Kim Sykes

I was saying yesterday that I think I'm the only southerner who doesn't have an accent.

And that's because I think I spent the first 20 years of my life trying to erase everything southern about myself.

And then of course I'm spending the next 20 years of my life trying to remember it all to get it all back.

Here's a memory.

When Hurricane Betsy was coming to New Orleans, my daddy, he took me and my brothers and sisters, all seven of us, eight of us actually, and my mother out to Lake Pontchartrain to watch Betsy arrive.

My daddy, he sat on the levee and he liked to look out at the sky and the lake.

The sky

The longer we stayed, it got blacker and blacker, and the lake looked like a sheet of black granite.

It was so still you could almost walk on it.

My mom, you know, she was so angry.

She wouldn't get out of the truck.

She sat with her back to my father in the lake, refusing to come out.

She'd turn around every once in a while and say, Willie, it's time to go home.

And he'd say, in a minute, Vi.

And he'd sit right where I was.

The kids, all of us, we were too busy having fun and wanted to go home.

We ran around the decorative fountains that would shoot water up into the air and the lights would change the water to colors like blue and then yellow and then red.

My father, he didn't want to come home.

But my mother finally grabbed the keys and she says, Willie, I'm taking these children home.

And she headed for the truck.