The green beans aren't salted

Last Saturday, we went to an all-day, post-Thanksgiving celebration in Jefferson Davis Parish in southwestern Louisiana. (Counties are called parishes in Louisiana.) This part of Louisiana is rice country. The land is flat and, for the most part, there are no trees. It’s called the Cajun Prairie, and when you drive through it, mile after mile after mile, you might well think you are in Kansas or in one of the Dakotas. That kind of landscape, flat and forever, made me feel a bit lonely in an exquisite way.

My wife and I were invited as guests by the family she had nannied for in the past and who had since moved away. They are a sweet couple, with two little girls. They’d come home for Thanksgiving, and invited us to this grand fete.

It was a gorgeous day, in the mid-sixties; the sun was strong, and there was little wind. We drove through the voice-quieting level land until we turned down a narrow country road and reached our destination.

It was a compound of small houses leading to a large, open-ended barn. Over 100 people were gathered there, drinking and eating and enjoying the day. There was a long table overwhelmed with food: gumbos, stews, pulled pork, various slaws, sweet potatoes, dishes I didn’t recognize, more than I or anyone could eat. The sun spilled into the barn, and its warmth and brightness was mirrored by the mood of the people. We found my wife’s former employers and stayed and talked with them a while and then sat with plates and ate and met some new people.

Then came the music. There was a bandstand, and about 2pm, musicians made their way there. They were, except for one man, African American, and the music they were going to play was Zydeco. The band was Joe Hall & The Louisiana Cane Cutters.

Joe Hall , with accordion, and his Cane Cutters

Zydeco is “a music genre that blends blues, rhythm and blues and music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles.” The origin of the word is uncertain. One theory is that it’s derived from the French phrase, les haricots ne sont pas salés, which means, “the green beans aren’t salted.” When pronounced, it sounds something like the word “Zydeco.” Maybe. This phrase was used to express hardship: when you don’t have enough money for salt, things are tough.

Zydeco is mainly, but not solely, played by African American musicians. The most famous of these was probably the late Clifton Chenier. Its main instrument, the centerpiece, is the accordion.

The band began to play. Immediately, the man who owned the barn and all the outlying buildings and who was at least in his sixties, got up with his wife and began to dance. He was soon followed by other couples. Most of them were in their fifties or sixties, seventies and older.

Zydeco is one of the most danceable forms of music you’ll ever encounter. The couples knew how to dance and had probably done it all their lives. They grew up with it. They spun around the floor smoothly.

I had been feeling a bit blue about this whole aging thing lately. And the slow segregation you begin to experience as an older person. Your world gets smaller and smaller. Once, for example, you felt comfortable in bars. Then, one day, you walk into a bar and find no one remotely your age. So, you leave. This is the same for many places, events. We’ve all felt excluded by looks and body language.

This is accompanied by a general feeling that you are no longer competent as a person. This is called agism. It’s also called getting old. Eventually, you may find yourself conversing, mingling, socializing uniquely with people your own age, like some kind of restricted country club from the 1950s, except instead of rejecting black, Jews, Catholics, Italians or whomever, the world in general doesn’t want the pleasure of your old, white-haired, mottled-skin self.

I’m not telling you anything new, or that you haven’t heard before.

Hearing about it, though, and experiencing it are two different things. My reaction to all that is one of sadness and of anger. Sad, because I don’t want to be excluded from anything joyful. Anger, because how dare you 20s, 30, 40s-somethings tell me I’m not wanted. I’m powerless, though, to change that.

My wife read these words and got teary. “I don’t want you to buy into this,” she said. I don’t. I feel young inside. I have energy to spare. But I can’t control the outside world.

I was talking to a friend the other day, a woman about ten years younger than I am, but still in the “older” category, about all this. She said that agism is the only “ism” that is still acceptable to practice. She said that people are still able to make fun of old people. Agism isn’t woke. It’s still sleeping, or nodding off, or napping.

Which leads me back to the barn where my wife and I were watching the people dance to Joe Hall & The Louisiana Cane Cutters. When was the last time I saw older people dancing like this? With panache, pleasure, skill? Not shuffling around listlessly but with brio. At a wedding, perhaps. Other than that, nowhere.

It struck me how beautiful it was. Here they were, older couples dancing at a party, and it all seemed right. What made it all the more lovely was that the older couples were dancing amongst a crowd of younger people. This was everybody dancing. There was no agism at this party. My wife and I danced with the others. I thanked Zydeco and this part of Louisiana gratefully and sincerely.

When you don’t see something for a long time and then you do, and it’s something that makes you feel alive, the world becomes full of possibility.

Here, it was as it should be. People, all of us, living life, living life, living life.