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ROUSES.COM
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CITY PRODUCE COMPANY
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ROUSES HISTORY
Donald Rouse
My grandfather, Joseph P. Rouse, or J.P., grew up
in Marrero. His family — father, mother, brother —
immigrated to Louisiana from Sardinia. There were
farms in Marrero where houses stand now, and J.P.
worked the family truck farm raising garden vegetables.
Eventually, he got the idea to open a produce company,
and in 1923, he and my grandmother, Leola Pitre,
moved to Thibodaux. J.P. bought fruits and vegetables
from big farms in Chackbay and Chocktaw and sold
and shipped them to stores as far away as Alaska.
Aunt Anna Mae
My brother, Anthony, and my cousin, Ciro, worked at
City Produce Company helping Daddy. Anthony and
Ciro were as close as brothers.They worked side by side
in the packing shed washing and sorting green onions
(we called them shallots), which were then packed
in trucks and rail cars filled with ice. City Produce
Company also delivered potatoes, cabbage, squash,
oranges, satsumas, tomatoes — anything grown locally.
I stayed out of the packing shed. Instead, I’d sit on the
screened-in porch of our house on Jackson Street in
Thibodaux and clean and bunch shallots with friends
— Marie, Michelle, Bernice and Bernice’s cousin.
Donald Rouse
Dad and Uncle Ciro took over City Produce Company
when my grandfather passed away in 1954, but the big
farms that drew my grandfather to Terrebonne and
Lafourche Parishes were already starting to shut down.
Big oil had become big business, and people in the
area were able to find better wages working in oil fields
than onion fields. Dad and Ciro eventually closed the
produce company. In 1960, they opened a grocery store,
Ciro’s Supermarket, in downtown Houma. Dad said
they chose the name Ciro’s over Anthony’s because it
had fewer letters in it, so the sign was cheaper to make.