THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER ROAD

Instead of hopping on I-10 for an hour or so for our drive to New Orleans, Becky suggested that we take the winding River Road instead. The road, which goes from Baton Rouge to the Crescent City, essentially parallels the Mississippi River levee, and runs through some really beautiful country. There are also many weird things to see, and, occasionally, it was like going back in time.

Of course, I brought my camera.



There are tons of old, cool churches. This one above seems to be no longer in use, but it still stands. Really, that's one of the coolest things about this state: there are lots of old buildings. It seems like in Texas, they just can't wait to tear old buildings down and replace them with strip malls and suburbs.

Here's another cool and old church building:



We also saw a lot of these:



Yeah, that's right. A crawfish mound. They were all over the place at certain points, but, then, that makes sense--we are in Louisiana.

We also encountered an engineering marvel of which I had never heard, the Bonnet Carre' Spillway. As you may or may not know, New Orleans is below sea level, shaped like a bowl, in fact. Really, like Las Vegas, New Orleans ought not to even exist as far as nature is concerned. It's slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, but leave it to the Army Corps of Engineers to figure out a stop-gap solution. I'm not quite sure how the whole thing works, but I know it has something to do with releasing Missisippi River flood waters when pressure on the levees becomes too great. At any rate, it's an impressive sight:



Of course, what would a five hour drive through the Louisiana countryside be without a trip to a plantation? This was a pretty weird experience, too, because we were accompanied by about six German tourists who were constantly yakking away in German, wearing their shorts too tightly as is the European style, decked out in backpacks and photograpy equipment. Germans always bring some surrealism to the table. Anyway, the name of the place we toured is the Destrehan Plantation. Here's a shot of the big house:



You can see one of the weird Germans in the lower right corner. Becky took these next two shots while we were there. On the front balcony:



A very old tree:



Here's a detail from the big house.



Somewhere along the line, as this bizarre old woman dressed in 19th century costume told us how the rich white people ate, slept, and had parties, it dawned on me that she was telling us almost nothing about slave life on the plantation. In addition to what I already know about the barbarity of Southern slavery, I learned from a display there that the big house was the site of a hardcore tribunal for the sentencing of participants in a slave rebellion in 1811.

From Lest We Forget:

1811 LOUISIANA SLAVERY REBELLION

In St. Charles Parish, the tribunal was composed of Jean Noel Destrehan, Alexandre Labranche, Cabaret, Adelard Fortier and Edmond Fortier, along with Pierre Bauchet St. Martin, acting as judge. Beginning at 4 P. M. on January 13, through January 15, they issued death warrants for a 21 [enslaved persons] for the crime of insurrection. These men were sentenced be shot by a militia detachment, each one in front of the residence to which he belonged. The tribunal decided that the heads of those executed would be cut off and put up on the end of a pike, at the place of execution, (“with the goal of making a terrible example”] for all who might in the future seek to win their freedom by force of arms.

Click here for the rest (emphasis added by me).

But not a word about any of this from our Granny "The South Will Rise Again" tour guide. Really, ignoring the plight of slaves here was quite conspicuous given the slave "cabins," that is, shacks, on the premises:



But then, why am I so surprised when the gift shop, first and last stops on the tour, was selling this crap:



To be fair, not all plantation tours are like this. There's a place here in Baton Rouge, about a three minute drive from where we live called the Magnolia Mound Plantation, that Becky tells me has quite a bit of info about slavery. I've got to go check it out someday.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll try to post some New Orleans pics sometime soon.

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