Tattered Jeans

Deep in Cajun country, times are better but worries remain about long-term effects of BP spill

Editor's Note: In 2010, Katie Oxford filed a series of riveting columns from the heart of the Gulf oil spill disaster. She recently returned to Louisiana. This is her second column in a series.

While in Baton Rouge to meet Xuan "The Ant Man" Chen, I camped at The Cook Hotel, which is conveniently located on the LSU campus. Also camped there were Daughters of the American Revolution, who were attending the Louisiana State Convention — 200 plus.

I met a few of the daughters on the elevator. They were a jolly group, mostly blue-haired ladies who on this day were wearing pink hats with the pumps and pantyhose and chattin’ up a storm. An elderly gentleman stood silently in the back, wearing a baseball cap and a slight grin.

Something happens to me when traveling the back roads of Louisiana. My heart accelerates and senses ignite like a hound dog hot on a trail.

A few of the ladies pointed to their daughters and said where they were from. After we spilled out of the elevator, I felt a light tap on my shoulder.

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” the gentleman said. “In this group,” he explained, his fingers spread like he’d just tossed a seine, “I’m the H-O-D-A-R. That stands for ‘husband of a DAR’ but I say, it means ‘hundreds of dollars are required’.”

His wife, smiling dismissively, continued walking.

The DARS were adorable but I was glad to be leaving this hub of a beehive and going south. To Cut-Off, that is, according to the wife of the HODAR, “Is cut off.”

Dripping with color

Something happens to me when traveling the back roads of Louisiana. My heart accelerates and senses ignite like a hound dog hot on a trail. This trail, Highland Road to LA 1248, was dripping with color.

If spring green is gorgeous in Houston, it’s on steroids in Louisiana. Azaleas adorned almost every yard. Some sat in rows like buttons on a jacket popping pink. Others dressed the slopes down to the road, where on either side ditches were filled to the brim with cattails.

If spring green is gorgeous in Houston, it’s on steroids in Louisiana.

The houses seem suited to the land both in scale and in beauty. Refreshing. Roofs slant long and low and tree branches are the size of huge barrels. Porch columns are almost as plentiful as the golden rods, also in bloom.

From one farm road to another, I zigzagged through towns like St. Gabriel, Vacherie, ChackBay, feeling more intoxicated after every curve with some concoction of Norman Rockwell and Cajun country. The sight of water, that is, a bayou, ever constant.

From LA 20, as I hit 308 and turned south, I knew I was getting close to a place that feels like home. Lafourche Parish and Terrebonne Parish. I can’t decide which. The two sit side by side like sisters.

The people here are Cajuns. They live honoring the simple things in life like sharing a meal or a friendly conversation. As one Houstonian said, “We have watches, they have time.” Cajuns are my kind of folk.

Better times

By late afternoon, I came to that familiar sharp curve in the road and saw the Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor. Unlike three years ago, the parlor appeared to have customers. Indeed, it did.

Inside, Bobby Pitre and Eric Guidry were busy at work with more customers waiting.

I still wonder why the Woodward/Bernsteins of the world aren’t on this part of the tragedy like a tick.

Bobby looked up from the table and smiled big. I was glad that he remembered me and I was anxious to hear how things were going from Bobby’s point of view.

“Going great!” he answered, “because we’re working! It’s been a good year so far.”

Bobby reported that last year wasn’t so good. “People weren’t spending any money,” he said.

I asked whether he’d seen any media folk. “Some,” he said, “maybe four in the last year.”

Then I asked him if he had any concerns, now three years after the BP oil spill. His answer came with no hesitation.

“Yeah I do,” Bobby said. “I’m concerned about the dispersant…what’s in the soil.” He had a daughter who he used to take to the beach on a regular basis. Not anymore.

Bobby had hit on something that hits on me. Big time. Who will ever know the amount of poison that BP sprayed in Louisiana and God knows where else. Why they were allowed to is the bigger question, and I still wonder why the Woodward/Bernsteins of the world aren’t on this part of the tragedy like a tick. Something that at the end of the day may prove more damning than the damn oil spill itself.

Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor Eric Guidry tattoo artist

Photo by Katie Oxford

Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor Eric Guidry tattoo artist

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Winter weather warning

Arctic air will bring hard freeze to Houston this weekend

Photo by Uliana Sova on Unsplash

This weekend could bring ice to Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond.

With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South, including Texas.

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know how people are going to deal with it,” he said.

Forecasters on Tuesday, January 20 warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.

“If you get a half of an inch of ice — or heaven forbid an inch of ice — that could be catastrophic,” said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.

The National Weather Service warned of "great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain” starting Friday in much of the nation’s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.

The exact timing of the approaching storm — and where it is headed — remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.

Meteorologists at WFAA say it's too early for an exact forecast across Dallas-Fort Worth. But it's good to start being weather aware.

Here’s what to know:

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a 'major winter storm’
An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.

“This is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be “a major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that’s spilling in,” Jackson said.

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South
Some of the storm’s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.

“At the same time, we’re expecting rain to move into much of the state,” Shamburger said.

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.

“It’s going to be a very difficult forecast,” Shamburger said.

An atmospheric river could set up across the Southern U.S.
An atmospheric river of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.

“Global models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,” according to the National Weather Service's Atlanta office.

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm
Travel is a major concern, as Southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days.

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation’s major hub airports, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze
Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week is “will be the coldest yet,” Jackson said.

“There’s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,” Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that’s connected to the Arctic Ocean. “And this is dominating the weather over all of North America.”

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