Posted on 08/30/2017 10:13:49 AM PDT by Hojczyk
a time such as this, you want the guys who can still thread a line when their hands are wet and cold. They’re descending on Houston in their fleets of flat-bottomed aluminum boats, the sport fishermen and duck hunters outnumbering the government rescuers by the hundreds, their skiffs sitting low in the floodwaters with their human catch in the back, clutching plastic-wrapped possessions.
The country is suddenly grateful for this “Cajun Navy,” for their know-how, for the fact that they can read a submerged log in the water, and haul their boats over tree stumps and levees and launch them from freeway junctions. There are no regulators to check their fishing licenses or whether they have a fire extinguisher and life preservers on board, which they don’t. They’re used to maneuvering through the cypress of Caddo Lake or the hydrilla and coontail of the Atchafalaya, where the water might be four feet or it might rise to 18, and the stinking bog is called “coffee grinds” because of the way boots sink in it. Spending hours in monsoon rains doesn’t bother them, because they know ducks don’t just show up on a plate, and they’ve learned what most of us haven’t, that dry comfort is not the only thing worth seeking.
“They can handle their boats better than the average fireman, who handles a boat once a year during annual training,” says Lt. General (ret.) Russel Honore, who estimates outdoorsmen saved 10,000 from floodwaters in New Orleans while he was in command there after Hurricane Katrina. “They use their boats all the time and know their waters, and know their capacity. It’s an old professional pride. It’s like good food: Some people didn’t go to the Cordon Bleu, but they can cook like hell. That’s these fishermen and their boats.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I’ll take it even further. In a crisis such as Harvey, I want “red” voters on my side — period.
So she is validating just how worthless the media and pajama boys are?
This is a good article..in of all places The Washington
PostLocal author-editors Trent Angers and Jefferson Hennessy have come closest to pinpointing the origin of the movement: It seems to have begun in the Lafayette-Abbeville area during Katrina, when a local state legislator named Nick Gautreaux organized a group of sportsmen to go to the aid of imperiled friends in St. Bernard Parish. Meanwhile, R&R Construction organized a similar flotilla out of the Lake Charles area. In both places, about 75 percent of the residents are avid fishermen who own some sort of craft. During the impromptu rescue effort, someone wrote “Cajun Navy” on a large white ice chest.
Thank God for those bass fisherman and their boats. Have you ever gone bass fishing? It takes a lot more skill and knowledge than I have.
These boatsmen being described.
Are they diverse people of color, hipsters, urban dwellers, college students, antifa types, SJW’s, LGBTDDDDDWAAAZ, metrosexuals, womyn?
pigs are flying somewhere because the Post wrote an article about red state folks that was flattering. Great article. Good writer.
Go to comments section..remember it is the Washington Post
hambone99
8/29/2017 8:17 PM EDT
Nice article. Now can we stop turning every other comment in here into some political or social commentary, sheesh!
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UGH
8:04 AM EDT
Just wait. Someone will be offended by the word “Cajun”.
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Jonathan B. Melançon
10:50 AM EDT
No, because we aren’t the easily offended snowflake type. That, and cajun is not a derogatory term. Its simply a derivative of the word Acadian.
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K2LAW
12:45 PM EDT
Well, if you’re going to call one a coona** you better be one
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JBR2
8/29/2017 7:22 PM EDT
Thanks very much for this, Sally. Far too many urbanites dismiss country people and outdoorpersons as primitives who kill animals for fun. When serious bad stuff inevitably hits the fan on a national or global scale, they will be the ones who survive while the cities starve and tear themselves apart.
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Run4Life26.1
Yesterday, I saw RVs traveling north and boats heading south. High five and thanks to all who are helping.
Agree, I’ll take a country boy any day over a pajama boy. A country boy can and does.
Sally thank you for writing a really good article
I guarantee you there is as many duck Hunters in those boats as there are fishermen. Duck Hunters are really used to getting into the tight spots.
Whoa - an entire story in the WaPo without a single nasty remark about Trump. Cherish it.
Not the local looters, though; they are shooting at them!
Somebody’s already jumped in with the gyno-drop, women have to be included even if there is no evidence of them among the Cajun Navy. So, therefore we must celebrate the great contribution of women to this effort or be sexist pigs, or something.
Because these boat captains are such Heroes, I feel certain that they are all black women:
aren’t they..?
They’re rednecks. Some of them have very dark skin, but they all have red necks.
If you’re not a redneck, you’ll find it pays to be among rednecks. Caution: Redneckery is contagious!
Cajuns and Creoles are a mixed people, you can have “white” and “black” blood relatives out in the bayous going back generations and acknowledged as such, but most are somewhere in between, looking rather like tanned “white” to outside eyes. They all hunt, fish, enjoy the country life and get along well with one another, obviously quite well in many instances. And, yes, they’d fit an urbanite’s definition of redneck.
The people who are the most ignorant in many instances are totally ignorant of that fact, a description that fits our MSM to a tee. This author for the Washington Post is pure anomaly, she must be from Louisiana, because the rest of them are just too stupidly preoccupied with trying to out-yuppie and out-WASP one another while condemning the caucasians they’re so at pains to mimic.
During Katrina, Louisiana Dept of Wildlife & Fisheries was one of the highly effective agencies, for the same reasons. LDWF agents are in Texas now, doing search and rescue.
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