Blue Highways: Delcambre, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) drives through Delcambre, leading me to muse on things in Cajun country that I missed doing when I had a perfectly good chance while living in New Orleans.  Ah, well.  I still have 40-50 years left to do it.  To see where Delcambre sits on the journey we are traveling, click on the thumbnail at right.  Anyone know about the Cajun country progressive poker game in a pirogue?  Just wondering...

Book Quote

"I took Louisiana 14: roadsides of pink thistle, cemeteries jammed with aboveground tombs, cane fields under high smokestacks of sugar factories, the salt-domed country, then shrimp trawlers at Delcambre."

Blue Highways: Chapter 3, Part 14

A boat at Delcambre's Shrimp Festival. Image at EatLikeANative.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Delcambre, Louisiana

One of the things that I missed while living in Louisiana were three or four events that I heard take place in many towns in Cajun country.   I really wished I had taken time to do these things, though as I look back on it, being a graduate student did limit my time especially toward the end of my stay in New Orleans when I was studying hard for my comprehensive exams.  Regardless, I still have some regrets I didn't do these things.

One thing I didn't do was attend a Cajun Mardi Gras.  There isn't as much of the pomp and spectacle of a Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but I heard and read that these events are very nice.  Before I talk about it though, let me rant for a moment while I have the speakers box about some misconceptions of Mardi Gras.

My wife, Megan, and I in costume at Mardi Gras 2010 in the French Quarter in New Orleans.I speak to a lot of people who tell me that they would NEVER go to a Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  They see the pictures and film of people on Bourbon Street drinking, puking and flashing their naughty parts for beads.  These people doing those things are TOURISTS!!!  They come to New Orleans thinking that is what is supposed to happen on Mardi Gras, and they make it happen.  They stay on Bourbon Street.  Unfortunately, that is the view that most people get of Mardi Gras.  Snoop Dogg's girlie videos done there don't help the image.  The Mardi Gras I know is family friendly.  It is celebrated in parades through Uptown, where children are set at the top of stepladders and get more beads thrown to them than anyone.  It is where cookouts happen as people wait for the huge, long parades with fantastic floats and masked riders.  It is a day where everyone is friendly to each other.  My Mardi Gras also happens in the French Quarter on Fat Tuesday, where my wife and I walk around in costume and check out the costumes of locals.  Sure, there's some risque ones, and you might see an occasional naked person, but that's the exception not the norm.  The norm is families with children, enjoying what literally amounts to a fun Halloween/Christmas atmosphere in February or sometimes March.  So go see a Mardi Gras!

That's my rant.  Mardi Gras in the Cajun country is even more down home.  Floats, but not as fancy.  Costumes, but not as decked out.  Neat events like chasing a chicken down.  Great food like gumbo and etoufee and jambalaya.  Great music.  Even more of a family atmosphere because there aren't hundreds of thousands of people packed in.  All in a small town atmosphere.  Having grown up in a small town, I find myself at home in such celebrations.

Another activity that takes place in smaller municipalities in Cajun country, and which LHM's passage above reminds me of, is the blessing of the fleet.  Delcambre blesses its fleet as part of an annual Shrimp Festival.  So do other bayou towns with a fleet and a passage to the gulf.  Every year, the shrimp trawlers head out for the first fishing trip of the season, and as they pass by, a priest stands at dockside and blesses them as they go by.  Again, it is a festive occasion, since many families depend on the shrimp season for the livelihoods.  This is why catastrophic events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the BP oil spill can really cause a blow to the regional economy - no shrimp means very difficult times for many families.  The blessing of the fleet with holy water is one way which these fishermen try to ensure a good season.  It might help - we don't know - and it certainly can't hurt.

A third activity that I heard takes place down in the bayous is a progressive poker game where you go from bar to bar in a pirogue.  A pirogue is a small boat that is paddled or poled in bayou country.  I don't know if this actually exists, and I can't find any mention of it when I do a search, but if it does it sounds really cool.  One could go from backwater bayou bar to backwater bayou bar lazily in a boat, play his or her hand, maybe win some money, but also maybe meet some really cool people in the process.  And drink Dixie Beer.  Doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

Once again, I find I'm kicking myself for not doing these things when I had the chance.  It's an open secret that I think it would be wonderful to live in New Orleans again - it's a place that one can grow to love despite the ever present daily difficulties and annoyances of living there.  Poorly maintained streets, crime, the third-world local and state bureaucracy, for examples, are things one has to deal with if one wants to put down roots in New Orleans.  On the other hand, it is a place that knows how to have fun when it's warranted, and how to exist despite what the rest of the country thinks.  I'm just weird enough to live there, and maybe I will again someday.  And if I do, I most certainly will take advantage of visiting Cajun country and trying to catch a glimpse of a culture that human progress in all its forms may make disappear someday.

If you want to know more about Delcambre

Delcambre, Louisiana for Kids
Delcambre Shrimp Festival
Louisiana Tourism Site: Delcambre
Wikipedia: Delcambre

Next up:  Abbeville, Louisiana

Blue Highways: New Iberia, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIn New Iberia, we could have seen ghosts of Roman emperors (but no longer!).  Now we just ruminate on Tabasco, nutria and live oaks.  Which is all just fine, especially if it is in the somnambulant heat of a summer afternoon.  Click on the thumbnail at right to see where Rome, Brazil and Louisiana intersect in Hadrian, nutria and bayous.  Leave a lazy, sleepy comment if you wish!

Book Quote

"The Teche, at the western edge of the basin and paralleling the Atchafalaya...was the highway from the Gulf into the heart of Louisiana. Half of the eighteenth-century settlements in the state lay along or very near the Teche: St. Martinville, Lafayette, Opelousas, New Iberia. The Teche was navigable for more than a hundred miles.

"Blue road 31, from near Opelousas, follows the Teche through sugarcane, under cypress and live oak, into New Iberia....A long strip of highway businesses had cropped up to the west, and the town center by the little drawbridge was clean and bright....Bayouside New Iberia gave a sense of both the new made old and the old made new: contemporary architecture interpreting earlier designs rather than imitating them; a restored Classic Revival mansion, Shadows on the Teche; a society whose members are hundred-year-old live oaks; and the only second century, seven-foot marble statue of the Emperor Hadrian in a savings and loan."

Blue Highways: Chapter 3, Part 14

Shadows on the Teche, a plantation house in New Iberia, Louisiana. Photo by Jemery. Click on photo to go to host site.

New Iberia, Louisiana

I have a romantic vision of what New Iberia might look like downtown with the live oak trees.  I traveled past New Iberia in 1999 as I was driving back from New Orleans on a visit to the University of New Orleans, where I eventually did my PhD studies.  On the way back, my friend and I decided to take the scenic route on US 90, which took us through the swampy Cajun country, past Thibodaux and Morgan City, and ultimately past New Iberia before we rejoined I-10 at Lafayette.  Unfortunately, by the time we got by New Iberia, we were probably tired and just ready to get to the freeway and eat something in Lafayette.  The truth is, I don't remember much about that trip back.

It's unfortunate that I didn't take the time to stop in New Iberia to check out its most famous resident, Hadrian.  I'm quite an ancient history buff, and Hadrian ruled Rome just about the time the empire was at it's most extensive and powerful.  He built the wall across northern England that bears his name to control entrance and egress of northern tribes like the Picts and to serve to discourage invasions from the North into Roman settled lands in the south of the country.  A recent movie, King Arthur (2004) was set along Hadrian's Wall and depicts Arthur as a Roman officer, and Guinevere as a Pict warrior.

But I digress.  Until 2008, New Iberia hosted a statue of the Roman emperor which was carved in 127 A.D.  The statue was about 7 feet tall and a landmark of the town but had been a target of vandalism, prompting the IberiaBank, which owned it, to put it under a locked glass atrium.  The bank had originally bought the statue from a New Orleans collector who had himself purchased it in 1957.  The bank paid $3,000 for Hadrian's statue, which it sold at auction at Christies in New York for $900,000.  Not a bad return on its initial investment, I'd say.

Near New Iberia sits Avery Island, which is where Tabasco Sauce was formulated and still made today.  Tabasco is a great sauce for pretty much everything - in New Orleans I learned to put Tabasco or Louisiana Hot Sauce on things and even today I spice up my scrambled eggs with Tabasco.  I've never been to Avery Island, but a popular legend says that the scourge of the swamp, the nutria, came from an Avery Island attempt to breed them for their fur, which can be used in coats and hats.  These giant rats from Brazil with orange teeth were supposedly freed after a hurricane came through the area, and because they have no natural enemies, they bred like wildfire.  They damage levees by digging into them, and eat native vegetation.  When I lived in New Orleans, the sheriff of the neighboring parish had posses out shooting them, and the state paid a bounty for every nutria tail brought in.  As a New Orleans reporter, my wife went on a nutria hunt with some Cajun hunters who were taking advantage of the state program.

I would have also liked to have seen the live oaks.  When I lived in New Orleans, a drive or walk down Carrolton Avenue or St. Charles Avenue was always a treat because of the huge, ancient live oaks planted there.  These massive oak trees are the ones that you might think of when you think of the South.  Massive, spreading branches that reach out over the street, providing cooling shade in the hottest of summers.  In Carnival season, the trees become a record of Carnivals and Mardi Gras' past, because beads thrown from Carnival floats often get stuck in the branches of the trees.  I've thought of a great title for a novel:  The Bead Trees (sorry Barbara Kingsolver!)  They also have been known to hold up Mardi Gras parades, because floats sometimes have to maneuver under their boughs.  During storms, a branch that breaks off a live oak tree can weigh a ton and squash down a car underneath like one of those car compactors.  I assume that the live oaks in New Iberia are probably just as majestic and beautiful, and have served witness to much of history in their quiet way.

If you want to know more about New Iberia

Article on the auction of the Hadrian statue
City of New Iberia website
The Daily Iberian (newspaper)
Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival
Wikipedia: New Iberia

Next up: Delcambre, Louisiana

Blue Highways: St. Martinville, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIn the quiet bayou town of St. Martinville, we happen into a story about the flight of the people who became Cajuns, and in the midst of their travails, the story of a beautiful woman searching vainly for her lost lover.  It's an American tragedy, put to poem.  To see where all this happens, click on the thumbnail of the map at right.

Book Quote

"In St. Martinville a bronze statue of a seated young woman in wooden shoes, hands folded peacefully, head turned toward the Bayou Teche, commemorates - at one and the same time - Emmeline Labiche, Evangeline Bellefontaine, and Dolores Del Rio....

"....The bronze woman site, literally, above the eighteenth-century grave of Emmeline Labiche, who, Cajuns say, wandered primitive America in search of her lover, Louis Arcenaux....

"....But the name on the statue above Emmeline's tombstone is Evangeline.  Cajuns believe Longfellow patterned his wandering heroine on Emmeline, and he probably did....

....Then there's Hollywood.  The face on the statue, smooth and beautiful and untouched by madness or years of wandering the wilderness, is that of Dolores Del Rio, the Mexican-born actress who completed the trinity by playing Evangeline in the 1929 movie filmed nearby at Lake Catahoula."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 12

Statue of Evangeline in St. Martinville, Louisiana. Photo part of the French in America calendar set at johnfishersr.net. Click on photo to go to host site.

St. Martinville, Louisiana

To prepare for this post, I read the text of Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  The story, which Nathaniel Hawthorne encouraged Longfellow to write, was written as a long poem in a meter, dactylic hexameter, that hearkened back to classical Greek and Roman poetry.  The poem romanticized a period of Canadian and American history that, like many others, were in reality grounded in brutality.  It is a romance set in the time when the Acadians of Nova Scotia were expelled from their villages by British forces with the tacit approval of New Englanders.  The backdrop of these actions was international rivalry and conflict between France and England, and the French-speaking Acadians were in the crossfire.  These actions occurred before the American Revolution, and sparked an exodus wherein the Acadians were forced to spend years in exile.  Some went to other parts of what is now Canada, and others settled in areas of the United States with a large number making a home in the bayous of Louisiana.  The term "Acadian" over time became "Cajun."

Longfellow's poem was a sensation when it came out in 1847.  Not only is it an easy poem to read, but it tells of a long-suffering woman who searches for her lost love after being forcibly evicted from the Nova Scotian village of Grand Pré (which really exists, by the way), finding him only when it is too late.  It is a romantic tragedy.  Longfellow never stepped foot in Louisiana, relying instead on what others told him and on a precursor of the motion picture, Banvard's moving panorama of the Mississippi River.  These panoramas were paintings wound around scrolls and then unfurled to give one the impression that he or she was traveling through the depicted scenery.  Subsequent scholarship has indicated that Longfellow may have gotten some details of historical accuracy incorrect, but it also provided the United States with a piece of literature that compared favorably with other similar poetic epics from Europe and other places, and it gave peoples of Acadian descent with a heroine they could call their own.

I really enjoyed the story of Evangeline.  Many times, in the poem, she comes close to finding Gabriel, her betrothed from whom she was separated at the Acadians expulsion from Nova Scotia.  When she arrives in south Louisiana, her boat literally slips past the boat carrying Gabriel in the opposite direction.  They are separated by a small island, and do not see each other, though she is certain that she can feel him nearby:

Nearer and ever nearer, among the numberless islands,
Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the water,
Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and trappers.
Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the bison and beaver.
At the helm sat a youth, with countenance thoughtful and care-worn.
Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his brow, and a sadness
Somewhat beyond his years on his face was legibly written.
Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and restless,
Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow.
Swiftly they glided along, close under the lee of the island,
But by the opposite bank, and behind a screen of palmettos,
So that they saw not the boat, where it lay concealed in the willows,
And undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen, were the sleepers,
Angel of God was there none to awaken the slumbering maiden.
Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the prairie.
After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance,
As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, and the maiden
Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, "O Father Felician!
Something says in my heart that near me Gabriel wanders.
Is it a foolish dream, an idle and vague superstition?
Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit?"
Then, with a blush, she added, "Alas for my credulous fancy!
Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning."
But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he answered,—
"Daughter, thy words are not idle; nor are they to me without meaning.
Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface
Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden.
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
Gabriel truly is near thee; for not far away to the southward,
On the banks of the Têche are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin.
There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bridegroom,
There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheepfold.
Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit-trees;
Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens
Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest.
They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana."

Evangeline
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
at Project Gutenberg

I could identify with Gabriel, who gets lost in his own troubles and love for Evangeline, so much so that even his father begins to not be able to stand him:

 "Be of good cheer, my child; it is only to-day he departed.
  Foolish boy! he has left me alone with my herds and my horses.
  Moody and restless grown, and tried and troubled, his spirit
  Could no longer endure the calm of this quiet existence.
  Thinking ever of thee, uncertain and sorrowful ever,
  Ever silent, or speaking only of thee and his troubles,
  He at length had become so tedious to men and to maidens,
  Tedious even to me, that at length I bethought me, and sent him
  Unto the town of Adayes to trade for mules with the Spaniards.

Evangeline
Henry Wadsworth Longellow
At Project Gutenberg

I have been known to get like that myself - dark, brooding, lost in my own self-pity rather than taking positive action and steps that might lead me to new things or help me find things that I've lost.  Instead, as is usual, the initiative is up to Evangeline, and she follows Gabriel, finding where he has been but always missing him by a few days.  Her travels take her to the Ozarks, up to Michigan, and finally, as an old, sorrow-filled woman, to a convent in Philadelphia where as a Sister of Mercy tending to the sick and lame, she finds Gabriel in a bed breathing his last.

  As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision.
  Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids,
  Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside.
  Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered
  Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken.
  Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him,
  Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom.
  Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness,
  As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement.

Evangeline
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
At Project Gutenberg

The poem is well worth a read and does not run on for hundreds of hundreds of pages, like the Iliad, Odyssey or any of the other epic poems you might have been forced to read sometime in your schooling.

Unfortunately, in my own travels I passed near to St. Martinville but never got to the town.  I would have liked to have seen the statue that LHM refers to - the one representing the supposed real-life Emmeline Labiche, whose story inspired Longfellow.  Scholars now think that Emmeline also was fictional.  The statue also symbolizes Evangeline herself.  The model for the statue was Dolores Del Rio, the first true Latin American movie star with an international following.  After portraying Evangeline, Del Rio modeled for the statue as a thank you to the town of St. Martinville and the residents there.

There you have it, Littourati.  For a piece of American history that is immortalized in poem, visit St. Martinville.  In the surrounding swamps and bayous, you too can imagine a beautiful woman, lost, looking for her true love, still convinced that she will find him and make a life with him.  Around you, the bayous move slowly, languidly, unconcerned about the affairs of men and women.  Time stands still - then a pirogue may appear with a Cajun hunter and glide slowly and silently by before disappearing into the cypress.  At this moment, you might feel Evangeline's loneliness, and the isolation of the Cajuns down at what seems like the end of the world.

If you want to know about St. Martinville or Evangeline

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie at Project Gutenberg
Evangeline:  YouTube video of a song by Marie-Jo Thério
City of St. Martinville
Wikipedia: St. Martinville

Next up: New Iberia, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe make a quick stop with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) in Breaux Bridge for some crawfish in the Crawfish Capitol of the World.  Read on and join the spicy feast!  If you want to consult the map to see where Breaux Bridge lies in Acadiana, click the thumbnail of the map on the right.

Book Quote

"The menu claimed the catfish were fresh because they had slept the night before in the Atchafalaya. All well and good, but it was little crustaceans I was after. As journalist Calvin Trillin once said, the Atchafalaya swamp is to crawfish as the Serengeti is to lions. The waitress wore threads of wrinkles woven like Chantilly lace over her forehead and spoke her English in quick, rounded Cajun measures. She brought a metal beer tray piled with boiled, whole crawfish glowing the color of Louisiana hot sauce. I worked my way down through the stack. The meat was soft and piquant, sweeter than shrimp, but I had no stomach for the buttery, yellow fat the Cajuns were sucking from the shells.

The waitress said, 'Did they eat lovely like mortal sin?' and winked a lacy eyelid. 'You know, the Cajun, he sometime call them 'mudbugs.' But I never tell a customer that until he all full inside. But the crawfish, he live smilin' in the mud, he do."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 11

Downtown Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Click on photo to go to host site at Wikipedia.

Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

I finally get to write about, at least in the context of Blue Highways, about a place I have been.  And yes, it involved crawfish in the "crawfish capitol of the world."  This blog is not only about journeys chronicled in the books I map, but also about where those journeys take me in my own experiences and imagination.  While I have a lot of imagination, it's nice to sometimes be able to write about a place where I've actually been.

My experience of Breaux Bridge involved a long drive, a campsite along the bayou, a whole mess of crawfish, and some weed.  While living in San Antonio, I would say the year was roughly 1993, my wife and I made plans to meet friends, a couple from Wisconsin who we met during my wife's graduate studies at Marquette, in Breaux Bridge for a weekend camping trip.  It was only the second time we'd driven into Louisiana - the first was a trip to New Orleans - and we didn't know what to expect camping.  We knew that Breaux Bridge was close to the Atchafalaya Basin, so I was picturing swamps.  We knew that it was in Cajun country, which was quickly confirmed when we crossed into Louisiana and heard the Cajun French of DJs on radio stations and the accordion driven sound of music.  From San Antonio to Breaux Bridge was roughly a 7 hour drive, as I remember it, and involved negotiating the traffic of Houston.  But, after leaving early on a Friday we took Interstate 10 all the way across and found the campsite by late afternoon.  I think that Dave and Leann were already there, so we set up our tent and spent an enjoyable evening next to a bayou that ran behind our tents.

Bayou behind our Breaux Bridge campsite. Photo circa 1993 by Michael Hess.There were armadillos in the vicinity, and I had never really had much of a chance to observe these little critters.  They looked like something out of the Pleistocene or other prehistoric age.  They have long tails and snouts, and an armor shell to protect them.  They snuffled around our campsite like little armored pigs, and I wasn't sure what they were after.  If one of us startled one of them, it would jump straight up in the air, and run off.  I also heard that when threatened they can curl themselves up into impenetrable little balls of armor, but I never saw that.  I was a little bit wary to go near them, because I had heard that they can carry the bacteria that causes leprosy.  The last thing I wanted was a disease that would cause my extremely helpful extremities and other parts to rot off.

One of our party brought some pot with him, and in the spirit of things we smoked a joint with him.  I was a little nervous, thinking that Louisiana State Troopers would show up any minute, bust us, and then I'd have to figure out how to keep myself safe in the Louisiana State Penitentiary or something, but of course I was overimagining things.  It was actually quite nice and mellow.

My wife, Megan, holding a freshly scrubbed live crawfish. Photo circa 1993 by Michael Hess.But the real treat, and an all day affair, was getting a 25 pound bag of live crawfish at a local store.  We spent pretty much the entire day scrubbing the little guys with toothbrushes to get the mud off, and then throwing them into a pot with crab boil to season them.  I kind of hated throwing them into the pot, because I got kind of attached to them, but they made for great eating and there were a lot of them in 25 pounds.  Of course, the dead ones got thrown away into the bayou - you have to eat live ones because the fish spoils so quickly in the heat of the day.  But there weren't that many dead ones and the feast we had was really nice.

It was definitely a unique experience in camping for me to boil up some crawfish and eat it.  I can't remember rightly but I think we may have gone to Mulate's in Breaux Bridge before we left for some Cajun cooking.  Mulate's is a pretty famous place, and is also known as a place to hear good Cajun music.  It has a branch in New Orleans, but the restaurant in Breaux Bridge is the original.  If this is the restaurant that I am thinking of where we ate before we went our separate ways at the end of our camping trip, it is the same place where I learned a very valuable lesson.  I will put my lesson on its own line so that you don't make the same mistake:

Michael's Law #52

Never let Louisiana Hot Sauce touch your fingers before you go to the bathroom.  You'll begin to feel intense prickly hotness where you really don't want it!

Words to live by, all you Littourati out there.

If you want to know more about Breaux Bridge

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival
Breaux Bridge Live
Louisiana Travel.com: Breaux Bridge
Visitor's Guide to Breaux Bridge
Wikipedia: Breaux Bridge

Correction to above

Megan informs me that we went to Prejean's in Lafayette after our camping trip, not Mulate's in Breaux Bridge.  But if you are in the vicinity, think about visiting either or both of these fine establishments for good Cajun food.

Next up: St. Martinville, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Lafayette, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapTrying to find Cajun music at night in rural Louisiana, we end up with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) in a bar listening to chanky chank, watching a guy play the bones, talking with a Minnesotan, and finally finishing the night with some beer and gumbo.  Not a bad day, if you ask me.  Where does this take place?  Near Lafayette (pronounced Laugh-yet), Louisiana.  Click on the map thumbnail to locate Lafayette, and listen to some good Cajun music while you read - I've included a link to a Cajun internet station down below.

Book Quote

"Then a red glow like a campfire.  A beer sign.  Hearty music rolled out the open door of a small tavern, and a scent of simmering hot peppers steamed from the stovepipe chimney.  I'd found Tee's.  Inside, under dim halos of yellow bug lights, an accordion (the heart of a Cajun band), a fiddle, guitar, and ting-a-ling (triangle) cranked out chanky-chank.  The accordionist introduced the numbers as songs of amour or joie and the patrons cheered; but when he announced un chanson de marriage, they booed him.  Many times he cried out the Cajun motto, Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 10

Downtown Lafayette, Louisiana. Click on photo to go to its site on Destination360.com.

Lafayette, Louisiana

I am cheating a little bit on this post.  I'm really combining two stops that LHM made near Lafayette into one.  If I were to map it most correctly, I would probably first highlight his first stop at a bar in Lafayette where he has a Dixie Beer and asks where he can hear some "chanky-chank," or Cajun music.  His second stop was then a rural bar named Tee's where he finds the music he is looking for.

However, I am not going to do this in two separate stops because I cannot find Tee's - perhaps the bar has closed down in the intervening 30 years.  There is a Tee's Lounge in Sunset, Louisiana about halfway between Opelousas and Lafayette, but that would have involved LHM going back in the same direction, and its location doesn't really make sense because it is right off the freeway, and LHM clearly is following a bartender's vague directions , trying to find Tee's in the dark on rural roads.  So, since I don't really know, I'm not going to speculate and be wrong.

"I wound about, crossing three identical bridges or crossing one bridge three times.  I gave up and tried to find my way back to town and couldn't do that either."

Having lived both in Texas and Louisiana, I often found that the best places for live music often lay in rural, out of the way places.  I can remember trying to find a dancehall in Texas once.  We drove and drove through the dark rural roads and, like LHM, accidentally stumbled upon the place when it seemed like the best thing to do would be to just give up.  But once we got there, it was an amazing experience.  Cheap but good beer, and a wonderful time dancing to great music.  These places just seem to materialize out of thin air - like Brigadoon, Avalon, or any otherworldly place - just when you need them to be there.  And, almost as if they belong to another dimension, if you don't pay attention to how you got there, you may never find your way back again.  They seem to exist at the end of time, where pleasant people and fine music mix in a heady ambience so much so that you lose track of time and place, and like the mythical drug of the Lotus Eaters, you may never want to come back.

And the music you will find in these types of backwater dance halls is amazing, about as authentic as any you'll find anywhere.  In Louisiana, you can look for Cajun and Zydeco bands like Beausoleil, Bruce Daigrepont, Buckwheat Zydeco, Wayne Toups and Zydecajun, Dwayne Dopsie, Feufollet...you name it.  These are bands that will make you dance, literally, because you won't be able to stop from moving  your feet.  If you are a woman, you will often be politely steered around the room by a Cajun guy in a fast Cajun two-step or waltz, and chances are you won't get to sit down all night.

And if you are lucky, you get a little of what Louisianans call "lagniappe."  Lagniappe is just a little something extra added onto whatever you already have.  For instance, if you went to a bakery to get a dozen donuts, and the baker decided to throw in a thirteenth free, that extra donut is lagniappe.  LHM describes his experience of lagniappe, though he doesn't label it as such probably because nobody used the term around him:

"....Everybody went home.  The barmaid watched us wearily.  "Okay," she said, "come on back for some hot stuff.

"Is this where we find out why they call themselves 'Coonasses'?"  I said, and we laughed again, holding on to each other.

"All right, boys.  Settle down."  She led us not to a bedroom but to a large concrete-floor kitchen with an old picnic table under a yellow flourescent tube.  We sat and a young Cajun named Michael passed a long loaf of French bread.  The woman put two bowls in the oil cloth and ladled up gumbo.  Now, I've eaten my share of gumbo, but never had I tasted anything like that gumbo:  the oysters were fresh and fat, the shrimp succulent, the spiced sausage meaty, okra sweet, rice soft, and the roux - the essence - the roux was right.  We could almost stand our spoons on end in it."

Such stories, to me, are the essence of Louisiana and the graciousness and generosity of the people I found there.  In New Orleans, especially around Mardi Gras, you can walk down the street and complete strangers will invite you into their house to a party or to share in their meal.  It isn't just "letting the good times roll."  That in itself would be special enough.  No, the extra specialness that I found in Louisiana consisted of that lagniappe that appeared unexpectedly, without warning.  The memories of those that, on a whim, invite you to participate in something extra and magical - those are the memories that we carry with us.  LHM finishes that passage with this wonderful tableau about eating gumbo after hours in Tee's:

"The woman disappeared, so we ate gumbo and dipped bread and no one talked.  A gray cat hopped on the bench between Seipel and me to watch eat bite of both bowls we ate.  Across the room, a fat, buffy mouse moved over the stove top and browsed for drippings from the big pot.  The cat eyed it every so often but made no move away from our bowls.  Seipel said, "I've enjoyed the hell out of tonight," and he laid out a small shrimp for the cat.  Nothing more got spoken.  We all went at the gumbo, each of us, Minnesotan, Cajun, cat, mouse, Missourian."

All quotes in this entry from Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 10 

If you want to know more about Lafayette

The Advertiser (newspaper)
Lafayette Conventions and Visitors Bureau
Lafayette Independent Weekly (alternative newspaper)
Road Food America list of Lafayette restaurants
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Wikipedia: Lafayette

Next up: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana