Thibodaux, Louisiana
Cutoff, Louisiana
Baby Boomer
I’ve got a friend of mine who’s a shrimper. He’s been shrimping since he was three years old. He’s from Grand Isle, but lives in Cutoff now. His two sons are also shrimpers. I see their generation knowing how to get out here and catch shrimp. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I’m at this time in life where I’m getting tired of working for other people, and I want to start getting into this industry because it makes good money. But if this place is gonna start disappearing in the next 50 years, that’s sad. This year hasn’t seen too many storms, either. It’s been very calm so far. But I look at it this way: Seeing all the housing damage caused by the storms last year and the year before that we’re still dealing with, tells me that there’s a lot of damage to the coast, and there’s no stopping it. But that’s why I wake up in the morning, my best part of the day, I get on this(pointing at a bible)and I pray. I watch positive videos. I thank God for waking me up, for the air in my lungs, ask Him to help me through the day.
Well I’m not gonna be around here in the next 50 years or so. I’m 62 years old, you know? So I hope y’all can figure something out, because you might have a kid born today, who’s never gonna see that culture. Because they’re not gonna be able to live here, they’re gonna be living more up north. The storms also make it so hard to predict, because how are you gonna predict tragedies like that? Even what is predicted shows the coast just falling away on a normal day, there’s just no stopping that.