My Freshman year in High School

My freshman year in high school would have some momentous life events in it for my whole class. 

On August 17^th, 1990 a few days after we started school, we would lose Heather and Becky.  They along with their boyfriends, would be killed on a well site, when it exploded.

You have to remember we were all from a small town. There was no place, where kids might hang out together, drink beer and make out.  What was done in those days, is that kids would go down on a well site and party.  Well sites, are old oil well sites, where the rig has been removed, and now have only collection tanks remaining.  These sites are usually down a dirt road, and in those days rarely protected, by a gate and / or a lock.  These places are often secluded and hard to find.  I frequently heard my father tell tales of finding old, long abandoned well sites, when he was working on a new pipeline.  I am not sure, in those days, that even the oil companies knew, where all their well sites were.  On a well site you have these huge natural gas tanks, that sit on a large gravel or dirt area,  that have been cleared and can easily accommodate a large crowd, and most of the time 5 or 6 vehicles easy.   Their seclusion, large cleared area, and easy accessibility made them natural gathering spots for teenagers. 

The tanks on these well sites are called 210’s, meaning they can hold up to 210 barrels of natural gas.  A natural gas barrel is 42 gallons, you have to allow for the natural expansion and contraction of the gas.  That means just one of these tanks can hold 8,820 gallons of natural gas.  These tanks are usually 12 ft tall and there can be 1, 2 or as many as 4 on a well site.  One thing most people don’t know is that natural gas sweats, and when it does it produces a condensation that is as powerful as jet fuel. 

My knowledge comes from living here all my life and having a father in the natural gas business, and years of going on these well site locations with him.   Now I should be clear, I only heard of these parties.  I was never cool enough to be invited to one. 

Somehow a spark was made and it ignited the gas tanks. It shook houses a mile away, and broke windows a good distance away as well.  Becky who was tall and slender like her sister, was two years older than me. Heather was in my same grade, but we were not often in the same class.  I have always regretted that we were not closer. 

As much as I suffer with that guilt, I know others it has eaten alive.  Other who were supposed to have been at the party that night, but for whatever reason never made it.  Heather and Becky’s death taught me to be grateful for every birthday, because not everyone gets to be this old. 

After Heather and Becky’s deaths I saw a great effort on the part of the oil companies, to mark and lock their well roads and other properties.  Today you rarely find one open.  I have no idea if parties on the well sites continued after their deaths, or it they still happen today.

The same year we lost Heather and Becky we lost our school as well, on the evening of February 4^th, 1991 our school began to burn.

I got a phone call, from one of my uncles long before dawn.  I remember him saying, “Ilsa, schools on fire.” I said, “Okay,” and went back to sleep.  I woke up just about the time Daddy was getting ready to go to work.  I caught him just before he left.  I told him of the phone call.  At that point I was not completely sure I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up.  I asked if he would drive by the school, and come back and tell me what was going on.  He said he would.

Now Logansport is a small, quiet town.  In those days I could sit on my porch, and listen to the football games.  I always knew when we made a touchdown, because I could hear the crowd cheer.  While Dad went to go check, Mom and I looked in the general direction of the school and saw an orange glow.  Daddy returned a few minutes later to say I was correct.  I didn’t dream it.  The school was indeed on fire.

Now I know it’s almost every student’s ardent hope and wish, that their school would burn too.  I must tell you we had all wished for such a thing, until it happened to us.  One night affected our lives for the next year and a half.

Mom and I hoped in the car and immediately drove to my school.  We could see it’s flames long before we ever got there.  My ancient 2 story high school was engulfed.  I will never forget driving past the blaze and the windows in the car being too hot to touch.  At that point my school was just a shell.  I would find out years later, that the original school had been wood.  Some years later it had been bricked over.  So when all was said and done with, the interior of the building was gone, but the brick facade remained. 

There were fire trucks and fire fighters everywhere.  I wonder now if they called in mutual aid from adjacent fire districts.  They must have, at some point, marked it as a total loss and let it just burn.  I think by the point we arrived, they were just trying to keep the other nearby buildings from catching fire as well. And they did a phenomenal job.  They saved the “Middle School” (the building the 7^th & 8^th graders used), the gym, the annex, the band building, and the home economics building.  The only things that burned that night were the main high school building and the annex, but that had been condemned long ago.  We stopped to talk to one of the firefighters.  I wanted to warn him that there was a chemistry lab upstairs.  He said, “Yes Mam’.  We know.  It was putting off pretty colors & sparks last night.”  Stories abounded about how firefighters and teachers alike risked their lives to save important documents, like test scores and grades in the councilor’s office, and those who tried to save trophies from the trophy cases. 

My school burned for three days straight.  It was a week before it stopped smoldering.  The steel beams inside were twisted from the heat.  I do remember hearing that part of what fueled the fire, was the very thick, probable 2” – 4” thick layer of wax, on top of the wood floors.  I know it was a while before investigators could get a good look, at what was left of our school, and decide what the cause of the fire was. 

The fire was deemed to be arson.  No one, as far as I know, has ever claimed responsibility for the fire.  No one has ever been convicted in this crime.  We were all told that a homeless person had been inside and set the fire.  Logansport had no homeless person, that I ever saw.  We were badly in need of a new school, long before the fire.  There was another rumor that the son of one of the school board members was asked to set it.  I have no idea.  The think the rumors are still wild and varied on who did it. It all kinds of depends on who you ask. 

I want to give a shout out to all the peps from Shreveport and the Ark-La-Tex, who stepped up and helped my little school out after the fire.  People came of the woodworks to help us.  People donated books by the truck load, as our beautiful little library had been part of what was destroyed.  Within a few days what had been the gym became the new library, admin offices, councilor’s office and 3 or 4 class rooms.  Four T buildings, temporary one room portable buildings to have classes in, were brought in and set up.  In less than a week were back in school.

I remember going to school, and seeing what was left of the building, still smoking and with twisted beams.  Then came the men in white suits.  My guess is they were checking for asbestos, or trying to see if what remained was toxic or not.  What was left of the school was soon surrounded by a chain link fence.  Why we tried to get on with our lives, and figure out what to do next.  I remember Mrs. Land’s room and her asking us to put our library books on the green built in book case at the front of the room.  We did. It only filled a few shelves, but that was all that survived of our library, was what we had checked out a few days before.  It was terrible to me to think of all those books gone. 

Discussions were had on whether to rebuild the old building, what to do with what remained of the old one, or whether to build a new building, and if so where.  It took a while, but finally the decision was made to build a new school.  It would take about 2 years, and would not be at the same location as the current school.  There were 4 beautiful white columns on the front of the old high school. It was decided that they would be saved, and everything else burned by the fire would be demolished.

The 4 columns and the front part of the school stood for several years, before it was deemed unsafe, as people were prone to climbing on it.  Finally it was destroyed as well.  For a year and a half we lived like that.  I remember letting out a great scream when the high school was being demolished.  We all stood around the fence and watched the bulldozers destroy what was left.  We couldn’t stop watching.

The new school was built on a sprawling property just before the Maple Springs Baptist Church, down from the Louisiana Pacific Plant, and the VFW building.  It was beautiful, but with none of the same charm as the old school had. 

The land where our old high school stood was bought by the First Baptist Church, which was next door to our old school.  Ironically their building burned down a few years ago.  They built a new million dollar church in the same spot as our old school stood.

The trees were the last witnesses to go.  On either side of the sidewalk in front of our old school were two massive old oak trees.  Turns out they had been planted to honor students who fought in WWI.  They were as much a part of the school as the columns were.  At the beginning of the new churches construction they were cut down, despite protests from those in town, including one beloved lady who had to be dragged away from there by the police.  I must say I admire her style.

I was recently through that neck of the woods for a cousin’s baby shower.  I saw the new church in all its glory and out in front had been planted two new trees.  Ironic and typical, at least in my mind anyways.

Ilsa

A brief history of North Louisiana

So Spain is in control of the Louisiana territory at this point and sells it back to France.  The French government is in control of Louisiana for only 20 days, before it officially sells Louisiana, to the United States on December 20^th, 1803.  The US really only wanted the Port of New Orleans, so they could continue to use the Mississippi River, and have access to the Gulf of Mexico.  The US paid 11 million for the Louisiana Purchase.  Other then South Louisiana there were few settlers in the Purchase at this time, a lot of this territory was still owned and controlled by tribal people.  The Purchase added 828,000 square miles to the United States.  Most of you know that President Thomas Jefferson, sent Lewis and Clark, to explore this new area of the US. 

On April 30^th, 1812 Louisiana became the 18^th state in the Union, well most of it anyways.  From the early days of French and Spanish exploration in Louisiana, the western border had been disputed.  The Spaniards said that the state of Texas went all the way to the Red River.  The French said their western boarder was a river deep into Texas, several hundred miles on the other side of the Red.  This is part of the reason that Fort St. Jean Baptist was in Natchitoches, in order to protect France’s western border, as well as protect settlers to that part of Louisiana. 

Spain set up a mission and presidio (fort) outside of what is modern day Robeline, Louisiana.  Robeline is about 15 or 20 miles west of Natchitoches.  The mission was officially called, “San Miguel de Linares de los Adaes.” The presidio, was called, “Nuestra SeÑora del Pilar de Los Adaes (Our Lady of the Pillar of the Adaes). The mission was there to convert the Caddo Adai tribe that lived there, and protect Spain’s Eastern border.   It was also the capital of Texas from 1729 until 1770.  Los Adaes was not supposed to buy goods from France, but it took 6 months for them to be restocked by Mexico City.  So out of necessity, they began to trade with Fort St. Jean Baptist, and they began to intermarry as well.  Remember that thing I told you about the shortage of women.  All that mattered is that they be Catholic. 

In 1819 the Adams-Onis Treaty was signed.  That brought Florida into the United States and also established the Sabine River as the western boundary of Louisiana.  In 1823 Fort Jesup was established outside of Many, Louisiana, 30 miles west of Fort St. Jean Baptist and 15 miles west of Los Adaes.  Today all three of these are state parks. I would have the joy of working at 2 of those 3, and relating its place in history to 100’s of tourists, both from this country and around the world.  

For twenty years, between 1803 when Louisiana was purchased, until 1823 when Fort Jesup was established, the land between the Red River and the Sabine River was a No Man’s land, sometimes called the Neutral Strip.  It was a wild lawless and godless area, full of murders, robbers, and anybody who was running from the law.  I think some of them never left.  They were untouchable by either the Spanish or the Americans.

Fort Jesup was established to clean the area up, provide stability and law to the new territory, and assist settlers both coming to Louisiana and on their way into Texas.  Spain could not keep enough people in Texas, so they opened it up to anyone who was Catholic and would swear allegiance to Spain.  Many of those on their way to Texas passed thru here.  One of the Jesup soldiers jobs was to help Americans, going to Texas not be robbed by bandits, still in the Neutral Strip.  Fort Jesup was also established to watch the Mexican border, and protect the United States from what they felt would be an impending conflict.  That did not happen until the 1840’s, when the fort closed and every one left to go fight in the Mexican-American War. 

The Red River at this point was still pretty much impassable.  The great log jam extended 400 miles North West of Natchitoches.  Enter Captain Henry Miller Shreve “who designed and built the first snag boat, which removed stags, a hazard for river travel” (Garvey & Widmer, PP.  84). In 1833 he commands a group of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and begins to clear the Red River.  The Great Raft was all these old rotting and uprooted trees, and eroded soil that filled the river.  So great and deep was it that at some points, trees grew on top of the floating logs.  The river was not officially completely cleared until 1874. 

Now the Caddo were still in the area at this time.  Their population had been decimated by disease, as most first peoples had no immunity to western diseases.  On July 1^st, 1835 the Caddo sold their lands, which include most of North Louisiana to the United States Government.  For his years of service, Larkin Edwards, translator and friend to the Caddo was given 640 acres of land.  This land he would sell and it would eventually become downtown Shreveport.  The Caddo moved west into Texas, which was then held by Mexico.  In 1859 the Caddo were removed to Oklahoma.  They now make their home in Binger, Oklahoma.  They are still alive there and they number over 5000 strong.  They are a proud and wonderful people struggling to hang on to their way of life and their language. 

So by the 1830’s Louisiana was now owned by the US, the Red River was clear up to Shreveport and the Caddo were gone.  Beginning in the 1840’s great numbers of settlers began to move in to north Louisiana.  Most of them being white, of Scotch-Irish and English decent and Protestant, a massive contrast to Catholic and French speaking South Louisiana.  These new settler were from the Appalachia’s, or from descendants of the Appalachia’s.  Many of them continued to carry with them a distrust of government and the idea of total self reliance.  They had moved from the mountains across into northern Georgia, into Northern Alabama, Mississippi, North Louisiana, and right on into East Texas.

My family came out of Lowndes County in Alabama, just south of Birmingham.  They travel by wagon and it takes the more than a month to get here.  Slaves had been sent two years before, to begin clearing land and building houses.  Records have our family living in Keatchie by 1858.  We have been there ever since.  Yes we owned slaves, and no there is nothing that I, or anyone else can do about that.  It was simply a fact of the times back then.

There remains a huge gap in the way North Louisiana is treated.  The state capital of Louisiana is in Baton Rouge, in South Louisiana.  When you go into South Louisiana the roads are better and the schools are better.  Why?  Because South Louisiana has all the money and all the power.  In South Louisiana the only thing that matters is the French culture.  It is engrained in everything they do.  So much so, that until the last 10 or 15 years, when the governor of Louisiana took their oath of office, it was first done in English and then in French.  When I was a child, it was not believed a governor could be elected who did not speak French or have a French back ground.  Gods help you if you were not Catholic as well.  There have only been a few protestant Governors and very few from North Louisiana. 

North Louisiana is treated like the red headed step child that is locked in the attic.  Another example, recently a woman lost her child in a car wreck on I-20.  The accident happened on one side of the road, one of the cars, crossed across the median.  It traveled over and caused the death of this young woman on the other side of the road.  Had there been cable barriers across the median, like there are in South Louisiana, the young lady might have been saved.  The mother of the young lady lobbied for several years for these cable barriers to be put in place.  I remember the news conference announcing that they would be installed, on more than 20 miles along I-20.  The reason they said that South Louisiana had them and not us, is that they had a higher population then we did, and therefore more traffic. 

There was also a movement some years ago for North Louisiana to secede from South Louisiana.  I do not however advocate that, as this would leave us landlocked and I feel much poorer.  I do know that from living in South Louisiana, many there did not consider me to be a real Louisianan, because I did not take French in High School (it was not even offered), I was not Catholic, and not of French, Cajun, or Creole decent.  Even though we all root for the Saints on Sunday.  Yes even though I am from North Louisiana I am a member of the Who Dat! Nation.  I will never root for the Cowbags.  I remember one of my friends telling me I was from “the hills.”  When I came home I didn’t realize how much hillier the land was then South Louisiana.  I kept a blown up map of North West Louisiana in my room, to show my new friends , where I was from, and that I was in fact just as much a Louisianan as they were.  I am not the only person to go thru this, I know many other people who have similar experiences. 

Louisiana remains a corrupt and polluted state.  Our long time governor Edwin Edwards was put in the federal pen for crimes he committed while in office.  I believe it safe to assume that almost every politician is crooked.  As my mother likes to say, “He’s so crooked, they going to have to screw him in the ground when he dies.”  I remember being in college and hearing that a garbage scowl from New York was not allowed to dump it’s trash in New Jersey.  It was all finally dumped here in Louisiana.  As a child, we were told not to eat out of the rivers and lakes, because they were full of toxic waste.  I know there were many politicians who took kick backs for turning my paradise into a toxic waste dump.  For many years, Louisiana has been the $20 dollar hooker for the US, allowing them to do whatever they want to us, and dumping whatever they pleased here.

I had hope as a young woman that the corruption in my state could be changed.  So I voted out the old and in the new, and had hope, but now I know now it will never change.  Although I will continue to vote, and spend time researching those who I will vote for, and I encourage you to do the same, I have lost what hope I had for Louisiana ever recovering.  We have become Pandora, once beautiful and wild, and now used up.

I think many of the politicians get into office, so they might become rich off of the kick backs and from the lobbying groups.  I think it has been this way for a long time, maybe back to the beginning of our state.  I feel it has always been their plan to strip Louisiana, of her natural resources, and leave her people with nothing, few if any of them try to protect or promote what is beautiful and unique about our land.  With each election I have renewed hope and by the end of their term, I know that nothing has been done to improve the roads, or the schools, there are no new jobs, and fierce competition for those that do exist.  If Louisiana will not invest in herself, who will?  I have watched generation after generation leave this place for somewhere better.  Like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

If people would only fight for Louisiana!  Even if I was to become Governor, I don’t believe that I could make a real difference.  I don’t have the family name, connections, money, or political clout to be able to change the system.  The people of this state are often just trying to keep food on the table for their families, living from paycheck to paycheck and trying not to end up homeless.  Those of us who are educated and smart, and are somehow still here, feel stuck at what few morsels we are thrown.  I believe the situation is hopeless, we are all doomed, and it will never get any better. 

Ilsa

This article could not have been possible without the help of :  Louisiana: the first 300 years, by Joan B. Garvey and Mary Lou Widmer, Garmer Press, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2001.

Louisiana - a short history

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It occurs to me that some of you may be dialed up to this blog, from other parts of the country or world, and don’t know much about Louisiana or why it is the why it is.  For those of you who did not have Coach Morvan in 8^th Grade Louisiana History, I would like to give you a short history lesson.  Don’t worry, you will like it. I promise!  And you will not be tested on this material.

First I want you to think of the shape of Louisiana.  It’s kind of like a boot.  Anybody who has ever been to Louisiana, to visit or live here, understands that we are a kind of crazy all unto ourselves. Our state has a beautiful culture, and I am not just talking about Cajun or Creole peoples here.  Louisiana is unique in that it was colonized, and please forgive my use of that word, from the bottom up.  Most states in the US were colonized from east to west.  That happened, but only in Northern Louisiana. 

A bit of a geography lesson first.  Louisiana is all old alluvial flood plain.  We are stuff that has been deposited from eons of the Mississippi River’s and it’s tributary’s silt deposits.  So this leaves Louisiana with a high water table. You can’t dig too deep around here without hitting water, especially in South Louisiana.  This is why people are buried in crypts like you see in New Orleans.  Those are actually above ground or very shallow vaults.  This is also why coffins are tagged in South Louisiana.  We get a hurricane and people get washed out of their graves.  Tags tell you who they are, and what cemetery they belong to.

Louisiana is still evolving.  The Mississippi had changed her course many times, always flowing to the path of least resistance.  It was not until the levee systems were put in, that we began to try to hold her in.  Flooding was part of her annual thing and why the land is so fertile.  Today this is part of the reason we are losing our coast line, by holding her in, we are holding back her silt to deposit and make new land. 

Most of Louisiana is not very high above sea level.  New Orleans is actually a few feet below.  When she flooded during Katrina, you could see what she is really supposed to be like.  We have drained and changed that land over the years, until it is what it is today, to allow more people and more commerce.  The hill I write you from is about 250ft above sea level.  Built long ago, I am sure by the deposits of the Red River.  The highest point in Louisiana is 535ft at Mt. Dristkell, not far from Ruston, in North Central Louisiana.

The tribes were of course here long before the Europeans arrived.  The first peoples learned to function in all Louisiana’s vast and different eco systems, swamp, prairie, forest, and wetlands.  The people of Watson Break were an older civilization then Poverty Point.  They go back 6000 years. They were “The earliest known evidence of settlement in the New World, predating both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids.” (Garvey and Widmer, Pp. 4). 

Most of Louisiana’s first peoples were mound builders, they were very different from the Plains tribes were all taught about in school.  These people were hunters, gathers and farmers.  Some of the first people of Louisiana were Tunica, Opelousas, Natchez, Tchoupitoulas, Attakapas, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Acolapissa, Chitimacha, Houmas, Caddo, Natcheans, and Biloxi.  The Cherokee came in later, as they ran away from the Trail of Tears.  Each of these tribes had their own language, as different to each other as French is from English, and German is from Italian.  There is not just one single “Indian” language.  Most of these tribes, other than the Caddo, who I will talk about in A Brief History of North Louisiana, have had problems with federal recognition.  No recognition, no programs and no assistance for the tribe.  The reason is that the United States only recognizes tribes that have treaties with them.  Many of these tribes had treaties with Spain or France, and so were never recognized officially by the US.

The Spaniards were the first Europeans to see Louisiana in the early 1500’s.  They were exploring these lands that were new to them.  The Spaniards had started with the Caribbean.  Remember there are no maps at this time, no satellites, so they were kind of fumbling around in the dark.  They hit Florida and wanted to see what it was attached to.  They were also still looking for the fountain of youth. 

At one time, Spain owned most of the southern half of the US.  This include: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Florida.  The tribes had no roads; neither did the first settlers and explorers.  They used the river systems like highways.  Spain and France would flip flop for years in who owned Louisiana.  In fact the Spaniards owned Louisiana longer then the French did. 

Discovers and explorers came and went, killing tribal people along the way with disease, weapons and dogs.  In 1682 LaSalle lead an expedition that traveled down the Mississippi.  When they reached the Gulf they planted a cross and a column and claimed the river, and everything drained by it, for the King of France.  Little did they know how much land they had claimed.  This claim would eventually become the Louisiana Purchase and made up all or part of 13 states. 

LaSalle tried a few years later to colonize Louisiana.  He set out with 4 boats.  He missed and hit Texas.  Only one person of the compliment that include 350 settlers and the explores men, survived.  Almost as if Louisiana did not want to be colonized.  Louisiana remains a land that is difficult to tame.  She is still a difficult mistress.  It is always feast or famine around here.

Now the French already had settlements in the New World in Canada, but in the 1690’s they wanted to try again to colonize Louisiana.  This time they chose an old boy named Iberville to do it.  The establishment of a colony was necessary to make the claim stick.  They made the first colony in Biloxi, Mississippi, and used this as their base of operations.

The French were a little different masters to the tribal people of Louisiana.  They helped each other out in the beginning.  Had it not been for the tribes’ generosity, Louisiana may not exist as we know it today.  Many a French soldier turned native and went to live with the tribes.  Many took tribal wives as well. 

The first colonists were fur trappers, fortune hunters, and criminals, (Garvey and Widmer, PP. 22), some from Canada and some from France.  Louisiana ain’t changed all that much.  We are still full of criminals and fortune hunters. 

So in 1714 Louisiana finally got it’s first real settlement and town.  A feller named St. Denis, founded Fort St. Jean Baptist and the town of Natchitoches on the Red River in what is central Louisiana.  They chose this spot to trade with the Spanish in Texas, and the tribes as well.  They also could get no farther up the river, because of the great log jam.  Natchitoches is the oldest, continuously occupied (by Europeans), city in the Louisiana Purchase.  New Orleans would not be established for another 4 years, and it would be washed out by disease and flood several times, before it finally had a permanent settlement. 

It was here at Fort St. Jean Baptist on May 29^th, 1755, Jay’s ancestor, Jean Baptisite Mathieu Plaisance would marry Jeanne Marguerite Toutin.  We know a few things about this first Plaisance.  He was of course Catholic and was a native of Pau, Lescar, France.  He came from the southern region of France called Plaisance, literally meaning pleasant.  He probable came from a large family of boys.  Under French law, only the first male inherited.  By custom, the second son often went into the priesthood.  Any boys born after that, would have to find a way to make their own fortune.  Jean Baptisite was the name of the saint who protected the family.  In fact the name Jean / John has been used in this family for over 300 years.  His friends probable called him Mathieu, the French version of Mathew.  I do not know at this time if he was a settler or a soldier at the fort.

There are still Plaisance’s in the Natchitoches area, 260 years later.  Jay’s Great – Grandfather moved up here to Shreveport, around the 1900’s.  He had been a police officer in Campti, and came up here to work.  Jay swears he is Cajun although he speaks no French, and has no Cajun customs.  He just has a French last name, of which he is very proud.  In doing Jay’s genealogy, we also found that there were several tribal ladies, who were married into his family.  We believe them to have been Caddo Adai.  We also know that there were a lot of Spanish that intermarried with his French side. 

It is said Louisiana has some of the most beautiful women in the world and there is a reason for that.  In the early days there were not a lot of ladies around.  So finding a suitable wife could be difficult. If it walked like a woman and talked like a woman, and of course was Catholic, they married them, or took them as loves.  So we became this beautiful mix of French, Spanish, Native American, and African-American, with a little German and Italian thrown in for good measure, a gumbo of peoples. 

 

Jay’s BFF is a guy named Kenny.  He is Creole.  He is descended from the Creole community outside of Lake Charles.  It’s funny.  Jay and Kenny look so alike, except that Jay looks more white, and Kenny looks more mixed.  On several occasions, I have approached the wrong man, thinking he was the other one.  We know there has got to be common ancestor around there somewhere, but as yet we have not found them.

So you are going to hear these two words in Louisiana, Cajun and Creole.  Originally Creole meant anyone born in Louisiana of French or Spanish decent.  The word has changed over the years.  Creole in Louisiana has no relation to the persons or language by that name in the West Indies.  Most of the time, in Louisiana when we speak of Creole, it is in relationship to a unique ethic group with our state, and area.  These persons were and are a mix of African-American, French and/ or Spanish.  They were early “Free People of Color.”  Many of them even owned slaves.  They continue to have French traditions and customs.  They have for centuries lived in over 100 small endogamous communities, scattered threw out Louisiana, many of them still in existence. One of these major communities is outside of Natchitoches on Cane River.  Another one, is the one Kenny ‘s family is from, outside of Lake Charles.  Now make no mistake, these are not just mix persons or mulatto.  This is a culture with it’s own language, history, food ways, and customs.  They are just another part of what make’s Louisiana so wonderful!

Cajun is a term that is often applied by other persons not from Louisiana, to anyone who is from Louisiana.  That is incorrect.  Cajun is a bastardization of the word Acadian, which means “of Canada.”  Acadia was the French name of what we now know of as Nova Scotia, in Canada.  In the 1750’s the British living there, decided they wanted the French, to swear allegiance to the British crown, and denounce their Catholicism and become Protestant.  They refused.   Some left, and some were thrown out of their homes.  Many left carrying only what they had in their hands, and set sail for Louisiana.  They settled over, the next few years, into the bayou country and worked the land.  Some say so they would never again be found to be expelled by anyone, and some say they just wanted to be alone. 

From this Cajun culture we have those who speak a 17^th century version of French, with a lot of Spanish words thrown in, as well as some tribal and African words as well.  You have this wonderful music that also has a heavy German influence to it.  This tremendous food, that comes from living off the land around them, and what they could grow where they were.  Rice became a staple, because South Louisiana was too wet to grow potatoes, west of the Atchafalaya Basin.  The peppers and the heat came from the Spanish.  It was something they learned from the tribal people.  Peppers and hot food makes you sweat, and when you sweat you are cooler.  We also know now that peppers have antibiotic properties to them. 

So today you have Cajun country, which makes a triangle from Lake Charles in the South West corner of Louisiana, kind of close to Houston, over East to New Orleans and then up to about Alexandria, in the middle of the state.  This includes Lafayette where I would go to school at ULL, then USL, from 1994-1996. 

When I met my first roommate at USL, she was from so far back, and her accent so thick, it took her 3 days to convince me she was not a French national.  Some people there had a thicker French accent, come more of a Cajun, and some just plain Southern.  It was defiantly an interesting place to live.  After two years there I came back with an accent and love for hot spicy food.  You learned quick there to like spicy food, or you didn’t eat.  Even the pizza sauce was special made for the area, and was spicy.

It is hard to say exactly when you pass into Cajun country.  For me, it is when I can’t pronounce the names of the towns on the signs anymore.  My Cajun friends used to laugh at me because I could not say anything right.  They did not believe that anything north of Alexandria, was even part of Louisiana.  It was just America to them, and not part of who they were.  This creates all kinds of problems in our state government and we will talk about that in a bit.

Cajuns also have a distinct accent, which I am sure many of you can try to imitate.  They also say strange things like:

“How many channels does your TV catch?” = “How many stations do you get on your TV?”

“Go open the light.” = “Go turn on the light.”

“We going to get down and go make Groceries.” = “We are going get out of the car and go into the grocery store.”

“Che’” =a version of Cheri, a term of love and affection

“Boo” = a term of love and affection

“ça suffit” = Is that enough?

I do.  I think that’s enough for one night.

Ilsa

This article could not have been possible without the help of :  Louisiana: the first 300 years, by Joan B. Garvey and Mary Lou Widmer, Garmer Press, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2001.

 And my good buddy Ryan. Thanks Y’all!

Teachers

My favorite teachers in my middle school were:  Mr. John Gingles, 8^th grade Earth Science; Deb Land, 9^th grade English; and Coach Dale Morvan, 8^th grade Louisiana History.

Mr. Gingles was one of the most beautiful men I had ever met.  I was totally in love with him.  He was well over 6ft tall, with an auburn beard and mustache.  He was brilliant, and an avid chess player.  He was the first male teacher I would have, who didn’t have Coach attached to his name.  No offence to our coaches out there, but you could tell for some of them, coaching was their first choice and not teaching. Mr. Gingles was simply there for the love of teaching. 

Mr. Gingles was an Agnostic, something he had to explain to us.  A few of us tried to convert him, but he would not budge and refuted our ideas.  I admired him for sticking to his guns.  I was one of his brightest students, and we became fast friends.  I am still looking for him today.  I have yet to find him on the internet.  He had a profound impact on my life.  I would love him to read this article.  If y’all know where he is, please let me know.

At that time of my life I wanted to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard, who had found the Titanic just a few years before.  Mr. Gingles encouraged me.  I gave up on that dream, when I realized I had to move away to where the ocean was, away from my family.  But at that time in my life, I was convinced I was going to go the Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon and study Oceanography.  One day I wanted to run the Hatfield Marine Science Center there on the Oregon coast, in Newport, Oregon. 

Every night I went to bed and studied the Oregon map.  I used to keep it in this shoe box, I had covered in another Oregon map.  It was full of tourist information on the state, and letters from a Oceanographer I had been corresponding with.  I had found his name in a newspaper article, about his work mapping the ocean floor.  He was at the Oregon State University.  So I figured that is where I would go too.  I read any book I could get on the subject, and subscribed to a scuba diving magazine, because I knew it was a skill I would need. 

I had decided I was going to have a house in Sweet Home, Oregon, just down the road from the institute.  I had it all planned out.  I think I even wrote a story or two about it.  For years I fanaticized about a place, I had only seen on a map.  I was headed west, like the pioneers before me, just 150 years after the gold rush.  I studied hard, but my math was terrible.  I kept getting it all turned around in my head.  I know now because of my lack of math skills, that I would have never made it. 

I wanted to be many things along the way, before I would become the writer, dog mom, blogger and wife I am today.  Some of my earliest memories are of “skating,” in Oma’s dining room in pantyhose, on her linoleum floor, which creates a kind of sliding action.  I would prop open her bathroom door, it was adjacent to her dining room, to see myself in her full length mirror, as I spun and jumped like the figure skaters I saw on TV.  Now remember people, Louisiana has no ice to support such a sport.  Well not naturally anyways, so this was as close as I got.   I would land with a great thud!  I still feel sorry for whoever lives in that house now, as I am sure I damaged the floor by doing that over and over again. 

I toyed with the idea of being a nurse, but I could not handle the idea of sticking people.  I didn’t want to hurt them.  So ditto on being a vet.  I could not imagine, having to be the one to put an animal to sleep.  I acted in many plays as a kid and I really liked it.  I thought a lot about being an actress, but that stopped when Sonya, my BFF, told me that I would have to sleep with directors and pose for Playboy. 

I think I hooked on to being an Oceanographer because of Dr. Bob Ballard yes, who remains a hero of mine to this day, but also because of this.  I am the first woman, in the female line of my family to be born inland in at least 50 years.  My mom was born on the coast in Corpus Christi, Oma in Danzig.  Oma and Ur-Opa (great grandfather), both worked in the Danzig ship yards.  My Grandpa spent his life at sea.  I still have no great passion for the sea the way my mother does.  She collects nautical things and visits the ocean regularly.  I was trying to live into that legacy about that time.  Now I am content for my local beach at Cypress Black Bayou, Biloxi every now and again, and some Jimmy Buffett music.  I kind of freak out when I can’t see land anymore.  I know I am a land lubber. 

So Coach Morvan taught me 8^th grade Louisiana History and I feel in love with it.  I’ve been in love with history and Louisiana for a long time.  I know I’m kind of a square, right?  I still think we should teach our kids in school, local history as well as the state and national stuff.  I think they need to understand how their community fits into the local scheme of things.

When I first wrote this article I believed Deb Land was my 8^th grade English teacher.  She was not, but I have still kept her in this article.  She was in fact my 9^th grade English teacher.  But it didn’t matter much, as we were all kind of squished together in one place, and teachers flowed between the main high school building, and the middle school building. 

In 9^th grade I had Deb Land as an English Teacher, and she was awesome.  That year she read Romeo & Juliet to us, and I fell in love with Shakespeare all over again.  She would read us a few lines, and then would tell us what it meant, and translate it into something we could understand.  She would then ask us what we thought about it.  I still feel Juliet was a freaking idiot.  If you’re that in love with a dude and he moves away, pick up your shit and go with.  Maybe I just don’t understand the times she lived in. It may not have been a real option in her mind.  I however really like the character of Juliet’s nurse maid, who had probable been her wet nurse, and raised this poor girl.  I have always thought if I ever got to be in a production of Romeo and Juliet that I would want to play her.  Cause she kept trying to talk some since into poor Juliet. 

Ms. Land also taught us grammar that year.  She would be reading from the book, and then look at it a bit distressed.  She would tell us to take our red pens, and turn to the back of the book to mark corrections.  I believe she sent her book back to the publishers after teaching from it, with her corrections.  It was the first time I ever saw a book be corrected, which I thought it was very cool.

Ms. Land was also a god’s send to me.  English was one of my favorite subjects.  The year before I had had Mrs. Coles.  She was a freaking nightmare.  While others loved her, and still love her to this day, I saw her for the monster she was.

I was one of her favorite people to pick on.  My favorite example is one day we had a report do.  I had forgotten mine at home.  Something I usually didn’t do.  Mrs. Coles calls me to the front of the class to public embarrass me.  She says, “What’s wrong with you Ilsa!?  Did you forget ½ your brain this morning??!”

Ever quick on my feet I respond with, “Yes, Mrs. Coles, I did.  I got up this morning, put in ½ my brain in, to you know get dressed and stuff, but I was running late for the bus, and I don’t know I guess I just forgot to put in the other half this morning.”  The class erupted in laughter and applause.  Mrs. Coles gritted her teeth and told me to sit down.  She had been bested by a student and she didn’t like it.

I was to have her for 11^th grade English, English 3 they called it.  She was the only teacher for it.  But the joke was still on her.  Mom and I walked into my principles office and I told him point blank, “I refuse to take her.  She is abusive and I will not take her class.  And you will find me some other way to take English 3.”  He was a bit taken aback at being spoken to so strongly by a student, but with the full support of my parents he had to listen to me.  He found me a correspondence course, which I did by mail through LSU.  It took me a year to do it, but I passed. 

Ilsa

Friends

Logansport Rosenwald School was from Kindergarten until 6^th grade.  Then you transferred and went to the big school.  Logansport High School was from 7^th grade to 12^th.  There really was no such thing as middle school for us, but I will refer to my 7^th and 8^th grade years in that way here, for your convenience and understanding. 

When I went to 7^th grade, I had three best friends.  Sonya had been my best friend since 1^st grade, and would continue to be, until my senior year.  She treated me like dirt.  Courtney was a short, round girl who lived down the street from me.  We took her on vacation with us once, and camping at least once.  Sonya and Courtney were my BFFs for many, many years.

Mary transferred in to Logansport Rosenwald, from the Caddo Magnet program.  She was very smart and very nice.  I fear she thought we are all stupid.  She easily excelled at our school.  Mary was also African American. She and I were one of the first interracial friendships my school had seen.  We hung out together at lunch, and she spent the night at my house a few times.

Stacy, Angela Heartsfield, and Jennifer were also my very good friends.  We all hung out together and ate lunch together.  I called it “holding court.”  I felt all people there were free to speak their minds, and tell any story they wished. 

I will never forget stepping into my new lunchroom.  All the black kids were on one side, and all the white kids were on the other.  They call it self-segregation. So when Mary sat down with me on the white side, which had the only open table, we both got dirty looks.  Mary took a lot of heat for that from the black community.  They often accused her of wanting to be white.  I think that idea just befuddled her. 

Together all of us kind of formed our own click.  We were the outcasts, the weird ones, most of us terribly smart. We were our own Isle of Misfit Toys.  We, as a group, often floated between the jocks, the poor kids and some of the black group, but then again we were also a cohesive group on our own and often stayed to ourselves.  As self-centered as it may sound, I often felt they were my entourage.  I felt I was surrounded and protected by strong, intelligent, beautiful women, but none of it would last very long.

Into our group we added Alison.  She became one of my closest friends.  Her father was the pastor of Maple Springs Baptist Church.  It was right next door to Louisiana Pacific (the log plant) and the creosote plant.  Her father was one of those charismatic leaders.  I would find out later, that when he left town, he owed quite a few people money.  It was to him I posed the question of, “Who are God’s parents?”  He became violent and belligerent towards me, and told me to never ask such things again.

Alison’s church had a choir and you know me, I just love to sing.  We rehearsed again, and again.  We were preparing to do Bette Midler’s, “You are the wind beneath my wings,” about the time my dad told me, I had to quit.  I remember turning in my choir shirt, with tears in my eyes.  I was devastated.  I still don’t quite understand what happened.  My guess is this.

I had made an alter call.  I had for several years been masturbating.  Something I believed I had invented.  Remember no sex ed. here people.  I knew I was going to burn in hell for this.  I felt I could not bring up such a subject up with my parents.  I feel embarrassed and squeamish bringing up such a subject to you even now.  In a generation full of women’s liberation and equality, women’s rights and long after the sexual revolution took place.  My parents never discussed such thing with me.   I would make several altar calls, as several different places, before I would find out what I was doing was healthy, natural, and normal. 

I was also making altar calls about this time, because I had heard other people’s stories of being saved.  Some said they saw light or halos, or that God spoke to them.  None of that had happened to me when I got saved, so I thought perhaps I had done it wrong.

When I made this particular altar call, Alison and her buddies took me in the back of the church.  They told me how proud they were of me, how they had been praying for this and that now I could be saved.  I tried to explain to them that I was already saved, that I had been sprinkled in the United Methodist Church the year before.  They told me that this did not count.  The only way I could be saved was to be baptized.

I had stumbled upon a nasty Southern truth.  Most Southern Baptist churches, don’t recognized a person’s baptism, outside of their own denomination.  I have also known some church that only recognized your baptism, if you were baptized in their church.  Even, for some of these people, if it was another Southern Baptist Church, you had to do it again.

United Methodism is not like that.  You tell us you were baptized on such and such a date, and at such and such a church, we will believe you, as long as we can verify it.  No problems.  You don’t have to be resprinkled or be rebaptized.  We simply call it a profession of faith,  you are then counted as a member of the church, and given what we call a “letter.”

Dad tells me I came home that night, after my altar call, “talking all kinds of crazy shit.”  He knew that the people I was hanging out with up there, were not the people I need to be around.  So he told me I had to quit the choir.  I think I stopped being friends with Alison about that time as well.

My friendship with Alison pushed me to places that I was not comfortable going.  One of the girls in our click was named Stacy.  She is a dear and treasured friend.  Alison convinced me that Stacy needed saving.  She and I brought our bibles to school.  Not a big deal, lots of people did that.  During our 7^th grade English class, we asked to be excused, outside with Stacy.  The teacher said okay.  I believe she knew what we were going to do.  We left the room with our bibles in hand.  We took Stacy outside and proselytized to her, and told her she need to be saved.  We were so adamant, that Stacy started crying, because we had upset her so bad.  I had to stop.  I think I walked back inside. 

I have apologized to Stacy several times, over the years for this.  The fact that I attacked Stacy in this way, on school property, and was allowed to do so, by the teacher, still bothers me a lot.  Stacy should have been free to attend school without the fear of some trying to shove their religion down her throat.  Just imagine, if your kids got accosted by a bunch of Muslims, that tried to force your child in to believing in Ali, while she was at school, and the teacher knew about it.  You would probably be pissed too.  Although Stacy is a Christian, and was back then too, I wonder how many people get accosted like this every today.

Courtney and I, were also coming to the end of our friendship, about that time as well.  I had loved Courtney, as a best friend, for many years.  But she frequently insulted me, and made fun of both me, and of the things, I loved and treasured.  She also would always hold over my head, everything I ever did wrong.  I stopped speaking to her as well.  I often acted as if she was dead or she simply wasn’t there at all.  Not an easy thing to do as we both graduated in the same class together of 47.  Between the time I stopped speaking to her in middle school, and today, I think I have said less than a paragraph to her. 

Breaking up with Courtney had to be as hard on her, as it was on me.  We were continuously urged by both our parents and other friends to fix our relationship, but I refused to budge.  I can be very stubborn when I want to be.  I see Courtney’s Momma ever now and again, and ask after her.  I even ran into Courtney a few years back and spoke to her.  She looked like she wanted to run away from me.  I tried to friend her on Facebook, and make amends but she told me no.  Although I have no desire to be her friend again, as I know how she is, I do want to apologize to her, for the way I behaved towards her, and for not being there for her when her dad died.  I want her to know I wish her all the best that life has to give her. 

 

Ilsa

Conversion

So I want to share with you some memories that happened around the same time.  Please forgive me if they are not in order, jump around a bit or don’t flow like usual.  Hey it’s been 25+years here and I know the memories are there.  They are just stuck on the floppy drive in my head.  I am still trying to give you a since of who I was then and what was going on around me about that time.  So here goes. 

After Oma died Momma tend to Grandpa.  He ate dinner with us every night, and constantly complained how bad the food was, while he steadily shoved it down.  I can still hear him saying, “This gravy tastes like wallpaper glue.”  Correcting me on my table manners, “When you put soup on your spoon, try not to ding the side of the bowl.”  I still think of this when I am nervous at the table.  Nothing was ever good enough for him.

Between the time Oma died when I was 7, and he married Barbara when I was about 12, Grandpa developed cancer.  Well not really.  The Dr.’s never did quite understand what it was, but they treated it as cancer with radiation. They found it during his routine yearly examine.  He had developed some kind of sack at the base of his Medulla Oblongata, or his brain stem.  He had a six inch scar down the back of his head and neck.  We called it his zipper.  The surgery left him with balance issues and he was unable to lift his head to see the stars.  Something he told me he greatly missed.  He had retired from sea life, at this point. I don’t think he could have ever gone back to sea, because of his balance issues, even if he had wanted to.  For the first time, since he was about 17, he was land locked.

The surgery changed him a lot.  So much so, that I don’t think my younger cousins, will recognize the man I have described in this blog.  After his surgery Grandpa was a much kinder man.  I don’t know that he ever beat Barbara, the way that he used to beat Oma.  His demeanor changed.  We used to say they had taken out his meanness with his surgery. 

Grandpa, Barbara, my parents and me all became very active in the Bethel community.  It was a small community outside of Logansport, way back in the woods and we began to attend the Bethel United Methodist Church.  Bethel church had a large congregation and lots of kids at the time.  It was here that both Grandpa, Barbara, and eventually Mom became members.

My best buddy at Bethel was Jennifer.  We used to sit behind my Mom and Dad in church.  We would just giggle.  Then Mom would do that thing, where her head rotated like an owl, her eyes would get huge, her eye brows lift, and she would give us this look of, “If you two don’t shut up.  I am going to beat you within an inch of your life when we get home.”  And then she would turn back around like everything was normal and fine. 

Jennifer was a year younger than me.  We helped put on Vacation Bible School.  I can still hear, “Jesus and you at Camp Can Do,” in my head as I write.  My favorite story to tell of her is that there is an old hymn called, “Bringing in the Sheaves.”  That’s it, some of you are humming it now.  I can hear you, Alto’s in the back.  We had no idea what a sheave was at that time.  So our brains changed it into something we recognized.  I brought in the sheep and Jennifer brought in the sheets.  When we realized this in church one day, we started just busted out laughing.  All I could see was Jesus getting the sheets off the line, just a humming that song. Oh still makes me smile today. 

In the summers made the rounds of Vacation Bible School (VBS).  One week I was at First Baptist, one week at First Methodist, and one week at Bethel.  It was at the VBS at First Baptist that I really heard about Hell for the first time.  The pastor had us hold up our hands, during prayer time, of those of us who were not saved.  I held up my hand.  I was not sure what he was talking about.  He asked those of us who had raised our hands, to stay for a moment before we went to our classes. We did and he explained that if we were not saved, we would go to hell and be burned for ever.  I think he gave us a little tract pamphlet and told us to go home and talk to our parents. 

I did and told my parents that I wanted to be saved.  They were overjoyed.  I now just had to decide if I was wanted to be Baptist like Mom or United Methodist like Dad.  If I went Baptist they would have to find a place to baptize me, as they had no dunking tub at the church.  I knew there was a nasty old pond outside with snakes, and I didn’t want that either.  In the Methodist church I would be sprinkled.  I liked that idea a whole lot better.

I joined Keatchie United Methodist Church the next first Sunday.  Hell seemed to be something that was really talked about more, and emphasized more in the Baptist churches that I attended, then in the Methodist ones.  Yes, from what I understood, Methodist believed in Hell and Satan, but they focused more on Jesus’ teaching.    There was also a lot less screaming, and hell fire and brimstone sermons in the Methodist Church.  I was sprinkled in the Methodist Church August 6^th, 1989.   

About the same time in my life my favorite thing to do, was to go camping and fishing with my parents.  We took my friend Courtney once, but she was not too keen on it.  My Grandpa had about 200 acres down the old Bogle road, where he had grown up on the old family home place.  That land is now all owned by Dow Chemical. 

Mom, Dad and I had started out years before fishing.  There were two ponds on that property, a little pond and a much larger one.  We would borrow Grandpa’s little green aluminum boat and paddle out to the middle of the pond.  Daddy’s job was to put worm on Mom and I’s hooks, and to untangle us when our lines got crossed.  Poor Daddy, I don’t think he ever really got any fishing done.  I never could jab those little worms, so I just wrapped them around the hook and the Brim would just suck them right off.  So I learned to poke them, just a little bit.  Oh I was heartbroken when I found out worms cannot breath under water, and that I had been killing them.  I have yet to go back fishing after that. 

Camping kind of naturally came out of that.  We were working class poor, and Daddy worked all the damn time, so the idea of a vacation, that lasted more than a weekend, was a real luxury to us.  I think I took a handful of those during my school years.  What we did do a lot was go camping.  We mostly liked North Toledo Bend State Park out of Zwolle.  It is a beautiful park and in those days it was cheap and close for us.  We would go several times a year.   Sometimes we would even take Grandpa’s bass boat out.  It was a beautiful dark blue with a glitter finish.  Some of my best memories are of camping with my parents.  My parents spoiled me with the gift of their time.  I encourage you to do the same thing with your kids if you can. 

Daddy would often leave before dawn and come home late after dark.  It was nothing for him to work 60 to 80 hours a week, sometimes for months at a time. Daddy worked in the oil fields as a pipeline supervisor.  But a lot of the time he was on some type of machinery, whether it was dozer or a trackhoe.  Hell he can run them all.  He used to take me on location with him sometimes.   He would put me in the space behind the seat of the trackhoe, and it would go boingy, boingy, boingy and just bounce me up and down. 

He would come home and he had worked so hard he had sweated salt rings onto his shirt.  I always wanted to kiss him when he first came home, even if he was dirty.  He smelled like dirt, and diesel and oil.  Even today those smells excite me and make me think of home. 

Daddy is not an uneducated man.  He was raised on the Dairy at Keatchie, went to Longstreet High School and then went to Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  He was working on his degree in Animal Husbandry when he ran out of money.  He had wanted to be a vet, but there was not a vet school in Louisiana at that time. 

He left Louisiana, and bounced around for a while, traveling to New Orleans, and then Kansas, and finally after that and went to Houston.  His first job there was working as a rigger, for Brown and Root Construction.  He was working on the tops of buildings that were being constructed, walking those huge steel beams.   Brown and Root lead him to work in the oil field and he’s been doing it ever since.  He’s gone from being a hand and running equipment, to pipeline supervisor, to basically being a company man now.  His job is to sit in the air conditioned truck and make sure everyone is doing their job correctly.  The last 10 or 15 years he has had to travel for work going to Oklahoma, Ohio, and South Texas.  But as a child, I was lucky he had work where he was home every night. 

 

Ilsa