Morris Ardoin - Stone Motel

STONE MOTEL

STONE MOTEL

MEMOIRS OF A CAJUN BOY

MORRIS ARDOIN

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON

Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses.

Copyright 2020 by Morris Ardoin

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2020

All illustrations are courtesy of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ardoin, J. Morris, 1959 author.

Title: Stone motel : memoirs of a Cajun boy / Morris Ardoin.

Other titles: Willie Morris books in memoir and biography.

Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2020. | Series: Willie Morris books in memoir and biography

Identifiers: LCCN 2019044436 (print) | LCCN 2019044437 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496827722 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781496827739 (epub) | ISBN 9781496827746 (epub) | ISBN 9781496827753 (pdf) | ISBN 9781496827760 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Ardoin, J. Morris, 1959 | FamiliesLouisiana. | GaysLouisianaBiography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC CT237 .A73 2020 (print) | LCC CT237 (ebook) | DDC 976.3092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044436

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044437

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CONTENTS

STONE MOTEL

PROLOGUE

Over a span of eighteen years, my parents, Eliza Mae and Zanny Ardoin, brought nine children into the world. Momma was pregnant pretty much every two years, as if on schedule, though none of us were planned. They had incalculable assistance from Mommas mother, Ortense, our grandmother, whom we all called Mmre, and who was a regular presence in our lives. In addition to these three adults, my memoir focuses on the children at the center of the ninethe twins, Glenda and Gilda, our little brother Dicky, and me, who were constant companions for a period of about seven years, beginning in the late 1960s and lasting through the mid-1970s. I believe that the person I am today began to take shape in earnest during this critical time in my life.

There is another character here, a little roadside motel outside of Eunice, Louisiana. With my parents purchase of the Stone Motel in 1967, our family upended the typical postwar American family model: a father figure who worked at his job each day and then came home to a wife who managed their kids in that home. We had effectively instead taken on a family structure common before the war, in which everyone worked, and often lived, in a family business. The Stone became our home, our place of work, and in many respects, our very identity.

The Ardoin Family, Early 1970s

Daddy, aka Zanny Ardoinmid-fifties, six feet tall, 190 pounds, complexion of a tobacco-shop Indian chief, thinning salt-and-pepper brown hair. He was partial to gray coveralls and heavy, black work shoes. Spoke in a Cajun baritone made deeper by twenty-five years of Kent cigarettes. A mans man, he did his best thinking walking in the woods with a shotgun in his hands. He had quiet, mumbled conversations with himself; when he couldnt be hunting, he worked out the big issues of his life sitting on the rocker in the front room of the house, which was also the motel office. Mostly, he had it all under control, but gradually the bitter residue of a cruel childhood and the soul-numbing experiences on the European battlefields had finally corroded his core and began to seep through to the surface.

Momma, ne Eliza Mae Mae-Mae Thompsontwo years younger than Daddy, she kept herself in great shape; youd never guess she had nine babies before she was forty-five. Her thick auburn hair was full up front and tapered a little in the back, and always in a bit of disarray, which was funny, because she was responsible for keeping the coifs of dozens of ladies in our little town of Eunice in bountiful bouffants, chic chignons, perky page-boys, and sensual shags. There was always a bit of self-doubt in her voice; she was shy around new people, but warm, funny, and sincere once they sat down in her hydraulic chair. I still picture her sitting in that very chair in her shop, her feet crossed and resting on the foot bar, something she rarely got the chance to do during the long days she put in there. Her shop uniform was a short-sleeved smock with a small floral pattern on it, brown slacks and white nurses shoes. At home she hid her purse, because my little brother Dicky would take her gum.

MmreBorn Ortense Thompson with no middle name, on December 9, 1904. By the time she reached her late sixties, her frame had shrunken to five feet five inches, and she complained that she couldnt dance or play the accordion with the endurance she once did. Nonetheless, she still made a valiant daily effort to keep up her appearance. She felt best dressed in a crisp new blousesomething with a blue or green floral patternblack slacks, and simple black shoes. Her once-auburn hair had gone gray; she kept it ink-black with a rinse. With her peers and her children, she spoke French, the first language of Ville Platte, the little town a half-hour drive from Eunice; she used franglais to communicate with anyone born after 1950. After Momma and Daddy, Mmre was the most influential adult in our lives. The first time I recognized unparsed love and absolute security was as a toddler in her arms, in one of the three big rockers in her kitchen. Well into my teens, her little house at 508 East Jackson Street was a refuge. CassieBeautiful, gregarious, mischievous. She once snuck a piece of chewed gum into Mommas cheeseburger, repulsing her and compelling her to return to the Frost Stop to demand a refund. She wouldnt fess up to Momma for years. At eighteen, she casually entered the Miss Eunice pageant. Standing in a semicircle on the stage, entranced by an audience staring back at her, she missed her cue to move along with the other girls, holding up the show for a few awkward, humorous moments, before winning the crown. An out-of-focus close-up of her mascara-streaked face ran on the front page of the Eunice News. The story by the papers reliable, beloved town fixture Jerry Hoffpauir described her as a strawberry blonde beauty. A week after the pageant, she high-tailed it to college in Lake Charles to study music.

AndyThe first-born son and second child, he was bashful, honest, hardworking, humble. Loved the outdoors. Still does. His muscular frame is five feet ten inches; he was the only kid in the family with dark brown hair like Daddys, not auburn like Mommas, which caused some of us to wonder about his true provenance. For his sixteenth birthday he built a homemade pistol from a plastic pipe he stuffed with Christmas fireworks powder. He lit it and aimed at a bulls-eye he had painted on a cotton-ball tree. Instead of shooting, the pistol exploded in his hand, sending up a mushroom cloud that filled the back yard. When the cloud finally dissipated, he noticed his right index finger was split open. Thirteen stitches.

GildaAs a young girl, she had attached herself to Cassie, eagerly seeking her elder sisters affection. Im are your friend? shed whine, needily. Im are your friend?! As a teen she became daring, temperamental, comical, and the artist within her emerged. She designed and built Sears-catalogue-paper witches and drew a series of elaborately detailed caricatures of some of the people she encountered. The Jaw-jaw Lady, rendered in pencil on four sheets of lined notebook paper Scotch-taped together in the back, depicted one of Mommas beauty-shop regulars who had stopped by the house for an unannounced visit back when we still lived in town. The drawing not only captured the womans prominent namesake jaws but also made particular note of an apparent bladder-control issue: Gilda had her sitting in Daddys rocker with pee splashing to the shiny wood floor below. It was a masterpiece.