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Dear Friends,

The Maui Jim sunglasses I received for Christmas in 1995 were splattered in blood. Blood was everywhere, from those oversized glasses to the all white outfit Mother had arranged for me one day earlier. Mother was under the impression that the dress code for the New Orleans Big Game Fishing Club matched that at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Mother, having never been to Venice or Port Eads, assumed the best of both towns, thanks to their sophisticated nomenclature. One could forgive her punctilious preparations.

The journey started for us at the Foot of Canal, where we caught the Algiers Ferry, which at that time allowed car transport. Uncle had never before taken me on a trip alone like this one and it gave us time to talk. But males often do not need to share words to bond, and we spoke less than a five minutes on the two hour drive. This trip was the first trip on the water since that traumatic afternoon Pontchartrain sailing adventure. New Year’s Eve, fog, Queen: I am sure you remember now.

I regret that I did not take good notes on paper or in the mind on the drive south, even though I had never before taken that long Highway 23. What can be remembered was a seemingly interminable pavement which followed the serpentine course of the river with a levee sometimes visible to the left. Turning the head the other way revealed fields of reeds, and a few withering groves of live oaks, to the right. I also recall seeing the orange groves scattered from Belle Chasse to Port Sulphur and Fort Jackson, where we stopped.

We walked the levee and grounds of that old fort, girded with brick the color of the old Time Savers. It had been built at the behest of our dear general Jackson who feared the greedy English, always eyeing to expand the Empire, might try us again. It was there Uncle taught me the truth about Mardi Gras -- that it was first celebrated at that site in 1699 before Mobile was even a settlement. “Never trust those delusional scapegraces from Mobile,” he cautioned me. I have held tight to his admonition.

In Buras, we stopped at Barrois Drugstore, where I rushed to get toothpaste. Soon, we came to Pizza Inn in Venice, at which I successfully petitioned Uncle to stop. In retrospect, it was quite an achievement for an outpost like Venice ever to entice a national chain restaurant to build on that vulnerable sliver of land. The interior was red, the lights dim, and the booths vinyl, the type of vinyl that sticks to your sweaty legs and then squeaks when you scoot to rise for another plate of pizza.

The Buras and Venice of the 1990s will never again return. Like most of Plaquemines Parish, those civilizations are finished. Oil companies and fishing charters may find utility in and beneath the waters God blessed there, but, just as Pilottown died as a community after Camille, these places, their schools and churches, died as communities after Katrina.

The true southern end of the road for Middle America is Venice. Venice, then and today, is an unnatural, inhospitable contradiction of heavy industry and wild nature. Both are ready at any moment to consume the other. Standing on this land, I could see why Bienville kept moving. Any rational explorer or immigrant would march right back to his ship. This is not land for living.

Uncle’s Viking was waiting for us at Cypress Cove Marina. After talking to Mr. Ballay, we threw off the bow and stern lines. A zigzag through some canals led us to the violent Mississippi, where submerged logs, unpredictable current, and rogue wakes from ocean going ships are ever present. We had a 22 mile journey to Port Eads remaining.

Uncle was a member of the N.O. Big Game Fishing Club, whose headquarters were in Port Eads, which at that time was not much more than a primitive marina, lighthouse, and the club. Since last year the port and its marina, a 2013 construction that cost the taxpayers $12 million, has been closed, a victim of South Pass filling with silt. Even the smallest of fishing boats struggled in recent years to navigate that channel which was once deep enough to accommodate the largest of ships. This natural obstructive phenomenon, which James Buchanan Eads solved six score ago, will likely go on until it is dredged.

The club house was a typical riparian wooden shotgun with minimal windows and screen doors, the type that creak loudly and slam quickly. Sitting in the shadow of the iron lighthouse, its white paint flaking, the club house had walls lined with old pictures with the greats who discovered this fishing blessing -- Dutch Prager, Paul Kaulman, and Bob Mitcheltree.

It was Captain Mitcheltree that birthed in Uncle a love of bluewater fishing. Uncle still speaks about that first trip at Mitcheltree’s River’s End Lodge with words as delicious and warm as Mother’s hot chocolate. Grandfather, Uncle and father all caught their first marlins that weekend. Ever since, the two brothers have had the bluewater bug. Grandfather, though invited to be a charter member of the NOBGFC at their first meeting at the New Orleans Athletic Club, never enjoyed the open water. He always preferred the protected waters near his beloved Tally Ho.

The club also housed what Uncle called “the best restaurant in the parish.” The chef hardly wanted the fame. I nicknamed him Prime Rib Pete. He never told me if his name was Pete, but he made the best prime rib I have had. I do not know if my positive opinion was due to the food itself or the fact that the food was served feet from the mouth of the River and six miles from the continental shelf. Either way, I loved eating there, and this visit was my first. It would not be my last, that would come in 2004. The pictures and the clubhouse were swept into the abyss in 2005.

The next morning we rose before the sun. Halogen lights lit the cockpit as we readied the gear, a collection of aureate Fin-Nor and Penn reels. The former were for trolling, the latter for casting at the rip and jigging below the rigs. By this time, Uncle’s business friends, one an Italian and the other an Uptown American, had joined us.

My job was to defrost the boxes of cigar minnows and squid. There was one plastic bag of prerigged ballyhoo, but I was not supposed to touch those. Borrowing the tarpon’s shape and the marlin’s bill, these little fish were fascinating. Naturally, as a child, I started talking to one. I fidgeted with its jaw to mimic it responding to my question about what its favorite restaurant was. The conversation was interrupted when Uncle saw what I was doing. “Stop. You’ll break their beaks,” Uncle said. That was the last time I communicated with the ballyhoo.

The smell of diesel engines in the predawn hours is one of the most memory invoking odors. I can, as though it were yesterday, remember how those fumes, mixing with the smells of our bait, made my head spin and my stomach turn. It is a good thing Pizza Inn did not allow for takeout boxes, for my stomach was already empty that morning.

As we cleared the jetties we struck a southeast course. Uncle yelled for me to come up to the bridge. After a few minutes, Uncle asked if I could see the line on the horizon. I squinted and there was a disturbance on the water. He would not tell me what it was except to say, “You won’t believe what you’re about to see.”