“WAR IS A RACKET” – MAJ. GEN. SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, USMC
ST. MARTINVILLE, LOUSIANNE – No doubt, the most vicious form of this depredation we know as war – the attempt by one nation or city state to enforce its political will upon that of another through the means of organized violence – is civil war.
When you’re in a desolate spot like Nova Scotia, what’s the difference between the tail end of a 100-year-long mafia credit bust-out – and a downright hillbilly feud?
The subtleties are far too difficult to apprehend when armed, hostile soldiers are at your door, in your face, up your old lady’s skirts, to quibble the quibby of the quay of the quo.
What is not so much of a legend of the 1755 Acadian dispersion from that troubled and bleak province of Canada is the hard fact, handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, that it was a total mistake to believe the bloody Brits when they said the disarmament of the Acadian people would be only temporary.
It gets very rude outdoors when you lose the war. True story.
Just get on the bus, Gus. We’ll handle this – together – in peace.
Wrong.
They put them on the ships and dropped them off in the Panther, the Grandaddy of the swamps, a place where dark comes early, descends like a black velvet curtain, and stays all night until an often gray and dismal dawn that reveals very little other than soggy hammocks of black trees and lots and lots of green water in between.
They were lucky to have a thimble, frying pan, blanket, or pocket knife. And that ain’t all. They were a long way from home.
That’s why it’s agreed. When you are in the Cajun country, show a little respect – at least. They don’t know where they at, either, but, at least, they ain’t lost – like y’all.
You are suddenly aware, by design, that you are a long way from home. These folks have a long, long memory. It’s easy to show some courtesy, a little discretion – some respect. Costs you nothing, ami.
What’s more, they still didn’t have their guns – or much of anything else it takes to survive, much less thrive.
Then came Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, scribbler extraordinaire, who wrote the definitive blarney, a tale of old Philadelphia – of all places – and put the Evangeline Oak on the map.
They say the old scribe never once set foot in Louisiana – even the red dirt country on the way to Big D – much less the land of the Cajun. What’s more, it’s questionable if Evangeline ever returned to her home. She is entombed at the City of Brother Love, as it were.
So, all you boiler room guys and gals out there. Here’s a replacement for the age-old sales contest question: Who’s buried in Evangeline’s tomb? Eh? No, the one in St. Martinville nigh Lafayette. Yeah, that one. Take a guess. What’s at stake? An all expense-paid junket to our newest time share gated condo community on that legendary jumbo jet. Con-Air.
Read All About It: (clique here)
https://perceptivetravel.com/blog/2010/05/25/evangeline-louisiana-history/
Better yet, dig the tube:
Like most legendary happenings, the facts are not exact, and the truth, as a result, is plain to see.
It’s agreed. The truth is this. Had they fought to their last drop of blood with rifles and other weapons they had refused to relinquish on pain of their ignominious death, Evangeline and her man would have at least gone down together.
That could have very well been old Longfellow’s point. Ask the Cajuns.
They gonna tell you down in Dixie.
And now, we have reached the halfway mark in a new Hundred Years War, that of the bankers vs. the Land of the Homeless and the Brave, which started in 1969, the year of the second tranche of the dismantlement of the Oil Depletion Tax Allowance, a monumental faux pas committed by none other than John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Boston, Massachusetts and Riverdale, Westchester County, New York.
They tried to tell him not to go to Dallas, but he wouldn’t listen.
I guess he was full of beans. In fact, he must have had some in his ears. Maybe the Vice President had put a little cotton in his ears.
After they busted out his replacement, Lyndon Baines Johnson of Johnson City, Texas, who declared on the half hitch year of 1968 that if nominated he would not run, and if elected, he would not serve as your President, “mah fella Americans,” the new guy, Richard Milhous Nixon of Yorba Linda, California, hauled off and had his brightest young men invent a whole new form of currency – the Petrodollar!
Carved in stone, no doubt.
Suddenly, old Quadaffi’s oil was worth a little something more than chump change and a how do ya’ do.
The clock is ticking. Is it a time bomb, or just the slow turning wheels of history? It’s the $64 trillion question. Relax. This is the day that the Lord hath made. Get happy and rejoice in it. Etc. Happy New Year, 2019.
¿Quien sabe?
We headed that way. Talk at y’all when we know more.
I have spoken.
I am sincere.
So mote it be.
- The Legendary
Get a load of this: Tell me another one, etc.: