OK, hopefully this is the last installment -- and the first person to make a smart comment about how long it took me to complete this task is going to get thwacked upside the cranium.
Friday, Barney decided a trip to Grand Coteau was in order. GC is a small "village" near Lafayette where Jackie (B's wife) grew up and went to school. We started off with a visit to Jackie's folks' place in the country. Jackie's dad is a physics prof at the U of LA-Lafayette, and some years ago he and two other ULL profs (math and history, I think) went in together and bought a big chunk of land outside GC. On said land, they constructed three homes and a "community building" containing a swimming pool and other stuffs suitable for gathering. The Meriweather pad is this rustic, cabin-looking piece of beauty complete with a tin roof. Trees everywhere, silent as all get-out -- I LOVED IT. I was heading through the yard toward the house, watching the ground for pot-holes, when Barney advised me to stop right where I was and look up. It took me minute to see what he was talking about, but I momentarily realized I had nearly walked into the biggest spider web I have ever seen up close and personal, and the master designer was home. While the arachnophobic in me sent up a thanks that I hadn't given that big spider a reason to drop down on my head, the biologist in me had to admire the beauty of the web and its resident. The web was easily five feet across, and the spider was four or five inches across its legs. Jackie pointed out another web with a different type of spider just five feet away and explained that it was par for living there to watch for spiders EVERYWHERE. There was even webbing stretching from the roof of the house to a nearby tree, and leaves hung from it like a natural form of party decoration.
The house was small and cozy, with books in every room. You know I was in love. I perused Dr. Meriweather's personal library (Mrs. Meriweather's was on the second floor and thus unavailable to me), and I was surprised to find several volumes (I'm guessing first editions) of the Hardy Boys mysteries and closer-to-original-than-my-omnibus of the LOTR trilogy as three separate books. As I looked up and up the shelves to the ceiling (yes, the man has floor-to-ceiling shelves), I just wanted to weep with jealousy. ONE DAY I, too, will have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
Next it was into GC proper to have lunch at Catahoula's. For those who don't know, a catahoula hound is a breed that seems to be fairly unique to Louisiana (but I'm sure they can be found in other places, as well). The man who started this restaurant has a passion for them; he's also a regionally-well-known photographer, and his photos of catahoulas decorate the restaurant. My two major comments about Catahoula's concern the food and the manager. The food was exceptionally good -- a little pricey, but I truly have no complaints in this department since Al had insisted lunch was on him and gave us money as we left the house. Barney and I had an appetizer of crab cakes and for lunch I had the pan-fried catfish covered in crawfish etouffe. I ate so much I almost something. As to the manager, I have to go on record as saying, "Yum." Hey, I'm a red-blooded female with good vision (with my glasses), and I promised you all an honest reckoning of my trip, right? John (son of the restaurant's founder, not the founder himself) came over once to talk dogs because Reba, bless her little doggy heart, batted her browns at him several times. Some mutual harmless flirting later, John saw us to the door and even held it for me in that great Southern sense of politeness. Yeah, that was fun, especially since I don't have it in me to flirt much. As Gina said once, Stacy got all the flirting genes in our family.
After lunch, Barney took me to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, the Catholic girls school Jackie attended. The school was founded in 1821 and is the oldest continuously run Sacred Heart (maybe even Catholic overall) school in the US. There are one or two other schools in the US which were founded earlier but were closed at least once at some point in their histories. Sister Moreau showed me the chapel (which is where Barney and Jackie were married) and the shrine to St. John Berchmann. This is the site at which Berchmann performed his third miracle by curing a sister of a severe illness. I found the history of the school and the miracle very interesting, and Sister Moreau patiently answered my million and one "I'm not a Catholic, so could you please explain . . ." questions. I know enough Church history from Professor Gythiel's classes to follow most of what she told me about canonization procedures and such, and it was great to add more to my regional knowledge. Plus, I love old places, and this one (especially the shrine) felt so peaceful and sacred.
Friday night we went to the Festivals Acadiens kick-off to listen to some excellent music. We caught the end of a Cajun folk group and stayed through the interim to listen to an hour of a Zydeco group. The biggest kick of the night was watching Barney dancing and cutting loose. If you look at his picture on the UNO bio website, and he kind of looks preppy and . . . well . . . just not like a guy who dances to Cajun music. He gets cooler and cooler the more I know him.
Saturday we attended more of Festivals Acadiens -- listened to more music (and Barney and Jackie got to dance more), ate cracklings and fried soft-shell crab, and checked out local crafts on display. It was 100 degrees, but it was still a blast.
And now I'm off to meet some of my fellow members of the Biology Graduate Student Conviviality Association for a little fun and socialization at a place called d.b.a.
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