NEDERLAND — My old friend, Pod Roget, called the other day, to see if I wanted him to go with me to Sabine Pass the next time I went to check on my place.

I told him yes, of course. So within the next few days, I went by and picked him up on my way there.

“Your truck's got a big dent on the right side,” said the good Pod, “why don't you get it fixed?”

“Pod,” I explained, “I bought this truck ten years ago, to get from point A to point B, and to pull a cattle trailer if necessary. I turned too sharp a right and hit a post in my pasture — made a dent on the passenger side. Now I don't have to pull a trailer anymore, but I still have to get from point A to point B. This truck still does that...the dent doesn't matter.”

“Looks like hell,” Pod said.

“I ain't tryin' to impress anyone, Pod, with a pickup truck.”

“Looks like hell,” Pod repeated.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “it does.”

“How's ever'thing at Sabine, Neal?”

“Still pretty bad, Pod. Hurricane Ike really did screw up my whole place...pastures and all. You'll see when we get there.”

“How 'bout the marshes”

“They bounced back within a year.”

“Uh-huh,” Pod said.

I had my Blue Heeler dog, “Mister”, in the bed of my truck when I picked Pod up. And, as we crossed over the Intracoastal Canal bridge, Mister stood up and looked at the nearby marsh.

“Dog's standin' up in the truck, Neal.”

“He always does that when we cross this bridge, Pod. He was raised on my ranch at Sabine. I think he recognizes the smell of marsh grass.”

“Huh,” said Pod, “I wonder what he's gonna think about when them BP tar balls hit the beach.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I wondered when I got you in the truck if we would start out talkin' about BP or just sorta work up to it.”

“Well, BP promised $20 billion to pay for clean up and losses, Neal. That's a big pot fulla money.”

“Pod Roget is of Louisiana Cajun heritage, everybody knows that,” I told him. “So we're talkin' here, Pod, about your whole family background... wiped out.”

“I know,” Pod said, “but BP's gonna pay for it.”

It was hard for me to keep from pulling over to the side of the highway and parking my truck as we talked. But it was too damned hot, and Mister was in the sun. So I shook my head and kept on driving.

“They can't pay for it, Pod, because they don't know what's gonna happen in the future. You know what I used to kill unwanted grass and weeds with on my little Sabine ranch?”

“No, what?”

“I poured used oil on it, Pod, oil from my tractor. And that always killed it.”

“So...?”

“So you can pick up tar balls on the beach, and you can skim oil off the ocean,” I told him, “but oil on marsh grass stays there. And then the marsh dies.”

“Whatta you expect BP to do about that, Neal?”

I frowned. “That may be the point, Pod, there's not anything they can do now. So how the hell they gonna pay for that? For a whole, vanished eco-system? If it kills the grass, it can kill the roots. Then there may never be anymore grass.”

“Well, it's a helluva lot of oil to clean up,” Pod answered.

“Yeah, I read BP's Pandora's box may be spilling as much as the total Exxon-Valdez spill ever four days.”   

He sat quietly then, and said nothing. Mister still stood, smelling the marsh with a lifted head.

“My family, way back, used to be Louisiana shrimpers before we moved here and Dad went to work at the refinery,” Pod said. “I guess, if we still shrimped, it would be bad news.”

“Bad news is puttin' it lightly, Pod. It might mean the end of fishing families all up and down the Louisiana coast.”

“Bad as an atom bomb?”

“Just about. Think about it, man. It could mean the end of Cajun culture on the Louisiana coast.”

“How you figure that?”

“Those shrimpers, crabbers, and fishermen have always done a bunch more than catch and sell seafood. We're talkin' about generations of Cajuns, like yourself, who created Cajun music and Cajun cooking. We're talkin' shrimp gumbo, crawfish balls, and lord knows what else.”

“I can't imagine life without gumbo,” said Pod.

“ And the language, that Cajun patois — accent — we all love to hear. Without Louisiana fishermen we wouldn't have it.”

“Damnation, Neal, I hadn't thought about that part yet.”

“It's sad,” I told him. “And it's especially sad when you realize it's impossible to stop what's happenin' to Louisiana, and maybe Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coasts also. It might be too late to stop it.”

“Yeah, it reminds me of that old teevee ad, 'Man has no right to mess with Mother Nature,' or somethin' like that.”

“See, there you go, Pod. Like I've told you many times before, but apparently BP doesn't understand it...People are more important than money. That's been my Democrat credo all my life.”

“You had to finally say 'Democrat', at least you didn't say 'Republican'.”

“Didn't have to, Pod, facts speak for themselves if folks listen.”

Neal Morgan of Nederland is a retired educator. Contact him at neal.morgan1@yahoo.com.