Angola to Zydeco: Louisiana Lives

Acknowledgments

xiii Acknowledgments Thanks to all of the people who are featured in these pages. It takes a huge leap of faith to allow a complete stranger into your life to ask you a grocery list of questions. Thank you for entrusting me to tell your stories. From the moment he barged into my office unannounced for our first interview, Elemore Morgan Jr. proved to me, not just by what he said but by how he lived his life, that a practical life could be balanced with an artistic one, and that both are necessary for some folks, including myself, to live a semi-sane existence. I’m always going to be indebted to him for that. But I dedicate this book to my family. They have lived with these stories, more than anyone else, for the past decade. Heather, you have always been my first, most honest, and most valued reader on everything I’ve written. Thank you and Henry and Bird for all the hours y’all allowed me to sit in front of the computer to shape up my words as best I could. None of it would have ever happened without your love, support, and understanding. On my first newspaper assignment, I rode out to Angola with photographer Terri Fensel. I remember riding up Highway 66, looking past her out the window into a field and seeing a crumbling brick structure overgrown with weeds. For a second, I had profound déjà vu—the combination of driving out to Angola with Terri, seeing that old building, and the feeling that everything was all right and as it should be. Terri and I continued to work together throughout the years, even Acknowledgments • xiv after we both left the Times and took jobs with the Independent Weekly. We fed off of each other’s energy trying to tell the same story in our own ways, and it was always a pleasure. Thanks also to Judy Johnson, not just for giving me the job as assistant editor at the Times of Acadiana but also for giving me the space and the time to figure it all out. I had admired Scott Jordan’s writing with Gambit Weekly in New Orleans long before we ever met, but I got to know him while working with him at the Independent. It was comforting to know that someone else was geeking out about writing too, and I’m fairly certain that I’m a better writer for having worked with him. Thanks to publishers Steve May, Cherry Fisher May, and Odie Terry and the rest of the Independent staff, past and present . Thanks also to Craig Gill and the staff at the University Press of Mississippi for seeing this collection all the way through. ToMom—MollyConnWiley—fortellingmeataveryyoung age never to put my name on anything that I didn’t believe in. It’s a lesson I’ve always remembered and one I’ve tried to adhere to with everything I’ve written. It hasn’t always been easy, especially when I was sometimes assigned to write about subjects I could not have cared less about, but I’ve always tried to write something that I wouldn’t be ashamed of later. I hope it’s worked. Steve Conn, it seems like I’ve always relied on your advice and counsel, for both my stories and my life. Thanks for letting me bend your ear all these years and for listening to my triumphs and tangents. And if I never did tell you, thanks for the Goo-Goo Cluster. Both of them. To Chris Lee—attorney, drummer, thespian, raconteur, and friend: Thanks for looking after my best interests and for helping the court see the grave injustice of that traffic ticket. Thanks to Will D. Campbell for calling me out of the blue xv • Acknowledgments one Sunday afternoon and telling me to get this book published . There are several people that I want to personally hand a copy of this book to. But since they’re no longer here, I’ll have to settle with simply acknowledging them. To my father, Clea Fuller, who did whatever the hell he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it: Thanks for teaching me that lesson and for never balking when I did the same. I love you and miss you terribly. Tomygrandmother,BertieD.Conn,whoalwaysencouraged me to pick up the pen and who...