By Ellen Labry
I am a Cajun girl who never learned
how to speak French.
I am a Cajun girl who never
lived in a swamp.
I am a Cajun girl who has not lived on a farm
except for maybe a week or two.
I am a city girl who is a Cajun.
My dad was a Cajun boy who
spoke French at home.
My dad was a Cajun boy who was not allowed to speak French at school.
English was the language spoken there.
The school punished students who didn’t obey the rules.
It was a modern thing to do.
And my Daddy was a modern boy.
He was the first in his family to finish grammar school and high school.
He was a modern man.
He was a Cajun, who married Ellender,
a non-Cajun girl who only spoke English.
She was an Irish Baptist girl who lived in the city all her life.
They were a modern couple.
There were no French words spoken in their home.
There was no French music in their home, just the Top 10
on Hit Parade.
They were a modern couple.
He was Cajun.
My brother and sisters knew our
grandparents were different than our grandmother.
They lived in the country on a farm.
They were Cajun.
My grandparents were 5 generations
Cajun from Nova Scotia.
They dressed different, spoke different,
believed in the old way.
Remember we are a modern family.
They were Cajun. We were Cajun.
As a child I did not like to visit out in
the country as we called it.
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