Diving Into Acadian Louisiana on Wisdom Road

Miss Gina Zachery is why I am on Wisdom Road; a surprise “interview” with my morning Lyft driver:

“Wisdom is the beginning of getting everything you want in life. Basically, wisdom is the beginning of understanding. If you have wisdom, you’re gonna know that if you treat a person a certain kind of way, it is gonna fall back on you.”

“The mindset and the energy that you put off either draws negative energy or positive energy towards you. So you always want to think positive thoughts and good thoughts, so good things could come your way. If you are just so negative, you think everybody sucks, everybody’s so negative,you are drawing that negative energy towards you. But if you smile and say, ‘Good morning’, and have a positive mindset, you’re gonna see the good in everything.  That is my experience.”

“I try to pass on to my two boys that pretty much every decision you make in life is a building block to your future. Can you be a creator of your own destiny? You know, we can’t make bad decision after bad decision and expect to live a prosperous life.”

Lester Gautchier speaks fluent French, traces his ancestors back to the Acadian expulsion that brought them from Canada to Louisiana, has received an armload of awards as an attorney in Lafayette, and jams every Saturday night on vocals and wash tub bass with other Cajun musicians.

“The first thing to understand about Cajuns is that we had a shame based culture. You live in the United States and you don’t speak English? Let’s give you an English exam. You’re not smart. So my culture was considered to be not too smart. English was the language of education and commerce. French was the language of ignorance.  Kids who spoke no English were not allowed to speak French on the school grounds. They didn’t know how to ask to go to the bathroom and they wet their pants because they didn’t know to ask.  There was almost a revolution about around the 70s, where we came to realize that we had a good culture.”

“I really got into French culture when I got away and longed for it; it was important by its absence. When I turned 18, in 1971, I was out at Miramar Naval Air Station in California and that is when I personally got into liking to listen to Cajun music. That’s when I felt something missing. That’s when I felt that yearning for my culture.”

“We have to get away from tribalism. We have to quit making people ‘others’. They’re humans, they’re not others. They’re humans, they all have a story. If you treated them as an individual human being, and you understood their story, you’d probably give them money, or give them a place to live or help them find a job. If you treat them as a mass of people as a different tribe, then you don’t want to have anything to do with that tribe.”