Grey clouds threaded with lightning marked another evening of intermittent rain when I met Natasha Terrell at the French Quarter's Le Richelieu Hotel on Chartres Street. We were on a mission: to find out just how tall her grandmother's tales were.

Terrell grew up on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain and had always figured the older woman's increasing dementia distorted the stories that her own grandfather, Jacob (Giacomo) Cusimano, was a wealthy leader in New Orleans' turn-of-the-century Italian community.

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Source: http://countryroadsmagazine.com/