About a month ago, Mom, Marc, Jackie and Steve, and I went to Washington, Louisiana to see the house where her father, Joseph Pitre, was born . We drove out to Washington, which is a little ways past Ville Platte on I-49, on a Sunday. This particular Sunday happened to be the Catfish Festival, so driving through the town was a little tricky. However, we finally made it through. A family in Washington bought the house where Mom's Father Joseph Pitre was born a few years ago. They are currently restoring it, along with other old Louisiana homes in the area. Unfortunately, the previous owner did not treat the house well. He even tore up the floor and sold the wood from the floor. So, the house does not look as well as it used to look. The house is over 100 years old.

The name of the place where the family lives is called Magnolia Hills or Gardens or Magnolia something; I cannot recall now. You park your car in a small parking lot and walk down a concrete path to see all of the houses (they are restoring more than just Joe Pitre's house). Anyhow, you walk up the steps to the front porch . You can see the front door and windows from the porch. On the right side of the porch, you can climb up a ladder into the attic (which I believe also served as another set of bedrooms) from the front porch. None of us felt like climbing that day, so I do not have any pictures of the attic. The front door was unlocked so we went inside and looked around. When you walk through the front door, you come to the living room . The living room, like all of the other rooms that we saw in the house, are fairly small compared to rooms today. On the right side you can see the chimney and walk through a doorway into a bedroom . Mom said the bed looked like the old beds her parents used to have, except that the bed was missing the mosquito netting. The dolls on the bed were also supposed to be original. You can pass through another doorway in the bedroom. Looking from the second doorway, you can see an armoir and some furniture in the bedroom. On the left side of the living room was a doorway into another room containing lots of furniture and stuff . As you can see, the inside of the house will require a lot of work to restore. After walking through the inside of the house, we walked around the right side to the back side of the house . Although it's not clear from the picture, the back side also requires some restoration work. The small house behind Joe Pitre's house was not part of the original house. Apparently the family restoring Joe Pitre's house added this small house. Finally, I took another picture of the back side of the house from the left side . We walked a little further down the trail to see the flowers and plants and trees. Then we walked back to our car and left. And that was our visit to the house in which Joseph Pitre grew up.