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to pet the most out of yJJ/VawtWn on the Gulf Coast, I’d like to give you a few tips. These, of course, could apply to other vacation spots in the United States or elsewhere, but 1 happen to live here.
I	came here 22 years ago to spend six months, a fugitive from Ohio bank closings and depression. I am still considered a new-comer by the natives, as the old families can trace their ancestors back to the original French settlers.
There is a saying here that if you eat mullet, a local fish, you won’t ever leave. One of my first experiences was a mullet fishing trip with several men equipped with hand knit nets and flares. We walked for miles, it seemed to me, along the shore in shallow water, and it was a thrill to see the leaping mullet captured in the round nets which the men handle so dexterously. We ended up with a fish fry on the moonlit beach, accompanied by a lot of conversation about local conditions, such as the price and goodness of red beans and rice; the big gar that tore up one mullet net; the size of the ’gator in Crooked Bayou; the fun of watching 01’ Man Napoleon groping for his false teeth that got caught in his net as he was making a throw; the uselessness of setting out muskrat traps, as the price of pelts had dropped to nothing; and a general agreement that a crab could make short work of a body dropped overboard. Altogether, a most informative and different introduction to Gulf Coast life. I wonder how many visitors ever took such a trip?
Some folks from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and other states have been coming down here for years, sit in their hotel lobbies, or cabins, and visit with other people from said states, or play pinochle, or bridge and mingle so little with native Mississippians that they still say Biloxi, instead of B'luxi. Their impression of local folks is that they are lazy, improvident, dull and ignorant—never having taken tha time to get to know these people and to enter into their lives and homes. Without any investment except time and interest you can reap a wealth of
July—August 1953
lore and experience and pleasant memories.
Those whistles you hear around 4:30 A.M. are at the shrimp factories, letting the women pickers know that the boats are in, and to hustle on down and start picking shrimp. These boats have been out perhaps for days, searching for those delectable Biloxi shrimp, which you buy canned or frozen up home.
If you want a new thrill, make arrangements to go out on one of their short trips with them. Enjoy the early morning breezes; the sunrise over the Gulf; the seagulls swooping
b> of red wine. And that is the time to LISTEN! You will hear some tall tales of the briny. DON’T tell these men how they fish for holing up your way, nor wjiat they use to paint their nets in Maine! THEY may be interested, but YOU came to LEARN, not to TEACH! Ask them where they came from, or their fathers. They may have come from Jugo-Slavia or Austria, and remember the old country, or tales their mothers told them.
Since shrimp is used for fish bait as well as food (if the fish don’t bite you can always go home and eat your
An Impertinent
GUIDE
to the Gulf Coast
By Ruthe M. Carr
down to catch the fish thrown overboard. Each time the nets are hauled in you’ll see strange and interesting specimens of the deep, as the shrimpers separate them from the shrimp: perhaps a blow fish, a big conch, squid, seahorse, and, at certain seasons, stingarees. The fishermen handle these dangerous, bat-like monsters, whose long tails are laden with poison, with an ease born of long practice. They can identify each specimen with perhaps a story or legend. You’ll be impressed with the grace of these booted, clumsily dressed men, as they bring in the long trawls, and the care with which they lay their nets on the backboards so they can be smoothly let out for the next drag. To each his own!
When the morning’s work is over you may be fortunate enough to share their dinner of court bouillon (Coo-B-Yon), French bread and maybe a
bait!), ask the shrimpers where to go fishing, and take their advice. They will tell you whether they are biting in the bay, or around the outside islands, or in the many saltwater bayous. Don’t start out with that box of tackle you used in northern Michigan, as they don’t use the same tackle down here, and there’s a good reason whether you think so or not. If you see both out of state and local cars parked at a fishing camp, chances are the fish are biting. The proprietor wants you to catch fish, so you will come back. LISTEN when he tells you where, and how to fish. Don’t waste good fishing time by telling him how they run camps up in Lake of the Woods, and how he should duplicate the set-up down here. He may be a retired Wisconsin resort owner who has decided to live longer by moving south with the sun. At (Continued on Page 26)
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