To eat lunch at Le Café on a Friday during Lent was to feel the heartbeat of a community. The small eatery in Breaux Bridge—home to the best fried catfish and shrimp poboys around—has always punched above its weight, delivering food that exceeded the expectations of anyone who had initially judged it by its square footage alone.

Over 900 barbecued chicken hungry persons gathered in the Clayton Boudreaux Memorial Park to eat chicken dinners and watch the first annual pirogue races held in Catahoula Lake this past Sunday.

Sue Theriot will tell you in her delightful Cajun French accent that she is married to a very versatile farmer and teacher. She has watched husband Jackie Theriot raise sugarcane, supervise the building of fish hatcheries and irrigation ditches, drill wells, and repair foreign-made machinery, all with equal ease.

The Indian summer of flowers of which you have ofttimes dreamed is just any day along Catahoula Lake. Boughs are always leafy there, and blossoms are ever fragrant.

Duchamp Opera House in St. Martinville, built in 1830, is the oldest opera house in the country, and beginning this fall, live music will once again return to this beloved historic space.

The t’fer is a percussion instrument that adds rhythmic and tonal accents to Cajun music. You can think of it as the Cajun triangle. T’fer means “little iron” and if you pronounce it like “tea fair,” that will get you close enough. Brandy Guidry Aubé, a member of the team at St. Martin Parish Tourism, is one of only a handful of people keeping this traditional art alive. I visited her at her workshop in Breaux Bridge, where she walked me through the process of making one.

Traditionally served over rice, courtbouillon is somewhere between a stew and a gumbo. Some like to eat it more on the soupy side, with a spoon, while others prefer less broth and a fork. Potato salad is the perfect accompaniment.

Catahoula Elementary School student-parent handbook for the 1970-71 school year

Transcription of a brochure announcing the Grand Opening of Rousseau’s Catahoula Inn

In one sense music is short-lived. You sing a song, you fiddle a tune, and it’s over in less than four minutes. But in another sense, music lives longer than any of us. Like fire that passes from one candle to another, the performer sparks the listener, the teacher sparks the student, and on and on it goes.

You won’t find them in stores, they grow among thorns, and who knows what wild creatures you might startle with your rubber boots when you trudge through the vines to collect them, but there’s just no substitute for the taste of wild dewberries, and this cobbler is their perfect showcase. The perfect balance between sweet and tart, chewy and gooey, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream ties it all together.

When the last shades of night had passed away and the sun in her brightness shone down on St. Martinville and brought forth another day, it found the town arrayed in all her beauty, and every decoration that was possible for human ingenuity to construct in every place possible to welcome the King of Kommerce, and the people began coming from every direction, and by noon it was easily perceived that the display would be a grand success.

In 1982 archaeologist Dr. Jon L. Gibson, coordinating a team of scholars, put together a comprehensive report on the cultural resources of the Atchafalaya Basin after extensive fieldwork in the area. The report, Archaeology and Ethnology on the Edges of the Atchafalaya Basin, featured a description of the St. Rita Church Fair in Catahoula, which is excerpted below. Photographs of the church fair have been sourced by me from residents of Catahoula.

There’s no sign on the road alerting you to its presence, and driving through the sparsely inhabited area on the outskirts of Catahoula, which is covered with sugar cane like much of the rest of the parish, the rural landscape calls no particular attention to itself. You’d never suspect that remnants of a prehistoric society lie buried just below the surface.

Gammy’s recipe for tarte à la bouillie combines an extra-thick, pudding-like custard filling with a cookie-like sweet dough pie crust.

On Saturday, May 7, 1842 Catahoula Lake, without warning, rose more than six feet, according to an inhabitant of Catahoula who was fishing in the lake at the time.

When I first saw the forecast saying it would get down into the low twenties, maybe even into the teens, I did consider postponing. We are simply not prepared for that kind of weather in southern Louisiana. Pipes burst, the roads ice over, and heaters struggle to keep up with the cold. Would the almost-two-hundred-year-old building be warm enough?

Initiative to revive native population of Louisiana irises on Bayou Teche gathers momentum.

If autumn in St. Martin Parish is synonymous with sugar cane harvest, then gateau sirop, a traditional spice cake made from cane syrup, is surely the dessert of that season.

If you know only one thing about me, know this. When it comes to any kind of historical anything about Catahoula, I will always say yes.