Blue Weeds: The Alchemy of a Cajun Childhood

By Francois Meaux

Some say a child is fortunate to grow up in a community with eccentric characters and plenty of opportunities to explore nature. François Meaux hit the jackpot. Born in southern Louisiana in a small town surrounded by rice fields, groves of moss-draped oaks, and the Gulf of Mexico, Frank soon learned to embrace the earthy, mysterious aspects of the Acadian region.

In a colorful memoir, Frank details what it was like to grow up Cajun as a cotton-topped, intensely curious boy on a journey to manhood within a unique culture. His stories highlight his young life as he witnessed delights and difficulties, encountered the joyous and terrifying unknown, wondered about the unseen, and sought explanations for the unexplained. As his path led him through one experience after the other, Frank reflects on how the Cajun land and its inhabitants, like life itself, became nourishing yet mysterious, fertile yet frightening. Included are lagniappes that provide perspective as Frank looks back on his childhood and shares lessons learned as well as questions that remain unanswered.

Blue Weeds is a coming-of-age memoir that creatively weaves a boy’s experiences in southern Louisiana with the natural wonders, cultural uniqueness, love, and violence that surrounded the region.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982211219

Francois Meaux

Francois (Frank) Meaux is a native of south Louisiana. His formal education includes graduate degrees from Boston University and Georgia State and a doctorate in psychology from Emory University. He is the father of three children and resides with his wife, Gloria, in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Copyright © 2018 François Meaux.

Interior Graphics/Art Credit: Alec Addelton

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-1120-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1122-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1121-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910403

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/18/2018

                                       To Justine, Emily, Andrew,

                                       and their descendants

CONTENTS

Foreword

Beginnings

Lagniappe

Part One

Chapter 1    Blue Weeds

Chapter 2    Hugs And Sissies

Chapter 3    Bread And Milk

Chapter 4    The Big Dream

Chapter 5    The Summer Of 1951

Chapter 6    Figs And Fidelity

Chapter 7    Boucheries And Bayous

Chapter 8    Chicken Feed To Chicken S**T

Chapter 9    Bigger And Better

Chapter 10    Sights And Sounds

Chapter 11    Ernest And Huey

Chapter 12    Black And White (Or White On Black)

Chapter 13    Poodoos Are People Too

Chapter 14     Maltrait Memorial

Chapter 15    Sex In The Deep Deep South

Part Two

Chapter 16    God Calling

Chapter 17    Summertime And The Living Is Easy

Chapter 18    Seminary Years

Chapter 19    The Marsh

Chapter 20    Heaven To Hell (Or The Other Way Around?)

Chapter 21    Welcome To The Real World

Chapter 22    Endings

In Gratitude

French/Cajun-English Glossary

Appendices

Appendix A1    The Acadian Odyssey

Appendix A2    Broussard Lineage

Appendix B1    Dartez In Louisiana

Appendix B2    Dartez Lineage

Appendix C1    Meaux In Louisiana

Appendix C2    Meaux Lineage

FOREWORD

Too often today the dramatic side of human nature prefers to be entertained by exaggerated, distorted versions of our selves. Blue Weeds is different. Free from enhancement, excess, and hyperbole, it magnifies nothing. Its fascination is a result of direct experience, the truth it expresses is monumental in stature, and its storytelling never clouds its purpose with forged emotion. It is about Cajun Americans, people who have been culturally distinct and geographically isolated for roughly four hundred years (until maybe recently), with colorful types and more. I won’t offer you Blue Weeds’ content except to guarantee a ripe cornucopia of treats. And say to expect percussive laughter, a by-product of its truth delivery system.

How do I know? Frank Meaux has been my friend since first grade. We are from that same heel of Louisiana where pioneer Cajuns debarked in distress (but neither ignorance nor bliss), flotsam far off the not-yet-blazed path to what would ultimately become mainstream America. I know because I grew up in the same small town, in the middle of the 20th century, a boom time for Cajuns, and for us boys.

Frank does not mask or turn away from what was—which to me carries what is along with it, plus a load of reflections and reverberations attached en route. Blue Weeds is a gift of a book, written with love to family, friends, and you future readers. A bright narrative flows from the boy-in-the-man whose perplexed search through dilemmas of conflicting energies is deeply affected by local geology, genealogy, and God. Balancing was with is, this book presents an edifying register of inner change—the main force of being, and life’s compensation for its struggle and joy.

Frank and I each moved away from Kaplan during our teens—for keeps, it turned out. More than fifty years have passed with exile from it as our principal common ground; we are ex-patriots, and with deserved irony, because the Southwest Louisiana we left behind was once ex-patriot territory extraordinaire. Acadie, now Nova Scotia, was the first North American homeland, settled in 1604 by unflagging French refugees. But a hundred plus years later the Acadians living there were rounded up and thrown out—quite roughly—as cannon fodder and spoils of a great world war fought by England and France. Broken, ravaged, pitched out to sea, our Cajun ancestors then drifted—circuitously—to Louisiana. Once dug into its boot heel, however, they stayed put, planted for good, never to budge again. And I swear most won’t move when time and the world itself ends. Cajuns don’t leave, they hold, they endure, they participate in ever-returning circles of life, like nature herself.

When Frank asked me for a Blue Weeds foreword, I wobbled, thinking too much about ex-patriotism in repetitive, returning orbits. But then such ideas as these are my credentials, so I must press on. There exists a mammoth provincial fortification with unspoken rules and real dangers that cow members of a fixed culture. It takes towering courage to oppose tradition, but by moving away, we ex-patriots forfeit our presence and our action, so both ways the status quo persists. Self-expression is difficult as well, if not impossible, for most people living inside space-binding circles—but just for them. Ex-patriots can speak freely. In fact, they must, says Frank, who knows very well, close up. Once he got it that he was witness to something that was long abiding, good, beautiful, and true, something deeply soulful, now dying, he started calling up stories from the deeps of his memory’s crucible to share with us. Ergo, Blue Weeds.

In this writing, Frank explores his youth and its alchemy, summoning beginnings, continuums, and natural environs fostering life, surveying the vulnerable terrain we call human with an inquisitive mind and open heart, and recounting things from his life with a power that stimulates. We have all had terrifying, rich, and invaluable experiences—if only we look at them closely. Try the chapter Bread and Milk or Hugs and Sissies in the same sitting as The Marsh for a taste of some of the rich flavors he recalls into balance for us. The writing in Blue Weeds clearly describes a shimmering arc in the return orbit of a voyage home.

A conclusion from another writer might fit here to nudge you to Frank’s opening, Beginnings. It is a sentence written by Sherwood Anderson near the end of Death in the Woods, one of his more evocative short stories, sealing it shut with a single line of dramatic ambiguity. I shamelessly plug Blue Weeds with it:

A thing so complete has its own beauty.

Read Blue Weeds and marvel at its unequivocal honesty.

Wade Hanks

BEGINNINGS

Some say a child is fortunate to grow up in a community with a few odd and eccentric characters and plenty of opportunity to explore nature. I hit the jackpot! I was born in Southwest Louisiana in a small town surrounded by rice fields, marsh, and prairie, groves of ancient weathered, moss-draped live oaks, swamps, canals, bayous, bays, and the Gulf of Mexico. This rich land hosted an abundance of remarkable creatures—from alligators to armadillos, roseate spoonbills to ibis. The salt and fresh waters teemed with fish, shrimp, and crabs.

My hometown of Kaplan rose up in the middle of this isolated, wild, natural setting. It was conceived by a Jewish merchant and populated by French Acadians, now called Cajuns. I grew up listening to a 16th century French patois; my grandparents never spoke English. The Cajuns in this region farmed, raised cattle, trapped alligator, nutria, muskrat and mink, fished, shrimped, crabbed, or worked in the growing oil industry. They hunted, fished, cooked, ate, drank, made love, fought, made music, danced, and prayed the rosary. Some drank and fought too much, some prayed too much, some were razor-sharp smart, some dull, some drowned, some shot themselves or someone else, most were amazing cooks, all were storytellers, and each is worthy of a story.

I was a smart, quiet, mostly obedient boy, and I was intensely curious. A joie de vivre encircled me when my many aunts and uncles and over fifty first cousins gathered to dance, drink, and eat. I was nourished by rich Cajun cooking and steadied by a plumb line of love from my parents and this large extended family. I felt secure in this womb-like world, but somewhere within, there was fear—a fear with no words.

There was a dark scary undercurrent that I could taste as readily as the seasoning in my mother’s sauce piquantes and gumbos. Something lurked beneath the surface, like alligators that cruised beneath the calm bayou water and moccasins hidden under beautiful Louisiana irises. There were realities unseen and unknown in this fertile watery land, this rich ancient culture, this loving family, and within me. I attended many funerals, looked at dead bodies of relatives, and heard sob-filled stories about life and the afterlife. I heard stories of healers called traiteurs who were able to cure people with prayers. They didn’t advertise but they seemed to show up when you needed them. I even had one do his magic on some warts that appeared on my ten-year-old hands. They fell off that night.

I wondered about the unseen and sought explanations for the unexplained. I listened to my parents who listened to the priests and nuns. The Church surely had answers to the invisible. But some questions were shut down with certain authority, my parents’ or the pope’s. I calmed doubts and internal tension with conformity. But prodded by curiosity, my ears listened for clues in the many stories. My eyes witnessed events as they unfolded. This land, and its inhabitants, like life itself, was nourishing and mysterious, fertile and frightening.

Blue Weeds is a collection of stories in the life of a boy as he witnessed delights and difficulties. Humor, music, dancing, religious devotion, sexual awakening, riveting tales, and natural wonders blended with alcohol, clerical abuse, gambling, hurricanes, murders, prejudices, and an ancestral history of genocide. Each story explores his encounters with the joyous and terrifying unknown. The resulting alchemy from this mixture of opposing energies was the foundation for his life.

Like all memories, the details of these events were filtered through my level of awareness at the time. I have tried to be faithful to facts, but I make no claim to accuracy. You might say that Blue Weeds is my healing fiction. Explorations into the denied regions of my developing psyche revealed rich and often painful truths. And so, the stories, in the voice of the boy, are followed by a lagniappe, the Cajun word meaning something extra thrown in. These lagniappes, in the voice of the adult, helped me integrate my experiences into a greater conscious harmony. They include updates on the characters and reflections on the events from my current perspective.

Although I cannot precisely recapture the subtle and complex linguistic environment of my youth, I have used some French words and phrases I heard as a child in these stories. Where possible, English translations are provided either in the context of the story or in footnotes. A brief glossary is on pages 203-209.

Each of the chapters began as a separate, limited story. They are sequenced in an order that is reasonably consistent with the trajectory of my young life. The healing and helpful power of revisiting my story, however, was not in the reassurance of the familiar, although that is how all story begins. The true gift was in the encounter with the Unknown. Those encounters often took me beyond the facts of the immediate story, into my ancestral past and cultural patterns and they ultimately expanded my understanding of myself. I now sense that the deeper story of each of our lives is timeless. It is past, present, and future, circular rather than linear.

LAGNIAPPE

Alchemy is an ancient term often used to denote the futile attempts to transform lead into gold. Metaphorically, it refers to the slow, difficult processes that transform raw ingredients into something of value—words into stories, stories into books, childhood experiences into adulthood. It could also be applied to the process used to create Cajun cuisine. My mother was my first alchemist.

"First you make a roux" is the basic beginning of most Cajun cooking: chicken and seafood gumbos, sauce piquantes, redfish courtbouillons. The roux, a simple mixture of white flour and oil heated ’til darkened, is essential. The oil and flour, under a steady heat, stirred slowly with constant loving attention, gradually blend and congeal. Patience and care are essential. Too much heat and the flour burns. Too little and it remains too white, too innocent, and tasting only of flour, incapable of carrying the creative flavors that define each finished meal. Stirred too quickly, the roux flies out of the pot and burns the chef. That’s the meaning of the phrase, Cajun napalm. Once the roux is made you add vegetables grown in the black earth of most Cajun gardens—onions, bell peppers, perhaps celery. You stir ’til the sweetness of the greens infuses the roux. Then you add water and dissolve the roux, further transforming the ingredients as they progress on a journey forward to become a uniquely flavored masterpiece. Then you add the other ingredients. Old hens and roosters take more time to tenderize. You might add special sausages, okra, seafood, or wild game. The choice is yours. Then you season, serve with rice, potato salad or sweet potatoes, and savor your creation.

My mother was a culinary alchemist, capable of transforming the simplest ingredients into a feast for friends and family. She even published her own cookbook. Slowly, patiently, carefully, she took the basic ingredients from nature and transformed them into tasty meals enjoyed amid accolades of Talk about good! Meals that nourished both body and soul and left us with golden memories.

Good cooking, like anything worthwhile, requires patient, careful, and subtle attention to ingredients and processes. My mother learned this art after many years of helping her mother, sometimes succeeding, though often burning her roux or being burned by it. Only after years of practice, only then, could she consistently compose tasty meals—food with depth of scent and flavor that could still time and demand total attention in the moment. Food worthy of being savored.

Savor means to taste or smell appreciatively, to relish or enjoy. Savor, by way of French, comes from the Latin word sapere, meaning to taste, to be wise, or to know. Sapere informs the Latin word for wisdom, sapientia, as well as the distinctive quality of our species, homo sapiens. To be a wise human, one needs the practice of learning to savor, to still time, and experience the composition of the feast that is our life and our world. I hope you enjoy the many flavors of Blue Weeds. Bon appetit!

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Vermilion Parish, Louisiana

Painting by Alec Addleton

Part

One

CHAPTER 1

Blue Weeds

Tall weeds seemed to appear overnight. Small blue flowers hugged the side of each green stem, and though they looked skimpy on their own, a few of them bunched together looked pretty darn good. Barefooted, I scooted around the yard and plucked all I could find. I ran past the dirt pile where we played king de la butte (king of the hill) and into the neighbor’s yard to pick more. These weeds stood a bit taller since the neighbor dad didn’t mow his lawn as often as my daddy. Then I scampered to the damp ditch, where I harvested more colorful stems.

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My first bike

It was early afternoon when I walked into the house. My momma was standing at the sink, finishing up the dishes. I tugged her skirt, and as she looked down, proudly handed her my bouquet of blue weeds and said, I love you, Momma. Do you love me? It is my earliest memory, still clear and sharp, unusually so.

I was four going on five with blond, very blond, almost white hair. My cousin Kenneth called me Cotton-top. I saw the world through green eyes, eyes my momma said turned blue at times—times when I looked at blue things, like the sky or a bunch of blue flowers. I listened through bigger-than-normal ears, and felt with fingers that were double-jointed.

Of course, I have other memories before that day, but they are all fuzzy, single images. Each connects me to a lost story. Some link to old photographs; others are recorded only in my head. Riding a tricycle on the sidewalk at our old house on Hebert Avenue, my brother Gene smiling at me, my dad’s cigar smoke, my brother Ronnie’s crew cut, my mom’s pointy dark-framed glasses, kumquats hanging from a tree across the street, laughter, Dixieland jazz, beer bottles. Subtle tones of emotion still find a home in these images, scents, and sounds. Other feelings linger as orphans.

Mom pulled off her yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, bent down and said, Of course I love you, babe! She took my blue weeds and carefully placed the green stems in a water-filled mason jar, the kind we used as an iced tea glass when it wasn’t full of preserves made from figs picked at grand-mère Meaux’s house. Being a smart woman, she must have known, as I do now, that it’s not every day a four-year-old boy asks his momma if she loves him.

Keeyaw! Wow! It’s amazing what big, sad, green-blue eyes, a few blue weeds, and an I love you and would you mind loving me a bit too? can get a boy. The next thing I knew I was snuggled in my dad’s arms as he read to me from a gray-bound book of fairy tales. Of course, lots of dads these days read fairy tales to their kids before they go to sleep at night. Not this dad, not in those days; he had too many important things to do, like start up a brand new lumber yard from scratch, pay bills, re-level our house whenever it began sinking, spank one or all three of his boys with his leather belt when Momma got upset with us, and of course make the four of us feel safe and secure whenever a hurricane came by. He was the king de la butte. Hell, he hauled the dirt and made the butte himself. It was his butte, this was his house, and here I was invited to jump into his chair—with him.

Even in his absence, the chair was a symbol of his presence. Most of the time as he sat there, he was unapproachable, surrounded by the magical incense of cigar smoke and hidden behind important documents like the New Orleans Time Picayune or the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. This day was different. After some encouragement from my momma, he invited me into his lap for the first time. His big hands reached under my armpits, lifting me to princely status. I felt warm and safe.

He read my favorite story, Tom Thumb. When he finished, I begged him to read it again, wanting more of this new experience: my dad’s time and attention. He sure didn’t act like he wanted to on this Saturday afternoon when he usually took a break from his kingly duties. My momma, still standing at the sink, exchanged a few words with him in French and juréed him, fussing until he read to me again. Grumbling and boudéed (pouting), he obeyed. He actually read it a third time, until enough was enough, and I was dethroned to roam our yard, where my brother Ronnie was mowing down the blue weeds with our new push lawn mower.

Lagniappe

Tom Thumb, in case you haven’t had it read to you, is the story of a thumb-sized boy whose father sold him to traveling showmen. He was a clever little guy, and he eventually made his way back home in the belly of a wolf. His daddy killed the wolf to get his son back and promised Tom that he would always be wanted and never sent off again. In my cotton-topped head, the question of whether I was wanted and loved seemed like a big deal. I had heard my momma tell a story many times about my older brothers wanting a sister. When she walked in from the hospital with me and told them I was a boy, they acted disappointed; she asked if she should take me back. Merci le bon Dieu, thank God, they said no. Every time I heard that story, part of me wondered if I was really wanted or if I was some kind of orphan. Not likely a real orphan since I have a bit of my mom’s brainy, neurotic mind and a lot of my dad’s square chin, but I surely wondered.

Maybe there’s something to that unwanted-orphan business. Before we got a TV so my dad could watch the game of the week, my parents veilléed—visited—with my grandparents every weekend. On each visit, after the gossipy nouvelles—news—they gestured and gabbed about family. I heard story after story about who was whose daddy and who his grand-père was and don’t forget the mommas and the grand-mères.

Maybe they were all trying to convince themselves that we, all these Cajun French—at least kind of French—speaking people came from some place important since we sure weren’t like the people on the radio and TV, or the people who taught school or ran the church. Most of the priests came from France or Canada and spoke a fancier French. And the people in the schools and on the TV—well, they spoke English proper-like, like we were supposed to. But we didn’t do any of that.

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Gene, Me, and Ronnie

So perhaps we were orphans after all, just orphans with plenty of relatives going way back. Maybe the stories were trying to help us get home to where we really belonged, at least to where we really came from. Maybe my blue-weeded question was really about more than me. Maybe it was about all of us Cajuns. Maybe I was also asking, Who are we? and Do we really matter? Maybe everybody wonders that. And maybe if I tell a story long enough and full enough I’ll find out the answer to those questions, mine and ours. Je ne sais pas. I just don’t know.

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My parents named me François Leon after their daddies, François Meaux and Leon Broussard. My birth certificate says Francis, splitting the difference between the boy I was and the girl everybody else in my family expected. Maybe my mom switched from François to Francis for another reason. As kids, my parents were spanked on the playground by their américaine teachers for speaking in their Cajun French dialect; it didn’t take but a couple of whacks to make them feel couillon et honte—stupid and ashamed—and second-class. Perhaps she didn’t want me to feel shame growing up and maybe wanted to save me a spanking or two. Maybe she wanted to clear a path for me into the larger American culture while still helping me hold on to my Cajun heritage. My mom was great at splitting differences. Growing up, she called me Francis Lee when she was upset with me; that always made me feel couillon, for sure. I have no memory of my daddy ever calling me by any name.

In my hometown, everybody called me Flm (pronounced like the fancy word for snot), thanks to my uncle Ray. He was my daddy’s brother and he visited my mom in the hospital when I was born. His real name was Rayule. Like many Cajuns, he had moved to Port Arthur, Texas, seeking work during the Depression. He’d found it as a painter for the Texas Company, later known as Texaco. He’d probably got hired after calling himself Ray instead of Rayule. While he was painting Texaco executives’ initials on their parking spaces, he amused himself making names out of the letters. BJM, bajum; BLM, blem; FLM, Flem. Flm stuck like paint to concrete. To this day, everybody still calls me that in my hometown. When I left South Louisiana, people called me Frank and that stuck too. Today, after a lifetime learning to be Frank everywhere but Louisiana, where I’m still Flm, François sounds pretty good again. Mom would like that since she said lots of times that she regretted the switch. I suppose I am beginning to know who I am. But part of who I am is a lot older than me.

CHAPTER 2

Hugs and Sissies

I sure wanted my momma to hug me and say I love you and my daddy to hold me in his big arms, but wanting that made me feel small and honte, you know, ashamed. I watched my brothers arm wrestle and beat each other up. I watched Ronnie catch bullfrogs, shoot birds, and skin rabbits. I watched Gene whistle, play a smooth trumpet, slick his hair back, and try to look cool all the time. I watched my dad gut fish and hammer nails. And sometimes I watched my mom chase a chicken, catch it, and ring its neck. I never saw any of them hug or say I love you or sit in each other’s laps or look scared. And then there was weird little Flm, picking blue weeds like a sissy and feeling lonely, and saying dumb stuff like Do you love me? I was one confused cotton-topped boy. Of course, I was little and they were all grown-up, at least kinda, moitié.

Before I go on, I’ll admit I am exaggerating. I did see some hugging when I was little temps en temps—from time to time. If my momma cornered my daddy, after a few beers and a dance, she could sometimes get a meek hug out of him, with his eyes looking off toward the ceiling fan, just like I did in Dr. Fletcher’s dentist chair while he drilled away at my cavities with his slow-poke, noisy drill. You can bet I didn’t let him numb my gums, because that’s what sissies did. (Actually, I was more afraid of the needle than anything.)

I was a capon little kid, sensitive and timid, but I wanted to be tough and cool like the rest of the men in my family. My brothers liked to tease me. "You want to play ramassé, Flm? I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded good to me. Talk about!" My brother Gene pulled out a deck of cards, which made him real grown-up-like, at least to me. Shuffling cards, like whistling, meant you had a skill that made you stand out. Gene could whistle and shuffle cards at the same time. I stood, waiting for the game of ramassé. Gene then held the deck between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed, sending cards flying all over our bedroom. Pointing to me, he laughed and said, "Il faut tu les ramasse. You have to go pick them up." Up north, they called that fifty-two-card pickup. I picked them all up, handed the deck back to Gene, and it started again. FRRRRIPP…encore. Maybe I liked being teased or maybe being included was more important. It wasn’t an I love you, but it was attention.

Sometimes though, enough was enough. When Ronnie teased me one too many times while we were all pulling weeds in the yard one Saturday, I picked up a hoe and chased him around until my mom stopped me. He just teases you because he loves you.

Well, I don’t suppose my momma and daddy popped out of their mommas’ bellies all grown up. They were almost the youngest in their families, like me. My momma was the last girl and the ninth of ten and my daddy was the last boy and the twelfth of thirteen. Maybe they both wanted to be hugged and told they were loved when they were three feet tall.

They grew up a few miles from each other, unlike many today who marry folks from the other side of the country, or even the planet. But in some other ways, my momma and daddy were thousands of miles apart. My momma was a Broussard. She grew up on a farm down the road from the village of Meaux, Louisiana. My daddy was a Meaux, but he was born in a village called Cossinade and moved to Kaplan when he was still little. My mom had her own horse on her daddy’s big farm. My dad didn’t even have a mule and his daddy for sure didn’t have a farm. My mom’s dad planted acres of rice, and raised enough vegetables, cattle, hogs, and chickens for plenty of great dinners cooked by her momma every day. My dad’s daddy was a carpenter and, with no horse or car, he walked from house to house with his toolbox on his shoulder. My mom’s home wasn’t some big mansion, but it was nice and well built; it’s still standing in a grove of slow-growing, centuries-old live oaks. My then three-foot-tall dad lived in an old house where the winter wind slipped through the rotted siding and hit him in the face while he tried to sleep. The house fell down a long time ago, along with two smelly, quick-growing, China ball trees his daddy planted for shade.

My momma’s family hugged on her a lot, maybe too much. I don’t think my daddy’s family hugged on him much, if at all. My momma’s parents loved each other and seemed well raised—bien élevé. I don’t think my daddy’s parents liked each other much. My dad’s daddy often went into the barn, chewed tobacco, and had a swig or two to get away from my dad’s momma. My mom’s family really believed in Jesus and Mary and God and goodness. They prayed a lot together, and said the rosary every night. My dad’s family was only un peu Catholique—just a little Catholic—and did their praying when they had to, maybe. Mostly, they worked to have enough to eat.

My daddy told me that his older brother Ophe (pronounced oh-fay) once wanted a nickel from him to mail a postcard to his girlfriend, Belle. My daddy wouldn’t give it to him, so my uncle Ophe chased him all over the countryside until he caught him and stole it. My momma had plenty of nickels and would freely have given you one because there were plenty more in her daddy’s pockets or her momma’s apron. By the time my mom was five feet tall, she was warm, comfortable, hugged, loved, and happy. My dad, thirteen years old and five feet