A Barge on the Bayou

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Eventually, though, the futility of this annual war against the floods was recognized by these stubborn—but not stupid—souls . . . and that acknowledgement just happened to coincide with the invention of the outboard motor. Equipped with a boat and one of the portable powerplants, a swamper could establish his or her family and livestock in settlements outside the levees, yet travel into the swamp to continue making a traditional living by fishing, frogging, moss picking, trapping, and so on.

Within the following 20 years, all signs of the old community disappeared as buildings were torn down and rebuilt outside the floodway. Only temporary shelters made of cardboard, scrap tin, and used plywood remained within the swamp, maintained by fisherfolk for emergency overnight stays.

That sort of compromise lifestyle, however, never appealed to my cousin Calvin. Even as a child, he dreamed of returning to the swamp for good . . . he longed to live and work among the silver cypress and whispering cottonwoods. So, since he couldn't remember a spring flood that came high enough to cover the bank, Calvin invested in moving his parents' vacant house back out to the old family homesite in the swamp. Then, in June 1972, when I was looking for an unusual summer job before commencing Ph.D. work in September, he took me on as a fishing partner. By the time autumn rolled around, there wasn't a graduate program in the world that could have enticed me away from that wilderness home!

We drifted through the year in a daze of enthusiasm. We painted, patched, and hung curtains in the old house. Vegetables and roses fairly sprang out of the black earth, encouraging us to put in an herb garden and a small orchard. The fish and game that had attracted the first swampers were still plentiful. We even got to the point of wondering how those old-timers ever could have left this paradise for their stark, unlovely settlements perched along the levees . . . until the flood of 1973 answered that question with a vengeance!

NOTHING TO LOSE

As I toured our water-wrecked home and contemplated the dreary prospect of my return to a city apartment and the academic world, I idly pried the relics of our life in the swamp from the mud with my toe: a jar of preserved pumpkin, winking in the July sun like hot coals . . . my grandmother's ceramic soap dish, half-buried but unbroken . . . an aluminum muffin pan filled with 12 perfect mud cupcakes. Each of the buried treasures seemed to chastise me for the return to the land of panty hose and polyester that I'd come to think of as inevitable . . . since even if the old house could be repaired this time, it might be washed away again any year the Mississippi flood waters were diverted into the Atchafalaya Swamp. I realized then with what heartbreak my ancestors had given up their battle.

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