I've had to work my normal 6 am to 6 pm daylight shift since Tuesday. Four straight daylights, during the week is always rough, especially now that I work the top operator position. It is a busy job on week days. I worked off Friday afternoon and don’t have to return to work until Wednesday night.

The most trying thing this week was yesterday. My grandfather, who will be 85 in a couple of weeks, seems to have suffered a mild stroke. Lisa called me yesterday morning and told me that PawPaw had been rushed to the hospital. She didn’t know which hospital or why. I was working but took time out where PawPaw was. I called the hospital and talked to Mrs. Esther (my step grandmother) and found out that he was doing ok.

After work I rushed home, got cleaned up and went to the hospital. Pawpaw was weak, but was doing ok. He is a very modest old man and is not comfortable in public. I stayed there for a couple of hours and helped as best I could.

At one point he told me that "It is good to die when you are young. It’s hard to be old and feeble." That made me so sad. PawPaw is such a wonderful man. I love to visit him at his house. He has such wonderful stories to tell. We sit in chairs nest to each other and he tells me stories from the past. Sometimes he forgets that I am not fluent French and he will tell start speaking to me in French. I try to keep up, but I only cathch bits and pieces. Once Mrs Esther told him top speak English, because my French is not good, but he told her that I knew French well enough to keep up. I did not have the heart to remind him that my ability to speak or understand Cajun is poor at best.

PawPaw, Adam Johnson (pronounced Ah-dahm Jean-sonne) is a Cajun. He learned what English he knows from his children. My mom spoke no English when she started the first grade. She learned English the hard way, in a school that would punish Cajun children for speaking their native French, even though they could speak no English whatsoever.

Paw Paw is getting old, but I remember when he was a very strong man. When I was 18 I worked at the Port now and then. We would fill the holds of ships with rice and the rice came on pallets in 100 pound sacks. PawPaw had been a farmer (sharecropper) but moved to Lake Charles and went to work at the port in the early 1960's.

By the time I worked at the port PawPaw, who was 58 years old, had worked his way up to the job of crane operator. He would operate the crane for and hour and then he would have an hour break. He would then come into the ship’s hold and throw my sakes so I could have a break. That 58 year old man could work circles around me when I was 18.

PawPaw is a devout Roman Catholic. He is a wonderful man. I love him dearly and I hate to think that his time on this earth is now growing short. His generation is the last of the Old Cajuns for whom French is a first language. When the last of his generation is gone most of our Cajun Culture will have died with them. Just thinking about that makes me want to cry. I love this culture but it is almost gone, even now it is only a vapour that is barely visible. I too is a victim of modernity and America’s Anglo hegemony.

I thought MK and I would get together this evening, but that did not happen. Hopefully we will share a bottle of wine later this weekend.

Coram Deo,
Kenith