In Louisiana: Gone Shrimping

By Gregory Jaynes

"Louisiana should be looked in on periodically, like the kid in the upstairs bedroom who's been known to tie the sheets together and split. Any piece of the personality is at any given time substance enough for enlightenment, to say nothing of entertainment."

"Any piece? "

"Pick something, something that sounds dull."

"Shrimp."

"You got it."

In the cabin of the shrimp boat, bound for the Gulf of Mexico, are these: one Sunbeam Master Chef charcoal grill, three spatulas hanging from eye hooks, a slicker, half a dozen greasy life jackets, a pan full of plastic dishes, a box of Zatarain's crab boil (since 1889), a bottle of Hunt's All Natural barbecue sauce, a bottle of Seven Seas Viva Italian dressing, a bottle of Formula 409 all-purpose cleaner, a can of Bush's Best whole-kernel golden corn, a can of Shurfine early harvest sweet peas, a can of La Choy meatless chow mein, two jars of Ragu Chunky Gardenstyle 100% Natural spaghetti sauce, a can of Trappey's jalapeno navy beans (flavored with slab bacon), a can of New Orleans French Market chicory coffee, a bag of garlic cloves suspended from the ceiling, a cold box full of sandwich meats, boudin and cheeses, a teakettle and a coffeepot, four fire extinguishers, three boxes of Raid mosquito coils, a can of Hot Shot fly and mosquito killer, kitchen matches, a Rayovac Workhorse flashlight, salt, a toolbox, two spinning rods, a case of Budweiser -- and Richard Cretini, the captain, who likes to be prepared.

As he guides the boat across Lake Charles, Captain Cretini, a powerful man, as thick in the thighs as some simps are in the chest, gives freely of his Louisiana past. Born less than five miles from where he lives today with his wife, a school teacher, and two children. Army service, 1965 to 1968. Flight school on the G.I. Bill. Joined the San Antonio police department and stayed four years. Missed home. "It's mostly the people here. It's more relaxed." Took a job as a longshoreman on the dock at Lake Charles. Then the work, much of it loading rice, went slack. Cretini switched to shrimping. So did scores of other unemployed Louisianans. At last look, the Lake Charles' unemployment rate was 14.8%, more than double the national average. A local official estimates that there are 2,000 commercial shrimpers working these waters where just a few years back there were 500. The competition has become fierce and ugly, and at the moment Cretini is steering toward the thick of it.

Through the summer the Louisiana law forbids shrimping in "inside" waters. This is to protect the breeding grounds in the marshes and lakes, to assure there will be something to harvest each year when open season comes round. The shrimpers in these parts run out into the gulf at night, turn their bows inshore just at the designated line that divides "outside" and "inside" water, drop their nets and wait for the outgoing tide to bring the shrimp into their pockets. Here the line is just outside the entrance to the Calcasieu Ship Channel. It is called, by one and all, the Firing Line.

The tide is mighty, and it takes a big engine to hold a boat against it, especially a boat with nets down 12 ft. deep. And there is only so much room cross the mouth of the channel -- room, say, for 20 boats, elbow to elbow. So position is everything. The nets in front take the tide-bestowed bounty; the nets behind, on the lesser powered boats, scoop in what is left. If this were a democratic game, the boats on the line would drop back with their fill after a set time, allowing those behind a chance, but it is not, and anyway, shrimpers, like hawks, do not share. Thus feelings are bitter within the fleet, and the bitterness is exacerbated by a parochial rivalry between the shrimpers from Cameron, the port town nearest the Firing Line, and the shrimpers from the lakes, like Captain Cretini.

Out in the channel the shrimper allows that he bought his 40-ft., all- cypress boat four years ago for $15,000, from a neighbor named Buddy Wannage. He says he paid too much for it, and that so far he has only managed to pay the interest on his loan. He does not know the age of his boat -- "People make them in their backyard. It's not a factory rig" -- which at this very moment is breaking down, just shy of the Firing Line. An exhaust sleeve is spewing dirty water like a coffee percolator gone wild. Overheated, dead in the water, he sees to his repairs as Eddie Wannage, Buddy's brother and a fellow shrimper, pulls up astern to offer help, then chuffs off to take his place in the rear of the Firing Line.

The state exacts a particularly emasculating fine if you are caught ahead of the Firing Line; it cuts your nets off. This happened to Eddie Wannage a month ago. "It took my Dad 30 hours to make new ones. I lost five prime nights during a full moon," he says. It is dark now, the water as black as used motor oil, and the lights on the rocking boats describe a skyline suffering slippage. No one is taking in much shrimp this night, least of all Eddie, whose nets snare more flounder and speckled trout than anything.

Eddie passes the buggy night grousing on his CB radio. He tells his listeners he is 28 years old, that he has a wife and a ten-month-old, that he is living in an Airstream trailer trying to "scrape it together to build a home" and that his tax statement showed he earned $4,200 last year. He indicts the state wildlife-and-fisheries commission for "selective enforcement," saying, "They don't cut the Cameron boys' nets off." Next he attacks his fellow shrimpers: "The Vietnamese stick together. Even the coloreds stick together. These coon asses, though, it's every man for himself. They could have said I wasn't out of line. I wasn't. But they just watched, and I got my nets cut off."

So Eddie rants, and Richard Cretini catches up along toward midnight and lets down his nets, but no one is hauling in anything to speak of. By first light not a boat is left in the channel. There had been cruel words on the radio all night -- all summer, for that matter -- but no violence.

When the sun is high, Tim Racca, a Cameron shrimper, is washing down his boat. "They're all big on the radio," he says, "but you see them on land, they're like puppy dogs. It's mostly mouth, but it can be dangerous. You've got somebody 1 ft. away, and you go down, you take three boats on the rocks with you probably." Racca said that it "isn't the Cameron shrimpers against the lake shrimpers. It's people against people. They're all scared they'll let one shrimp go by."

What remains to be settled is Eddie's charge of selective enforcement. The man to settle it is James Nunez, chief wildlife-and-fisheries enforcement officer for the area. Nunez operates out of the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge near Grand Chenier. The drive there is through marsh country, with egrets and heron everywhere and a duck-hunting dog in every man's yard. The canals are thick with lily pads and anglers, and the talk is of the upcoming opening of teal season. (During the Iranian crisis, it was locally claimed that ten Cajuns could have saved the day if you put them in the desert and told them 1) Iranians were out of season, 2) there was a two-bag limit and 3) they taste good in gumbo.)

"Some of these people I've had to arrest 20 times," Nunez says. He says he has had to cut the nets off about 50 boats in the past year, about half of them Cameron boats, the other half lake boats. "Shrimping is dull," Nunez then volunteers. "Alligator farming is the thing here now." He beckons a colleague who says, the economy the way it is, the farmers are switching over to alligators. They get their stock from the refuge there, which will hatch 9,000 eggs in the next few months. The refuge has a waiting list with 40 names on it. "Gator stock is not exactly something you can just order up from Sears, Roebuck."

Louisiana should be looked in on periodically . . .