Tumbleweed

by Jimmy Trout

Raisin debtor.

Of all of the tortured, mutated, bastardized French you may have heard from your fellow expats in Paris (and that you may have the gift of speaking yourself), none of it comes anywhere close to what I grew up with.

On a daily basis, you may hear and/or speak an appallingly cross-bred version of French and English, French and German, French and Romanian and so on, but it's not half as contorted and distorted as the French of my native Louisiana.

In Louisiana, the local dialect of the French language is the product of centuries of intermingling - both linguistic and genetic - of French settlers, the Native Americans who came before them, and the English, Irish and Spanish who came after them.  It's generous for the world to refer to the resulting combination of indiscernible vocabulary, incomprehensible accents and utter disregard for the rules of grammar as a dialect of any language, let alone French, but they do, all the same.

Over the centuries, this mish-mash of cultures has made Louisiana the world's premiere venue for massacring the French language, far ahead of erstwhile competitors like Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec.  No other continent, country or state can come close to Louisiana in coalescing this many bad influences on the language.  It's been a centuries-long linguistic orgy, where each and every participant has contributed his or her own distinct imprint, influence and incurable linguistic VD.

The result is an expansive list of vocabulary you will hear nowhere else on the planet.  Or if you do, it won't mean quite the same - such as essence, catin, galette and cocotte.

But here's my own hands-down favorite: raisin debtor.

Unknown to even most Louisianans, this is a term I learned long ago from childhood acquaintances back in Pointe à la Hache, Louisiana.  After years of using this term in normal conversation, its meaning seems obvious to me, but most people haven't a clue.  When I asked Isabel Ortiz, she guessed it to be an obscure commodities trading term.  That's how dim-witted you non-Louisianans are, in case you ever wondered.

Raisin debtor, quite obviously I think, means raison d'être.

Raison d'être is, in turn, an important concept you may want to contemplate - raising just one of the countless philosophical queries you may have picked up and pondered while living among the French.

A raisin debtor is - quite literally - a reason for being and as such is one of those questions that, once you start asking it, won't go away.  It's a genie you can't put back in the proverbial bottle.  Or any other bottle, for that matter.

As I wander around Paris and start discovering its varied neighborhoods and characters, I wonder what my raisin debtor is.  Forever roamin' has always been my instruction manual.  "What Would Hubcap Charlie Do?" has always been my compass' true north.  But what is underneath bringing it all together?  And have I been brought here to Paris to discover it?  Will I find it here in Paris or is Paris merely the next step in life bringing me closer to finding it?  For an itinerant such as myself, does locale even enter the equation?  Perhaps it's the people I meet along the way and I've certainly met some good folk here.