Blending ingredients from French, Spanish, African and Caribbean cuisines is the staple for Creole cuisine. The spicy flavors that had Pierce Brosnan choking in Mrs. Doubtfire can be found in cajun cooking, the mixture of French and American spices. These two similar, but distinct styles can be found anywhere in New Orleans from gas stations to hotel ballrooms.
The culinary industry has been a safe haven for those who want to cook, create and serve. For most people the industry is a gateway to the workforce, for others it is a gateway drug into a life that will consume one’s dreams of blanching, slicing, dicing and frying. Albert Walker was 17 when he first started in the industry and continued cooking for the next 50 years.
Albert was born in the ninth ward projects to Mary Elizabeth Walker, also known as Sugar Mama. He was the fourth boy of Mary’s eleven children. Albert is the oldest surviving member of the Walker family. Sugar Mama passed away in 2008 on Mother’s Day, a befitting way for a loving mother to leave this world. Mama’s funeral was the last time I saw my uncle Albert.
In 1965 Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in the middle of the night. My father and Uncle Albert were separated from their family for 13 days. They didn’t know how to swim and climbed to a rooftop until relief came. The national guard rescued the two boys, wrapped them in blankets and gave them food as they were taken to a school to help locate their family. My dad called the Soldiers angels.
Meals Ready to Eat are packaged food that Soldiers are given during training environments and other harsh conditions. During my time in the Army I never liked them and would have to force each item down with liters of water at a time. Out of the 28 selections, I preferred only four. I usually had to barter a lot of my personal belongings to get my hands on my desired MRE. I traded lighters, cigarettes, books, or toilet paper to be able to eat comfortably when I was in the Army.
I guess I got my disgust for MRE’s from my Uncle Albert because he was disgusted with his first meal during Betsy that Dad’s angels provided. I wish he had the arsenal of goods to negotiate for a better meal like I did. I wish someone would have told him that the MRE kit has an oven pouch that is activated by any liquid (even urine as I discovered, when I was running low on water) so that he could’ve tried the dehydrated food hot as it was intended. This misfortune made Albert dream of something he could cook for himself when he had the opportunity.
The hurricane changed the two boys’ lives and helped them find the career in which they would retire. For my dad, he joined the Army when he was seventeen. Albert went to a club and worked in their kitchen as a line cook until he got a job at the hotel next door.
“I was at the club for years,” said Albert. “I met my wife at the hotel next year and we’ve been married for 57 years.”
Hotels are some of the best places for an aspiring chef to work. Hotel proprietors make their executive chefs one of the highest paid employees on staff and they have full authority over what goes on. The main goal hotels want from their patrons is to be in a drugged state like Odysseus was when he and his crew ate lotus flowers, addicted to what they consumed so that they never leave. Albert helped his chef create lotus flowers for years, working and cooking his way from the line, to sous chef.
“It’s like you’re married to that job,” said Albert. “Long hours and long nights working every holiday. It wasn’t an easy job.”
Albert would’ve stayed at the hotel, but Betsy came back to New Orleans. This time she had a new name, Katrina.
For the first time in nearly 30 years, Albert was going to be separated from his family, this time he was going by choice. Albert and his wife, Danetta, evacuated New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. They left all of their belongings that didn’t fit in their car and headed west. They were renting a home at the time on the west bank of New Orleans near the hotel.
All of the Walkers went to Houston as a rally point and Albert and Danetta settled in Stafford, where they reside to this day. The Federal Emergency Management Agency cut them both a one time check for their household for being displaced by Katrina. Luckily Albert’s hotel had a location in Houston and he was able to resume work in his new city.
“We wanted to go back to New Orleans,” said Albert. “FEMA didn’t have too much to give to the renters to help so we stayed here. We were the only ones to stay in Houston. I miss New Orleans. I miss my family.”
After I received a medical discharge from the Army I moved away from my family and started working in kitchens. It took me six years to get a coveted hotel cooking job, when I was hired my dad said he’d tell my uncle of my success.
Two weeks before the pandemic I received a large box from Stafford. Inside I found crisp chef coats all engraved with Walker, a German chef’s knife and a paperback cooking book with a spine so fragile and over a dozen tabs marking recipes. It was the only gift my uncle gave me, and it became a treasured one.
Inside the pages were clippings of my uncle from different newspapers and magazines. On the tabs it felt like I was a Harry Potter reading the Half-Blood Prince’s potion book. In the margins were directions, suggestions and ideas my uncle had written. Next to a chicken stock recipe my uncle scribbled “use shrimp peelings instead of them bones and you’ll get a seafood stock.”
Last week Uncle Albert and I revisited the big box he sent. It was like talking to an Army buddy. We spoke about how hard working in kitchens were, and swapped stories of cooking with incredible chefs. I gave him his flowers for the career he had and being featured in Southern Accents magazine with an ice sculptor he made.
“I really did some things in life,” said Albert. “I had to get up four in the morning seven days a week, it never comes to an end. The food never stops, like you.”
