Last year, 2012, I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. Canadian Thanksgiving comes in October; I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia for that and made it back to U.S. of A. the next month for the American version. People who know me know Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, it’s no secret We celebrate our heroes birthdays and anniversaries of famous battles and other conquests but TG isn’t about a hero or a great victory. I suppose there is a historical precedent, loosely timed with harvest time. Our tradition alludes to Pilgrims who were struggling to survive in the New World. It wasn’t new; there were millions of citizens already residing there, in a culture that had been self sustaining for thousands of years. But they thought they had discovered something new and were migrating by the boat-loads.
The story has been tweaked to make those European immigrants appear competent, self sufficient and independent but we all know better. They were in trouble and native people had to provide nurture and material support. You might say it was the first evolution of welfare in the USA. But story has it, they celebrated their good fortune with a great feast and thankfulness. Being of strong religious beliefs, they attributed their survival and freedom to their creator. In that tradition, hundreds of years later, we stop for a long weekend before the Christmas season to take stock of our good fortune, to share our blessings and be thankful. I understand the hyperbole that surrounds Pilgrims and their righteous destiny but the idea of universal gratitude flies on its own wings, above politics or religion.
Yesterday we drove down to Iberia Parish, on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, known for its islands. Not typical islands with beaches and tides, they are dome shaped hills that cover thousands of acres, rising several hundred feet above seal level in a land formed from river sediment. A 200 ft. hill here is as noteworthy as as a 14,000 ft. mountain in Colorado. There are no hills in this flat land along the Gulf of Mexico except for the “Islands”. Over millions of years, primordial salt deposits have been squeezed into upwellings or domes.
We went to Avery Island, where the McIlhenny family has been mining salt and making Tabasco Sauce for the last 150 years. We walked through the factory and visited the Company Store. The farm itself tills only about 400 acres and the peppers they raise are all used for seed. Peppers for the sauce are grown in Mexico and Latin America. They are blended into a pepper mash, aged in oak barrels for three years before they can be turned into Tabasco Sauce. They use exactly the same ingredients and process they did in the 1860’s. I’m sure the McIlhenny family, who still operate the business, hands on, are thankful today for not only their good fortune and the rewards for their industry but also the nature of salt domes and the chemistry of capsaicin. Yesterday, in the gift shop, if your purchase was over $25, you got a free, one gallon bottle of the original, $41 per gallon Tabasco Sauce. So, we have two gallons of sauce that we didn’t have to pay for and a t-shirt, hot pad and wine bottle stopper that cost enough but I think we came out ahead.
Farther down the coast is Weeks Island. It also had salt mining but is better associated with the Weeks family and, “Shadows-on-the-Teche.” Shadows is a Greek Revival home that was built in the early 1830‘s by planter David Weeks, for his wife Mary. They had a 2000 acre, sugar cane plantation on Weeks Island. She was so isolated and depressed there that he built a townhouse for her, closer to civilization on Bayou Teche. The village, then city of New Iberia grew up around the smaller, Bayou Teche plantation of David & Mary Weeks. For over a hundred years and four generations of Weeks, the residence was archived with family furniture and belongings, and over 17,000 documents that chronicled the history of that family and the region. It is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is designated a National Historic Landmark.
Our tour was not only interesting but unusual in that all of the rooms and grounds were furnished with the actual possessions owned and used by the Weeks family. They were the most affluent family, with the biggest and best of Antebellum, New Iberia. But even the high and mighty have troubles. Mosquito netting on all the beds bore witness to inconvenience and health issues. If you chose the nets you gave up any relief from the heat as a breeze would not make it through the netting. Shortly after the mansion was completed, David died of tuberculosis and his son, age 19, took over operation of the sugar plantation. Only five of eight children survived childhood. After seven years, Mary remarried a wealthy judge but kept control of the Weeks interests. After the Civil War, she negotiated a working agreement with former slaves and the plantation continued to prosper.
No photographs inside the house but outside, around the grounds you can take all the photos you like. There were little kids on the tour and they gravitated immediately to an ancient Live Oak tree in the back yard, just up from the bayou. I stood patiently for what seemed a very long time, waiting for parents to snap their own photos and for kids to figure out how to get down, off the giant tree trunk. I had plenty of time to think about being grateful. First, there is some money in the bank to back up my credit card. I was thankful for a great education, a curious, unquenched imagination and an appetite for new information and understanding; and where would I be without hot sauce? Everything would taste like white bread. I was thankful that all the people working for the McIlhenny’s had jobs and that the sun was shining.
They were still milling around and climbing on the tree. Live Oaks hold green leaves all winter, dropping their leaves gradually all through out the year so there is no significant leaf fall in autumn. I thought about how thankful the Weeks mush have been. They enjoyed the greatest privileges that wealth could provide. I was thankful that our economy doesn’t depend on slave labor any more. There was evidence in the archives that the Weeks treated their slaves better than most, with some degree of respect and mercy but then, how do you paint a smile on slavery? Then I thought about hot, running water and tooth paste. I thought about not knowing anybody who had suffered tuberculosis, or typhus, or the pox and I felt grateful all over again and it spilled over, right into the photograph I finally got to take.
A few hours later, we were at the Blue Dog Cafe in Lafayette, feeling thankful over stuffed mushrooms and shrimp au gratin. Still, if the high and mighty have troubles you know the down and low have even more. I’m so lucky and grateful not to be so down or low. The world is not as harsh with us as it used to be but we still exploit each other in the name of ambition and liberty. We don’t like to admit that we are as wicked sometimes as we are generous others. We don’t look in the mirror until we look just like what we want to see. The pursuit of personal wealth and a collective responsibility for each other both stem from the same freedom. We talk about it all the time and I’m thankful that conversation is going on.
