I popped Don Henley into the CD player and headed east for Louisiana again — a place that tugs on me like a crab on a string of bacon.

At the Sulphur Cameron exit the sky turned the color of Kaopectate except for an area north, glaring down like a giant bruise. It made me think of something my niece had said when she saw her first rainbow. “God’s coloring book,” she pointed.

In this sky, however, Day 90 of the oil disaster, it looked like someone else had hold of the coloring book. As the trip would prove, something had gotten hold of the people of Louisiana too.

When I reached New Iberia, KANE radio was reporting that the cap had a few bubbles. However, the real buzz in “The Berry” was about an upcoming event on Wednesday. A rally for economic survival (meaning anti-moratorium) was taking place in the Cajun Dome in Lafayette. Thousands were expected to attend and as it turned out, reportedly did. “Probably as many politicians,” I thought.

In Jeanerette, WWL radio came into listening range. Spud was on a tear. “What is this SEEP?” he asked. “How far is this seep from the well...how hard is that to say? Why shouldn’t we have unfettered access to this?”

He had more questions. Should BP also pay a fine along with the clean up? For fisherman, the fine is around $4,000 for every gallon spilled. “No wonder no one knows how much oil’s gushing outta there!” I thought. Except BP. Maybe the government too. Who trusted anyone in this mess inside a mess?

At the turnoff toward Port Fourchon the signage read “LA 1 – Gateway to the Gulf.” I drove past Adam’s Fruit Market where they had a new crop of white beans. They also sell alligator meat, frog legs, turtle meat, hog cracklin and ginger cakes.

You only have to read the street names along Highway 1 to know that it’s personal along this narrow stretch. Danos Street, Vallerie Lane, Marcelle Street, Alida Lane, Josephine Street, Family Farm Lane.

Along Bayou Lafourche, I saw what looked like was once an old gas station but still kept neat as a pin. I pulled over, parking my car partially on the shoulder and some on the grass, freshly mowed.

Like much of the scenery on the back roads of Louisiana, the gas station with the bayou as a backdrop looked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. I took my camera and walked along the bank, meandering towards a trailer house with a chicken coup nearby. As I was clucking back and taking pictures of the chickens, a woman walked out with a dog named “Domino.”

“Hope you don’t mind,” I said, “these chickens are beautiful!”

“Oh, not at all,” she laughed.

Anna smiled proudly as I continued firing my camera but seconds later and with an entirely different tone, she offered a warning. “I don’t know about that guy, though,” she pointed. I looked towards my car where an elderly man wearing coveralls was studying my license plate. Anna disappeared inside her trailer. I wish now I’d gone inside too.

I walked towards my car waving to the man now wiping his forehead. His face was red because of the 110-heat index, I thought, but in an instant I realized it was from heat of another nature.

“What do you think you’re doin’!” he yelled, “This is MY property!” I quickly explained that I’d meant no disrespect. I’d parked where I could get out of the car safe from ongoing traffic. He wasn’t appeased in the least.

“I’m gonna put a sign out here!” he declared, stomping off towards a house on the opposite side of the highway.

Guess one too many folks had stopped to enjoy the beautiful scenery, I first thought. But then I wondered, given the man’s outrage, perhaps it’s people carrying cameras and notebooks that he so detested.

Mistakenly, I took a picture of the man walking away. At the very second I fired the camera he turned to give me one last glare. But when he registered what I’d done, he turned about-face and came charging like a bull.

“Did you take a picture of me?!” he hollered, thumping his chest. He yelled the question again never breaking stride and scaring me stiff.

“Actually, sir,” I yelled back, “I was taking a picture of your HOUSE!” To my great relief, the lie worked. He turned around and started towards the house again making an arm gesture as if snatching a fly out of mid air and throwing it down.

What happened next was a combination of good manners gone amiss and more stupidity. I turned into the man’s driveway and stopped halfway up, genuinely wanting to apologize for having upset him so.

The man had climbed onto a small scaffold next to his freshly painted house. When he looked down and saw me (camera-less) walking up his driveway, he went ballistic.

“What the hell are you DOIN’!?” he screamed, climbing off the scaffold with his face the color of a fire engine. I froze, feeling my stomach go south, but still thinking he’d accept my apology. Instead, he pulled his cell phone out. “I’m callin’ the police!” he hollered. I put my hands up as if held at gunpoint and scurried towards my car. “You get the hell outta here!” he yelled. “GO BACK TO TEXAS WHERE YOU CAME FROM!”

I wouldn’t realize until later, cruising the parking lot at my hotel and noting the number of out of state license plates, how overrun the people of Louisiana must feel.

When I reached Cut Off, I was still shaking but realizing how lucky I was too. The further I drove, however, a funny thing happened. My fear and gratitude dissipated and anger kicked in.

I spotted a Louisiana State Policeman who’d stopped someone and was issuing a ticket. “Wouldn’t it be something,” I mused, “if I walked up the man’s driveway with this cop?” I pictured the man’s face turning from red to a color white I’d seen in Anna’s chickens. “You wanted to call the police on me?” I’d say. “I called the police on YOU, buddy!” Course, I didn’t approach the cop but I enjoyed the hell out of this fantasy.

At a sharp curve in the road before reaching my hotel in Galliano, I stopped to take another picture. This time, however, I parked in a parking lot. The mural I studied painted on the Southern Sting Tattoo Parlor perhaps gave a clue into the old man’s angst. Certainly it was an angst others would later express. Using a multitude of rich colors, artists Bobby Pitre and Eric Guidry made a statement. Several. Mannequins were used to make one, holding a sign that read, “God help us all!”

Throughout the week many would say, “BP didn’t shut us down, the government did.”

I wondered if they’d say the same thing years later to their grandchildren. When and if the facts ever became known as to how many gallons of oil had spilled into the gulf and how much dispersant (banned in the UK ten years ago) had been “sprayed” into it.

“Dispersant,” Governor Jindal said in May, “was doing more harm to Louisiana than the oil.”