NOway: Dust to dust, Shrimp to Shrimp

In the dried-shrimp production process of southern Louisiana, shrimp pulled fresh from the water are boiled, dried, and rolled around in gigantic steel-mesh cages resembling bingo-wheels. During the rolling process, the heads and tails of the shrimp crack off and disintegrate into a fine powder, known as "shrimp dust." That dust is then ground up into a still-finer powder and sold to shrimp farms in Japan, where it is fed to other shrimp. These shrimp farms serve as direct competition for Louisiana shrimpers, who are losing more money every year because climates in many Asian countries allow for year-round shrimp farming at lower prices.

This is just one situation in which Louisianans are bringing about their own destruction.

Yes Way

After one of the least productive and drunkest months of my life, spent entirely in Western New York, I’ve moved back to New Orleans. I am no longer in the way-beyond-full-time service of my former employers, who could no longer deal with my complete financial dependence on them. Figures. It results that I’ve moved back to this damaged but beautiful city with no job, a laughably small amount of money, and a head fuggy with anticipation of the many unknown joys and horrors that surely await. Yesterday, a joy:

In my rush to find gainful employment in southeastern Louisiana, I applied to a weekly newspaper outside the city. This newspaper is in Houma, a small city roughly the size of Olean, N.Y., which lies about an hour to the southwest of New Orleans. I applied not even knowing where Houma was, how exactly to pronounce it (HOE-MA), or if I would hate it.

The editor, a gregarious man with an unfortunate tie, assigned me a couple of stories to see if I could cut it on the mean streets of Houma, which are roving with cut-throat politicians, vicious street thugs, and all stripes of rough-and-tumble characters. Or so I hoped. Actually, Houma is like Mayberry with some housing developments, a BestBuy, and two whole Wal-Marts. Its government building, on an impossibly idyllic Main Street, is huge and ugly, conspicuously labeled “GOVERNMENT TOWER” in comical blue block lettering. I later discovered that the tower previously belonged to a bank, which, in its fiscal responsibility, had apparently ordered the entire building from a catalog. If you’re ever in a position to build a tower, you should consider this method—it saves on beauty and architects.

One of my assignments was to interview people near the airport—Houma has an airport?— complaining about increased helicopter flights to off-shore oil rigs. The other, which I decided to dive right into, was a news feature on the expansion of the Houma Historic District. Because nothing truly gets me going like Historical Districts, especially when they’re fixin’ to expand… I tracked down somebody on some council—the “Main Street Manager,” as it happens, whose entire job is to make Houma’s Main Street look as nice as possible. She referred me to the Blum and Bergeron Dried Shrimp Company, where a man named Tommy Cobb, I was assured, would be more than happy to let me know just exactly what the Houma Local Historical District Expansion Plan entailed. I walked into Mr. Cobb’s 100-year-old shrimp business and was greeted by his son Michael, who led me through an old brown-paneled office to a bigger, even more weathered office where Mr. Cobb sat in an ancient swivel chair. “Welcome to history,” he said in a slow-as-molasses Louisiana drawl, remarking on the age of his business and gesturing toward the various antique trinkets and pictures scattered around the office.

Cobb, a robust man in his early 60s with teardrop glasses and a perpetual smile, gave me a short history of his business: It had been in his family since the late 1800s, when his great grandfather got into wholesaling and large-scale shrimp-drying before it became fashionable to do so, and before affordable methods of preserving shrimp in freezers and coolers emerged. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Great Depression, World War II, Hurricanes and floods and technological developments, and here they are today: After the worst hurricane in the country’s history, they’re still selling dried shrimp and dried shrimp byproducts around the world. Mr. Cobb, as local a celebrity as there can be, has also compiled a photo-book about Houma’s history, Houma (Images of America: Louisiana), with photographs dating back to the 1800s.

After flipping through the book, I tasted some dried shrimp, and it was indeed phenomenal. I was no longer interested in Historical Districts (as if I was in the first place), especially since the younger Cobb offered to take me for a drive along the bayou to see the shrimping boats and operations that still fuel the region’s slipping economy. At 4:30, Michael Cobb, in his last semester as a business administration major at Nichols State College in Houma, would drive me around for a couple of hours and give me the lay of the land stretching south toward the vast Gulf of Mexico, whose inlets join the tributaries of the Mississippi River and provide the system of bayous, lakes, and marshland that comprises this beautiful edge of the country. It’s as if God, or whoever, shredded this place with an enormous cheese grater, haphazardly, using every side to carve the strangest gashes and scars. What a bored adolescent this God must be to have also made Hurricane Katrina. Maybe God is just an irresponsible teenager...

As we drive out of town on Main Street, Houma’s industrial section comes into view: electronic plants, machine shops, oil rig construction and maintainence companies. After that there are fewer and fewer houses along Bayou Terrebonne, including one mansion fashioned to look exactly like the one in Gone With the Wind. Beats ordering it from a catalog. Locals call the house Gone With the Wind On The Bayou. There are all kinds of natural gas wells scattered around southern Louisiana, not to mention the various off-shore oil and gas rigs. These have made barons out of some locals, and I can see as we drive along the bayou that they’ve built some gorgeous houses.

Most of the people who live along the bayou (not the ones in mansions) have been here for generations, sometimes four or five. Their grandparents live in shotgun-style houses the back yard, while the 30- and 40-somethings live in nicer, more modern houses. We also pass Indian burial mounds, upon which the Catholic church has built its own cemeteries as sick statements of religious superiority over the "heathens." This is evidence that some insane Christians will never stop trying to convert some people—even when they're dead.

As we come to a bridge, Michael turns to me and says, "Everything south of this bridge is in the hands of God," which means that there's precious little civilization from here on, "except for maybe a Piggly Wiggly."

But there is civilization, just not the kind I'm used to. The further we go, the higher houses begin to rise off the ground. They’re built on high mounds or concrete stilts, which with each passing mile become taller and taller, until, at the end of the road, we see houses raised more than 15 feet. They managed to survive Katrina and Rita—but just barely.

We stop at one of Blum and Bergeron's shrimp suppliers, where I survey the various conveyor belts and docked shrimping boats, which won't hit the water until May, when shrimp season begins in earnest. I meet Lawrence Boquet, a stout Cajun man who gives me the rundown on the upcoming season (supposed to be good) and the prices shrimpers will get for their product (supposed to be dismal). He's optimistic enough, but it's clear that making a living in the shrimp business in southern Louisiana is an increasingly difficult proposition. Shrimp farms in Asia and elsewhere are taking business away from shrimpers in this area, and every year it gets a little bit harder to make it.

Lawrence Boquet stands at his shrimp facility on Bayou Terrebonne, south of Houma, Louisiana.

A typical shrimping boat docked at Boquet's. The boats will start hauling back shrimp, usually 5,000 pounds or so per trip, in the beginning of May.

We take a peek at the shrimp-drying facility across the street, where the shrimp are flash-boiled, salted, dried, decapitated, and shucked (which produces an odd phenomenon called "shrimp dust"). The dust, as I mentioned above, is used in a variety of applications (animal feed, mostly) including feeding other shrimp in markets that compete with Louisiana shrimpers. It's curious.

On our ride back, Michael tells me all about Louisiana history, the cultural differences between north and south, the state dog, and all manner of miscellany. He throws in a couple of jokes involving two local historical figures, Boudreaux and Thibodeaux (Boudreaux and Thibodeaux go into a bar... Boudreaux and Thibodeaux go fishing...). They're not worth repeating, but they were charming enough and indicative of the local Cajun culture.

As we rode back in the twilight, on the other side of the bayou, we saw some trailer parks, more houses on stilts, and about 20 run-down seafood restaurants. The air was cool and calm, and kids were out playing basketball, running too close to the road. When we pulled back into downtown Houma, I thanked Michael, got in my car for the hour-long ride back to New Orleans, and vowed never again, if I can avoid it, to eat shrimp raised in Japan.

-This post brought to you by the Sound Café, whose barista moved the hell out of San Francisco for a better life in New Orleans. We could be friends...