Tiffany:

Bright and early the next morning, our hostess, Miss Jo, (be-aproned, white hair swept into a neat bun) opened the kitchen door to us with a smile that faltered only a little when she took in our appearance.  (Inwardly I wondered if she was concerned about all that pink and purple hair dye on her pristine white towels, but she needn’t have worried: we’d brought our own, just in case).  Our smiles ratcheted up when the scent of what I can only describe as rich, garlicky, onion-bacon heaven enveloped us.

Miss Jo led us to the dining room and we sat down and helped ourselves to cereal before we realized we were going to be served a million courses of breakfast, cooked by her husband, Charles (AKA Chaz).  While we ate, Miss Jo chatted away in her easy southern drawl.  A couple of times, Rach and I exchanged panicked looks when the conversation veered into the thorny territory of politics, but we managed to guide the subject back around to weather and wildlife before anyone said anything damning.  After a while, Chaz (unmistakable frown at our hair) joined us to recommend points of interest around town.

An hour later, overly full and locked in vicious battles with our respective muffin tops (we ate way too much trying to please Miss Jo, who in turn kept serving us more, probably in an effort to please us), Rach and I thanked our hosts for the meal and the conversation.  Even as we headed out into the mild, sunny day, they continued to be solicitous of our comfort. (Let us know if there’s anything y’all need!  Don’t hesitate to ask!  C’mon back if y’all have any questions!) I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing people generally mean when they talk about Southern Hospitality, although calling out to a couple of frightened women at night that you aren’t following them and then turning down a side-street seems like it should be included in the term.

We had a list of places we absolutely had to see, and we walked the length of Main Street again to visit the shops in daylight.  There was a flavor of New Orleans about the place: touches of wrought iron here and there, gas lamps, overhanging balconies.  I took a video of Bouligny Plaza and we walked along the Teche.  The river flowed parallel to Main Street, separated from it by a block of sporadically placed buildings.  I wondered why it was called Bayou Teche instead of River Teche, when it seemed like a pretty straightforward line of moving water to me.  But when we crossed a bridge to visit the park on the opposite bank, I saw cypress trees growing right out of the water, hillocks of roots peeking out of the slow-moving shallows.  I had never seen a bayou in my life outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland, so it seemed pretty swampy to me.

Video of Bouligny Plaza

In the afternoon, we headed back to the B&B for our car, and Rach was once again amused at my expense: stifled snorts of laughter, the rolling of eyes and yet another unsuccessful attempt to adjust my seat.  We drove to the high school, fully intending to look around the building, but chickened out because we thought it would be weird for a couple of random adults (even though Rachel is actually a teacher!) to be snooping around the place without getting permission.  Luckily, a few miles away, we found a much more interesting building that USED to be the high school, but had been converted into apartments.  There was even a huge, moss-covered live oak near the parking lot!  We’d found our fictional school!

It was late before we were hungry again.  We had a list of places to eat and the first one was R&M’s Boiling Point, which sounded amazing.  I love fried things, things still in shells, things they dump out on your table while throwing you a bib and encouraging you to ‘have at it!’

The outside of the restaurant was unassuming, like a shop in a strip mall, except without the strip mall.  We pushed open the glass doors behind a youngish couple decked out in matching camo gear and were greeted with the mouth-watering scent of fried food.  People seated at tables nearest the entrance stopped talking and turned to stare at us like we sported Thanksgiving turkeys instead of heads.  The silence only lasted a couple of seconds, maybe, but Rach and I stopped mid-sentence to stare back at the crowded restaurant.  WTF was that??

Simultaneously we whispered, “Is it my hair?” to each other before a friendly waitress arrived to lead us to our seats.  As we walked, eyes followed us, and I found myself wondering if I’d forgotten to put on pants.  The phrase “and they were never seen or heard from again,” drifted idly through my mind.

Self-conscious now, we ordered some beers and stared at the menu.  We decided to split a plate of all the sea life one could possibly fry, as well as some other things we decided later that no one should fry.  By the time our food came, we were blissfully buzzed, exchanging grins with the people seated nearby, whose friendly smiles had followed quickly in the wake of their stares.

Rachel picked up a medium sized crab off our plate of interesting seafood, turning it this way and that.  We noted, quite intelligently, that the entire thing was fried.  In lowered voices, we discussed whether or not this was intentional: didn’t most crab places take the shell off?  Or make it so you could easily crack the whole thing apart?  We ended up pretty much mutilating it as we tried to avoid the shell, and later, the waitress came back to laugh at us:  apparently, this was a soft-shelled crab, and we were supposed to eat the thing whole.  Well, what did they expect?  We weren’t even from around those parts!

We followed dinner up with a visit to one of the bars on Main Street.  On the way, an old, white-haired woman (Christmas sweater, holly in her hair, on her way to a party, maybe?) was heading the opposite direction, and she gave us an appraising look that turned into a grin as we neared her. “I bet y’all have fun!” she remarked with a wink as we passed.  We laughed, assuring her that yes, we were definitely enjoying ourselves.

Bourbon Hall was crowded, cave-like, smoky, noisy, and full of a lot of sports fans, because there was some game going on that I can’t remember now.  People wanted to know where we were from (how could they tell?), what brought us to New Iberia, and what we thought of it.  Once again, I was astounded at the friendliness of complete strangers when they recognized that we were not from the area.  Granted, there were a lot of very drunk people there, but after the initial stares we got walking in, they made us feel right at home.

I leave you with this photo of Rachel wearing a Spanish Moss boa, taken on our way back from the bar.

NEXT TIME: The thrilling conclusion of the New Iberia portion of our research trip, in which I nearly freeze to death in a swamp, there is an unfortunate lack of alligators, and a conversation about poop goes horribly wrong.