Reader alert: If the word ass is offensive to you, stop reading this post now.
 

So, I was crabbing last week in Southwest Louisiana, which is Cajun Country, heavy on outdoors activities, music with an infectious beat, and plates heaped full of over-fried food. They fry everything here. I met a man who fries Oreo cookies, just because he can.

My guide in Cajun Country, Captain Sammie Faulk, talked about Cajuns as he baited a crab line with a chicken neck, hoping a hungry crab would grab the bait and we could snatch some dinner with a net.

Faulk surprised me when he described himself as a Coonass, which, as best I could determine, is a homespun word (sometimes hyphenated coon-ass) meaning Cajun Redneck.

Faulk, who speaks in a back country style but clearly is an educated man, said that Coonass is a term not offensive to him and his friends — rather it is a badge of honor for working men whose lives are tied to the land and its traditions.

Be careful where you toss that word

Faulk did acknowledge that everyone does not agree as to the value of the word Coonass, but that he and his friends delight in the discomfort of those who do not like the word. Some folks in Southwest Louisiana, he said, would take mighty umbrage at being called a Coonass, and my further research on the subject highly supported that position.

I decided that Coonass is best left to the beholder, which in this case was Captain Sammie, who seemed to enjoy various uses of the word.

Out in the Cajun flatland where crabs crawl, we were munching from a plate of boudin balls, which are deep-fried, baseball-size concoctions of a Cajun sausage mix of pork, rice, onions and various spices. It's a potent mixture, and as I have written before, an acquired taste. I was making a visitor's effort to acquire at least a little tolerance.

As we were eating, Captain Sammie said that Coonass is a word used as an adjective as well as a noun.

For instance? I asked.

“Well,” said Sammie, “those boudin balls we're eating for breakfast. Boudin balls are like Coonass Twinkies.”

For some additional thoughts on Coonass, if you need them, try Wikipedia.

David Molyneaux is editor of TheTravelMavens.