Louisiana

Kenny is a character. We spent several hours listening to him talk, and his deep voice, Louisiana accent, and creative way of telling stories made it interesting. During the time we spent at his trailer, he talked about everything. First he asked us about school and what we are planning career-wise and we talked about cartography for a while. We talked about noodling for catfish, which Kenny has done, and about fishing for alligators using a rope, hook, and half a chicken. We talked (or, rather Kenny talked and we got a sparse few words in here and there) about the weather in Louisiana and Minnesota, about Duluth's heated streets, steep hills, and heavy snowfalls, and we talked about hurricanes. Hurricane Rita was actually more destructive than Katrina. Rita flooded the whole of southern Louisiana, whereas Katrina only got so much attention because of the levee breaking, which did all the damage since the city of New Orleans was built below sea level, the levee built from the land where the city now sits. Kenny has satellite TV but the only channel he watched while we were there was the Weather Channel. We talked as the Weather Channel played in the background, and watched Hurricane Dean's progression over the 4 day trip. We watched reports of it ripping through the lesser antilles, south of Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, and hitting Jamaica hard. The storm eventually made landfall at the Yucatan Peninsula. Tropical Storm Erin had flooded Houston's streets and that was also covered. We actually recieved some rain from the outer bands of that storm, but nothing major. Kenny went on talking about Louisiana's public school system and how it has the lowest standards in the country, and yet 40 some schools still do not meet those standards. "GodDAMN" he would say after certain sentences, the way we would use "can you believe it?". He said the college system was better. We talked about LSU and the craze over football in the region. We talked about Mardi Gras, which he has never been to and has no big inkling to go. "It's a con-artist's wet dream" as he put it. He told us that not many out-of-staters realize Mardi Gras is a statewide celebration, and many locals are heading to towns like Lafayette, which are holding closer to tradition and have grown recently. We were lucky to find a place to stay, because it was Jazz Fest in New Orleans, the second biggest event besides Mardi Gras, and hotels are more expensive and vacancies tough to find. He invited us to stay every night of our trip, and we accepted his hospitable offer. Kenny went on talking late in to the night until we went to bed on the cots at around 3 AM. It's impossible to describe how funny some of the stuff Kenny said was without being there to see it. He talked as he slouched in his maroon arm chair, drinking about 6 cans of Pepsi and smoking about as many cigarettes, hands motioning as he spoke to animate his stories. One thing that made us laugh hard was when he talked about CSI and how a lot of people are going into that forensics because of it. He said that when they get a job they find out that it's pretty boring and nothing like the show: "Kids expect to get a job and they give you a Bionic eye and zoom, there's your pubic hair, cum stains all over the walls...that ain't how it is. GodDAMN". He says it all with a straight face. He used the phrase "throwd off" a lot too. Like when he told us "I got this throwd off theory" about how humans killed off the dinosaurs, armadillos are small ankliosaurs, and humans have always been humans. "Yall might think I'm throwd off but I want you to show me a chimp with a human baby...evolution is all throwd off man." He says he isn't a "bible thumper" either, because he has seen to much in his travels that he doesn't follow religion much. He was in desert storm and told us about how his unit was given nerve agent pills by the government that was supposed to give them throwd off symptoms. He and another dozen men from his unit didn't suffer the symptoms and were pulled aside. It was discovered that all of them were from the south, and that due to crop dusters, polluted water, and pesticide trucks they had already been exposed and become resilient to the poisons in the pills they were given, so they were sent back out to fight. Louisiana is the "ass whole of america" as Kenny called it, "everything comes out here" referring to all the pollution of the rest of the Mississippi watershed. As we were on a fishing trip, we also talked about fishing. As Kenny said, "yall must have a hard on for fishing" and "yall must be throwd off if you come to New Orleans to go fishing". "GodDAMN"

Before we went to bed he told us the shotgun's in the closet if we need it.

The first morning we ran into town (Krotz Springs and got beer and my fishing license at a gas station. We also got boudin balls and cracklins. Boudin balls are deepfried potato and meat mush, spiced the cajun way. Cracklins are deep fried pork fat, and I didn't care for thme, but the boudin balls were pretty good. The fishing was somewhat slow in the hot humid weather, but we managed to catch some brim (sunfish). I landed a few longear sunfish, a pair of warmouths, and a few bluegill, which we cut up and used for bait ("everything is legal in Louisiana"). I managed to catch my first spotted gar, and also a nasty looking alligator snapping turtle. It got hot fast, and the humidity made me drip with sweat, so we didn't fish during mid afternoon. Nick was drinking a lot, so I drove into Baton Rouge (a 40 minute trip). The capitol building sticks up among the skyscrapers of downtown, and an oil refinery looms in the distance. Looking on the otherside of I-10 from the bridge LSU's Tiger Stadium stands like a shrine, surrounded by residential area. We went to the LSU campus and drove around looking for The Chimes restaurant. It was raining in sheets when we found it, but the food was good. We split an appetizer of alligator, which tasted like chicken but is tougher, and we each ordered crawfish etouffee, which was really good food. On the way back Nick showed me the area he worked at tracking turkeys. We saw an armadillo in the field and chased it but it got under a shed. We poked at it with a pole to spook it out, and it finally ran out. I didn't see it til the thing was halfway across the field and it made it to the woods before I could catch it. They are faster than I thought they would be. Kenny told us later that some armadillos in the area carry lepresy. We went back and fished for a while, then talked with Kenny some more. While Nick showered and talked to his girlfriend Kenny told me about his own college experience. Kenny went into the military for 10 years, and then went to college in Texas and got a degree in business and gemology. He told me some stuff about diamonds, platinum, and silver, and about how he wracked up a big Blockbuster bill. Now he has Netflix. He had thought about being a professional jeweler, but doesn't work because he has enough money not too, and he likes to live cheaply as it is. When Kenny didn't have the Weather Channel on he was watching M*A*S*H constantly. I think he got through seasons 5-9 while we were staying with him. Nick ran me to a town that had an ATM machine and we grabbed some energy drinks at the gas station for the morning. That town only had 4 black families in it at one time, and Kenny said they all burned down on the same night. The authorities called it problems with the electrical wiring. Right... (Kenny used some colored words but isn't racist. As he said, he has problems with "coonass" individuals, not with groups of people). He told us how blacks don't hunt in the area anymore, because some neighbors down the road hung a KKK flag up once. He doesn't like those neighbors. Kenny let us go to bed relatively early that night (11 PM) since we were getting up at 1 AM to drive to Lafitte for our guided fishing trip. He got up with us and made us coffee, and we headed out. On I-10 we ran into stalled traffic on a long bridge and sat from 3:15-4:00 while they cleared out an accident. We passed New Orleans, and the Superdome and skyline looked cool lit up in the dark. We made it to the Griffin Fishing lodge right at 5:30 and they gave us a sausage and biscuit breakfast and we headed out. The sky was beautiful that morning as the sun rose. Cumulonimbus clouds shone in the light and the water glowed orange. The salt marshes are vast flatlands of shallow water and short marsh grass and we could see for miles in every direction. The only thing sticking up on the horizon was a distant oil refinery. The fishing was fun. We fished shallow water, working the edges and points of the marsh grass with jigheads with a rubber minnow on them. Storm squalls moved in the distance, and thankfully kept away and allowed us to fish til we limited out on redfish. Our guide, CJ Rojas, put us and kept us on the fish all day. He was a good guide, giving us tips here and there and pointing out fish. Nick and CJ talked about ducks, and he talked about shrimping and oyster fishing. He filleted our fish in about 10 minutes with an electric knife and packed our fillets with ice. We went to the Academy, an outdoor store, near New Orleans and got a cooler and some blackening spice. We were going to go into New Orleans and check out the French Quarter, but the streets were confusing and it was raining so we decided to go back to Kenny's. We talked all that afternoon and evening, and watched the Weather Channel. Saturday we slept in a bit and fished again at Kenny's (he has a dock right on Little Alabama Bayou). His neighbors showed up that day and they took us out on their pontoon boat. The culture is a bit different down there, and the married couple referred to each other as Mister Burton and Miss Lin. Miss Lin wore the pants in that relationship. Mr. Burton had a talkative, cocky attitude, but is a nice guy. Kenny says he's throwd off. Miss Lin was jumping at the bit to go fishing, and she could give the coldest glare I've ever seen, using two evil-eyes at once. Mr. Burton pulled the boat up to a vine full of 1 cm sized purple spheres. They were muscadines, a type of wild grape used for jelly and wines, but can be eaten as is. We ate a few, skin and all. Kenny told us later that we weren't supposed to eat the skin, that Burt is throwd off in the melon, and that we'd probably get E-Coli from the bird shit on them (all in his matter-of-fact tone and straight face). It started to lightning so we got off the bayou without being able to fish long with them. Burt told us that if we ever came back to make ourselves known and we could do some serious fishing. After the rain and after dark we went fishing once more, trying to pull in a catfish or something. We set up mosquito coils to keep the bugs off and fished for about an hour. We didn't catch anything, but Kenny brought a spotlight down and shone it over the water. We saw 3 pairs of orangish eyes glowing. They belonged to alligators swimming around, the first time I'd ever seen one. It was pretty cool. The biggest one I saw was about 6 feet long.

We talked to Kenny some more, about guns, hunting, wildlife, and wolves before going to bed again. We got up, had a cup of coffee, thanked Kenny for letting us stay and headed out. Kenny said we were welcome to stop any time and told us to make sure and call when we got home so he'd know we made it safely. It almost felt like he was an uncle or something by the time we left, not just some random stranger that gave us the key to his house for the weekend. It was a great trip, and I want to go back, to fish, and to visit Kenny again. He enjoys the company, and said it was fine that we didn't have any thing to offer him. He's a cool guy. We went to the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge and Nick got some shot glasses and I got a pair of Ragin Cajun sunglasses at the Nawlins Sports store. Then we headed out. We took I-55 into Mississippi and ate at a Waffle House for grits and waffles, which was very good. We stopped in St. Louis to see the Golden Gate Arch, and then headed across Missouri on I-70 to Highway 63, which we took through boring-as-hell Iowa. Nick drove the whole way, non stop. We pulled into Rochester at around 9 AM. There had been heavy rains here while we were away and Nick's basement got flooded. Ken and Linda gave me a ride back to Red Wing so Nick could crash and sleep. I hit up Mcdonald's breakfast with Kori and cashed my checks, then went to bed and slept til the following afternoon. I think I will be making another trip to Louisiana in my future...