MY ANCESTRY
When I hear ancestry, a few words come to mind. Roots: my roots are in New Orleans, Louisiana. Louisiana is the Country. I don’t think so, I’m from the City of Louisiana, really urban. I am a Creole, which is a mixture of Black, French, Spanish, and Native on my father’s side. The sides of my families are extremely different except for one thing (or should I say three?): partying, drinking, and addiction. My mother’s side (at least the family I was acquainted with) was mainly women, broken and abused women. Women who would find themselves in relationships with toxic men. Men who would beat, demean, and abuse them. My father’s side was gamblers, predominantly. Men were womanizers (players), heavy drug users, and drinkers, and they were hustlers.
Another word that comes to mind is culture. My culture is very decadent, from the revelries, the merriment, the food, the atmosphere, the drinking. I’m from the city where I believe the real Mardi Gras resides. (I don’t care what the rest say.) Ours is the liveliest, most decadent, most — more about that later …
I will start with my grandmother on my daddy’s side. My Grandma Winny (RIP), she had about eight boys and two girls. She was not only an outspoken hustler, she was the matriarch. She was a candy lady, Avon seller, babysitter, and she sold dinners and threw card parties. Parties where people gambled and drank and smoked. You could gamble, buy cigarettes, buy a chicken plate, bet on boxing matches and other sports events, and she sold liquor. Needless to say, she was a hustler. She would hold me as a baby in one arm and her spades card hand in the other. Sometimes I would bring her luck, so I was told.
Then my grandma on my mother’s side, the woman who raised me, fed me, gave me her last … my grandma Lillian Hampton (RIP) was light-skinned Creole. She had a really hard life. She was beaten so badly by my biological grandfather that he permanently crippled her. Despite all of this, she was the sweetest woman I have ever known. She was a world-renowned cook. I know this because I worked at a lot of restaurants. Decades before I was born she was a cook at a lot of places later where I worked, and she did a lot of cooking for our church functions. The good stuff, the red beans and rice, the jambalaya, the shrimp étouffée, and last but not least, the gumbo. Just in case you don’t know gumbo, it is a roux (soup) with shrimp, sausages, crabs, and rice. What really makes me feel guilty is that I wasn’t there for her when she passed away. But she was always there for me — even if she had to walk there.
Now we are going all the way back — back to the very beginning, to 1853, to my great-great-great- grandpa. He was a gambler and a bootlegger. He dressed real sharp and owned farmland, which had a wooded area where he would have kept his whiskey stills. He was illiterate, had other vices, but went to church every Sunday. He had four boys and three girls. He did the best he could with what he had. He did a lot of business in New Orleans but lived about thirty minutes away in Kenner, Louisiana, a rural area at the time. I can feel him with me — he is my Spirit Man. He also was a fallen man, redeemed. He was resourceful, an opportunist, and a survivor. He was the right amount of noble, and cruel at the same time. He kept a good running truck and a well-maintained car — seeing as he did a lot of work out of town. What I hear him telling me in spirit is to stop blaming others for my fallacies, pay attention, and also that life is adversity. If I fall five times, get up six, and to do it moving. In other words, it’s all about progress. | WM
WALLACE MORELAND IS FROM NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — BIRTHPLACE OF MARDI GRAS. HE IS CREOLE, BLACK, FRENCH, SPANISH, AND NATIVE. HE IS A STAND-UP COMEDIAN WHO WRITES ALL OF HIS OWN MATERIAL.
