In April, when I converted my old newsletter (Parenthetically Speaking) into this blog, I announced that the University Press of Mississippi (UPM) will be publishing my memoir next year. At the time, the title of my book was “The Canasta Summers – Memoirs of a Cajun Boy.” This was the only title I’ve ever considered…
Tag: #memoirs
Great Depression Bouillie au Lait
In our house in Eunice, Louisiana, in the 1960s and ’70s, bouillie au lait (milk custard) was a comfort food. We pronounced it “B-yo-ly,” and sometimes ate it for breakfast or as an after-school snack. In Momma’s childhood home in Ville Platte during the Great Depression, bouillie au lait was survival food. It was affordable…
The People in the Book*
My memoir covers the late 1960s through mid-1970s and focuses on the siblings who are closest to my age: Gilda, Glenda, and Dickie, and me, of course (well, a memoir is like that). In between chores at our family’s motel, the four of us did a lot of game-playing, and for a few years, the…
Canasta’s Trip to the Bayou
In 1939 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Segundo Santos and Alberto Serrato invented a rummy-like card game they named after the “baskets” of cards, or canastas the players would create along the way to winning. In the next decade the rules of the game evolved, modified by players all over South America. By the 1950s the resulting…
