MY FAMILY

 Proverbs 1:8 Hear, my son, your father’s instructions, and forsake not your mother’s teachings.

It has been said that Southern families are known for being a colorful sort of people.  Southern politician's families even more so.  Then why should anyone be surprised if my family looked like an 8 box of Crayola Crayons (that's counting the dogs).  We were different, brilliant, and nontoxic, and oh, so much fun.

 My dad held the trump card of the raconteur, feeling most at home with an audience around him, telling homespun tale after tale.  Never mind if the tale grew in proportion each time it was repeated.  If it caused attention being brought to him then the better the tale.  Daddy loved an audience.  He rose from the ranks of the poorest sharecropper’s son to work for the common good.  He honed his skills of honesty and hard work, meshed with a clear understanding of all man’s problems and dreams.  He had a big generous heart and a fair dealing hand which characterized his efforts in the strange world of Louisiana politics.  The most important person was the person he was currently talking to.  He loved having people around him.  He loved a good joke, and no one was immune.  Not even the governor.

 

         


  My mother was articulate, literary, and well trained for public life.  She was a scholar, loved reading,  writing and entertaining.  She loved the arts.  She, also, required lots of alone time.  Being a Methodist minister's daughter, she had lived her entire life “in a fishbowl” and was well suited for being scrutinized by everyone, relishing the idea of surprise as to their evaluations.  She too loved jokes and loved telling stories.  Mother felt drawn to the man who had never known the genteel ways she had been taught, perhaps exercising her independence by rebelling against the tight reins her parents had kept on her and perhaps due to her idealistic hope of refining the rough edges of this common man.

  As a young couple, they were perfectly suited or so one thought.  On the one hand, there was the idealistic country boy out to conquer the world, who had never used a telephone until the day he arrived at college.  On the other hand, there was the young lady who was used to Sunday socials, attending plays and concerts and teas in the warm summer afternoons, or sneaking off to swim on a Sunday afternoon, a known sin for a preacher's daughter.   My daddy was a home body, he had never traveled outside of central Louisiana, except during the war when he was sent to China, and really didn't care much for it.  Mother loved to travel. She was used to it since Methodist preachers moved every three years back then.  No two backgrounds could ever have been more different.  Yet, there was a commonality between these two.  Both had a keen sense of humor and playfulness; both were strong willed, though mother had been trained to acquiesce to the male in the family.  Both loved to talk at the same time.  One never really listened to the other, but continued to talk over and above the other, succeeding to communicate his or her wishes only by endless repetitions.  To this competing conversation at the dinner table, we four children added our voices creating a cacophony intolerable for most, but the norm for us. 

 My parents believed in entertainment and creativity.  There were large gatherings on election eve.  There were small groups over for meals.  Sunday School parties, party parties. People were always coming to visit us to talk politics, or ask for help.  Our house seemed like a revolving door.  Everyone was treated as a dear friend, although, privately Mama grumbled behind closed doors.

 Our life was one adventure after another. For instance, when I was around nine or ten my mother decided I should experience a train ride and a plane ride.  I thought she did this with all of us, but found later that I was the lone lucky one, probably she saw us as kindred souls.  So, the two of us went down to the train station on lower Third and boarded a train to New Orleans where we spent hours exploring Magazine Street and the antique stores.

 We went to Brennan's for a meal, white tablecloths and napkins, jazz music in the background, and fine silverware.  I even wore a tie.

  
A sharp contrast to the rowdy meals we had at home.  We spent the night at a hotel on Canal Street.  The next day was spent at the Audubon Zoo after some beignets at Cafe du Monde.     

 

She even took me to Preservation Hall.  We traveled Bourbon Street while I had a lesson about the evils that lurked behind those doors while laughing at the drunken characters we met.  She told me that someday I might want to attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but I should wait until college which I did.   The next day we boarded a plane and flew home.  I was now a man of the world, I thought.  

 

 

  
A few years later, when I was twelve, while staying with daddy in Baton Rouge, he took me to a bar/restaurant downtown just a block from the Heidelberg Hotel.   He said I should learn about Beatniks.   These were young people who were part of a social group in the 1950s and early 1960s that rejected the traditional rules of society and encouraged people to express themselves through art.  We sat at a back-corner table, wine for daddy and a coke for me, listening to the young people.  Some played their guitar, others read a poem.  One sang a song of rebellion.  After each performance, the fingers would snap in approval.  The room was dark with wine bottles as candle holders and black lights around the black walls.  Everyone there wore black clothing with berets or scarves. Most everyone was smoking.  I, being naïve, thought, they were only cigarettes.  Daddy didn't think the smoke would be a problem since we wouldn't be staying for long, and it was important to have this experience.  I was fascinated by these people that I had heard of but never seen.    

  I might have even dressed the same except that I owned no black clothing.  Blue jeans and cowboy boots with a western shirt was my attire those days. 

 When we were in early elementary school, mama caught some of us using crayons on the walls in the hall, guess who?  Yea, me. I tried to blame my younger brother, but she saw through my lie.  There was some fussing, not too loud, while she complimented my artwork.  I did have to clean up after myself.   A few days later, Mama cleared out a closet in the middle of that hall and declared that it would be everyone’s place to be creative.  The closet had a space where the clothes should be where we could play. Overhead were two large, deep shelves that used to house suitcases.  We could climb up and lie down in those cubbyholes.  We wrote all sorts of things on those walls as well as colored and drew to our hearts content.

At the barn, we made hideouts and tunnels in the hay loft, and read books away from prying eyes.   My brother hid in the loft and skipped school and discovered smoking. We climbed trees and hung by our knees on the topmost branches, well, I did anyway.

  We used slingshots, shooting China berries, and had wars with each other or just tormented our sisters.

We were free range children.  We made rafts in newly created drainage ditches and floated around the ditches.  We laughed at the table and walked around the rooms like Groucho.  I was frequently on my horse galloping around the lane that circled our cotton and corn fields, pretending I was in the Kentucky Derby. Our only rule was to be home for supper and before dark.  I’m glad I grew up in a family that was different, brilliant, nontoxic, and fun.

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