My Experience In Cajun Country
By Louis Crusenberry

I first had my experience with the Cajun culture in 1952 when I arrived at what was then Alexandria Air Force Base in Alexandria, Louisiana. I met a guy by the name of Wayne Chitty who was also stationed there. Wayne was from Breaux Bridge, which is a small town just east of Lafayette. I remember well, going with Wayne to Breaux Bridge one weekend. That was a great experience. He took me to one of their nightclubs. Those Cajuns danced to Cajun music and drank "pop with foam on top (JAX & Falstaff)" until the wee hours of the morning. Even the kids were dancing. 

Being a Hillbilly from Kentucky, this was all new to me. First of all we never went dancing back in those hills -- too steep. We did drank a little moonshine once in awhile and steal watermelons from the watermelon patches on the side of those hills. I remember one time; a bunch of us boys stole some watermelons and took them to a small creek with our favorite swimming hole. We went skinny-dipping and threw watermelons at each other as we ran up and down the creek. Well, this has nothing to do with the Cajuns; just a good story...

As I said, I was stationed at Alexandria Air Force Base in Alexandria. That base was later re-named England Air Force Base in memory of Lt Col England who died in a plane crash in France rather than bail out over a heavily populated area.

Now Alexandria is not heavily populated with Cajuns. Actually Alexandria is the dividing line between the north (Yankees to the Cajuns) and the south, which is Cajun Country. The cities of Marksville and Bunkie are just 30 miles south of Alexandria and  are heavily populated with the Cajun people.

Back to some of my first experiences when arriving in Alexandria.

I had never heard of:

Eating crawfish (crawdads to us hillbillies…fishing bait.)

Eating dirty rice…how disgusting

Eating gravy over rice…we ate gravy over potatoes and ate rice for breakfast with butter and sugar

Eating Alligator (we ate a few possums in the hills)

Hebert (pronounced A-bear) or Thibodeaux or Fontenot or Boudreaux or Broussard

Now here is a weird one...Lagneaux (pronounced lawn-yo)

Mardi Gras --- Gumbo                                                 

Crawfish Etouffee --- Couchon De Lait

Bayou --- Jambalaya

And the list goes on and on. They have a language of their own. There are more Cajun jokes than there are Polock jokes. Most of them are about Thibodeaux and Boudreaux.

They have some funny town/city names also

Lafayette -- Opelousas

Natchitoches --- Calcasieu

Lecompte  (pronounced La Count)

Chopin  (pronounced Show Pan)

Lacassine --- Thibodeaux

Remember back at the beginning I said I came to Louisiana in 1952. Well, I have been hooked every since. Truth is – I married a Louisiana women in 1953. She is not Cajun, but has all the habits of the Cajuns…like eatin all them funny foods. I was in the Air Force for 21 years and spent 12 of that in Louisiana. When I retired from the Air Force I had to settle in Louisiana. My wife said “my web feet does not fit those hills of Kentucky”, so here I am some 30 years  later. I still am not crazy about all that funny food, but I have made a lot of good Cajun friends. Some with simple names like Campbell, Walker, Miller. Of course I have made a lot of friends with them funny names also, like Charles & Bonnie Hebert from Lacassine, Don & Rose Mary Fergus from Lafayette and the list goes on.

In the fifty years that I have lived in out of Louisiana (mostly in) I have never been to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but recently I had an opportunity to attend a real Mardi Gras. It was in Iota, Louisiana. That was an experience. We were invited to spend a few days in our motor home in Iota by our very good friends Tom & Flo Miller and Bob & Margie Walker. Tom owns a vehicle maintenance shop in Iota and Bob is the Chief of Police. They invited our entire camping club (The Rainbow Riders) to park our RV’s at Tom’s shop, where we had a birds eye view of the Mardi Gras street event. Everything takes place on Fat Tuesday.

I am not going to even try to explain the meaning of Mardi Gras or the different ways that Mardi Gras is celebrated, but here in Iota they closed off Main Street where the event took place. They set up various booths selling everything from Cracklins to Shrimp Corn Macho (Whatever that is). They played Cajun music from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM. At 2:00 PM the Mardi Gras’s arrived on trailers pulled by trucks. Then they preformed a dance on stage while everyone threw them nickels.

We went to a fantastic restaurant for dinner on Sunday evening, where the Madi Gras’s performed while we enjoyed good seafood. The restaurant's name is D I's and it was running over with people. They fed in shifts and the Mardi Gras's performed at 7:00 PM and again at 10:00 PM.

One of the great sayings of the Cajun People is "Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler" which translates to "Let The Good Times Roll," and they believe in Letting The Good Times Roll."

If you would like to hear some good Cajun Music go here. 

More to come...