Item From the Past: The New Orleans Tee

Tucked away in a corner of a shelf in one of our bedroom closets is my tattered t-shirt collection. It features tees that I used to wear, but whose condition would make wearing them embarrassing now. Yet they have sentimental value, often as reminders of places I've seen, such as the one sporting the Hong Kong coat-of-arms, or the colorful Maui shirt, or the yellow shirt with black letters that say, "Eat, Drink and Be Merry, For Tomorrow You May Be in Utah."

Most prized of all is my New Orleans shirt. I acquired it shortly after the 1981 visit to that city that I mentioned on July 10. Kevin Middleton, one of my traveling companions, was on his way to becoming a graphic artist even then. After we got back, he designed and silkscreened five shirts with the same image to commemorate our visit. I think he kept two, and gave one each to the three other people on the trip.

This is mine. It's faded after three decades, and scanner doesn't really do it justice anyway.

Kevin is the central, Pan-like figure with pointy ears. Artist's prerogative, I figure. He's holding hands with Nancy at top, who is bald and has a mermaid's tail. To the right of Kevin is Tom, blindfolded and reaching for a bunch of grapes. I'm to the left, looking demented. It all suggests a bacchanal.

Spelled out at the bottom, in French, is "July Sixteenth to July Nineteenth, Nineteen Hundred Eighty-One."

Item From the Past: Anticipation of New Orleans

Career consultants and their ilk say never to post pictures of your drunken self on the Internet, but I'm going to ignore that advice. Besides, after 30 years I'm not sure just how much I'd had to drink on the night of July 12, 1981, at my home in San Antonio in the company of some of my high school friends, two years after finishing school.

Probably not that much, all things considered. I look pretty giddy, though.

We had reason to be giddy. Four of us -- three in the picture, and the fellow taking it -- were planning to visit New Orleans later that week. And so we did, leaving on the 16th. Now that was a time.

Travel Orts

I made a brief stop last month to see the Ellis County Courthouse in Waxahachie, not far south of Dallas. Texas has some grand old county courthouses, many dating from the late 19th-century golden age of courthouse construction, but I've never seen one more ornate.

I visited the fine Witte Museum while in San Antonio, and it had an exhibit about the development of public parks in the city from the 1800s on. That meshed nicely with the book I was reading on the trip, a biography of Fredrick Law Olmsted, though he didn't work on any of San Antonio's parks. I was especially interested in reading about the evolution of the much-beloved Brackenridge Park, which is behind the museum.

The museum also had an exhibit about wild west shows -- the sort of late 19th-century/early 20th-century extravaganza that made Buffalo Bill Cody and other showmen famous. Lots of posters, and not just about Buffalo Bill's show, but some of his competitors as well, whose names and claims to fame now exist in dusty obscurity. Here's a fast fact: in the '30s, Tom Mix launched a wild west show, or maybe a circus with wild west elements, called the Tom Mix Circus; but the time had passed for such entertainments, and it failed.

The Witte, incidentally, was where my family and I waited in line to see a moon rock in 1970. They had one on display, about the size of a small, squarish gray golf ball. We probably waited an hour to see it. "We waited to see that?" my brother Jay complained. In hindsight, I suppose he had a point. Pretty much every planetarium and science museum has a moon rock now, and people walk right past them.

I exited I-10 in Flatonia, Texas, for two reasons. One, I've always liked that name. Two, I wanted to find a mail box. I found one, along with a nice-looking cemetery.

I drove on US 90 from Flatonia to Schulenburg, where I got a milkshake at a Whataburger -- an authentic Texas experience, if you ask me. Near the Whataburger I saw a sign for a store called Double Shot Guns and Liquor. Now that's a winning combo.

On I-10 just outside of Katy, Texas, I saw an odd truckload by the side of the road. It took a moment to figure out what it was: a load of windmill blades, tied together, bound for the green-energy revolution, I suppose -- transported there by diesel.

I timed my transit through Harris County, on I-10, which takes you right through the heart of Houston, to compare it with my driving experience in Austin. It took me only 50 minutes during a mid-day Monday. Sometimes traffic slowed, but it never stopped.

Also of note in the metro Houston area: There are a lot of billboards advertising the services of various shysters who say they want to help out with your "Ike claim." Such is the lingering effects of that storm, which the National Hurricane Center calls the third-costliest in U.S. history.

En route to Louisiana, I detoured into Beaumont to see Spindletop. The small open-air museum at the site was closed, so maybe I missed something special. Otherwise, considering how important Spindletop is in the history of Texas -- of the oil industry -- of mankind's quest for energy, the spot is hardly worth stopping to see. There's a replica derrick and an obelisk with a star on top, as you see at other historic spots in Texas. That's it.

In Lafayette, I saw more than one group of convicts taking care of the roadside. Convicts in orange (for traffic safety) and black-and-white convict stripes (for tradition). Not quite like the chain gangs of old, I suspect, but I wouldn't want to be out there in the hot sun with them.

The main route north out of Baton Rouge is US 61, named the Scenic Highway in town. What does one see on the Scenic Highway? A lot of chemical plants -- several miles of them. Impressive, really, but that's stretching that "scenic" concept beyond recognition.

I passed through Philadelphia, Mississippi, hometown of my father's family. One of the places I saw there was the town cemetery. I have relatives there, in this case my paternal grandparents and some of my uncles and aunts.

The last thing I saw on the trip wasn't actually Superman (see July 10). I spent about ten minutes in Effingham, Illinois, standing under this enormous cross, which is nearly 200 feet high.

The cross was made with some 180 tons of steel and is able to withstand very high winds, according to various sources. Each of the Ten Commandments has a display at the base, forming a ring around the structure. Metropolis' Superman statue would look puny next to the Effingham Cross.

A Po' Boy Among Po' Boys

Photography in the digital age means that you stop taking pictures not when you run out of film, but when your batteries run out of power. I might have taken more photos of certain places but for low power, a situation that's impossible to correct at a campground without electricity.

Such as in Lafayette. Camera-battery power was low the morning I went into town, so I have no images of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Cemetery on Surrey Street, which was chock-a-block with the sort of above-ground tombs generally associated with New Orleans. When visiting the visually interesting Vermilionville (see July 1), I left my camera in the car.

Later in the day, I drove out to New Iberia and then Avery Island, world HQ of Tabasco Sauce, to take the tour. As interesting as the process of making that hot sauce is, it was just as well that I left my camera in the car there, since the inside of Tabasco factory isn't all that compelling, visually speaking, at least for a photographer of marginal skills. Except for the giant faux Tabasco bottle.

Outside the New Iberia Public Library are enormous old trees festooned with Spanish moss. Down Main Street from the library, behind its own live oaks and bamboo and an impressive gate, is the sugarcane plantation mansion Shadows-on-the-Teche, which was closed when I arrived, but impressive even at a distance.

Maybe it's just as well that I didn't make many pictures of Lafayette, since it will oblige me to visualize my memories by myself. In the end, I decided I had power enough for one picture in Lafayette, and this is it:

I had lunch that day near Louisiana University at the Old Tyme Grocery, which may be old tyme, but it really isn't a grocery store. In one part of the place, you order from its simple menu and wait for your food to be wrapped and ready. The other part looks like a small bar. I ordered my food and sat at the bar.

Looks don't count for much at a place like this anyway. The food's the entire deal. I had a shrimp po' boy, fries and locally made root beer. Note the gushing comments here. I agree with them all, and have to add my own about the po' boy: Damn, that was good.

One of Our Finer Capitols

"The House and the Senate chambers are both open, and you'll want to see them, since they're gorgeous, and back there you can take an elevator to the 24th floor, where you can catch a smaller elevator to the observation deck," the woman behind the information counter at the Louisiana state capitol told me.

Observation deck? Wow, this is one great capitol, I thought. A free observation deck. But before I could say anything, she spoke again.

"Huey Long was shot in front of the old governor's office, right around the corner over there," she said, pointing.

"Do people still ask about that?" I was going to ask, but I'm eccentric that way.

"Yes, they do."

Now that's what I call posthumous fame. Long might smile at the thought that he's one of the few Depression-era state governors (or U.S. Senators) remembered so well. How many others can you think of without looking them up? Of course, it helped to have Robert Penn Warren write a novel about him, sort of, and Broderick Crawford to play him in the movie, sort of.

I saved my visit to his assassination site for last, but I'm not saving it for last here. Across the hall from the entrance to the former office of the governor of Louisiana -- Long was the first governor to have his office there -- is this plaque:

Next to the plaque is a display case with pictures, contemporary news clips, and other information about the assassination. Conclusion: Maybe Dr. Weiss did it. Maybe Long's trigger-happy bodyguards, who shot Weiss into Swiss cheese, accidentally got the boss, too. Note that the plaque merely says "a bullet wound." We'll never know for sure.

But that's not all. In front of the capitol, there's a large statue of Long. Even better, he's buried under the statue.

The grounds and the building are, of course, much more than a monument to Huey Long, even though as boss governor he persuaded the legislature to build this magnificent art deco building, in the midst of the Depression, no less. So in a sense all of it is a monument to him. Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

I was especially impressed by the Memorial Hall, just inside the main entrance, with its rich gelded ceiling, enormous lamps, murals, double life-sized sculptures of governors, and the massive, ornate bronze doors leading into the House and Senate. On the floor is a large bronze relief map of Louisiana, encircled by the names of the state's 64 parishes.

There are also flags. The capitol's web site lists them: "Castile and Leon, Bourbon France, Bourbon Spain, England, French tricolor, 15-star U.S. flag, flag of the Republic of West Florida, Louisiana national flag, Confederate Battle flag, Confederate Stars and Bars, Louisiana State flag, and the modern U.S. flag."

Louisiana national flag? See "The Flags of 1861" on at flagspot.net. I didn't know there was a such a flag. The flag of the Republic of West Florida, which lasted for all of about a month in 1810, was later known as the Bonnie Blue Flag.

The observation deck had some fine views. Downtown Baton Rouge. The Mighty Mississippi and bridges spanning it. The city's enormous chemical industry. Well, that wasn't so picturesque, but it's good to know that Baton Rouge doesn't subsist mostly on state government and its hangers-on, as some capitals do.

Vermilionville, Acadiana

Vermilionville, an open-air museum in Lafayette, Louisiana -- "a Cajun/Creole Heritage & Folklife Park" -- is a first-rate example of that kind of museum. It has a pretty setting on the Bayou Vermilion, for one thing. Its lush landscape, described in great detail by the pamphlet you receive when you pay your admission, is another (now I know that Spanish moss is a member of the pineapple family). The place also has 19 buildings of pre-20th-century vintage, and of various original uses, but all from the part of the state called Acadiana, the concept of which seems to be a 20th-century invention.

To digress, Acadiana has its own flag, which I'd never seen nor heard of before. Not to be confused with the older flag of Acadia.

But the museum had more than interesting buildings in a good setting. The morning I visited, June 16, I ran into a couple of interpreters who not only knew their stuff, but could play their stuff. Stationed in the La Maison des Cultures, a Creole house dating from the 1840s, was a Creole fiddle player whose name I can't remember and which I couldn't spell even if I could remember, so French was it. Perhaps in his early 30s, the fellow was tall but not quite lanky, dark of hair and eyes but not quite so dark of skin, and dressed in what I took to be mid-19th century workingman's attire. We talked for a while about the peopling of Acadiana. I think he was glad I had some notion that Cajun and Creole were not the same, but rather ingredients in the ethnic (shall I say it?) gumbo that is Louisiana.

I was the only visitor at La Maison des Cultures, so we talked a while, and then he fiddled a while. "This," he'd say, "is how they play it in such-in-such a place." Then he played a few bars, or if inspired, more than a few. "Now this," he'd continue, "is more like such-and-such music, but you know, they listened to this-and-that music, too, so it's all mixed together." (Like gumbo.) More playing followed. I couldn't remotely keep up with him, so fluid was his demonstration of various styles and substyles. A remarkable talent.

In the 1890s schoolhouse, L'Académie de Vermilionville, I learned that the state of Louisiana suppressed the speaking of French in the schools for much of the 20th century, since that fact was written in large letters on the chalkboard (in English). I also met "Bob" (I can't remember his name either), an Acadian with an accordion. Tall like the fiddle player, but older and Caucasian, he too was in period clothes, and was just as talented. "I heard this when I was a boy," he'd said, and then launch into a blur of hand and finger movements that made the accordion sing. "Now this one, you might have heard in such-and-such a place." More music would emerge.

I wouldn't have heard it in such-and-such, since my experience in Acadiana is sadly limited. But I left Vermilionville early that afternoon, and left Lafayette itself the next day, wanting more. I'd say that's the mark of a good destination.

Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Interrupted

The things you learn after you visit a new place. Just today I read, on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service web site, that the "124,511-acre [Sabine National Wildlife Refuge] coastal marsh... is currently closed to all public uses because of damages sustained during Hurricane Rita."

Two weeks ago Monday, I drove from San Antonio to Lafayette, Louisiana, as the first leg of my return home from Texas. Naturally, the drive was more than just about getting home, so I took a few detours of my own devising. But not as many as I'd dreamed of. When I look at a road map, I see more than points that designate cities and towns or lines that designate roads. I see a candy shop.

Like candy, I can only take so many destinations, but it's still a fair amount. Just west of Lake Charles, Louisiana, I left I-10 and headed south on Louisiana 27, also called the "Creole Nature Trail." It cuts down the eastern edge of the Sabine NWR in extreme southwest Louisiana (Cameron Parish) and then eastward along the Gulf coast.

Also, according to the National Scenic Byways Program, a division of the Federal Highway Administration, the road is an "All-American Road," which is the program's term for a major-league scenic route. (But don't expect a reasonable description of Louisiana 27 from byways.org. It's just as bad as a hack travel brochure: "... when you travel the Creole Nature Trail, you will get an up-close and personal view of Louisiana's unique environment. The trail travels through thousands of acres of untouched wetlands, which reflect an area blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable.")

That isn't to say it wasn't one fine drive, through intensely flat, intensely grassy, intensely wet territory in June. A sublime green all around. This is a view from a platform at a place called Blue Goose Trail, which didn't seem to be closed. At least the parking lot was open. So was the trail, which winds through the background of the picture.

So I took a walk, with a hat and water. It was just as hot as in Texas. I'm not sure if these posts used to be part of something that blew down four years ago or not, but they were trailside.

"Untouched" isn't quite the way I'd describe the Sabine NWR. Again, from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: "Refuge recreational areas along Highway 27 received varying amounts of damage to bridges, piers, observation towers, boardwalks, restroom facilities, fences, and parking lots. These facilities need to be repaired before the areas can be re-opened for public use."

The bridges I saw connected Louisiana 27 with side roads, crossing the large canal that often ran next to the highway. Most of them looked intact, but one not far from Blue Goose Trail had been completely wrecked and not restored yet.

In case I had any ideas about heading down one of the Sabine NWR's canals to gig some alligators, "West of Highway 27, Sabine refuge canals and marshes were severely impacted by storm wind and water.... Canals and marshes are clogged with seven million cubic meters of debris from off shore rigs and coastal communities.... Tanks and barrels containing hazardous liquids and gases have the potential to explode or break down and release toxins into the environment. Over 1,400 hazardous material containers have been identified and are estimated to contain between 115,000 and 350,000 gallons of hazardous liquids and gases."

Lest we forget, Hurricane Rita was stronger than Katrina. But it didn't hit New Orleans. Instead it washed large parts of the oil industry into a wildlife refuge. It also thumped a lot of places in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas, and destroyed the the town of Holly Beach, Louisiana, on the Gulf, which I passed through after walking on the Blue Goose Trail. I can't compare what I saw to the pre-2005 town, but the place did look ragged and improvised. At least the new buildings were far up on stilts.

My plan had been to cross the Calcasieu Ship Channel by ferry and continue along Louisiana 27 and loop back to near Lake Charles. Or maybe even follow Louisiana 82 to Abbeville, though it was getting late in the day. But after waiting in line a while, I decided to retrace my route back to I-10, especially after a truck driver came by telling everyone, "the ferry's broke."

Wrecked

New Orleans is the kind of place that everyone ought to have fond memories of. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I do. Hard to imagine the entire city being evacuated. Or the damage all along the coast, since New Orleans is hardly alone in its suffering.

Very hard to imagine it all as I was driving around on this sunny day here in Illinois, where the only hints of trouble were coverage on the radio and about a 30¢/gal. increase in the price of gas from yesterday, at least at the place I usually buy gas. Warned of this hike (again by radio), I filled both cars yesterday at the old price of $2.87.9/gal. Now if they would only stay full.

Katrina inspired me to pull out the 2005 World Almanac and check the table called “Some Notable Hurricanes, Typhoons, Blizzards, Other Storms,” p. 206-7, which runs from the Great Blizzard of 1888 (400 deaths) to the storms last year that beat up Florida. My conclusion: if you want to avoid the worst storms, don’t be Bangladesh.