Remember the days when we grew real sugar cane – soft and sweet as sugar? There were many kinds of cane – red cane, stripped cane and coffee cane. You could peel them with your fingers they were so soft. We used to go to the sugar house in Glenwild and eat the brown sugar right out of the bin. The steamboat J.N. Pharr used to tow barges of cane from Avoca Island to the sugar house in Glenwild. The people working on the barges would let you eat all you wanted of the sugar cane.
I’ll never forget the time I brought my brother, Joe, who was about 10 years old, with me on the barge. It was freezing cold and Joe was chewing on the cane and his nose was running. That is what you would call sweet and sour sugar cane.
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Do you remember “Spark Plug” Bourgeois? His first name was Agnan. “Spark Plug” was telling me one day about his job as a night watchman at the Riverside Packing Co. He said it was a good job, but he was not making enough money. I told “Spark Plug” to ask for a raise and if it was not given that he was going to quit. Well, “Spark Plug” made the mistake and told his boss that a night watchman’s job is very important and that he wanted a raise. Well, lo and behold, they fired “Spark Plug” and put a dog in the plant at night to watch the premises. How would you like to be replaced by a dog?
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The Town of Berwick was named for one of its earliest families – that of Thomas Berwick, a surveyor, who arrived in the area in 1784.
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Dr. Walter Brashear of Morgan City was a famous surgeon who was one of the first to amputate a patient’s leg at the hip. He is also recorded as being the first surgeon to remove a cancerous breast.
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Have you ever visited the Amish people? My wife and I stopped in a little town in Pennsylvania called Intercourse, where we visited the Amish Community. They are a group of people who belong to a Protestant group that originated in Switzerland. They are a sort of strange people; the men wear beards and wide-brimmed hats and they drive around in buggies pulled by horses. They were very nice and polite. The women, on the other hand, wear plain and long dresses, put their hair up in buns and wear bonnets, and use no make-up. They are extremely clean people, their houses and yards are immaculately clean and their neighborhoods look like pictures out of a magazine. We had lunch with these people. The food was simple, but good, and the only drink was water. The dining room was a plain room without rugs or decorations. The floor was of boards, and there was a long table with wooden chairs. They forbid the use of electricity and telephones. They limit education to the eighth grade. We enjoyed it, but it was quite an experience.
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