Thad Minaldi

Selected quotes and notes from Count Time Podcast with LD Azobra Interview with Thad Minaldi

Good evening. Good evening. Good evening it’s 4:00 PM. Stand up it’s count time, time for every man and woman to stand up and be counted. Welcome to another edition of Count Time podcast. I am brother LD Azobra. Thank you for joining us today.

This is gonna be this is gonna be a great podcast because we got so much happening today. But I got it My friend here attorney Thad Minaldi. Cause we go back a long ways. He decided to go to law school back in the day. First of all, give us a little background on yourself. Where is Thad Minaldi from? How’d you come about? Who your people?

TM
I was born and raised in Lake Charles. Went to St. Lewis High School. My parents moved to Lake Charles from Morgan City and Burwick, Louisiana, so that my dad could work at the city service oil refinery out there. My mother was from Burwick. Her last name was Plessala and my father was from Morgan City and it was Minaldi Meat Market and the Russos, so that was our family.

LD
So you’re Italians then?

TM
Sicilians, I should say. I used to say Italian until one of my great uncles corrected me.

This is so many years ago. We drove through Franklin all the time, coming and going to Morgan City and Burwick. And probably one of my best memories as a young child is driving through Franklin at Christmas time, going down the main street with all the beautiful decorations and the music. That was just wonderful.

LD
And they call it the post, the light post. We got the most beautiful light post right there in Franklin, Louisiana. We always like to spotlight it during the holiday season. It’s the best time to come through Franklin. I don’t remember your family being so you’re from the St. Mary Parish.

TM
Yes, both my parents. Yes, they both came from big families and they were there all their lives until they moved to Lake Charles.

LD
But you spent a lot of time in St. Mary Parish as a young child.

TM
I was very lucky. My mother’s mother was a young grandmother and she would take my older brother and I water skiing, crabbing fishing, because she was so young. She’d play plastic bat and ball with us in the yard. And it was just really a wonderful summer experience. We would go I guess we’d spend about six weeks every summer until we were dumb enough to be playing serious sports and had to go report for training. And then we couldn’t go anymore.

And my father’s mother and her family had a meat market and a grocery store over in Morgan City, right by the railroad, right by the Catholic Church. And we would spend time there, too. And it was just the greatest old house. We hide up and down the stairs and just really had a wonderful time there.