As always, Louisiana comes fully alive, from the peaceful fog of the
Bayou Teche to the manic streets of New Orleans.
When I return to our home in Louisiana, on
Bayou Teche, a tidal stream on which members of my family have lived since 1836, I look at the red sun beyond the live oaks on the bayou, the smoke from stubble fires drifting off the fields, the hammered gold-and-purple light on the sugarcane, and in the gloaming of the day I want to see the moment caught forever inside a photographer's lens, before the land developers and the builders of strip malls and discount stores have their way with what I think are the gifts of both Heaven and Earth.
Between the Acadian French on the
Bayou Teche and Canary Islander Spanish on the Bayou Terre aux Boeuf, little open land remained to attract these German and Slavic-speaking new Americans to Louisiana's southlands.
In the first, "A Gentleman of
Bayou Teche," a Northern painter wants to capture the colorful spirit of rural Louisiana by portraying a local man in the imagined garb of the 'Cadian rustic, something the man, Evariste Bonamour, considers demeaning for any gentleman--Acadian or other--of the
Bayou Teche.
Deep within the cool green shadows of the
Bayou Teche lived Phillip LaDuc and his young sister, Anabelle.
1) "The
Bayou Teche is pockmarked with bubbling, moss-green lumps that very well might be knotty-headed gators submarining and cracking the surface of the caramel-colored water.
That leads into the whole idea of the ghost figure and creating that sense of
Bayou Teche and having to be kept hidden within the bayou, which makes her invisible to her culture as well as invisible to herself, because she doesn't know her historical roots.
Martinville, where the tomb of Emmeline Labiche and the ancient oak where she waited for her lover, Gabriel, stand alongside the
Bayou Teche.
Bayou Teche Brewing | Saison D'Ecrevisses - Crawfish Season Saison | Arnaudville, LA
Potato salad is the traditional accompaniment to fried seafood and fried chicken and in the southern part of the state, particularly along
Bayou Teche.
2)Kate Chopin, "A Gentleman of
Bayou Teche," Bayou Folk (Ridgewood, New Jersey: Gregg Press, 1967), p.
Bayou Teche Brewing | Joie a Tous (Joy to All) | Arnaudville, LA
