Many, Many Crawfish

    News about the crawfish reached us much as the odor of some chemical would have reached us that bright January morning. It was faint at first and then seemed to vanish altogether, then returned and asserted itself with an intensity not to be denied. This was the news: there were crawfish in the coulée behind Gros Jeansonne's farm, and Gros had given permission for all the neighbors who wanted to go get crawfish to pass through his pasture.

    The mule and the mare were quickly enticed into the smaller enclosure next to the barn and by the time my mother had changed her clothes the team was hitched to the wagon, which  was in its traveling configuration--sporting only the two basic panels on its sides. My two brothers were waiting impatiently, sitting on the smooth plank which served as a second seat when inserted between the top and the bottom of the wagon's side panels. My mother's two large zinc washtubs and an assortment of baskets and buckets had found their way into the wagon. Off we went, a family to the harvest. My mother and father sat on the front seat and my two brothers and I on the back seat. We were not alone. Four or five neighboring families, most of them relatives, had heard the call and were responding. We made an orderly procession of wagons in the January sunlight.  Down the gravel road and up to Gros Jeansonne's gate we went. The gate opened and we proceeded through his lot and to the pasture and headed toward the woods.

    The woods were really pastureland, but  recent winter rains had flooded the area and given it the appearance of a well-kept swamp. Not wanting to risk getting stuck in the soft earth, the entire convoy halted on the edge of the flooded area and disembarked personnel and containers. In the next instant someone called out that they had found crawfish, and the harvest began!

    The crawfish were large, pale red, whitish toward the ends of their tail shells and the ends of their pinchers. They were abundant as in a dream. One had only to pick them up on the back of their heads, avoiding their uplifted, supplicating paws and deposit them in bucket, basket, or tub. The harvesting gave rise to a euphoric sense of God's goodness. In providing these creatures in such abundance, in making them so accessible and so yielding, God had demonstrated, by giving us these, his delectable creatures, that he was indeed capable of miracles.

    And what feasting ensued! We who had been accustomed to getting crawfish by fishing with pieces of chicken fat at the end of a little string in the little stagnant bayou near our house, we who had been thrilled to have a dozen or two of the creatures to boil on our wood-burning stove--now we had crawfish!  We built a roaring fire under the large black pot in which my mother boiled her clothes and which we used for cooking cracklins at boucherie time. Into the  boiling water went our crawfish, batch after batch. And as we ate our fill, marinating them for a short while in vinegar and salt and pepper, there began to be talk of gumbo, and etouffée, and pies, and jambalayas. This led to talk of canning, and, since the season of les boucheries was not far off, whether or not it was possible to preserve crawfish in lard.
 

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