Puckett: A Community at Joor & Sullivan Road

By Vicki Carney

Puckett was a community that reached its peak when it had a post office from February 1, 1901 to June 30, 1912. It was located at the corner of Joor Road and Sullivan Road. The community had around 300 people and was named for the first postmaster, David D. Puckett. Bill Lewis was born after the hay day of Puckett but still remembers seeing the three old buildings, the grist mill and the polling shack and hearing his relatives talk about it. The following are his memories: I don’t remember if all three stores were open at one time. The largest of the stores was at the intersection of Sullivan and Joor Road. The polling shack for the Third Ward was a building built solely for that purpose and was located south of the intersection, not too far from Gurney Road. You used a paper ballot and put it in a ballot box. In the 30’s, Gurney was a dirt, ungraded lane with one house on it which belonged to a black family who made charcoal and sold it. The stores were the typical wooden country stores. Since there was no refrigeration back then, the stores had can goods, and bulk items like flour, sugar and syrup. I remember the grist mill which also doubled as the blacksmith’s shop. The home of the owner faced the road. Green roses grew between the grist mill/blacksmith’s shop and the proprietor’s home. I had never seen green roses until then. It was a beautiful old wooden house with a wraparound porch. The shop had a large forge and bellows that was operated by a belt from the steam engine. You got your horseshoes there, tools would be sharpened and broken tools like plows would be fixed. Some of his patrons paid for the proprietor’s work by supplying firewood for his steam engine. I don’t know who owned the large home that was located in the Live Oak grove. The house was torn down in the 50’s but you can still see the beautiful oak trees to this day. In the “20’s and ‘30’s people in rural areas bartered for services rather than paying. Dad and I bought the dried corn, shelled, in bushel baskets to be ground into cornmeal and grits. We brought flour sacks to transport the products back home. Instead of paying for the grinding of the corn, the proprietor would keep one half and the farmer would get the other half. We had to transport our sugar cane stalks to Devall Road to produce syrup and molasses. We brought jars and tin buckets with us to use to store the finished product. The Duvall family made the molasses and cane syrup in a big iron rectangular vat that was raised on iron legs over a fire. The Fairchild family did so as well. They used scoops on the end of long handles to skim the foam and bits of cane stalk off the top of the boiling cane juice and boat paddles to continually stir the liquid. They would reduce the liquid until it reached syrup consistency, remove as much of the syrup as they wanted, then boil the rest down into molasses. Most of the farmers in the Central Area just grew enough sugar cane for their own use. Usually the owner of the vat got to keep one half. Corn was grown for cattle and chicken feed. It was ground into cornmeal and grits and while fresh for the table, or to be scalded and cut from the cobs. The kernels were preserved in mason jars. Sweet potatoes were spread in single layers on barn floors to be chopped up for hog food or baked as food. Irish potatoes would be kept the same way in a dry cool area to be eaten over the winter with some of each kept for next year’s planting. Everyone grew seasonal vegetables. Sweet peas, field peas, butter beans, string beans, tomatoes, were canned in mason jars. Strawberries, figs, pears, quinces, plums were cultivated or wild plums, mayhaws, muscadines, crab apples and blackberries were picked in woods or fields, to be cooked down with sugar into jellies and preserves. Pork was smoked in smoke houses, chickens provided eggs and were killed fresh as was wild game for meat. Cows were kept for butter, milk, cottage cheeses and clabber. Nearly every home in Central area had most of these things growing in gardens so very little in the form of groceries had to be bought. The stores stocked Kerosene, shot gun shells, seeds, condensed milk, lard, flour, sugar, spices, canned fruit, canned meats, candies, etc. Water was from hand dug wells. We had no electric or phones bills because neither service was available until the “40’s. Lack of income during the Depression years of the “30”s didn’t affect the people of agrarian Central as much as it did the lives of those who lived in the more urban areas of Louisiana.