Testimony

 

I interjected my commanding voice into the conversation at a booth in Max's Place. I wanted to testify about how close I'd been to the Mississippi River in Southern Looziana. We've all heard about the mighty Mississippi lately, and the spillway that they might open; the houses and farmland that would then be flooded. I said that I'd seen some of those “structures” and that they looked old and rusted. “I hope they'll still work if they need them.”

I searched through the archive of The Reluctant Trucker and finally found the relevant post, which follows. The map was pirated from DeLorme Maps. I'd gladly pay their licensing fee but the hassle still doesn't seem worth it. I hope they don't put me in jail, or bankrupt me. Hey, I'm advertising their brand, right?

1/05/07

It’s nice of Spring to come so early this year.  I love the bright green of young grass.  But then I was in the Deep South, I doubt many of you have seen the grass growing just yet, despite the unusually warm start to winter this year.  Don’t worry, it’s probably going to hit with a vengeance soon, trying to make up for lost time.

I had an interesting drive across Louisiana 15 today, following the Mississippi River.  They call US 61 the “Great River Road,” but I’ve always been disappointed following it.  Other than some interesting architecture in the towns it's just another highway and you never really get close to the river.  I was close to the river today, and I mean close.  For much of the way the road ran along the top of the levee, marshy woods on one side, and marshy woods on the other, except that the eastern side often opened up into wide expanses of water and there were no buildings, with one exception.  There was quite a bit of water on the western side too, but most of that was due to the heavy rains the night before.  I didn’t actually see the river itself except in a couple of places, but there was no mistaking that it was the shaper of the landscape.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been busy out there.  Every creek and river that pierced the levee had elaborate spillways.  They were all of different design.  Some had huge concrete superstructures that towered over the road; others rose little higher than the water, but they were all built in segments, I presume so that some segments can be opened wider than others, and all of them looked old.  There were locks too.  I got a close up view of a lock looking right down into it from the bridge I was crossing.  It was huge and could have easily accommodated at least two of those big barges, one in front of the other, though it was empty at the time.

And I saw poverty like I’ve never seen it before.  There were literal tar paper shacks, with tin roofs perched drunkenly on blocks of concrete; the yards full of junked cars, old washing machines and piles of other stuff.  Grandma sat on the porch while a group of men leaned over the open hood of a beat up pick-up truck.  There were other dwellings as well, they weren’t all dirt poor, though most of them were modest.  Still, many of the other houses may have had tin roofs too, but they were level and their lines straight.  And there was one large white two story with huge columns along the front of it.  It didn’t look old enough to actually have been a plantation house, but it was sure modeled after one.

All of the buildings were on blocks, because of the swampy ground, and the couple of graveyards I saw had those above ground tombs that you see in New Orleans.  At one place there was a row of modern ranch houses built in a flooded field.  The only ground that was showing was that immediately surrounding the houses and the driveways.  That flooding was due to the rain, I’m sure.  They expected it too, or they wouldn’t have built on raised ground and made a causeway out of the drives.  Still, I’m not sure that I’d want to live anyplace where the front yard was dominated by a levee more than twice the height of your home.

I passed signs for two ferries.  The first I didn’t think much about but the sign for the Angola Ferry caught my eye since it was as crooked as those shacks had been.  As I passed I looked down the drive.  It was one lane gravel and wandered shakily into the woods.  It makes me wonder what shape the boat is in.  I’ll bet it smells like fish down there.

There wasn’t much that was truly old; perhaps the moisture rots things before they can become antique.  But there were a few indications that people had lived there for a long time and that things have changed.  One was a high wrought iron fence with a double gate decorated with scroll work.  It was tilted, rusty and surrounded nothing more special than a plowed field.  Another was the sign for a store, eatery or maybe a filling station that rose right up out of the ditch that ran along the bottom of the levee; behind it nothing but scraggly woods.  The name of the establishment was missing, only the Coca-Cola logo remained.  It was probably from a day before the levee was built, or when it was smaller.  And then of course there were the graveyards with those eerie crypts.

It was an interesting and pleasant drive.  The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky (here’s an observation: even brown muddy water can reflect a clear blue sky without sullying the color in the least).  I needed something like that since this load had been hell up to that point.  The shipper was in a little town along the river and there was no direct way to get there from where I was coming from.  I’d tried to follow their directions but got lost in the dark and the rain out in the country.  I was on narrow little roads with no shoulder, my lane barely wide enough for the truck and the fields on either side were flooded.  Shortly after I got found again I had to wait for over a half an hour while they cleared a fallen tree off of LA 1.  Then, when I finally got to the shipper I found out that the load wasn’t going to be ready until the next day, so I parked along the fence for the night.  They’d said that the shipping office opened at 8:00 so I stayed up late playing my computer game, setting the alarm for 7:00, but at 5:30 in the morning they came banging on my door.  I was due for something nice, don’t you agree?



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I know that I promised I wouldn't use the “N” word again, but I came across this related entry as well:

1/07/07

I feel blessed somehow, in a painful way.  Stuck here in Memphis (with the mobile blues again) I opted not to go into town and spend money.  Instead I spent just a little on some cut rate movies from the local Walmart.  One of them was The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a 1973 film about an 110 year old black woman and her story from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement in east central Louisiana, on the Mississippi River.  Hey, I was just there!  The history that I had assumed has taken form and weight.

I feel compelled to say a few more words about that shanty town.  I didn’t think that I needed to mention that the residents there were black.  I figured you could guess that, especially with the reference to the large manor style home.  Forgive me if I made it seem like just so much more scenery.  I was appalled by it; fascinated, but appalled.  That's the third world people, right here in America!  What do I think about all the unsightly junk in the yards there?  Resources.  That’s where those unemployed young men will get the parts to make that beat up old pickup truck run.  One could make a derogatory slur to describe a machine made to run with inadequate materials, but I think it takes ingenuity and resourcefulness.  And what about Grandma on the porch?  I bet she could tell you a thing or two.  I recognize that I am just a passing spectator, and don’t know the local circumstances, but I can tell you this: it isn’t just one or two lazy souls who choose to live that way, there is a whole community there, right now, as we speak.


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I wonder where those lazy souls are now. If they open the spillway on its rusty hinges there ain’t much chance of them saving those fancy homes.