ABSTRACT
In 1939, in the midst of the Great Depression, George F. Sims sat in his Chicago home and reminisced about seafood dinners in his native Louisiana. He loved catfish. As a youngster, he used to sit on the wharf with a pole and string to reel them in. He also caught crabs in the bayou with a dime’s worth of bait. The crawfish his mother used to prepare her tasty bisque didn’t cost him anything. He caught them with his bare hands in the canals built to drain water from nearby swamps. Other Creole favorites included his wife’s jambalaya and gumbo. He hadn’t eaten so well since moving to Chicago although he said that he could get decent fish in the Jewish neighborhood on the west side of town.
