More than just a living

You see it now and then on a shrimp boat down here, in different sizes. It is a picture of a man piloting a boat with a big wheel, stormy seas off the starboard side, his face determined yet serene.

On the sailor’s shoulder is one hand of a wraithlike Jesus; the savior’s other hand pointing ahead, appearing to give the direction for safe travel.

The images of a painting called “Christ Our Pilot” by the late Warner Sallman, a Chicago artist whose work can mostly be seen in galleries at Anderson University in Indiana.

Such an image is a clue to why, when it comes to matters involving those who fish for a living, that there is such a dogged clinging to its importance as thing of heritage and culture.

Commercial fishermen don’t fish just for the money anyhow. There is a greater purpose to it.

Tony Verdin is a good example of this. His boat is the Miss Kahlin Marie, has the picture of Jesus behind the captain on the wheelhouse wall. The boat is named for his 7-year-old daughter.

“She says that it’s her boat,” says Tony, who is the third generation of his family to commercially fish. Like some other fishermen, he has seen writing on the wall that says in the long run shrimping won’t hold up the entire family, and so he has other work. This week you’ll find him on the tugboat Crosby Carrier. But on days when he is not servicing the oilfield, Tony is piloting the Miss Kahlin Marie, hunting for shrimp when the season allows.

Tony’s father, Jessie, shrimped all of his life. Tony’s grandfather, Justlien, was a shrimper as well. A lot of other relatives made a living on the water, and could never imagine doing anything else.

The remarkable thing about Tony’s family is not that the story is unique, but rather that the story is one shared by so many other families here, in Cut Off and Golden Meadow, Dulac, Chauvin and Pointe-Aux-Chenes. It is this fact which moves those who realize this to say that if anything can be done to keep these people on the water it is right because they earned the right to be there.

There is joy in these boats, from the memories of a barefoot child first being allowed to hold the big wheel to the joy of everyone on board when there is a net-bag bursting with shimmering, wriggling shrimp. But there are other memories as well, for some.

June 6, 2006, started out as a normal day of shrimping for Tony Verdin and his family; all over Barataria Bay they were, armada of shrimp boats, talking on the VHF, hoping for the best. And then came a problem.

Jessie, Tony’s dad, had taken a severe fall on his boat and needed help; Tony raced to the location in his own vessel and everyone figured out Jessie would have to come in.

They had Jessie’s situation well in hand and Tony’s father-in-law, Kim Wunstell Sr., he remained out on the water doing what he could to catch the shrimp.

But Kim Wunstell Sr., Tony’s father-in-law, remained out on the open water.

And then more trouble came. Kim caught a massive heart attack, right there at the wheel of Tony’s Pride, and for him it was all over. The boat continued on its own, striking an oil well. The family got to Kim’s earthly remains but had to leave the vessel, coming back later to raise her and valiantly – for three years – patched and fixed and re-glassed and did everything they could.

Tony worked the vessel and it performed well; but he couldn’t bear the thought of continuing with it and so eventually it was sold. There were too many memories; there was too much pain.

And so now Tony shrimps on the boat that bears the name of his daughter. And one might easily imagine as he travels in the bays and bayous the hand of Christ on his shoulder.

But he, like a lot of other people on the water, gives thought as well to those who went before, and like a lot of others he has no doubt that his father-in-law and the grandfather he never met might just as well be there in that picture of Jesus as well.

And this is just one of the reasons why, for Tony and so many others, the fishing is more than just a living.