A tangled mess
September 5, 2013
Fishing tourney donates $4K to NSU
September 5, 2013
More than 75 years have passed since Morgan City’s fledgling Shrimp and Petroleum Festival was held, but there are no signs that interest and passion among people who attend has waned.
A close look at this year’s festival, which wrapped up Monday, shows two distinct identities, however.
Food, carnival rides and music – along with the traditional blessing of both the shrimping and oilfield fleets – are mainstays of the event. But the sights and sounds take on different perspectives by day and by night.
In broad daylight strollers take in the music and magic exposed to bright sun, sauntering perhaps a little more slowly.
After dark the festival is a phantasmagoria of lights and shadows, adding a surreal layer to the crowds and the sights, as spots and neon catch and hold the smoke from sizzling sausages and hot-popped kettle corn. There is a bit more urgency, perhaps, to the movements of fair-goers who seem to know that the closure is near, that only a few more hours or minutes remain to win a live bunny with the toss of a golf ball or thrill to the rise and fall of a carnival contraption.
“Sometimes it looks like you get a little more family participation during the day because people want to put the kids to bed early,” said festival board member Greg Price. “Overall, it is a mix, day and night, it just depends.”
Attendance figures for the festival are not kept, in part because since attendance is free there is no accurate way to tally numbers. But this year organizers are seeing a healthier attendance anecdotally than in the two prior years, in part because of better weather.
What is clear to organizers is that a mix of things to do and see make the festival a standout every year, literally a case of something for everyone.
“It’s the combination of all the things we have,” Price said. “You have a group of people that take part in the bands and the music, a group of people that like the craft booths, they go up and down and visit them all. On the Sunday we have the blessing of the fleet and a Mass in the park, and of course the fair.”
The very first celebration, following the landing of some big shrimp in nearby waters, was held on a Labor Day weekend.
Members of the Gulf Coast Seafood Producers & Trappers Association staged a labor demonstration celebrating their work, which included a parade.
A blessing of shrimp boats on Berwick Bay was held in 1937, beginning a tradition that continues through today, and the festival – largely in recognition of the efforts of seafood harvesters – continued.
Then in 1967 shrimp and oil were wed.
The oil industry was firmly in place, and members wanted recognition, too.
Thus the festival with its current name was born.
It has been recognized as the American festival with the most unusual name. And in 2011, as Louisiana suffered from the throes of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, national and overseas media flocked to the fest to emphasize the irony in their stories.
So do shrimp and petroleum go well together?
No, said one festivalgoer Friday night, who confided that he works in the oil industry and worries about the effect it has on living things in Louisiana waters.
Others disagreed, and said it is important to recognize simultaneously two industries that mean so much to local economy.
Whether attending during the day or the night, festivalgoers interviewed this year overwhelmingly said they are attracted by the food and the chance encounters that occur with old friends.
Patterson engineer Stacey Grubb was celebrating a 30-plus birthday at the festival and said there was no place else she would rather be.
“Where else would I want to be but with family and friends?” she said, as she prepared to dance with her father, Mike Grubb.
Retired truck driver Joe Webb of Baton Rouge and his companion, Audrey Miles, came from their Baton Rouge home for the first time ever.
“We saw it advertised on television and I said we should go,” Webb said. “We decided we wanted to go where all the people were going that were having a good time instead of sitting at home.”
They were rewarded for their efforts, as were so many others, in a culinary way.
“We were talking to a man and he said there was a stand with eggplant served with shrimp bisque and that it was two blocks away,” Webb said. “So we walked the two blocks away.”
Away from the clamor of music and cheering of carnival riders, life-long shrimper Mac Rolf (CQ) sat beside his trawler, named Vickie, with family members having quiet conversation, at a dock beside the Atchafalaya River.
He enjoys the festival but mourns the disappearance of Morgan City’s fishing infrastructure, which keeps shrimpers tying up and trading at other Louisiana ports.
“A lot of changes have happened here,” Rolf said. “We used to have an ice house but now you can’t get ice here in Morgan City. You have to go somewhere else.”
