Cajun Stories My Granpa Tole Me

Inspirational short stories from the heart of a sun country.

“Breaux is a genuine slice of Southern life. Like any good Southerner, he refuses to take himself too seriously. His humor is bound to cure what ails you.” —The Press-Register Filled with stories inspired by the Cajun atmosphere, this volume captures the humorous elements of life and successfully blends them with interesting and animated characters. Tommy Joe Breaux fondly recalls the stories his grandpa told him and wanted a way to share them with others. By writing down these tales, he is saving part of his heritage as well as allowing readers to enjoy some Cajun humor. Returning characters include Elmo and Marie, Poo Poo and Stinky, and greedy Doc Duplichan in this compilation of funny stories. Divided into twelve chapters, each group highlights a different aspect of the Cajun culture and people. Told in Cajun speech, Breaux gives readers a glimpse of the Louisiana countryside while commemorating the stories he gleaned from his grandpa. “Tommy Joe’s funny-bone gumbo won’t give you heartburn—just a big belly laugh.” —Country America “Tommy Joe Breaux’s Cajun humor always makes my day.” —WWL “A warm and witty compilation of down-home stories from a master storyteller at the top of his form.” —Al Tainsky, The MS Beat

In this treasury of Cajun heritage, the author allows the people who are the very foundations of Cajun culture to tell their own stories. Nicole Denée Fontenot visited Cajun women in their homes and kitchens and gathered over 300 recipes as well as thousands of narrative accounts. Most of these women were raised on small farms and remember times when everything (except coffee, sugar and flour) was home-made. They shared traditional recipes made with modern and simple ingredients.

My name is Jake Tama, and as the long-time captain of the Cajun Queen I invited a special group of river aficionados to share their river stories with me on the boat's final voyage. And here they are, young and old-and from all walks of life. These are people with a river history of their own, and they have been on many trips of the Cajun Queen. As they cruise, they each tell their favorite river tale-something that happened to them, personally. Something that affected their life-or their thinking. I'm a riverboat captain with many years experience piloting large craft up and down the rivers of the mid-west and south. Here I draw on the experience of other people who also are infatuated with the rivers as a way of life and an important part of the world's commerce

Winner of the Donald T. Wright Award from the the Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library, a special collection of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Life Between the Levees is a chronicle of first-person reflections and folklore from pilots who have dedicated their lives to the river. The stories are as diverse as the storytellers themselves, and the volume is full of drama, suspense, and a way of life a “landlubber” could never imagine. Although waterways and ports in the Mississippi corridor move billions of dollars of products throughout the US and foreign markets, in today's world those who live and work on land have little knowledge of the river and the people who work there. In ten years of interviewing, Melody Golding collected over one hundred personal narratives from men and women who worked and lived on “brown water,” our inland waterways. As photographer, she has taken thousands of photos, of which 130 are included, of the people and boats, and the rivers where they spend their time. The book spans generations of river life—the oldest pilot was born in 1917 and the youngest in 1987—and includes stories from the 1920s to today. The stories begin with the pilots who were “broke in” by early steamboat pilots who were on the river as far back as the late 1800s. The early pilots in this book witnessed the transition from steamboat to diesel boat, while the youngest grew up in the era of GPS and twenty-first-century technology. Among many topics, the pilots reflect movingly on the time spent away from home because of their career, a universal reality for all mariners. As many pilots say when they talk about the river, “I hate her when I’m with her, and I miss her when I’m gone.”

The companion book to the ground breaking Arena documentary series airing on the BBC that celebrates the pioneers and artists who gave us modern American music