Editor's note: Katie Oxford is on the ground and in the boats in Louisiana, reporting from the heart of the Gulf oil spill disaster. This is her 10th column from the scene.

This is phallic at first but there’s a point (no pun intended). Maybe several.

Years ago, an old and dear friend, Randy, married Sally, and together — produced four boys. Still going for a girl, pregnant Sally walked into their bathroom one evening and saw Randy and the boys all taking a shower together.

Story goes — Sally took one look around and decided to go somewhere else. Exiting the room, she said, “There’s too many penises around here.”

As it turned out, and happily, their fifth child was a girl. But on this day of the Gulf oil disaster, I remembered this funny story. Only this time, I wasn’t laughing.

I’d reached Port Fourchon, Louisiana. A place that seemed like the edge of the earth, certainly industry, a lifeline, so to speak, to our addiction. Oil.

“It’s a perfect port,” said Rusty Toups with A.N.S. Engines — a diesel engine company and more — located in Golden Meadow. “We’re the oldest operating family owned diesel mechanic in LaFourche parish.”

I asked Rusty to describe a perfect port. “The access to the Gulf — the depth of the port,” he said. “It’s the perfect location to get to your destination, which is deep water drilling. This country needs Port Fourchon. Period.”

To get to Port Fourchon, I crossed, a bridge, or rather zigzagged. Over the bridge lay Port Fourchon. A vast vista of ships and industry as far as the eye can see.

I pulled into my final destination, which was a truck stop called the Kajun Truck Plaza. The owner, Anthony Toups, (coincidentally, first cousin to Anson Toups of A.N.S. Engines) had directed me there, suggesting I visit with his daughter, Jenny, who runs the place.

On the porch of the building there were men everywhere from truck drivers to Coast Guard. So many, in fact, that I had the creepy feeling that I’d suddenly walked into the wrong bathroom. Before entering the building, I had a brief encounter with two in the parking lot.

They were truck drivers and for reasons unknown, weren’t happy with the fact that I was taking photographs of their cargo strapped atop their open bed 18-wheeler like an infant in a car seat. One of the truckers was leaning over, looking inside my car when I approached.

“Why were you takin’ photographs of what’s on my truck?” he commanded. For a second I thought my camera was a goner, that, this guy wasn’t going to ask me for it, just grab it. I quickly explained there was no particular reason — that I was simply trying to get some “graffiti shots.”

A few minutes later the guy seemed more at ease but I scurried into the building, relieved to have my camera (intact) and especially, to see the cashier. Another woman.

“I’m looking for Jenny Toups,” I told her. She pointed towards the back of the store, which I walked through to a large cafeteria (packed). I approached another woman cashier with the same inquiry and she pointed towards some double doors.

Once inside the cool, clean bar where there was soft light and little noise, I felt the tension drop out of me like water in a sink. I saw a young woman with dark hair sitting alone at the bar and asked her where I might find Jenny Toups. “I’m Jenny Toups,” she answered. The next few hours would feel like a reunion with old girlfriends.

Jenny Toups Stevens is 33 years old and runs the Kajun Truck Plaza with poise. She’s all straight talk and gives one the impression in a pleasant way that you shouldn’t pull any punches with her. Yet she’s as warm hearted and kind as your grandmother.

Jenny mentioned hers with nothing but love in her voice. “MaMa” she called her. In Cajun/French — it’s pronounced like you’d say the last word in Café Du Monde.

“MaMa loves the Pope and Anderson Cooper,” Jenny said. I laughed and said that I did too but not in the same order.

Three of her friends — all women and two employees — drew near to our conversation like approaching a low fire to warm their hands. They were boots on the ground people who, like most Louisianans, love thy locals. I asked them my standard “If you were king for a day what would you do” question and their answer came unanimously.

BP hires all the locals first – THEN they can hire those who are not. Fair enough.

Jenny invited me to her and her husband’s house for dinner that night. Like her grandmother, she loves to cook. It struck me as endearing that Jenny, and the other gals too, couldn’t believe that throughout my time in Louisiana, no one had offered the same invitation. I asked if I could take her up on this invitation when I returned to Louisiana and then took a picture of my Ya-Ya sisters of Port Fourchon.

Driving back to the hotel in Cut Off, Louisiana, I thought of the Toups I’d met on this trip and how they all shared something beside blood. Like Rusty said, “We’re local people who take care of their own.”

Rusty believes there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. “Coastal restoration may be the winner here,” he hoped.

Surely this is one light, but aren’t there several?

Port Fourchon may be the perfect port. But doesn’t the greatest environmental disaster in the world present a perfect counterpoint? Isn’t it time we do something different? Like Sally did in a way — go to another place. Reach for harmony. Starting with changing our everyday practices as citizens to our policies as a nation.

A brighter light at the end of this nightmare might be if we, as a BODY POLITIC, decide that we can never again — do business as usual. Period.

Other Katie Oxford columns in this series:

At the Gulf's bedside

Let's do the hustle

An unexpectedly grave concern

The Little Girl in the Church

Oil pain seeps into the radio

Tempers flare on the bayou

Beauty amid the Gulf oil spill

The Ant Man from the Louisiana marsh

Life on a shell