LOUISIANA HOLIDAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 7, 11 August 1939, Page 10

LOUISIANA HOLIDAY

A Visit to Huey Long's Territory Last month from 4YA, Dorothy Neal gave several talks on her visit to this American State. Below are accounts of a few incidents taken from her first talk _ yIVIANE, my hostess, was extremely kind to all her four negresses, Susannah, Savannah, Pauline, and Mary Lou. She gave them each three enormous meals a day, together with liberal supplies of food to take home to their respective families. She went to see them in the negro hospital when they were sick, and gave their children clothes, while her husband was expected to bail out their husbands from gaol whenever necessary, which was frequently. Moreover, every five or six months the Harpet’s were expected to go to the negro church, and as the "white folks" of Susannah, Savannah and Co., give liberally at collection time so that their darkie servants did not lose caste among their own kind. In between fits of envy for Viviane’s small army of help, I couldn’t help suspecting that the darkies had got the better of this semi-feudal bargain. However, all four maids had plenty to do when the Harper’s gave a barbecue for me. A barbecue is a typically Southern form of entertainment. ... All

day long the darkies had been busy preparing trestle tables for the feast. I say " busy," meaning that they spent a greater amount of the day than usual in move-ment-but do not imagine that there was ever the slightest suggestion of speed or haste. Slowly, but admittedly persistently, they piled great plates with rolls and corn meal muffins. They cut slices of cold chicken and mixed bowls of potato salad. Behind a hedge in the garden was the barbecue pit, about eighteen inches in depth, filled with burning logs and pine cones. And above the pit were iron bars from which hung a sheep which cooked there from mid-day until eight o’clock in the evening. Samuel, a black so-called "house boy," of some seventy summers, who usually spent his days meandering nonchalantly round the Harper garden, had been delegated this day to attend to the barbecued sheep. He stood by the pit all that sultry afternoon pouring Judge Harper’s barbecue sauce on to the roasting animal, with a quiet philosophic smile on his wrinkled and perspiring face. About eight o’clock the guests began to appear. ... We all sat round the trestle table, and consumed the potato salad, polished off the cold fried chicken, toyed with the rolls and cornmeal bread, and finally embarked upon the barbecued sheep. . .. The meal lasted for hours seemingly, as everyone ate very slowly and averaged an anecdote in between each mouthful; but when it was finally ended the guests joined with Savannah and her helpers and sang plantation songs till they were hoarse. Even the "boy" Samuel sang a brief humorous little song in a quavering falsetto voice. ... It was all grand fun.