the clear air

by Rose Y. Adams, December 23, 2015

I was always curious about my great-grandfather Abraham and my grandmothers. In as much as they had both been deceased for about a decade before I was born, I would only hear the stories about them from my great-aunts (who were much younger) and my mother, of course. But I wanted to know about their early years. I knew that great-grandfather Abraham, my great-grandmother Rose and grandmother Rose were business people/owners. I knew my great-grandfather made a lot of money selling fresh fish and fish dinners. I knew he didn’t trust banks but entrusted his money instead to the town’s black doctor, who stole it. Great-grandfather was a mason. His father was a Methodist minister. I wanted to know what my grandmother was like when she was a girl. I had done quite a bit of genealogical research. However, nothing really told about their personalities or what they were really like as human beings.

During that time, I spent a lot of time alone in the studio of an artist friend. It was a storefront located in Fifth Ward on Lyons Ave. I never really understood why the term the Bloody Nickel was a reference for Fifth Ward. I would be at that studio at night, late night alone. There were no curtains. You could see right through the place. Nobody ever bothered me. Oftentimes, an elderly Creole man would walk by when I was there during the day. He would wave. However, this day he decided to come in. I pulled up a chair for him. His name was Mr. Lawrence and he was in his 90’s. He walked better then than I do now at 51. Knowing that my friend was an artist, he wanted to give him some sort of stuffed buffalo head. As I talked with Mr. Lawrence, I found that he’d published a book on his own family genealogy. This was way before self-publishing books were common. He could recite his ancestry all the way back to the first African. He knew his Native American and European sides as well. In talking with him, I found out that he was from my mother’s hometown Lafayette. Oftentimes, when you ask people where they are from and they answer Lafayette, they are usually from some neighboring town. But Mr. Lawrence, like my mother, was actually from Lafayette. I asked him if he knew any Landrys. He answered with a declaration of sorts, “I only know of one, Mr. Abraham Landry, “The best fish man in all of Lafayette.” He began to lay it all out for me. He knew my grandmother when she was a girl. He knew about a great-uncle who had died before my mother was born. He talked about how this uncle was a fine dresser, good looking and a ladies man. He even told me my uncle’s nickname: Boulo. I’d heard my great aunts speak of that name. He told me that my grandmother was very particular about her appearance and how she and her older sisters would perform at the theatre. He recalled the time they performed a song called, “Dardanella.” We never knew that. I went to the library and looked up the song. It was a popular song in 1919. His mind was that sharp. I had been blessed by his presence.