which is precicely why i am objecting to the term.
to those attempting to justify the term: i figured to ask nice, instead of resorting to a shredding. be thankful for that. i have no patience for racism, and will not ask nice again. i have dealt with my husband's stupidity at home. he clearly did not know that the two cajuns he knew from hunting were well meaning but ignorant people so far as etymology goes.
Now hold up one dad-gum minute here. No one is being racist here. Now I might be as ignorant as the day is long and I sure enough hold my fair share of prejudices because of it, but ma'am I am no racist.
Now I don't know if you have ever traveled through the great state of Louisiana, but I have had the good fortune to make several visits there in my lifetime. On one particular cross country romp, I was camping out on the north bank of Lake Pontchartrain with my friend Boris. Boris had come from Germany and was driving across the US in a beat up Oldsmobile. We had pulled into this big camp ground right around dusk as all the creatures of the lake and woods were starting to show themselves the for nightly orchestra they was fixin’ to put on. You know the tune. The one with the crickets and the locusts and the frogs and other fixtures of the great outdoors. Anyway, Boris was fascinated by this little tree frog that was crawling across the backend of the Oldsmobile. We was carrying on trying catch this frog when this dude comes walking up to us looking at us kinda queer like. I quickly blurted out that my friend here was from a city in Germany and had never seen the likes of all these critters before. The guy kinda looked at us sideways while he processed the fact that these simple little tree frogs that he had grown up knowing his whole life had captivated two strangers "not from around here".
After a couple seconds the ol' boy kinda gets a look in his eye and you can tell that he is now looking at this frog kinda like Boris had been seeing it, you know, like he was seeing it for the first time all over again. He went right from being on guard about us strangers to being our tour guide for the swamps and woods that made up the topography of where we was at. Johnny Lapierre was his name, and he was a native to the area. In fact he only lived 10 or 12 miles from the campsite we was at, but he had taken a whole week off of work just to go camping and reconnect with nature. He even left his wife and kids at home while he spent the week fishing and such. Johnny's face went flush and his eyes got all big as told us about his favorite fishing hole and frog pond. "Just through them trees you'll come to a trail. Follow it up a good quarter of a mile until you hear dem frogs a croakin'. You can't miss it." Now I know Boris had never been fishing before and he sure enough had never seen Deliverance. But the guy had an honest face and it wasn't long before Boris and I were outfitted with fishing poles, bait and some flash lights and were traipsing off into the night in search of carp and, according to our guide, "some of the biggest frogs you ever seen." We were given a fireside crash course in the art of "frog-gigging" and minutes later set out in the night time woods.
Upon reaching our destination we were welcomed by a symphony of ten thousand frogs all clamoring about in the little 1-2 acre pond. I don't know if you ever been frog gigging before, I have been once, but the idea is you get a big ol' stick of some sort and you take your light and when you see a frog you shine the light in its eyes to stun 'em. Then you take your big stick and you WHACK 'em over the head scoop 'em up and put in burlap sack tied your belt loop. Sounds easy enough right? Well them frogs had obviously played that game before because they were a whole lot better at it than either Boris or myself. We wore ourselves out making laps around that little pond trying to shine frogs. We'd hear what sounded like a thousand frogs right at the water’s edge just a croakin' up a storm. And we'd make our way right up to the shallows with lights and sticks in hand and right as we got there… hush, the darn area where we had just heard all the commotion would go silent and there wouldn’t be one single beady eye poking up out of that water. But just as one area went silent 50 feet away a whole 'nother group would get to croakin'. Again, we'd stealth right up to the water's edge and just as we got ready to pounce on our delicious prey… hush, the place would go silent, not so much as a ripple could be seen on the surface of the pond and 50 feet away a whole new chorus of frogs would start to rosin up their bows and mock the two strangers in a strange land.
Now I couldn't tell you how long Boris and I ran circles around that little pond being mocked by them creatures of Satan, but I will tell you one thing, I am a damn competitive dude and I was not about to be out witted by a bunch of pea brained, chicken tasting, bugeaters (no not kneebraskens, the toads). So the moonlight lit the path back to Johnny's campsite. We had been outwitted by the toads and the carp didn't seem to take too well to the can of corn either. So as we approached the edge of the wood you could see the camp fire from Johnny's campsite up in the clearing...and that is when I saw one of the damnedest things my eyes have ever seen.
My eyes strained in the shadows being cast by the moon and fire light that was a dancin' off of the trees surrounding Johnny's site. I could make out a tent and row of about 3 trepid little critters lined up like they was going to go catch some shut eye right up in that tent. As we emerged from the wood still straining to make sense of the whole situation, Johnny popped out from behind a tree carrying a big ol' spade shovel. A quick glance at Boris indicated we both were experiencing fight or flight in that split second before Johnny spoke, "Stand back. I think they are going to go in this time." I couldn't believe it. He had enticed a family of raccoons near the campsite with some marshmallows. Lined the marshmallows right up to the door of his tent, the one I assume he planned to sleep in later that night, and was waiting for the raccoons to enter the tent so he could knock 'em senseless with the spade and treat us to a swamp delicacy, **** steak. Now knockin' frogs over the head and trying a couple of frog legs on the bank of the Pontchartrain is one thing, but full on murdering and ingesting an animal that looks and acts more like a family pet than anything is quite another. I know what it is like to get caught up in the thrill of the hunt. Your focus narrows, you get little beads of sweat on the tips of your fingers, your mouth starts watering and you start swallowing hard in anticipation of landed that big kill. Well that is not far off from what was happening here. Thank goodness our bad luck from the frog pond followed us to the campsite and after a few seconds of contemplating the taste of that delicious marshmallow just inside the walls of that Coleman tent, instincts kicked in and the little family of raccoons scurried their way back into the darkness of the wood.
Boris and I sighed a big sigh of relief and Johnny quickly turned and offered us a beer as we set down his borrowed fishing gear and flashlights. As we joined up around the campfire we filled Johnny in on the details of our misadventures on the frog hunt. He pointed out several of our "rookie" mistakes and encouraged us that we would do better next time. He explained his awkward technique and motivation for wanting to bag a raccoon for us. I awkwardly apologized for disturbing his hunt and Johnny reassured me that it was no big deal. "You really want to soak them in milk for about 3 days before you start cooking them, otherwise they can be pretty tough. But I still wanted you all you get a taste of one since I am pretty sure neither of you have tried raccoon before." No we sure hadn't. After that we sat around the campfire swapping lies until we had depleted the cooler of Natty light. We shared with Johnny some of our stories from the road and how we had found our way to this little corner of the world and he regaled us with stories of growing up huntin' and fishin' the banks of the Pontchartrain and surrounding areas including some stories of his more successful and tasty **** hunts.
"I'm just a simple coonass from the swamp but I'd sure like to see Germany someday. So Boris, you really had never seen a tree frog before?" And there it was. That simple little dirty word that inspired this whole mess. Coonass. Johnny used it to describe himself, and based on what I had seen and heard up until that point it sure enough seemed to fit him to a T.
Years later I had another chance encounter with a Cajun by the name of Beau. We quickly found a common bond in our love of huntin', fishin' and the great outdoors. Upon learning he was from Louisiana I joked with him, "so you're a coonass?" "Yeah, but don't think that makes you better than me you redneck." And from there on he was Beau my coonass friend. And a couple years later when I was doing a job in LA and Beau put me up in a spare room in his folks house in Crowley, LA (check a map 77, its in SW LA) everyone of his friends he introduced me to was a coonass, and all them coonasses became my friends.
So before you go spoutin' off calling people racists, why don't you turn off your computer and take your nose out of your books long enough to get out and go see a part of the world or this country, that you fear or don't understand. Big words and fancy theories are fine and dandy, but until you get out and experience what it is your theorizing about, your judgment of me based on the language I use is no better than the implied judgment I am making against a people in using the term coonass.
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