Surrounded by rice farming, crawfish ponds, and cattle ranches, and billing itself as the “Duck Capital of America”, Gueydan is a small town of 1200 people, on Hwy 14. It’s 24 miles west of Abbeville, 12 miles east of Lake Arthur. As the crow flies, it’s about 20 miles inland (north) from the coast, and about 10 miles south of I-10. It’s right at the intersection of Hwy 14 and Hwy 91.
A bustling and prosperous town in the oil boom of the 60’s and 70’s, Gueydan declined in the oil bust of the 80s and never quite recovered to its former level of growth and activity. Though there are at least a half-dozen vacated buildings on Main St., some in very bad repair, the others are occupied, with steady car and foot traffic. The buildings are well maintained and the streets are clean. There’s a general feeling of cleanliness and being well maintained throughout the whole town.
Though the town is losing population – it’s gone from 1600 to 1200 in the last few years, there’s not a big sense of decline. On the contrary, there’s a lot of quiet prosperity here. It’s not flashy prosperity – it’s clearly a working man’s town, but many of these “working men” are doing well. Oil money is always in the background. For those who don’t have the oil money, there’s still a sense of prosperity, because most of the locals really love the lifestyle. It’s common for grown children to leave the area for a few years or many years, only to come back and settle down here, some even in retirement.
The sense of family is profound. Being Cajun country, nearly everyone is related to a large percentage of the rest of the community. There are the Broussards, Thibodeauxs, Richards, Hairs, Fontenots, Campbells, Sirmons, LeBlancs, Guidrys and Zaunbrechers. Relationships are described in terms of aunts and nephews and grandmas and second cousins, and great nieces and everything family relationship you can imagine, and they’re all within the local area. We’ve been really tickled that one of the first questions on meeting someone new is “what’s the family name?” That will be followed by an extensive explanation of names and relationships, searching for connections.
Catholics and conservatives are in the clear majority. The community is big enough to support at least three “white” churches and several “black” churches. There’s an active community life, based around the family and church and school. The Duck Festival, with its attendant Duck Festival Parade, is held in August and it’s the biggest local event of the year. The high school holds a homecoming parade down Main St. and the churches hold festivals and bazaars and other activities. For Halloween, Main St. is shut down for 2 hours and trick or treaters wander the homes and businesses collecting candy.
Cars are late model and well maintained. Pick-up trucks are by far the most common vehicles. Clothing is primarily farm wear, but on weekends you’ll see well-dressed people in church. You won’t see many 3-piece suits around town, or many suits at all, for that matter. The architecture is simple and functional. There are lots of brick buildings and wood frame buildings. The homes are nearly all Cajun style, with the characteristic front porch and supporting columns. The streets in many parts of town are lined with huge beautiful oaks, lending a wonderful feeling of peacefulness. There are some junky homes with unkempt lots, but not many.
Talk is pretty much about the crops, LSU football, local activities, hunting and fishing.
Gueydan is big enough and organized enough to have its own City Hall, water system, police and fire departments.
Hwy 82 runs down near the coast and then comes up inland to Abbeville, but Hwy 14 is a much bigger artery for southern Louisiana. Oversized rigs are not allowed on I-10, so that traffic must be routed elsewhere. The heavy oversized traffic was on Hwy 90, paralleling I-10, until the locals fussed too much; now the traffic comes down from I-10 into Lake Arthur and over through Gueydan to points east and south.
Sitting on Main St. and watching the traffic from inside the house has been quite an education. If we ever get a chance to see an oil rig or see some oil industry installations, we will recognize all the parts of the infrastructure, because we have seen it all roll right by us, more than once. I couldn’t begin to describe what we’ve seen, and probably none of it is recognizable to anyone outside the oil industry. I think only someone who works specifically with the physical infrastructure would be able to tell what all we’ve seen. We also see all the supply trucks come by (that’s how we knew water was about to be delivered to Dollar General in the first hurricane). We see the livestock being transported – cattle and horses – and we’ve seen quite a bit of farm equipment. We can always tell what’s being harvested because we see the big transport trucks going by – so far we’ve watched the rice going to the rice dryers and we’ve seen the baled hay go by in big rolls.
The big trucks roll 7 days a week starting well before dawn, with some going all during the night. The traffic is just lighter and starts a little later on Sunday, and it’s just a bit lighter on Saturdays than during the week. We can’t believe how fast they go through here – they will actually lay on the horn to warn people rather than slow down going through the heart of downtown. Just amazing…
The oversized transport is quite a big deal around here. The big trucks are required to have lead vehicles and following vehicles, and frequently they are required to have state troopers accompany them (at a cost of $75 an hour per trooper). This creates quite a parade, as you’ll see the state trooper(s) with lights flashing, followed by a lead car with lights and flags and signs, then the massive truck itself, then more following cars with lights and flags and signs, and possibly a state trooper with lights flashing making up the rear. Many of these trucks sail through at least 10 mph over the speed limit, but some are so tall they need to crawl by a few blocks for fear of damaging their cargo on the overhanging branches or power lines. Often they need to go on the opposite side of the street (Main St. is divided by a grassy median) so that creates more congestion as all oncoming traffic must be diverted or stopped. And we aren’t talking the occasional truck going through town – we are talking many times every day all week long, into Saturdays as well.
When you meet these trucks on the highway, you’d darn well better be alert, as they won’t slow down at all, and there’s definitely not enough room on the road for you and them. They won’t be the ones pulling over for you!! In addition to the scariness of meeting them on the road, there’s the damage they inflict on the road edges. After so many of these trucks sailing through, the edges are crumbling, creating a most unpleasant ride in a car, and a horrible ride on a bicycle. There’s lots of local grumbling about it, but there won’t be any changes until the local communities band together and get really vocal. Meanwhile the trucks will continue to roll through town, creating congestion, noise, air pollution, and crumbled roadways.
Gueydan has a surprising variety of stores and services. They’ve got two banks, more than 5 churches, a full-fledged post office with home mail delivery, a Catholic school and public schools, a couple of bars (we were told we probably wouldn’t be comfortable in the bars), several gift shops and a pharmacy, a library, nursing home, and bookstore, a Laundromat, two grocery stores, a gas station and mini-mart, four restaurants, and a museum. You won’t find a movie hall, theater group, symphonies or opera, but you’ll find a welding shop, an auto parts store, a florist and a hardware store. For such a small town, we are really astonished at the completeness of the services available.