One wrong turn.

A missed exit off I-10 near Lake Charles, La. was all it took for me to find myself where I didn’t want to be – smack in the middle of where Hurricane Laura blasted through Louisiana.

I meant to take a road further north of Lake Charles to make my way through the state, but I somehow missed that exit and unexpectedly found myself in downtown Sulphur, one of Laura’s hardest hit areas.

Sulphur was the fast-food exit along I-10. One could stop there and choose from a dozen fast-food joints before heading into Lake Charles and heavy traffic.

I never ventured past the first half mile off the interstate, but on a gray, rainy day, I found myself looking at what a small town looks like exactly a month after a Category 4 hurricane comes through.

The destruction was unbelievable.

At the end of every driveway, both businesses and residential, piles of debris and water-logged furniture, wood and sheetrock were stacked up so high, it was hard to see past them.

Sheets of metal roofing waited at dozens of curbs like curling ribbon on a birthday present.

Businesses were demolished. Most of the roofs were gone from the front of the store to the back. Where plate glass once gave shoppers a view of what was inside, now there was only a vacant room with insulation and wires hanging from the ceiling.

Some brave businesses had hand-lettered signs out front stating they were open for limited hours, but most were dark and vacant.

Giant live-oak trees, some as big around as a hotel fountain, were lying on the ground as if a pro wrestler had picked them up and slammed them down. Most trees were ripped in half and the leaves had been blown off those that remained.

There were dozens of utility trucks on the roadways with hard-hat topped workers at the top of utility poles, attaching new wires to the new poles, to get power back to people who are still in the dark.

A school was boarded up with empty yellow buses filling the parking lot. Chunks of the building were gone, tarps and wood covering the openings.

The school sign flashed a message for students to remember they’re loved and to finish classes online because there was no way the school could open in the foreseeable future.

At first, all I could see was the sad destruction, the devastation and the overwhelming work as I wondered how people could pull themselves out of a hole that wide and that deep.

But people were going about the business of rebuilding. They were hauling debris and waving at each other as cars and trucks passed their homes. Those waves were accompanied by a tired smile, but a smile nonetheless.

And then I smelled a distinctly Louisiana fragrance – cayenne pepper. A food truck was operating in a parking lot with a hand-lettered sign stating they were selling boiled shrimp and crawfish.

That’s a way of life most have known for generations, and no hurricane was going to stop them from enjoying a semblance of civilization, of family and of home.

Little by little, month by month and probably year by year, Louisiana will rebuild, just as these Cajuns did after Betsy and Camille, Katrina and Rita and Ike and Carmen.

I realized Sulphur’s more than a one-stop town off the interstate. It’s home to over 20,000 people who’ve survived floods, economic downturns, Covid and now this hurricane. There is no way they won’t rebuild, no matter how long that rebuilding takes.

The saying “laissez les bons temps roulez” will ring through the bayous again.

Cajuns are resilient and nothing, not even a Class 4 hurricane, will ever stop them from “letting the good times roll.”

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.