A Spicy Easter Tradition
In the small, Southeast Louisiana town of Slidell, located on Lake Pontchartrain about 20 miles northeast of New Orleans, I discovered an Easter tradition unique to this region.
In Slidell, if you get up at sunrise on Easter morning and drive over to Kenny Seafood you will have to park a block away because the parking lot will be full of pickup trucks. At the back of the store, high school boys will be helping the truck’s owners load 40 lb. bags of live crawfish – lots of them. Or, you can go inside and get all the freshly boiled crawfish you want.
This crawfish frenzy continues at Kenny until about 10 a.m., which gives you time to get home and get your mudbugs soaking in large pots full of extravagantly spicy, boiling water before friends and family get out of church, change clothes and head over to your house.
Crawfish boils are big parties. They take place in backyards, front yards, driveways, church parking lots, parks, you name it, all over the New Orleans area as the faithful gather to observe Easter and the end of Lent. A lot of other folks around here gather on this sacred day simply to celebrate the height of crawfish season.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.