Field Note 001 · Cameron Parish
Grand Chenier, Louisiana · Visited July 2026
We weren’t looking for Booth’s Grocery. We were looking for a restroom.
On our way to Rutherford Beach, we noticed a car parked outside an old country store and pulled into the gravel lot, hoping someone might still be there.
The door was locked. Booth’s Grocery had already closed its doors, and had been closed for quite some time.
We could have gotten back in the truck. Instead, we walked onto the porch.
A door that still opened
Not behind the register, waiting on customers, but caring for a place that had shaped generations of life in Cameron Parish.
That afternoon we met Earl Booth Jr. What followed wasn’t an interview in the formal sense. It felt more like sitting at a kitchen table while someone pulled memories from shelves that had held them for decades.
You could tell almost immediately that this wasn’t simply a building to him. It was family.
“The walls weren’t decorated. They were remembering.”
The walls remember
Photographs. Certificates. Newspaper clippings. Handwritten notes. Each frame marked another chapter in a story that began long before we arrived.
Nothing felt staged. Nothing felt curated. It simply accumulated over a lifetime.
The walls weren’t decorated. They were remembering.
Leaving
Eventually the conversation slowed. We thanked Earl for sharing his afternoon — and his family’s story.
Outside, Highway 82 was exactly as we’d left it. The marsh still stretched toward the Gulf. Traffic was still almost nonexistent.
We found a restroom a few miles later.
What we almost missed was Booth’s Grocery.
Field Record
With sincere thanks to Earl Booth Jr. for generously sharing his time, memories and family history.