Mercedes Calvert, Metarie, Louisiana

Mercedes Calvert is a gracious French-speaking Cajun woman who remembers her childhood in Pointe Aux Chennes,Louisiana as wonderful except when the oil companies came to her house and stayed for three years drilling and prospecting for oil, leaving the spoils behind without any real compensation. “No one got any sleep, it was horrible, ” she recalls. In those wistful memories she remembers the marsh being endless, never having a glimpse of the gulf. Today those marsh grasses are mostly water, and tomorrow or soon thereafter will be oil-soaked. To her the 1948 classic “Louisiana Story” was beautiful, exactly as she remembers it, except for the real parts without sleep. I like to explain in a playful pun on the title of my film, that we are ALL IN THIS FAMILY. Pointing out that with the Louisiana accent, the word “oil” is pronounced “all”. It takes a family and for that I thank my cousin, Maxx Sizeler and her former partner Bea Calvert, for the introduction to Mercedes, Bea’s mother.

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