LAROSE, La. — In other parts of the country, Bayou Lafourche might be called a creek. It creeps away from the Mississippi River and passes through this speed trap town on the way to the Gulf of Mexico, a liquid median between the parallel roads that take unceasing punishment from the eighteen-wheelers that service the offshore oil rigs.
As you drive closer to the coast here, land gives way to marshes and water: Because of erosion and other factors, the land is disappearing, a can’t-miss metaphor for precarious survival.
“When people out there say you’re from the Bayou, they mean here,” Jerry Gisclair, a local politician who also owns a sports radio station, said.