A special blessing

The Rev. Roch Naquin lived up to the sound of his first name, the time big winds blew into Dulac and the waters came up, just over 20 years ago, with the storm named Andrew.

It was this soft-spoken, gentle man who showed to me the backbone of his community, this place people by the Houma and the Cajuns, the transplanted Alabama roughnecks and the African-American people who had worked so hard for generations.

Like any reporter I was needing a sherpa to take me around, to introduce, so that I could tell the rest of the world what had happened and Father Roch was just the ticket.

I thought of him Sunday, as I stood across from Holy Family Church, waiting to hitch a ride on a Sheriff’s Office patrol boat, for a better vantage point of the blessing of the fleet. Priests have come and gone since Father Roch, but he was my first religious acquaintance in Terrebonne Parish.

I was was living in New Orleans then and so was little more than a tourist.

I visited again around Christmas time, traveling Bayou Sale Road and thinking it was a never-ending highway of swamp and marsh, coming upon the Cecil Lapeyrouse grocery store in the middle of nothingness, like some cedar-planked oasis of a spa, where they sold oyster shells with Santa’s face painted on them.

Father Roch, the next day, had some words of wisdom for me, knowing that I had come to write about how the community was recovering from the disaster that was Andrew.

“You know, sometimes when you only come to a house when there is strife, people don’t always want to talk to you,” he said in an inimitable Cajun patois. “It is better to come visit when things are good, when the people are happy, when you can see them at their best.”

So when, I asked, would such a time come in Dulac?

Father Roch then explained to me about the boat blessing, how it would be in April, and how I could come and ride in the lead boat with him.

And so I did, witnessing for the first time the blessing, smelling the spicy-sweet aroma of crawfish and shrimp mingling with the sweet scent of decay rising from the bayou mud and the salty tang of the water that rides over it.

At the intersection of the Houma Navigational Canal and Bayou Grand Caillou, I watched as Father Roch threw the wreath over the side, while saying prayers for those lost at sea in the prior year. And it was one more thing that made me fall in love with these bayous and their people.

So on Sunday I witnessed this all again, as I have now for so many years past. The priest, the Rev. Justino Estoque Jr, was magnificent as he blessed the boats he passed with a sweeping dramatic arc, shaking out the holy water, passing out the prayers.

Like some effigy of Bourbon Street on the water, music of a half-dozen different varieties – old time Cajun, swamp pop, rap, heavy metal, just to name a few – boomed and squealed and rolled from the speakers on board the beautifully decorated vessels.

And what I was most astounded by was how – absent the presence of the rap music, maybe – all was just as it had been the first time I visited for a boat blessing.

Dulac has gotten smaller and the water has gotten bigger. Local mainstays like the Samanie shrimp plant and the Boudreaux grocery are gone, but other businesses are taking their places. And the way things look, with some of the way shrimpers are once again looking at the future rather than dreading it, maybe there will be a lot more.

As I looked at the contrast of girls and boys dancing on the top deck of a boat with the holy vision of the priest spreading God’s love and grace at the bow as everyone traveled down the bayou I realized something.

Now – as way back then the first time – I was indeed seeing Bayou Grand Caillou and its people at their very best. And for that I am the one who is so very, very blessed.