Louisiana: St. Martinville Festival Grounds: Old Garage

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

There's an old garage, now a disintegrating building, owned by the city of St. Martinville (so I was told), that is part of the St. Martinville Festival Grounds.

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

It's got the proverbial good bones that some buildings have, if it would ever get reborn into something useful, but for now it falls mostly into the category of the decrepit picturesque.

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

The broken windows refract the fading light of a day in pleasing ways.

Garage in disrepair, St. Martinville, Louisiana

Louisiana: "Kaw, that's a big one!"

 

     "Kaw, that’s a big one!” said 59-year-old Danny “Eagle” Edgar.


    “That’s a man,” agreed 56-year-old Clay Switzer.


    “Boy, he really is big,” hissed Harry “Hop” Dugas, who at 47 is the baby of the group.


    “It’s got eyes like an alligator,” murmured Edgar in wonderment. 

Tense excitement bled through the three men’s Cajun accents. What could have had them, with nearly 150 combined years of life in the woods and on the water, so excited? Were they perched on a rickety bamboo machan, hunting a man-eating tiger? Were they perched in the flying bridge of an offshore boat, gawking at the massive bulk of a great white shark? 

Neither.

 Source: Louisiana Sportsman

 

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

A friend and I went to the Acadian Memorial Heritage Festival in St. Martinville today.

Some kick-ass music, good food, gorgeous day along the river, and, and, and ..... holy swamp gas! Gigantic bullfrogs!

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Who knew frogs got so big?!

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

 
I was so fascinated by these creatures, I had to go back a second time during the course of the festival, just to gawk some more.

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

I understand about the frog legs for eating, but what happens to the rest of the bullfrog's body? Returned to the water for recycling? Used as bait for fishing? Given the popularity of frog legs in southern Louisiana, we're talking about a lot of skin and guts here.

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Interesting articles about bullfrogs and frog hunting: 

• Of Frogs and Men, Louisiana Sportsman (excerpted at the top of this post) 
• Real Cajun Cooking: Cajun-Fried Bullfrog Legs
• Cleaning a Bullfrog/Skinning a Bullfrog

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

 My mother and a brother are coming to visit next week. Maybe we'll try some frog legs.

Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Louisiana Movies: In the Electric Mist

In the Electric Mist. From: IMDb

Movie: In the Electric Mist

Provenance: Based and filmed in and around New Iberia and St. Martinville, Louisiana

Based on a book by James Lee Burke: In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

Synopsis: Series of murders in and around New Iberia investigated by former alcoholic sheriff Dave Robichoux, including a murder from the long-ago past.

Wow - where has this movie been? Sometimes I take a break from watching a movie because it's a little dull and I go off to do other things. With this movie, sometimes I took a break so it would delay the ending.

The photography is beautiful and captures all that is entrancing about southern Louisiana. The misty bayous, the super-green, flat sugarcane fields, the alleés of live oaks. The low-brimmed Acadian houses with their deep porches, lawns that touch the water. You'd think it was a paradise, if you didn't remember the mosquitoes and the sopping humidity. 
 
Tommy Lee Jones and John Goodman are both a pleasure to watch, with TLJ determinedly lethal and Mr. Goodman Nero-like in his dissolution.

There are a few plot points that are a little off, but these are minor quibbles.   


Music from the movie

La Terre Tremblante:

Damn Right I've Got the Blues (in the movie performed by Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas), performed by Buddy Guy:

I'm a Hog For You, performed by Clifton Chenier:

Recommend? An enthusiastic yes! 

St. Martinville, LA: Free furniture! Crawfish burger! Banana Tree!

The title says it all, really.

Food

Had lunch at the Steakhouse Tavern with a walking partner – took this photo of part of the menu:

Steakhouse tavern, St. Martinville, Louisiana

Items such as chiles rellenos and green chile stew in New Mexico have been replaced with delicacies such as crawfish burgers, crab burgers, and shrimp po’ boys.

Who says America has no traditional cuisine?!

Furniture

I’d been mentally lamenting the dearth of second-hand stores in Lafayette, and here was a guy ripping out his kitchen on a St. Martinville side street, and placing the cabinets on the sidewalk in front of his house, just as we walked by. I mean this was fresh scavenge!

We each took a cabinet, put them in our respective vehicles, and felt very satisfied. Mine is perfect for my office set-up. The printer is on top and office supplies are on the shelves, which I can hide behind the pretty doors.

Banana tree!

Incredibly, there is a mature banana tree in the patio outside the back of the Steakhouse tavern. It’s huge, and a very large bunch of green bananas hung from almost the very top.

Banana tree, St. Martinville, Louisiana

Imagine. I live in a place where bananas can grow.

Retrospective

I stopped in St. Martinville during my 2011/2012 road trip here. A very pretty village.

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 9: Tabasco and More Ned

St. Martin of Tours Church, St. Martinville, LA

Tabasco

The Tabasco company is on Avery Island, about an hour and a half from Arnaudville. Avery Island is made of salt. Not kidding. (And even though some people recoil from same as if it were meth, I like it, with no apologies.) I drove down for the factory tour.

The tour is very short: A brief, but interesting, lecture by an enthusiastic speaker, a 10-minute video advertisement documentary about Tabasco, and a short, self-guided walk down the glassed hallway, where you look at bottling happening. Today, the sauce was being bottled for shipment to France.  Each of us received three teensy bottles of Tabasco sauce in different flavors.

The intended climax of the tour was the visit at the "country store," where you could taste Tabasco products, including its pepper ice cream. And then buy stuff.  I did buy some hot&sweet pickles and jalapeno jelly. Best of the Tabasco sauces: Chipotle.

I think I'm glad I did the tour. And if I'm not glad I did it, I'm glad I prevented the need for me to do it in the future. So it's a win-win.

St. Martinville

Headed up north again. This time, I dawdled in St. Martinville's town square. Very pretty church, St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church.

St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church, St. Martinville, LA

Out back, there is the famous Evangeline statue. Note her shoes. The Acadians (cajuns) used these wooden shoes on their homesteads along the bayous. They adopted them from the Dutch way back when their ancestors learned how to protect farmlands from the sea.

Evangeline, St. Martinville, Louisiana

Light and bright, as churches go.

















I especially liked the pew gates.

There was also a spiral staircase up to a pulpit. And a couple of saints new to me. (Which I see, now, since I cannot identify them, I need to get into the habit of photographing such housekeeping details  - or writing them down immediately - because I will forget them before the day is out. I will add this to my road trip guide.)
 

I was at the church at noon, so I heard the bells.

Outside, angels flew.

Ned, again

I hadn't heard anything about Ned the lost dog yet, and I was curious. I had to pass through Breaux Bridge on my way back to Arnaudville, so I stopped in at the music guy's place to see if I could get some news. The music guy was in his shop, painting.

"Oh yeah," he said, "We stayed here in the shop til 11:00 last night waiting to hear back from the owners, but we never did, so we figured out where they lived [via reverse phone lookup] and just took him over there and left him in the [fenced] yard."

I nodded my head, listening.

".... and you know what? Ol' Ned showed up back here the next morning."

"You're kidding?!"

"Oh, yeah. So I took him on back to his house. The owners still weren't there, but some neighbors were, and they saw him, and they said, 'well, hey, there's ol' Ned.'"

I think probably Ned has more up his sleeve for the future, and I hope to hear about it.
 
So who was this nice guy at the music store, anyway? When we parted, I went to shake his hand, and he said, "We don't shake hands around here, we give hugs." And so we did. I learned he plays in the Steve Riley and Mamou Playboys band. His name is Brazos Huval.

They've been nominated for a "regional roots" Grammy for their album, Grand Isle.  Here's the band performing an NPR tiny desk concert: 

Poche's

Time for a late lunch. Stopped at Poche's specialty meats and cafe. Poche's is just down the road from Glenda's Creole Kitchen, which so far had served me up the best meal of this road trip. Both Glenda's and Poche's are between Breaux Bridge and Arnaudville, on Highway 31.

I was torn between trying the crawfish etoufee and the smothered rabbit, but went with the etoufee. Some people, upon taking the first bite, might exclaim: "Holy Christ on a stick, that's #%^#@! good!" I would not say such a thing because it would be crass, so let me just say that it was mighty flavorful. As was the sweet coleslaw and the potato salad.

Today's plate lunches at Poche's

Do you see why road trips are so much fun?