YCL Art

I Remember My Green Shoes

I was growing like a wild weed at a very early age. Along with my height, my feet also kept on growing. I had a favorite pair of green tennis shoes that I kept out growing. I loved those shoes. It was a very sad day in my life when the shoe store no longer carried my size…

"I Kept Growing & Growing..."

I was always pretty tall, I had actual growing pains when I was younger, nothing too horrible, but enough to be noticed. I seemed to have crazy growth spurts, pictures of me with other kids my age were always entertaining, I towered over everyone. I got called “giraffe”, “long legged grasshopper”, & “Olive Oil.”   Good times …  :-)

Everybody knows that New Orleans is known for it’s yummy food. I will admit that my love for Cajun did not fully develop till we moved to Florida. My fondest memories of New Orleans’ foods were the beignets and the Sno-Balls. For those who don’t know, a beignet is a french version of a doughnut smothered in powdered sugar that comes accompanied with a yummy cup of cafè au lait (that’s fancy talk for coffee with milk.) Mmmmm, it was impossible to neatly eat a beignet. The powder sugar would somehow make it to places that powder sugar was never meant to be, like in your eye for example.

Then there were the Sno-balls. This was a perfect treat for those hot, thick, humid, New Orleans summers. The best way to explain a Sno-ball is like this: they’re not as hard as a snow cone but not as runny as an Icee, it was like actually eating fresh snow. Even at the young age of 5, I knew that eating a Sno-ball was exactly like eating a real life snowball (I didn’t see real snow till my early 20s but I somehow knew I was right). I always ordered strawberry, on occasion I would be adventurous and order watermelon (which tasted a lot like strawberry. ) The syrups they poured on the Sno-balls were just tangy and sweet, and sometimes for .25 cents more you could get condensed milk poured on top of that, like there wasn’t enough sugar in a Sno-ball to begin with.