{"id":4882,"date":"2016-04-21T14:37:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T19:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2016-04-21T16:13:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T21:13:20","slug":"lullaby-cajun-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/2016\/04\/21\/lullaby-cajun-french\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lullaby Of Cajun French"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026where the story begins with the author declaring himself a \u201cToken\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p>In my 20\u2019s I was a novelty. I\u2019d moved to the big city and met young adults like me, from all over the country, and I was, to them, a Token Cajun, the only one they\u2019d ever known. I was like an exhibit in the zoo, or an article in National Geographic, except I had a couple of Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes that were good for a hearty laugh and a free beer. I met people from Wisconsin and Illinois, from Iowa and Texas. I met people who\u2019d gone to no college, some college, any college, even Harvard. We were all Americans, but they were More American. They weren\u2019t ethnic like me. I used to get a hoot out of watching Jessie Jackson on TV, trying to sell black America as the minority of minorities. O, and please. I\u2019d tell my new acquaintances about my father, born in America, by Americans, by generations of Americans&#8230;and yet he heard his first word of English on the first day of school. \u201cSay something,\u201d they\u2019d say. So I\u2019d get in my grandmother\u2019s voice, me just a kid, out with a BB gun in the ditch by the gravel road, the gravel road where top speed was 30mph and two vehicles an hour, and I\u2019d pitch my voice up and say, \u201cCher enfant, come off da road, da car gonna pass on you.\u201d And they\u2019d all smile, like tourists, far away from home and listening to the locals, especially when I defined cher enfant (dear child) and explain how her generation didn\u2019t think you got \u201crun\u201d over by a car, only \u201cpassed\u201d over. And here\u2019s the deal \u2013 I said it in English. Because I was never taught French\u2026<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p><strong>This Is The Way It Was<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My great-grandfather was named Jean Pierre. He\u2019s 100% American and 100% Cajun. His wife is Estelle. Here come the kids: Todose, Farie\u2026 very French, very dated, but you can see how they felt the pressure to be a part of America\u2019s melting pot, because by the time they got to the last kid, they just reached out, for the first time in the history of the family, and picked an \u201cAmerican\u201d name, Tommy. Just Tommy. And all those other kids, they ended up going by their initials. Todose was TD, Farie was FE.<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4883\" style=\"width: 714px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cajun-french.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4883\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4883\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4883\" src=\"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cajun-french.jpg\" alt=\"My father, Sidney on the right, my uncle, J.D., on the left. You\u2019re looking at pure-dee American-Cajun quality. English was their second language, but character was their first.\" width=\"704\" height=\"376\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cajun-french.jpg 704w, https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cajun-french-150x80.jpg 150w, https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cajun-french-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/cajun-french-698x373.jpg 698w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 704px) 100vw, 704px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-4883\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>My father, Sidney on the right, my uncle, J.D.,\u00a0on the left. You\u2019re looking at pure-dee American-Cajun quality. English was their second language, but character was their first.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s What Ambitious Families Do<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s entirely natural to want better for your children. In my grandparent\u2019s time, being a Hard Worker wasn\u2019t a way up, because everyone was a hard worker\u2026 You needed more. You needed more education, but you needed more than that. You needed better table manners and conversational skills. You needed to talk properly, and dress with dignity. And so it was\u2026that about the time I come into the family picture, that all the adults, who all speak French, decide that there is no point in me learning French. Our family is going to be American. Let the melting begin.<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Secret Language Of Adults<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In any given day of my childhood I was a just-a-kid, among adults, and I had no idea what they were talking about. Sometimes my name would be mentioned and I\u2019d perk my ear, like a dog would, and would look for smiles or frowns to see if I was in favor or not. Sometimes we\u2019d have guests, and I\u2019d watch their faces, the confused tourist look, when the conversations were in French, and then translated. (And when I say \u201ctourist\u201d, I\u2019m talking about people who lived just fifty miles away.) In the 1960\u2019s, in Allen Parish, didn\u2019t matter who was President, didn\u2019t matter if man took one small step for mankind on the moon, or somebody launched the nukes, the language of adults was French. But at the school, the teachers spoke English, even among themselves, and I don\u2019t know of any of us who were taught French in the home\u2026 \u2026which is curious, because in the 1970\u2019s, in school, I first heard about state programs to keep the Cajun culture alive. Somebody had realized that we were losing a good thing\u2026<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p><strong>Back Home The Phone Book Was Pages Thick With Fontenots<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Away I went, out of school, out of Louisiana, off to the Big City, where I\u2019d have to spell my name with every receptionist, because they\u2019d never seen the name before. I worked on my accent\u2026which means, I worked on not having one. You can\u2019t be taken seriously, in business, with a bunch of poo yie and oo ye yi. My goal was to sound like the men doing the news for the big networks. Or Johnny Carson. Just sound American. But I\u2019d come home, and I\u2019d slip right into accent. Better than Maw Maw\u2019s cooking, was sitting back, watching, listening, to the sound of my father talking to his mother in French.<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p>As the years passed Them That Could started dying off. I can still see my grandmother\u2019s head, the way it moved when she was making a little small talk with Daddy. She was so quiet, he was so quiet, had no idea what they were saying, but always, gentle voices, still water sliding over pebbles. I remember getting out of the car and for the first time my goal was to be RightThere when my father greeted his brother. It might have been the lamest of small talk, Good to see you &#8211; Well it\u2019s been too long, but it became something precious, because it was getting rare. In Dad\u2019s last few years I could count on one hand the number of times I heard him speak French. One time it was at the Post Office, a stranger, but they sized each other up by age and accent and one did the parlez vous thing and they knocked back a few sentences and then went back to English. Aunt Rose made sure to come for Dad\u2019s last Thanksgiving. My generation and younger, we hushed and neared them, as they sat and talked in French. No idea what they were saying, but precious, precious, their many miles walked in similar shoes, the sound of courtesy and respect, in Cajun French. Now it\u2019s only her.<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p><strong>What Once Was Annoyance Is Now A Lullaby<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>French was a way to separate the kids from the grownups in my childhood, but it was also the soundtrack of everyday life. It\u2019s Mr. Murphy, the school bus driver, with his hand-rolled cigarettes, the man who sold Sugartown watermelons out of his pickup, Sister Ida, the mail lady, the man at the hardware store, the lunchroom ladies at the school, my family VIP\u2019s\u2026I remember, I remember, the cadence of French, how vowels danced in the air, and the way statements ended with a little Up at the end, as if they were questions\u2026 All of a sudden I am the little kid grown to man, and all the voices that I rate as Important are gone. I was taught to be a melted American, and I am. Ooooh, but what I\u2019d give\u2026there at the end, when the mind retreated from adult English to the safety of childhood French\u2026 \u2026gathered around Dad\u2019s hospice bed, being told that hearing-was-the-last-to-go, to have been able to speak French with my father&#8230;tell him, Go on Dad, we\u2019ll be alright\u2026<\/p>\n<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n<p><em>This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we like our America American, but we want all the ingredients to keep their flavor. Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories can be found on Eighty-one\u2019s Facebook page. Uncle P welcomes the occasional attaboy at 81creativity@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026where the story begins with the author declaring himself a \u201cToken\u201d\u2026 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ In my 20\u2019s I was a novelty. I\u2019d moved to the big city and met young adults like me, from all over the country, and I was, to them, a Token Cajun, the only [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,58],"tags":[1094,4,59,894],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Lullaby Of Cajun French - BestOfSwla<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bestofswla.com\/2016\/04\/21\/lullaby-cajun-french\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Lullaby Of Cajun French - BestOfSwla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u2026where the story begins with the author declaring himself a \u201cToken\u201d\u2026 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ In my 20\u2019s I was a novelty. 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