S1B6: Trucker Gal Dairies: New Orleans, Interstate 10 and memories of my youth.

The Bayou host serenading frogs, and loud noisy bugs

 Moonlight illuminates moss-dripping trees rising out of warm waters infested with cottonmouths, and copperheads, but also with crawfish, and freshwater clams. 

 Bedtime in my youth, sweltering in the summer heat, I tried to stay awake and avoid dreams of the swamp monsters and goblins of the night – to no avail!

Lauren Saige the Trucker Gal, June 8th,, 2021

While on the Goodman account with Werner, I drove goods from Houston up through the South to midwest and northeastern states. I drove Interstate 10 along the Gulf, through New Orleans, over bridges twenty miles long, through swamps and rivers, over the Mississippi bridge, and my mind traveled back to more youthful times as I passed childhood cities where I once lived, went to kindergarten, first, and second grade.

We lived in Marrero, Louisiana when I was in first and second grade. Mom learned to make the Cajun staple “red beans and rice.” The first time, I wasn’t so fond of it. Her version would have long slices of soft white onions and two - or three-inch cuts of Italian sausage that splayed out on the ends. It wasn’t exactly the traditional recipe. As a child, the onions and sausage kind of grossed me out. But I grew to love it over time. In fact, it became a lifelong quest to make the best authentic red beans and rice I could make - creamy, smoky, delicious red bean stew with a dollop of rice in the middle and a sprinkle of sliced scallions on top for color. I succeeded, and it has become a staple at home and over the road. (Recipe in the next blog).

Our home, my parent’s first home purchase, was in Marrero. I remember our neighborhood with clamshell roads, bordered by a wooded forest on one side and a bayou on the other. We had heard that there was a man who sold sugarcane for a nickel.  A friend and I walked down the road that bordered the right of our neighborhood until we found a kindly old black Cajun (as skinny as a toothpick) who lived in a small shed, wielding a machete and threatening us in some strange language we didn’t understand. We held up our nickels or quarters (can’t remember which) as another friend advised us to do, and then pointed to the sugar cane. The weather-worn man then cut us a piece of sugarcane that we gnawed on all the way home - but not until he finished rattling his machete and speaking harshly in that strange language. His meaning was clear: Never, ever, under any circumstances return or he would surely chop us up into bits and feed us to the crocks, lizards, water moccasins, and all of the creatures of the swap – and whatever bits were left over the crawfish would devour and we would be seen no more. I was convinced that was what his words surely meant.

Had our mothers known what we were up to, this would never have happened. But those were the days when children would be sent outside to play all day until mom called for us to come in for dinner. What happened in the swamp stayed in the swamp. And there were dangers other than crocs and snakes. There were stray dogs that sometimes traveled in packs.

The older, bigger children in the neighborhood would steal our bikes and or throw snakes they had caught at us while we ran squealing in the opposite direction. 

In the summertime, we would collect wild blackberries and raspberries with mom. She, with her magical mother powers, would transform those berries into delicious cobblers that the family devoured. 

My mother was an adventuresome cook at times. Every once in a while she would decide to make something new, like Indian curry – if she didn’t have all the ingredients would simply choose something and say with delight “This should work.” I didn’t actually know what Indian food really tasted like was until I had grown up and tried it at an Indian restaurant with some friends. My mom is an incurable romantic of life. She has a whole amazing imaginative life that I think transferred to me.

I grew up to love Cajun and creole cuisine, along with zydeco and jazz music. And I learned to cook. 

Dad took us on several occasions to the “Cafe Du Monde” for hot fresh beignets smothered in white powdered sugar. Mom would take my sister and me antiquing in “Nawlins.” Once she covered our eyes when we turned down the wrong street where some topless lady on a balcony yelled out “Hey! Cute kids!”  

I loved the darkly lit antique shops with tiny-paned dirty windows that allowed sunlight to filter through bottles of green-colored glass and bounce off glistening, somewhat-tarnished silver objects.

Street artists mesmerized me as they painted portraits on the spot in the square. Little did I know that one day I would create art and make a living at it designing glittery objects, and giftware inspired by those antique shops so long ago. 

New Orleans is a magical place, beautiful, strange, and frightening in some ways. It is a land of make-believe, glitter, joy, dance, music, and life. I miss the bayous and moss-dripping trees. 

My father took us to Mardi Gras once, holding our hands tightly as we were smothered by the crowds of frenzied people all jumping, screaming, and grabbing at the toys and beaded necklaces that are thrown from elaborately decorated floats inhabited by dancing and singing masked performers of all shapes and sizes. He took us only once. “It was too dangerous to go again,'' Dad told us. “The people are too wild.”

I was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, but lived there all of a month. It was New Orleans that captured my heart. We only lived there for a few years before we moved to Connecticut. 

My retirement gig brought me back through those bayous, lakes, and rivers that formed so much of my youthful imagination, nightmares of high bridges, and thousands of snakes that formed many dreamscapes at night that sent me running or calling out to my mother in the night.  

I remember seeing a bright ghost in my doorway at one evening that I thought might be an angel. Was it a ghost? Or was I in that in-between state of consciousness and sleep where dreams start to creep in? Another time I saw a bald-headed boy between the slates of my headboard. I was convinced that I was awake, but was I? Among other things, Nawlins is the city of ghosts, witches, beignets, and jazz music.

My Fathers career had us moving each time he was promoted. We moved from Mississippi to Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois. I may have the order mixed up. Perhaps all of the travel to see relatives and grandparents through the years gave me a love for the road.

Some of the grandest beauty is to be found along the roads and highways of our great nation. I never grow tired of driving the highway. In fact, after a year on the road, it occurred to me that I absolutely love driving.

Next Blog – Recipe’s for the road:  A Cajun staple.

Lauren Saige, the trucker Gal