Mike Tidwell - Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisianas Cajun Coast

Contents

For Sasha, who is the whole world

ACCLAIM FOR MIKE TIDWELLS Bayou Farewell

Passionate.... [Tidwells] first-person reportage is engaging and well-written.... A clarion call for Americans to focus on an unfolding environmental disaster.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Brilliant... a celebration of the open, friendly, industrious, fun-, family-, food- and music-loving people who were pushed from land to land until they found a place nobody wanted and then made it their own kind of paradise. Read this book and youll want to go down to the bayou and youll want for all this to be saved.

The Birmingham News

Accurate, poignant and personal.... We are captured by his narrative. His clear description[s]... pull us and hold us with fascination.

The Anniston Star (Anniston, AL)

An eye-opener.... Tidwell does an excellent job of explaining why we, as a nation, should care about what is happening in the swamps of Louisiana. For that reason alone, I think everyone should read Tidwells book.

Rob Meltzer, Milford Daily News (Milford, MA)

Hauntingly eloquent.

The Monroe News-Star (Monroe, LA)

A tale both enlivening and sad. What makes Bayou Farewell so appealing is that Tidwell allows us to experience life on the bayouand thus better appreciate what is being lost.

The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)

Tidwell masterfully depicts the watery threat that is claiming an acre of land every 20 minutes.... It is a sad and infuriating story, yet there is much joy and laughter in Tidwells wonderfully written piece.... Beaucoup good.

The Tampa Tribune and Times

Conveys a powerful sense of place.... Sobering.

Washingtonian

Tidwell gives a voice to the activists who are knee-deep in the problem and to the local people who are directly affected. He supplies all the facts... [and] draws vivid portraits of the people who welcomed him.

New Orleans Gambit Weekly

Tidwell is a master of capturing the significant dialogue and indeed the very sound of that dialogue.

Decatur Daily

All who live in coastal regions would do well to pick up Tidwells book and heed its warnings.

Cape Cod Times

An astounding book that ought to be required reading.... Well-researched.... Breathtakingly descriptive prose.

Louisiana Sportsman

[Tidwell] can wax poetic about a bayou sunset with the best of them. About as complete and heartfelt a book on the Louisiana wetlands crisis as can be written.

Baton Rouge Magazine

Unique.... The one best book on the subject... should be read by everyone.

Lifestyle Lafayette

Tidwell immerses himself in the Cajun world.... [His] writing style makes it easy for readers to feel his new Cajun friends are their friends, too, and to wonder if their way of life must vanish because the rest of the nation doesnt care enough.

BookPage

Acknowledgments

Thanks first of all to Louisiana natives Glen Pitre and Michelle Benoit, who first offered the opinion that an outsider like myself could safely hitchhike down the bayous of Louisiana aboard Cajun fishing boats. In between my boat trips, they opened their beautiful home to me along Bayou Lafourche, giving me a treasured place to rest up, regain my land legs, and feast on sweet blackberries just behind the back porch. Fine writers themselves, Glen and Michelle also offered invaluable comments on early drafts of the book. In a state famous for its warm people and welcoming culture, these two truly stand out. Again, merci beaucoup.

Special thanks also to heroic conservationists Mark Davis, Kerry St. P, and Windell Curole, who spent hours in the field, on the phone, and in their offices patiently explaining to me the social and scientific reasons behind the rapid disappearance of Louisianas fragile wetland coast.

Enormous thanks, too, to my agent, Jennifer Lyons, who immediately recognized the importance of this subject and applied great stores of grace and savvy in finding a home for the book.

For help large and small, thanks also to: Craig Stoltz, Edward Kastenmeier, Nick Varchaver, the Melancons of Leeville, Papoose Ledet, Dean Blanchard, Knuckles and Rose Mayeux, Wayne Belanger, Charlie Broussard, Papoose Plaisance, Ricky and Elaine Cutchall, Loulan Pitre Jr., Denise Reed, Peter Vujnovich Jr., Brenda Dardar, Michael Dardar, Lawrence Billiot, Bill Vermillion, Peter Callais, Kirk Cheramie, Kirk Kilgen, Rob Gorman, Father Joseph Pilola, Father Roch Naquin, Chuck Villarubia, Paul Kemp, Glen Thomas, Elam Griffin, Mark Dismuke, John Verdin Jr., Seth Grimes, and Frank Reiss.

Final thanks to my dear wife, Catherine, and son, Sasha, who with great love and patience endured yet another of Dads exhausting book projects.

A Note on Accents

The Cajuns of South Louisiana speak English with an accent as distinctive as any in America. The long history of spoken French in this region means that most Cajuns cannot make the th sound, a sound that doesnt exist in French. So when speaking English, this comes out dis and brother comes out brudder. Elements of French grammar also creep into the English, with some Cajuns saying they have to go upstair to find a pair of shoe. Finally, both the general tones of French and the influence of Deep South isolation color almost every word of Cajun English. A bayou fisherman might say, Ah don lak ta dance oil de time, me, at de fais-do-do. So I deen ween no contest. Translation: I dont like to dance all the time at the fais-do-do [a traditional Cajun dance]. So I didnt win any contests.

Clearly, to write all of the Cajun dialogue in this book in this manner would exhaust the reader and prove, in the end, disrespectful to Cajuns. The true color and dignity of their speech would inevitably be lost in translation. Therefore Ive chosen a more limited portrayal, faithfully omitting the th sound and including some of the altered grammar without laying things on too thick. This approach serves to consistently remind the reader that Cajuns do, in fact, sound different from most Americans without loading the pages down with an impenetrable soup of dialect.

Journey Down the Bayous

Prologue

I cant believe Im about to cry, but there it is: my eyes well up as I face, one last time, the two Cajun fishermen. They are grizzled men, standing in the thin light of a new moon, standing on a wobbly dock at the end of Bayou Petit Caillou just spitting distance from the Gulf of Mexico. We shake hands goodbye, but the gesture is decidedly awkward and grossly inadequateand though I dare not hug these men, I want to... and perhaps they want to hug me, too. But these are working menshrimpers with scars on their hands and tattoos on their arms and cigarettes behind their ears. They are poor men who, on a bad day, will put in twenty hours for just three or four dollars payand yet they ve given me everything they have: food, drink, shelter from storm, a ride down the bayou, and a journey through a Cajun world that is as backwoods and off the trodden path as anything in America.

What if I want to send you a letter up dere in New York? says Wayne Belanger, a man with dirty-silver hair and hands as thick as encyclopedias who mixes Cajun French into his English, calling storms