Our ceremony in Gueydan to become honorary citizens was brief and to the point. We posed for a photo with the mayor, Bob Hensgens, while he handed us our Gueydan lapel pins and our honorary citizens certificates. We had a few minutes to chat with Bob, and before he left he let us know that he’d arranged for us to have a mudboat ride with Wildlife and Fisheries down at White Lake. We were definitely excited about that idea!
While chatting with the City Hall office staff, we met Heuetta Benoit, a lively and outgoing woman. We mentioned to her that we were going on a mudboat ride to see gator eggs collected, and told her about our alligator farm tour with Shane Stelly. She told us that her husband catches gators during the season, and she salts the skins. Heuetta laughingly told us that if we’re still around during gator hunting season we could check it out. She said it was in the month of September, and we laughed, thinking we’d be long gone (but thinking how awesome that would be!). Little did we know…
We moved down the street from the mayor’s office to an impromptu interview with Meceal Smith of the Gueydan Journal and Mike Rizutto of the Lake Arthur Sun-Times. We loved the down home attitude at the paper. Mike and Meceal chatted with Max and TJ while we sat back and listened to their stories. Meceal (pronounced Meh-seal) is a font of local knowledge and colloquialisms, so much so that I’d love a recording of her.
A short while into the interview, a guy came in to the office, clearly needing something. All heads swiveled over to look at him. Mike stood up and went over to see what he needed, while we kept talking with Meceal. She was distracted, looking at the guy, but turned to us with a big smile and said, “We didn’t know who he was, but we findin’ out… We questionin’ him…”. When I laughed out loud at that, she simply said “We tell it like we sees it.” We thoroughly enjoyed the chance to talk with both of Mike and Meceal, and could have stayed for hours. Max had appointed himself time-keeper, and reminded us that we had lunch reservations at Nott’s Corner in Lake Arthur.
Lunch at Nott’s Corner was delicious. A local landmark, Nott’s has been around for over 22 years. It serves local Cajun food, prepared wonderfully, with huge servings. They have some of the best bread pudding we’ve tasted yet. The walls are adorned with old black and white photos of the area, and posters of the movie Passion Fish which was filmed in this area (including shots of Nott’s Corner).
After lunch Max took us to Market Basket in Lake Arthur and bought us some basic groceries, before bringing us back to the old parsonage where he took a quick look at my misbehaving trailer. He came up with a few ideas to fix it, which we decided to pursue later.
That night we wandered out on our bikes to explore the town, and found a little place that was open for dinner. According to the sign it’s Cormier’s Creole Kitchen, but all the locals still call it “the pool hall” – even though it changed hands many years ago. We loved their sweet potato fries, and they have a very good “shrimp salad” with lots of shrimp mixed in with the iceberg lettuce. Heading on out again after dinner, we spotted a real treasure, a bookstore – Patti’s Book Nook – just off Main Street. A sign indicated they served coffee, so we couldn’t resist heading over to take a look. The shop was closed for the night, but peering through the windows, it really looked more like a bookstore and less like a coffee shop. Ah well… even though our hopes for a good café mocha were dashed, we hoped they’d let us trade our books when they were open.