Nässjö Coming back into Venice I asked Roland about the Vietnamese fishermen who I heard had moved into Southern Louisiana. Did they have any special communities or towns of their own?
http://relaxapartmanitara.com/uncategorized/the-simple-reality-about-hispanic-wifes-that-no-one-is-telling-you/ “No, dey heah,” he said. “In fact dat dock ovuh deah is owned by a Vietnamese, dose ah dey boats right deah.” Their shrimp boats looked more or less the same as everyone else’s: just a bit more battered. They looked like the used boats other fishermen had cast off. I would see a few Vietnamese fish stores/restaurants as I rode up toward New Orleans. There were a number of immigrants but they clearly had not taken over entire areas of the swamp, as I had heard. Their stores were terribly unprepossessing: none of the Louisiana color and flavor inhabited the stores, which would be fluorescent lighting and bare walls and cheap mass-produced tables and chairs.
“Dey good people,” he said. “My only concehn is dey ought to speak English. Sometimes when you talk to a bunch of ‘em, dey staht to speak dey own language, which I dink is rude. Dat’s my only concehn.”
“Are they crawfish fishermen? I had heard it was crawfish they were fishing for.”
“No, no, dey shrimpuhs. All kinds of fish, I suppose, but mainly dey shrimpuhs.”
If his only concern was language, I wasn’t too concerned. Their kids would speak English and speak it well. And they didn’t seem likely to stay in the swamp very long. Every time I walked into one of their stores, if a young person was at the counter they looked up at me from a thick textbook. I don’t think they were training themselves to be the next generation of shrimp fishermen (but you never know).
When we arrived back at the dock, Roland again refused any compensation for his fabulous services, despite the fact that I had taken up hours of his day and a fair amount of gasoline too. I tried to just pay him for the gas but that failed as well. I was deeply impressed by his humanity and generosity – and his concern for his son, his father, everything. He took joy in my joy, too, and understood it.
I had now come up to Venice from the Gulf. There was more river down there – we had taken the shortest and smallest of the river’s mouths to reach the sea. Down below there were isolated spots of higher ground, I heard, some of which was privately owned. You could see this on the official Louisiana state maps, which shaded the mouth of the river green to indicate public land, except for isolated strips and blocks. People had hunting and fishing cabins out there – I spoke with someone who had just come up from a two-week stint out there. He offered to take me out there next time he went, but it would be the fall before he went back out. There was always more to see, of course. But I had been to the Gulf, and entered the river from the sea, and now could head upstream. I wanted to find the Source.
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