Meat Pie Triathlon
Natchitoches, LA, September 19, 2004
1/2 mile swim / 20 mile bike / 3.1 mile run
First of all, it's pronounced NACK-ih-dush, where the "dush" rhymes with "plush." The "ush" sound and the silent "es" on the end, that comes from the French, but I have no earthly notion about that "nack." I believe it comes from a Native American phrase meaning "to sweat profusely." It's all very illogical and charming from a phonetic standpoint, so I embraced it and practiced the pronunciation to myself as I drove in from the airport in Shreveport in a black Camry on a blisteringly hot afternoon. Why would any rental car company in Louisiana have any black cars at all? It's an extremely hot climate. I note this because I just about grilled my hands opening the car to stash my bike and gear . It's extremely illogical and not charming at all, not one bit.
I had flown in by way of Dallas, which was fortunate, because if I'd had a ticket through New Orleans, that flight would have been seriously cancelled. Hurricane Ivan tore through the Gulf Coast on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, glancing off Louisiana but doing some nasty damage to the east - Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola, and Navarre Beach and Ft. Walton Beach, where I had had so much fun with Dana in April.
In Dallas, though, the sky was bluish, hot, hazy. The little American Eagle terminal seemed to have an inordinate number of triathletes milling around the gate for the Shreveport flight. "Huh," I mused, "I didn't think the Meat Pie Tri was that big a deal." Then I remembered that Shreveport was playing host to the USAT National Age Group Championships this weekend. That's where fast skinny triathletes go on the third weekend of September. Slow Fat Triathletes head for the Meat Pie Tri. I was worried that the turbo-prop plane wouldn't have room for all the bike cases, but mine was the second one off the belt, so soon I was heading south on I-49, happily free of any schedule. My only objectives were to find Natchitoches, find the Samuel Guy House bed and breakfast establishment, and acquire a little dinner, and I had most of the afternoon and all the evening to accomplish them.
Natchitoches was easy to find, and so was the historic downtown. I remembered that the Guy House was off of Jefferson, on Pine, and I could only turn left onto Pine. Piece o' cake. But hmmm, there was no Guy House on the 1 1/2 blocks of Pine. The road dead-ended into a gravel driveway and a wooded hill, so I went around the block again. Huh. I drove on into town, a few blocks more, and saw lots of B & B's, including the Steel Magnolia, the house that served as the central characters' home in the eponymous movie. You learn a lot about this film if you spend any time at all in Natchitoches.
I saw old wooden houses, brick houses, and houses made of bouissilliage, the Creole version of adobe, made out of mud and Spanish moss and deer hair. I didn't know that yet, but that was what I was seeing. There were nice old downtown buildings with the wrought iron balconies and all that fun stuff you associate with New Orleans. Natchitoches, however, predates New Orleans by two years as the oldest European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase (1714 vs. 1716). So there. Eventually I saw the visitors' center, and I presented myself as a seeker after history, meat pies, and the Samuel Guy House. Apparently that gravel driveway at the end of Pine was in fact the entrance to my destination. A sign would have been helpful.
The Guy House, though, is a fairly new B & B, having been moved from its former home down by Alexandria and lovingly restored by three co-owners. The 1850 structure was actually cut in half before being transported out of its overgrown cow pasture and plunked down next to the American Cemetery in Natchitoches. It's been put back together in spectacular fashion, with its huge front and back porches and a spacious central hall running the length of the house.
I tried the front door and found it open, but I couldn't find anyone around or an office, or a note, or anything. I wandered around the rooms, trying doors at random. Eventually I went back downstairs to find a pleasant woman constructing a giant flower arrangement on the hall table. She denied being a proprietor of the house, though. Lola was setting up for a reception that the Natchitoches Historical Foundation was having that evening. As we chatted, the vase overflowed and we soon bonded over the need to mop up the excess water. After a bit Lola's husband Edwin, the president of the Foundation, arrived with boxes of flowers and candles, and I soon found myself staking lanterns in the front and trying to make myself a bit useful. Finally someone showed up who did work for the B & B, and she promised to get my room ready. No worries, I said. She said things had been hectic because the house had been packed full of evacuees from south of New Orleans.
Before too long I was installed in the fancy downstairs room, with twelve-foot ceilings and an amazing four-poster bed whose posts were eight-inch thick Corinthian columns carved of cedar, connected at the top by a diagonal arrangment of curling wrought iron rods. The bedding was the kind I usually only see in catalogs, and the bathroom boasted a jacuzzi tub and pretty little handmade soaps. I felt bad at first dragging my funky triathlon gear in there, but I got used to it.
Having been invited to stay for a glass of wine and a meat pie at the reception, I changed clothes and mingled for a while. My first taste of the famous Natchitoches meat pie was provided by Marie, a local woman who makes the pies and delivers them hot to various functions around town. Lola swore that Marie's meat pies were the best in town, so I was eager to check them out. By the time I got them, they weren't too hot anymore, but they were tender, with a soft, succulent filling of ground meat and just a little kick of hot pepper. I ate a couple of the cocktail size goodies, listened to some speeches, and then headed out into town in search of local color.
The streets were just rife with gorgeous old houses, but there were some regular people's homes scattered here and there, so that the overall effect was not too precious. A couple blocks down from Pine, Rue Poete had some cool old brick houses, and there was a funky white wooden house on the Bayou Amulet - more a little creek than what I picture as a bayou- that had a garden full of tacky sculptures and mobiles. I did like the sea serpent climbing up the hill from the bayou though. I walked along Jefferson to the riverfront and down the steep bank to the Cane River Lake.
Before coming to Natchitoches I was confused about the Cane River Lake. Seen on the map, it appeared to be a river, but then it was called a lake. Diligent perusal of tourist literature revealed to me that the lake used to be part of the Red River, but then the river changed course, leaving behind a 36-mile long oxbow lake and transforming Natchitoches quite literally into a backwater town. I took off my flip-flops and stuck my feet into the water. Ick! It was lukewarm, barely producing any cooling effect on my overheated tootsies. It was immediately clear that the Meat Pie Tri would not be a wetsuit-legal swim.
The riverfront showed signs of an incipient festival: large tents were going up, sound systems were being assembled, and food vendors were staking out their places. I ran into Keri Fidalek, one of the Guy House proprietors and also the director of the Meat Pie Festival. A tiny, truly tireless woman with a faint resemblance to Sarah Jessica Parker, running purely on adrenaline and giddy from the two glasses of wine she'd consumed at the reception. I climbed back up to the street, downed a half dozen disappointingly tasteless oysters at Mama's Oyster House, drank a couple of Abita beers, and strolled back to the house. Even at 9 at night, it was far too hot to do anything but stroll in a languid manner. And humid, too. Did I mention it gets humid in Louisiana?
On Friday I rolled out of bed around 8, planning to eat breakfast and then put my bike together before the heat got too fierce. There was no sign of any breakfast, either in the dining room or the kitchen, so I applied myself to the bicycle. During this process I got acquainted with the hurricane evacuees, an extended family of Cajuns from a bayou about 50 miles south of New Orleans, bringing with them about four cars, three toy poodles, and a Labrador retriever. I never did get all the relationships straight, but there was a spirited woman about my age whose name I never could understand, two of her boys, Duffy, 12, and Jonathan, who I figure was about 7. Then there was a grandfather, a husband, and maybe a few cousins ranging in age from 3 to about 18. Duffy had become fascinated with the old grave markers in the American Cemetery, and went off to take pictures for a school project he had come up with on his own initiative. Jonathan and I went onto the back lawn and played with the poodles, LaBelle, Jolie Blonde, and Zydeco. I'm normally not a poodle fan, but these were slightly unkempt in an endearing sort of way, and very friendly and intelligent. Jonathan entertained me with tales of boyhood on the bayou, taking the pirogue out fishing, whacking alligators on the head with the paddles, surfing the lawn on a sheet of plywood chained to the back of the ride-on mower, and four-wheeling in the mudpit. I was enthralled. Duffy, that's the twelve-year-old, has his own Ford Ranger which he drives mostly just on their property.
The charm of their accents cannot be captured in writing. The exotic vowels with enticing hints of multiple cultures, the intonation, the occasional off-kilter word order that translates directly from French - you could read a tax form in that accent and I would roll over on my back and wiggle from the sheer pleasure of it.
But it was after ten and there was still no breakfast in sight, so I had to bid adieu to my new friends and seek out sustenance. I made a beeline for Lasyone's Meat Pie Restaurant. This trip was the culmination of my food and triathlon-inspired travels, and I was determined to extract the maximum culinary enjoyment. I ordered the Meat Pie Breakfast special - one meat pie, two eggs, and hashbrowns. Lasyone's meat pie was full-sized, a crimped semi-circle of dough about 6 inches in diameter, stuffed as tradition dictates with the filling of ground beef and pork, onion, and black and red pepper. This version's filling had more of gravy than Marie's, with a little more spice to it. I decided I liked it better. James Lasyone, according to the many articles plastering the wall, was the Natchitoches pioneer of commercial meat pie cooking, parleying an investment in a propane burner and a dented cast-iron kettle into a small empire of meatiness. No less a deity than Calvin Trillin had sanctified Lasyone's with his gourmandizing presence, and I was sorry I could only eat one meal at a time there.
My next stop was the local museum, a fairly uninspired collection of artifacts and documents that did nonetheless help me get clear on the whole Spanish-French-American interaction around Louisiana. At least, I was clear at the time. Now, a few days later, it seems hazy again. Go look it up. Then I was inspired to drive around the plantations that line the banks of the Cane River, seeing as I had all day. In the Southern road trip tradition, I stopped at the gas station and bought a styrofoam cooler, a bunch of Cokes, some bottled water and a bag of ice. I wasn't venturing out into 100-degree heat, AC or no AC, without some icy cold drinks at my side.
My first destination was Tatae's, a hole-in-the-wall café in the hamlet of Derry. No plantation here, but the museum ladyrecommended it for lunch. I was still working on digesting breakfast, but I had promised myself that my eating here would not be bounded by any thought of moderation, except perhaps the night before the race. Fried catfish, crunchy, spicy, and tasty, with about a half-gallon of lemon iced tea.
Next it was on to the Melrose plantation, which had a pretty interesting history. Founded in the late 1700s by Camille Coincoin, a freed slave who ended up owning land and slaves, and used her income from cotton planting to free the rest of her family. The Yucca House, the original building on the plantation, is still standing, showing characteristic Creole timbering and the use of that boussilliage mud stuff. Over a century later, the plantation's life was governed by a Camille Henry, who brought all her resources to bear on creating a center for artists and artisans to work and cross-pollinate. Writers, painters, weavers, woodcarvers, and sculptors came and stayed in little cabins on the grounds. One artist gave some leftover paints and an old window shade to the Henrys' cook, Clementine Hunter. Ms. Hunter had worked as a field hand on the plantation before working her way up to cook, but when she got her hands on those paints there was no stopping her. She painted non-stop, mostly scenes of the fast-vanishing plantation life and traditions, becoming an internationally recognized folk artist and painting right up to her death at the age of 101.
From Melrose I drove up the road about ten miles to the Oakland plantation, which is in the lengthy process of being transformed from a collection of decaying buildings into a national park. The Prudhomme family occupied this land from something like 1798 to 1998, when they turned it over to the Park Service. An eager young archaeologist named Nik gave me a haphazard tour of the main house, still being shored up by workers to keep it from toppling on its base. The coolest thing in the house was a very old baseball which the workers had just dug out of the ground an hour before. There were still roots sticking out of it. It looked to Nik as though it was homemade, with twine and horsehair figuring into the mix of materials. He was going to have to figure out a way to support its shape now that it was out from the soil, and then send it to a lab for age testing. I was fascinated by the old slave cabin, which had been lived in right up into the 1960s, the overseer's house, the corn crib, and the main barn, which had all kinds of intriguing odds and ends just sort of lying around. I was psyched to see all this stuff before it was all cleaned and tidied and labeled into neat little exhibits.
But it was 100 degrees, so I was eager to get back to the air conditioned car and my cooler of beverages. The road back up to town was so quiet, I wondered how long it would take to be discovered if one broke down. There were actual cotton fields shimmering in the heat, and I stopped to take a picture, even though I'm well aware that we grow more cotton in the San Joaquin Valley than in all of Louisiana. It just seems more normal to grow it in Louisiana. For one thing, it rains there, and you don't have to irrigate the crap out of it to make it grow. But enough of my water politics. Louisiana's not short of water, and it shows, from the lush lawns to the towering leafy trees, including lots of pecan trees, which I had never seen before.
Back in Natchitoches, I visited the Campus Corner to buy shot glasses for the collecting crowd and an NSU T-shirt for myself. I was thinking I might go to the NSU football game the next night, and I wanted to be properly dressed. The Demons were playing Texas Southern, whose marching band is legendarily skilled and funky, with the acrobatic drum majors and the scantily clad cheerleaders and incredible polyrhythmic percussion.
After the sun set, I felt the urge to check out the first night of the Meat Pie Festival. The music was playing, the lights were flashing, kids were bouncing in the bouncy tent, and the air was heavy with the smell of fried food and beer. I checked out the different meat pie stands and decided on Etta's, a clearly homemade operation with handwritten signs proclaiming Etta a past winner of the meat pie cooking contest. Etta's pie had the least savory filling of the three I had tasted to date, but I liked the pastry, lighter than the others, with a melt-in-the-mouth quality. I indulged in a beer and went to hang out by the stage, where the band was playing zydeco classics as well as cajunized versions of pop tunes.
Saturday was the day before race day, so ideally the well-prepared triathlete would do a short brick workout in the early morning and then rest up the rest of the day. I eschewed the workout and instead ate scrambled eggs with crawfish and cheese, grits, and a delightful berry turnover for my breakfast. In search of Internet access, I wound up at PJ's Coffee & Tea Co., the Natchitoches outpost of a New Orleans company. Luscious leather sofas and easy chairs, free WiFi, and tasty coffee made this a winner. And one of my emails got me back up off the luscious sofa. My email bud Jamie in Virginia,urged me to get down to the riverfront to the farmers' market at the Meat Pie Festival, where her dad would be selling marinated crab claws and cajun pickles. So much for resting up. I scooted down to the river, found Ron, and had a great chat with him about his beautiful and talented daughter. Ron then introduced me to all the other vendors, so a lively discussion ensued. Most people seemed to find it pretty astonishing that I had come from California for the Meat Pie Tri.
Hanging out in the South, as Michelle has long instructed me, is a matter of being able to relax into endless tales of family relationships, history, gossip, and improbable legend. I was really getting the hang of this when I ran into Chris Boyd, who was broadcasting live from the Meat Pie Festival for 100.7 KBZL. He too was astonished that I was a pilgrim to the Meat Pie Tri, so much so that he did a little live interview about it. He felt strongly that my original working title for the next book, Road To The Meat Pie Tri, should have been the winner. But he's biased. I ended up meeting his wife Kim, getting a free ticket to the NSU game, and hanging out with them on and off for much of the afternoon.
Chris and Kim had already departed for the NSU tailgate scene by the time the World Meat Pie Eating Championship was getting ready to kick off, a slight lapse in journalism, but they had multiple radio commitments. I saw Keri bringing out metal trays of meat pies and a bunch of hefty guys milling about up on stage. I shook my head at the craziness of it all. One guy, noticeably heftier and older than the college kids who would be stuffing face to chase the glory and the $500 cash prize, looked kind of familiar. He turned out to be "Gentleman" Joe Manchetti, a professional competitive eater who has scarfed against the best in the world. He had flown down from Connecticut for the glory and the bucks. Wow.
Keri grabbed a mic and exhorted the crowd to step on up. "Let's get some women up here, come on!" I felt a twinge of temptation, my competitive ego raising its treacherous head. I mean, I know from long and bitter experience that I can eat more than most gals, and a lot of guys too. But no, I shook my head again. I was doing a triathlon tomorrow, for cryin' out loud! The last thing I needed was to have my belly stuffed full of ground pork and beef and fried dough. Not to mention the extreme caloric density of such a competition.
I wandered off and bought a lemonade, and came back to the stage. And suddenly I was just seized with the kind of wild-hair impulse that gets people into trouble. "Oh, what the heck," I proclaimed to Keri. "Sign me up." "Yay!" said Keri. Another girl had also entered the fray, a fairly petite Brazilian student named Erica. I figured I had the women's division sewn up.