More likely, tho, that I will take your hand and show you some of the foolishness. To those of you that haven't talked to in too long, I have been working down on the Gulf of Mexico, attempting to put a dollar sign to some small parts of BP's Business as usual Policy.
I lived for the first month in a genuine, authentic FEMA trailer in a real-live FEMA trailerpark, complete with poisonous chemical smells, angry child graffiti on the walls (MarlonmarlonMARLONNONONONONONONO) and federally funded crockpot. The roaches were shoe-sized; the walls on one side, when I arrived, covered in mud, as if the trailer had fallen over, filled with water, and then been righted, drained, and left alone. Each night at 7:30, as if it were the 1950's again, a truck came by without warning or sound, spraying enormous amounts of mosquito-quelling gas from a large tank on the back. It pulled into each driveway along Highway 23, passed close to each trailer, and moved on. Missing only were the children frolicking in the ice-cream man's DDT clouds, concluding the ominous comparison.
Evenings were incredible and often fierce, with colors borrowed from another palette than I had ever seen before.
We left mostly out of Delta Marina, below the overpass from Buras down to Venice, south of New Orleans. Once out in the bayous, it was difficult to keep my bearings, until I discovered the catfood plant.
Under the highway overpass was a fetid, foul-smelling concrete structure that belched smoke at all hours of the day. It processed the waste "pogey" fish that were caught by the thousands in giant purse seins that scoop up everything else living and unfortunate enough to be near-bye, to be made into catfood, makeup, and fertilizer. A large operation, 6-8 80 foot soiled blue and yellow boats oozed and tottered out to the bays together, fishing in unison and clued into the location of the schools by ciircling airplanes overhead. The plume of smoke from the factory was noxious to the point of making me puke in my mouth routinely upon passing through downwind. Depending on the day, the smell could either stretch miles to the south, or limply coil its rotting, ropey flavor directly down onto the remains of the town beside it. It was an excellent navigational beacon.
The shrimping season began after about a month, and all the boats that had been loafing along the sides of the canals and marinas, came to life.
In the morning, we would head out at around 7:00am, greeting the returning boats, swollen and bloated with shrimp, as they waddled drunkenly home to port.
The shrimp boats have, almost to a one, a wonderfully rackish, devil-may-care approach to construction, upkeep, and appearance.
What sometimes subsides into decay and floating rot is much more often a squinting amalgamation of pie-eyed F-yous' to the laws of flotation and sea-worthiness, at least as per what the Coast Guard would have us believe.
Rarely did I see what I had assumed this part of the world would be like, after a steady diet since childhood of National Geographic's looming cypress and echoing swamps. That exists, but where I was working, it is mostly gone. Routinely, boat captains would point off the bow to an otherwise unremarkable, indistinguishable stretch of open water and say, "Had a camp here, for 60 years. Used to be all marsh. Now its just the pilings...".
Heavily drilled for oil since the early 1950's, the landscape was much more often one of Mad Max afloat, derricks' and wellheads', abandoned and left to oxidize slowly into the Gulf.
Once, passing an open natural gas flame over the sign "Poisonous: Do Not Breathe", I came upon a slick the size of several footballs fields', a wide, greasy, smooth expanse amidst otherwise riffled water on a windy day.
The air smelled like death, and a shrimp boat passed by just outside the slick.
The captains all used GPS, of which the only useful function was the depth-finder. Most had units in their boats that were 4-5 years old, the information and maps in which were already rendered obsolete and inaccurate by rapid wetland subsidence. Often we would run-aground with a shuddering, wallowing groan, and then resort to more antiquated means of navigation. Here I am tromping about, seeking deeper water to push the boat towards. "I like the GPS, tho", said one captain. "Islands 3 years ago are good fishing spots now".
