I’ve written a lot about my mother’s Cajun ancestors and heritage, which were from her mother. But her father was of ancient Spanish stock, from the Balearic Islands in the Meditteranean, that could be traced all the way back to the Carthaginian occupation of Minorca around 250 BC. Granddaddy’s Spanish blood, which remained purely Spanish despite being the 3rd generation of his family in New Orleans, was a source of both ‘hybrid vigor’ in our otherwise too-heavily-Cajun genetics, and humor, leading me to thank the stars that my grandmother ‘let a Spaniard in under the gate.” Which she loved. It often elicited, in turn, her caricature … “don’t worry me none!”. Her daddy, my Granddaddy, was the finest man I ever knew and the standard by which I have always assessed goodness and honor in every man I’ve ever met.
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