In any given year, the Louisiana crawfish harvest tops 50,000 tons. The
Amazing Crawfish Boat chronicles the development of an amphibious boat
that transformed the Louisiana prairies into alternating fields of
aquaculture and agriculture. In seeking to understand how such a machine
came into being, John Laudun describes the ideas and traditions that
have long been a part of the Louisiana landscape and how they converged
at a particular moment in time to create a new economic opportunity for
both the rice farmers who used them and the fabricators who made them.
Walking fields with farmers and working in shops with fabricators,
Laudun gives readers a rich portrait of the Louisiana prairies and the
people who live and work on them. The Amazing Crawfish Boat seeks to
unearth the complex mix of folk cultures that underlie a variety of
traditions that are now seen as native to an area populated not just by
Cajuns but also by Germans and other groups. Over the years, this
diverse mix of cultures has produced an astonishing set of artifacts
that demonstrate not only their ability to adapt, but their ability to
innovate, and the crawfish boat is a great example of such creativity
produced by individuals deeply embedded in their culture and place.
While the lives of artists and scientists have been examined for what
they tell us about innovation, The Amazing Crawfish Boat seeks to
address creativity as part of a larger cultural complex of ideas and
behaviors. To ascertain this inventiveness, Laudun examines the
historical and cultural trends that led to this creation, drawing from
archives, oral histories, and ethnographic accounts. He investigates the
shops and sheds where farmers and fabricators work, revealing the
immense imagination and intelligence that lie behind the bolts, welds,
and hydraulic lines that hold the boats together and, in so doing, hold
a way of life together.
