A Simple Life, by Lisa Gelhaus, photos by Bryan Tuck ... Houma Courier, June 7, 1998
Pushing open the rusted wire and weathered wood gate onto Clarence and Sadie Hebert's property knocks a hole in time.
As vehicles roar past their Park Avenue home, situated among residences and businesses along one of Houma's busiest thoroughfares, the brother and sister carry on a way of life that has disappeared from most places.
For the past 70 years, they have lived in the 178-year-old Acadian style house that their great-grandfather Marselier Hebert built out of cypress - a place where their mother and father died and were waked.
Little has changed in the simple structure, although Clarence, 74, and Sadie, 80, have literally covered the walls with newspapers, political posters, calendars from the late '30s to early '40s and family photographs.
She doesn't throw things away. Items ranging from jars to shopping bags to old garden gloves have a place in their home.
"Someone gave me a picture, I put it up on the wall," Sadie said. They grew up during the Great Depression, when money was scarce. They continue living in poverty. |
The bare cypress walls of the Heberts'
home have
been
covered with political fliers,
calendars, antiques
and family
photographs. |
They said they receive no Social Security, welfare, food stamps or any other government assistance. The couple have almost always been self-sufficient, living off the land. Clarence said he only earned $65 worth of Social Security when he worked for a sugar cane mill.
Most of the Heberts' work is done in the cool morning hours, beginning at about 4:30 a.m.
In the afternoon, they relax with cardboard fans and softly talk in French. |
Today, they live off money raised from the sale of land measuring 288 feet by 50 feet, which was used to construct Alma Street. They also receive necessities thanks to the goodwill of friends, visitors, and family.
Their present existence symbolizes a time and a way of life when Terrebonne Parish's economy and landscape consisted of sugar cane plantations and small farms.
The Hebert family was one of those small, poor, French farming families that survived by its own labor.
"We were poor, yeah," Sadie said. "We had to work hard. ... You had to dig potatoes if you wanted to eat."
Their parents and older brother and sister were busy either harvesting sugar cane, raising crops or tending their animals.
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As they watched their neighborhood change, they continued drawing water from one of three cisterns, and they continue to use an outhouse. There are no screens on the windows to keep out insects.
Sadie still uses a washboard - a cypress-framed one embedded with long wire nails that her mother bought - to wash their clothes.
Until last year, there was a cow grazing in the front yar. Red New Hampshire chickens still stroll over the sandy yard. In another part of the yard are the black Plymouth Rock hens and the strawberry blond 5-year-old rooster named Buck, who keeps a watchful eye of the roost.
Sadie and Clarence have spoiled one red hen, nicknaming her "the talking chicken." She's allowed in the hosue and Sadie soothes her by speaking French.
The chickens, as with most aspects of the Heberts' lives, have a purpose and are part of their survival. They sell the fresh eggs to a nearby butcher for $1 a dozen. |
Clarence builds a mound around a young bean plant in the larger of his two gardens.
Working without the aid of modern machinery, he hoes the long rows by hand every season. |
On most mornings, breakfast for
the Heberts is simply a banana. |
WORKING HARD
They were trained to work hard and work for each other, Sadie said. They worked so hard their brother, Howard, died of a heart attack while working in the sugar cane field.
"We worked hard, yeah. this is the way we were raised." Sadie said. "That's why we still work because we were raised that way. ... You're not going to find any 80-year-old working in the field, no."
"This Sunday (May 31), he will be dead 22 years. Twenty-two years ago it was a Monday. This year it's a Sunday," Clarence said of Howard, during an interview last month. Clarence has a staggering memory for the dates of their lives' milestones.
Clarence was 5 and Sadie was 11 when their family moved from U.S. Sen. Allen Ellender's potato farm in Coteau to the house their great-grandfather built. But the land belonged to a man they called "Old Man" Babin. Their parents leased the 22-acre farm that stretched a half-mile from Bayou Terrebonne, 600 feet past Alma Street. The price was $100 a year.
Sugar cane was raised in the rear field, and corn potatoes and white beans in gardens closer to the house. They raised hogs for their meat and cows for milk. A 700-pound hog would provide enough meat for a year. |
Every member of the family worked to support the family's survival, which surpassed the need for an education.
Clarence, the youngest Hebert child, attended Bayou Cane School until the fifth grade. Sadie, the second youngest, remembers going to school for three years.
"I quit school to go work in the field," Clarence said.
"We couldn't afford to go to school. We had to work." Sadie said.
Both Sadie and Clarence harvested and planted their sugar cane by hand. They started when they were 14.
"Since I was 19 years old, I was taking care of this house," Sadie said. "Taking care of five people. I was planting in the garden, cooking the food, milking the cow and, if I had any spare time, I was working in the field."
They can hardly recall playing. Marbles is the only game they remember.
"We didn't have money to pay for dolls in those days," Sadie said.
The only holiday they celebrated was Christmas, which meant killing one of the farm's roosters for the holiday meal. There wre no presents. There were no birthday cakes and parties. They never owned a car. Clarence didn't go to dances because he wasn't taught how to dance.
However, like most people, Sadie remembers and yearns for her youth. Her reason, however, is unique.
"I wish I was 26 again. I'd be out there in that field cutting cane, I could work good then," she said.
Holding homemade fans, the siblings sit in their rocking chairs in the house's newest addition - the kitchen. It was built by their former landlord, "Old Man" Babin.
During one sugar cane harvest, Clarence remembers working with his brother, Howard, loading 18 tons of cane without a machine. |
Sadie Hebert takes a break at her kitchen door
while
cooking lunch for her and Clarence. |
"At the end of the day I couldn't hold cane up like this," Clarence said, holding his hands to demonstrate he could only hold about three to four cane reeds.
Exhaustion was no excuse. Southdown Plantation was expecting the Hebert's sugar cane at the Hollywood Road bridge at a certain day and time.
Mules pulled the loaded carts to the hoist where a small-gauge train took it to the mill for grinding.
Southdown paid them $2.50 to $3 for a ton of cane. But as soon as they got the money, it went to pay off their yearlong bill at the general store. The store's owner let them purchase goods on credit.
"If it wasn't enough, he waited to get paid next year," Clarence said.
Park Avenue was a shell road that the Heberts used to get to Hollywood Road bridge. It also was the road to church.
Clarence and Sadie used to walk about two-and-a-quarter miles to catechism classes at St. Frances de Sales Cathedral. They were told it was only a mile.
"I think it was more than two miles. It used to take us an hour," Clarence said.
Clarence was baptized there. Sadie was 6 when she rode in the bed of a canopied truck to attend her brother's baptism.
It was the first time she had ridden in a car.
Both made their communion in the cathedral. Hanging on the wall are wallet-sized photographs of Sadie in her communion dress, placed in the frame of a larger photograph.
The entire family lived together in the house until the older sister, Louise, got married in St. Francis. She was the only woman in the family to wear a store-bought dress - a wedding dress from a store in downtown Houma. |
Using the light from an open door, Clarence shaves
using a mirror from an old truck.
|
Sadie said she and her mother made the family's clothes.
World War II caused the second family member to depart. Howard went to Fort Polk and eventually was sent to Germany, where he stayed until the war ended. He returned home 51 years ago with enough money from his military salary to purchase his family's farm for $5,000 from "Old Man" Babin.
Why didn't Howard buy his own home?
This is his home. This is where he was raised," Sadie said.
With no running water in the house, a small pan filled with water
from a cistern acts as a sink in a corner of the house. |
MODERN DAY INTRUSIONS
Either a resistance to change or their poverty prevents them from keeping up with the computer-age world that exists outside their door.
But some changes can't be avoided. They're almost forced upon them.
When the road was paved in 1958, they lost the front 50 feet of their property. In the 1960s, there was the Vietnam War and the hippie generation.
About that time, Clarence began having trouble finding kerosene for his hurricane-style lamps. In 1964, a friend wired the Heberts' home for electricity without charging them. A year earlier, they had a gas stove installed.
Thirty-four years later, the only appliances drawing power are a refrigerator, freezer, television, radio and a few light bulbs. Their utility bill is $8-10 a month.
They installed a telephone after a cousin told them they had to have one.
They have no plumbing or bathroom and rainwater is still collected in cisterns.
"That water doesn't cost me nothing," Clarence said. He strains but does not boil the water. |
He knows about the parish's purified water, but he dislikes the smell of the chlorine. He said the chlorine erodes the pipes, so "what is it going to do to me?"
Despite the lack of copper pipes and chlorinated water, the siblings said they have never been sick from the water collected of the corrugated tin roof.
Clarence recalls getting sick once. He said he got typhus from a flea bite. The flea was hiding in the corn feed Clarence took to nourish the cows.
It was 53 years ago, and he spent several days under a pile of quilts, sweating out the infection. The doctor recommended Clarence take a quarter-tablet of St. Joseph's aspirin every few hours. He drank lots of juice and broth. He said he hasn't been sick since.
Sadie suffers from an unknown nervous condition. She used to take medicine for it, but when the doctor retired, she quit.
Although they say they don't need doctors, Clarence does need his bicycle. He rides it to Cannata's supermarket to buy their bananas, peanut butter and other food items. He also banks there. He says he goes about every three weeks.
They live frugally and within their era - a time long forgotten by most.
Kevin Belanger, the parish's senior planner, studied the development of architecture and land in Louisiana while attending college. As a planner, he helps parish officials develop zoning laws for stores and houses in Houma and understands the impact made by those changes.
"You've got to appreciate people like that. ... What if no one held onto their beliefs?" Belanger said.
"Back then you didn't care about what kind of car you drove or if you had a copper roof on your house," he said.
Although the brother and sister appear to be shut off from 1998, they are plugged into the parish's news and happenings.
Every day they listen to the radio for news and weather. Sadie likes to see the newspaper and read the obituaries.
They've heard of convicted rapist Chad Louviere, and they listened to the October 1996 bank hostage situation where Louviere is accused of killing a Dulac woman while holding other women hostage for 25 hours. Clarence believes, like many people in Terrebonne Parish, that Louviere should be executed if convicted of murder.
During a recent visit, a friend stopped by with some visitors carrying a digital camera. One of them takes a picture of Clarence, then shows him the recorded image. |
Clarence returns to the house after a morning of working in the garden. |
Like a small boy with a new toy, Clarence smiles at the latest generation of camera technology. Clarence marvels at the ability to instantlly see the color image of himself.
"Fifty years is not a long time when you look at the advancement of technology," said Belanger, "... and look at the pressures that come with technology."
The shell road that once connected the Heberts' farm to their neighbors and community is now paved.
When they were growing up, they spotted one or two cars a day. Mule-drawn wagons and carts used the road. It now is filled with passing cars - enough traffic to keep them from crossing the street. Sadie hasn't crossed Park Avenue since 1968. Clarence said it sometimes takes him a half-hour of waiting before he can safely cross.
Their neighbors are connected to the world through telephone, teleconferencing, faxes and the internet.
Sadie and Clarence simply carry on.
They are the fourth generation of Heberts to live on their land. They expect their nephew and some of his children to inherit the property.
The generations of the Hebert family still share the remaining 17 acres of land. Two of their nephews' sons live on the 600 feet past Alma Street. Their nephew lives on the bayou side.
Clarence and Sadie, French Canadian descendants, have a strong affinity for their home.
Sadie said they'd have to drag her out of the house by her feet before she would go to a nursing home.
"I was raised here, I'm going to die here," she said.
Until then, they sit in the kitchen telling their stories, while the remaining sugar cane farms sell off acres of land to build single-family homes on quaintly named subdivision streets.
The generous and welcoming Sadie waves her fan at visitors to keep them cool.
Wasps fly in through the windows looking for a suitable nesting place. The white mud wasp nests dot the exposed ceiling. |
The Heberts' 178-year-old cypress house on Park Avenue seems out of place among the businesses and residences
that line the road, but Clarence can remember when homes of this type ran all the way to Thibodaux along the road. |
The house is not insulated, and cracks in the floor give glimpses of the dirt below. Sand accumulates in the house.
Several weeks ago Sadie and her brother planted butter beans. The planted hundreds of seeds by hand, equal distances from each other, the way her parents taught her, while Clarence patiently hoed the 50-yard long rows.
Now they just wait for rain.
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Copyright © 1997-09 Tim Hebert 
