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Louisiana’s Zydeco Trail
April 22, 2011
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN
I HAD never noticed how closely the syncopated rhythm of
zydeco music echoes the rollicking stumble of horses on rough terrain. But on a
September afternoon in the piney woods of Evangeline Parish, in Louisiana’s
Cajun country, with hundreds of dusty horseback riders moving down a narrow
trail, the kinship was impossible to miss. As the horses followed a tractor
towing a D.J. and a zydeco-blaring sound system, they bucked and swayed in a
cadence fit for the barroom floors of Lafayette, 70 miles away.
Eventually the riders — young and old, encumbered by cold beers or small
children — reached a large clearing in the middle of the woods, which quickly
filled with horses, flatbeds, wagons and buggies as the music continued to
throb. People sold barbecue sandwiches and turkey legs from the backs of pick-up
trucks. A group of women piled out of a wagon and serenely performed a line
dance in the dust. Young people sang and flirted and held up their beers with a
“Wooo!”
The clearing was the halfway point of the Pineywoods Trail Ride, one of a
circuit of zydeco trail rides that take place in the countryside around
Lafayette and in many parts of Texas from Mardi Gras through early December.
Exuberant, untouched by corporate sponsors and run by a close-knit network of
people who price their beer at $2 a can, the rides are a traditional way to
celebrate the cowboy culture of rural blacks or Creoles (commonly understood as
a mixture of black with French, Spanish and/or Native American ancestry).
Originally small affairs among relatives and neighbors, the rides have evolved
over decades into organized events with a dedicated following, though they have
remained largely unknown to outsiders. In recent years, trail rides have surged
in popularity among rural youth, as zydeco musicians have incorporated strains
of R&B and hip-hop, attracting a new generation for whom Creole is suddenly
cool.
The Pineywoods ride, for which more than 2,000 people gathered over the course
of three days, started and ended on a farm with an open-sided pavilion that, by
the end, would be in a sorry shambles — its benches broken from the weight of
people climbing up to get a look at the musicians, an industrial-size Dumpster
outside overflowing with the detritus of revelry. It would be a huge, weird,
miles-from-nowhere party, one that I had fantasized about for nearly five years.
IN July 2006, when my friend Lisa D’Amour and I embarked on a long,
music-seeking weekend with Lafayette as our base, all we knew about zydeco trail
rides had been gleaned from an endearingly amateurish Louisiana music fan site:
they existed, they took place regularly on Sundays somewhere in the area and to
find one, you might try listening to the local Cajun radio program. There was no
mention of the fact that the program was in French.
Neither a more extensive Internet search nor the local newspapers got us any
further. But the more elusive zydeco trail rides seemed, the more important it
became to find one, even if it meant wasting an entire day.
We began our search with an inquiry at Prejean’s, a Cajun restaurant in
Lafayette with a stuffed alligator in the entryway and a Webcam that provides
worldwide access to views of tourists enjoying shrimp sassafras. Stupid
questions are not a rarity at Prejean’s, but our waiter was stumped. Finally, he
suggested we take a half-hour drive to Lawtell, the home of iconic zydeco clubs
like the Offshore Lounge.
Lafayette is a small city, and you don’t have to go far in any direction before
things turn very country, as in gas-station boudin and music venues that are
open only on Saturday mornings. Travel south or east, and you will soon see
signs for swamp tours; go north, toward Lawtell and Opelousas, and it’s scrub,
forest and farms. We knew we had arrived when we saw a hand-painted sign:
“Welcome to Lawtell, Home of the Town and Country Riders.” We found an old store
that sold bait and rusty key chains, but when we mentioned trail rides, the
white man behind the counter gave us a blank look.
At another gas station, a black cashier was more helpful, pointing us to an
inebriated man buying a Sunday morning case of beer, who kindly led us to a
large shade tree where a man was shoeing a horse. Several other men were hanging
around, one of whom wore a rodeo championship belt buckle as big as a
chicken-fried steak. Lisa and I looked at each other and grinned.
These men, we soon learned, were not the Lawtell Town and Country Riders, now
defunct, but a different club, the Lawtell Low Riders. And yes, they could take
us to a trail ride.
The riding clubs, we came to understand, are a fixture of life in Acadiana, the
part of southern Louisiana named for the exiled French Canadians who settled it.
Here, even Mardi Gras is traditionally celebrated on horseback; the riders are
masked. The clubs are a formalization of the loose confederacies that developed
among rural African-Americans out of kinship, friendship or necessity. The rides
themselves have their roots in country traditions like boucheries, or hog
butcherings.
Nowadays the clubs form the organizational core of the zydeco trail rides,
competing to attract the most riders and hire the best bands and D.J.’s.
Die-hard riders will bring their horses out every weekend, even if it means
towing them across state lines, but most rides remain obscure to outsiders. Even
a popular one like the Step-N-Strut, held in St. Landry Parish in early
November, which has evolved into a multiday music festival that attracts
thousands of people, is still not well known outside the circuit.
The clubs strive to set their rides apart — Pineywoods, for example, is known
for using an actual trail instead of backcountry roads. But they do have certain
things in common: each begins and ends at a church, community center or private
parcel of land, sometimes with a pavilion built for dancing.
Our new friend the horseshoe man, whose name was Paul Young, disappeared for a
good while and returned with his family (son Paul and daughter Paula) and a
trailer full of horses. First we followed him in one direction, seeing nothing
but farmland and fishing holes. Then he turned around and went the other
direction for an even longer ride. Later it was explained that he had changed
plans after learning that the first ride had been canceled, but the detour gave
Lisa and me ample time to consider what we were doing: following a bunch of men
we had just met across two parishes to the middle of nowhere. Just as a sense of
doom was sinking in, we pulled off onto a dirt road, passed a chicken coop and
saw three runaway horses with men in pursuit. A guy stationed at the gate
collected $5 a head as we passed.
The trail ride had already begun, so there was a scramble to saddle up the
horses. Soon, we were headed down a country road at a fast clip. It was hot, and
someone reached into a saddlebag and handed me a Coors Light, which bubbled over
and spattered on the ground as I tried to drink and ride one-handed. (Note:
saddles are not equipped with cup holders.)
Soon we caught up to the other riders: at least a couple hundred people on
horseback; a horse-drawn buggy with red wheels and black tufted upholstery; and
a wagon or two loaded up with coolers and people. (One flatbed trailer carried a
portable toilet.) In the middle of it all was an old, slowly coasting yellow and
white truck with a rabbit painted on the side, outfitted front and back with
speakers, out of which issued the familiar canter of zydeco. Lisa and I were as
awed as if we had unwittingly stumbled across Burning Man while trekking in the
Black Rock Desert.
We had spent the previous two days hearing music in the area, and had begun to
grasp the differences between the two kinds of music that are essential to the
identity of Acadiana. Cajun music, a mournful back porch music of waltzes and
fiddles, is still largely the province of white musicians. Zydeco, a more
upbeat, catchy genre, is played mostly by blacks. It uses the accordion and
washboard, more often called a scrub-board, and went mainstream in the mid-1980s
with the help of the hit song “My Toot Toot” and the Dennis Quaid movie “The Big
Easy.”
Perhaps because of the movie, many people associate zydeco with New Orleans. But
zydeco is country music, created by Creole cowboys. The zydeco rides in Texas
are a direct result of pollination by Louisiana Creoles, who went there to do
seasonal farm work and brought the music along.
Much later, as my interest in trail rides grew keener, I called the owner of the
yellow truck, Frank Malbrough Jr., at his home in Church Point, La. (he was
watching a home video of a trail ride when the phone rang). Mr. Malbrough, 79,
is known as the Breadman because of his truck’s former service at a Bunny Bread
bakery. He claims to have attended a ride every weekend of the season since
1985.
“Trail rides used to be a neighbor thing,” he said. “I got a horse, you got a
horse — these guys worked on horseback in the rice harvesting. They started
mixing with that horse on Sundays, then they would meet and ride in the woods
and have a good time. Trail riding became a family affair.”
There is no telling, according to this history, when the first zydeco trail ride
officially occurred. But the rides ended, as they do now, in music and dancing,
at a church or on someone’s porch. The Breadman takes credit for the innovation
of bringing the music along on the ride itself, first with a borrowed boombox
and later with the Bread Truck, purchased in the mid-1980s.
After several hours of following the Bread Truck, we all returned to the farm
where we started. Under the shelter of what seemed like a picnic pavilion at a
public park, a zydeco band played through a late afternoon rainstorm, and
everybody danced. The ride, and all that went with it, encapsulated everything
we loved about Louisiana, whose most inviolable traditions are built around
enjoyment and leisure; where proud strangers will lend you a horse and hand you
a cold beer not because they have a reputation of hospitality to uphold but
because it would be a blot on their honor if you did not have fun; and where
things coalesce not because of anything you or I might recognize as
organization, but according to their own internal logic. With a little luck we
had been welcomed into an afternoon of unmediated Creole culture. This was the
side of Louisiana that anthropologists love to study, but I love to visit.
JOE FONTENOT, 65, was famous in his youth for riding a pet bull. He can remember
capturing wild horses by dropping from a tree onto their backs. On his farm, he
raises horses, naked-neck chickens and the guinea hens he says make for better
gumbo.
Driving from Lafayette late on a Friday evening last September, I found the
Fontenot farm by following cardboard signs that pointed the way. Ever since that
first ride, I had wanted to attend another, but had not really known where to
start. When I Googled “zydeco trail ride,” I found a forum whose most recent
post was two years old, some YouTube videos of trail rides past and a 1989 album
by Boozoo Chavis, the zydeco star. Frustrating as it may be to interested
outsiders, riding clubs still rely primarily on a tried-and-true advertising
method: distributing fliers to trail riders at trail rides.
I made some calls and finally got in touch with Torry Lemelle, who runs the
Step-N-Strut and whose husband, Dave, is the president of Border2Border, one of
two main Louisiana riding club associations. She told me that the Pineywoods
ride, held in Beaver, La., on Labor Day weekend, had been run by the Fontenot
family for 25 years, and gave me a number to call. Ultimately this led me to the
farm’s gate, where I leaned out my car window and paid $20 for a weekend pass.
I had been delayed by a hurricane on the East Coast, so spent part of the
evening nursing my disappointment that I had missed the free supper of cochon de
lait — marinated suckling pig that had roasted all day in a metal box, or a
“Cajun microwave,” as the Fontenots call it.
At first, the feel was a lot like that of the 2006 ride — the farm, the dance
pavilion (where at least seven varieties of Boone’s Farm wine were on offer),
the RVs and horse trailers lining the grounds in a vast encampment. There would
be live bands all three nights, and I watched as the serious dancers took
advantage of the one night when the floor would not be overcrowded. A determined
young woman chomped her gum in time to JoJo Reed and the Happy Hill Band as she
and her partner covered great swaths of dance floor, never pausing for breath.
On Saturday morning, adults hunched over domino games or tended to the ribs,
gumbo or backbone stew they were cooking at their campsites, while children
played and rode bareback. But as cars and campers steadily poured into the
grounds, an influx that would continue right up to the start of the main trail
ride on Sunday, the place took on a different feel. At my first ride, I had
noticed a lot of old-timers — “originals,” they call themselves — wearing, as
Joe Fontenot did, pressed Western shirts and string ties.
But at the Pineywoods ride, as more and more young people crowded the grounds, I
noticed cargo shorts and rubber-soled boots with brightly colored uppers, some
with an accumulation of paper wristbands from previous rides threaded through
the pull straps in a display of trail ride status.
Virtually everyone wore T-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to a particular
riding club: the No Limit Riders of Mamou, La., the Spare Time Riders of New
Roads, the Hip Hop Ghetto Riders of Breaux Bridge. Some clubs, like the
Exclusive Steppers, showed loyalty to a particular kind of mount, the
high-stepping Tennessee walker, considered the Cadillac of trail riding (“If you
ain’t steppin’, you ain’t reppin’ ”). Others, like the Wild Bird Riders, honored
their favorite whiskey, while the Suga Riders were named in memory of “one of
the realest cowboys you would ever get to know,” a Lafayette man who rode his
horse to nightclubs. The Mixed Breed Riders, a youthful posse in short-shorts
and tank tops, gave a nod to the racial mélange so common in Acadiana. I counted
upward of 50 riding clubs, though a few of them didn’t seem to bother with
actual horses.
I also heard, between bands, the D.J.’s play something I hadn’t heard at the
earlier ride: the occasional hip-hop track (Lil Boosie, a Baton Rouge rapper,
was a favorite). In fact, several attendees credited the surge in popularity of
the rides to zydeco musicians like Brian Jack and Chris Ardoin, who have given
the music a more contemporary feel. On Saturday night, Brian Jack would pack the
pavilion, getting a loud cheer when he asked, “How many cowgirls you got out
there?”
I met Arloe Fontenot, a 32-year-old member of the extended Fontenot clan, whose
members, many of whom have green eyes, range in appearance from fair to dark.
“When we were young, we fell into a middle ground in terms of race,” Arloe said.
He added, good-naturedly, “Now everyone wants to be Creole, meaning everyone
wants to have some freaking boots on and play zydeco in their car and go to one
trail ride and call themselves Creole.” This yearning apparently applies to
whites as well — I noticed a more racially diverse crowd than I had in 2006,
when Lisa and I were the only nonblacks in attendance.
Daphne Rideaux, a 22-year-old member of the Mixed Breed Riders, told me that all
any newcomer needs is “the boots, the belt, the spurs and the trail rider
shirt,” adding, “They can make their own.” (Park Slope Steppers, are you
reppin’?)
From a food truck, I bought a dozen tamales, made by Mr. Fontenot’s
sister-in-law and served with saltine crackers and hot sauce, for $8. As I
strolled the grounds, I met mail carriers and pipe fitters, a man called Mule
who made extra money shoeing horses, and a bank teller named Angela Deculus, who
patiently taught me the basic zydeco dance step. Zydeco dancers swear this step
is all you need to know, but I have learned it countless times, only to be
boot-scooted right off the floor. Figuring out what people are doing with their
feet when they zydeco is like trying to determine whether all of a horse’s
hooves leave the ground as it gallops.
But I still love to watch, especially the people who grew up dancing in this
music-steeped culture. The older couples meld as if they had been specially
machined to perform in unison; the younger couples clasp hands as they move one
way, only to drop them on the return with inimitable insouciance. You can almost
see the church halls, the linoleum floors, the lessons from grandpa, the
generations that precede each particular dance — see the music moving through
the blood. These dancers zydeco the way they sit a horse.
On Saturday afternoon, there was a “mini-ride,” or what Mr. Fontenot called a
“vice-versa ride” because it follows the route of the big Sunday ride in
reverse.
It was quieter than the Sunday ride would be, and together several hundred of us
passed through woods filled with bright purple beautyberries. The temperature
hovered at an amazingly cool 80 degrees. Mr. Fontenot no longer rides, but his
grandson Casey, then 9, took the lead position, slung across his horse at a
jaunty tilt, just as if he had been born up there and it had never occurred to
him to get down.
SADDLE UP AND PASS THE BOUDIN
FINDING A TRAIL RIDE
Zydeco trail rides take place primarily in Louisiana and Texas.
Two of the biggest zydeco trail ride associations in Louisiana, which serve as
umbrella groups for the clubs, are the Border2Border Trail Ride Association and
the Rainbow Trail Ride Association, both of which include Texas rides on their
calendars.
Their 2011 schedules are posted at billpickettrailriders.com and marcsobers.com.
There are a lot of T.B.A.’s on those schedules, but I found updated information
for rides in the next couple of months at zydecoevents.com/trailriders.
In Louisiana, the ride itself is held on Sunday; in Texas, it is often on
Saturday with a rodeo on Sunday (and Louisiana folk will tell you that the food
is not as good). If you do not have a horse, you can ride on a wagon; often at
least one of these belongs to the ride organizers. Let them know you are a
first-timer.
SLEEPING AND EATING
To camp at a trail ride, you will likely need a camper or RV — there are
generally no facilities for tent camping. Otherwise, you can find a hotel close
to your chosen ride’s location; there are accommodations in Opelousas, Eunice,
Ville Platte and Breaux Bridge (where the Café des Amis is known for its zydeco
brunch on Saturdays). Lafayette is a good base from which to explore the trail
riding scene, but expect to drive an hour or more to get to one from there.
In Lafayette the Blue Moon Saloon (215 East Convent Street; 877-766-2583;
bluemoonpresents.com), has a guest house catering to music lovers. Rooms start
at $70; “dorm” rooms that sleep up to eight are $18 a person.
Prejean’s (3480 Northeast Evangeline Thruway; 337-896-3247; prejeans.com), is
open for breakfast, lunch and dinner,
Ask the locals which gas station has the best boudin.
SHAILA DEWAN, a former Southern bureau correspondent for The New York Times, is
pleased that parts of the family memoir she is writing take place in Louisiana.
Louisiana’s Zydeco
Trail, NYT, 22.4.2011,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/travel/24zydeco.html
Driving Back Into Louisiana’s History
May 25, 2008
The New York Times
By RON STODGHILL
STRIDING across the rain-soaked field of an abandoned
Louisiana plantation, Mitch Landrieu, the state’s lieutenant governor, waved his
hands impatiently. “C’mon, you’ve got to see this,” he called out, sounding more
P. T. Barnum than politician. Marching beside him was the Whitney Plantation’s
owner, John Cummings, a wealthy Louisiana lawyer turned preservationist who,
with Mr. Landrieu’s help, hopes to prove that the old Southern plantation, or at
least this one, is still very much in business.
Centuries past its prime, the Whitney Plantation sits grandly beneath a canopy
of oak trees along a dusty road in St. John the Baptist Parish, a sleepy river
community 35 miles northwest of New Orleans. The estate, promoted as the most
complete plantation in the South, is an antebellum gem. It includes, among other
things, a Creole and Greek Revival-style mansion, an overseer’s house, a
blacksmith shop and the oldest kitchen in Louisiana. Built in the late 1700s by
Jean Jacques Haydel Jr., the grandson of a German immigrant with a penchant for
fine art, the house walls are adorned with murals said to be painted by the
Italian artist Domenico Canova, a relation of the neo-Classical sculptor Antonio
Canova.
Yet Mr. Landrieu is far less interested in the Haydels than the legacy of the
254 slaves who once inhabited the nearly dozen shacks behind the big house
during Whitney’s reign among the largest sugar farms in Louisiana. His muddy
shoes planted in front of a row of neatly situated sun-bleached shacks during a
recent visit, Mr. Landrieu nudged a reporter toward what he likes to call a
living museum:
“Go on in. You have to go inside. When you walk in that space, you can’t deny
what happened to these people. You can feel it, touch it, smell it.”
He compared the experience to visiting the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Personal politics aside, in an era of proliferating theme parks and “Girls Gone
Wild” spring breaks, it is entirely possible that hanging out in former slave
quarters — or, for that matter, the adjacent so-called “nigger pen” lockup —
runs counter to most Americans’ idea of a vacation. But in post-Katrina
Louisiana, where an antidote to recent images of black disillusionment, despair
and displacement has so far proven elusive, the recently started
African-American Heritage Trail offers a disarmingly triumphant immersion into
Louisiana’s rich black history and culture through such powerful juxtapositions
of freedom and bondage and the creativity that sprung out of both conditions.
Served up in heaping gumbo-style portions, the African-American Heritage Trail
is not always easy to digest: it spans 26 sites, wending its way through
museums, marketplaces and cemeteries from New Orleans to Shreveport.
To be sure, this is one wandering, race-obsessed road trip: not even those tasty
Cracklin or Boudin balls at Highway 190 truck stops, or the reassuring baritone
of the actor Louis Gossett Jr., who narrates a fact-filled audiotape of people
and places, can always cut the lull of hundreds of miles of often barren, rural
highway. And if you’re toting kids as this trailee was, you might feel at points
as if you’re driving the African-American Headache Trail.
But if you can hang in, there’s a realism to this traveling history lesson, with
a richly tactile and authentic quality. You’ll find it as you stand in front of
the childhood home of Homer Plessy, whose refusal to move from the “whites only”
section of a rail car would lead to the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v.
Ferguson; as you take in the story of Madame C. J. Walker, the hair-care
entrepreneur who bootstrapped her way out of poverty to become the nation’s
first black female millionaire; as you stroll through Armstrong Park in New
Orleans, named to honor the jazz pioneering work of Louis Armstrong. And of
course it’s there in the Cajun and Creole cooking that puts an exclamation mark
behind each stop.
In a state that relishes its contradictions, Louisiana’s African-American trail
is actually the brainchild of Mr. Landrieu, the white liberal scion of a famous
Louisiana political family. In the 1970s, his father, Maurice Edwin Landrieu,
known as Moon, made history, and his share of enemies, when as New Orleans
mayor, he hired the first blacks into his administration. Mitch, a
self-proclaimed champion of social justice, said he conceived the trail as a way
of brokering dialogue between the races at a time when the nation sorely needed
it, an idea that gained urgency in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“We want to transform the discussion about race and poverty in America,” said
the 47-year-old Mr. Landrieu, who served 16 years in the State House of
Representatives (his father and sister, Mary Landrieu, also a Democrat and
currently a United States Senator, held the same seat). “Many, many white people
and black people of good will have been separated by ideological fights that
have been powerful. But you can’t transform the discussion if you can’t remember
what happened.”
Mr. Cummings puts it another way: “Is black men not caring for their children
today in any way connected to slavery? These are the kinds of questions we
should be asking. I want to get beyond the moonlight and magnolia myths of the
plantation.”
There is a more practical basis for the trail also. “There’s not enough money to
build a museum in every parish in Louisiana,” Mr. Landrieu said. So, over the
past couple of years, he has spearheaded an effort to link private-sector
cultural attractions into a network of state-sponsored tourism programs, from
bird-watching to golf tours. The African-American Heritage Trail is but the
latest example of fiscal creativity with Louisiana’s tourism program.
“The whole state of Louisiana really is a museum,” he said.
At the turn of the 19th century, Louisiana was a major player
in the Deep South in international slave trade, thanks to its location on the
Mississippi River and its rise as a sugar capital. Far more compelling than its
robust slave population, though, was the culture that developed around it, as a
blend of French governance, liberal manumission laws and tradition of racial
mixing created an especially unique twist to an already peculiar institution.
A trail weighted with such historical crosscurrents could easily turn into a
kind of four-wheel Rubik’s Cube in the wrong guide’s hands. That is why what
appears at first blush a freewheeling journey that can begin and end virtually
anywhere in Louisiana is best approached with a degree of conformity.
There are some obvious reasons to start the trail in New Orleans, including the
fact that airfares to there will most likely be cheapest. But perhaps the most
compelling reason to begin in New Orleans is that one of the oldest, richest
strains of African-American culture flows directly from there, or more
specifically, from Tremé, which according to historians, is the nation’s oldest
surviving black community. On the northern fringe of the French Quarter, Tremé,
also known as Faubourg Tremé, bears resemblance to a well-to-do Caribbean
community, with pastel-colored Creole and shotgun-style cottages and Greek
Revival-style homes lining narrow shaded streets.
Throughout the 19th century, Tremé (named after Claude Tremé, a Frenchman who
split up the lots and sold them off) was populated by free people of color —
many of them fair-skinned French-speaking Creoles — who identified more with
their European than African ancestry as they dominated the trades as merchants,
businessmen and real estate speculators.
In many cases, their ascension up the social ladder was orchestrated through
Cordon Bleu or quadroon balls, private soirees in which wealthy Creole families
presented their daughters to white suitors for long-term relationships.
So fascinating are the quadroon balls that you’ll want to visit the
African-American Museum, located in the heart of Tremé, for more nitty gritty on
these affairs, as well as the lowdown on Tremé’s most infamous Creole woman,
Marie Laveau, known as the voodoo queen, who is believed to have resided, at one
point, in the Passebon Cottage on the museum’s property.
The centerpiece of Tremé, though, is St. Augustine Catholic Church, which
embodies much of the community’s complex cultural narrative. Built in the mid
1800s at the request of people of color, St. Augustine remains the spiritual
nerve center of the New Orleans black community.
The church also has the distinction of being one of the nation’s first
integrated churches thanks to a legendary “War of the Pews” in which free people
of color and whites one-upped one another in purchasing family pews for Sunday
Mass. Free blacks not only nabbed two pews for every white family pew, but also
gave them as gifts to their enslaved black brethren. After church, and filled
with the spirit, colored congregants would migrate to Congo Square (today within
Louis Armstrong Park) where they would sing, dance and play music in their
native African traditions.
With the French Quarter so nearby, dinner at the Praline Connection, a
black-owned, child-friendly Creole soul food joint in neighboring Faubourg
Marigny, is a good way to cap the evening — and the New Orleans portion of the
trail. While this unpretentious, affordable place, isn’t exactly historic — it
was founded in 1990 — its gumbo has earned praise from locals, as have the
smothered pork chops and other specialties. And kids, exhausted by now, will
squeal as straight-faced waiters serve up fried alligator as nonchalantly as a
bowl of Cap’n Crunch.
A few sites on the heritage trail veer from Mr. Landrieu’s “living museum”
construct, though they are not necessarily any less satisfying. Among them is
the River Road African-American Museum, in the town of Donaldsonville, about 65
miles north of New Orleans. The River Road area is brimming with historical
significance: Donaldsonville elected the nation’s first African-American mayor,
Pierre Caliste Landry, in 1868, Others who hail from the area include King
Oliver, Louis Armstrong’s musical mentor, and a corps of enslaved
African-American soldiers who fought with the Union at nearby Fort Butler.
The museum’s founder, Kathe Hambrick, a native of Donaldsonville, enthuses over
their tales to audiences as though reminiscing over her own family scrapbook.
Ms. Hambrick started the museum in 1994 after living for several years in
California.
“Everywhere I turned, there was this word ‘plantation,’ ” Ms. Hambrick said.
“And every time I heard it, I would get this knot in my stomach. One day I
decided to take one of these plantation tours. It was all about antiques,
furniture, architecture and the wealthy lifestyle. But I wanted to know how many
lives of my ancestors did it take to produce one cup of sugar.”
Since then, Ms. Hambrick has assembled a collection that combines everything
from shackles and plantation tools with antebellum maps and deeds from slave
auctions. The production is heavy stuff, and its details, while fascinating to
adults, may be less so to small children yearning to return to the open air.
But a couple of hours north, the Louisiana landscape opens wide, and as you
travel along Highway 1 toward the town of Natchitoches (pronounced
NACK-ah-tish), home of the Cane River Creoles, the hard stories in
Donaldsonville fade under the great magnolias that shade the entrance of Melrose
Plantation. This is where the love story of Marie-Therese, known as Coincoin,
the grand matriarch of Melrose, took place.
Raised as a slave in the household of a Louisiana military commander,
Marie-Therese was later sold to Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer, a French merchant.
The two fell in love and she eventually bore him 10 children. Marie-Therese and
her children eventually gained their freedom and became wealthy landowners in
their own right. As the story goes, Marie-Therese Metoyer owned slaves but also
bought many slaves their freedom along the way.
One of her sons, Nicholas Augustin Metoyer, financed the first Catholic church
in the United States built for people of color. St. Augustine Catholic Church
was founded in 1803 and is located in Natchitoches.
The story of the Metoyers seems to illustrate Mr. Landrieu’s belief that the
trail “is about so much more than civil rights — it’s about hope.” He paused,
and rephrased his thought for wider appeal. “This trail is really about how hope
hits the streets.”
IF YOU GO
The Web site for the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail,
louisianatravel.com/explore/cultural_history/african_american_heritage_trail,
offers maps and detailed information on the trail’s sites. You can also call
(800) 474-8626.
WHERE TO EAT
The Praline Connection (542 Frenchman Street; 504-943-3934;
www.pralineconnection.com ) in
the New Orleans neighborhood of Faubourg Marigny offers affordable local dishes
like gumbo and smothered pork chops. Entrees $12.95 to $19.95.
In a restored Art Deco building in historic Donaldsonville, the Grapevine Cafe
and Gallery (211 Railroad Avenue; 225-473-8463;
www.grapevinecafeandgallery.com
) offers arty atmosphere and lauded South Louisiana cuisine, like crawfish
étouffée ($13.95) and seafood gumbo ($5.25).
WHERE TO STAY
The major hotel chains might offer convenience for families, but Louisiana
boasts a wide array of B & B alternatives. In New Orleans, the Hubbard Mansion
Bed and Breakfast (3535 St. Charles Avenue, 504-897-3535;
www.hubbardmansion.com ), set behind
oaks along St. Charles Avenue, blends modern amenities with classic charm for
about $160 a night.
Farther north, near Melrose Plantation along the Cane River in historical
Natchitoches, there’s the cozy Creole Rose Estates Bed and Breakfast
(318-357-0384; www.creoleroseestates.com), a three-bedroom waterfront getaway
with scrumptious Creole meals cooked by the host, Janet LaCour. Rates range from
$145 for two people to $250 for six people a night.
RON STODGHILL, a former staff writer for The Times, wrote “Redbone: Money,
Malice and Murder in Atlanta.”
Driving Back Into
Louisiana’s History, NYT, 25.5.2008,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/travel/25trail.html
Into the Louisiana Bayou
May 23, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID CARR
THERE are a lot of ways to hit the erase button on adult,
workaday concerns on a quick trip to New Orleans.
You can ingest a few of those mysterious Jell-O shots on Bourbon Street, or
gamble-dance-party your way to a new kind of Zen all over the city.
Even without alcohol, the mélange of fat, spice and seafood that New Orleans
dishes up every day can have wonderful mood-altering effects. But even though a
plate of blackened redfish will probably do the trick, there are few capers that
compare with going out to the bayou and getting that fish yourself.
Not long ago, three pals from New York — two of whom had never really been
fishing — joined a New Orleans friend for a quick weekend of male frolic. On
Thursday, we met for a boys’ night out at Galatoire’s, the seminal Creole
classic in the Quarter, and then wandered out to the bars on Frenchman Street.
A slow wake-up Friday was followed by a 40-minute drive south toward the town of
Jean Lafitte. Suburban sprawl quickly gave way to the bayou, and its
most-sought-after inhabitant, the redfish.
Once we arrived on that swampier, funkier ground, we found a charter boat to get
better acquainted with Mr. Redfish. We put our fishing destiny in the hands of
Capt. Theophile Jean-Antoine Bourgeois, who took no small pleasure schooling a
bunch of Yankees on his own version of Cajun fishing culture, including
brandishing some kind of voodoo talisman built out of the teeth of nutria and
the unmentionables of a raccoon.
Riding along in his boat, one of us noticed a beautiful duck taking wing as we
roared through the bayou and asked about its name. He said, “I don’t know, but
you get four of them and you got yourself a nice gumbo.”
It’s not all backcountry fun and games. Captain Theophile (pronounced toe-FEEL,
the name is a gift from the father that he has passed on to his son) and his
crews run as many as 25 boats a day out of Bourgeois Fishing Charters, which is
in a century-old schoolhouse, the Cajun Vista, that was rehabbed after Katrina.
Most everyone goes there for the almighty redfish, a swimming, eating machine
that prowls the brackish, shallow water of much of the Mississippi Delta. There
are day trips, but for people who are serious, or want to pretend they are,
boats take an overnight run out to the Cajun Chalet, a fishing camp 18 miles
down Bayou Barataria. On our trip, Captain Theophile and Capt. Chris Pike, 24,
one of the Bourgeois skippers who at age 17 became the youngest captain out on
the bayou, took four fisherman in two boats out into the vastness of the swamp.
Some of us were open-mouthed as we raced along through hairpin turns on two feet
of water at 40 miles an hour in two 24-foot boots with big, angry 225-horsepower
Mercurys at the back. The heat receded as we whizzed through a landscape of
working and abandoned oil rigs, cypress trees in various states of entropy and
seemingly endless hidden throughways and open cuts, a maze that throbs with
wildlife and no small amount of mystery.
“Where you at Red? Come out, you spotted girl!” Captain Theophile called as we
stood up and threw spinners and jigs just to the edge of the grass line. A wind
the day before had roiled the shallow waters and sent many of the fish into the
mud to wait it out. Using native instincts forged in the crucible of both guided
tours and tournament fishing, Captain Theophile and his crew crisscrossed the
bayou at high speed, guided by winds, the clarity of the water and the chirp of
Nextel radio beeps from fellow captains.
“Where are we at?” inquired one of the visitors.
“I believe for the time being it’s called ‘No Fish Bayou.’ We might be eating
chicken tonight,” Captain Theophile said, smiling beneath his shades.
IT looked grim for a while. One of our group stepped to Captain Chris with an
impossibly tangled reel and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Operator error,” he said, not looking up from the tangle in his hands.
Another one of us let a jig drop too deep and fought like crazy to pull in the
catch — an old piece of tree stump.
“That’s America on line,” Captain Theophile said. “You landed a piece of the
planet.”
And then the elusive star of the show made an appearance. Captain Theophile
pulled in an eight-pound redfish; then he told a visitor to cast right on top of
the spot, and sure enough, another smaller but still feisty fish hit the lure.
The redfish mugged the bait and when they noticed it was attached to something,
created a huge, splashy ruckus trying to get away.
“We kicked the skunk off the boat,” Captain Theophile announced triumphantly.
There was enough real actual fishing that day to generate excited chatter over a
communal dinner table back at the Cajun Chalet over a mess of steamed crayfish,
followed by jambalaya, gumbo and fried redfish from one of the earlier returning
boats.
Various fishing parties — the chalet sleeps 20 in two adjoining cabins — mixed,
played poker and talked smack.
The Cajun Chalet, less rustic than restful, gives fishing shacks a good name.
It’s air-conditioned and nicely appointed with bunks made of cypress. There are
showers, a cooler full of beer and soft drinks, and screened porches that seem
tailor-made for telling fish stories as night settles in over the swamp.
Chris Sadler has been coming to the Cajun Chalet with pals for 10 years. “It’s
all of it. The scenery, the fish, the camaraderie,” he said. “And, of course,
Theophile’s stories don’t hurt.”
Captain Theophile works a Cajun oral tradition that involves casting out stories
before somebody finally takes the bait. One of the highlights is the loup-garou,
a mythical swamp beast his mother recruited to scare him into bed.
Eventually the jaw-boning about the day’s achievements subsided and people
turned in to make ready for the crack-of-dawn departure for more fishing.
The next morning, the Rajun’ Cajun, KLRZ-FM, was on the boat radio as we pulled
out after a big breakfast, and Mrs. Gloria the D.J., was declaiming her current
husband’s fecklessness in between old-timey zydeco songs full of violins,
accordions and love gone bad. The sound, the scene, the wisecracking captain —
the grandness of this place and its pleasures are manifest, and it is not even 7
o’clock.
We worked the spots near the chalet until word came from a boat across Little
Lake that the redfish were schooled up there. We all jumped into Captain Chris’s
boat, and he told us to settle in the rear so we could rip across the lake.
By the time we got there, one of the boats from the camp had already caught its
limit of five for each fisherman, and the late arrivals, including us, gladly
hopped on. Four and then five boats used trolling motors to go back and forth
over the bunch of redfish, a school of boats over a school of fish, and the
redfish began hitting.
The little bay came alive with whoops of joy as first one and then another of
the latecomers hooked a keeper. One of our guys mentioned his hope of catching a
flounder, and Captain Chris yelled to an adjoining captain, “We’re up on this
redfish hole, and this Yankee wants me to find him some flounder!”
It’s not exactly fish in a barrel — the four of us got 13 fish, including a few
speckled trout — but the thrill of landing a big game fish out of the bayou is
fleeting, not least of which because the bayou itself is fast disappearing, no
longer built up by a channeled Mississippi River.
“None of this will be here in 20 years,” Captain Theophile said. “Erosion from
waves, salt water intrusion, the river not refreshing the bank.”
ON the way back, someone — we won’t say who — got a big ole 20-pound drum fish
on the line and made the rookie move of dropping the tip of his pole for a
second, enough for the fat trophy to escape. The forlorn angler muttered as
Captain Chris explained that that was the fish that would bring him back. (And I
will be, Mr. Drum, you can count on it.)
A man of many skills, Captain Theophile grabbed a couple of our fish when we got
back to the Cajun Chalet and had them filleted and grilled in less than a half
hour. We got busy posing for pictures with our remaining fish while the crew
cleaned up.
By early afternoon, we motored back to the schoolhouse, ending at a huge dock
where the electric knives came out along with the bounty from the holds, and
every one of the 20 guys walked away with a huge bag of fillets.
An ultralight aircraft sat incongruously parked next to all the speedboats. “How
do you think I find all those fish?” said Captain Theophile, who takes to the
air to scout locations and buzz gators when the mood suits.
On Sunday morning, the flight home beckoned, with duct-taped coolers and the
faint aroma of fish offering evidence that the Yankees were bringing home more
than memories from the bayou.
VISITOR INFORMATION
BAYOU COUNTRY can be sampled as a day trip from New Orleans or serve as a
landing spot for several days of exploration. The redfish is king, but there are
other reasons to visit the bayou.
Bourgeois Fishing Charters (504-341-5614; http://neworleansfishing.com ) offers
day trips for fishing. ($475 for two people and $75 for each additional person
up to four). Fishing, lodging and meals are available at the Cajun Vista ($375),
and there are also fishing-lodging packages for the Cajun Chalet, 18 miles away.
Other guides in the area include Papa Joe (504-689-3728;
www.fishneworleans.com )
and Mike Daigle (504-915-9480; www.castitcharters.com).
Packages are generally all-inclusive with bait, tackle, light food and soft
drinks. Bring your own beer if you are so inclined, and remember sunscreen and
hats. Guests are expected to tip captains after a good day on the water.
People who want to see waterfowl and gators up close but have no interest in
actually fishing can take one of the many swamp tours in the area, including
Jean Lafitte Swamp and Airboat (504-587-1719;
www.jeanlafitteswamptour.com ). The
two-hour tours ($24 by boat or $49 by airboat), include all manner of swamp
critters and a tutorial on the Cajun culture.
And if you would rather take in the splendors of the bayou from the sanctity of
a wicker chair on a dock, try the Victoria Inn & Gardens (4707 Jean Lefitte
Boulevard, Lafitte; 800-689-4797; www.victoriainn.com ), a B & B with 14 rooms
($127 to $250), a restaurant, a pool and paddle boats.
Into the Louisiana
Bayou, NYT, 23.5.2008,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/travel/escapes/23bayou.html
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