Baton Rouge was disappointing. The reason I went there was because I was sitting in The Apple Crate Bar on Frenchman street listing to some lame-ass blues band. I pulled out my phone thinking in a city the size of New Orleans there has to be better. I did a search for blues clubs and the closest hit I got was Teddy’s Juke Joint outside of Zachary, a northern suburb of Baton Rouge, two hours away. Ok, well, I guess that answers that. From my bar stool I resolved to go there on my way home.
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| Baton Rouge Planetarium |
When I first arrived in town all the downtown hotels and bars were filled with people in tuxedos. I had trouble even finding a place to eat that wasn’t filled with penguins and blue hairs. Baton Rouge is the capital city and it felt like I was seeing political gatherings. At one point, in a quick glance, I was pretty sure I saw Lauren Boebert I did not go for a second look because I didn’t want to know. I lived through a time where women in my town were dressing and cutting their hair to look like Sarah Palin so it could have been that sort of thing too. I can’t speak to if they were having brain removals as part of their hero worship as well.
By far the most interesting thing I experienced was visiting the poor black cemetery east of the downtown. Named Sweet Olive, it was an eye opening experience for me. The grave sites were literally shoulder to shoulder. Just enough room to walk, heel to toe, between them. The sadness of that place was palatable. All the graves were in such rough condition. Many of the stones were not even stones. They were cast slabs of cement dates inscribed by writing with a nail. Like other places in the delta the majority of graves were above ground level, but unlike wealthier spots, these above ground vaults were placed without any foundations at all. All of them had sunk and shifted to the point many were at a 45 degree angle.
Grave robbers had been at work as well. What they were robbing from the bodies of people who must have died with so very little, I can’t imagine. Some of the vaults had been broken open and inside the casket had also been pried open and was sitting half submerged and rusting. Only the elements and passage of time prevented me from seeing a corpse.
Of course I had to make this stand out in my mind even more by leaving and driving just a few blocks north, across a neighborhood changing major roadway, to a wealthy white cemetery. The grass was plentiful and mowed. There were beautiful trees and pastural open spaces.
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| Look at all this space, mown grass and big beautiful trees. |
But then there was something I noticed in contrasting the two. Though the dates on the stones were from a similar period of time, early to mid 1900s, the wealthier cemetery had some silk flowers placed along some of the graves within the first ten yards of the road. Those flowers all matched and smacked of perpetual care. I only saw one grave looking like a caring human was involved in its decoration. But in the poor cemetery there were a significant number of graves that were being sort of maintained. Even if the flowers placed there were wilted or even browned, I felt they were expressions coming from someone’s heart. These people are still loved fifty or seventy five years later.
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| The one grave proving people still cared. |
I was really expecting to find the city to be a scaled down New Orleans. I was surprised when it wasn’t even close. None of the incredible architecture, none of the cute little neighborhoods. Instead there was downtown and around the capital building all being paid parking. Then there was south of the downtown, a very, very sketch area indeed where I was positive I would have trouble if I parked overnight. Then there were suburbs and big box retail where all the parking is on private property. I stayed two nights and then I rolled on.
My next disappointment came when I arrived at Teddy’s, the music venue I had come to the area to visit. When I pulled into the parking lot there were two cars. Hmmm, not good. I got inside and found Teddy, the owner sitting with one of those really angry faced black men. What is the male equivalent to RBF again? Anyway, he had a bad case of it. I had a beer and some good conversation with Teddy. Even got RBF to smile once. It was a fun night, just not what I was hoping for.
I got out of Louisiana and I stopped off in Vicksburg Mississippi to let some weather up north blow over. In the basement of a place called The Biscuit they had live music. A fun band I didn’t catch the name of. The highpoint was when they sang _What’s Up_ by 4 Non-blondes and it turned into an entire bar sing along. I love moments like that. There was a great coffeeshop named “61” for the highway it was on. It was there I heard people talk about the last two “snowstorms” people could remember. Those happened in 2017 and 1980. I also had a really good lunch at Key City Brewery where as part of my meal I had and excellent example of one of my favorite southern delicacies, the deep fried pickle. Vicksburg was a win!
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| My favorite southern fried food. The fried Pickle. |
That night winter even reached out to touch me. About half an inch of snow fell and the town literally shutdown. The main street where I was parked was open but at every intersection the side streets were closed with traffic cones. There were a few cars driving around. They were traveling about ten miles an hour and they all had their hazard flashers turned on. It was funny. No salt, no sand, no plows. Everyone was waiting for the sun to thaw the roads.
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| The view from the beautiful rooftop bar in Vicksburg |
By noon the sun was out, still most of the streets were blocked off by I managed to find a route to the highway and escaped towards Jackson. Those roads weren’t too bad. North of Jackson up to the Tennessee state line the roads were pretty bad. The worse driving on the least amount of snow I had ever experienced. But I made it. I spent the night parked close to the service door of a Ford dealership and got on the road again. It was just a slog from that point on. The roads were clear and dry though there were hundreds of vehicles in the ditch on a stretch around Cedar Rapids.
Now the burden is on my northern friends who all have to listen to me bitch about the cold.
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