Cultural Collision!

We married in December of 1964 and I took a civil service job with the United States Air Force at England AFB, Alexandria, Louisiana, in the fall of 1965. This caused us to leave our family support system and move away from our rural roots of 500 residents to the city of 50,000. My new supervisor was a air force tech sergeant and he and his family became our new support system. He had been stationed all over the world but had been raised up not far from the Alexandria area. He had a unique background in that his heritage was a mix of Coushatta Indian and Cajun French. His wife was a wonderful woman from the Bronx and a more unlikely couple you would never find.

She was 100% east coast Yankee and he was 100% Louisiana bayou. I’m not sure why but they more or less just assumed and absorbed us into their family. She was Catholic and he was nominally so and they had five children to prove it, (which eventually became six along with several they had lost in miscarriages). My wife and I came from a ultra conservative Baptist tradition and how we were able to fit into this very different environment is quite amazing. When I say they took us in, I mean that more or less, literally. We shared many of our weekly meals with them in their home. We spent many Saturdays with them in their home. He and I spent many hours fishing on a nearby lake. We would catch small channel catfish, bring them home, and barbecue them in their backyard.

On Saturdays they liked for us to come early and we would spend all day with them. He started drinking beer pretty early in the morning which he loved to tease my wife about. He drank it out of quart bottles and professed never to get drunk but he could get loud and often laughed when no one else knew the joke. We essentially became part of their routine. They were able to pick up a Lafayette station so we watched Cajun box accordion music and Cajun singing along with most of the commercials in Cajun French nearly all day on most of our Saturdays.

They took our list and bought our groceries out on the base to save us money. They were a unique couple and often fought like cats and dogs even with us there. He had this makeshift barbecue pit made out of a number three wash tub with hardware cloth stretched across it. We grilled many chickens, hamburgers, sausage links, and catfish fillets on that grill. He had a special barbecue sauce that was made from slow cooking about five pounds of onions in a tomato mixture and then after many hours he would use the drippings to base the meat. It was like nothing we had eaten before, but we learned to love the food and our adopted family.

It would take too many blogs to tell all the stories we could tell about these remarkable people. And, I will no doubt get to some of them at some point in time, that is, if the Lord is willing and the Creeks don’t rise, (Creek Indian nation, not water). They owned a 1957 Chevrolet sedan and one day he invited us to go with them to visit his mom and dad who lived in Elton, Louisiana. We crammed his entire family along with myself, my wife, and our infant son into that Chevrolet to make the 60 mile trip. There were no seat belts and no infant seats in those days so we had kids sitting all over the place.

When we got to the turn off to go to his parent’s house, he told us that this was a very special day for his dad. It was his dad’s birthday but also a very special birthday and they were to celebrate it with a roasted pig that had an apple in its mouth. This sounded okay to us and then he told us the rest of the story. He said since this was such a special occasion for his dad and they had a Cajun feast planned in his honor, then it would be bad if anything happened to make his dad unhappy on his special day. Something like maybe someone showing up that he did not know and immediately did not like. That could be like us, my wife and I. Wow! Talk about putting us on the spot!

But thankfully we were accepted and while we didn’t understand most of what was being said it was a tremendous experience for us to participate in. The food was unbelievable and the people so gregarious towards us. We did not get to where we are today by ourselves. All along the way there were folks who came along side and helped and supported us. I can’t think of any who did more than this couple to help us on our journey. May God bless John who is still living and the memory of Bernice who died about five years ago. More later……………..