Falgout: The Cajun or Royal or Irish or German or Whatever! Once thing I will never be able to shake despite my genetic differences with the Falgout family, having been an adoption case of the Lower Garden District charity called St. Vincent de Paul’s, who specialized in orphans and adoptions mainly of working class Irish, Italians, Germans or combinations of the three, is that somehow, through the toils of nurture rather than nature, there is no doubt that I am indeed a Falgout. Moreover and through no fault of his own, an even further diluted, little product called Peter Maximilian Falgout will also be passed along the traits that will make him, reluctant or not, a part of this South Louisiana clan. My fellow Falgouts, throughout my upbringing, always kind of scratched their heads when asked about their origins. Some said we took the sad and battered path of our brethren Cajuns leaving Poitier to find temporary happiness in Nova Scotia, then finding ourselves abused, aggressed and finally forcibly uprooted by the English only to begin the sad trek to the bayous of Louisiana. Others theorized that we were more Alsatian and others said we were even German and that the “F” had once been a “V”. Well the fact was we just didn’t know until finally one woman, Barbara Allen, single-handedly took on the enormous task of tracing the lineage in an award winning genealogy called Falgoust: A history and genealogy of the Falgoust and Falgout families of France and Louisiana, 1555-1988. Now I haven’t thumbed through this book in over fifteen years, but I can tell you that every Falgout from Dulac to Larose went hog wild with delight upon sifting through the labors of Mrs. Allen. The Falgouts in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, however, probably never ran out to buy the book since Falgout was a name that had merely been bestowed upon them by their slave masters, but for every non-black Falgout, we were shocked to discover that we were not a part of the Nova Scotia arrivals. We were rich! Important! It seems that during the time of Louis XIV, a wealthy doctor named Marcel Falgout got so rich that he bought the royal title of Beaumont and became some kind of knight or duke or something and became known as Marcel de Beaumont, but despite his fame and fortune in Paris, for some unknown reason he and his large family of sons took the long cruise to the New World and set themselves up in style in New Orleans. So this Parisian, medium-sized fish came to New Orleans during the 15th century and made himself a big fish, bought a big, stylish home, recklessly threw around his royal title, bought slaves and drank and ate in the style of a king. Forgive me if my genealogy now strays from the correct and accurate labors of Mrs. Allen, but I would like to quickly explain what happened to all of that Falgout splendor. The loss of wealth rendered us just a common as say a Thibodaux or a Naquin or a Boudreaux, Chaisson, Robicheaux, Trosclair, LeBlanc, Benoit, Percle, etc. Mind you, all of these are good families of South Louisiana, but in comparison with the noble Falgout, they were mere bottom feeders. That is until the Falgout family, through their great ability to reproduce like rabbits, having usually twelve or more Falgout boys per every fresh Falgout generation had bred themselves out of fame and fortune, and over time, became just as common as say a Thibodaux or a Soignier. The process was slow and hardly noticed by Father Time, except for the great efforts of Mrs. Allen. This leads us to the modern Falgout, which unless I were either completely delusional or excessively pretentious (one of these I am certainly not), can best be compared and measured right along the same prestige levels of any ordinary, common, simple, squirrel-eating, gumbo-making, back woods, pirogue-paddling, shrimping, fishing, Miller Light drinking, run-of-the-mill, refugees of Nova Scotia. If you take just a glance at Mrs. Allen’s genealogy, you will notice that the modern Falgout has as much Chaisson, Hebert, Boudreaux, Callais, Chabert, Badeaux and Cheramie among other names running through his veins. In fact, anyone with even a slither of hope to trace his genetic attachment to the once noble Marcel would be a long shot. The post-World War Two days and the boom of the oilfield were good to the poor, gathering and hunting, okra-planting Cajuns. Many left their bayou shacks and houseboats to live the American dream, moving to modern communities like Ellendale, Rienzi, Acadia woods and my old stomping ground, the Bayou Country Club where my illustrious sugarcane expert of a father ended up after spending the first half of his life memorizing every blade of marsh grass from Cocodrie to Lake Decade to Caminada Pass. Yes, Bob Falgout had found his place in the world, living the life of an in-demand expert of the most abundant local agricultural, money-making produce that the subtropical climate of South Louisiana could offer (okra being a distant second). Anyway, the professor has lived a proud life and rightfully so as he ends most of his days on a chain swing under his covered patio which overlooks the par five fourth fairway of the BCC golf course. For years, nothing in this world has given Dr. Falgout more pleasure than to sit there swinging ever so slowly sipping rot-gut Scotch from huge, gallon-sized, plastic jugs while watching a bird here, a great or poor golf shot there, a bee, a wasp, an occasional slithering snake, neighbors’ trespassing pets and, of course his favorite, the giant, over-fed, bright-red golf course squirrels that frequently come into his yard to steal his pecans from his two beloved and highly maintained pecan trees. Now these golf course squirrels are as big and as colorful as tabby cats, and they have acquired years of trust for humans since the golfers drive their carts by them without so much as a hello. My father, on the other hand, is acutely interested in these domesticated, free-range, fattened rodents. In the days of his youth, his passion was to walk the woods of Terrebonne Parish hunting small game like doves, rabbits and squirrels. He is the son of a poor man so he never had the resources for big game hunting although his favorite story is having once taken down a spike buck with bird shot as it ran in a circular pattern around him. It took three blasts from his Winchester Model 12, but my father was proud of the kill, exclaiming, “And I’ll be damned if he didn’t drop right after the third shot, right at my feet!” To my knowledge, this is the largest creature he has ever slaughtered, but there aren’t enough ledgers to itemize the multitudes of squirrels, rabbits, doves, trout, bass, catfish, redfish, shrimp and oysters that died by his hand. He tried in vain to teach me to hunt squirrels, but I had a problem. The only squirrels I knew were the big red golf course variety and whenever he took me to look for their wild, human-fearing cousins in the local woods, I had a Hell of a time. These wild squirrels are not bright red. They are rather the exact color of the trees and when any human being or other predator comes within twenty-five yards of them, they freeze, motionless and blend into the branches. I tried and tried in vain, but for the life of me, couldn’t see them in the trees much less shoot one. My father, on the other hand, as we walked quietly through the woods would throw up his thirty-five year old Winchester and blast an unsuspecting squirrel out of a tree in about the same time it takes a Great White shark to pounce on a wounded baby seal. Every time he killed one, I’d look at my father and the dead, skinny, brown squirrel and yell, “How did you see it? I never saw it!” He’d reply arrogantly, “You jus gotta be lookin’, boy.” Well, I gave it up. I never mastered the ability to shoot, much less even see a squirrel in the wild. Now the squirrels of the Bayou Country Club golf course are another animal (literally). You can see them from a mile away frolicking and partying on the lush fairways, jumping from limb to limb of the tall manicured trees in the rough. My dad watches them too, but not as a passive observer. He hunts them. Of course, no one until now knows about this because he does it with the stealth of an invisible man. Oh he looks so innocent on his swing, slowly swinging back and forth, slowly inebriating himself on the most rancid imitation of Scotch whisky ever created, but when one of those little, fattened creatures happens to wander onto Falgout property in the hopes of devouring a pecan or two. The professor slowly stops his swinging, sets down his glass of poison and reaches for the pre-pumped and loaded .22 caliber air rifle. He then makes a careful check to make sure no golfers are around and the neighbors are elsewhere, places the air rifle sights right on the impossible-to-miss, fattened target and with a whisper of a bang, a squirrel is harvested. On a good afternoon he can harvest two or three of them. He quickly skins and guts them, then bags and freezes them. His goal is a long and simple one. He needs about twenty of them to make a giant sauce piquante and many people in Thibodaux regard my father’s squirrel sauce piquante as one of the best, but in no way comparable to Spud Chaisson’s. So after a few months, my father has his twenty squirrel carcasses, and on this day you can find him on his swing with a boning knife removing every millimeter of flesh from the carcasses. It takes him almost three hours, but when he’s done, his has one giant bowl of perfectly fattened, juicy shredded meat and a garbage can of ex-squirrels, complete skeletons in fact. Then he sets the date, calls his buddies to the house, uncorks the wine (which is only slightly higher in quality in comparison to the toxic Scotch), and a huge feast and party commences. This ritual has lasted for years, and although my father and I are estranged, I imagine he still maintains his slightly illegal, but personally enjoyable hobby. Yes, we Falgouts, despite the efforts of the great and noble Marcel, have come a long way down the rungs of the social ladder, and despite a few post-WWII moves back up the ladder, there is a common expression that all Cajuns know very well: You can take the Cajun from the bayou, but you can never take the bayou from the Cajun!
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 05:56:09 +0000
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