My name is Clam.

I grew up in a little town in South Louisiana called Chikapin by an hour west in New Orleans

and right in the end of the deep bay.

The channel is everywhere and you can make it from my backyard all the way down to the

Gulf of Mexico by boat.

He spends some time in the water just about every day since I can remember.

We need the waterways and terribon parishes like the backs of our hands.

Me and my cousin Rake, we are about the same age.

We were partnered up a lot when we were kids.

There were times when we'd spend most of our days in the bayou hunting and fishing and

trapping.

And that's what life was like.

If the longest time was about all it was.

For those one particular day, night, as you say, it stands out above all the rest though.

A night I still had bad dreams about all these years later.

It happened when we were about 12.

Me and Rake, we'd gone out in the bayou late in the evening to run some traps.

Daddy and Uncle Billy pretty much let us do whatever we wanted because they knew they

could trust us.

They knew we knew our way around.

They knew we could handle ourselves.

We were also supposed to stay inside certain boundaries to the south and then stay

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