Bunkie, LA: Music & Mexican Food

Fifteen minutes south of the Bayou Boeuf River we rolled into Bunkie, a Main Street mix of local joints, small businesses and national franchises. And, today, live music.

“Check it out,” Jon said, pointing at a parking lot on the right side of the road where a four-man band in cowboy hats was twinging their twang up on a flatbed trailer.

“Time to pull over,” I said as Jon was pulling over.

A modest mingling of people stood in the hot sun watching the band while others sat in the shade of a white canopy tent. “We’re celebrating the Grand Opening of Karen’s Kitchen,” they explained, pointing over to a small blue barn-like hut that could have housed an ice-cream parlor in a former life. “You guys hungry? Go get yourselves some lunch. Good home cooking for you!”

Excellent. Right there in the middle of Louisiana, in some small town along a two-lane road. Could there be a more perfect place to grab some real Cajun cooking? Some genuine Creole cuisine? Some mudbug jambalaya, or a heaping helping of down-home, authentic…Mexican food?

That’s how it goes when you decide to just see how it goes. (Karen, by the way, could make a mean enchilada.)

By the time Bert, Ronnie, Jason and Chad had finished their song the crowd, consisting mainly of Karen’s extensive family tree branches, was listening to Jon and passing around the brick. “We’re police officers,” said Chad, motioning toward Jon’s truck. “So this really means something special to us.” After having Jon climb up onto their flatbed stage to say a few words into the mike, Chad thanked him for bringing his project to their small town and asked everyone else to make sure they did the same. The band then fell into a seemingly spontaneous rendition of John Cougar Mellencamp’s Pink Houses.

With a population of four thousand Bunkie was by far the largest town we saw along the hundred-mile route between Alexandria and Baton Rouge. For two hours we rolled past the farms and fields and the homes that dot the flat landscape, no evidence of the wood-porch towns we were hoping for. When Route 71 ran into Route 190 we cut left and ran through the northern reaches of the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge, habitat for Louisiana black bear, American alligators, bald eagles, white-tailed deer and the eastern wild turkey.

We saw none of them as we rolled along through the northern tip of the thousands of acres of rich bottomland hardwood swamp they call home. Just south of us, running parallel to 190, were the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. Interstate 10 brushed the southern boundary of the refuge. Somewhere in between, in the middle of all that green land, bordered on the west by the Atchafalaya River, all those bears and gators and turkeys were running wild. I would have given almost anything to see them.