By The annual Beaumont fishing trip to Cocodrie. This time: me, Luc, Rémy, Pierre, and Tee-Claude. A boys' weekend at Boo's camp, where the mosquitoes are the size of hummingbirds and the fish don't care what you're going through — they bite or they don't, and the bayou makes no promises.
Pierre and I drove down together, which means we drove in companionable silence for ninety minutes, listening to the Cajun station, with Pierre occasionally saying a word and me occasionally responding. "Hot," Pierre said, somewhere past Houma. "Oui," I said. Conversation complete. If Danielle and Angelle had been in the truck, we'd have covered twelve topics and three arguments. Pierre and I covered the weather. Both approaches are valid.
Rémy fished like a man possessed. He's five and a half now, and the rod from Christmas is an extension of his arm. He caught four specs, two reds, and a catfish that he declared "ugly but beautiful," which is the most poetic thing a five-year-old has ever said and which I'm putting on his college application. Luc caught more — eight total — but Rémy caught the biggest, a 22-inch redfish that made Pierre raise both eyebrows, which is Pierre's equivalent of a standing ovation with fireworks.
I cooked on the camp stove both nights. Friday: fried fish — whatever we caught, cleaned and in the oil within the hour. Saturday: a seafood boil at the camp, twenty pounds of shrimp and crab, boiled in the same pot that sits at every bayou camp from Cameron to Slidell. We ate on the dock, feet dangling over the water, the marsh stretching to the horizon in every direction. Rémy sat between me and Pierre and ate shrimp with the efficiency of a factory machine, and Pierre looked at him and said the most words he'd said all weekend: "He's got Joey in him." Three words beyond the standard Pierre limit. A genuine verbal splurge. I said, "Oui." And we went back to eating. And the marsh went on forever. And the boy ate shrimp between two men who loved his grandfather, and the evening was a prayer said in fried fish and silence.
The fish and the boil were the whole point of the trip — I won’t pretend otherwise — but after Rémy finally crashed in the bunk and the shrimp shells were cleared off the dock, Pierre and I sat out there for another hour while the marsh turned purple and the frogs took over. Those are the minutes a camp weekend is really made of, and they call for something slow in your hand. Planter’s Punch is what Boo used to make in a big pitcher on nights like that, and I’ve never felt the need to change a thing about it.
Planter’s Punch
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 1
Ingredients
- 2 oz dark rum
- 1 oz fresh orange juice
- 1 oz pineapple juice
- 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
- 1/2 oz grenadine
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- Ice, for shaking and serving
- Orange slice and maraschino cherry, for garnish
Instructions
- Combine. Add the dark rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, lime juice, grenadine, and bitters to a cocktail shaker filled with ice.
- Shake. Shake vigorously for about 15 seconds until the outside of the shaker is well chilled.
- Strain and serve. Strain over fresh ice in a tall glass — a Collins glass or whatever’s clean at camp works fine.
- Garnish. Add an orange slice to the rim and drop in a cherry. Sit on the dock. Watch the marsh.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 220 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 8mg