Saturday, July 17. Oil Plugged. Oysters Die Freshly. Core Families Revisited. This is a happy day. BP shut first one valve, then another, then a third on the new cap over their blown-apart well in the Gulf. And once that was done, no significant amount of oil could be seen gushing out. As it has for nearly three months. This is the first piece of genuinely good news about the disaster.
Even so, the spokesmen are being cautious. The big worry is that the pressure in the well might be enough to further damage the part of the well below the Gulf's bottom, which would be truly difficult to remedy. But as days went on, although the pressure in the well was not what the engineers expected, the situation seemed to be stable.
Meanwhile, news reports from the oyster beds show dead oysters being tonged up from formerly productive beds. It's all blamed on the oil spill, of course. But what really caused all this was not the oil itself but the fresh water channeled in from the Mississippi River. The idea is to keep the oil from penetrating into the bays and inlets. But fresh water kills oysters as effectively as anything. On the other hand, it doesn't permanently poison the beds. I'm sticking with my prediction that we will be eating Louisiana oysters with gusto again by Thanksgiving. Somebody's got to be a cockeyed optimist.
Mary Ann and I had breakfast at the Courtyard. We haven't been there in awhile. Every time I get their scrambled eggs from the buffet, I marvel at how good they are. Just the way I like them--soft and creamy. That is emphatically not how mainstream Joe likes his eggs. Mary Ann, for example, is a devotee of hard-scrambled eggs and bulletproof omelettes. Today, I found out by sheer sneakiness what the secret is. They stir a little sour cream into the eggs after cooking them. (And they don't cook them hard.) Yum. I will try this at home.
Radio show for three hours. A number of people called to tell me they've tried the $20.10 lunch special at Antoine's and loved it. For years, every time Antoine's came up on the air I winced, because it was likely to be a bad report. Not getting many of those anymore. But always a few, from those who want the 170-year-old restaurant to behave like one that opened last week.
Supper party at Ceil Lanaux's. Also there were George and Margot Bragg and Ed and Lisa Rapier. That's all but one of the parents of the Cobras--the five-best-friends Boy Scout unit that stayed together and active for ten years. Jude was a member until Katrina. The missing parent is Ceil's husband Charles, who died from a freak infection two years ago. And there's a tragic symmetry among the young men. Ben Bragg died in a weird accident less than a year ago. This is the first time we've all been together since Ben's funeral, although we see each other often enough. Even with our young men and our other interests scattered to the four winds, the bond of many years of the best possible times with our boys and two major sorrows is unbreakable.
Courtyard Cafe. Covington: 101 Northpark Blvd. (Marriott Courtyard Hotel). 504-871-0244. Breakfast.
