Shadows on-the-Teche

It was my New Year's resolution to decrease my postings this year. In keeping that resolution I was not going to write about a little trip we took yesterday to New Iberia. However, our tour guide (Elaine) for the house by the Bayou Teche made us promise that we would tell others about the house and encourage them to visit the place. The house had been in the ownership of one family for 125 years, four generations lived there. Just before his death the last living member of the David Weeks family,William Weeks Hall, turned the home over to the care of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. As he once said: "Fine things are without value".  Over the years many of the documents of the family, including family letters, were stored in trunks in the attic. Not only important family papers, but also linens, furnishings for the home, and clothes for the family were kept in those trunks. The house  was, without a doubt, an historical gem to be preserved. Trust restoration cost $169,519.33, more than 16 times the home's value in 1846.  The house today, and its furnishings, does very well reflect back to its state in the nineteenth century. Below is a picture of the house. When we noticed the shadows which flickered over the home ( created by the sun filtering its rays through the branches of the large live oaks on the grounds) we did not puzzle any longer as to how the home received such a mysterious grand name.

 On our return home we stopped in the town of Breaux Bridge where there is a snake sculpture. The Bayou Teche got its name from an old Chitimacha Indian legend. According to that tale, there once was a very large snake who roamed the area and terrified many people. He was finally slayed and as his body collapsed into the earth, it carved out the bayou into the shape of a snake.