I know a couple people that consider themselves coon-ass and it certainly isn't a designation they shy away from. good people, and they do talk funny...and we all have a good time with it.
Anybody whose ancestors were thrown out of Canada has the right kind of family tree in my book.
Our own local patois shares the Cajun roots; there were just too many of then settled in our neck of the woods, and they threw most of the Britishers out.
Sample:
The Bewitched Treasures of Point O'Chene
As told by Pepe Boucher
Non, non, this not be all loup garou of this place. I tell you now about Point O'Chene.
You know where Point O'Chene be down on the Wabash River below Vincennes? All around that place be charmed. If anyone cut wood to build a house it be all right, mais the limbs of the trees he want make make into wood to burn and the limbs he pile to make a bon-fire disappear as they be chop off. No trace of them do we ever see if they not turn to the thick under-brush which grew and grew everywhere around the river bend near Point O'Chene. Of course other things happen at that place. When one look on the ground for the limbs he cut from the tree he see silver snuff boxes, combs with high silver filigree for woman's hair, gold rings with bright gems glitter on them, silverware for the crea, sugar and coffee. They be so beautiful and so bright that everyone want them. There be fine lace like the cobweb of spider; silk that seem woven by the sunbeam. One by one, man go to the place to pick up the treasures lost by a Spaniard long before George Rogers Clark came over the stream.
Oui, oui, many pieces of silver, lace and silk he got, mais they say they must be paid for in some awful manner. They were goods the devil tempts people with. One time a man had silver candle-sticks, paltes, combs and cups, and his wife had much lace, silk and silver back combs. Ma foi! their children be none and when some borrow nice white corn meal from them, when the corn meal be in the other house it be musty and green when he gets home and opens the sack. His wife feed it to the dog and it die. No one borrow meal more than once from man and woman, who get things from Point O'Chene.
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