By Onie Grosshans
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Adventure Travel category
Carol, from San Jose State, and me from the University of Utah, were in New Orleans for a convention when we decided to join several other colleagues on a swamp tour. I had read books with the swamp being the setting for the story, watched movies with the swamp in it, so was curious to see the real thing. We boarded the Greyhound bus in front of our hotel, and an hour later turned into a gravel lot next to a flat-roofed structure.
From our bus seats we could see the masts of two boats rising above the trees. The driver told us to walk around the side of building where we would be taken care of. The open-air area, with wooden benches lined up like pews, had people sitting in the front sections. Our bus people took the remaining empty rows in the back, near a couple whose rambunctious young son was running around the pews before dashing in and out of the building.
It didn’t take long for a distinguished looking older man in a crisp white shirt with epaulets on his shoulders, to step forward and introduce himself as Captain Martinou. Holding a sheet of paper, he said, “Those of you with tickets from one to 25, please go to the boat at the end of the dock.”
Some of our colleagues were in this group. A few minutes later, those with tickets from 26 to 50, which included the remainder of our colleagues, were directed to nearest white boat—with Captain Martinou following them. Carol and I looked at our tickets; we were 55 and 56. The remaining nine people, including the couple with the rambunctious son, checked their tickets.
“Do we have to wait for one of those boats to return before we can go out?” someone asked.
Then,from behind us, a male voice shouted, “I’m over here.” We turned to see a man waving us to his boat. I had noticed another boat when we sat down, not gleaming white like the two yachts disappearing around the bend, but a smaller one like the weather-beaten boat in “The African Queen.” The man had closed-cropped blonde hair, no hat, wore a clean white t-shirt over a slightly protruding belly and clean khakis—and he was pointing towards his ‘African Queen.’
We were told to take any seat, which meant a wooden bench along each side of the small boat, a smaller bench at the back of the boat, and a three-seater up against a wooden box in the center of the boat. Carol and I took the center bench, the rambunctious kid and parents headed to the back, and the other six separated between the two sides.
While everyone got settled, I whispered to Carol, “Our tickets cost as much as those going on the bigger boats, do you think we’ve been taken?”
Carol wondered the same thing.
Jimmie introduced himself as the captain, said he had taken “many an alligator run,” knew the swamp since a bitty boy, and even captured a few alligators in his time on the river. His sing-song cadence was pure Cajun when he introduced his African Queen.
“She’s a bit rusty on the edges, but she’s a good boat.”
The engine roared to life, blue fumes belching momentarily out of the back as we pulled away from the dock. Almost immediately the kid began running from side to side, before stepping on a rung at the back of the boat, which rode low in the water, trying to touch the spray.
Carol whispered, “This is not the swamp tour I had in mind.”
Jimmie, in his booming voice, begins to talk about alligators, how difficult it is to see them, how silently they glide underwater, how quickly they can leap up to snatch lunch with their powerful jaws, ending with, “like that there little tyke, a good example of gator bait.”
The parents immediately grabbed the kid, and kept him under control for most of the tour.
“Where y’all from?” he asked.
We introduced ourselves while we got underway. Within minutes it was obvious Jimmie loved the swamp—and his boat. He talked excitedly about life on and in the water, the alligators, the beauty of the trees, the birds, the swam animals and how smart they were to avoid alligators. How the hanging vines took years to grow, and how his small, but powerful little boat could get into places bigger ones couldn’t go.
Jimmie slowed the engine as we approached a thicket of trees that didn’t appear to have an opening. Sensing our apprehensiveness, Jimmie said, “It’ll be OK folks, I’ve done this a million times.”
We slid under branches scraping the top of the boat, and emerged into a lagoon. Jimmie cut the engine and as we floated, he said, “Listen to the swamp.”
No one said a word. We heard water lapping against the boat and nearby tree trunks, a variety of birds and other unusual noises, which Jimmie identified in a low voice.
We must have floated for 10 minutes before Jimmie asked, “Do you see any gators?”
We looked again, thinking several logs on the sandbar changed position.
“Is that log half way in the water a gator?”
Jimmie laughed, sweeping his arm from one end of the sandy opening to the other, “Yes. And how many gator logs do you see?”
We stopped counting at ten, all different sizes, then Jimmie pointed to two more logs under a tree, and one floating silently on the far bank.
We must have floated into a dozen small inlets, no longer feeling apprehensive as branches scraped overhead. A few times, Jimmie pointed to 2×2 board, about 6 feet long leaning behind him, and said, “if someone could just get this stick and poke that branch a bit higher, we can sail under.”
Entering another inlet, Jimmie said, “Look behind us.”
Peering through some branches we caught sight of one of the gleaming white boats passing by.
“Those boats can’t come in here,” Jimmie said, with a sense of pride, “but I can.”
We watched a bird sitting on a tree trunk, inches above the water, not moving beyond the maze of roots, to get food that was obviously a few feet away. “That bird,” said Jimmie, “knows his limits. Any farther out and he’s gator lunch.”
Several times we glimpsed a white boat passing by on the wider part of the river while we floated in inlets hidden by over-hanging trees.
Jimmie reached into a shelf and pulled out a thick photo album.
“These here photos show me catching gators—if you wanna see them.”
We took turns leafing through the pages showing a very young Jimmie, to fairly recent ones, and always with an alligator hanging by a tail. Jimmie said he released most of the gators, but some he killed for food and its skin, after all “where do ya think alligator boots come from?”
Jimmie pointed out a few snakes, lots of birds, some baby alligators, and, realizing it was time to head back, said he wanted to show us one more thing.”If that be fine with y’all because we’ll be running late.”
By then, our small band of strangers had morphed into friendly companions, and in unison, we said, “YES!”
We headed deeper into the swamp, and for the first time a hill appeared on the right side as we came out onto a wide opening of water. Jimmie turned off the engine (as he did whenever we were in a lagoon) and we floated close to the remains of a dilapidated wooden dock, with only some posts and cross boards surviving.
Jimmie pointed to the hill. “Do you see that little shack up there?” Almost hidden among the trees was a house. In a soft, almost tearful voice Jimmie said, “That’s where I grew up.”
We were caught up in this heart-rending moment for Jimmie, and, as the boat quietly floated, we asked about his childhood.
“Lots of fun swinging on the vines.” “We fished from that dock.”
His parents (both dead); his siblings (three brothers, two sisters but a brother drowned in the swamp); when the family left the swamp, Jimmie was in high school.
Heading back, Jimmie spots an alligator floating near us and pulls the boat closer to it, cuts the engine, opens the small side gate.
“Here’s how you catch a gator,” he said, kneeling.
With one hand holding on to the railing, he reached into the river and grabbed that gator by its tail. Stunned, we stared as the gator swung its head from side to side, water spraying everywhere and everyone. But Jimmie did not let go. A few passengers moved to the opposite side of the boat to avoid the spray, but most of us ignored the flying water, watching wide-eyed as Jimmie held on to the squirming reptile. We were fearful Jimmie might be pulled into the river.
Who knows why Jimmie finally released his grip, maybe his knees hurt, but he did let go, stood up, clean t-shirt and khakis soaked, shut the gate and with a big grin said, “I coulda got him if we had more time.”
We were 30 minutes behind schedule but not one of us complained. Everyone either shook Jimmie’s hand or hugged him while giving him a big tip as we left our ‘African Queen.’
The bus had to wait for us, making some passengers irritable, but upon seeing our wet clothes and damp hair, several said how sorry they were that we had to go on that old boat.
“Don’t be sorry,” said Carol. “We had the tour of a lifetime.”
***
A life-long reader and always curious about trying to write, Iona Grosshans took classes and did critical reading after retirement. She realized it’s difficult and complex to write a good story others might enjoy. This story has been years in the making.