Here’s a drinking place you have to be a maritimer or an acadian to know about: a bootleger.
In american culture, the bootlegers went extinct after the prohibition. In the 1930s, the canadian maritimes were a major hub for smuggling booze from Europe to the US.
The Acadians kept the tradition alive and today, a bootlegger is someone who serves booze illegally in his private home. Acadian musicians and poets made many mentions of them over the years.They are as part of the culture here as moonshine can be in the Southern US or pubs in the British Isles.
Way back, when I was a kitten, two of my uncles were in the trade. As I remember, there was always something like fricot or beans on the stove. Always pop for the kid and my uncle taped kids movies for me to watch: “The Neverending Story”, “Labyrinth”, “E.T.”, “The Great Land of the Small”. There was also all those folk songs on tape. The quebeckers La Bottine Souriante and their revolutionary, militant neo-trad. The french Soldat Louis with their intense celtic sailor songs from eastern France and the acadian Cayouche, a bootlegger-fly himself, who wrote about them as he chronicled the simple life of poor acadians of New-Brunswick.
I fell asleep on the couch or on a bed, in a sea of coats while the grown-ups were partying in the kitchen, listening to songs about hunters, devils, saints, assholes, ski-doos and lumberjacks…Those were the last veillées, the last kitchen partys…
I could translafe to you the lyrics of 1000 french songs and legends…but I’m just better at making cartoons.
Way back, when I was a kitten, two of my uncles were in the trade. As I remember, there was always something like fricot or beans on the stove. Always pop for the kid and my uncle taped kids movies for me to watch: “The Neverending Story”, “Labyrinth”, “E.T.”, “The Great Land of the Small”. There was also all those folk songs on tape. The quebeckers La Bottine Souriante and their revolutionary, militant neo-trad. The french Soldat Louis with their intense celtic sailor songs from eastern France and the acadian Cayouche, a bootlegger-fly himself, who wrote about them as he chronicled the simple life of poor acadians of New-Brunswick.
I fell asleep on the couch or on a bed, in a sea of coats while the grown-ups were partying in the kitchen, listening to songs about hunters, devils, saints, assholes, ski-doos and lumberjacks…Those were the last veillées, the last kitchen partys…
I could translafe to you the lyrics of 1000 french songs and legends…but I’m just better at making cartoons.
Grab a Alpine. There’s fricot simmering on the stove. Le conteux, the story teller, is about to start…
