Roberts Cove Germanfest / October 2018
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Coming in Next Month's Column
November's Splash from The Swamp
"~ At the ~"
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LEJ's Louisiana
Yours Truly in a Swamp
Monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org Yours Truly in a Swamp
by
Leonard Earl Johnson,
of Lafayette and New Orleans
of Lafayette and New Orleans
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| German Flags on the first Unity Day ~ 3 October 1990 ~ Berlin / Wikipedia |
Roberts Cove German Festival
~ a fine sense of place ~
~ a fine sense of place ~
October 2018
by Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2018, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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Oktoberfest!
In Roberts Cove, Louisiana. You Laugh?
It might tickle the lederhosen off a real German, but this is the best ~ albeit somewhat zany ~ American German Festival that I have ever attended.
My Mother's Family is German. Please bear with me. I have been to a lot of such festivals.
In Roberts Cove, Louisiana. You Laugh?
It might tickle the lederhosen off a real German, but this is the best ~ albeit somewhat zany ~ American German Festival that I have ever attended.
My Mother's Family is German. Please bear with me. I have been to a lot of such festivals.
Roberts Cove's has good beer, joyful singing, echoing Alphorns (Alpine horns), thrilling yodeling, white marble graves of original settlers decorated with vibrant black-red-and-gold German flags, and hot spicy (normally mild veal with a hint of nutmeg), Bratwurst Sausages cooked into a gumbo-stew of white potatoes and cabbage flavored with Tabasco Sauce.
Technically Roberts Cove's festival is a Germanfest, not an Oktoberfest.
Oktoberfest is the German harvest / Munich Bier (beer) festival starting in September and ending the first weekend of October or, of late, Tag der Deutschen Einheit (German Unity Day), 3 October 1990, when East and West Germany reunited.
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German immigrants were few to French Louisiana, but those who came left their mark.
Notably there were Germans lured over to Louisiana by the promoter, John Law, a Scotsman turned English and then French.
Those industrious Germans were said to have been disappointed to find themselves transported to a subtropical Swamp, but being industrious Germans went on to feed the early indolent folk of New Orleans from productive farms along the Côte des Allemands (French for German Coast) around present day Bayou des Allemands (Bayou of the Germans).
The Mississippi Bubble
Hurricanes, floods, and the collapse of John Law's Mississippi Company and his monetary schemes ~ he invented paper money ~ scattered the settlement, and New Orleanians took further to suffering sustenance from bountiful seafood, sugar, rice, and game.
Some of John Law's Germans resettled near Lafayette, Louisiana at today's prosperous rice-growing settlement of Roberts Cove.
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On our way, crossing Bayou des Allemands, aboard Amtrak, westbound from New Orleans ~ where traces of Faubourg Marigny's German origins are known simply and dismissively as 'the lost Germans.'
On the banks of the Bayou we witnessed three des Allemand boys mooning ole Train #1, the Sunset Limited.
"Some things change," L. A. Norma said, raising her coffee to the window, "Some things don't!"
"Boys still moon trains," I observed, "but now they are integrated."
"Rosa Parks would be proud!" Norma said.
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| Amtrak overwater / Courtesy of Amtrak |
On the banks of the Bayou we witnessed three des Allemand boys mooning ole Train #1, the Sunset Limited.
From the bayou banks two white and one black rear end shined up at us as we sipped morning coffee and zipped along an old rusty rouge iron bridge.
"Some things change," L. A. Norma said, raising her coffee to the window, "Some things don't!"
"Boys still moon trains," I observed, "but now they are integrated."
"Rosa Parks would be proud!" Norma said.
* * *
"Do you speak German?" asked a friendly lady with a heavy Cajun accent. She was descended from original Roberts Cove Germans, she told us.
Her Cajun accent came from the fact French-Canadian Cajuns had taught her late-arrival ancestors how to speak English.
We were in the Songfest Zelt (Tent), yodeling and listening to Alphorns.
Her Cajun accent came from the fact French-Canadian Cajuns had taught her late-arrival ancestors how to speak English.
We were in the Songfest Zelt (Tent), yodeling and listening to Alphorns.
"Bisschen Deutsch," I said. She understood the "Deutsch," but not the "Bisschen."
"A Little," I explained.
We raised our bier and joined in the Rucksack Song. Her husband wore well-stitched lederhosen and sang with great gusto. I would bet my last Deutsche Mark he sang those same songs when a boy.
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In the middle of a sugarcane field near Roberts Cove is Hawk's, a
crayfish cafe' noted for purging
crayfish cafe' noted for purging
their "mud bugs."
Hawk's also prides itself on no signage. Finding it is something of a local game. Outsiders searching are, of course, a double muddled source of local entertainment.
One day, successfully washing up at Hawk's dining-room wash basins, I asked a man at the basin next to mine where he was from.
The man said, "Down the road."
"Is your name German?" I asked.
"No," he said, "further down the road."
"A sense of place is a fine and settling thing,"
L. A. Norma said, swilling a mudbug with her tall beer.
L. A. Norma said, swilling a mudbug with her tall beer.
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| Musik Audio: Alpine Horns (Alphorns) |
Lagniappe du Jour
Copyright, 2018,
Leonard Earl Johnson
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posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 3:05 AM
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