urban bicycle journeys

Born on the Bayou is a magnificent song from 1969 on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s second album Bayou Country. It is the flip side of the big selling 45 single Proud Mary. The only problem, which is maybe not a problem, is that having your facts straight is not always necessary to create great art. Creedence Clearwater Revival was not from Louisiana. They were four kids from a blue collar suburb of San Francisco, California. The song sounds nothing like music I have heard from actual bayou country. The song’s images are strung together figments of John Fogerty’s fertile imagination. He probably had never been anywhere near Louisiana. Even in 1969 it is clear that the word “bayou” carried a mystical romantic connotation..

For many years I did not know really what “bayou” meant, even when living in New Orleans. For example, people sometimes refer to the entire Houma/Thibodaux area as “The Bayou.”.

Bayou is not an area, or the name of a region. Wikipedia defines bayou as an extremely slow-moving river, stream, marshy lake, wetland, or creek. The best and highest land in south Louisiana is the land created by the natural levees that line the bayous and rivers, a fact I did not know until Tootie took a course at UNO in 1987 called History of New Orleans, I grew up in the Norfolk VA area, an area that like south Louisiana is slowing sinking into the sea. Around Norfolk the softest lowest land is nearest the waterfront. Here in south Louisiana it is the opposite; marshy land sinking into the Gulf of Mexico is land NOT near a river or bayou.

Back in the 1980’s I used to sell air freight services around New Orleans and just about everyone I met from the Houma/Thibodaux area was interesting, friendly, or both. To those not from around here, Cajun refers to the rural culture in southwestern and south central Louisiana, separate from the city Creole culture of New Orleans. Houma/Thibodaux is part of Cajun country but not its center, that would be closer to Lafayette LA, a hundred miles further to the west, On a Good Friday I drove sixty miles down to Houma for two days of cycling along nearby bayous. The Bike Friday was in the back of our Ford Escape Hybrid.

The bayous of rural south Louisiana usually have busy highways lining both sides, especially near a “major” city like Houma. It is difficult to find long stretches of road along a bayou that is also pleasant for bicycling. Before leaving I had found on the map a promising looking twenty-two mile stretch along Bayou Black from Houma northwest towards the settlement of Gibson LA.

I would start bicycling in downtown Houma LA (population 33,000) I found a parking spot facing a pleasant park in front of a courthouse. It was Good Friday and the streets were mostly bare of both people and cars. I pulled the Bike Friday out of the back.

I had just started cycling but I hated to pass on an attractive local coffee house. Only a few people speak French anymore in south Louisiana; likely more around Houma than in New Orleans. Businesses and organizations nevertheless love to play with French phonetics. I ordered an oat milk latte with one pack sugar at Downtown Jeaux.

The plan for the first day’s ride was an up-and-back, Houma to Gibson, twenty one miles each way. Even with oil price booms and busts over the past sixty years many in Houma have prospered. The town is the jumping off point to offshore oil drilling. As I had seen in other parts of southern Louisiana, hip roofs are the dominant style in newer housing.

Relatively near downtown I passed a new looking subdivision of faux old style minimansions.

A mile or two from downtown Houma I arrived at the street that paralleled the north bank of Bayou Black. For the first several miles well-off people’s houses lined the bayou.

Several miles out of Houma now on state Route 182 I now saw romantic bayou images.

It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect, brilliant blue skies and a temperature of about seventy.

Houses of locals living along the bayou now varied from rich to poor.

The tiny Grace Baptist Church had a huge groomed front lawn.

The car traffic was light. I had brought along my usual peanut butter sandwich, on Dave’s whole wheat bread; this time with strawberry jam from a rural Mississippi vendor called Mama D that I had met a week earlier at the Crescent City Farmer’s market. I had hoped to find some kind of picnic table but I had to settle for sitting on a guardrail. I ate my sandwich and read the Kindle. I have been reading Sarah Broom’s memoir The Yellow House, about her life growing up in New Orleans East.

I had barely met the twenty mile point before turning around. I could see that Gibson LA was not going to be much of a town anyway and my rear tire that was suddenly almost flat. I stopped, pulled off the wheel, and removed the tube. I could not find a leak, I installed my replacement tube but IT failed in about ten minutes due to a poorly installed old patch. I had to stop and change back to the original tube. I pumped the tire up, gently. It held air, at least for now. The tube ultimately did work for that afternoon and all the next day. I still am not sure why this tire thing happened. I continued cycling along this lovely bayou road.

There had been only one commercial establishment along my side of the bayou. I stopped for Gatorade at this gas station. Almost every vehicle out here is a pickup truck.

I cycled onward back towards Houma. On this Good Friday I repeatedly passed houses in neighborhoods rich and poor, Black and White, where people were sitting down outdoors communally. I speculate they were holiday crawfish boils.

I cycled back through the wealthier neighborhoods of western Houma. The ubiquitous mansard roofs continued.

I was back in downtown Houma after having cycled at least forty miles. On this holiday Friday there was no one around.

In my travels around America, usually it appears Walmart did NOT put Main Street out of business, Discount stores before Walmart put Main Street out of business, then Walmart put THOSE stores out of business. Near downtown Houma this former strip mall is labelled Town Hall.

I needed a drink! Most of the bars in central Houma were inexplicably closed. The Boxer and The Barrel was mostly empty but had a few people sitting at the bar. I sat down and ordered a beer. Fly-on-the-wall listening, most of these people seemed to be workers or entrepreneurs in the nightclub business., telling stories to each other of their alcohol abuse. I perused my phone looking for somewhere to stay that night. 1980’s MTV videos were playing on the screen behind the bar.

I have yet to compare it to neighboring Thibodaux but downtown Houma is not an especially happening place. I could not find any hotels, motels, or Airbnbs downtown. I booked a room at the “Wingate By Wyndham Houma” out on the big highway. Part of the schtick of these trips is that I cycle to my accommodations but in this case it that seemed unsafe and useless, My car sat only around the corner. I loaded the bicycle in the back and drove three miles out to my motel near the Walmart. The highway had a totally different vibe than my previous route along the bayou.

While a chain motel, they did have this in the lobby. “DO NOT TAKE FOOD OFF THE ALTAR”. St Joseph’s altar?

I also broke my mold by driving my car from the motel to dinner, this time at Big Al’s Seafood Restaurant, just down the highway. It was crowded but I found a seat at the bar. Seafood platter of fried fish, fried oysters and fried shrimp, and I chose boiled potatoes as my one side dish. A lot of fried.

I read more of The Yellow House memoir on my Kindle. The bartender and the older woman sitting next to me asked about what I was reading. They both liked to read; the bartender liked fiction; mysteries., The woman on my right described her reading but also bragged about her drinking, saying that this was her sixth hard liquor cocktail since three that afternoon! She had a colorfully thick Cajun accent, the kind one rarely hears back in New Orleans.

I did not take her picture but I do have a shot of her arm.

She said she would turn eighty this year and was proud of her health. She did order grilled shrimp instead of fried, accompanied by French fries. She said she is still working as a home health aid to clients mostly younger than her. She said she keeps exercising, walks and a stationary bicycle. She finished eating before me and got up to leave. I guess in some other planet I would have called the police or a cab for someone who was about to drive after having six drinks in four or five hours. The bartenders acted like they had seen her before. I just returned to finishing my dinner. It did give me pause about the cars down here passing me while bicycling.

On leaving I passed the restaurant’s Easter Tree. Who has heard of an Easter Tree? This one had bunny ears.

The next morning I went to the breakfast buffet at 6:35 AM to get some coffee. On his Holy Saturday most other guests looked already dressed for church.

I wanted to cycle south from Houma on along one of the bayous but not in heavy traffic and not over any of the several major bridges. I drove the car to get through those barriers and parked at a Dollar General six miles south of downtown Houma at a settlement called Presquile. There would be a major road along Bayou Petit Gaillou but a minor road on the other side suitable for cycling south along the bayou. There was road construction in several places but the cycling was generally pleasant. The first couple of miles passed through suburbia similar to the day before. There were a few Trump flags. They used to say Make America Great Again; now they say Take America Back.

After a few miles the landscape changed. Fishing boats in various states of repair lined the bayou. This area was devastated by Hurricane Ida just over two years ago, in fall 2021. I realized that now almost all of the houses were new, or obviously rebuilt. Most were elevated or on stilts.

In a travel article a few years ago about rural Cajun country it said some of the best food is found at gas stations. I found no restaurants down here south of Houma but there was a mini-mart with hot boudin. Boudin is available in New Orleans now but it is really a Cajun thing. Boudins are a spicy rice and meat or seafood dressing stuffed in a sausage casing. I ate this one mostly while moving, cycling along the bayou.

I was time to go home. I turned back and cycled back to the car at Dollar General. On the way I noticed that all the real estate agents had French names.

It was just over an hour’s car drive back to New Orleans.