Envision yourself sitting alongside the idyllic Bayou Petit Caillou in eastern Terrebonne Parish. You are eating boiled shrimp and crabs, whose shells will soon be discarded back into the bayou to continue the cycle of life in a productive ecosystem. The breeze that ruffles your hair is forceful enough to cause the floating pelicans to carelessly drift backwards on the bayou as packs of seagulls swirl overhead. Shrimpers whose boats move up and down the bayou wave at you as they trawl for shrimp. Bayou water laps at the banks. A morning catch nets over 1,300 pounds of shrimp for one shrimper.
This is a scene that has played out for over a century just steps outside of Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery between Chauvin and Cocodrie, a fuel/supply and general store that has existed for 110 years. Proprietor Cecil Lapeyrouse has owned the store for forty years. His grandfather built it in 1914.
Some aspects of life on the bayou today resemble a way of life that has been a cultural hallmark in south Louisiana. Yet much has changed, and Cecil has seen it firsthand. Now 73 years old, Cecil grew up at the tail end of what was still a mostly French-speaking world around him. He was born and raised on the bayou. His parents spoke more French than English. The customers coming through the store were mostly subsistence fishermen living and working in the community or nearby bayou towns. Business was often conducted in French. Now, the customers coming through his store are more likely to be recreational fishermen from any number of outside places rather than subsistence fishermen.
The people who were here, they were more the people who lived in the neighborhood. But everything has changed. People who are coming here now are more from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Mississippi, and further places. There are still some people who live here, but not like when I was growing up.
While he was a young student in the late 1950s and the 1960s, English quickly became more common in everyday life. Spanish was taught in school. “By then, there were some kids in school that didn’t know how to speak French,” explains Cecil. “At home, their parents were still talking French, but they never really picked it up.”
The idea that speaking French was something to be ashamed of or purged was still in practice. “There was a young man who grew up not far from here. When he started school in the 1960s, he spoke just French. At school, he was punished for speaking French. The French language has changed a lot during my life. It was really rare to hear someone speak English (during my childhood). Now, that world is gone.” According to 2020 Census data, today 86% of homes in the 70344 zip code where Lapeyrouse is located speak only English.
The Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery after hurricane Ida
The Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery today
Cultural erosion happened simultaneously with ecological erosion. Federal levees built along the Mississippi River beginning in the 1930s began a cascading effect of land loss and saltwater intrusion that decimated the pastures and sugar cane fields of Cecil’s youth. Hurricanes and the economics of the fishing industries have taken a toll in the community. Hurricane Ida flooded Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery with three feet of water. Oil industry jobs lured workers from the fisheries. Whereas Cecil’s father was a shrimp processor who hired local labor, Cecil spent decades working offshore in the oil industry.
People have moved away. Fishing camps proliferated in areas where full-time residents raised families. There were once twelve shrimp docks between Cocodrie and Chauvin; now there are only two.
I think there is a whole bunch of optimism to it.
And yet the traditional way of life continues. The shrimpers working the bayou still buy supplies from Lapeyrouse and sell their product to the docks. And, it’s still possible to hear French in the grocery, both from locals and tourists. “I have a few guys living here that I still speak French with sometimes,” shares Cecil. He also regularly gets customers from France. “They want to see where their ancestors went.”
Cecil is optimistic about the potential land-building that could occur from river sediment diversion projects. “The oyster guys, the crabbers, the shrimpers – the places that they’re working today were land before. Then they built the levees, and the saltwater started coming in and started eating up all the land. Now, instead of a guy having to go all the way down to Venice to go shrimping, he can just go right down there to Lafitte in Barataria Bay.”
For now, Cecil continues his family tradition as Cecil Lapeyrouse Grocery’s presence provides a sense of durability for those still enjoying and working on the bayou, in a way only a store in its twelfth decade can.
