Chris didn't have to go in until late today, so we went out to the St. Edward the Confessor Cochon de Lait Festival in Metairie. The cochon de lait (roast suckling pig) wasn't ready, so we ate cracklins and fried catfish and crawfish pie and fried jalapeños and new potatoes cooked in crab boil. The fried jalapeños were the star of the show -- not the stuffed "popper" kind, which always burn the roof of your mouth and are never spicy enough, but battered, fried pickled pepper slices. I bought four chances on a jack o'lantern cake, but didn't win it. Then we were each going to pick out a silly carnival game for the other to play, but instead we ended up buying two cans of Silly String and having an apocalyptic battle. I think Chris won, if only because Silly String attaches best to hair and I have a lot more hair than he does. I wish I had a picture of myself webbed in green Silly String to post, but we forgot the camera.

Conversation of the day:

ME (picking wads of Silly String out of my hair): It reminds me of spaetzle.

CHRIS: Only a really obsessive foodie would think that.

ME: But you see what I mean.

CHRIS: Sure.

I was just working up the nerve to go on the Tilt-A-Whirl (about the only carnival ride I can deal with) when it started to rain and they shut down all the rides. It was a fun day, but it made me want to write an entire story set at a church parish fair (as opposed to "The Feast of St. Rosalie," which is set partly at a city fair associated with a church parish), whch in turn made me realize that we've scarcely met any of the twelve Stubbs grandchildren yet. We've had glimpses of Rosalie's Tommy and Chris in The Value of X and "The Feast of St. Rosalie," and Henry's now-deceased Matthew in "The Heart of New Orleans," but that still leaves nine kids to deal with (ten if Matthew died before G-man's reference to the twelve grandchildren in Soul Kitchen -- I need to work out that chronology -- see, this is why I've just got to get off my ass and make a concordance), and Mary Louise's kids, at least, are probably old enough to have kids of their own by now.

I just realized I put my "Stubbs family file" containing the family chronology in storage, and I suppose I ought to go dig it out -- why, I don't know, since I certainly don't have time to write this story right now. Chris suggested that I have Lenny meet up with some of his henchmen at a parish fair and use it as a cover to discuss evil plans, but I think that's too goofy even for me.

Tonight I must either read an extremely dry scholarly book about the language and ethnography of the Isleños in Lousiana, or write. I'm hoping the dauntingness of the one will force me to do the other, though I'll have to do both sooner or later. Occasionally I catch myself wishing I'd had the shrimpers in this book be Cajuns -- sure, hardly anybody outside Louisiana knows fuckall about Cajuns and the rest of the country thinks anything from Louisiana is automatically "Cajun,", but that doesn't change the fact that the Cajuns are as easy as pie to research and read about and find and talk to if you want to know. The Isleños, though, have such a fascinating history, and hardly anybody outside Louisiana even knows they exist, let alone who or what or where they are. Besides, I pretty much set myself up for the Isleños when I had Rickey and G-man buy a camp in Shell Beach. There are a few Cajuns down there, but in general, the whole Reggio/Shell Beach/Yscloskey/Delacroix Island area is overwhelmingly Isleño, or at least the fishing community is. I'm happy to be writing about a part of south Louisiana culture that hasn't been written about much and fairly confident I can do it justice ... but if it weren't for my Isleño friend Mindy, who has provided me with an entry into her community and culture, I might have caved and switched to Cajuns some time ago.