Patience, car windshield grasshopper in Opelousas, Louisiana. Travel can be challenging.
“Oh, they haven’t done that since before COVID started, and they’re trying to figure out how to get more funding for renovations, so the theater is closed.”
Yes, that was the event that I’d specifically booked a hotel room to attend that night.
Well, some trips are smooth sailing, with most expectations met. Some trips are… not so smooth.
The key is to stay positive, and be open to zigging when your plans zag.
On a recent trip to Louisiana, a sweet dough pie search and live music plans both blew up in my face, but despite the Cajun chaos, it was still a fun adventure and I was able to, as the locals say, “Pass a good time.”
My quest to try the sweet dough pie regional treat started with a quick drive north from my road trip’s base in Lafayette LA. Sweet dough pies are handheld, foldover-style pastries with a variety of fillings. I’d tried a packaged Cajun brand pie in Lafayette, which was pretty good, but wanted to pick up a fresh one.
Flipping through Garden & Gun magazine (it focuses on U.S. Southern culture and stories, and is more mellow than its title might indicate) I’d read about a place in Grand Coteau LA that had these pies. It was a short drive north of Lafayette, so as soon as I could carve out some time, off I went to find The Kitchen Shop, which I assumed was a bakery in a town that holds an annual Sweet Dough Pie Festival.
Entrance to The Kitchen Shop in Grand Coteau, LA, near Lafayette.
Since Grand Coteau is tiny, the Shop wasn’t hard to find – it’s right across the road from the Jesuit Spirituality Center.
It was really a kitchen supply and household goods store, though, not a bakery, and I was out of luck.
The pie plate was empty…
I was too late! The sweet dough pies were all gone.
Still, the woman working in the Shop was delightful, and I picked up a wide-brimmed straw hat that was made, ironically, in the Austin TX area where I live.
Although I left pie-less, I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around on a backroads drive on Louisiana’s Zydeco Cajun Prairie Scenic Byway, taking in the rural sights and colorful small towns.
Zydeco Cajun Prairie Louisiana Scenic Byway sign near Grand Coteau LA. Not the most scenic location, but the Popeye’s Chicken sign in the background means it’s Louisiana legit.
I knew of another place to get fresh sweet dough pies, and it would fit into the Cajun music part of my journey.
For years, I’d heard about two events that happen every Saturday in Eunice, Louisiana.
One was an informal Cajun music jam, where anybody who can play shows up between 9 a.m. and 12 noon at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, and anyone who wants to listen can come in and pull up a chair.
The other event was Rendez-Vous des Cajuns, a live music performance at the Liberty Theatre in Eunice every Saturday night that is also broadcast as a live radio show.
I was excited to discover that both of these would line up on the Saturday right after my stay in Lafayette, so after confirming on two different websites that the Rendezvous was scheduled for that Saturday, I booked a night at a hotel in Eunice to see both of them.
The Saturday morning drive to Eunice from Lafayette had the perfect soundtrack – public radio station KRVS 88.7 FM “Radio Acadie” was broadcasting live Cajun music from Lafayette’s wonderful annual Festivals Acadiens et Créoles, and the signal was strong for my entire trip.
The informal music jam session at the Savoy Music Center was as described on their website; very casual, and an un-fussy showcase of some terrifically talented players who get together every week simply for the love of making music.
Here is a 30-second-ish taste of these folks playing without any sheet music in front of them, but simply picking out the notes and then rolling in on their own interpretation of a slow version of the “Roller Skate Dance” from the movie Heaven’s Gate…
All of us listening that day were sitting in the back of the small room. No one said we couldn’t move closer, but I felt a little weird doing so.
Unless you know what to ask for in terms of specific gear or musical instruments (and I do not) there isn’t a whole lot to see in the store’s display cases, but I poked around for awhile anyway.
Top of a display case at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, Louisiana.
Make sure you drop a listener contribution to the music jam via their donation box, which helps keep everyone fueled with boudin and/or cracklins…
US$5 or US$10 goes here, and don’t be stingy, baby.
In some friendly conversation with the accordion player, I mentioned how much I was looking forward to seeing Rendez-Vous des Cajuns that night.
That’s when things started unraveling.
He told me that “they haven’t had the show since COVID started,” and the host venue, the Liberty Theatre in downtown Eunice, badly needed repairs and renovations so was closed for the foreseeable future.
What?
Inexplicably, the Liberty Theatre itself doesn’t seem to have a website, but the state tourism site about the theater doesn’t say anything about it being closed. I’d seen event notices for that night on the KLFY news station’s community calendar, and on the city of Eunice’s website.
You would think that online event information would resemble reality since we’re this far along in the internet age.
I was not on an escorted or hosted press/media trip; I was just a regular traveler who saw no reason to pick up Ye Olde Telephone, because authoritative online sources gave me what seemed to be authoritative information.
Even trying to kill time that afternoon in Eunice was not optimal. The National Park Service’s Prairie Acadian Cultural Center next to the Liberty was also… closed, for some unknown reason.
Okay, so what WAS I going to do that night instead? The accordion player mentioned two places nearby with live music – D.I.’s Restaurant and the Cajun Lounge and Dancehall. I made some tentative plans for D.I.’s.
Disappointed but undaunted, I shifted back to my sweet dough pie quest. A place called Yam Country Pies in Opelousas, about a 30 minute drive east of Eunice, is famous for them, and didn’t close for another couple of hours. Time to get a pie!
Except when I pulled into their little parking lot, they were closed. No sign on the door maybe saying, “We’re out for the day, so sorry!” Just, closed, on a Saturday. Another car pulled in, saw the situation, and then turned around and left as I sat there, wondering if the universe was going to keep toying with me.
Time to Google, “things to do in Opelousas LA.” There was a Visitors Center and Le Vieux Village Heritage Park and Museum, a collection of historic buildings to tour. Not super-exciting, but sure, why not? If I couldn’t have some pie, I’d have some history.
I checked the hours, pulled up and parked, and… you guessed it, they were closed. On a Saturday, when visitors tend to be out and about. Two other small groups arrived after me, tried the Visitors Center door, then wandered around looking at the exteriors of the locked-up historic buildings.
Fortunately, there were explanatory placards to read at each building, or it would have been a total bust. I did learn some things.
Did you know that trains full of orphan children were brought to Opelousas from New York City in 1907 and 1929?
“Between 1854 and 1929 two charity institutions, The Children’s Aid Society and The New York Foundling Hospital, gathered resources to help the more than 250,000 homeless or abandoned children living on the streets of New York City. The plan was to take as many children off the streets of New York and place them into rural homes across America.”
Also, how many times do you have the opportunity to learn about rare three-seat outhouses? Or that the star cutout means it’s for men, and the crescent moon cutout means it’s for women?
One more reason for me to appreciate living in the modern world.
I know that there are staffing problems everywhere. Visitors Centers and small local museums have a harder time then ever finding volunteers. Still, I’d have thought that a weekend would be the one time to find bodies to keep places open. I took my hangry self to an Opelousas ice cream and coffee shop; it was showing some college football on their TV which was a good distraction while I sulked.
Time to salvage this road trip.
Back in Eunice, I checked into my hotel, glanced bemusedly at the 90’s-era deep bathtub in the same room as the bed (how did I land in the, er, honeymoon room?) and got on the road to family-owned D.I.’s Cajun Restaurant to continue my live music journey.
The accordion man had not steered me wrong. Out in the middle of rice fields and not much else, the parking lot was full and I had to wait a little bit for a table.
D.I.’s Cajun Restaurant near Eunice LA, at sunset on a rural highway.
Inside was a mix of everything from teens in prom dresses to families to farmworkers. There are multiple rooms – you can go to a quiet one in the back, or stay closer to the small bandstand. There are plenty of tables.
The place is obviously a pillar of the community; wall decor included the owner’s family in Courir de Mardi Gras portraits, and team photos from when the restaurant sponsors local kid’s sports, like the mighty 1999 Mudbugs T-ball team. The guest book had signers from all over the U.S. and as far away as Germany.
The band that night was Louisiana Pride, with a drummer who had lost an arm in a farm accident years ago and now plays with a prosthetic limb. The bonus is that now with the metal gripper part of the prosthetic arm, he “never drops the drumstick.” That’s some positive thinking.
The dance floor at D.I.’s had a few couples, but mostly the young kids seemed to really get into the music, along with a parent who had to be out there with them to keep mayhem at bay.
The menu is full of shrimp and gator and oysters and catfish and frog legs and crawfish, and there are lots of mix-and-match possibilities if you can’t decide.
I got grilled oysters and grilled shrimp, washed down with an Abita Amber, brewed in Covington, Louisiana.
I cleaned my plate, yessir.
As I drove back to the hotel that dark, warm night, with eleventy-billion Louisiana insects meeting their maker on my windshield and front bumper, I was quite satisfied with the end result of my Cajun Chaos road trip adventure.
It wasn’t Rendezvous, but some day that event will come back, and I will go to see it, after I call and email and send carrier pigeons and whatever it takes to make sure it’s really happening.
All photos and video by the author.
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