The Rock Wall

I thought about telling you about some strange things I have seen from the water.
Once Kimball and I launched in the Tchefuncte (Cha-Funk-tah) River that runs into the northeast corner of Lake Pontchartrain and fished toward the lake. I caught a huge crappie on the crankbait and for some unknown reason decided to remove the liner from the front cooler/live well and put the crappie in there…and forgot it. I parked the boat as usual in our two car garage in Slidell. Late in the week, I smelled something dead and found the crappie right where I had left it.
I put on my SCUBA mask, tank and breathing apparatus so I could stand to get the crappie carcass out of the live well and put it in a garbage bag. Gagged anyway. I took it miles away to a dumpster I found.
As we got closer to the lake, we started seeing huge dead black snakes that had been caught on trot lines and dragged out on the bank. I’m talking as big as your arm and six to 10 ft. long. I went into a fish camp and asked if they were poison. No just water snakes that bit on their trot lines.
Soon we saw bridges that didn’t connect to anything – a section of bridge here and there parallel to the highway. I just had to ask why. They were replacement parts for the 26 mile long Causeway that connect New Orleans to Covington. If a wreck or a hurricane destroys part of the Causeway, a special ship comes in, picks up one of the preformed bridges, takes it to where it is needed and drops it into place.
I’m guessing that there weren’t any replacement parts ready for the two five mile stretches of I-10 connecting New Orleans to Slidell that Hurricane Katrina destroyed. I used those every day to get to work and back home. Guess I would have gotten real familiar with the Causeway.
Our son-in=law, Cain Gilfoil, spent months supervising a major project to put new guardrails on one lane of the 26 mile Causeway. They worked only at night. KL