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DELCAMBRE - Delcambre Shrimp Festival Queen Alaina Barras wanted to do something to help bring back the Delcambre Shrimp Festival with a bang.
The festival has been canceled for the last two years because of COVID-19. It will take place on Aug. 17-21.
Back in April, Barras came up with the idea of making a three-dimensional wooden sculpture of the word “Shr mp.” However, the letter “I” was left out of the word for a reason. People could stand and fill in for the “I” when they take a photo.
On Monday, Barras unveiled the sculpture to the Shrimp Festival Board. The letters were placed on the stage in the Shrimp Festival Building the night before by Alaina and her parents, Robbie and JoEllen Barras. They covered it with a tarp to make sure no board members saw the letters.
It was the first time the Shrimp Festival Board saw or even heard about Barras’ idea.
“Their jaws dropped,” said Barras.
Once she saw the Shrimp Festival Board liked the letters, a ton was lifted off her shoulders.
“In my head I was worried the board would not like it,”she said. “I did not fully enjoy it until the board saw it. For four months we had to keep a secret in this small town, which is hard to do.”
Barras, who is not an artist, said the sculpture turned about better that expected.
“It turned out better than I envisioned, “The detail on the letters are great.”
The letters, are made out of wood and stand about five feet tall, will be on display next to the Shrimp Festival Building during the festival. People will be able to stand where the letter “I” is and take photos at no charge.
The unveiling of the letters was the end of a four-month project accomplished by Barras, a 21-year-old education major at the University of Lafayette.
She began thinking of ways to help the Shrimp Festival in April. Then, she thought about how Lafayette has the sculpture of the word “Lafa ette” with the “Y” missing. She thought about the word “SHRIMP” without the “I.”
She presented the idea to her parents to see if it could be possible, and both agreed it was possible. Next, she spoke with the Shrimp Festival queen sponsors to see if they were OK with the project. They loved it.
In April, she began laying out the plan to make this happen. First, she met with Delcambre Principal Chantel Helms about getting Delcambre High’s woodworking students to cut out the letters. Barras met with DHS woodworking teacher Jake Broussard before the end of school last year.
The DHS woodworking students cut out the letters and made the platform for the letters to stand on. That took about four weeks.
Once the letters were cut out, she found local artists to paint on each letter. She had a vision of what she wanted on each letter and she also wanted to use pastel colors.
The artists who painted the letters were:
Blair Blanchard painted the letters “S” and “H.”
Jessica Touchet painted the “M.”
Lexi Renard painted the “R.”
Kassie Duhon painted the “P.”
Before painting the letters, they submitted their idea to Barras, who had the final approval.
Pink shrimp were painted on the S.
The Delcambre bridge was painted on the H.
The letter R has the traditional Delcambre Reebok, white boots, along with a shrimp boat, shrimp, a white crane, and the words, “Bayou Carlin Cove.”
The letter M has the image of the Blessing of the Fleet with a priest, plus an image of Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church.
The letter P has the image of the Delcambre Water Tower, along with the words “Eat Local” and the Delcambre zipcode, “70528.”
“Each letter is unique,” said Barras. “Each represents Delcambre and the festival.”

The venerable old paddle-wheeler Borealis Rex was steaming as hard as it could to get from Cameron to Lake Charles when the big hurricane of 1918 caught up to it.
Forty passengers were on board, plus two engineers, the pilot, a cook, and two deck hands. One of the passengers was Ned McCain, the 10-year-old son of Tom McCain, one of three brothers who owned the boat. (The other two were James Medd McCain and Angus Bouie McCain.)
The passengers had no other way to flee. There were no roads then. The Rex was the only way to get out. It normally made three runs each week; to Cameron on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then back to Lake Charles on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The boat carried mail, freight, groceries, bales of cotton, cattle, firewood, and even automobiles to Cameron, returning to Lake Charles with oranges, grapefruit, cotton, rice, garden vegetables, seafood and livestock.
Archie Hollister, a columnist for the Cameron Pilot, wrote in 1960, “Her passenger list was always large; on any trip there were likely to be a dozen or two, and often seventy-five or a hundred people would engage passage. The river was the highway to the world, and the Rex was the means whereby they came and went. … She was their one link with the outside world, and her coming and departure were moments of importance.”
The trip on August 6, 1918, was of more than ordinary importance. A major hurricane was sweeping in from the Gulf.
According to Ned’s recollection many years later, the Rex made it to Prien Lake, just down the Calcasieu River from Lake Charles, before it was blown ashore — tossed one way and then the other as the storm’s eye passed over it.
“All forty passengers, plus the six crew members … got off safely,” Ned remembered. “All of us were … sheltered in the George M. King summer home. When the hurricane reversed direction … the Rex was blown about a mile downstream, up against another shore. Ten-foot waves washed over her and sank her.”
When Angus McCain talked about “how the storm used his tried and trusty boat, it was as though he was speaking of a human being whom he greatly loved,” according to a newspaper report. “He told of the fight the Rex made, struggling along at seven miles an hour in the teeth of the mighty wind; striving so hard to reach port and, finally, after all the passengers were safely off, giving up and lying down in defeat, a good old soul bested.”
A diver from Galveston looked at the wreck and found the hull and machinery intact, so the McCains decided to refloat the good old soul. The battered boat was towed up the Calcasieu to the Clooney shipyard for repairs.
When the $15,000 job was finished, the Rex was “handsomer and more commodious than ever,” according to reports of the day. It was painted white with green trim and the kitchen was described as “the completest thing of its kind outside a large city apartment house. There [is] a huge range, the top of which [can] hold 5 or 6 steaming kettles of good things, and the oven [is] large enough to hold a turkey, a johnny cake, and a pan of yams.”
The first round trip after the refurbishment was on April 29, 1919. The Rex left Lake Charles with 40 tons of miscellaneous freight, including lumber, farm implements, groceries, and the mail.
But things were changing. In the 1920s, the Rex lost one of its primary sources of income, the mail contract, to a faster, gasoline powered boat.
Then, in 1930, sparks from the boiler caught some wood on fire. The fire was contained but, while the crew devoted its attention to fighting the fire, the Rex struck a mud bank and was stranded and damaged.
She was fixed and put afloat again, but it was no longer a paying proposition to spend a lot of money on repairs and maintenance.
The final blow came in 1931, when the first road connecting Calcasieu and Cameron parishes brought quicker and cheaper travel. The old boat was tied up at its wharf at the foot of Pujo Street, near the Lake Charles business district, and never steamed again.
By 1935, the stately old Rex was an eyesore hulk, its superstructure gone, and its “wide, flat-bottomed hull [buried] deep in the mud,” according to a newspaper report. “Only her once-proud bow, now a battered, broken shell is still thrust above the waters among the gaunt pilings, rotted remnants of the wharf that has slowly died with her.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

GUEYDAN — For the next three months, Scott Vallo will have to do a different campaign in Gueydan.
He will tell everyone in Gueydan not to vote for him despite his name being on the city council election on November 8.
For the last 13 years, Vallo has been a city council member in Gueydan. Two weeks ago, he and seven others qualified to run for council members in Gueydan.
However, Vallo learned of the Hatch Act, which deals with Federal Employees and elections.
Vallo is an employee with the U.S. Post Office, making him a Federal Employee.
He is also a Gueydan council member.
The Hatch Act states that federal employees can not participate in a bipartisan election.
Vallo and seven other candidates sought the five Gueydan council seats in the November 8 election.
The November 8 election is bipartisan, so Vallo resigned his present seat on the Gueydan council, and last week, he went to the Vermilion Parish court house to remove his name from the November 8 ballot.
However, he missed the deadline to withdraw his name from the ballot by four days. So, when voters in Gueydan go to the voter’s booth, they will see eight names on the ballot seeking five places. The top five vote-getters will be named as the Gueydan council members.
“I will tell people not to vote for me,” said Vallot. “As the election gets closer, I will run ads in the Gueydan Journal asking everyone not to vote for me.”
Here lies the problem if Vallo is elected as an alderman. If he wins, he will have to be sworn in as an alderman. Then he has to resign because he can not hold office.
Once he resigns, the city council has 20 days to name a replacement. Then, a special election in Gueydan has to take place to select the fifth alderperson.
That special election could cost the town more than $15,000.
Now, if Vallo does not make the top five, then none of this takes place, and he goes on with his life working for the post office.
“It is crazy, I know,” said Vallo. “I am taking not being an alderman hard because I love Gueydan and enjoy serving the people.”

During the Trump administration, the liberal media always tried to discount any positive news and spin events in the worst way for the President. They hated Trump and attempted to destroy him.
These liberal media “watchdogs” have become today’s “lapdogs.” Instead of reporting factually, the liberal media strive to find “positive” news to boost the sagging poll numbers for President Joe Biden and the Democrats.
The latest example of this cheerleading occurred with the release of the July jobs report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It showed an increase of 528,000 jobs from June, while the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, matching the nation’s lowest level in the past fifty years.
This report was better than the expectations that the economy would add 250,000 new jobs in July. Soon after the announcement was made, President Joe Biden boasted that the report was a positive economic sign. He said, “Today’s jobs report shows that the economy added 528,000 jobs in July. More people are working than at any point in American history. That is no accident, it’s results.”
Does this report indicate that the economy is doing well, and the American people are prospering? No, in fact, the economy is in serious trouble and so are the American people.
The biggest problem is that inflation is raging at 9.1%, which is the highest level in 41 years. Simultaneously, the country is mired in a recession, as defined by two quarters in a row of negative Gross Domestic Product growth. In addition, there are still supply chain problems and shortages remain of key items such as baby formula and feminine hygiene products.
Most importantly, there is a lack of consumer demand because real weekly earnings have fallen 5.6% since the end of 2020. In the view of Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey A. Tucker, these numbers are extremely troubling. He said, “We are living through the longest consecutive month-by-month decline in real personal disposable income since 1959, and it is combined with a most recent 16% increase debt service as a percent of that same income stream. Translation: dramatic moves toward personal impoverishment.”
As a result of increasing “personal impoverishment,” more Americans are unable to pay for their basic needs and are forced to access community food banks to prevent starvation Because of a vast array of economic problems, 56% of Americans are delaying making large purchases, while 61% are worried about their savings. It is also not surprising that the savings rate has fallen to only 5.4%, much lower than pre-pandemic levels.
With higher prices and a decline in real wages, consumer confidence in the economy is declining rapidly. After posting the lowest rating in a decade in June, the consumer confidence index fell again in July to 95.7%. According to Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at the Conference Board, “Concerns about inflation – rising gas and food prices, in particular – continued to weigh on consumers.”
There are good reasons for the American people to continue to worry. Gasoline and grocery prices are still significantly higher than last year. With high inflation and an ongoing recession, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates significantly for two consecutive months.
All these signs show an economy in trouble, not one that is expanding with robust job growth. Thus, the so-called record job numbers and low unemployment rate being touted by the Democrats and the media are truly a mirage.
Upon closer examination, the July labor report shows plenty of troubling statistics. Fox News host Charles Payne noted that in July there were 68,000 fewer Black Americans employed. He also discovered that there were 71,000 fewer full-time jobs, while part-time employment exploded by 384,000. This economy is so awful that the number of people forced to work two full-time jobs increased by 92,000 in July to a staggering level of 433,000 Americans.
Other compelling statistics indicate the true economic problems the country is confronting. In July, the number of self-employed Americans dropped by 279,000, while the number of Americans not in the workforce altogether increased to a staggering level of 100,051,000 in July, an increase of 239,000 from June.
These are individuals who may be retired, receiving an education, serving as a family caregiver, or choosing not to work or seek employment. With so many Americans not in the workforce, the labor force participation rate dropped in July to 62.1%.
Prior to the start of the pandemic, the labor force participation rate was 63.4%. This shows that the media reports that the labor force has returned to pre-pandemic levels are patently false. In fact, there are 623,000 fewer people in the workforce today than in February of 2020, right before the pandemic began.
A detailed examination of the jobs report shows no reason to celebrate, only more reason to worry about our nation’s economic health.

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com