French-Accented Spanish Moss - Chapter 5 : There's a Gator!

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Louisiana highway eighty-two slopes south of Abbeville to the Gulf of Mexico. The raised and shoulderless byway uncovers a lifestyle, dramatic recent destruction, and geography that the parish seat quietly conceals in its more densely populated setting. It is the gateway to the expansive wetlands where waterfowl and fearsome reptiles far outnumber human inhabitants.
“There’s a gator!” cries out Alison, my newly-acquired guide from the Chamber of Commerce.
I am too busy keeping the car on the two-lane road, knowing full well that any significant error will land us in a waterlogged ditch. I nonetheless peer off to try to catch the glimpse of one in the natural rectangular ponds. At fifty-five miles an hour, I can make nothing of the wooden sticks that protrude above the surface. I am still unconvinced that I saw one.
Alison has an advantage. She is native to Vermilion Parish and can distinguish between a semi-submerged tree branch and a pair of reptilian eyes staring back at the asphalt. Though I did not realize it, I will not see an alligator the entire day but for their images on billboards. “When I was a girl, my family only had one car. So since my Daddy worked down this way, we had to go to work with him every day in the morning and pick him up so the rest of us could get around.”
I had already given up on alligator spotting and kept driving. “So, you could just close your eyes and direct me around this part of the parish without a map?”
“Yep, not a problem. Don’t need one. But I still like coming through here and pointing everything out to other folks.” I doubt she understands where I have traveled and that I have never come across a place where land and sea mesh like Southern Louisiana. Everything is new; I am excited to be behind the wheel.
At Forked Island, Alison points out the engineering techniques that keep the road above the water. Nowhere are we more than five feet above sea level. “When the road first went in, workers laid down logs and then covered it all. That way it doesn’t sink. We cruise over the timber foundation enveloped in a well engineered earthen mound; there are very few turns in the road. It is almost impossible to safely pull over and stop.
On Saturdays duck hunters make a necessary stop for supplies at the corner store in Forked Island. The community is little more than a T-stop anyway. I invent a reason to go in just to look around a store as bucolic on the inside as the surroundings are outside. I buy a bottle of water but cannot get past the cashier without exchanging pleasantries even if I tried. It’s the nature of people here. “Happy New Year!” she calls out to me and I return the wishes. A minute earlier when grabbing a cold water bottle in the back, I eavesdropped on a similar exchange between her and a few local hunters in full gear. Their words were so suffocated in their Cajun accent that I could not grasp what they were discussing. It was English and not French, but just barely.
Long freight barges chug through the Intracoastal Canal in order to avoid the choppier waves and petroleum platforms of the open Gulf. The bridge just south of Forked Island still impresses the thirty-five-year-old mother of two. “I thought this bridge used to be the biggest in the world.” Indeed, it is an attention getter. It has several concrete columns extending from under the roadway to the canal floor. The middle columns are far enough apart to allow traffic to go under. Farther up the road is another nondescript convenience store at which I stop only to have a look. Mounted on the wall are over a half dozen species of ducks in flight formation. A constant flow of pickup trucks arrive and depart. They are mostly Chevys and Fords. An occasional Dodge Ram may also stop. Cajuns do not embrace Toyotas, Hyundais, or Nissans. Without being vocal about it, they buy American. Hunting accessories abound. I can find no packets of gourmet Indonesian coffee or espresso machine filters anywhere. The store’s patrons are often father and son, decked out in grey and green camouflage from head to ankle. A handful wear fluorescent orange tops.
At Hebert’s Public Boat Landing, nothing stirs in spite of seven or eight parked pickups with empty boat trailers in tow. Only a solitary and aged shrimp boat softly bobs but makes little noise. Barking comes from the back of one pickup bed. A golden retriever, the kind I fantasize should get my slippers every morning near the fireplace, yelps from behind a locked kennel. Its master is away and has left him behind. My vehicle is the only four-door sedan I have seen for miles. Strangely enough, given my country surroundings, just driving the Pontiac makes me feel like a rodeo bull rider at a hip hop concert.

A few hundred yards from Pecan Island High School, cattle graze in sparse numbers on the damp flatlands. Three years ago, 30,000 more head chewed away at the high grass turf. A clue as to why such a plummet in numbers is evident at the school’s entrance. The school has been shut down indefinitely. The entrance walkways are cracked. Duct tape still criss-crosses some windows. “No Loitering” signs have been posted; I look the other way and pretend not to notice them. The blue lettering on the silver metal mailbox has peeled. The “d” in Island is completely gone. Rusty support beams cover the main unswept entrance. Not enough students live in Pecan Island anymore to justify its operations. Teenagers now must travel each way, everyday, for the better part of an hour to Kaplan. The high school’s desertion is the first stark reminder that Hurricane Rita’s legacy will not gracefully dissipate into the history books. After more than two years, life has not returned to normal. Recovery from the physical scars, never mind the psychological ones, is a long way off. Every now and then, Alison and I pass the shell of foundationless homes sunk several inches into the marsh. Mobile homes are propped up on concrete pilings; they are precautions against the far reach of the menacing Gulf in late summer and early autumn. The triangular stakes on which their homes are propped will save residents the torment of complete property loss and having to rebuild.
I was about to learn how severe Rita’s devastation still lingers in neighboring Cameron Parish as I continued west along highway eighty-two. Mildly bent toothpick-like posts hoist thin power lines to the side of and parallel to the uninspiring road.

I never took note of the address. Even without a numbered mailbox, it is easy to recognize. I have named it the Palmetto Estate for the trees that hinder a complete view of the front porch from the road. It is beyond Pecan Island on the way to Grand Chenier. No one has occupied the white stilted home in a while as evidenced by the dried up coarse palm leaves on the front walk. Even when raised above the land, the gabled two-floor home’s porch gives the feel of a more dignified antebellum home in Natchez, Mississippi. Nothing impedes me from walking on the front lawn; the white fence that once stood lies in arranged piles of plastic posts. Once embedded in concrete, they have been ripped from their subterranean base. Some of the formerly buried concrete boulders have been exhumed by Rita’s winds. Among the loose gravel chippings of the side entrance are seashells that have been carried and deposited from the sea. The open Gulf is over five miles away.

The gate at the unpaved side driveway of the Palmetto Estate has had its green iron bars twisted by Rita. Seen through those bars are over two dozen live oaks in perfect formation. Though they mysteriously lack the hanging Spanish moss, they form a canopy and silently remind me of the former splendor of this property. It is a classic example of Southern charm without being too stereotypically Southern.

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Photos

Old Boathouse
Along Route 82...

Intracoastal Canal
"High" point in this part of Louisiana...

Storm Surge Protection
A bit extreme, but you get the point...

What Used To Be
Remnants of Pecan Island High School...

Palmetto Estate
Aptly named. Abandoned but still stately...