Room 109

I had a series of roommates over the semesters, none of which would stay the whole time.  Daria tried twice, but never made it a full semester.  Her seizures were too severe.  She collapsed on campus twice and ended up being put in the hospital, waking up each time in the Psych. Ward.  The Doctors did not know what to do with her.  She would call her parents and they would come and get her out.  I had a roommate who was recovering from Anorexia and had a psycho boyfriend.  She didn’t last long either.  My last semester my assigned roommate didn’t show up, again.  So I lived most of my time in room 109 there by myself.

My first semester there, I had been there about two weeks, when the homesickness, the loneliness, and the feeling of being abandoned just became overwhelming.  I went to see my dorm mother.  She asked me a question I pondered for most of my college years.  She said, “Why are you here?”  I couldn’t answer her.  I didn’t know.  I went to college, because that is what I was told to do.  I had no idea what I wanted in life, and no idea what would happened to me after I graduated.  I fumbled around in the dark, and finally found my way.  After understand the rigors of a life in the food industry and that I didn’t want to run my own restaurant or become a chef, I fell in love with Sociology, mainly because of my professor Dr. Sarah.  When she came in one class dragging an imaginary pink elephant, she had me hooked.  The moral of that story is that even if it not real, and I think it is, it has an effect on all those that interact with me.

It took a while, but I began to make friends.  Many who’s pictures I have, and don’t remember their names, Meg Landry from Abbeville, the girl at the front desk of my dorm from Africa, Debra Fowler and her friend David, and the immortal Gamboa brothers from Paraguay. 

Life on the halls was interesting.  We would all sit in the floor and drink, smoke, eat, and play Skipbo till 2 in the morning.  My neighbors became my friends.  I met my first Jewish person, who lived down the hall.  She converted to Druidry, that was the first time I ever heard the word.  I had nothing to do with that.  Some of the ladies were afraid of bugs and would call me to kill them for them.

Bancroft dorm had a twin, which sat just a hundred feet from it.  It was called Denbo.  I got to know the girls on the first floor there.  Many of them were blind, and several had guide dogs.  I fell in with the ladies.  One lady, Alison and I became pretty close.  She was in my math class, which I was of course failing.  Trying to explain Algebraic equations to a blind person is very hard, worse when you make a mistake.  Many times, if Alison did not have her cane, I would guide her.  She would put her hand on her shoulder and we would walk.

I would read the blind ladies textbooks to them, until they arrived on tape.  One of the ladies had a guide dog.  She had lost her eyes as a child, and had glass eyes.  Every now and again she would look at me and say, “Hey are my eyes straight?”  If they were not, she would knock herself in the side of her head until her eyes were centered.  Weird, but it worked.  She was an awesome crocheter.  One year she gave me a cross bookmark she had crocheted.  I have long since rid myself of all Bibles and Christian things in my house.  But I kept that bookmark, as a reminder of a friend who’s name I don’t even remember. 

When I first went to live in South Louisiana it is a bit of a culture shock.  I had to convince most of the young ladies from South Louisiana, that I was from Louisiana as well, even thought I was not Catholic, did not speak French, and talked funny.  One told me, “Oh you are from up in the hills.”  It never occurred to me that North Louisiana was hilly compared to the flat lands of South Louisiana.  I kept a map in my room of Louisiana and a blown up sections of where I was from.  So I could show people.  Most of them did not consider Shreveport to be part of Louisiana.  

I have talked before about my love for Jeff Foxworthy, who was just making it big about that time.  Jeff, bless him, took the power out of the word Redneck, by helping people laugh at it, we reclaimed it as ours.  This word, that had been used as a slur when I was growing up, and was not said in polite company.  I decided to become the “Redneck Ambassador” to USL.  I even printed up a sign and put it on my dorm room door.  I educated others, on the differences between our two cultures.  It was all very tongue and cheek. 

Now everyone in South Louisiana is Catholic.  Even if you are not Catholic, you are Catholic.  You learn to do all the little idiosyncratic things that Catholics do, from years of training, without even knowing it.  I was riding on the USL bus one day, going to the sports complex.  We passed by church and suddenly everyone, without saying a word to each other, crossed themselves.  It was the weirdest thing.  I had to ask and was later told that yes everyone crossed themselves going past a church, because that is where the Eucharist was held.  The part that is not used, is place in an ornate box.  Because it has already been transformed into the body of Jesus, it is considered holy or sacred.  When people pass by the church, they make the sign of the cross, in acknowledgement of the sacredness of this. 

Other Catholic things crept into my life.  My blind girl-friends in Denbo, taught me to say the Rosary.  Some of them prayed to a particular Saint that their sight would be restored.  When Palm Sunday came, you took a palm home, and kept it as good luck.  I learned to cross myself when I passed the church, so no one would know I was not Catholic and look at me funny.  There is a lot of discrimination there, if you are not, just like I encountered in Ebarb, many years later.  You crossed yourself when a funeral went past.  You took a knee before you got in the church pew.  You celebrated Mardi Gras, whether you were Catholic or not.  Then you gave up something during lent, and ate fish on Fridays.  I never noticed till I came home that most small restaurants that serve lunches,  serve fried fish on Fridays, whether it is Lent or not. 

Most people spoke a little French or their grandparents did.  Their parents would speak in French when they didn’t want them to know what they were talking about.  I learned quickly about the language, although I can’t speak it, except for a few things.  I noticed everyone kept calling me “Chei,” and “Boo.”  I remember calling my Dad and saying, “I don’t know why but everyone keeps calling me Cher and saying Boo, and it’s not Halloween yet.”  My father explained that they were love names.

I learned about Catholicism.  I also learned about the food.  All food in South Louisiana is hot, a holdover from the Spanish, who got it from the tribes.  Hot food makes you sweat, when you sweat you are cooler.  Something you needed before AC was so prevalent.  Even the pizza sauce was hot.  And you never said something was hot, NOOOO!  You always said it was, “Well seasoned.”  I came home with an accent and a taste for hot food. 

Part of the reason I was at USL was I had two aunts who could watch over me.  One was a great Aunt, I think I saw her a few times I was down there.  The other was my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Cliff.  Now follow me on this one.  Uncle Cliff had been college roommates with my biological father, Beau.  We kept in touch with Aunt Cathy and them, after my parents divorced.  They were originally going to be my Godparents.  Aunt Cathy and Uncle Cliff have 4 daughters all with C names.  It was Aunt Cathy and her family that helped take care of me while I was at USL.  You know took me to the grocery store, called to check on me, let me do laundry at her house.

Aunt Cathy’s youngest daughters are identical twins, Cattie and Callie.  They were about 3 my first year in college.  Oh I loved both of them so much, and they loved me!  They were the light of my life!  One of the worst things about leaving USL was leaving them.  I loved going to the store and people thought they were mine.  I got to pretend for just a minute.  They even helped me pick out the fabric for the curtains in my dorm rom.  I was still hurting from things that had happened my senior year, the Brett Incident and my friends not talking to me.  I will always feel that the twins helped heal me, with the immense amount of joy they gave me. 

In the Fall of 1994 I was told my Wesley group would be taking a trip to Saint Louis for an Ecumenical Christian gathering the week after Christmas.  I was asked if I wanted to go.  It was a lot of money and I was not sure.  I was spending the weekend with Alison in her home in Crowley.  We had gone to mass and we were sitting in church.  Now Alison could see light and shadows but nothing else.  I told her I was looking for a sign, to decide if I should go or not.  She said she saw light come from where the Eucharist is kept and it touched me.  That for me was sign enough. 

I left after Christmas and rode with my minister, and 4 of college buddies.  I was the only woman in the group.  It took us 16 hours to reach St. Louis.  I had a wonderful time at the conference.  I even went to the top of the arch.  It was at this conference that I met Mike. 

I tried to balance my relationship with Mike with school.  I had been failing, long before I got involved with Mike, and not for lack of studying or trying.  Although I had graduated High School with honors, I was not prepared for USL.  I would not know for many years that NSU had originally offered me a full ride to school there.  Because I was so dead set on USL, my guidance councilor never told me about it.

There is one more story I want to tell you about USL.  Mike was a music major and told me that most colleges have a choir that members of the local community can sing in.  I joined.  I loved it.  I practiced all semester to sing in one of the local cathedrals.  I missed two classes and was told I had to make it up in a private session with my professor.  It was then he learned my secret.  I can’t read music.  Still can’t.  Years later I tried to have Mike teach me and that failed miserably. 

Twice, my professor told me to hit a specific note, and played it on the piano.  I couldn’t do it.  He told me that he had always heard me something strange coming out of my alto section, but couldn’t figure out what it was.  Turns out it was me.  I sing with others by listening to them, to know what note I should be singing.  He told me I had two choices.  I could quit or I could lip sync our concert at the cathedral.  I chose to lip sync.  I could not let all that work go to waste.  He told me something that has stayed with me.  He said, “All people can sing.  Some shouldn’t.  Your one of them.” 

I lip sang ¾ of the concert, and the last quarter I just sang my little heart out.  What was he going to do, flunk me.  I was already failing and leaving to go to NSU after that semester.  What could he possibly do to me!

I have always thought if I ever made an album I would call it, “Shouldn’t sing.”  I’ve got my music playing while I have been writing this, and another Jimmy Buffett just load up.  Think I will crank this one and sing myself out.  Oh it’s one of my favorites, Bob Robert’s Society Band.

A lady dressed in purple started dancing all alone,

Then she sauntered oh so gently to the vacant microphone.

She sounded like she’s someone who never missed a beat,

By the time the number ended they were dancing in the street.

 

Ilsa

 

 

 

USL

I gradated Logansport High School in May of 1994, which I talked about in The healing power of music.  Within a few weeks I started working at the McDonald’s in Center, Texas.  My town had little work, and what jobs there were, were taken up by others in our town.  I drove almost 30 miles round trip to work there.  Let’s just say I learned a lot about working, and what was legal and what was not.  It was definitely interesting to say the least. 

One of the managers was having an affair with one of the cooks.  They like to make love on the washing machine, when it was going.  He was 18 or 19, she was married with small children.  At night the managers would make us clock out at midnight, then lock the door, and not let us leave until the place was clean, usually till 2 or 3 in the morning.  If you walked out, you lost your job.  The idea was that they were supposed to be done by midnight and the store was to be clean.  If corporate found out that it wasn’t, my managers would have been in trouble.  I had no idea until later that this practice was illegal.  I worked for McDonald’s until a few weeks before it was time for me to leave for USL.

I had an experience there that has stuck with me as I became Pagan.  My manager told me to trust my gut, that money and all things were replaceable, but we were not, to trust my instincts.  If I ever had a situations where we were afraid, to simply back up and get him.  I had a man come in one day, my guess is it was close to Summer Solstice.  He was dressed in a black robe, I think, and had a huge pentacle around his neck.  My immediate thought was “Satan worshiper!” even though his pentacle was pointed up and not down.  I didn’t know the difference back then.  I backed up, and got my manager.  Who served him beautifully. 

As I have become pagan I have thought of this man.  I have no idea who he was, and in 10 years of being in this community, I have never encountered him again.  But I want to apologize for what I did.  Now I see him as simply a Pagan man, trying to get something to eat.  I see myself as the ignorant and stupid one.  I am ashamed of my actions, and hope where ever he is, he would know how that one act still has an effect on me.

In late August of 1994 I prepared to leave for college.  The day I left, we boarded my little Schnauzer, Sugar, at the vet.  She had been acting weird for a few weeks.  To our surprise while we were gone, she delivered 7 puppies, 2 who lived.  We adopted one out and kept the other.  We named her Sissy, she would be part of my life for more than 10 years.  Six weeks after I went to college by beloved friend and dog Texas died.  He was about 10.  Now the vet said he died of Hepatitis C, which he guessed Texas got from eating something dead.  I still believe he died of a broken heart. 

I planned for weeks on what to bring, trying to decide on which books to bring was almost painful.  I took pictures of my family to hang on my wall when I got there.  One of my grandmothers, I don’t remember which one, bought me new linens for my bed.  One of them gave me a small old refrigerator to take me.  My parents drove me down to Lafayette.  My first dorm room was on the 5^th floor of Bancroft.  I put all my things on one side of the room, waiting for a roommate that never came.  When my parents left, and the door closed I had never felt so alone in my life.  I felt like a stranger in a strange land.  I decorated my room and took pictures.  The sound of the wind was very creepy, as was the sound of people I did not know talking in the rooms next to me, and going up and down the halls all hours of the night.  They had no respect for others.  I was there to work, not party.

We were met at my dorm by Rev. Don Ross who was the Campus Minister at the Wesley Foundation for USL.  Part of their ministry was to assist those moving in.  They brought dollies and strong backs.  Bancroft had elevators, because it was 7 stories tall.  I sure missed that elevator when I moved to NSU.  We had to carry everything by hand up stairs.  Not fun.  My father took me to the campus ministry after we finished unpacking and talked with Don a while.  He asked him to watch over me, and that is where they left me. 

I became very active in the Campus Ministry there, for a time, even running an Interfaith Campus Ministry.  I was just trying to get the Catholics, Methodist, and Assembly of God to work together.  It all fell apart when they built a Mosque just off of campus and the Muslims wanted to join our group.  It worked for a while, and then I resigned.  It didn’t last long after that. 

I stayed in my 5^th floor dorm room for a few weeks.  Then I met Daria.  She was from Parks, but she had family in Butte La Rose.  It took her 2 days to convince me she was not a French national.  She asked me to move down to her room on the first floor.  I had no idea that the first floor even had rooms.  But it did, about 9 of them.  They were designed for the physically handicapped students.  Daria had severe seizures.  She was allergic to the medications they had tried to treat her with.  One time she had 7 seizures in one day.  I had experience and knowledge dealing with seizures.  We decided we were a good fit.  So I moved down to room 109.  I would stay in that room for the next two years, until I left for NSU. 

Ilsa

 

*Bancroft and Denbo were demolished in the last few years to make way for a new student housing complex. 

The Brett Incident

I had spent much of my teenage years wanting to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard.  I even ran my bath scalding hot, so I might prepare for diving in the hot water around the underwater volcanoes.  When I tried to get into LSMSA, see Cold Hands, I had to take the SAT’s.  I began to understand I was smart, but not that smart.  Math is the bane of my existence.  I also began to understand I would have to leave the state to study, something I was not prepared to do.  I did not want to leave my family.  I also did not want to leave the area, go away, build a life, get married, have kids, own a home, and have to give up everything many years later, to come home and care for aging and dying parents.  I am an only child.  I don’t get the luxury of handing it off to another family member.  It is going to be me, doing it all, in the end.  I was brought up to believe you do not put your loved ones in a nursing home.  It is dishonorable and distasteful. 

So I knew I could not be an Oceanographer, although I loved writing, I figured I could never make a living at it, besides I knew I wasn’t very good at it.  I knew people who could write circles around me.  I didn’t want to be a teacher like my mom was working on becoming, and two of my Aunts were already.  I didn’t want to be a nurse like my other Aunt.  I had been training in the wifely arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and hand work since I could remember.  My mom always said she wanted to prepare me.  So I thought I am a pretty good cook and I love food, maybe I will be a chef, so that is what I started out going to college to do.  I was also in love with the Frugal Gourmet about this time.

As my senior year approached I began to look at colleges.  My father then stepped in and said, “You may only apply to colleges where I may get to you in less than a day’s drive.”  That sealed the deal, no Oceanography for me.  I remember measuring off the distance and marking my large US map with my compass and setting up the radius.  I decided to apply in state.  I asked, my family, for help filling out the forms for both financial aid and college applications, they refused.  It taught me how to do them though.  I always found it odd some colleges required you send a picture.  What the hell did that tell them about your brain or who you were???  I applied all over the state: to Northwestern in Natchitoches, LSU in Baton Rouge, USL in Lafayette, Louisiana Tech in Ruston, NLU in Monroe, Southeastern in Hammond, and McNeese in Lake Charles.  I got in to all of them.  I was very surprised I got into LSU, but I did. 

I was so ecstatic when my letter came from Louisiana Tech that I had been accepted.  My entire life my father had told me, “You’re going to college.”  I never had a say in it.  I wanted to go to Tech, desperately, like my father before me.  I have always wanted to be just like my Dad.  I still remember going into the living room to tell him.  He held the letter and said, “That’s great, but you can’t go there.  You will have no one to watch over you.  You can go to NSU, where you Mom is attending, and she can watch other you, or you can go to USL where your aunt can watch over you.”  I was devastated.  All that work, applying to all the other colleges, only to be told, again that what I wanted, didn’t matter.  I am sure he had his reasons, but he broke my heart that day.  Still makes me angry to this day.

I thought for a moment.  I wanted to get as far away from my mother as possible, and I knew others from my school were going to NSU.  I was terrified the bullying would continue there, so I said, “I guess I will go to USL then.” 

USL became my battle cry, it became my hope, and thinking of going there and getting away from the daily abuse, which was only getting worse now that Cajun Rink had been added to he bunch, became my refuge.  Cajun helped crank the daily taunts up to 11.  But I was trying so hard to be a good Christian and turn the other cheek, and to do what my parents asked.  But with every word he hurled at me, I died inside.  He even went so far as to paint penis on my car windows, in shoe polish. I am still thankful for the cheerleaders who helped me remove enough from my window, to drive home, with spit and a Kleenex, and held me while I cried.

Into my life came Brett.  He was beautiful or so I thought.  He had this long curly black mullet.  He was of Native American decent, and covered in pimples.  I didn’t care.  I was on him like white on rice.  He was fresh meat and I wanted him.  In my mind he had not been tainted by my tormentors.  So it was game on.  He was from Shreveport.  He was always crying, come to find out his father had recently died.  His mother had remarried.  She and her new husband had moved to Keatchie.  Brett and I became fast friends.  I was always trying to comfort him, rubbing his back and trying to help him through this difficult time. 

As I sit here looking at my annual, I don’t know that we were ever officially boyfriend and girlfriend.  I was invited to a bonfire at his house.  Our parents met and they liked each other.  They encourage us to be together.  I went to a Christmas party at his house, where he danced with me.  He gave me a cassette single of Dwight Yoakam’s “Fast as you.”  I spent hours listening to it, to see if Brett was trying to give me a secret message.  I hate that song now, it reminds me of all of this.

Brett was strange.  He spent hours on his hair and although it was my guess he liked me, he didn’t want to hold my hand, and kissed me only once.  When he kissed me it was not like Adam’s kisses, full of passion and want.  No it was like kissing a rock.  I was confused.  I liked him, was falling in love with him, but he did not seem to reciprocate.  I knew, deep down, it was going to be another one of my one sided love affairs.  I often fell “In love” with a guy and then waited for him to say he liked me, even tried to buddy up to some of them, but none of them ever got the hint.  So it was always on sided.

Brett, me and our families went out New Years Eve to the American Legion Hall dance.  Brett was prone to migraines.  He had one that night.  I would learn later he faked it to get away from me. 

Not long after we were due to give blood.  I talked all my friends into doing it.  It ended up that I could not because had an ear infection and was on antibiotics.  Brett, Sonya and some more of my friends gave blood.  A few weeks later Brett received a letter, or so I was told, that said he had a devastating medical condition.  I wrote him a letter and told him how much I loved him and I would stay beside him through this diagnosis.

Within a few days later I was given a note from him, by Sonya, he said wanted nothing to do with me anymore.  I was devastated.  For once in my life, I thought I had found love.  I have always said the worst thing about all of this, was that for a few weeks, I had hope that I was not this horrible, ugly, fat, crazy monster that everyone told me I was.  When I read his letter, all that hope was destroyed.

It was not just the relationship that hurt, what did the most damage is what came after.  Sonya, my best friend since 2^nd grade, was also friends with Brett.  What I didn’t know, is that many nights that I was on the phone with Brett, she was quietly listening in.  He had called her, before he called me.  I didn’t know until later that she was acting as a conduit to help get him hooked up to another friend, who Brett began dating a few weeks later.

This friend he dated, a few months later, when the relationship was over, turned to me in class and said, “He lies doesn’t he?”  I said, “Yes he does.” 

I still do not know what was said.  I don’t know what rumor was spread, but from the time that Brett broke up with me in January of 1994 until about a month before I graduated in May of 1995, I was basically shunned.  Suddenly none of my friends, or anyone for that matter, would speak to me.  No one would eat lunch with me.  I was treated like a pariah.  My only clue is what one friend said to me one day.  He had the courage to break whatever taboo they had set against me.  He said, “They have told me to hate you and I just can’t do it anymore.  You have always been nice to me.”  And he sat with me and ate lunch.  It was finally over.  He was the first, more would join us as they year drew to a close. 

I cannot tell you how desperate I was.  I cannot tell you how many nights I wanted to kill myself.  How I wanted to jump from the river bridge.  In one swoop I had lost everything I understood.  My people, my tribe, my friends, or however you want to call it.  My sociology professor years later, would call it a “social death.”  When I finally got up the courage to talk to my parents, tell them what was going on and I was suicidal, my Dad said, “Oh It’s just puppy love.  It will pass.”  Twenty-Two years later it hurts, almost as bad as it did when it happened.  At least I now have some understanding to go with all of this.

I stayed friends with Brett’s parents.  I have seen his mother several times over the years.  When I saw her, I told her all that had happened, and she confirmed for me what I had begun to suspect many years before.  Brett was gay.  I now understand what he did.  He used me for cover.  He was pretending to be interested in me to appease his family and hide his homosexuality.  That I could have lived with, and would have even happily participated in it had I known. 

I found Brett many years ago on Facebook, we discussed much of the above.  To say he has a different idea of what happened is an understatement.  He said we were never in a relationship and he never cared for me, that he has always been gay.  I am sure there is much truth to that.  I have known for a long time what I felt for him, was not reciprocated.  I had hoped for an apology, but that will never happened.  Never got one from Sonya either or knew what was actually said about me.  Would love to know now, if someone wanted to PM me, I would be open to hearing it now.  Ten years, after all this, I would see Sonya again.  Who just hugged my neck and could not understand why I was so mad at her.  What a Bitch!

While all this was going on, all I could do was pray and count the days until I would go to USL.  I was in Hell and I had to find my own way out.  I was like Rapunzel.  I was trapped in the tower, no one was coming to save me, I had to cut my hair and save myself. 

There was a young man in my class who came in everyday, with the most beautiful smile.  As corny as it sounds his smile, gave me hope.  Seeing him smile, and hearing him laugh helped me in ways he has no idea of.  I even developed a little crush on him, but my fate was sealed and I was too broken and afraid to try to find love again.  I was leaving for Lafayette after I graduated, and that was that.

I began what I called “Smile Therapy.”  I would force myself to smile, just for a few seconds every few hours.  I noticed when I did so I would feel better.  Turns out smiling releases all kinds of endorphins in your brain, that are good for you.  Slowly, ever so slowly I feel it began to pull me out of the worst of my depression.  The first few weeks were the worst.  I would get two or three seconds and then burst into tears again.  I cried so much during class, during this whole thing, me a woman who hates to cry and used to see it as a sign of weakness. 

A few weeks before we graduated someone told me something I would never have dreamed.  They said, “Melvin has been in love with you for years.  He would have done anything for you.”  I remember sitting in our drafting room, looking at him and just smiling.  I have no idea if it was even true, but it helped me none the less.  And today I regret not doing anything about it.  The idea that Melvin had once loved me, along with my friends smile, gave me comfort in one of the darkest times of my life.  Stupid and corny, right?  I know.  But I love stupid and corny. 

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.

Becoming His

In the fall of 1995 I returned to USL in Lafayette, more than 4 hours away from where Mike was at NSU.  He called me not long before I was to leave and go back to school to tell me Charlie had broke up with him.  He could not understand why. 

When I returned to USL I began to write him letters again, many of them erotic.  It was not long before we became a couple.  What he did not share with me, until our wedding day, was that he had slept with another girl, between Charlie and me.  Some girl he had met at his apartment complex pool.  I still don’t know how many times.

Mike called me one night after receiving one of my letters and asked me to marry him.  I gladly accepted.  We began to make plans soon for him to come down, so that we might have sex for the first time.  I even brought special purple lingerie and white thigh highs.  He arrives and we go to make love, he never says anything about how nice I look in my new lingerie.  I lay on the bed, him on top and he enters.  It is over in 30 seconds.  He shivers and collapses on top of me. 

I pat his shoulder and say, “what the hell was that?”

He says, “Oh you didn’t have an orgasm too?” 

“Um, No.  Was I supposed to?” I ask.

He does spend the next 2 hours making it up to me, but he knew it was my first time.  You never get to make that back up, you know.  This was not his first time.  He knew what he was doing. Most you remember your first time, and I hope it was a good experience and not what happened to me.  This man should come with a warning label I swear!  I wish there was somewhere I could register him as a sex addict, abuser and a bad lover so other women would know to stir clear of him.

We continue hot and heavy for that semester.  As I had no car, and I still think that is part of why I married him so I could have a car, he had to come down and visit me.  I could not drive to NSU to see him.  He did take me back with him one weekend and I got to meet his friends and go to the Wesley up there.  We spent most of that time shacked up in a hotel room though.

That semester Mike’s grandmother died and left him some money.  He bought a new car, a new computer, some inline skates, and an engagement ring for me.  He just showed up with it one day.  It was gold with a 1/8^th of a caret diamond in it.  Yeh, I hated it, but I accepted it. I was never asked what I wanted, and if he had ever bothered to listen to me, he would have known I don’t like gold and I don’t like diamonds.  I find them pretentions, everyone has them. 

Now my parents did not like Mike from the very beginning.  Hell my dog Sissy did not like him either.  Every time he tried to touch her she screamed and ran away.  She would not let him touch her.  She never did this with anyone else.  Remember what I said about animals always know, if we only listen.  I should have listened.  After a summer spent messing around in my parents’ house, behind closed doors, they were not thrilled with me either.  And why would they like him.  He was a music major, had basically had an affair with me while still dating Charlie, and had not worked meaningfully since the time they knew of him.  They saw no potential in him, and now their only daughter was having sex outside of wedlock.  This could only lead to no good. 

Mike decides in the Spring of 1996 to transfer and be at USL with me.  He says he needs a change.  For the rest of our marriage Mike would go into a screaming fits and often rage about how USL ruined everything in his life.  While we were happy to be together, stealing in each other’s dorms when we could.  Hell I practically lived I his dorm for days in a row until we almost got caught and we decided it was not worth getting kicked out of school over. 

While we were still hot and heavy for each other, the porn continued.  It just never went away.  I kept explaining to myself that it would get better, once we were married.  Mike worked very little other than being a monitor at the Wesley, which paid less than $100 a month, and stuffing envelopes occasionally for his dad, he had no steady employment or real skills. I am always lending him money, which he never paid back.

Mike claimed to be a music major, with his concentration in voice.  Mike never sang.  He never practiced.  He never studied.  I still don’t know how he passed his classes.  I have a memory of walking to his dorm on my birthday.  He didn’t get me a present, get me a card or even make me one. I innocently asked him to sing me “Happy Birthday.”  Just to have something from him on my birthday.  He refused.  He suddenly claimed to be getting a sore throat.  In fact, he never sang to me. The only time I ever heard him sing was during one of his finals at NSU.  I was waiting for him outside the door, and I leaned my ear to the door to hear what he sounded like.  He sounded good, accept he kept saying “wait”, as if to get what he was doing correct, every few seconds.  They flunked him.  That was the only time I ever heard him sing. 

Why Mike was at USL, my father insisted that I stop paying for things for him and he get a job.  What money his grandmother had left him, was long since gone. Mike walked around the corner from the Wesley and got a job delivering pizzas.  A profession he is still in to this day.  Delivering pizzas got us through most of our college years. 

At some point in the Spring of ’96 it was decided that I would transfer to NSU in the fall.  I missed my family terribly.  I was 6 hours away from them. I saw them maybe once or twice a semester if I was lucky.

When I began to apply to schools I was told by my father that they had to be within driving distance of home, so that limited me to Louisiana.  I had applied at several universities in Louisiana and got into all of them, even LSU.  I had wanted to go to LA Tech like my father.  When the letter came that I was accepted into LA Tech I was so excited.  My father then looked at me and said, “That’s great.  Now you can choose.  You can go to NSU where your mom can watch over you.  Or you can go to USL where you aunt can watch over you.”  I was crestfallen.  I was a daddy’s girl.  I wanted to do what daddy did.  As I had and still have a very difficult relationship with my mother, and I knew many of those who attended my high school were attending NSU, I chose USL.  It was only years later that I learned NSU had wanted to give me a full ride.  By the time I got there, those offers were long gone.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  My father said, you’re going to college, so I went.  I did as I was told in those days.  I had thought for some years that I might want to be a chef and USL had a good culinary program.  So that’s what I had come for.  But as they laid out the realities of the cooking industry and what it took to run your own restaurant, I decided it was not for me. When I heard that even with a degree I would start as a dishwasher, I decided to switch majors. 

Hell I was failing anyways.  Two years into college and I had a 1.9 major and not for lack of trying.  I had taken remedial math twice and failed.  It would take me 3 more times at NSU before I passed. I often tell a joke where I say, “It took me 5 times to pass math in college,” and only holdup 4 fingers.  I still hate math and are amazed by those that can do it well.

Somewhere along the line I had to take a Sociology course, and I fell in love with it.  I had the most awesome teacher who has spent many years working with people who had AIDS and in the LGBT community.  Don’t ask me to spell her name I never could get it right.  So in the Fall of 1996 I would transfer to NSU as a Sociology major.

Ilsa

Summer of 1995

In the Spring of 1995 the first letter from Mike arrived.  I did not even read it.  I tore it up and threw it across the lawn of the USL Presidents house.  It happened to be on the way between the post office and the Wesley United Methodist Campus Ministry.  Sorry I littered!  I was even stronger in my resolve that what I had done with him and being involved with him was wrong.  But the letters kept coming.  I finally gave in and began to read them and then to write him back. 

By the summer of 1995 I was very much in love with Michael. So much so that I proposed to him twice, and both times he turned me down. I did not want to be in love with him, because he was still with Charlie, his girlfriend.  It was a very mixed emotional and difficult time for me.  I in no way wanted to hurt her.  I never believed I would ever fall in love, marry, or have children.  I had been told all my life I was too fat and too ugly for such a thing to happen to me.  So the idea that Michael wanted me was just overwhelming.  I soaked it up like a sponge.  Every moment of attention I hid in my heart.  What we were doing was wrong, but I could not bring myself to stop.  Mike’s hold on me, as threw out most of our relationship was hypnotic.

That Summer of 1995 Charlie was in Baton Rouge, Mike was in Shreveport and I was in Keatchie.  I was an hour away, compared to her 6 hours away.  Mike and I spent every moment we could together, locked in each other’s arms, and each other’s bedrooms.  The rule was no clothes off.  Everything else was fair game.  We kissed, groped, dry humped all to the point of orgasm.  But no we never had sex, just everything but.  I never realized until now maybe he just wanted me for the thrill of the affair.  Maybe he was using me ever then. Who knows?

Now I knew about the porn.  I found the tape in his player.  His magazines while putting up his socks and making his bed.  I knew about the ones under his bed and in his night stand.  I explained it way.  He misses Charlie.  He’s not getting sex on a regular basis.  I think that summer he only made one trip to Baton Rouge to see her.  Course then money was tight and neither one of us was working at the time.  I figured the porn would go away once we got together and he got sex regularly.  That he would grow out of it.  He never did and it only got worse.

In August of 1995 Mike went back to NSU and I went back to USL.  With heavy hearts we parted ways.  Mike reported for band camp, a few weeks before Charlie was to report for school.  A few days after he arrived she called to break up with him.  They remained friendly threw out our marriage.  Charlie would confide in me years later that she had broke up with him over the phone because she was terrified he would hit her. 

Mike had a violent streak, although he never hit me, he hit everything else.  The walls in our home had holes in them.  I learned early on not to keep glass in frames, because when he would beat the walls, our pictures would fly off and the glass would break.  I kept boxes of telephones on hand, usually three at a time, because he would break the phones so often. He had road rage and would beat the steering wheel so bad it had no cover left on it.  This was pre airbag days.  The cover came off and for years he beat the part where the metal part for the horn was, until it had a dent in it.  He would throw temper tantrums if he did not get his way.  He would bang his fists against his leg, gnash his teeth, and stomp his foot.  And he did this in public with me many times.  I always feared I would be next.  And he had no remorse for any of it. None of these things he showed until after we officially became a couple. 

Where there warning signs?  Yes there were warning signs.  Experts have come out in the last few years and told women not to date men with holes punched in their walls, because one day it will be your face.  The first time I walked into Mike’s family home I was shocked to see this nice suburban home so destroyed.  There were holes in the walls and holes in the doors.  Nicholas, Michael’s younger brother had no door.  It had been destroyed. 

Mike and Nicholas were violent towards each other.  Always yelling and screaming.  I’ve seen then try to kill each other with baseball bats.  Their mom was no better, constantly screaming at them.  Mike’s father, a former news editor, had long ago checked out.  Yet I believed I could be a positive influence on the situation and I could fix Mike and his family, with love and understanding. 

Ilsa

Meeting Mike

On December 21^st, 1996 I married Michael Carl Liberto, in a back yard in Bossier City.  My mother walked me down the aisle and whispered in my ear, “You can still get out of this.  It’s easier to get in a marriage then get out of it.”  All that did was harden my resolve to prove her wrong and to fix him. 

Michael and I had met on December 31^st, 1994, New Years Eve, in Saint Louis, Missouri.  We were both attending an Ecumenical Campus Ministry conference.  There were several thousand in attendance. 

Now a Campus Ministry, for those of you who don’t know, is kind of a throwback to years past.  Campus Ministries are organizations that are usually located just outside the fiscal boundary of a university.  Most of the time a block or two over, within easy walking distance of the campus.  They are outposts of most large church denominations, Baptist, United Methodist, Catholic, Pentecostal, etc.  Hell, I hear Harvard even has an Atheist one now. These ministries care for students spiritual needs.  They provide activities, like movie night, bible studies, church services, a quiet place to study and usually a free meal at least once during the week.  Although Campus Ministry is dying and underfunded I most places, Mike and I were heavily involved in them. 

We had not met until the last night of the conference at the big dinner and New Years Eve dance.  The feller I was supposed to go with bailed on me.  I was there with a group from the University of South Louisiana (USL) in Lafayette, He with a group from Northwestern State University (NSU) in Natchitoches.  There was no room for me at the USL table so I went to sit with the people from NSU.  I was looking good and smelling fine.  I had just bought some new vanilla oil perfume that day.  I took a seat between Mike and his roommate.  Now his roommate was cute and I was chatting him up.  Whatever I would say Mike would interject something.  I was trying to explain to the table that my mom was attending NSU and when I said she looked just like me.  Mike says, “Then by god she must be beautiful.”  Well that got my attention.  He kept saying, “Where are the cookies?   I smell cookies.”  We finally figured out it was my perfume.  It got such a rise out of him, that I continued to wear it most of our marriage. 

I don’t remember a lot of what happened after that.  I know that Mike and I stood outside the ballroom and danced for a while.  He had a hard on for me.  That was the first time I had ever felt that on a guy.  That was the first time, that I know of, I had caused one in a man. 

Now I was raised under a rock.  I was 18 and still a virgin.  I was 180lb and believe I would never marry, because I was too fat and ugly.  I’d never seen an erect penis much less been the cause of one.  Now let’s be clear, Mike at least kept it in his pants, that night.  I spent the 16 hour van ride home to Louisiana asking the 4 fellows I had come with what that hard thing was in Mike’s pants and what did it mean.  Conclusion, he liked me.  I’d never had a guy like me back. 

The next part is hard for me to tell.  After all these years I am still ashamed of it, but I’ve promised to write the truth of my life and this is part of that truth.  Mike and I went and hid for the rest of the night, in a little alcove not far from the ball room.  I don’t know how many hours we were there.  We talked, and we could not keep our hands off each other.  The worst part is that Mike had told me he had a girlfriend, Charlie, back home, and I did it anyway.  I wanted the attention so bad, it was hard to resist.  It was something I had never had.  He even told me he loved me, that night, as friends though.  Agape he called it.  I would get disgusted with myself and want to leave, then he would touch me and I would just melt.  He had my number early on. 

The hot and heavy continued for a while, with him even asking if I want to sneak away and make love.  I decided that was not what I wanted for my first time.  I asked him to walk me back to my hotel, which he did.  We said goodbye and I spent the rest of the night talking to my roommate about this horrible thing I had done.  I knew better then to mess with another woman’s man.  I knew better.  I was not raised like that.  My roommate and I made the decision to swear him off and never to see him again.  That was the most logical thing to do. 

The next morning I was full of resolve and self hatred for all that had happened the night before.  I am coming up the escalator and my pastor, and the pastor of the NSU group are desperately trying to get my attention. 

“What’s going on?” I said.

“It’s ML.  He’s been talking about you and asking for you all night.  He’s desperate to see you!  We’ve never seen him like this!  Ilsa you have to go to him.”

“Who the hell is ML?” I ask.

“Mike? You were with him last night.”

“I wasn’t with a Mike last night” I said.

“Michael”

“Oh Michael,” I said.  For some reason it didn’t register in my head that way.   “I don’t want to see him.” 

“Please Ilsa!  Please.”  You know what it’s like when you have two pastors begging you.  They know best, right?

“Okay.  Where is he?”  I finally gave in.  My resolve did not last that long.

Mike was checking out at the front desk.  He embraced me and tried to kiss me.  I turned my head and refused to hug him back.  I was like a limp noodle.  I asked what he wanted.  Mostly he wanted to give me his contact info and asked if he could write me.

Now this was in the early days of the internet, so most people did not email and few people had cell phones back then.  And they sure didn’t text.  Long distance calling on dorm phones required calling cards and were hugely expensive.  Later in our relationship, Mike and I ran up a $500.00 bill on my father’s AT&T calling card. And we didn’t talk that much and we were in the same state!  So in the beginning Mike and I wrote letters to each other.  What harm could a letter do?         

Ilsa