Thibodaux, Louisiana
Thibodaux, Louisiana
I’ve always heard about the camps. We lived up in Bayou Blue and where the camps (Houma Camp) were only about five miles out, if that much. My mom and dad used to talk about that and my grandma and grandpa too.
It’s kinda the same story that’s known here. They worked in the fields They worked the camps. And when they had good behavior they’d let them visit for supper at people’s houses, the other workers. For the Matherne family, the story goes that They would allow one of the prisoners to rock the daughter. Now I really really was surprised hearing this as a child, My parents spoke in French, but to see it on the wall really made it real. It really was true that they had prisoners of war here.
When I was growing up, my daddy couldn’t read past third grade. My mother maybe went up to eleventh grade. My grandparents had no education. They didn’t even get newspapers. I didn’t even have a TV. So they didn’t know. Unless someone who knew lived in the neighborhood. Every so often they’d have the Times Picayune and my mother would read out the stories of the murders. No television, no newspapers, no way of finding out.