gulf of Mexico. From that point, Louisiana sugar became a global commodity.
This was during the days of the "Steamboat" and water traffic was the key to industrial success. Mr. "Red Genusso" told me about an incident that happened involving my maternal grandfather. He died before I was born, so I unfortunately missed out on what would have been an important chapter in my life! It seems as though he had his boat tied up at Sterling Sugars dock when Captain Clyde Barber came down the bayou in his boat from his residence at Oaklawn Manor. This is the same mansion that is owned by Mike Foster, the now sitting governor of Louisiana. On this particular occasion, Captain Barber did not slow down, and apparently he swamped my grandfather's boat. He simply untied his boat and followed Captain Barber to the foot of Willow Street where he subsequently docked. My grandfather docked his boat just behind Captain Barber's boat and after disembarking his boat; he proceeded to "Buggy Whip" the hell out of Captain Barber! Apparently this is the kind of man he was, and no one ever disputed the story, nor has anyone ever mentioned any sort of retaliation by Captain Barber.
My grandfather, Eugene Taylor, was once a very successful plantation owner, and he lived in the home that is now owned by George Thomson. It is, in my opinion, the most beautiful home on the Boulevard with the White Lampposts, in Franklin, Louisiana. Portions of the Boulevard can be seen in the movie "Easy Rider." Two successive years of early freezes curtailed his wealth, and at the time of his death I think he had suffered severe financial losses.
Sterling Sugars is one of the large regional sugar mills that has survived through the ages. At one time there were numerous small sugar mills that dotted the entire area, because a farmer could only haul short distances with mules and wagons. You will notice that my name is spelled Stirling, and just across the bayou from Sterling Sugars is a very large oak tree with 6 or 8 graves beneath its shady branches. The graves under the oak are marked with head stones that are spelled Stirling. One grave in particular entombs a 17-year-old boy who died from Influenza while attending the University of Vanderbilt. This is a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, and only wealthy families could have afforded to educate a son there. This leads me to believe that before the Civil War, the Stirling family owned the mill. However after the war, someone was required to shoulder the responsibility for slavery. Since the Stirling family is on record as having been one of the largest slave owning families in the South, I think it is somewhat simple to just fill in the blanks. Nearly every slave descendent that I have ever known or heard speak blames the white man for his or her plight. Not one of them ever takes the time to stop at the dock where the tribal chiefs had gathered the slaves and delivered them to the white man in shackles and traded them for trinkets and whiskey! I have not heard of a single account where the white man ventured into the jungle to gather these people together. Many of these people have become great citizens of our country; on the other hand, others have not exactly made great strides to improve. Of course, that too, is the white man's fault! It is somewhere in this period of history that logic has apparently become distorted or intentionally obscured. It is just too easy to blame someone else rather than taking responsibility for one's actions!
By 1944, when I came along, we were among the poorest white people who lived in Franklin, Louisiana! As the years elapsed things only went downhill until we were finally all out on our own. I remember thinking that the only way out was through education. As I renew my licenses for the 35th time, I only wish I had considered more closely what type of education! However, I have only myself to blame for not having done so. However, I will say that I had no way of foreseeing how the situation of the Community Pharmacy would be so negatively impacted.
I mentioned Francis Marin already, but I think he deserves more coverage. He is the only person who actually gave me a $100 bill one time, and told me to let him know when it had been used up! He actually had a credit balance for several months! Whenever Dr. Stirling and I went down the bayou to fish somehow he usually knew about it, how, I can't really say. Now his fear of this "High Bridge" across the Intracoastal Canal was not at all an act, after it was constructed I doubt very seriously that he ever actually crossed over it more than once or twice! On one particular occasion, Dr. Stirling and I had been in the marsh fishing for about eight to ten hours before we finally got back to the Exxon landing. "Engelfinger" was pacing up and down, back and forth, and was fit to be tied! I barely got the boat to the bank before he nearly accosted Dr. Stirling! We had no idea what in the hell was on his mind, but as it turned out, he wanted Dr. Stirling to check the pulse in his feet! The damned fool had been there nearly all day long waiting for us so that he could get his medical check up, after all, he was not about to cross that high bridge to go into town!
I recall that just before I was to go into the hospital in 1987 for back surgery, I made it my business to visit several of my closest friends. Back surgery is not usually terminal, but when undergoing major surgery, one never knows what can go wrong. I went to "Engelfinger's" house and was promptly greeted by "Aunt Doucet." We talked for a short time before I asked her where I could find Francis. She said that he was in his usual place in the living room watching TV. I walked into the pitch-black room with the brilliant TV blaring, and he greeted me from somewhere on the opposite side. As it turned out, he had a sheepskin on the sofa where he was sitting. It took 15 minutes for my eyes to accommodate to the darkness of the room. After talking with him for a few minutes, he turned a light on and showed me a chinning bar that he had mounted to the ceiling. He told me that I did not need an operation; all I needed to do was to get a bar mounted on my ceiling so that I could stretch my back out. He was more than happy to perform a demonstration for me without my asking, and as he was hanging, I decided my visit had accomplished its intent, and I was ready to go. As I was leaving the house, both he and "Aunt Doucet" accompanied me outside. Once outside, Francis emphasized the stretching procedure by hanging from a child's swing set! As I drove off, I looked back and he was still hanging!
I spent five months in the bed after the surgery, and Francis called me every day! Sometimes it was every five minutes telling me to watch this program or that program! When he died some months later, "Aunt Doucet" called me to inform me of his death. I still remember how sad I felt to have lost a very close friend! It seemed quite strange to not get any more calls from him while I was still recovering from the surgery.
The events of the past week are what prompted me to write about this tiny part of the world! I was reminded of this when a Pulmonologist in Mountain Home, Arkansas gave me a pretty grim prognosis. This man, whom I had never seen before, glanced at his watch before he spoke. He knew that he had another $1000 bill waiting on him, and the clock was ticking if he was going to retire by the time he had reached the age of 45, he must hurry!
Sometime in the early to mid '80's Duncan Luke (Eldest Son of Margie and Bozo Luke) and Ertis Miller, Jr. were on their way back to "Bayou Sale." In the early morning hours of a long summer night, a train struck the vehicle driven by Duncan. As far as I know they had not been out together, but in typical "Bayou Sale" fashion, Duncan was just helping a friend get back home.
When the two boys arrived at Franklin Foundation Hospital via ambulance, Dr. Stirling was called out! Duncan was in critical condition, he had severe internal injuries, and he was bleeding profusely. Joan was sending blood from the lab and up to surgery as quickly as humanly possible! After an hour or so, Dr. Stirling emerged from surgery, soaked with sweat, and sadly broke the news to Margie and Bozo, he had done everything in his power, but in spite of the effort, Duncan could not be saved. A nightmare scenario for Margie and Bozo, but painful for Dr. Stirling as well! He had known both the Luke and Laws families since childhood, and I feel sure that that any compassionate surgeon would have felt inadequate in this situation, but for this particular surgeon, the pain must have been especially acute!
Some weeks later, Margie wrote a piece in the Banner Tribune that expressed her feelings about their loss. She was careful not to minimize how anyone else, faced with the same situation, would feel, but she wanted to emphasize how very important it was for a long time family friend to be the person who was the bearer of the devastating news! Duncan was not just a $1000 bill and a piece of meat, he was the son of life long friends, and it was comforting to the Luke and Laws families to know that the effort to save the life of their son, was made by a person who genuinely cared!
The medical community in Mountain Home, Arkansas, might take offense to the way I describe this scenario. However, if that is the case, my feelings cannot be changed .My experience was such a cold and callous one; I can readily appreciate the empathy that the Luke and Laws families received!
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