Today I learned things, and ate rather a
lot. So, a good day, then. I started by going to the Acadian Cultural Centre to
watch a film about the history of Acadia, and make some connections with my
cruise past Nova Scotia a couple of years ago. There, it was just the name of
an area, which I equated with a national park or something similar; but today I
learned all about the shocking history of les Acadiens (Brits beware: you’re
not the goodies).
Not far from there is Vermilionville, a
historic village of relocated and reproduced buildings from 1765 to the 1890s,
furnished authentically, beautifully landscaped, and populated by artisans in
period costume. Luckily, there was a summer camp programme running, so I was
able to eavesdrop on their little lectures, which is where I learned about, for
example, sleep tight (make sure the ropes that support your mattress are taut)
and don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (baby got bathed last in the
family tub, by which time the water was brown – though they did employ the
nicety of lining the tub with a sheet, to sieve out the worst between bathers).
The afternoon was taken up with a Cajun Food Tour, with the enthusiastic Marie in her bus strung with Tabasco bottle
lights and her rallying cry of “Allons manger!” We made six stops around
Lafayette – not a progressive dinner (though we did end with dessert), it was no
place for vegetarians. There were crab and corn bisque, a shrimp po’boy, pork
crackling (meat and fat as well as skin), boudin which though it looks just
like one is emphatically not a sausage, and a mysterious saucy nibble that we
were challenged to identify. Well, it looked like chicken, it tasted just like
chicken, and when it was all eaten the bones looked like chicken – but
apparently it was farmed alligator, so that’s another first.*
As she drove us around the town, Marie
chattered away, and in fact (a former history teacher) made a better job of recounting Acadian history
than the arty movie had that morning – but also random snippets like the
biggest branch of the live-oak tree outside the cathedral weighs the same as 14
African elephants; the Old Tyme Grocery produces 2000 po’boys every Friday in
Lent; an alligator in the little University swamp has escaped twice in the last
couple of months to roam the campus. It was fun, and interesting, and tasty,
and the company was good, too: “Zach,” asked Julia of the sole young man on the
bus, “I have a daughter. Are you married?”
And the day wasn’t over: that evening it
was back to the Blue Moon Saloon for my first zydeco music. Terry and the
Zydeco Bad Boys were playing and Terry’s girlfriend, sitting next to me, said, “You’re
going to love it. It’s happy music!” And it was, lively and jiggy and
impossible not to tap along to. The small but adoring - and very friendly - crowd didn’t leave it at
that: there were all sorts of dancing, as individual as the dancers, and some
of them were really good, the girls swept along and around by fluidly strutting
young men. It was a pleasure to watch them, on a warm night on the back porch
of the Saloon with a dog wandering through and a cat asleep at the entrance.
* Actually, I discovered later, the dish is called 'Swamp Legs' and comprises both duck and alligator, so clearly I got the bird and so can't tick gator off on my list of odd foods.
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