Spillway Review
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Shopping for Lutefisk

by Corinne Breaux


Catahoula is the name of a town in St. Martin Parish in South Louisiana near the Atchafalaya Spillway Basin.  André was not actually from Catahoula, the town.  He lived in the countryside, near the town of Catahoula in a ramshackle house surrounded by cypress knees and screen porches and pieces of wood pulled from the swamp.  He lived there happily with his clever bilingual (French and English-speaking) family, until one day he took some sort of achievement test and found himself recruited by 3M, and was mysteriously flown away from the shady swamp via helicopter for a special summer internship.  “Bye André,” waved his family.  André waved.  He would have told them not to forget to write, but he knew they would be too busy.  They were always up to something.

The helicopter landed at an airport where André boarded a regular plane.  On the plane, André chatted with the woman next to him, who was from St. Paul.  The conversation turned to cuisine, and André asked what the local specialties would be in St. Paul.  The woman answered that he might try something called cheese curd, and André promised he would try it.  André asked about seafood.  There was a lot of seafood served around Catahoula.   André told the woman that his family raised crawfish for food.  André couldn’t eat crawfish because he was allergic.

The woman said, “Yah,”  that seafood was plentiful in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and that her favorite seafood restaurant was Red Lobster, to which André said, “Hmmm.”  Within a 400 mile radius of Catahoula, no Red Lobster restaurant had ever lasted more than three years due to the general intolerance of the population of South Louisiana for frozen seafood.  André asked about lutefisk.  He had heard about it on public radio.  “Yah, there’s lutefisk,” said the woman.  André decided that at some point during his summer internship he would have to find some lutefisk, try it, and send some home if possible.

During his summer internship at 3M, André programmed and designed robots who made scotch tape.  André programmed the day away.  He was so engrossed in the tape-making robots that he forgot to have lunch.  One day when everyone knocked off work, André said that he was famished, and did anyone know where he could get a good plate of lutefisk.  Half of the other interns were also from obscure places far away from town, and they largely didn’t know what lutefisk was.  The other half of the interns were locals, and they all screwed up their faces.  “Hmmmm....., lutefisk, let’s see, hmmmm.....”  They all seemed vaguely familiar with lutefisk, but not with shopping for lutefisk.  André figured that if lutefisk were very tasty, they would have had a lot of experience acquiring it and would readily know where to get it.  However, he was not deterred.

Upon leaving work, André walked into a tiny branch of the public library that he had not noticed before.  It was a very old building.  In one corner, near the restrooms, there was an old wooden phone booth.  Inside the phone booth was a little stool and a phone book on a chain.  André went into the phone booth, pulled the door shut and grabbed the phone book.  It was thin, much thinner than the phone book in his little 3M-provided summer apartment.  The pages of the phone book in the booth were crumbling.  André looked up lutefisk , and sure enough, several lutefisk establishments were listed.  He chose Lutie’s Lutefisk, 1200 N. 14th Ave.  He called, half expecting the phone not to work or to get no answer, but sure enough, on the other end of the line was a friendly, “Yah, dis is Lutie.” 

André said, “Hi, I’m new in town, and, well I’m using a very old phone book, so I’m surprised that you are in business, and ...” 

“Vell, I’m Lutie, Jr.  Really, I’m the great grandson, but Yah, we’re hanging on here.”

“OK, well, how do you get there?” asked André.

“Oh, vell I get here by boat, but you can walk.”  Lutie chuckled.

André wasn’t sure what Lutie meant, but he said, “Yes, I meant how do I get there.”

“Ok, walk out, turn left, get to Third street, ...”  André grabbed his PDA, a little palm-sized computer/organizer.  Andre’s PDA allowed him to write on a screen with a stylus, and he jotted down the directions as Lutie dictated them.   When André left the library, he remarked to himself that Lutie obviously knew he was calling from the library, but André guessed that Lutie had caller ID.

The sun was starting to set.  It was a beautiful evening, and André found himself walking through a residential area of middle class homes built in the thirties.  Tall trees lined the streets and darkened the now-orange sky.  André could still see bits of blue in the sky, but they were gradually turning purple and dark.  He emerged on a street that had businesses and more traffic.  Across the street there was an intersection where the crossing street forked.  In the triangular area formed by the fork was the doorway to a little triangular building on that corner.  The building seemed to have been built in the thirties.  Embossed in concrete above the door was  the word Sanders, but below that was a little wooden sign that said “Lutie’s Lutefisk and Groceries.”  There were the normal stickers indicating that Master Card, Visa, and like plastic would be accepted.  It seemed a little quirky, but generally normal.

The moment he entered, André knew that the normal impression was a front and that nothing about the place was ordinary.  First, the wedge-shaped room was so tiny, only one customer could possibly fit at a time.  Lutie was behind a counter, and the customer was squeezed into the little area in front of the counter.  André was about six feet tall and slim.  He had to tuck his elbows in to keep from jostling items on the walls around him.  He definitely did not want to touch anything on any side.  He seemed to be surrounded by stiff white fish bodies, heads included in most instances, mouths gaping.  The oppressive and unmistakable smell of Draino was thick in the air.  It was humid in the shop, almost steamy.  André felt faint.  It was a shock to go from the fresh night air, hungry from his walk, into this.

“Vell, hello, you must be the fellow who called for Lutefisk.”

“Yah,” said André weakly.  The “yah” was infectious he thought.  He was reminded of the little shop run by the sheep in Alice in Wonderland.  Here too, items seemed to float around and out through the ceiling.

“O.K., vat would you like?” asked Lutie.

“Just the usual, whatever people get when they are tourists and want to have a lutefisk experience or send some lutefisk home or whatever.”  André had been very tempted to bail out, but he had gotten this far, and he decided he’d just buy his lutefisk and get out.  He wondered if the dried fish around him were lutefisk.  If so, he hoped they would be wrapped in something to protect him from the smell and the caustic effects of lye. 

“To tell you the truth,” Lutie said, “the season for lutefisk is Christmas, but I think we have a little leftover lutefisk...”

It was July.  André found the prospect of leftover lutefisk quite frightening. Lutie disappeared in a cloud of steam that emerged from a little door behind him.  André held his breath as much as he could, and had begun groping for the door to get out when, after what seemed like forever, Lutie returned with a gigantic steaming plate.  On the plate was a blob of mashed potatoes, some peas, some bacon, a lot of bacon grease, and a healthy portion of  white, gelatinous stuff André assumed to be the lutefisk.

“Haf a bite!”  said Lutie enthusiastically.  André balked. 

“OK, you can wash it down with this. “  Lutie provided a wee shot glass filled with clear liquid that André assumed was not water.  André sniffed the liquid, but there was no smelling anything over the smell of the lutefisk.  André took a gulp of the liquid and quickly downed a bite of the lutefisk.

The next thing André remembered was being outside in the fresh air again.  He had a paper sack in his arms.  Inside the sack was a large bottle of Aqua Vit, several of the bare naked dried white fish, and a large tupperware-type container.  He tried to flag down a cab.  One pulled over, the driver leaned towards André sniffed, and pulled away. 

Somehow André made it back to his car, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually put the lutefisk in his rental car.  He strapped the lutefisk package to the luggage rack on the top of  the car with some bungie cords he had in the trunk.  He still intended to ship the lutefisk home to his family.  He was sure they would love lutefisk, once they got to try it.

On the way back to his apartment André saw the light on at Viggo’s Veggie Villa.  He pulled in.  There was a warm light inside.  André noticed the other customers sniffing, and André was afraid he would be thrown out for disturbing the place with the aroma of lutefisk, but the staff was very sympathetic.  They seem to have dealt with lutefisk refugees before, and they fixed him up in a quiet corner near a window which they raised discreetly.  Gratefully André sunk his teeth into an avocado and sprout sandwich with grilled pecans.  He declared his curiosity for lutefisk satisfied.

For some reason, André never could find Lutie’s shop again, or the library with the phone he used to call Lutie’s.  He couldn’t even find the notes he made in his PDA about how to get to Lutie’s.  He did send the lutefisk home with some fear that it would be lost in the mail and that there would be no proof that he had ever encountered lutefisk at all.  However, André decided he couldn’t spend the rest of the summer with the stinking lutefisk package strapped to the top of his car.  He finally bundled it up in the most smell-proof packaging he could find and entrusted it to the U.S. Postal Service.  The lutefisk arrived safely in Catahoula, and was enjoyed by all, becoming the subject of many jokes, songs, and tales.  Some people even ate it.