“He doesn’t want the iron in the bed.” That’s the set-up for the punchline of a joke I heard when I was researching a cover article on Cajun humor for the premier issue of La Gazette des Acadiens (December 1976), a condensed version of which was published three years later in the Baton Rouge weekly Gris Gris. Instead of a hot water bottle, Cajuns used to put an iron in the bed to warm it up before going to sleep on a cold winter night. The joke, told to me by Revon Reed, host of a Saturday morning Cajun music program broadcast live from Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, concerned a bride on her wedding night who tells her mother that her new husband doesn’t want the iron in the bed (Il ne veut pas le fer dans le lit.) Le fer (the iron) sounds like le faire (to do it), so the mother responds, in French: “He’s your husband now. If he doesn’t want to do it in the bed, then do it where he wants to do it.”
In addition to Reed, I also interviewed Cajun chef and raconteur Justin Wilson and the great Bud Fletcher (whose off-color “Outhouse” LPs are probably the funniest comedy albums ever recorded), and several lesser known Cajun humorists. It was the most fun I ever had writing an article, and the two hours I spent in Bud Fletcher’s kitchen drinking good coffee and enjoying a command performance are one of the highlights of my life.