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

Make Link

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!

The family secret

No family is perfect.  Every family has secrets.  Every family has demons.  My new family’s secret, besides they were dysfunctional, was that all the men were a bunch of drunks.  My father Jef, and both his brothers, just like their father and grandfather before them.  We can trace alcoholism back several generations in our family.  It was simply the way we handled our problems.  Now in my Dad’s defense he was never a mean drunk, unless he was on the hard stuff and Mom told him he could not have that in the house early on.  It is not my intention to shame my father into going to AA.  I simply want you to understand that being an adult child of an alcoholic is also part of my story.  It is nothing to be ashamed of, it is just fact for many of us.  I want you to see my father as I do, wonderful, intelligent, funny, loving, heroic and flawed. 

My Dad is what is called a Binge Alcoholic.  He would go a week or two of being sober and then pull a big drunk.  He once told me it took him at least a 6 pack to feel anything, and a good case before he got drunk.  Now you have to remember my Daddy is a big man, he is 5’11 and about 300lb.  And as a kid a lot of that was muscle.  Daddy is a happy drunk.  When he drinks he wants to dance and would put on his Motown records.  He would contemplate putting on his Barbara Streisand albums, and then he would say, “You know I love her voice, but I just hate her politics.”  Daddy is a dyed in the wool, Fox News loving, gun caring, Conservative Republican.  He is the definition of a good old boy and I love him for it.  All though he has never been homophobic and believes in a woman’s right to chose. 

I would inevitable get sick with Bronchitis and be on the couch with my vaporizer.  He would get drunk and come in wanting to hang out with me, drink and play music.  We passed many nights like that.  Later in my life I would share a glass of beer with him on these nights. 

My Dad’s brothers were his very best friends.  His middle brother, Drew and Ashley’s father, died a few years back.  He has really grieved his death.   I think he lost one of his real reasons for drinking, hanging out with his brother.  I also think he lost his best friend.  I remember the days of my uncles all standing around Daddy’s truck, drinking.  Each one took a side.  They had a cooler in the middle and they would talk late into the night, especially if the weather was good.  Sometimes I would go hang out with them, and listen to their stories. 

My personal favorite story is when Daddy would not come home.  Now this was in the days before cell phones kids.  We would call all over tarnation for him.  We would finally find him at one of his brother’s houses.  Daddy would get on the phone and say, “Yeh baby I’ll be home in about 30 minutes.  I’m going to drink one more beer.”  He’d show up 4 hours later.  I always knew when he was drinking ‘cause when he came home to kiss me, his lips were cold. 

Mom tried for the first few years to fight this.  We went to Ala-non trying to convince him that he should join AA. Mom never got that the program was for her.  We left the Big Book around for him to read.  That never happened.  She would have dinner hot on the table and ready for him when he came home.  We would wait, until long after he said he would be home.  Finally it would get cold, and it would be late, and we would be tired of waiting and we would have to give in and eat without him.   Mom finally quit that after a while and when she knew he was drinking, we would just go ahead, have dinner and go on with our evening plans.  I think she learned somewhere in there to just let him be.

No matter how drunk my Dad or my uncles got, every morning they got up and went to work.  They never called in for a hangover.  I think it comes from all those years of having had the dairy.  They had a hell of a work ethic.  No matter what they did the night before, come 3 o’clock in the morning them cows had to be milked regardless of how you felt or the weather.  People and animals were depending on you. 

My Daddy taught me to love books.  He eats books.  He can read a book in a day if you let him.  He probable reads 2 or 3 books a week.  He is very much like Jay in that fact and I love it.  They like many of the same books and often trade them back and forth, and introduce each other to new authors.  I don’t do that.  Yes I am a book worm, but I read for detail and often with a highlighter.  I like my mother prefer non-fiction.  I used to love fiction, but it is hard to find an educated, animal and livestock loving, country witchy woman who is not in bed with the hero by page 4 and is in command of her own life.  I am still looking for good authors.  I had hoped to be a fiction writer, but I am just no good a plot lines.  Stories don’t have endings, they just meander and change, like this paragraph.

I will never forget the first time Daddy took me to the library in Logansport.  I had never seen so many books, and the idea that you could read any of them you wanted just fascinated me.  I am still in love with libraries and book stores. I was still young enough and light enough to be picked up.  Daddy sat me on the counter and said, “Hey y’all watch her for just a minute.  I’ve got to get a few books.”   And they did.  Libraries frown upon such things now.  

My library was tiny. My little trailer probable has more square footage then that library did.  But it was a beacon and outpost of the world beyond for me.  Daddy and I would go and I would just get lost in the books. I also loved the librarians.  They were knowledgeable on so many subjects. If they didn’t know they either had a book they could recommend, had one they could get for you, or had a vertical file (news clippings) on that subject.  They were like compasses.  They could always point you in the right direction.

I was always a good student, but my Dad demanded excellence out of me.  Homework was a priority, and to be done right after school and my snack.  My parents helped where they could.  Math was always my weakest subject and I suspect that along with my ADD I have Dyscalculia as well.  I am always turning numbers around, not letters, unless I am really tired.  I remember bringing home my grades and C’s went on the top, then B’s and then A’s.  Didn’t matter how many A’s you had.  You were going to be fussed about the C’s.  Daddy told me an A is an A, a B is like a C, and a C is like an F.  And when he was done fussing and me about my grades or my report card, then it was time for my Grandpa, Novelle, and my uncles to fuss me about them.  High grades and great things were expected out of me.  I often feel guilty that I have disappointed them. 

So the feeling of never being good enough, never measuring up, and striving for perfection were drilled into me from an early age.  My guess is the family hoped by doing so, I would not have to live the way they did.  Instead it made me self conscious, and terrified of disappointing them.  I still feel that way.

I knew from an early age my family expected me to go to college, just like my Dad and his brothers had.  My Grandpa was a “self made man,” and had left school at about 16 or 17 to go to sea.  We all believed the lie that if I went to college I would have a better life.  Go study what you love.  You can be anything you want to be, they told us.  I just wanted to be a Mom, but that was not good enough for anybody.  So I was encouraged to study.   I am naturally pretty smart, so I did good in school.  I excelled and won awards, but I was never smart enough to get into our gifted and talented program.  That’s what I always wanted, but it didn’t happen.  I had the grades but not the test scores.  I am not the best tester.  I have too much anxiety about the time aspect.  You know back in the day before you could get a waiver for such things. 

What we should be telling our kids, is that long before they decide what they want to be in school, they should decide where they want to live.  If you are a woman and a want to live in Louisiana it is best you do something in the medical field or teaching.  Despite what you may want, these are really the only two industries that want to hire women.  Even today there is little else for women here.  If you are a man and want to live here, you must have a strong back and be willing to work long hours.  What work there is for people here, is not what we would called skilled.  People who wish to live in Northwest Louisiana should also consider a trade: electrical work, truck driver, plumbing, contracting, mechanic, dog grooming, vet tech, etc.  Nothing that requires you to have a 4 year or more degree.  Even people we educate here, cannot get work here. 

If you do feel such an urge to obtain a college degree, you need to go ahead and be ready to leave this state for work in another place.  Louisiana puts no stock in it’s young people and there is nothing here for us but heartache, and trying to scratch a living out of the dirt.  It is always feast or famine around here.  When I was a kid there were plenty of jobs in the oil field, most of the fields are played out now.  Even the great boom of the Haynesville Shale is almost over with. 

It is simply a fact of life here.  Our smart and different people must move away to make a life for themselves in places like Dallas, Austin, or Houston.  No one comes to Louisiana, except New Orleans, (and that might as well be Mars for all most Louisianans care) voluntarily.  If you are in Louisiana you are here for a few reasons.  You are from here and got stuck here.  You came home for family.  You married someone from here.  You got stationed here.  My prayer is may you never be smart, and stuck in Louisiana. 

As for me, why did I stayed?  I got stuck, and I stayed to be close to my family.  I am an only child and know I will be the only one to care for my parents as they age.  Why move away, have a life, home and career and know I would have sell it all to come home and take care of my family?  As much as I talk smack about Louisiana I am also very much in love with it.  No, not the Louisiana you see on post cards, books and television.  I am in love with North Louisiana, all it’s terrible and wonderful flaws.  I love it’s people, who are warm and giving, as long as you are a certain type of person.  Even if you are not, they would give you the shirt off their back, and hope they could lead you to the Lord. 

I feel in love with the towering pine trees, the wild flowers, the muddy red waters of the river, the deer, the possum, and the armadillo.  I feel in love with the green pastures of Keatchie, its stately old buildings, and its Holstein cows.  I even love the smell of cow shit on a warm day.  It smells like home to me.   I love Louisiana in all her seasons: hot, warm, cool, and back to warm again.  I even love it here when it is 110° with 90% humidity.  Louisiana gets in your blood.  It is in my blood, my family has been here for so long now.  What every way you want to trace my family tree, my family has been here for more generations that anyone cares to count. 

Yes I have lived in larger cities, and I like the slow path of life here.  Like my Dad, passing time standing around his truck, drinking beer, visiting with his family and watching the world go by.  Does it get any better than that?

I must say though I hate our state government.  Most of them are so crooked, and have screwed the Louisiana population and land so much, “They are going to have to screw them in the ground when they die.”  I hope, above all hope that with each passing election, my state will get better and a little less screwed.  Never happens.  I guess I will eventually have to give up that ghost.

Ilsa