Tag: #Ancestor4

Cajun Egg Pocking

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Egg Pocking

It wouldn’t be Easter in Cajun country without egg pocking. The rules are simple: gently tap the pointy ends, the first to crack loses, and the winner takes all. Our grandfather didn’t play for keeps, sparing us the tears of an empty basket. But if he lost he’d tease, “Wait, was that a guinea egg?”

Only when we were older did our father explain that back in the day men gathered at the Ville Platte ice house on Easter Eve to drink, boast and bet over egg pocking, and that an accusation of slipping a tough-shelled guinea egg could set off a fight.

My entry to the RootsTech 2018 Photo+Story Competition for the HERITAGE category.

A Truck Full of Cousins

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Truck Full of Cousins
After Sunday dinner when the weather was fine, our grandfather would load us cousins into his truck and drive us to his camp by Lake Chicot. There, we’d throw hickory nuts, scare each other with cries of “Snake!” and shriek and jump for no good reason at all.

I’m sure my grandmother sighed with relief when the truck pulled away. No more kids running back and forth through the kitchen’s swinging doors, no more chicken fighting in the living room. To this day, none of the cousins has fessed up to breaking the glass top of her coffee table. I swear it wasn’t me.

My entry to the RootsTech 2018 Photo+Story Competition for the FAMILY category.

A French-American in Paris

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Prof in Lyons

“Dear Buddy, the book is a jewel. … Have you the negative of myself taken with the pigeons in Lyons?” The old man sat in my grandmother’s living room, with the letter in hand and his book on the coffee table, 70 years after the Great War and six years after my grandfather had died. We all knew the photo; it hung on the wall behind him. But the book and its author were news to us.

His grandson prodded, “Tell them the part about sneaking into Paris” And so we learned of my grandfather’s secret adventures in France.

My entry to the RootsTech 2018Photo+Story Competition for the CONNECT category.