Baton Rouge

 


So this morning I left my lovely host family in Olive Branch, Mississippi, who we'll call the Gourds, and headed for Louisiana.  

As a side note, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Gourds.  I knew as soon as I saw the .9 mm magazine on the counter that I was with kindred spirits, which was confirmed by my easily conversing with Mrs. Gourd and Brother Gourd for forty minutes that evening.  The food was good, the company was warm, and my heart was happy.  

I spent about three hours on the highways today before changing my GPS settings so it would only take me on the backroads.  The backroads turned out to be very nice at first, and then a little sad.  Highway 61 in MS is known as the Blues Highway, and I did have the blues much of the time.    

Look very closely and you'll see a train in the distance.


Then I hit Louisiana, where I was welcomed by a small sign telling me where I was, and then almost immediately, a much larger sign for Fred's State Line Casino and Truck Stop.  Did I stop?  You'll never know...

Yes, that does say something about Louisiana.


As I started getting closer to Baton Rouge, the air started getting a little hazier, possibly the migrated remains of Mardi Gras, or possibly from the giant chemical plant that I was driving by.  And after going through the trial of Baton Rouge traffic, I soon arrived at the home of Astrid and Hiccup (they picked their codenames themselves).




I've known Astrid my whole life, and though I've only met Hiccup once before, he's made a good impression.  They're incredibly kind, hospitable, and funny people, and their relationship makes me look forward to being married.  They were eager to entertain, so Hiccup was already hard at work on the jambalaya when I arrived (which was delicious).

After dinner we went out to the city, where we walked around a little bit before going to get hot chocolate and beignets.  I'll put some pictures up to end this post, but before I do, I want to tell a little story.

As we were driving through Baton Rouge, Astrid exclaimed, "Why is she hitting him?"  And looking out my window to the right, I saw a woman attacking a man on the corner.  I'm not sure what she was hitting him with, but it was bigger than a shoe and didn't look like a purse to me, but like some kind of stick.  He was bent over (still standing) and had his arms up, protecting his face.  Other people were standing around watching.  When the woman was finished, she strode away holding the thing she had been hitting him with.

I really don't want to remark on what might have happened, or who would have been to blame and why; I just want to observe that clearly something had gone wrong somewhere, and this was something very new to my eyes.  Not that I don't know that violence (and much bloodier violence) is really happening out there, but I've never witnessed it first-hand.  It's sobering, and thought-provoking.  I'm grateful that I saw it, unfortunate as it was, for those reasons.

Now, pictures.

The old capital building, which I'm told Mark Twain hated.
The other side of the capital building.

The front of the old train station.

The red stick (baton rouge).



The Mississippi River!




(I fell asleep just after writing this last night, so the time of posting won't match the writing.)

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