• 14"x 10" image size (16"x 12" paper size) / 100 prints / 16"x 20" matting size
• Available as a Matted Card scene.

Beneath a shady oak tree, the artist as a youngster, receives his first trim from his father while his dad's older brother looks on. No matter how prosperous or how poor, the Cajun home featured a galerie (front porch). It was the place where a housewife could sit and work, the family would gather, and people entertained in the cooler outdoors. Stairs on the front porch not only freed up interior spaces, but were a hedge against taxation of structures with inside staircases. The boys in a family usually slept in the attic while girls slept below with their parents. The kitchen was often a separate unit, reached by a doorway of its own, sensible in a climate of more heat than cold. The doors and windows of the home were flung open during the day, shaded with colored curtains of yellow, pink, red or green to retain a bit of privacy.

Paint was usually only on the front of the house in the galerie area. It was the place most often seen by the family and visitors alike, a leftover of French frugality. Backs of doors and shutters were not normally painted, because when closed at the end of the day, paint would not be seen in the dark and so was not needed. A ledge over a kitchen window was for a washtub to do the dishes. Inside was all economy with very little wasted area.

Houses were constructed of cypress. Fencing made of cypress slabs driven into the ground close together was placed around the house to keep animals out of the vegetable garden. Cypress is a durable wood, will not rot when immersed either fresh or salt water, is not attacked by insects, is straight-grained and easily fashioned, and does not warp when sawed. It grows best in standing fresh water. Cypress is said to grow naturally in every Louisiana parish with the greatest concentration in the Atchafalaya Basin. In days of cypress lumbering, "swampers" went into the woods in the fall, lived in crude camps, suffered malaria, and felled the enormous trees. In the spring, logs were poled out by train or logboats.