Legacy

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, 1847

“Would you like to dance?” asked the older gentleman with the tanned face covered in laugh lines. Completely flabbergasted, I accepted and was soon swept up in a whirl of lights, Creole music and the pounding of hundreds of feet stomping the dance floor.

In an effort to discover what the Cajuns of south Louisiana – specifically in the Atchafalaya Basin area – were like, I had come to Angelle’s Whiskey River Landing in Henderson. It’s just a short 45 minute drive west of Baton Rouge to the largest swamp in the United States. On my journey I met an array of people whose culture was far more multifaceted than I realized. I barely scratched the surface of a way of life that has survived the best and the worst of south Louisiana with a grin and a hearty appetite for good times, good friends and family.

My dance partner disappeared before I could ask his name, but I did ask him why he lived in his nearby hometown of New Iberia his entire life. His answer was probably the best – and the most accurate – of any I received in my time in Henderson and the surrounding area.

“If you ain’t happy here [in south Louisina], you ain’t gonna be happy anywhere else.”

The Bandito

The first night my coworkers and I ventured to Henderson, some misguided directions led us to a rather unfortunate situation in which our car became stuck in thick clay on top of a levee in freezing December rain.

Dirk Angelle, member of the towing team that rescued us, was the first of several business owners I talked to. He immediately referred us to some relatives who owned a houseboat marina. Angelle was large, loud and not the least bit shy about his membership in the Banditos, a notorious motorcycle gang known for its forays into organized crime. Angelle provided the first glimpse of a trait all the locals seem to possess: everyone either knew one another or knew about one another.

Despite Angelle’s tough exterior, the gang member couldn’t have been more accommodating. He offered my crew a place to stay in his spare trailer on his property, but we politely declined. Meeting Angelle proved to be the starting point of a long chain of connections between a dynamic and engaging community.

The Jack of All Trades

After surviving the fiasco on the levee the night before, we made our way to Atchafalaya Basin Landing. The owner, Tucker Friedman, embodied the classic Cajun. Decked out in a camouflage jacket, worn jeans and work boots, Friedman has lived on a handmade, two story houseboat at the marina for the past decade.

“It’s a unique life. It’s not a prosperous one – there’s one disaster after another,” Friedman said with a grin. “But it’s a good life. Being on the [Atchafalaya] basin and having the ability to just jump in a boat and do whatever you like is a great thing.”

Friedman has lived in the Henderson area his entire life and has been involved in local business for the past 35 years. Having owned a Chevron station, a supermarket, a wholesale ice company, a houseboat refurbishing business and finally a bar and marina, he is ready to take it easy and enjoy his life on the Atchafalaya Basin. After I asked why he stayed all those years, Freidman said he sometimes gets frustrated living there but could never leave the lifestyle and the people.

“When I leave I can’t wait to get back home,” Friedman said. “I’m an outdoors person, so being able to just walk out the back door and hunt and fish is important to me. The people that frequent here are generous and friendly. They’re always lending a hand whether I ask for it or not. They don’t expect anything in return.”

I spoke to Friedman as he was about to leave to restock the marina’s supply of Crown Royal Whisky. A good life, indeed.

The Bridge Tender

When I ran into Gerry Birard on a bridge next to the levee, I wasn’t entirely sure of what he was doing. He was leaning over the side of the bridge, staring intently at a large clump of plant matter lodged next to the support columns of the bridge. Birard, an older man who looked a little rough around the edges, was working on clearing the plants out from under the bridge with the assistance of a tugboat, a task he has dutifully done for the past 20 years.

Birard was once a soybean farmer, a job he said ended when he went bankrupt after “Reganomics” hit the area farmers hard.

Birard said he stays in the area because of the warm and inviting nature of the people in the Atchafalaya Basin.

The Bilingualist

“French is my first language. In school, we weren’t taught French; there was no French immersion program,” Debbie Savoi said in a heavy Cajun accent, in which words containing “th” are replaced with “d” and speech is peppered with francophone words. “To this day, there are certain people I walk up to that I automatically speak French to.”

I met Savoi at the Longfellow-Evangeline Park, a Cajun culture educational museum near St. Martinville, a town about 18 miles south of Henderson. Savoi is an older woman, who looks somewhat world-weary. She works at the museum as a guide, and informed me she was a “real deal” Cajun.

Savoi was slightly more guarded than other people in the area with whom I had spoken, but didn’t hesitate to tell me why she’s never moved from the area.

“I haven’t traveled that much in my lifetime, but when I do go away from here I miss the friendliness of the people. People here are open. They’re more willing to accept and they’re willing to take people in.”

Savoi told me something that seemed the most succinct way of describing the people in the Atchafalaya Basin area: “It’s just the way we are. It’s the joie de vivre.” The joy of life.

The Possum

Savoi recommended I go to a restaurant where she worked for about 15 years, a place by the name of Possum’s. Ignoring the seemingly cliché name, I ended up meeting Possum, otherwise known as Larry Bertrand Jr., after a late lunch. Possum, it turns out, was named so because his grandfather apparently thought Possum looked like an opossum when he was a baby.

Possum fully embodied the joie de vivre Savoi spoke about. A tall, weathered bald man, Possum ambled over to the table and proceeded to talk about everything from hypnotism (or “hypmotism”) to why St. Martinville struggled on even after the devastating loss of an industrial plant that had once supported 3,500 jobs in the area.

“St. Martinville’s changed a lot because the industry closed down,” Possum said matter-of-factly. “Wal-Mart left St. Martinville. Now, all the small Mom-and-Pop places are here. It’s constant evolution. St. Martinville is trying to become a bedroom community.”

Possum, like so many other residents in the area, has lived in St. Martinville almost his entire life, always returning to the area even after he left to work odd jobs.

“I stay here because of family. Everybody around here has large family,” Possum said. “Everybody that leaves eventually comes back.”

Back at whiskey river landing, the dancers left the floor as the Saints game that would determine their shot at the Super Bowl went into overtime. The bar erupted into shouts of exuberance as the Saints kicked the game-winning field goal to win the NFC Championship. I celebrated along with the bar’s patrons and couldn’t help but notice how willing they had been to talk to me about any detail of their lives. Their ability to completely open up to a stranger was the most remarkable thing about any of the people I met throughout the Atchafalaya Basin, a place that seems so far removed from anywhere I had been yet only a short drive from Baton Rouge.

From Dirk Angelle to the dancers at Whiskey River, the residents of the Atchafalaya Basin are a dynamic people whose accepting and easygoing nature is well worth the trip.

See a slideshow of photos from this story >>