Southern Interlude

I’m in Louisiana this week, doing some teaching, and staying with a 91-year-old widow lady named Miss Connie. She and her husband built this house more than 50 years ago and it’s as charming as white-haired Miss Connie herself. Warm wood paneling and floors, braided rugs and handmade quilts, lace curtains and doilies and knick-knacks from around the world.

Over hot chocolate Sunday night Miss Connie entertained me stories about moving to Iran with their four young children back in the 1940s? Fifties? Her husband worked for Exxon, and his job took them there as well as to Indonesia. The move to Iran marked the first time she’d seen a desert, and not an easy adjustment; she cried for three weeks. But her husband said, “I signed a contract and I intend to keep it. If you can’t live here, you and the children can go back to Baton Rouge. But I am going to fulfill my contract.”

Well! Since he had gone a month ahead of her to start the job, she had already had a taste of life as single mother. She wasn’t about to try that, again!

Because of her husband’s position and the highly developed “caste” system the British had developed there, the family was given a modern bungalow with central air conditioning. However, the place was tiny – it only had two bedrooms, a combined living area and a kitchen that she took one look at and hoped she’d never have to enter again.

As soon as a place in the older part of town, with bigger (if less modern) homes open up, she put in her request. She got it, too. “But your husband’s job rates something nicer!” she was told. No thank you, she said; the other will suit us better. The new place had no central air conditioning, but was better built for the climate and had walls that were several feet thick and screened porches off every room.