The Interview I’d Love to Give

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A New Flavor for an Old Festival

Oh, yes!  We’ve been anticipating this for almost three quarters of a century. 

If you look closely, you can almost see the greasy film.

A little Cayenne, a few handfuls of salt, and one free-standing hydrostatic pressure gauge.

In the soft glow of a full moon, the dying plankton looks so peaceful.

In Louisiana we don’t have enough confetti.  We use shrimp!!

You see, in Louisiana we’re trained to suppress our natural inclination to recognize that “one of these things is not like the other.”

A little 5w-20 Etouffe, anyone?                                         

Immortality in the Margins

My father, like many old men, has grown fascinated with his own genealogy.  Indeed, the intensity of his fascination seems to rise commensurately with his age.  When searching for his Christmas present last year I considered this and decided trace his family tree.  Hell, it's about time I put those two history degrees I've acquired to work!  I gathered what information he had, spoke to a few of our oldest living relatives, and started digging around. 

Granted, there were a lot of lacunae, and I took a number of educated guesses about who fathered whom.  But in the end, I managed to put together a mostly reliable and relatively interesting family tree that stretched from Louisiana to Lorraine.  In fact, I was so satisfied with both the hunt and the product that I decided to research my mother’s family’s background. 

Unlike on my father’s side of the family, my mother’s side had done quite a bit more record keeping over the years.  Considering the socio-economic differences between these two sides—my father’s tree includes a number of property owners and doctors, while my mother’s side is populated heavily with illiterate French-speaking peasants—this seemed strangely counterintuitive.  To date, I’m still mostly stumped by this apparent paradox.  But, getting back to the story here . . . .  

Paw-paw Logan, as my last surviving grandparent, was the logical person to speak with first.  And, even at 91 years old he’s sharp as a tack.  The man is still racing his Ford around Abbeville, eating Sausage, Gravy and Rice for dinner most nights, and still telling mildly off-color jokes about how dark the natives were in Borneo—something about how coal would leave a white mark on their skin.

Together we dug through several crates and wooden chests to find every old picture he had in his house.  Along the way we turned up many interesting documents, like my grandmother’s baptismal certificate, his marriage license, his Army discharge papers, and a few records from the Billups Station he managed for so many years. 

However, the most interesting document I found during my search was a census record that recorded the name and address of my great grandfather Louis Sarazin Mathiue in 1900.  This was a huge find.  With it, I now knew for sure that he was neither literate nor English-speaking.  Also, since he was living with a Chiasson family at that time, I confidently deduced from this that his own family had likely either died or were so destitute they could no longer support him.  Without this single page, this aspect of Louis’ life would be lost forever.  And all this was possible because over one hundred and ten years ago some poor guy went from door to door in backwater Acadiana (undoubtedly accompanied by an interpreter) asking people a few simple questions.  

Now, I dig this shit.  (Hell, I better dig it, because it’s an interest that promises neither wealth nor even work.)  But, because of this interest, I’m always conscious of the marks I’m leaving on history.  I’m aware of my own immortality, if you will.  How much of a trace will be left of me when I’m gone?  What impression will some future historian or genealogist get of me when he/she discovers this or that bit of my life?  What will one learn of me through my writing, my passports, my many addresses, my criminal record? 

This year Heejung and I filled out our own census form.  And, like usual, my predilection for leaving a historical trace piqued my interest in the situation immediately.  Just like when my great grandfather Louis lived for a short while as a Farm hand in his benefactor’s home, we are also in a transitional place and time.  Years from now (hopefully not 110 years later) one or a few of our distant progeny might stumble across a record of us (a Korean national and a Coonass) living in a house we don’t own in rural Virginia, and he’ll come to a few conclusions.  He might learn finally, (if he was wondering) why his eyes are a little longer.  He might pause for a minute to consider our lives and times.  He might imagine what it was like to be so peripatetic back in the “good ol’ days.”  At least I hope he will.  I’m leaving him the fucking breadcrumbs for god’s sake!!

Gawd Damn!!! It's WORSE than I thought!

 I usually leave the politics off this blog. But this is just horrible!  This video hit me in so many ways; it was fascinating, disturbing, depressingly funny, awful, scary, puzzling, hurtful, shocking, real, and real fucking stupid!!!

God, help US!!

This Ain’t Yo’ Father’s Walden Pond! Part IV

Living on this peaceful mountain it’s easy to get lost in it all.  I’m surrounded by the fresh smell of spring each morning.  I wake up to the crisp, chill breeze hitting me in the face as it sweeps across Appalachia and out to the Atlantic.  I amuse myself by watching the squirrels dance from tree to tree, the birds flutter from branch to branch, the bees buzz from flower to flower, the deer stroll up to the road at dusk, the springs trickle gently down the hills, and, when the wind whistles through the mountains, I watch the tops of the trees sway romantically from left to right in dazzling Technicolored, hyper-realism. 

Yet, amongst all this dreamy “Bird on my Shoulder,” Song of the South bullshit, it’s easy to forget that this place was once the base for a large Confederate partisan group.  Col. John S. Mosby, the “Grey Ghost,” controlled this area from 1863 until the end of the Civil War.  He and the 43rd Battalion, 1st Virginia Cavalry were camped up in these hills, making raids on Union forces nearby, blending into the local farming population, and, in general, just waiting to march triumphantly into Washington, D.C. 

As everyone knows full well—save for maybe the current Gov. of Virginia—there was no triumphal march; there was no victorious South.  For the most part, things didn’t go at all the way the “Grey Ghost” would have hoped; and he lived long enough to see it.  


I confess, however, that I don’t know exactly how his soldiers met their end.  I imagine that many of them did what they had been doing throughout the war; they blended into the population, worked the land, and let the bitterness of defeat eat at their souls for years.  I’d like to think that not all of them went this way.  I think many of them slept and bleed on this earth.  Some of them, I’m sure, died up in these hills.  And, quite a number of them surely buried their friends, brothers, and fellow soldiers under these rocks and trees.   

So, essentially, I’m living in a confederate graveyard!  As I hike the AT each morning (which by the way skirts the Eastern Front of Mosby’s Confederacy), I’m always on the lookout for some remnant of this place’s violent past—some name or bit of misspelled vulgarity chiseled in a rock, some chunk of lead buried in the trunk of a tree, some old, half-buried skeletal hand still clinging to the slaves it never owned and a vision of the South that’s so romanticized and so idealized that it scarcely ever existed in the first place.  

The Dharma [bare] Bums

A friend of mine has recently begun a year-long experiment in religious studies.  From the web diary he’s putting together it seems he’s planning to follow the doctrine and traditions of 12 major faiths (each for one month at a time).  So, since the first month is Buddhism, I thought I might do a little research on my own.  It didn’t take long before I found out what Buddhism is really about.  SHOCKING, is the only word I can use to describe it.  

Have a look!!!  

And what happens to the children?  Lord Knows!!

This Ain’t Yo’ Father’s Walden Pond! Part III

Seventeen Steps to Accomplishing Nothing

1. Get up early to brush teeth, stretch, and get some fresh air.

2. March around the brush surrounding the house to find Heejung the perfect walking stick.

3. Shave off all the bark from the stick and neatly carve HJ in the handle.

4. Help Heejung prepare 유부초밥 and 깍두기 to bring with us.

5. Fill water bottle, get Heejung’s shoes out of the car, and gently encourage her to hurry up.

6. Load newly carved walking stick, packed backpack, and ourselves into the car.

7. Drive one mile down the road to the Appalachian Trail public car park.

8. Park, unload, cross Hwy 55 and head south on the AT; Destination, beautiful clearing at the top of the mountain about 45 min away.

9. Hike into woods about three minutes.

10. Two minutes later listen to Heejung’s complement about the trail’s natural beauty.

11. One minute later hear Heejung SCREAM WITH HORROR!!!

12. Turn around to see that I just walked over a small Ribbon Snake sunning itself on the trail.

13. Move snake off the trail and try to convince Heejung to continue on.

14. One minute later, realize this is futile and guide her back to the car.

15. Eat 유부초밥 and 깍두기 on a picnic table at AT car park.

16. Drive home having accomplished nothing.

17. Take a nap.