April 12, Saturday Staying Put

Friday night the little Rv park at San Luis filled up with pickup trucks and fifth wheels. Saturday morning everyone was out fishing. In checking out the proper way to do this you needed a garden wagon, sort of like your standard Red Flyer kid’s wagon except on steroids. Your wagon had to have four pneumatic tires plus side gates. Attached to the side gates, like you would find on a steak truck, there needed to be at least 8 10 inch PVC pipes zip tied to outsides otherwise you would be considered a wimp. These pipes of course held your collection of fishing poles piercing the sky like a gaggle of cell phone towers. Inside your fishin’ rig was your drink cooler filled with Bud or if you were man enough, Sundog Ale. This cooler kept your catch cooler and your bait can in place so they wouldn’t rattle around at you pulled your possessions across the rough parking lot asphalt. If you had space left over in your fishin’ rig, you had your folded up lounge chair. Now ya ready to do some serious damage to the finned population out there at the end of the dock or along the concert bulkhead. You go, dude!!
OR you could have your six-foot casting net and stand on the bridge and fling it in a perfect circle with an artistic flare. You got lots of extra points if you were a woman and caught fish in the net. At least she got points in my book.
At night the RV park had batteries of huge mercury vapor lights flooding out over the water. They were annoying bright. However hundreds of laughing gulls, brown pelicans and royal terns used them as fishing grounds. All night long they would set up a flight pattern through the light so no one would smash into each other and dive for fish that were attracted to the surface by the light. People also joined the fishing derby well into the night from the shoreline.

Saturday was only the second “stay put; no plan day” since I left six weeks ago. I hung out at the table in Snee-Oosh or walked the beaches in the area. Again I was impressed by the vulnerability of the stilted dwellings to a hurricane. Even if your place was bomb proof like many houses were in Galveston during the hurricane of 1900, collapsed structures formed gigantic rafts that served as battering rams against the supports of those houses still standing bring their timbers down to be added to the destructive mass. I have the utmost respect for the sea. Last month a sixteen year girl drown not more than a mile from the RV park when she was caught in a rip tide and panicked. The “Watch for Snakes” sign had been expanded to include “Caution – Dangerous Current”. I suppose in Louisiana it will again be modified to include ‘gaters!