Baja St. Martin

I talked with one of the local “big” fishermen today and he said he is checking a few traps a few times a week but has not quit his main job and doesn’t plan to do so. Nobody seems to be catching many crawfish yet — wild crawfish, that is. With only a week until Easter, it’s pretty certain this season won’t be a great one.

The Belle River bridge work continues. No signs up as yet telling when the bridge will be closed. The work barge is first on one side of the bridge, then the other. Today I saw two guys in what appeared to be diving suits on the barge and thought it must not be a fun job to go down in that cold, murky water.

Highway 70 from the Belle River bridge into Pierre Part this side of the Pierre Part Bay bridge is in the process of being repaved. Right now the road bed is down to that striped stuff which makes your vehicle sound like it’s falling apart. Now that the old surface has been removed, the road is actually not bad. At least the big holes are gone! It is a nuisance when the traffic is held to one lane but it has forced me to be a little better organized and consolidate errands more efficiently. It’s not fun to sit in a line of cars for 20 minutes just to go a mile, so I’m reducing my trips. I wonder if there is some unknown (to the public) plan to be paving the road at the same time the bridge is closed to through traffic.

I’ve been away for a week, spending a few days with an older sister in southern Michigan who was having surgery for breast cancer. She’s doing fine but will have to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. Her surgery was at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor. It is an incredibly huge place but amazingly efficient. You’d have thought it would be pretty easy for records or patients to be mislaid in that enormous complex, but it didn’t happen to us, at least.

It’s quite amazing now to find that practically everyone I speak to has a story about a family member or close friend who has or had cancer. Everyone knows of a particular chemo drug or anti-nausea medicine or homeopathic remedy for the side effects of radiation or has a tale about good/bad chemo treatment. It’s both heartening and horrifying.

From a window at the other sister’s home, we watched a small herd of deer, squirrels and wild turkeys eat the corn we threw out every morning. My younger sister and I went for a walk one day in 15 degree temperatures which didn’t seem that cold as long as we were in the sun and out of the wind. Hard to remember that I was raised in that climate and loved it as a kid.

It’s good to be home in Louisiana .

Linda Cooke

The Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be contacted via e-mail at lcooke9417@bellsouth.net.