by Dominick Cross
It was mid-afternoon on Friday the 13th. Dark storm clouds grew and threatened as the wind whipped-up in and around Lafayette, Louisiana.
A pop-up storm, yet another of Spring 2022, was inbound and Downtown Alive!, the free outdoor concert series in Downtown Lafayette, was cancelled for obvious reasons.
Up in Grand Coteau, a small town some 15 miles north of Lafayette, a different scene would unfold under cloudy skies and a steady breeze. Not one drop of rain would fall.
The phone rang. The excitable voice on the other end happily informed me that Grand Coteau was having it’s own version of DTA! right then and there.
Right around the corner from her abode, hometown fave, Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble, had set up on a flatbed trailer in the street in front of Maison Title and were about to play.
And not only that, free crawfish, free hotdogs, free cookie-cake, free beer and other beverages were available while supplies last.
“This is our way of giving back to the community that supports us.”
Leah Graeff
Who’s going to pass up that? Not moi. When I arrived inexcusably later than intended, I would find the crawfish were gone, but everything else was in good supply.
I chatted with some friends and was told Leah Graeff had the keys to the crawfish. I’ve known Graeff mostly for her singing and “creative endeavors” (aptly stated in her bio).
(Backstory: Leah and I met a while back at Dwyer’s Cafe. She was having breakfast with her dad, musician/songwriter Benny Graeff.
(Back-Backstory: I’d been out of town a few years and hadn’t seen Benny in a while. We’d met in the mid-’90s working with Robert Dafford touching up some of Dafford’s frog murals at the Rayne exit on I-10.)
So, at Dwyer’s that morning, I was working through my breakfast, when Benny asks me in a disguised-ish, gravely voice, “Hey, man. I’m hungry. Can I have some of your breakfast?”
I looked up. Leah’s back was to me and Benny, sitting opposite her, just stared at me. Man, this dude is ballsy, I thought, but said aloud, “Looks like you’ve had your breakfast.”
Benny said something else along his initial comment and I was getting a tad uncomfortable and decided to ignore him. Then he says, “Dom. It’s me. Benny. Benny Graeff.”
When he stopped laughing, he introduced me to his daughter.)
Fast-forward to Friday past and Leah Graeff and crawfish and Grand Coteau…
Not that I was surprised the crawfish were gone. Fine. But how did Graeff know, I wondered.
Graeff, a Sunset native, is the executive director at Maison Title, the business that put on the shindig in its courtyard. She wears the marketing hat and a couple of others, too.
I also learned the event wasn’t Grand Coteau DTA! It was an annual celebration, now in its fourth year, that marks when Maison Title opened its doors in Grand Coteau. Maison Title is a real estate transactions company pretty much serving Acadiana.
But there’s more to it than that.
“We like to have events that bring the community out. We like to provide experiences for the people that we do work for in the community, the people we do see everyday,” said Graeff. “The people that we spend our time with.
“It’s how we brand ourselves. That’s how we’d rather spend any money we have to show people who we are,” she said. “We want to do stuff where we get to spend time with people.”
No ads in print or TV. No big billboards, though there’s one small billboard right around the corner by the office Maison Title’s our phone number.
“But, no. No other advertising any other way,” Graeff said. “This is just what we like to do. We’d rather have people front of us and spend time with people that we want to service.”
“This is our way of giving back to the community that supports us,” said Graeff. “For 364 days a year, they’re walking into the building for our attorneys to do work for them, for us to do transactions for their homes.
“They support us throughout the year,” she said. “So this is our one day where we put on a big party so we can support everyone.”
I also learned that Maison Title has other such events during the year.
“For Halloween, we do a ‘Carving in the Courtyard’ event that’s similar,” said Graeff. “We don’t have a band, we usually have a DJ because there’s more kids.”
In addition to pumpkin carving, there’s hayrides and other activities for the family. Graeff pointed out a pumpkin patch growing in the courtyard.
“That brings out about the same crowd and it’s all kids. They’re in costumes, the adults are in costumes,” she said.
When the weather is nice during working hours on a Friday, “we’ll have ‘Cooking in the Courtyard’ where we’ll have a huge barbecue pit or if it’s fall/wintertime, we’ll have a big gumbo going,” said Graeff. “So, anybody who walks past is welcome to have lunch. Anyone who has an appointment with an attorney or a closing, stay and have lunch.”
Sure, the whole idea can be considered a business doing business, but it’s also giving back and being a good neighbor. Call it good will.
“It’s fun. This is how we like to meet people and how we like to give people an opportunity to get to know us,” Graeff said. “And we’re doing what we like. We like listening to Cajun and zydeco music. We like hanging out outside and cooking and talking to people.
“It’s doing what we like to do,” she said.