LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / October 21, 2000

Still connected to the land, retired farmer J. Leonard Zeringue of Taftremains a fixture along River Road.

Nestled on a strip of homes immediately downriver from the massive Union Carbide plant, Zeringue’s home sports a vegetable stand where, every October for the past 50 years, pumpkins from his fields are painted with spooky faces which has drawn regular customers for years.

Zeringue, 81, said he couldn’t claim credit for the painted pumpkin idea, but his brother, Andre, with whom he ran the family farm, came up with it around 1950. Before long children in the family lined up pumpkins on the kitchentable.

“One did eyes, one did mouths,” Zeringue recalled. Then the children decidedeach wanted to paint their own separately, and so it has been for generations since.

The painted pumpkins average in price from $10 to $12, while unpainted ones are sold for $2. “We thought it was something that a little paint could getthe price up,” Zeringue recalled.

Zeringue and his wife, Phedelise Schexnayder Zeringue, have a long connection with St. Charles Parish. His wife was born in Ormond Plantationwhen it belonged to her family. They married 56 years ago and worked thefarmland at Live Oak Plantation in the postwar years before they acquired the 1830s-era Triche house.

The house itself is of a rare style of Spanish architecture, of which only one other example remains in Louisiana, according to an LSU architecture professor who examined it several years ago.

The offset roofline reveals that the kitchen area, on the upriver end, was once a separate building. Zeringue said it was once a schoolhouse and, whenthe J.C. Triche family bought the St. Charles Herald newspaper in 1890, itbecame the newspaper office.

In the years to come Zeringue and his wife had nine children.

“I always tell people I was born to love,” Zeringue commented, as his wife nodded in agreement. They also have 26 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Zeringue served as St. Charles Parish’s registrar of voters from fall 1962,when Police Juror Preston Madere persuaded him to take the part-time job when his predecessor died.

In a few years the job developed into full-time work, and his farm work took more of a back seat. He retained the job until summer 1988, when hisbrother retired and he decided to retire as well. Today, the Zeringue farm,with its rich harvest of pumpkins, oranges, peaches, satsumas, pecans and other crops, continues to provide for the Zeringues and their offspring.

Zeringue was succeeded by his niece, Janice Hymel, who began working for him in the office in October 1975.

When the old St. Charles Parish courthouse was razed in the mid-1970s tomake way for the present building, he found a brick in the rubble with the date 1826 molded into it, marking the year the original courthouse was built.

He displayed that “cornerstone” brick for more than 10 years, and upon his retirement passed it on to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Edward A.

Dufresne Jr. (formerly the clerk of court).Customers drop by for pumpkins every October, but few likely realize the historical treasure also living there.

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