Journal Entries
Stalking the Wild Rougarou
Posted Dec 15, 2006
Crawford, Louisiana – December 14, 2006
The Rougarou is found in the swamps and bayous of southern Louisiana. The name may also be spelled Roux-Ga-Roux. The Rougarou is half-man, half-wolf and half-alligator. It is thought that a person may sometimes become a Rougarou by breaking Lent seven years running. We were able photograph one of these rare Cajun creatures at a Jeb’s crawfish farm in Crawford, Louisiana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rougarou
Jeb is the 4th generation of his family to farm crawfish and rice. He has a funny looking boat that has a pusher attachment. These boats can run in shallow water or on dry land. Jeb farms 400 acres of crawfish single-handedly. The crawfish may burrow into the earth about eight feet during the hot dry summer and are harvested from December to May when water returns to the fields. Jeb rotates his fields and splits the crop between rice one year and crawfish the next. His boat has an ingenious mechanism of rollers which sends the little ones back to grow and puts the big ones in a sack. Here are some photos.
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/556414913IfJvty
Crawfish (or crayfish or crawdads) are similar to tiny lobsters. One of Jeb’s biggest problems is crawfish rustlers and employee embezzlement of crawfish. For this reason he works alone. As a side note, if you ask the Florida Department of Wildlife for a lobster stamp for your fishing license you just get a blank stare. You have to ask them for a crayfish stamp, which is strange because it is a license to catch spiny lobsters.
The previous generations of Jeb’s ancestors were avid collectors of antiques and old automobiles. There are several houses and warehouses stuffed full of unusual antiques and old cars on the farm. Jeb has hired a curator to sort things out and to give tours while he harvests the crawfish, and the sorting looks like a monumental job, only just begun.
The people in this area are very friendly to strangers and they, and the music and food, are totally unique to this part of the U.S. Last night we went to a roadhouse for seafood gumbo, crawfish etouffee and a concert by the Lafayette Rhythm Devils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89touff%C3%A9e
There was a large dance area and the ladies sat on benches and waited for a gentleman to invite them to dance what I believe to have been the “Cajun Two-Step”. Cajun music is very heavy on the fiddle and accordion, but the Devils also had two electric guitars and a drummer. The vocals are French-American and instantly recognizable as a distinct and upbeat musical genre.
This area was spared by Katrina, but Rita blew through a few weeks later and destroyed and damaged many homes. The graves here are above ground and many coffins and bodies floated far away. It is a tradition here to paint the graves every year, so finding a recognizable relative in the swamp who had been buried twenty years earlier must have been traumatic.
I have received some positive answers to my requests to volunteer with rebuilding efforts South of New Orleans. Unfortunately I discovered today that G-mail put them in my SPAM folder last week, so I need to sort that out.
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Latest reply: Dec 15, 2006
Sucking Crawfish Heads
Posted Dec 12, 2006
Abbeville, Louisiana - December 11, 2006
This is Cajun country. The Cajuns are of French ancestry and were rounded up in Nova Scotia and expelled in 1755. They settled in Louisiana and are known for fantastic crawfish gumbo and zydeco music, featuring the fiddle and the accordion.
There are lots of things to do here. There is the McIlhenny tobasco hot sauce factory to visit for a two-hour tour and the agrifactory where crawfish and rice are grown in the same fields. It takes three years to make the tobasco sauce. It's marketed in 100 languages and the entire world supply is produced on 2,300 acres on an island just a short distance away. Just down the road in Abbeville are eight municipal tennis courts (scores 6-0. 6-1 in favor of Mrs. Phred)
In Morgan City, 60 miles east, there is a 110 foot tower with 61 carillon bells cast in Holland (a photo op) and an oil rig museum.
The carillon bells are closed on Monday and the gates are locked, so we have crawfish gumbo and wait for the 2 PM tour of Mr. Charlie in Morgan City. Mr. Charlie is the first offshore drilling platform. It was constructed from 1952 to 1954. It’s a submersible platform capable of drilling in depths of up to 40 feet.
Mrs. Phred and I are the only people who show up for the 2 o’clock tour. The platform was retired in 1992 and sold for $10. It is currently used to train oil service workers. The company that sold the rig now pays the new owners thousands per worker to train new hires. The old rig is amazingly complex and I listen intently but only understand and absorb a small fraction of the drilling technology. This training program is said to have reduced oil rig worker turnover by 49 percent.
Today rigs float in place in deep water and thrusters keep them in position by monitoring GPS signals.
We are staying in Betty’s RV Park. Betty has a class act in a Louisiana bayou. She has 15 RV sites situated around her house. Every evening at 4 she has a social cocktail hour. We were advised by other travelers to stay here to get a taste of her gumbo, which is made from chicken, sausage, jalapenos and vinegar. I am told that her small RV Park is rated as one on the 25 best in the U.S.
I refuse to suck crawfish heads, but I really like the tails.
Oil rig photos, if you care....and Betty's backyard.
http://thefirecloudreport.blogspot.com/
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Latest reply: Dec 12, 2006
Roadside Relics
Posted Dec 9, 2006
Port Sulfur, Louisiana – December 8, 2006
It's crisp and clear here where we are camped on the Tchefuncie River in St. Tammany Parish, which flows into Lake Pontchatrain. Big cypress trees line the banks and grow out in the river shallows. The big lake has a 25 mile long arrow-straight causeway leading south to New Orleans, where the levees broke.
Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move
- Led Zeppelin
Katrina rolled over the Louisiana bayous 100 miles southeast of New Orleans on the way to smash the Mississippi coast. There wasn’t much on the news about this area and I wanted to see and document what happened.
We drive though New Orleans, past the convention center, and 80 miles down the peninsula toward the Gulf. There appear to be very few repairable structures. Large shrimp boats ended up in fields. FEMA trailers are everywhere. Katrina came though this area at full strength. The refineries and heliports that carry workers to the rigs are about the only things that are repaired.
At the very end of the peninsula a sad collection of broken music boxes, a porcelain Santa, and various small figures are placed on a seawall. A boy’s bicycle and an upside-down SUV are in the rubbish near the seawall.
We drive back to New Orleans and have dinner in the French Quarter. This is Friday night so we want to try the mango daiquiris. The businesses in the quarter are back, but the tourists don’t yet know that the city is open for business. We were the only diners in the restaurant we chose.
Pictures of the bayous:
http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=556300888
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Latest reply: Dec 9, 2006
Living in Infamy Forever
Posted Dec 7, 2006
New Orleans - December 7, 2006
December 7th...another one of those days that will live in infamy forever...or at least for a little while.
We spent yesterday in New Orleans, checking out the disaster and the recovery efforts. We had lunch in the French Quarter in a garden courtyard. I had jambalaya and shared a salad with Mrs. Phred. The French Quarter shows little sign of the Katrina disaster. It’s on relatively high ground and was not flooded. There is no obvious wind damage.
The French style 2nd and 3rd floor balconies are decorated for both Christmas and for the Mardi Gras coming up in February.
The business district is a little worse for the experience. The trolley cars are not running yet and there is an occasional small business, obviously smashed and looted, that remains shuttered. Soaked drywall is still being replaced in other ground floor businesses.
In the suburbs, the extent of the devastation is mind-numbing. There are literally hundreds of miles of homes on the beach that are simply gone...washed away... and untold square miles of damaged and destroyed homes and businesses in the sprawling New Orleans suburbs. FEMA trailers are parked everywhere next to damaged and destroyed houses and the countryside is dotted with clusters of FEMA trailers in formerly vacant fields.
This makes me think of Japan in late 1945. I have my own thoughts about the causes of the relatively slow pace of recovery and other thoughts about the public policy of providing insurance for mansions built on the edge of the ocean. Your house is destroyed or damaged.
Why not just rebuild like the Japanese?
- First, you need to wait to see what government assistance, if any, will be provided. So get in line.
- Second, if you have insurance, you need to wait and negotiate a settlement amount with them. So get in line.
-Third, you probably don’t have any money or a job and the govenment didn't help and the insurance didn't pay.
What a spectacle. Fifteen months and very little rebuilding or even refuse removal are evident. Even a superpower needs competent leadership to get things done. They don’t make them like Franklin D. Roosevelt anymore.
Here are a few pictures.
http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=556270205
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Latest reply: Dec 7, 2006
Storm Surge
Posted Dec 6, 2006
Biloxi, Mississippi – December 6, 2006
Biloxi is on the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles east of New Orleans.
I’ve volunteered online to work this winter in the recovery effort in three different places. No takers yet.
The beach in Biloxi curves and stretches to infinity in both directions. The land slopes up very gently at the waters edge. Katrina generated a 30 foot storm surge which scrubbed away almost all the structures along the beach for several blocks inland.
Life has returned to normal a few blocks inland from the Gulf. The only visible sign of Katrina is that all the roofs appear to have brand new shingles and many houses and businesses appear freshly painted.
The beach is another story. There are a few building steel frames standing with no walls or roofs, but for the most part it’s just mile after mile of building foundations. Many signs offer beach front property at bargain rates. Major bridges were demolished and are still not rebuilt.
The oak trees have taken on a strange appearance. All the leaves and small branches were stripped off. The new growth is very thick and close to the stubby trunks and limbs that were left by the 140 mph winds.
Very little reconstruction has taken place along the beach strip. The exception to that rule are the beach casinos which appear fully restored.
They found another body in a New Orleans attic last week. That brought the official body count to 1,697. The government's ineffective and slow response to the disaster brought the realization that the first limit of power is competent leadership.
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Latest reply: Dec 6, 2006
Phred Firecloud
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