Living country, cooking country a way of life for Betty Bize

The white house on Hwy. 1192 with the screened-in porch and well kept yard is an anchor in Blue Town. With chickens to the right of it, cattle to the back and zinnias guarding the front, Betty Bize’s home of 50 years stands welcoming.
“I was born country and I live country,” Betty said the other day as we visited.
You might not think being born in the heart of Mansura makes anyone country but back in 1930, as Betty indicated, “it was country. We had a meat market, post office, Durand’s was there and church. And we walked everywhere.”
Today the DesFosse house is an historical home and treasure to Mansura. Betty and her 10 siblings were born and raised in the house that is a French Creole show piece.
Her mother, Janette Normand married Lestan Normand, which makes the off springs “five part Normand.”
Unfortunately Janette died when she was only 51 years old and Betty was a very young 12.
“Papa raised us,” she remarked with pride.
Betty’s life path took a familiar route, “I finished school at 17 and married when I was 18.” The twist her path gave she would never have expected. “I was a widow at 37 with three young boys.”
Her husband, R.B. Laprarie, “died of a massive heart attack in the arms of Dr. Pete (Abramson).”
If anything can be said of Betty Bize, it’s consistency and determination. Moving forward, in faith, she trusted the bubble would right itself, and it did.
She married Bert Bize and moved to the country in 1969 and has been there ever since. “I haven’t changed a thing, she said about her home of almost half a century.”
She tried to call herself a hoarder but I totally rejected that, looking around her uncluttered clean and neat house.
What Betty has are things that represent memories. Gifts from a family member, ceramics a friend made for her, photographs of children, grands and greats, mementoes of the goodness of others.
“I keep them because I like them,” she stated simply. “I told my children after I die you can pull up a dumpster and toss but please don’t say. ‘Why did Mama keep this?’” She was just holding on to a part of them.
If her country home is full of such items it also gets filled with the family she loves.
“I fix dinner for everyone every Monday.” This tradition has been going on for years. “I even have a niece who comes from Alex to eat and visit.”
Grandchildren who are now all grown were once a part of the Monday dinner.
Part of being raised country is the heart of Betty’s cooking. We’re talking from scratch, full meals with homemade bread, rice and gravy, of course, “and a different bean every week.”
She loves to cook and said she has plans for the over populated chicken yard that has way too many roosters. “It’ll be a couple more weeks and I’ll be making a gumbo,” she said looking out the window and eyeing one of the roosters that flew the coop and was stuttering around the front yard.
Even though it was country to Betty, there were neighbors and friends and a lifestyle so different from the rush of today.
“We used to sit on the front porch in the evenings when friends came over and watch the cars go by. We knew everyone who was driving what car and truck.”
With a bit of lament in her voice, Betty pointed in one direction then the other saying, “But they’re all gone now,” she said as she ticked off name after name.
That hasn’t stopped her from being who she is. “I still get up at 5:00 in the morning, that’s my best time.” She cuts her own grass and doesn’t mind being out at 2:00 in the afternoon. She carefully watches over her coop of 20 chickens even though she’ll say, “they’ll eat me a lot of food.” She raises a garden and tends her flowers beds with a very green thumb.
Betty cooks for others and brings plates to friends and neighbors. She has been a faithful member of the American Legion Auxiliary and served as treasurer “for umpteen years.”
Short of this sounding like a nomination for Avoyellean of the Year, it’s really more a story about a person who has lived 88 years and given her all to all she does.
Did you ever wonder you would live 88 years and bury two husbands, I asked.
“I just live one day to the next but what I really wonder,” she said, “I wonder where the years have gone.”