No Strangers Here

Houma

Visiting Houma, Carnie Crochet and her crew headed to the Jolly Inn Cajun Dance Hall. “We were enthusiastically greeted by a man who introduced himself by the name Al E. Gator,” she says. “We sat there for a few minutes, watching the dancers. They didn’t let us sit there for long, though. People kept approaching our table, asking us to dance. We felt like expert two-steppers by the end of the night.” That’s just another evening in this bayou town of 33,000, where residents have been known to invite strangers into their homes for a bowl of gumbo or a down-home crawfish boil. Anne Parr, president of Bayou Grace, an organization working to preserve Louisiana’s bayous, says she can’t take her volunteers around town without getting invited in for a meal. “That’s just how we are here.”