They don’t have a lot of shrimp left,” my friend said. “I think I will get
30 pounds.”
We had been in the marsh looking for “reds” and anything else edible. None
of whom were Cajuns by birth, but all of us are Cajuns by spirit. We were ready
to load up on South Louisiana fare.
They don’t have a lot of shrimp left,” my friend said. “I think I will get
30 pounds.”
We had been in the marsh looking for “reds” and anything else edible. None
of whom were Cajuns by birth, but all of us are Cajuns by spirit. We were ready
to load up on South Louisiana fare.
We stopped at a shrimp shed, as someone called it. The shrimp are fresh out
of the marsh and cost much less than in Alexandria. Actually, the further one
goes from the marsh, the more expensive the shrimp.
“How much are they?” I asked.
“Two-fifty a pound.”
“How many pounds are you going to get?” I asked, expecting the answer to be
five or ten pounds.
When David said, “Thirty pounds,” my knees buckled. Thirty pounds of shrimp
all in one place at one time was beyond my experience. But, this was a macho
thing for me. We had been competing in our bow fishing experience and this was
no time to stop.
“I’ll take 30 pounds.”
Wife Leah is a great cook. Although she is a Yankee from Oak Grove in Northeast
Louisiana, she does a great job with seafood. I remember her remarking a couple
of months ago that she would not mind having shrimp every week, if we could
afford it. Well, at two-fifty a pound, we can afford it.
“O, man,” the Cajun at heart pastor said. “You can freeze those in water and
they will last a year.”
“That will be $75,” the nice lady running the shed said.
I swallowed hard and peeled out the bucks. Fortunately, I had just stopped
by an ATM.
At home, I began to prepare the shrimp for freezing. Wife Leah was gone, so
this was all my chore. The afternoon was a little cooler so I started beheading
the shrimp. Some kind of airborne alarm went off and flies from miles away came
buzzing, landing and biting. Another land-borne alarm went off and ants started
marching in goose-step unity.
With one’s hands covered with the inevitable from beheading shrimp, one cannot
slap or shoo flies or swat ants without plastering one’s self with the “inevitable.”
The temperature was in the high 90s with the humidity almost 100 percent. My
hands, however, were freezing from digging around in the ice-filled water for
the shrimp. Part of me was perspiring, the other part was suffering frostbite.
The sun began setting, and the mosquitos began arriving. But this time, I still
had some 15 pounds of shrimp to behead.
The ants kept coming, the flies kept swarming, the mosquitos kept biting and
the ants multiplied. They failed to fall for the decoy shrimp I tossed nearby.
Finally, the last shrimp lost its head. I washed shrimp and put them in water-filled
bags until there was not an unbagged shrimp on the place except those I tried
to use as an insect decoy. The bags filled much of the freezer part of the refrigerator
– enough shrimp for months, and months, and. . .
I also have blue fingers that are raw from separating the shrimp from their
heads, 20-plus mosquito bites, 18 ant bites, a patio covered with ants, a kitchen
that has the unmistakable odor of raw shrimp and at least five pounds of smelly
shrimp heads.
Greed is a terrible thing. We accumulate more than we need simply because we
can. And, the accumulation of the results of greed always exacts a greater price
than the stuff is worth whether it is shrimp or furniture or. . .
The next day I walked by the seafood counter at the local supermarket. I asked
how much the nice peeled shrimp was. The clerk said, “$12.50 a pound.” She looked
at me a little strange when I replied, “That’s not enough.”