Blogs from Abbeville, Louisiana, United States, North America

“I think I’ll pass on the alligator bites for today, sweetie.” People here refer to pretty wait staff as “darling”, “sweetheart” or some other term of endearment. The pretty twenty-year-old leaned towards me at the counter and offered another suggestion from the menu. “Our oysters on the half shell are just the-” “No, thank you.” Just the thought of the slimy raw arthropods getting near my throat causes me to involuntarily gag up one of my lungs. Seated ext to me are Mom, Dad, and son enjoying three dozen of them served on ice. They eat them on cracker wafers doused in a combination of ketchup of an assortment of Louisiana hot sauces. No matter how they are dressed up, there is a reason Black’s Seafood Restaurant and Oyster Bar posts a disclaimer about consuming raw ... read more

Cameron’s importance before September of 2005 centered around shrimping, the petroleum industry, and being the seat of the parish of the same name that abuts Vermilion to the west. While all three still play their essential roles, the wind-driven destruction of Rita lends to Cameron an ominous sensation that the storm struck its lethal blow only three weeks ago. Cameron is the swamp version of a ghost town whose primary sign of life is connected to the grey angular monsters of natural gas platforms rising from the Gulf. Cameron is still reeling. Dangling pieces of rusty sheet metal flap from the steel beams of obliterated warehouses. Homes were so completely wrecked that only their foundations remain from which entangled copper wires reach up but connect to nothing. In what used to be the front driveway, the ... read more

Abbeville’s unique and elegant downtown should be an icon for Main Street America. Founded by Père Antoine Désiré Mégret in 1843 as La Chapelle, Père Mégret designed Abbeville with two connected central squares around which traffic flows counterclockwise. The manicured grounds of St. Mary Magdalen church anchor the western square at the center of which is a tastefully designed park with benches, a white gazebo in a corner, a gurgling fountain, and a statute of Father Mégret. Behind the rectory’s framed flower beds and palm plants rests the remains of Abbeville’s ancestors in the Catholic cemetery. It is signposted as an historical landmark; the text reads in English on one side and perfectly constructed French on the other. The names on the gravestones make it unmistakably clear that French was once the common vernacular of Abbeville ... read more

The bar-fenced Texas ranches of sharp defoliated bushes along I-10 enclose lethargic cattle grazing on dry vegetation. Little changes on the horizon to keep the mind occupied on any highway in East Texas. The broad plots of land are replaced first by oboe-like towers of petroleum refineries in the Houston area. On the far side of the Sabine River, swamps and canals welcome motorists far more appropriately than even the signpost that reads Bienvenue en Louisiane. Vermilion Parish lacks color and is flat, dry, and shapeless in late December. The heat is unimaginable in the summer, they say. With the exception of piles of sand and construction stones outside a construction firm, the nearest natural hill is over one hundred miles away. My father told me the highway through Louisiana was uneventful; I was glad to ... read more