WILLIE AND CAMELLIA WATERS

Job 33:28        He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit, and I will live to enjoy the light.

                     

 

Willie and Camellia are members of the Riverdawg band and regularly perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Their blend of country western, blues and Zydeco, with a bit of rock and rap is acclaimed as the new music of the century. Other bands are clamoring to copy these pioneers. They have developed a large following, especially among the Canadian French.

Willie grew up in central Louisiana in Rapides Parish staying in fights and barely passing school. We were classmates all of our years in school. I remember him being frequently in the principal’s office in grammar school. In high school he was at the point of being expelled for the year when our principal, Mr. Johnson, decided to try a new approach rather than lose yet another young man to the streets. Mr. Johnson knew Willie liked music and needed direction in his life, something to discipline him. A goal to achieve. It took a great deal of persuasion to convince the band director to give Willie a chance.  

It was rough, at first, but gradually Willie discovered he had talent. The rest is history. Willie excelled in band going on to study at the New Orleans Conservatory of Music graduating with honors.

Camellia, his wife, is the lead singer in the Riverdawg band.  Some say she has tremendous promise, with a voice that rivals Ella Fitzgerald. Unlike Willie, she grew up in New Orleans around music. Her parents are performers, and music is in their blood. When she was growing up her evenings were spent doing homework in back corner offices while her parents were on stage. Occasionally she would join them for a song or two. It was only natural that she would follow in their footsteps. Camellia met Willie several years ago at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, falling in love with both his suave personality and exhilarating style of music. They fell in love. He gave her an engagement ring in the shape of a guitar, and they exchanged vows on the main stage at Festival International, in Lafayette, Louisiana while the band played on.

Willie and Camellia have been married for five years and are expecting their first child on Mardi Gras Day. This is an honor among musicians from N’awlins, I'm told. Camellia is thrilled because she once dreamed of having a child while riding on a float down Canal Street. She does not plan to be riding one on her due date, however. 

They have had a lot of discussion as to what the child should be named. If the baby is a girl, they intend to name her Lilly, Rose, or Pink. If it is a boy Willie wants to name him Fizzle, Fart or Stink. However, if Camellia has her way, the boy will be named Fat Tuesday, but she will still let Willie call him “Stink”.  I hope it’s a boy and he grows up to be a musician, too. He’d have a cool name, Stinky Waters.

© 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.

THE OLD CODGER HAD AN EXPENSIVE MEAL

My daddy was the compulsive sort.  Whatever idea he had in mind needed to be acted upon and acted upon immediately.  When the spirit moved him, it was best to just get out of the way and let him because nothing would stop him. Most of these ideas had to do with the farm. 

This time it was peacocks.

 My daddy decided we needed peacocks to roam about the farm for their beauty. I visualized him fantasizing about being some European gentry on his estate with exotic fauna.  Mother just rolled her eyes and shook her head with that “I've been through this before” glazed look upon her face.  She reminded him that Peacocks are expensive play toys. Daddy's retort was they would be a thing of beauty as they strut around the farm and that we needed to have something else for the school children, who visited the animals on our farm, to enjoy.

After researching zoos and many telephone calls, across several states, he managed to purchase two males and their matching peahens. We kept them in cages in the barn, for a few weeks, to get them used to the area before giving them free rein to roam the farm. When released the males paraded about the place showing off like fifteen-year-old boys in front of a gaggle of giggling girls. 

peahen

            The peahen, on the other hand, is a drab sort of creature lacking the finery of her distinguished mate. These drab ladies followed the males about the barnyard with admiring glances, obviously adoring every move made by these cocky show-offs. The conceited males loved the audience and spent endless hours turning and preening and spreading their fan shaped tails for their women to admire.

Daddy found joy in hearing their caterwaul from barn roof tops or around the grounds. Mama hated the sound especially when the caterwaul was in the middle of the night on the roof above our heads

Visiting school children adored the addition of peacocks to the goats, ponies, geese, deer, and lamas that the “old gray mule (my daddy) provided for their visits. We began having more school trips of adoring children having free reign of the farm while the tired teachers attempted to control the enthusiasm. Daddy loved the visits, which was easy for him to say since he usually went somewhere else leaving me in charge of crowd control. This went well until one weaselly little boy left the gates open. Hearing some noise, I looked up to see the peacocks parading down the middle of the busy highway. Right behind them, like a pair of dutiful squaws, walked their little mousy mates. I struck out at a gallop while the teachers practiced crowd control on the squealing children. 

I learned that Peacocks, for all their beauty, are lacking in brains, and are impossible to herd. They went everywhere except the right way. Finally, a kindly truck driver helped me retrieve the fowls running amuck.

Life went well for a while until one bright moonlit night. We suddenly realized something was missing. There were no screams of “help, help”, like some PBS murder mystery. It was too quiet. They were gone. Where were the peacocks and their homely women?

 Early the next morning, I was sent searching for these wanderers. The peacocks were found desolate, sitting in the tall grasses of a ditch dragging their beautiful feathers, like playboys with a hangover. They were alone. The mousy peahens were missing. I found no traces of them. Subdued and repentant, the peacocks were silent all the way home and spent the rest of the day sitting under a tree bemoaning for their missing mates. There was silence all day, until the moon came out. Suddenly the peacocks sounded like a couple of drunks, sobering up, and set off the most desolate cries of their entire lives for their girls. They screamed night after night for weeks. Still, we couldn't find the peahens. 

Mother was outdone with the whole situation and furious that the money daddy had spent on those noisy birds and their mousy mates was lost.  

Weeks later, mother heard, quite by accident, that an old codger down the road, who shoots anything with wings, except buzzards, to eat, had bragged how he just happened to find sitting on his back tree two of the nicest wild turkey hens he had ever seen. “I fattened them up on that corn I got from Mr. Blair, and they sure was tasty,” he said. This old codger had mistaken the peahens for wild turkeys. He sure had an expensive meal that year.

© 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.