sentimental journey

                                    "Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth . . . "

                                                                   --   Jethro Tull, from 'Thick as a Brick"


     this installment is not about nature, ya'll; unless you count the nature of cultural change..........

     on 10 sept, i drove up to haynesville, la. to do a talk for their annual butterfly festival....know where haynesville is? it's barely in louisiana -- maybe four miles from the arkansas line -- 250 miles from lafayette...................and at least a couple of generations removed from any existing post-modern culture.

     i'd been near, but never to haynesville, in my day; so i looked forward to the trip, remembering other nearby communities that i had been to, and had so enjoyed......but i could not exactly remember why. . .

     jumping off I-49 north of natchitoches, i had slipped the (relatively, i guess...) new allman bros. cd that a lafayette musician buddy had just given me, and by the time i had hit the first cotton field of the trip, just outside of coushatta, the sparse, rustic strains of dual (warren haynes & derek trucks....ya'll really oughta check this album ["Hitting the Note"] out..........) slide acoustic guitars were introducing greg allman's aching, 'hard times' ....... jerking me with a tactible shiver back into the years and the days of my youth....................growing up in ville platte, la in the 50s & 60s, we actually had a cotton field in town, not too far away from school (well, nothing was too far away from anything in ville platte...), where for a spell, we'd pick cotton before school (when them cotton bolls were heavier with dew....) for 2-cent-a-pound.

     but what had really given me that shiver there outside of coushatta was in instant memory of sharecroppers, the people who didn't pick cotton for fun.....they picked it -- and spent many more hours hoeing it -- for their lives............funny how during my dad's generation (ca. 1920s & 30s), the majority of folks around ville platte tended crops and livestock....for a living; but by the 1960s sharecroppers & small farm owners weren't even on local society's radar.......they were background noise......noticed only by merchants and bankers when they couldn't make their bills......yet they were the backbone -- the moral compass -- of what passed for "society" back then....................

     it's really no wonder how the blues got invented, ya'll..............

     anyway, the main thing that a traveler from far-away worlds notices up there on US371 is the roadside signage........just as in the post-modern world, it's everywhere; only it's different..............it's mostly wooden, and, again, it's wordage recalls what today would be considered the distant past. up there, convenience stores sit like a recent idea......all are independently owned, or at best, locally-franchised, with names like 'pak-a-bag' or 'handee-bag' .... i noted locally-franchised chicken joints named, 'chick-a-dilly'...........

     passing through the relatively large, I-20 town of minden, and turning right -- just past the Mt. Calm Elderly Apartments, you veer north-northeast, past 'the friendliest travel center in the u.s.' (just a gas station/cafe in the middle of the woods; but i'd bet that it's friendly.....) and you're really spinning back through the years.............

     i held out for a gas stop until i got to haynesville.....a town about the size of mamou or sunset......it only had 3 gas stations.....one of them, the one with the adjoining cafe, was closed......i pulled into the next one and an attendant (the owner, i think) actually came up and asked, "can i help you?"........i said, "yeah, ya'll take credit cards?" he goes, "uh...yeah....but we're out of gas...try that next one, around the corner, right across from the bank...." apparently the combination of the butterfly festival and the local high school football game (haynesville high's 'golden tornadoes') had caused a temporary blip in fuel demand...............anyway, i did like he said and landed at one of those locally-owned convenience stores, got out (no attendant there) and noted mechanical gas pumps..........that's right kids, no digital pumps up that way.......just as in the 1970s, these pumps have mechanical odometer-like dials.........no place to stick no credit card.....you pull on this armature type thing and that resets the pump and turns it on......i remember how modern such a pump seemed back in 1972....................................

     next i pulled in to the Starlight Inn to check in.....a true "motor-court" of 1950s vintage, where the attendant sits in a drive-in booth, fills out your room card for you, plops an honest-to-god room key in your hand, and you drive straight on through to your cinder-block room........replete with funky, concrete shower stall -- plastic shower curtain cracked with age -- and naked plumbing..................

    
     due to the heat, i guess (it had gotten up to 98F when i checked in at about 3pm), my room's window air-conditioner froze up that night, making for less-than-restful sleeping..............fortunately, the room was supplied with a complimentary, oh-so-refreshing, bar of 'beach mist' soap, to get me off and running the next morning.

     to a person -- black, white, and latino -- the townsfolk were friendly and courteous; looking at you directly in the eye to say, "good morning" or "hot, ain't it!?!" or "that'll be $7.28" as opposed to the sideways glances you (or at least i) get in the post-modern world.

     despite the sign that said "welcome to haynesville -- the butterfly capital of the world" there were no more butterflies around than any other rural louisiana town at this time of year......early fall, by the way, is the butterfly season across the gulf south............they did have a fine old clapboard cottage on the "festival grounds" landscaped "cottage garden" style with lots of wildflowers, and loaded with plains checkerspots and pearly crescents, skippers, and other butterflies-of-passage..................sorry that i didn't get a picture of that.................i also missed photographing the butterfly festival parade...........it happened so fast.......basically, a car or two with dignitaries and the town fire truck (blue!) loaded with golden tornado cheerleaders, on a 2-3 block parade route.............

     there were probably as many folks from south arkansas as from north louisiana at the festival.....all super-friendly and in a festive mood, regardless of the nearly-triple-digit weather.........................a good old-fashioned time was had by all...................