Category Archives: The Journey

Through the Eyes of a Newly Minted Texan

One of the things I love most about Dave is his insatiable curiosity. I’m also curious, but in a cursory “isn’t-that-interesting-as-I walk-by-and-take-a-picture-with-my-iphone” kind of way.

Dave digs in. And I can always trust that while I’m in the gift shop at the end of my lightning tour of any museum—looking to see if they have those finger puppets of historical figures—Dave will come tug me on the sleeve and guide me back for a “best-of” tour with his selected highlights from everything I missed.

This is where Texas began.

Which is why we spent four hours at the San Jacinto Monument. Where, thanks to Dave’s dedication to detail, this newly minted Texan got a full immersion course in my new state’s riveting history.

Little kids. Big monument.

As cool as the view was at the top of the monument, I was equally riveted by the impressions left by ancient creatures in the limestone used to build it.

The lesson actually begins on the drive in. To reach Texas past, you drive through its iconic present, surrounded by one tank farm after another. The monument itself, even at 567 feet tall, is hard to pick out amidst the forest of refinery cracking towers in the foreground.

It was here that Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna, because a Dave tells me in one of his tug-the-shirt-come-back-here-and-see-this sessions, “Santa Anna was a complete idiot.”

“Well actually he was arrogant,” Dave continues. “He knew that there was a force of Texans in the area, but je could not conceive that they would ever attack and defeat him.”

Deep breath: Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón.

One afternoon Santa Anna let his troops take a siesta. No sentries. How stupid is that? Houston and his troops sweep in. The battle lasted twenty minutes. Soon thereafter Texas is a nation unto itself. (Fun fact: When Texas was admitted as a state, it negotiated the right to fly its Lone Star flag at the same height and size as that of the Union—a right Texans proudly exercise to this very day.)

Santa Anna ran away from the battle and tried to blend in dressed as a common soldier. Wikipedia says that he was found hiding in a swamp. But Dave’s version is more fun, which goes that when the Texans began rounding up the Mexican soldiers they noticed that they addressed one among them as El Presidente. Oops.

But here’s the part that amazes me. Despite the fact that Santa Anna wiped out everyone at the Alamo when they wouldn’t surrender, and then when those he defeated at the next battle did surrender, summarily executed them all anyway, he was spared by Houston, and sent off to Washington, lived in exile and actually once met with President Jackson.

AND THEN, twice returned to Mexico, twice attempted to regain his status as dictator, and was twice more exiled. But somehow, after repeatedly pissing of one nation after another, never faced a firing squad. Amazing.

The amazing raisin de-seeder.

Also amazing was this little machine that took the seeds out of raisins back before botanists had crossbred the seeds out of grapes.

Hey, I have eclectic interests.

Wandering Off the Riverwalk

The Arnaudville Experiment

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George Marks did what many young people do who grow up small towns. He moved to the city—New York City to be precise, where his career as an artist was taking off quite nicely thank you.

Then his father became gravely ill. And George moved back to his tiny hometown of Arnaudville, in the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country, to help care for his dad.

After his father’s death, George realized that he wasn’t ready to leave home again.

And so, with the power of his gentle yet wildly infectious personality, George began nudging his hometown toward an amazing transformation. George will be the first to tell you that many, many people have made this transformation possible, but it seems clear to me that he was the catalyst.

Over the last decade this tiny hamlet has reinvented itself into a Mecca for all sorts of artists and artisans, and at the core of that transformation is NUNU’s Arts and Culture Collective. Step through the door past the weathered gray exterior of an old lumberyard building and into a explosion of creative spirit. On one recent visit to NUNU’s, quilters gathered around a frame suspended from 20-foot ceilings, not only celebrating and preserving that ancient art—but practicing their French, part of another community initiative to keep that part of local culture vibrant. The adjoining space serves as studios for Marks and other regional artists—and on the occasional evening as a music performance space. The town’s old jailhouse and waterworks have also been converted to artists’ studios. Down the road there are weekly jam sessions at the music shop Tom’s Fiddles, hosted by a fiddle maker from Maine, one of those drawn to The Arnaudville Experiment—along with a bass player from Rhode Island and a blues guitar player from Nashville.

We spent some of our final week in Louisiana back in Arnaudville, for its Semaine Francais—six days exploring how small communities can build on their cultural foundations to become even stronger, more vibrant places to live. Alongside local townspeople and politicians were a hundred folks from a similar small community in Brittany—from business people, to musicians, to high school students.

There were bi-lingual workshops in the day—and lots of food and music at night. (Including a joint performance by a band from Brittany and a local band in which they collaborated on new songs that blend their music traditions. How cool is that.)

Next up for Arnaudville is an ambitious plan to draw upon its French-speaking heritage to create an “immersive French weekend experience” for those who’d like to brush up on that particular skill without the cost of a plane ticket to France. Ideas include a French speaking lane at the grocery store, French speaking window at the post office, art and music studio tours in French.

Pretty groovy eh?

From this very special small town—comes very big ideas. Glad we got to visit one more time as we hit the road.

The Little Big Cup

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One of the joys of our time in Acadiana was hanging at The Little Big Cup, a restaurant and coffee shop opened last year by Kevin Robin, when he returned to Arnaudville from New York—with a partner he met there in tow.

How did you convince Sanjay to move from New York to tiny Arnaudville I ask? “His only condition was that there had to be a coffee shop,” Kevin responded with a chuckle. “And so I opened one.”

Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote about The Little Big Cup for Country Roads Magazine:

“We’ll have acoustic music on the deck and let it drift off lazily over the bayou.“

That really is just how Kevin Robin talks. And thirty seconds into the conversation you can’t wait to hear what he’ll say next. The 1800 square foot deck in question will be behind the restaurant he’s opening in Arnaudville next door to The Little Big Cup, a combination coffee shop and restaurant he opened with his partner Sanjay Maharaj last fall. It was so wildly popular from the start that he explains, “The restaurant hijacked the coffee shop.”

And Robin is very clear that he has a distinct mission in mind for each part of that equation.

He’d like the coffee shop to continue to be a a gathering spot—a community “nucleus.” A place where folks can come to visit with their friends, a place that’s embracing. Robin’s family runs a local grocery store that has long served the community, and just inside the entrance to The Little Big Cup are the vintage doors to the old store from which his family’s business evolved. Intended, he explains, “to bring people to a place of their childhood, when they pulled on those doors.”

Robin has recently returned to Arnaudville from New York where he was pursuing doctoral studies in neuropsychology. Which helps explain the way he expresses one of his visions for this place. “My idea was to create a place where we can foster intergenerational connectivity.”

And just how does one do that? In part with a really big table in the middle of your coffee shop. Each afternoon, his plan is to gather a half dozen folks from a nearby nursing home, and pair each of them with two latchkey kids to help them with their homework. Has it become clear yet that this place is about a lot more than a cappuccino and biscotti?

The restaurant next door draws upon that same vision.

“We decided to become the home of the $5 plate lunch,” Robin says, but adds that the special will be available in the evening as well.

“It’s traditional stuff like most of the folks would cook here,” he explains, delighting in the fact that they’ll often get an order from someone with a request to deliver the meal to an elderly parent so they won’t have to cook that evening.

What a guy. Glad I’ve had a chance to get to know Kevin and Sanjay a bit. Hope to see them again on next year’s swing through Louisiana. Keep up with the evolution at The Little Big Cup’s Facebook page.

First Stop: Acadiana

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Cajun Palms. I almost crack up every time I say the name of the RV resort we chose for our first stop. Here on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin, one side of the road has been cleared and planted with sugar cane that stands about knee high this month. The other side of the road has been cleared and planted with palm trees. Lots and lots of palm trees, each one waving over a concrete pad awaiting an RV. Palms are not native to this part of the world, but they seem to like it here. As did we, despite our first encounter with the quirky side of RV culture, upon which I’ll expound in an upcoming post.

We chose Cajun Palms not for its amazing bar and pool complex or the weekend drinking and line-dancing beside that pool, but purely for its location within easy striking distance of all the exploration we wanted to do in Acadiana during our last week (for awhile) in Louisiana. We packed a lot in to those last few days.

We celebrated Dave’s birthday the first night at a pot luck in an old lumberyard that has been converted to an arts collective, and where on that particular night a gathering of locals and visitors from France celebrated their historic connection. They sang Happy Birthday to Dave in in French accompanied by a band from Brittany.

We made the ten minute drive into Breaux Bridge for the legendary Zydeco breakfast at Café des Amis. The dance floor, inches from our table was packed, while we chowed down on an etouffée topped omelet and a huge boudin-stuffed oreille de cochon pastry.

We visited with long-time friends who live in a beautiful, art-fill Acadian cottage that happens to be just down the road from our home du jour.

We chatted one afternoon with the tiara-topped winners of the Miss and Mrs. Catfish Festival Queen contest who were the guests of honor at a outdoor arts show in charming, historic Washington.

We made a quick stop to see the irises in magnificent bloom at the über-cool, design-award-winning, eco-friendly St. Landry Parish Visitors Center.

We visited the branch of the Jean Lafitte National Park that interprets the lives of those exiled Acadians who ended up in the fertile prairies around Eunice.

At a reception one perfect Spring evening we chatted with the French Consul to New Orleans about Le Grand Dérangement des Acadiens when they were exiled and then enjoyed the view from a flower-filled deck overlooking Bayou Fuselier—at a beautiful restaurant that is part of the emerging arts community of Arnaudville.

We scored smoked boudin from a drive-through window across the street from our RV park. We at a LOT of boudin this week.

Another morning it was off to Lafayette for a trip down memory lane for me. This is where I got my first job out of college, directing an early morning TV show that was half in Cajun French, half in English. We had sweet potato and pecan pancakes at Dwyer’s Café, the owner of which was once my mess chef when I was a platoon leader for a National Guard unit in Lafayette. I’m convinced we had the best field rations in military history.

We were serenaded that afternoon by a 90-year old volunteer at the charming historic interpretation village of Vermillionville. He teased two young women in the front row asking where their men were and if they were married. “Not in this state,” they answered wryly, smiling at each other, and then gently back at him. We smiled at each other too.

Then it was home for soak in the hot tub and a nap.

Old friends. New Friends. Great food. Great music. Cultural quirks. Inspiring stories. We’ve only been on the road a week, and we’ve only traveled 100 miles, but so far this adventure is everything we imagined it to be and more. I’ll expand upon much of this in the next few posts.

Fabulous Fifth Wheel

Living large in a little footprint.