The unique event has gone on for 75 years. Organizers weren’t going to be stopped by an oil spill, even one that hurt the seafood industry. ‘We’re going to overcome this,’ says the festival king.
After the BP oil spill, the organizers of one of America’s more unusual civic celebrations began fielding the phone calls, the ones that invariably asked: Are you really going to have it this year?
In response, they erected a big billboard on U.S. 90 as it winds west from New Orleans through the heart of Cajun country.
“YES,” the sign said. “We Are Having 75th Annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.”
Morgan City’s civic leaders never doubted they would green-light their paean to crustaceans and crude, even though one of the featured industries has been threatening, of late, to wipe the other one out.
“We still need both,” said Lee Darce, assistant director and vendor chairwoman of the festival, as she drove a golf cart on this muggy September Sunday among busy booths hawking boiled shrimp, shrimp on a stick, bacon-wrapped shrimp and shrimp etouffee. “That’s what makes our community. That’s our lifeblood.”
In Morgan City, a community of 12,700 on the banks of the Atchafalaya River, fishing and offshore oil-related industries are of paramount economic importance and are deeply intertwined. Many offshore oil workers fish for extra income on the side. Businessmen like Al Adams III — the owner of a boat transmission company and this year’s shrimp and petroleum king — serve fishermen and offshore companies.
Mayor Tim Matte is aware that the festival can seem pretty weird to outsiders. “But we’ve always thought it’s unusual that they think it’s unusual,” he said. “As far as the workers are concerned, there’s always been a kinship of working over the water.”
Matte and others say the oil spill, instead of smothering this year’s festivities, has infused them with a new intensity: a yearning for catharsis after a soul-crushing summer, a hope for a return to a lost harmony between the two industries, and a celebration of a culture that is resilient enough to withstand the worst.
“There’s a spirit here that we’re going to overcome this,” said Adams, carrying his king’s crown on the city docks Sunday morning.