October 2010. Six feet under, and under again.

In early September I found myself in a car with Jeremy Broussard, the executive producer of “Little Houses,” to learn more about the film’s subject—historic Acadian grave houses, of which only three remain.  Turning off of Highway 90 and into a community known as Mermentau Cove, my host made turn after turn, and I was sure the next path would be gravel, or dirt, or unchartered altogether and straight through a farmer’s field. Jeremy, who grew up in Crowley and often visited his grandparents in the Cove, let me know en route that all the land my eyes fell on used to belong to the Istre family (pronounced “east”).

We finally arrived at our destination, Istre Cemetery, situated at the point where seemingly endless growing fields meet a forest border. It’s peaceful there, for so many reasons. The nearest towns, Morse, Mermentau, and Midland, don’t exactly bustle, and there are miles of country roads separating those villages of the living from this one of the dead. It’s you, the forest, the fields, and the final oak-shaded resting places of community members.
City folk would shell out lots of money to secure a spot in such a serene setting, but plots in Istre Cemetery are actually free for those in the area—one of the perks of a rural life.

Wanting a genuine first impression, I had decided to not watch the movie or read the companion book about the grave houses before meeting Jeremy for this excursion. I was struck straightaway by the size of the structures—the foundational dimensions are just a bit wider than the grave slabs, and all have small Alice-In-Wonderland-type doors. If you enter one of these grave houses to scrape off the wasp nests, wipe away spider webs, freshen up the paintjob, or leave flowers, you’re either a small child or you’re on your hands and knees. The effect is very cozy, tiny chapel or grotto-like.

As we moved around the houses and knelt at their open doors, Jeremy let me in on what is known about the grave house burial custom, which isn’t much. At the height of this custom in the nineteenth century, there were probably a few hundred grave houses scattered in Acadia, Vermilion, and Evangeline parishes, with an estimated forty of them in Istre Cemetery. They were constructed by hand just like the Acadians would have built their residential houses, with hand-hewn cypress clapboards and shingles, drip molding, diagonal bracing, windows and locking doors. Some had exposed rafter tails while others had soffits.

Generally, people would request a grave house and the family would build it on the day they died. “Back then when someone died, the women tended the body and got the home ready for the wake,” offered Jeremy. “These houses gave the men something to do, it was something that forced the sons to come together on that day…That’s just a story in my head, no one will know for sure.” He’s a storyteller at heart.

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