Culture Shock; I didn't see that coming!
Peggy Marceaux tantalizes your senses with another cultural collection of short Cajun stories.
Bayou Gauche
Even though they had nothing but each other, five kids and fresh seafood, Sible loved her husband. Russell Thibodaux. One day, after he built them a house boat to get out from Mr. Simoneaux’s control, he decided to keep his boys at home so he could take the pirogue out to fish. Even with his wife’s warning, he went ahead with his trip; and, indeed, caught two red fish for a coubion, but lost his life to the hurricane that had been brewing.
Emile Clama and the Atchafalaya
In this fictional story, Joostin was so happy to have a boy to go fishing with him that he took him out every day his wife would allow upriver, to the freshwater part of the lake. He was always in search of the tastiest fish, Sac-a-lait. He had numerous, humorous adventures on the lake with fishing, especially the one time his boy snagged a blue tarp with a “peoples in it.” That started Joostin’s trouble with the law, which didn’t end there.
Culture Shock
Karen Cantrell and her five-year old, Mikie, were looking forward to going fishing in Cameron, La., and to the male companionship of her brother-in-law, Travis, but something went horribly wrong. Lost, running out of time and unable to find a road sign, Karen was surprised by a hairpin turn, spun around and crashed into a steep ditch. Hurt, Karen ran nearly a mile before she encountered a primitive community who did not speak her language. Can she find the help she so desperately needed there?
On a “Wing and a Prayer:” Memoir of a Third-Generation Cajun
“Pulling herself up by her bootstraps” became Peggy’s way of going through life. She always lived in a house filled with mystery. As the oldest child of the oldest child, she was trapped for some time between the Cajun French culture, which was backward at best, and the Anglo culture, which was certainly more promising. She couldn’t even relate to her siblings and cousins, who were a good deal younger than she, and her sister, Gail, who was next in line, was already afflicted with the mental illness about to ravage the family. It was a strange, if not lonely existence living out what she considered to be a normal life and later discovered was anything but normal.
