Rita LeBleu

Booth’s Grocery is back. This is the store’s second comeback after a major hurricane. The sign is a bit faded, but its owner, Ella Mae Miller Booth, 93, is as colorful a character as ever, a bit of an icon in the Grand Chenier community— and beyond.

Hurricane Laura made landfall on the Cameron Parish coast in August 2020. Hurricane Rita, September 2005.

“It was a two-year ordeal to rebuild after Hurricane Rita, and it didn’t cause near the destruction that Laura did,” said Earl Booth Jr.

Earl Jr. is Ella Booth’s son, a retired principal, and he works in the store along with other family members, wife Michaeil, sister-in-law Bernice Booth and niece Rose Manuel.

After Hurricane Rita, Cameron Parish lost one-third of its population. Some of those folks survived Hurricane Audrey in June 1957, and were tired of starting over. Some could not afford the property insurance increases and the cost to rebuild to new restrictions. The same thing is happening now after Hurricane Laura, according to Bernice Booth.      

So, why do the Booths keep going back, and why do customers keep coming?

Rose Manuel answers the first question: “It’s like Dorothy says in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ There’s no place like home.”

She couldn’t wait to spend summers with her grandmother, saying there’s just no lifestyle like it.

To answer the second question…

For one thing, there’s not another store for miles. It’s a little isolated. Grand Chenier is over 60 miles from Lake Charles and Abbeville and the store is about five miles from The Gulf. The population is small, around 350, but Booth’s has had customers who come to fish, crab and take in the scenery from all over the world. Ella Booth can show you. She has a dozen or more notebooks with signatures and addresses of every new face that walks through the doors.

Customers find what they need at Booth’s: mosquito spray, beans, rice, cornbread mix, snacks, a cold drink, beer, the latest news — and then some.

Of course, Booth’s Grocery sells bait.

“We have melt, chicken necks, turkey necks, small and large mullet, worms, shrimp and even some of the artificial stuff,” said Michaeil Booth. “But we no longer sell fishing licenses. Folks mainly go online to get those now.”

Visitors are also drawn to Booth’s because of Ella Mae Booth. She enjoys being around people and people enjoy being around her. Most folks call her T-Mae. (T is used to denote little or petite by Cajuns.) She’s also been referred to as the Mayor of Grand Chenier.

Born in the house next to the store in 1927 (her mother and sister survived Hurricane Audrey in the attic), she married the late Earl “Red” Booth (Jan. 1918-Oct. 1993) when she was 17. He was a Navy Seabee from Ohio stationed in Cameron who never considered going back home after he fell in love with Booth, and the fishing, hunting and trapping lifestyle of the Gulf Coast. They took over the business in 1957.

“My Uncle Shelton (Miller) had the store at the time,” Booth said. “He didn’t want to reopen it after Hurricane Audrey. When we first opened, you could drink beer in the store. Some people would come and stay all day.”

She remembers an elderly man who thought she needed looking after even though she was well armed with hammer, Berretta and other security features as those became available. She remembers the man in the wheelchair that she helped into the store that would spend the day there and the one-eyed man who could blow cigarette smoke out of his bad eye to the delight of on-looking children.

“Workers and the retired would pour into the store everyday around 4:30,” Michaeil Booth. “They called it going to church at T-Mae’s.”

Ella Booth opened the store around 5:30 a.m., after drinking the cup of coffee her husband brought her in bed and dressing, working 12-hour days, sometimes longer. She has ladled up plenty of gumbo and other meals for customers, including her husband’s favorite, sauerkraut and pork.

“He made the sauerkraut himself,” Earl Jr. said, “by burying it in the ground.”

Ella Mae Booth, the baby of the family, went from being one of three kids that fought for the brains of a chicken at the dinner table to a woman who no longer eats anything with feathers. Nor does she eat alligator, which were at one time skinned right outside the store. She says it’s because she’s seen what they eat — anything.

Ella Mae Booth extended credit to folks she will never recoup. She treated neighbors like family. Kids loved her. She said they loved her treats, and she “adopted” St. Eugene’s

Father Vincent Vadakkadath as one of her own. A different St. Eugene’s priest gently scolded her – back in the day — when he happened to overhear her use a cuss word or two. Another sent a cat to her home for adoption, knowing of her disdain for cats.         

Southwest Louisiana reporters have interviewed her. However, the Nonk Chouz YouTube, Cajun OnStar, might best depict the character of the area and T-Mae’s endearing sense of humor. It records a Cajun’s conversation with an OnStar agent, who is having trouble locating the business after Nonk’s Cajun pronunciation. Nonk says the name again. (For those who don’t know, Cajun’s have their own way of pronouncing “th” as well as other sounds.) Finally, Chauz offers the OnStar agent the spelling: “B-O-O-T-H-comma-to-the-top S.”

The 2007 video was an overnight success. It also brought people into the store.

Will the store remain open?

“As long as I’m alive it will,” Booth says with a twinkle in her eye, upward jutted jaw and grin.”

Booth’s is located at 5647 Grand Chenier Hwy., .07 miles east of Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge.

Booth’s Grocery, at 5647 Grand Chenier Highway, is five miles from the Gulf and .07 miles east of Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge.

Rita LeBleu