Lacombe

"Bayou Time"

Living on Bayou Lacombe was like being cradled by the past. The water moved slow, dark and glassy, curling through cypress and moss like it had nowhere else to be—and neither did I.

My little shotgun house sat just high enough to catch a breeze off the bayou, where Spanish moss draped the trees like old lace and egrets stalked the shallows at first light. Mornings began with the soft lap of water against the dock, coffee steaming in hand, and the smell of damp earth and brackish air thick around me.

Sometimes, I’d paddle out in the pirogue before sunrise, just me and the herons, moving so still it felt like time forgot us. The bayou whispered—frogs chirping, fish slapping the surface, the occasional splash of a gator sliding off the bank. Folks in town said you had to be born here to really understand the rhythm of the bayou. Maybe they were right.

Evenings came wrapped in the sound of crickets and the low rumble of thunder building over Lake Pontchartrain. I’d sit on the porch, a jar of homemade fig preserves at my side, watching lightning bugs blink over the water, remembering stories my grandfather told me—of shrimping days, of storms survived, of the old ways that still lingered like ghosts in the trees.

Out here, life didn’t ask much. Just that you respect the water, pay attention to the sky, and take your time. On Bayou Lacombe, everything moved slow—and that was just fine with me.