We crossed the Mississippi on the trip to pick up the crawfish. Looking down from the Mississippi River Bridge from Baton Rouge to West Baton Rouge, I saw that the water line had reached near the top of the bank.
"If they hadn't opened the Morganza spillway, LSU and downtown Baton Rouge would have flooded," said my sister, in the driver's seat.
Big ships still plowed down the heart of the river, leaving a wake of white turbulence behind. The day was hot and dry; a juxtaposition of drought and high water. My sister turned to the ramp headed to West Baton Rouge, and we were headed through Brusly, divided into Back Brusly and Front Brusly, as my brother-in-law reminded me from the back seat.
I was visiting from Atlanta, interested tyo see this road, La. 1, that I used to travel frequently when my late father had a camp in Bayou Pigeon in Iberville Parish. We would not be going that far today, but would stop in Bayou Sorrell on the other side of Plaquemine to get two sacks of living, writhing crawfish for boiling that afternoon.
As we road, my sister and brother in law commented upon how much the area had grown; and sure enough, what I remember as sugar cane fields now were covered with strip shopping centers, condos, apartments and subdivisions. Appaently, the recession had not hit the area that badly, although Louisiana's state budget was in serious arrears.
Just outside of Plaquemine, my sister pointed out a commercial crawfish pond, and I turned to see a long, rectangular body of dark, still water. A squad of white herons stood on sentinel duty, statoned about 20 feet from each other in rows. They looked real, but in retrospect might have been fake birds to scare off whatever predator a crawfish pond might need protection from.
Headed into Plaquemine, the trip began to feel familiar. I saw the old rusted railroad bridge at the Plaquemine city limits and the lovely collection of ante-bellum homes. The names of the politicians on the eternal political signs were also familiar, dynasties of one or two families that had been running the parish when I left 30 years ago were still running things. Plaquemine had an exhausted, run down atmosphere, as if the 20th century and now the 21st had not quite settled in deeply. To my amusement, I noticed a sign for an Islamic temple beside a low-slung house of yellow stucco.
"I'm surprised Osama Bin Laden wasn't found in southern Louisiana," my sister said.
We turned off on the road that led to the Atchafalya Spillway and the road where my father had his camp. Again, homes, quite nice ones, lined the road where once sugar cane fieids lay. We turned off on a street where mobile homes and trailers alternated with nice houses. I recalled the strength of Louisiana's off-the-books economy. Although the state lags far behind most economic indicators, it's really quite prosperous, with many industries conducted outside of the bounds of govermental accounting.
We turned into a nice house with a big boat in front and picked up the crawfish. I looked at them in their sacks, packed in tightly with their familiar, distinctiive brown-gray color. We threw them in the back, and my brother in law covered them in newspaper to keep them from dying in the brutal sunrays beaming through the back window.
We headed back toward Baton Rouge, traveling beside the stressed levees along the Mississippi. I'd last traveled this road as a young man, and here I was back again at 60, taking part in a unique Louisiana ritual. We crossed the bridge, Huey Long's state capital rising into the bluish-white sky to our left, Tiger Stadium and LSU to our right. Folks had been flooded in the Morganza Spillway, but Baton Rouge was dry, by God, dry and resplendent beneath the hot Louisiana sun.