Grandpa stopped listening to country music when he returned home to Acadiana from Vietnam. But he never stopped singing. Subsequently, I was eighteen years old the first time I ever associated the lyrics of “Hey Good Lookin” with Hank Williams’ name. After all, they’d only ever reached my ears through Grandpa’s voice.
As part of a generation disenchanted with their ancestors’ faith in the post–Vatican II world, he left for something that seemed anything but exhausted and empty: the Pentecostal Church. It wasn’t hard, after all, for a Cajun to immerse himself in a faith built on one’s mystical encounter with the Holy Spirit. If you’ve trawled through the fogs of the bayou on a jon boat at dusk, you’ll know precisely why: Mystery becomes your bedfellow, it dances on your skin.
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