Why I choose to live in S. Louisiana

[Mayhaw Man]

I have a car in the shop and my wife gave me a ride to work yesterday morning. After a very long day it became very apparent that she had forgotten to pick me up. No problem. I live about 6 miles from my office, which is conveniently located right next to The St Tammany Trace. A fine example of what can happen when tax dollars are spent on something useful (sadly, we are not so great at that down here). I decided to walk home as it was a gorgeous afternoon and it only takes about an hour or so.

It was a really nice walk and as I got into my little town I saw that many, many people were already setting up for the The Abita Springs All Town Garage Sale This event started out as kind of a joke and has turned into an event that draws people from all over our area. The population goes from 2500 to 10,000 or more for about 8 hours on the Saturday of the sale. People sell everything that is not nailed down and there is also an area across from Town Hall (a really cool WPA built all cypress construction building) where out of town vendors (mostly craftspeople of various sorts) set up and vend their stuff. Families dragging wagons and pushing wheelbarrows meander around town buying our junk. It is a great thing for everybody (especially us ) and has turned into a big weekend out for many city folk who want ot get out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge on a nice Spring day. A suprising amount of money changes hands over the course of the day (I once made +$1000.00 selling nothing but junk out of my garage and my attic-many people do much better than that with a little planning).

As I walked into the backdoor my oldest son announced that we were going to Rauch's Grocery in Abita Springs to eat crawfish (he did not, nor did my wife, mention anything about how sorry they were that I had to walk 6 miles to get home from work because they forgot to pick me up ). I changed into some casual, crawfish eating duds and we walked over to Rauch's Grocery (I used this link because it has a decent front shot of the place and also because while there have been many movies shot here (Dead Man Walking was filmed (and sadly occurred) around here, but this was a low budget horror movie and was really fun to watch them film it-check out the rest of the website-yuck). Rauch's is an old country type grocery. The entrance is through a double screen door (complete with bread signs for push bars and an actual cool squeak). As the weather has been wonderful here for the last couple of days the doors and windows were wide open, which was very nice. The inside of the place is concrete floors with bead board walls and a pressed tin ceiling (the building was was built in 1907 and these are the original fixtures). There is a long oak counter down one side and the groceries were originally behind the counter (as the counterman got them for you). Nowadays there is a well appointed small kitchen that serves basic po boys, fish, chicken, etc (although they do have great hand ground and formed hamburgers-really great as a matter of fact) and they boil seafood on weekend nights when it is in season.

Last night the menu consisted of Boiled Crawfish at $1.89 a pound (live price is currently below $1.50) and boiled jumbo shrimp (16-20's) for 6.99 a lb. We ordered up 15 lbs. of bugs and 3 lbs. of shrimp, got drinks (this is one of the very few times that I ever regret this not drinking thing. Beer goes with this better than anything else-but I made do with Abita Root Beer-a fine product that I helped to formulate) and tucked in. There is not much conversation that goes on in the Mayhaw family when we are presented with a steaming mound of boiled bugs and shrimp-just alot of slurping and grinning. The crawfish were perfectly cooked-spicy, with a nice lemon and garlic tang. The crawfish were served with a generous amount of boiled corn, potatoes, and onions (along with a few heads of boiled garlic-just squeeze directly into your mouth for a taste explosion ). The shrimp were delicious and had been cooked perfectly and the shells fell right off. After about thirty minutes we all found ourselves picking through the tattered remains of our meal looking for one last tail or a stray shrimp. At that point I broke down and got 5 more pounds of bugs. They did the trick. We were all well satisfied and decided to take a stroll around town and watch the folks setting up to fleece the tourists . There was alot of action for an early evening in Abita and on top of everything else the Friday Night Bingo Game at Town Hallwas in full swing (oldest running Bingo in St Tammany Parish-no smoking or drinking alcohol-big payoffs) so there was lots of geriatric bingo action as well. Many of the vendors in the square were throwing a big impromptu crawfish boil and and there were a couple of people picking out tunes on some guitars (pretty well, actually). It was a very cool scene.

We walked home and went to bed. This morning I got up at 5 to get ready for work and my son Miles was up baking chocolate chips and cowboy cookies to vend to thirsty shoppers along with sweet mint tea (cookies-4 nice ones for a buck, tea-12 oz. for a buck)). His location today should be a hotbed of pedestrian activity as he is located in front of My Friend John Preble's Fabulous UCM Museum . This place is worth the trip if you have a car and want to come to the Northshore for a day during a trip to New Orleans. John is....well.....a bit eccentric and has collected some wild stuff over the years (as well as creating even more of it) and is also a very very good painter to boot. My wife Robin will be selling some gorgeous (and very well priced ) rugs that she has been collecting from various salvage sales and a bunch of other tasteful crap. I am working this morning (actually I am killing time at work on egullet) and will be doing a little light bargain hunting this afternoon.

Life is Good, People are Nice, and the Food is Great.

That, my friends, is why I live here

[Singapore]

Bravo!

I envy you tremendously.

[docsconz]

You gotta love when life is like that. I feel much the same about where I live, although I can't quite find a good crawfish boil. It is nice to know that there are still some regional differences and specialties. It is ironic that as travel gets easier, there is getting to be less of a need to travel. Your report reassures me that that is not yet completely the case.

What other local or regional specialties are you hugely proud of where you live? Are there any special producers of either local specialties or products of exceptional quality?

[hillvalley]

Thanks for sharing, it was a wonderful piece.

I am now craving crawfish. If only you weren't so far away

Hope you did well at the sale. You've gotta love taking money from tourist.

[clothier]

That's a great life you've got going there, Brooks, thanks for sharing it with us.

[Mayhaw Man]

You've gotta love taking money from tourist.

Other than oil and farming-it's all we've got.

I like to think that the well traveled tourist is thinking that the only money he or she needs to save when on a trip is just enough to get home from the airport, (this is my own personal travel creed ) so why not help them lighten their load all I can?

[hillvalley]

That's the philosophy we have up here as well!

Washington DC, leave your money with us.

I forgot to mention how f&*# cheap the seafood is. I bet you get oysters cheap too!

Hey, wait a minute. Why aren't you out there taking money from people!

How's the lemonade selling going?

[Mayhaw Man]

Washington DC, leave your money with us.

I think that we pretty much do leave our money in Washington, it's just that most of us don't get to visit very often.

Miles, the 14 year old is son the tea and homemade cookie concession. I gather that it is going pretty well. I need to post the recipe that he used to make that tea. It has fresh orange juice, mint out of my yard, and simple syrup (it is not, however, particularly sweet by local standards). It came out of a Baptist Church Cookbook from Bastrop LA printed in the thirties. I should approach them about a reprint as it really is a great piece of work in the antique-the way we cooked in the South when we were all dirt poor- category. The chocolate chips and the cowboy cookies are out of The Cotton Country Collection (Jr League of Monroe, LA-still in print).

I am at work until 1 cst. and then I will go wander around. The weather is great. We get about 6 weeks of this per year-3 in the Spring and 3 in the Fall-the rest of the time it is hot as hell and rains alot (56 +inches) or it is cool and rains alot, not much in between.

[Dana]

We boiled crawfish last Sunday, and they were terrific. I paid $1.59 per pound and they were all good sized - med to large - for this early in the season. Our Albertsons' gets them locally (SE TX). We're looking forward to a good season this year, if this first batch was any indication!!!

Sounds like you're going to have a terrific week-end, MM!!!

[Mayhaw Man]

This piece out of yesterday's Picayune gives anyone with any interest a pretty good breakdown on the current crawfish market.

These low prices are great for the consumers, but at some point (last year it was around $1.00US per pound) the farmers just quit going to get em out of the field. It's not worth it. Same situation with the shrimp industry down here. Those guys just can't make a buck anymore.

There are lots of shrimpers who have boats that haven't left the dock in a year. With fuel prices at their recent peak and shrimp prices in the tank (not to mention the pressure from Southeast Aisian imports-which is a factor in both the shrimp and the crawfish markets) what else can they do? There are guys (thank the Lord) that still run their boats and sell them direct to the market, bypassing the wholesalers. There is PLENTY of money in this, but it is alot more work and tends to be a family affair. My shrimp guy sells the shrimp that his brother has caught the night before. They are cheap and unbelievably fresh, but unlike what many of you by, they have not been sized. It is a pretty mixed bag, but as long as you don't mind going through them and sizing them yourself they are a phenomenal deal.

[Betts]

Mayhaw Man - that piece was worthy of being reade on NPR. Very evocative and heartfelt. Thanks.

[hillvalley]

Washington DC, leave your money with us.

I think that we pretty much do leave our money in Washington, it's just that most of us don't get to visit very often.

Don't worry, the locals don't see much of it either. But anytime you need a tourguide up here let me know!

I stopped by a local fish market (Right near the now at peak cherry blossoms. It was a total zoo, those damned tourist.) hoping to pick up some crawfish. The looked so sad swimming in some kind of liquid that I couldn't bring myself to get some

So what is your son going to do with the riches?

[Mayhaw Man]

We're going to the middle of nowhere in Manitoba fishing in July and I believe that that all important "new gear that you really don't need but probably should have" phase of his life has begun (this lasts many men forever-it is impossible to have too much money or fishing gear-although the two-sadly-rarely occur at the same time to the same person ) Anyway, I'm sure that most of it will go to Bass Pro Shop and Cabela's.

[maggiethecat]

Just beautiful writing, Brooks. Your little town may become a tourist destination for foodies and hedonists, should they about read it here.

I lived for way too short a time next to salt water -- Dalhousie, New Brunswick. You reminded me of the fifty cent lobsters off the dock, the fried clam stands (yes, gritty little suckers that came in a greasy brown paper bag) and platters of ridiculously fresh Malpecques. You gave me a big blast of nostalgia although the sea critters and the weather couldn't be more different.