GRAND ISLE, La. — Satisfying our desire to find oil-soaked beaches along Grand Isle before noon last Sunday, we decided we deserved a break from the misery of what appeared to be the future of the Louisiana coast.
Arthur Ware, my travel companion, Greenwood native and connoisseur of Cajun cuisine, suggested a stop for lunch. Wanting to prove my taste for adventure, I stopped at a small Cajun eatery built into the side of a convenience store. The restaurant/convenience store was located just before the winding, Hot Wheels-like track that takes travelers on and off the island.
The woman behind the counter switched between a Louisiana-tinged French and English, depending on the customer she waited on. She quickly detected my Northern dialect and opted to play with my attempt to blend in with the crowd. We told her we had driven to the coast from Greenwood.
“Y’all seeing any water up there?” she asked.
“There’s been a little bit of rain,” I replied.
She and Arthur both laughed at my apparent ignorance that she was asking whether the area had flooded recently. As I write this, I still do not comprehend the difference.
Even as oil was washing up on the shores where she made her living, she remained very optimistic. She bounced from the kitchen to the counter as if there were no eminent disaster.
She dutifully served up a few of the diner favorites — crawfish pies, meat pies and generous helpings of boudin sausage.
Two friendly regulars wanted to know where I was from and how I had come to Grand Isle. They both said they were from New Orleans. The friendlier of the men said he and his “fishing buddy” had come to their camp on the island to escape the city for a few days — just as they did every Memorial Day weekend.
“Even if we can’t fish, a weekend here is better than a weekend sitting in New Orleans,” he said. “We are just going to relax and enjoy ourselves as much as we can. The oil spill has been just awful, but it’s still nice to be able to come here.”
Both New Orleans residents munched on shrimp po’ boys — the “best around,” they claimed as they raved about the pleasures of Grand Isle.
“I hope you boys have a good time while you are here,” the friendly visitor said as he picked up his tab. “It’s a wonderful place to visit.”
It was. But to live here, it seemed, was to be haunted by a curse of natural and manmade disaster.
I thought about what Arthur had said earlier. The place was an odd place to live. But, just like the Delta, constantly under threat by various weather patterns and mired in poverty, this region has its own problems but also its own sense of charm.
I can see why many would think the fishermen, who hedged their living on such a fragile economy, are slightly crazy. But, I also know that my father, grandfathers and uncles would gladly take on their life of incessant outdoorsmanship in place of their office, factory work or other jobs. It was simple. It was free. It was the dream of every male who longed to live by the rod.
Residents and visitors of Grand Isle are still welcome to enjoy most of the amenities the island has to offer: superb dining, sandy beaches and a delightful sense of isolation. The only caveat is that beach bums must stay out of the water.
Although the sand still seems pristine in some areas, the water is tainted with dispersants, oil and dying sea creatures. The coastal paradise still appears beautiful at first, but a closer inspection of the sands and ocean reveals a much more sinister view of the treasured beach.
Thanks to protective sand levees and offshore booming, the upper portion of the beach is fairly safe despite the persistent spill of oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident. However, the water is contaminated with oil that continues to wash along the beach.
One worker on the cleanup crew said that despite the practically invisible effects on the shoreline, just a few miles from the sandy beaches, oil, piled four feet thick, floated on top of the sea.
At the Barataria Seafood Grill, where Arthur and I contemplated a dinner, many of the dishes were off the menu; fresh seafood catches were limited due to fishing restrictions. We opted to seek a late dinner in New Orleans instead.
The islands of Grand Isle and Venice, we had noted, were still heavily affected by Hurricane Katrina. Chain restaurants were long abandoned. Only mom-and-pops with the funding and tenacity to reopen along those depressed shores had dared to re-hang their signs and menus.
The only businesses in Grand Isle revolve around the fishing and tourism industry — both effectively shut down by the spill. Now the locals cater to volunteers and media personnel as they ponder what they will do next.
Jo Billups Hyer, an environmentally driven musician, had visited the shores early on to see the effects of the spill. She grew up in New Orleans and spent much of her childhood along the same coasts she is now seeing covered in oil.
She was performing as half of the duo Sassafras on Grand Isle when she was captured on video and put on YouTube. She was performing a song called “Big Oil” just feet away from where tar balls and patties would continue to wash up on shore.
Karen Harvil, the other half of Sassafras, sang with Hyer on a harmonized folk chorus protesting offshore drilling:
“Big oil, black gold,
Power and money is the price of your soul,
Offshore drilling is oil spilling,
Well, it sure can change your mind.”
Hyer said it was undeniable that the spill would take a major toll on Grand Isle.
“The effect is tremendous,” she said. “You can see it everywhere.”
Reports of clean-up crews and residents getting sick were beginning to pop up in the media as we explored the coast. Arthur and I did not give it much thought.
Hyer called Wednesday to see how I was feeling after traveling in areas she and her crew had traveled before.
“Do you have any symptoms?” she asked. “Everybody has been getting sick.”
She said the dispersants being released by air from BP were making many who came close to the spill nauseated.
I had to take a sick day from the Commonwealth Wednesday upon my return. Arthur said he went to the hospital with a fever Thursday. While I may attribute my own symptoms to sun poisoning, it’s hard to deny that we all could have been sickened by our common exposure to the oil and chemical dispersants along the shore.
Hyer had arranged for a boat ride through the marshes and out to the coast off of Venice. Without sleep for two days, Arthur and I turned in early at a motel in New Orleans.
We had a 9 a.m. appointment with the captain of Born to Fish Charters, a fishing charter company that had not been able to dip a line in the Venice water since the oil closed in on its shores.
“We haven’t seen any fishermen in a long time,” Captain Keith Kennedy would later tell us. “We can’t fish, so we’ve lost a lot of business. We don’t have many options.”
