Sometimes I forget how long I’ve been doing this column. Tim Palmer, of Lafayette, reminds me with this note:
“I’m gradually cleaning out my desk in my work office, with the plan to retire in the foreseeable future.
“I came across this copy of the first item from a member of my family that ran in your column in around 1992:”
A rare Louisiana moosehound
Carl Palmer, of Prairieville, was watching TV while dogsitting Bailey, his son and daughter-in-law’s Welsh corgi.
When the Alaska-based TV series, “Northern Exposure,” came on and a moose ambled across the screen, the pooch began to bark.
“He started for the TV,” says Carl. “About that time, the moose disappeared. Bailey looked behind the TV and all around the den, then ran out and searched the back yard.
“Now whenever he hears the theme music, he starts looking for that moose.”
Not Cajun, but OK
Mention of St. Landry Parish’s long-time sheriff Cat Doucet brought this recollection from Tony Falterman, of Napoleonville:
“I did not have the opportunity to serve as sheriff (of Assumption Parish) when Cat Doucet served, but I did serve with Adler Ledoux, who succeeded him.
“Adler was a pretty good character himself. He once told me when Cat was invited to meet France’s President Charles de Gaulle on his trip to New Orleans in 1960, he basked in the limelight.
“On his return to St. Landry Parish, he told folks he had a conversation in French with the president, and that the president’s French wasn’t too bad!”
Grandma says
John Thibodeaux says, “I miss hearing Grandma say things like:
“Gimme some sugar. I’m full as a tick. I got a hankering for apple pie. Oh, she is madder than a wet hen. Let me let you go.
“I ain’t seen her in a month of Sundays. You sure are gussied up. Hold your horses. Well, I declare! Heavens to Betsy!
“Well, butter my backside and call me a biscuit! You are getting too big for your britches. They are living in high cotton. Can’t never could. He ain’t got the sense God gave a goose.
“You got gumption. He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow. It’ll all come out in the wash. She’s just having a hissy fit.
“When Grandma talked, everyone listened.”
Sailor’s story
Brian Fisher, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says, “I am in possession of a sailor’s Navy cap and a letter from the commanding officer of Guantanamo Bay in 1962.
“My parents lived on the base for a few years in the early 1960s, and befriended a young sailor named Petty.
“I believe his full name is Willie Francis Petty, from Baton Rouge. According to my limited research, it appears he was born in 1936 and died in 1999, and is buried at Gilbert Memorial Park.
“I am attempting to identify his family rather than discard this piece of history. The letter validates a story I had heard for years; that Petty saved a young girl’s life on the base.
“It seems only appropriate that his children/grandchildren receive these items; they may not even be aware he saved a life.” (Brian’s at Simplelife13@hotmail.com.)
More on flies
Cathy Brouillette says, “My mother-in-law, Nell Brouillette, born in 1920 in Sun, St. Tammany Parish, called crane flies ‘galley-whoppers.'”
Doug Becnel, of Luling, says, “My mother-in-law was born and raised in Washington, D.C. She called them ‘stickle myers,’ a name I had never heard before. My wife also called them stickle myers.”
More malapropisms
“Marvelous Marvin” says, “A fellow worker, whose husband was an attorney, referred to a birth control procedure as a ‘tubal litigation.’
“Another worker exclaimed one day it was such a bad day she was going to go home and drink herself to Bolivia!”
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