Travels with Shadow
Exploring Louisiana - December, 2004
In order to allow more liberal use of photos without causing long download times, I am only using black and white photos
After scraping the ice off my windshield again, I pulled out of Memphis at eight thirty on Thursday the second of December. I thought I might stay longer but to me it was just another grungie city, and after twenty seven years in New York City, I have seen enough of them. I can't relax in a city anymore, it bothers me to have people on all sides of me. I had a hard time staying in Saint Paul during October after spending the summer in the woods north of Duluth.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the drive through Mississippi was lined with tall forests on both sides of the road. Somehow I had the idea that it was all open farm land like southern Minnesota. This country has the familiar feel of the dense forests of Northern Minnesota where I grew up. I could probably be comfortable here except for the heat in the summer.
I rolled into the "Land-O-Pines Family Campground" in the deep woods around Covinton, LA about five P.M. It is about fifteen miles up the road from the causeway that crosses Lake Ponchatrain into New Orleans. The temperature was a pleasant sixty one degrees, and hopefully I won't have to scrape ice off my windshield again. By the time I paid for a spot and parked it was dark. I had to finish up by flashlight. Backing into a pine forest solo can be a bit tricky in the dark, but I managed. I paid for a week at eleven bucks a night. I get half price because of my membership in Passport America. The year round residents pay a hundred bucks a month plus utilities.
A lot of parks won't let in old and raggedy RVs, well apparantly this is where they all go. I even spotted a pop up trailer with plywood walls where the canvass would normally be.
My collie Shadow did pretty good today as we were on the road from eight in the morning until five in the evening. I make a point of giving both of us a break every hour if possible. In the Ozark mountains he got car sick even on short trips. I let him stick his snout out the window every once in a while and that helps. I guess the roller coaster roads in the Ozarks got to him. He does better on flat lands.
Back in 1960 I dropped out of college to run off to San Francisco and be an artist/photographer. The Bohemian feeling of the French Quarter is quite similar to what I found in North Beach, San Francisco back then. Difference is that this is many times larger, and probably a heck of a lot more fun.
I wish I could play harp (harmonica) the way this guy does.
Preservation Hall is well known
Street Music seems to be everywhere
These guys were belting out some great Dixieland
It is a good thing that I went to San Francisco instead of New Orleans back in the sixties. If had gone south instead of west, I would have probably never returned home. It occurred to me that I could probably start doing sketches and paintings of musicians playing in bars and cafe scenes. I did pretty well selling them in the galleries in San Francisco in the sixties. Careful, I could get too comfortable here.
On the ninth of December I moved on to Maxies RV Park just south of Lafayette, LA. The park is nice but it is sandwiched between a four lane highway and a railroad line. However, at sixty eight bucks a week with my Pass Port America discount, I can't complain and the noise does subside after dark.
This is the heart of the Cajun country and on the edge of the Atachfalaya basin, America's largest fresh water swamp. I visited Vermillion Ville in Lafayette which is a reconstructed Acadian village with re-enactors and many original houses. It is a two hour tour and well worth seeing. It gives a hint at what life must have been like for these pioneers.
I have enjoyed my stay here and intend to come back again next year. Having grown up in the northwoods of Minnesota, turning on the radio and listening to the sound of accordians playing is pure pleasure. I have fallen in love with Cajun and Zydeco music. The French spoken here is easier on my ears than the Parisian French that I had a hard time hearing. I think if I stayed here long enough I could become fluent in it. Besides, it finds it's roots in the same southern French that my grandfather's grandmother, Abiah Raplee, spoke.
While in Lafayette, I took a side trip to Eunice which in the prarie land. I wanted to see Mark Savoy's workshop where he makes the most beautiful cajun accordians. He nicely showed me his workshop and while I couldn't afford the eighteen hundred for one of his boxes, I ended up getting a new Hoener button box for half the list price. He gave me cd of his family band, the Savoy family, which is well known. It also appears that we are related through the Colet/Coligny family.
I know that buying another instrument may seem crazy, but what the heck. The button layout is the same as the diatonic harmonicas I already play, so I was immediately able to play some songs on it. It will take awhile, if ever, before I can wrap my mind around the cajun music but I have a half dozen cds and a book of cajun sheet music to start with. But then, I have the rest of my life to work on it.
Unfortunately, I have to move on tomorrow, it went below freezing last night.