Claude Barilleaux

Oct 1, 2024 | mrbellersneighborhood.com | Claude Barilleaux |Thomas Beller |Sarah Firisen |Alex Wolf

I was only thirteen years old when I decided that I must live in New York City. Fred Astaire made me do it. Watching his old films in the early 1960s on our local tv station while growing up in the Cajun Country of Southwest Louisiana, I saw a glamorous and sophisticated world far different than the folksy, rural one surrounding me.

Aug 26, 2024 | csmonitor.com | Claude Barilleaux

On sweltering Friday nights of my 1950s youth in Louisiana’s Cajun country, my family and I thumbed our noses at the humidity and sat down to a spirited supper of spicy boiled crabs, the peppered vapor from the boiling pot fusing with the sultry air. My mother set the water to boil in large pots, and threw in rock salt, chunks of lemon, green peppers, onions, celery ribs, and cayenne pepper.

Aug 26, 2024 | everand.com | Claude Barilleaux

It’s summer in New York, and hot, steamy air closes in around me even in the evenings. Not a time to think of large pots of water boiling on a stove. But I do. Summer takes me back to the near-tropically humid nights of my 1950s youth in Louisiana’s Cajun country. I remember sitting immobile before the sluggish gusts of an oscillating fan, the saturated air pressing down on my body. The sun’s setting had brought little relief, only a clammy listlessness. Except on Friday nights.