I lived in New Iberia (where Tobasco sauce is made) from age four to age sixteen (when I graduated), so I'm not a real Cajun, but I can give you a few distinctive details:
Smells:
- burning cane: after harvesting it but before transporting it, the farmers burn sugarcane in the fields, which has a strong smell similar to burning green grass (this would be in late summer, like August/September)
- cane factories: for maybe five miles in any direction, the cane processing plants reek (I kind of like the smell, though, so it might depend a bit on your character)
- hot sauce factories: you can't smell those as far away, but they have a several-block radius reek factor and smell sour, more like rancid peppers than spicy food
Travel:
- lots of bridges: we crossed the Bayou Teche about five or six times on the way to school each morning
- cane trucks during harvest season: you won't hit this in town, but in the country, getting stuck behind what's essentially a tractor pulling several enormous baskets of burned cane is torture; they also drop lots of bits of burned cane all over the roads
Flora:
- live oaks: these enormous, gorgeous trees drip Spanish Moss, lose their leaves in winter to frame fantastic sunsets, and have shallow root systems that make them particularly vulnerable to getting yanked up and thrown into houses during hurricanes
- grass: your front yard will grow about two inches per week during the summer. I'm not kidding. You have to mow every Saturday or else. The first time I saw someone watering a lawn in Oklahoma, I laughed out loud; I honestly thought they were crazy.
- mold: one side of our house turned green every two or three years, which is how often we had to paint as a result
- goldenrod: these yellow-flowered weeds are everywhere and not particularly pretty, but when they fill entire fields or spaces between highway lanes, as they often do, the gold fields of them are glorious
- green everywhere: if you haven't lived there, it's hard to comprehend that every crack and crevice of everything has SOMETHING growing in it; if a flu pandemic wiped out humans, that part of the state would be an enormous field/forest within about two years
Topography:
- flat: most of the state is Mississippi delta, meaning it's deposited mud from the Big Muddy; no hills for your characters to hide in (but that's what swamps are for, right?)
- falling into the ocean: the coastline is disappearing into the ocean, thanks in large part to canals and other man-made coolness, at the crazy rate of something like five square miles per year; the mud is just washing out into the Gulf
- little sand or rock: I lived five minutes from the ocean and visited it maybe five times in my entire childhood; you don't often go to the beach unless it's a lake. The water may look different at other points on the coast, but where we were, it's brown and murky. There's no sand, just dirt or crumbled shells that hurt your feet. Also, the one time a friend had a beach party that I attended, we had to leave because the lifeguards spotted an alligator. No, really. Water sports like skiing and fishing are HUGE, though, because there are lakes and rivers all over the place.
Weather:
- the heat and humidity: positively obscene, even if you grow up there; the heat is like a physical, living, present thing, practically a character itself sometimes; air conditioning is not a luxury and every year the news reports an older person or two whose A/C goes out and causes a fatal heart attack; summer lasts from about February 15th to November 1st. Most people who live there like it that way.
- thunderstorms: everyone hears about hurricanes, but most don't know that regular thunderstorms knock shingles off roofs, smash small outbuildings, and occasionally even bump off one or two of the ever-vulnerable younger oaks. They also feature lots of booming thunder and lightning with torrential rain that soaks the ground in seconds, nothing like the feathery misty stuff we get in Oregon.
- flooding: it's just taken for granted that the ground will occasionally flood two or three inches after storms; our house was on cinder blocks about three feet off the ground, as was every other home on our street. Some people put up a lattice or brick shield so you couldn't see underneath the house, but nobody built on the ground or had basements.
- snow: doesn't. Cold air comes from the dry North Louisiana and Texas; wet air comes from the hot Gulf. It snowed once the entire time I lived there and melted the same day.
People:
- shorter than most Americans and mostly darker, too, as though tanned
- physically much more friendly than most North Americans: although the deep, deep Cajuns will still kiss you on the lips at meeting you, that's now pretty rare; they do hug all the time for practically anything, though; I had serious issues adapting to the unhugginess of the world when I moved away. They are generally friendly in their speech and actions, too. It's nearly impossible to pull over to the side of the road in my hometown without two or three cars stopping to offer help.
- Catholic: not everyone is Catholic and not everyone who is follows Catholicism strictly, but a significant majority at least go to mass on holidays and keep some form of lent. Not marrying in a church is practically unheard of, as is not getting drunk at the reception.
- Alcohol: I think Louisiana was the last state to make the official drinking age 21. When I graduated it was still 18. Cajuns LOVE their alcohol, especially beer, and it is an expected, accepted part of practically any gathering, family or not.
- Names: Cajuns have distinctive last names, and it would give your book a nice bit of credibility to get a phone book from the area and make note of names that you've never heard that appear 500 times, like Meaux, Breaux, Thibodeaux, Robicheaux, Trahan, Derouen, Delcambre, LaBiche, etc.
- Language: Right now, many Cajuns in their 70's and 80's speak French, a small percentage exclusively; many Cajuns in their 40's, 50's, 60's speak French with their parents and English everywhere else; most Cajuns under 40 took French in school but barely speak it. They still have a very distinctive, music-to-my-ears accent
- Mardi Gras: although it has a rep as an unusually debauched party holiday because of all the people from Indiana who overrun New Orleans every year running around topless, it's actually an enjoyable family holiday in the lower half of the state; schools close and the kids go to parades and dances and crawfish boils with their parents
- Crawfish boils: your boss or Paw-paw (grandpa) gets five or six folding tables end-to-end in somebody's front yard, boils a few thousand crawfish with corn on the cob and potatoes in a pot the size of a Buick, and piles the food onto the tables where 20-50 coworkers or family members sit to eat, popping tails, dripping juice, and occasionally (if you're hardcore) sucking heads.
Okay, now that I've made myself thoroughly homesick, I'm going to go call my mom and see if she'll send me some Community Coffee (made with chicory bark like the original Cajuns, too poor to use straight coffee without some chicory to cut it so it would last longer, used to use). Thanks for the chance to ramble about a fun topic and I hope I haven't overwhelmed ya.
Love the hitchhiker avatar, by the way!
