When I was at my Nanny’s house last summer, I found this old picture in one of her many photo albums. She has a million albums filled with all kinds of pictures of my childhood, but this one is such a piece of life as I remember it back then.
My Papa is the cigar-smoking barbecue chef in the picture. I can’t remember if that was a gas grill or not, but clearly safety and proper hygienic food preparations weren’t on the top of the priority list.
In the background is my Big Bob wearing his trademark gold jumpsuit with a pipe in his mouth, and sitting on the table is my great Uncle Bo who was the skinniest person I have ever met. He was also a Cajun who married into our Italian family and made the best gumbo in the world.
All three of them are gone now. They’ve been gone for a long time.
It’s funny how you can miss something that you didn’t even pay much attention to in the moment it existed. The three of them were just always there, presiding over the barbecue pit while the women stayed in the house and gossiped.
I don’t know when Papa built that little barbecue Taj Mahal, but I can’t remember a time that it wasn’t in his backyard. Every now and then he would update it with some new Astroturf on the floor or bring in an additional table, but it remained virtually the same until the day he passed away.
I’m not sure what he was cooking that day, but if I had to guess I would say links of sausage and burgers that were always well done. We ate so much spaghetti at Mema and Papa’s house that it always seemed exotic to have something different.
I loved those Saturday afternoons when the men would gather around the barbecue stand. The backyard was huge and my cousins and I would play baseball with my daddy and my uncles until the food was ready and Mema called us all to come in the house.
We’d gather in their huge kitchen, all sweaty and starving, and fix huge plates of food. It was always so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think. A football game would blare out from the television and everyone would holler back and forth from the kitchen to the living room with a joke or making fun of how much someone put on their plates. I can’t think of a time I didn’t see my Uncle Carroll look at someone’s plate and say “DERN, that is impressive.”
It’s an expression we still use today because it is perfection.
After lunch everyone would find a place on one of Mema’s vinyl couches or on the floor to stretch out and watch football. I remember climbing all over my twin uncles as they lay on the floor because I was hoping to annoy them enough to go back outside and play more baseball. Eventually they would cave and we’d all head back outside until it was time for everyone to go home.
Last summer when I was in Beaumont, I drove to the other side of town to see Mema and Papa’s old house. Time hasn’t been kind to their neighborhood, but the house still looked just as I remember it.
I drove by slowly to take in the huge backyard that is the site of so many childhood memories and pulled into the driveway next to the side door where everyone entered their house. The memories haven’t dulled with time and I could almost see my Mema standing in the driveway blowing kisses and directing traffic as I pulled back out onto the main road.
As I drove away, I felt an ache like homesickness down in my stomach. A longing for a place that only exists in bits and pieces of my memory. A place and time that is gone forever.
But I will be forever grateful for that time, that place, those people. They shaped who I am. They taught me the value of spending time with family, laughter, football, and taking the time to grill some sausage while smoking a cigar.
And, ultimately, those are the things you remember. Even thirty years later.