Down on the Bayou
By: Susan McKee
Louisiana is more than New Orleans. There's a whole 'nother world on the West Bank.
Shrimp, shrimp and more shrimp! From the tiniest down-home diner to the toniest restaurant, the tasty crustaceans were on the menu everywhere I went in southern Louisiana. Whether boiled or barbecued, plain or spicy, they’re the one constant in the culture of a place in rapid transition.
Louisiana – the state – celebrates the bicentennial of Louisiana – the purchase – this year, so I figured it was a good time to check out Cajun country.
Everybody knows about New Orleans. Yawn. So I headed across the Mississippi to the West Bank, and rambled around in a whole ‘nother world.
There’s no glitz here. The people of Gretna and Westwego like to stand on their side of the river and gaze across at the big buildings of New Orleans. But they’d sure rather live in Jefferson Parish. Only ferries connected the westsiders with the Crescent City until 1958, when the first bridge was built.
Gretna was settled primarily by Germans who started arriving in the area in the 1750s and didn’t stop coming for 200 years. You can’t miss the German-American Cultural Center in the middle of town at 519 Huey P. Long Avenue. It has an immigration museum that’s worth a quick visit.
A short walk away is the Gretna Historical Society Museum Complex, with a collection of vernacular houses, shops and a firehouse dating to the mid-1800s. A blacksmith shop recalls the legendary one in its namesake Gretna Green, Scotland – and, yes, indeed, its blacksmith also performed “quickie” weddings for eloping couples.
The next town over is Westwego (the origins of the name are still debated) -- another old-time community that got its economic boom from shrimping and crabbing. There still are enough independent fishermen left to provide a lively market each day at the Shrimp Lot on West Bank Expressway, just across the street from the Westwego Visitor Center. You can buy fish and other seafood from the people who caught it out in the gulf that very morning.
Old-timers bemoan the decline of shrimping. Depending who I talked to, the reasons varied. Government regulation was strangling the industry. Commercial fleets, with their economies of scale, made it impossible for the independent fisherman to compete. Then there are the environmental causes: loss of wetlands as the waters of the gulf continue to march north, industrial and chemical pollution from the oil drilling in the area and the fertilizer runoff from farm fields up the river.
Plus, there were those darn Southeast Asian immigrants flooding into the area and “taking over” the fishing industry.
Daniel P. Alario, owner of Alario’s Marine Supply Store in Westwego, told me that when he came into the family business in the 1960s, they were dealing mostly with Cajuns who still spoke French. Now, most of his customers (independent fishermen all) are Vietnamese. Yet, most the residents of the West Bank seem oblivious to the economic benefits of the influx of Asians, despite the raft of new shops and restaurants sporting Vietnamese-language signs.
But, of course, the ancestors of the old-timers brought change to the region as well. Many of the Europeans came in the 19th century to build the canals that drained the marshy land and provided avenues for the oyster luggers and shrimp boats to get to New Orleans to sell their catch. Even earlier settlers also had relied on the sea for food, and left behind enormous middens (hills formed from eons of discarded clamshells) that later inhabitants mined for the lime needed to make mortar and concrete.
Still, life is slower on the Jefferson Parish side of the Mississippi. Part of the reason is the difficulty in getting around. What few roads there are are narrow and winding, laid out to avoid the twin hazards of water and marsh. Hurricanes and the floods that follow are an omnipresent threat.
I’d come to Jefferson Parish not for the shrimp, but for Grand Isle. That’s where 19th century author Kate Chopin’s heroine in The Awakening walks into the surf and eternity.
The place is no longer the posh summer resort for New Orleans natives, however (a long-ago hurricane destroyed the old-time hotels). People now go to Grand Isle primarily to fish, and accommodations tend toward the utilitarian. There are dozens of charter boat services and bait shops and no glitzy boutiques or fancy restaurants along its one very long main road.
At night, if you ignore the twinkling lights of the oilrigs in the distance, the silence where the sandy shore meets the Gulf of Mexico remains as seductive as it seemed to Chopin’s protagonist, Edna Pontellier.
When I go back to the West Bank, I’m going to bring a group of friends. We’ll rent a furnished cabin in the state park on Bayou Segnette, buy our fish at the Shrimp Lot in Westwego from the guys and gals who caught it, and cook up a storm. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll wander across the river to New Orleans for a night of jazz. But, heck, just sitting on the cabin’s screened porch, listening to the crickets, sounds like a great antidote to the hectic pace of modern life.
THE DETAILS—
You will need a car to get around the area.
To check it out in advance, go to the Jefferson Parish Convention & Visitors Bureau site. The two largest towns in Jefferson Parish are Westwego and Gretna. I also wandered Grand Isle and Lafitte.
Be sure to allow an hour for the Louisiana Fisheries Museum, which gives a great overview of the history of that industry in this region – and immigrants have always been essential to its success. I learned that Croatians were recruited to establish oystering, Chinese brought in to process shrimp, and Canary Islanders (called Isleños) enticed to settle in the area by the Spanish. Other immigrant groups included the Cajuns (Acadians), Italians, Greeks and Filipinos.
Most of the places to stay seem to be rather ordinary motels or cabins better suited to groups of guys. I really liked my two nights in the cozy confines of the Victoria Inn in Lafitte. Nestled in the bayous at the edge of civilization, it’s furnished with lots floral fabrics, laces and ruffles -- a really “girly” place (or a nice honeymoon destination) that serves a superb southern breakfast and leisurely afternoon tea. The lush gardens go all the way down to the gulf.
Next time I dine out on the West Bank I’m going Gretna and try one of the two Vietnamese restaurants I keep hearing about: Nine Roses and Kim Son.
RELATED LINKS –
Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans has everything you need to know if you go. History of Mardi Gras in New Orleans tells you the background of the event.
About the Author
Susan McKee, M.A., M.S., is a writer in America's heartland. She is the travel editor for Indianapolis Eye
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