NERO ROBICHAUX

To Rome: “If to smoke you turn, I shall not cease to fiddle why you burn.”  Nero

 

     
             Nero playing his fiddle!

 Nero Robichaux is the master of his kingdom which consists of a moonshine still hidden back in the woods, an undernourished stray dog, some chickens and a rooster, some hogs and two changes of clothes.  He lives in a run down, one bedroom house that he shares with his grand pappy, the man who raised him, and the animals.  It wasn’t a good raising.  Most of his memories consist of hard work or abuse.  Since the time he could hold a hoe, he was sent to the fields to help his grand pappy, sharecropping the land that doesn’t even belong to them.

Nero has never been the brightest bulb in the box.  They lived far back in the woods near Lake Charles, Louisiana.  His education came from the man who raised him, a man that only had a 2^nd grade education himself.   Since grand pappy thought school was a stupid idea, he never taught Nero anything except how to count on his fingers, make change and sharpen tools.  Nero was lonely. He wanted friends so one day left his grand pappy and found his way to school.  He didn’t learn much the few years he went except how to name every type of tree in his surroundings, and locate plants that are edible, or used for medicinal purposes.  

When Nero was 14 his Grand pappy died in a barroom fight.  He was left alone.    The dogs had always been company, but they weren't enough.  He wanted more.  Nero dropped out of school, taught himself how to make homemade remedies for all types of illnesses from the herbs in the woods and set out to make his fortune.  He concocted remedies for inflammation, nausea, digestion, migraines and anxiety, and set off to make his fortune.  It didn’t work and he ended up back in the broken-down cabin living in squalor.  

One day out of boredom Nero searched the house and discovered a fiddle.  This was a huge surprise for he had never heard his Grand Pappy play.  Nero thought that maybe if he learned to play it, he could at least make some money on street corners, perhaps even move to New Orleans, and play around Jackson Square.

He taught himself how to play.  The dogs loved it.             

One night, not being able to sleep in the heat of the summer night, Nero took Grand pappy’s mattress out to the porch hoping to catch a breeze or two. As he shoved the mattress outdoors, he noticed how lumpy it seemed to be.  Nero investigated and discovered that the old man had been hiding a gold mine.  There was lots of money that apparently had been hidden inside that mattress all these years. 

Nero gathered all the money and one of the dogs, and they moved to New Orleans planning to sell his homemade remedies in the back alleys, or at least play his fiddle. 

Things went well for a while, until poor Nero bragged about his fortune.  Late that night he was robbed, finding himself back on the streets. Nero hitched a ride back to Lake Charles, and began peddling his remedies without any trouble, thanks in part to his fine fiddling.   

            Nero began to make enough to eat on until Hurricane Rita danced into town.   Poor Nero lost everything—the house, the dogs, the chickens, and the hogs—everything except his Grand pappy’s fiddle.

Here he is seen playing his fiddle on what’s left of his roof while Rita flooded the area.

              He is one of the least of these my children.

 © Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.