When I was young, my mom would drive us to Louisiana at least once a year. Usually it was just the two of us, my father rarely came. We would pack up our clothes and a cooler full of sandwiches, snacks and drinks into a small powder-blue Geo and head down I-20. We would just drive and drive. I would sit up in the front to count the mile-markers passing and imagine that I was outside running free through the miles of pine and marsh.
When we arrived, we usually stayed at my grandma’s house. I remember that she had a huge backyard, complete with a pool and swing set, it was picture perfect except for the knowledge that it faded into the darkness of the swamp. It offered so much open space! Exactly opposite of the stuffy apartments back home which, only had yards of grey, paved parkinglots that faded into the streets of the city.
After we arrived my grandpa, a man with a deep Cajun cadence, would invite over friends and family for a crawfish-boil. He would buy tons of live crawfish and boil them up in a large pot in the backyard with corn, potatoes and lots of seasoning and pepper. As soon as he was done with a batch we would sit down on a picnic table in the back yard and eat the tails and suck the heads until our mouths burned and our stomachs were full. If there were any leftovers, we would go down to the dock on the swamp and, bang a plastic bucket that would call an alligator, we named George, and feed him.
Our trips usually coincided with the Mardi-gras carnival parades. Now we were not Catholic so it had nothing to do with sowing our wild seeds before Lent; it was just tradition to go. Later in the evening, we would go down the street to watch for the floats to start slowly plodding our way. The streets would be crowded; I would duck and dodge through the people yelling at the brightly colored floats “Throw me something Mister!”. Down from the floats rained plastic cups, doubloons and multi-colored beads. I would hold them all tightly to my chest until I could hold no more and the floats paraded away…. |
Submission Name: A tradition
