Yeah, over the years aside from individual immigrants Louisiana had the original Spanish, the French twice, German, I don't know who all. I am a few miles from Hungarian Settlement. Interestingly, coonass was probably originally conais or similar spelling. The first French most of the Spanish settlers saw were long hunters who would travel a year or two collecting furs. Conais meant long traveler or similar.
I am of little or no French blood but was born on the bayou, Latte Nache bayou. Hard to find on a map plus I have seen at least a half dozen different spellings. Three generations of Cajuns lived next door. The oldest spoke no english, the next generation almost none. Our playmate Junior was a victim of the forced assimilation and spoke english. No surprise, my first crush when I was tiny was pure Cajun Suzanne R. I had a good eye even then, she grew up to be the town beauty! Small town it is true but she could have held her own in good company too.
These days I am reminded of an old WWII vet. He finally made it back to Paris. He said "I really wanted to come back in the fifties."
"You mean when Paris was still Paris?"
"No, when Johnson was still Johnson!"
I would still like to take a ride through Acadiana, the heart of Cajun Louisiana. Unlikely to find anything except graveyards and a few old memories. Twenty years or so ago I got into outdoor photography and that is beautiful country to photograph. I passed by a few hulls of buildings I remembered, sometimes just an old sign. I remembered one rusty old sign, Signorello's. Slicks as it was more commonly called. It was an almost every weekend trip during high school. Beautiful girls everywhere! When I was about twenty-five my Cajun running buddy and I went back to Slicks. We looked around a bit. "Babies have taken over!" It took awhile for me to realize, we were babies too when we went there. Did have to be careful. If she was there with family a girl might be twelve years old. Papa might let you dance with her, politely, but that was as far as it went. Not that I was chasing twelve year olds even at fourteen or fifteen but the only sign might be that she was drinking a coke.
Old thread revived older memories.
Hu
