South Louisiana Tour
by J. Burton LeBlanc
We left Baton Rouge on Christmas morning, destined for Fairhope, Alabama. We encountered heavy rain the entire trip, mixed with some sleet as we passed through Alabama.
Fairhope is a distinctive town. It was founded in the late eighteen hundreds by an evangelical sect from Iowa. They purchased this charming tract of land on the eastern side of Mobile Bay. Its soil is the reddest clay you ever saw. The western side of Mobile Bay, where Mobile is located, seems to be atop loamy, alluvial type soils. The eastern side of the Bay is an entirely different geological phenomenon. It is rather hilly and composed of the red clay soils mentioned.
The town of Fairhope itself is one of the neatest towns in the United States, both literally and figuratively. Most of the land, including the attractive downtown, is owned by the Fairhope “single tax” corporation, which means that there is no other tax, such as a sales tax, or property tax other than the rentals paid to the corporation. Even most of the homes are built on this leased land. There are some parcels of individually owned land.
The town provides an insight into what could be done in a properly planned community. Most towns in the United States are a hodgepodge of buildings of various types and descriptions. The fundamental reaction to it is blah! Not only is the land different, but even the air is better than west of the Bay. The edge of the pollen belt extending from Louisiana runs down the center of Mobile Bay. As one leaves Mobile one enters the tunnel built beneath the Mobile River on the western edge of the Bay.
I was once visited by a gentleman who took me to supper at Bob & Jakes Restaurant in Baton Rouge. The routing and construction of Interstate Highway Ten was being planned. One question was whether at the Baton Rouge crossing of the Mississippi River, there should be a bridge or a tunnel. For some reason, this gentleman thought that I might have some influence on the powers that be, in regard to that matter. He told me that he used to go into the banks in Mobile and their officers would say, “There is that crazy fellow who wants to build a tunnel under the Mobile River.
He said he built it, and the cheap tolls charged on it paid for rebuilding the streets of Mobile sevenfold. He said he had built more tunnels than any other person in history.
Christmas night Jay and I went to Judge Roy Beans. It looked like a run down old barn. It was in the adjacent town of Montrose. I am sure it could not have existed in Fairhope. It was a tradition that many people would show up on Christmas night at this place, including the college students who had returned home from various universities. It was a rather boisterous gathering and a band was due to play, but because one of the guitar players had been delayed, their performance was postponed and we left before we were able to assess the quality of their music.
The next morning we headed for New Orleans and the sun shining in my eyes was a token of the beautiful weather all around, in stark contrast to that of the preceding day. We arrived in New Orleans about two p.m. and met Jesse at his Greenhouse board and breakfast on Magazine Street.
Outside of the Vieux Carre’ or French Quarter, the most interesting part of New Orleans is the Garden District and Magazine Street. Magazine Street is a long street built on a ridge, formed by overflow from the Mississippi River, which means that it is three or four feet higher than the surrounding land. The Street is dotted with interesting shops, including art galleries, antique galleries, restaurants etc.
Jesse, Jacqueline, Jay and I, then went to an Italian restaurant on Magazine Street where we had a repast in pleasant surroundings. We did some maneuvering around Seventh and Eight Streets of the Garden District where probably the most interesting houses in New Orleans are located. Many of them were built in the eighteen hundreds.
We decided to take the bridge across the Mississippi to the west side and took Highway Ninety going towards Lafayette. One crosses the Mississippi River at New Orleans on the high bridge which provides a good view of the port with many ocean going ships and river barges lining its banks. Gretna is the town on the west bank of the River, opposite New Orleans. It was built at a later date than New Orleans and therefore has less interesting buildings and streets.
Leaving Gretna, one crosses the Intracoastal Canal and can see where it merges into the River. It extends from western Texas, across Florida and up the east coast of the United States providing a peaceful waterborne setting for tugs and barges between those points.
One passes through Boute, pronounced Boutee, and then Paaradis, pronounced correctly Paradee, which is no Paradise. Des Allemands, is of course where the Germans settled, and from it one catches vistas of Lac Des Allemands, a fresh water lake surrounded by marshes, which is a fishing haven, and has decorated hospitality boats for tourists. Beneath it lie thick oil deposits.
One crosses Bayou Lafourche near Raceland. It was indeed a fork or arm of the River, as it name suggests at one time, being one of the historic channels of the Mississippi. and has some historic houses alongside it. It is now a sleepy bayou permitted to exist by diversion of a piddling amount of water from the Mississippi. One of the attractive towns along it is called Golden Meadow.
Leaving the Parish of Lafourche one enters the Parish of Terrebonne, which, of course, means “good land”. This name obviously refers to the northern part of the Parish, where many fields extend before one to the horizon, for the southern part of this large Parish is coastal with marshes, oyster beds, duck blinds, and oil rigs prevalent.
There is nothing like a Louisiana swamp. We pass through the Chacahoula swamp, which is one of the large ones. It is named after the Chacahoula tribe of Indians. The highway is now elevated through the entire swamp. My family, who had been in the road construction business, had built one of the first roads through the swamp. It was ground level so was probably subject to frequent floods.
The lush growth in a Louisiana swamp is indescribable. You have to see it to believe it. The most impressive objects are the cypress trees which are very graceful in their structure with their reddish bark, exquisitely bent branches, and delicately fine leaves. The Louisiana Red Cypress, like many other natural riches of Louisiana has almost been decimated. They can grow to great height, grow very slowly, so that in some swamps, such as the St. Gabriel swamp, though tall they will not have a cone on top, which has been swept away by some past hurricane. They can be hundreds of years old.
I have figured out that the Louisiana Red Cypress requires a certain amount. perhaps infinitesimal, of salt water in order to develop into the quality of the Louisiana Red Cypress or the Florida Tidewater Cypress. I have not read this anywhere or been told it by anyone, but am convinced that it is a fact. In the St. Gabriel Swamp, with which I am very familiar, water under proper conditions of a prevalent south wind, would back up from Lake Ponchartrain and Lake Maurepas, up the Amite River, up Bayou Braud into the St. Gabriel Swamp. Its cypress was as red as it gets, which is indicative of the best quality wood. The whiter cypress from North Louisiana, all found in entirely fresh water is not as lasting as the red cypress.
Along Bayou Lafourche, particularly during the Depression, one would rarely see painted houses, for there was no need to paint them. Only after the nouveaux riche obtained some oil income would they paint their houses to make them more attractive. The wood produced from the Red Cypress will not rot, is resistant to insects, and yet being a hardwood, is a soft one and easy to work.
The arrival of industry in Louisiana, particularly the petrochemical industry along the Mississippi River, to which I, for better or worse, made some contribution, saw the construction of huge chemical plants whose function seemed as much to churn out dollars for the stockholders, the largest of which resided in the East. The result, although undoubtedly contributing to the economic income stream of many Louisianians has also left in its wake an environmental nightmare which has been swept under the rug to manifest itself at a later date.
Part of the history of Louisiana revolves around the fact that its great store of natural resources has been largely plundered. First it was the great virgin stands of timber, particularly Louisiana red cypress, that timber companies financed by owners from Michigan and other places, eradicated that timber. Then there were the great deposits of oil and gas, which have been exploited without regard to the detriment to the land and the natural environment.
Then, the coup de grace, which was the construction of refineries and petrochemical facilities which in addition to pouring harmful wastes into the surrounding countryside, actually severely affected the fresh water of its rivers both above and underground.
Having traversed from the Mississippi River at New Orleans to the Achafalaya at Morgan City, one has crossed four of the ancient courses of the Mississippi. Rivers, on their way from the mountains or highlands to the sea, build up alluvion along their banks, which in itself causes the river to change its direction. The river is always seeking the shortest route to the ocean and sometimes a “crevasse”, that word dreaded by the settlers along the River, would occur, sweeping through a bank of the river to its newly adopted course. The ancient beds of the river, because they left numerous sand deposits in their former course, constitute fertile sources for oil fields which are strung along the path of the ancient rivers.
One crosses the Atchafalaya River at Morgan City. The Atchafalaya is the westernmost of the various channels used to move the waters of the upper Mississippi to the Gulf. Historically there were other channels used between the presently located Atchafalaya and Mississippi. Beneath these different channels, as would be expected, lie some prolific oil fields.
The Atchafalaya is swifter than the Mississippi and since it is a shorter course to the Gulf than that of the existing course of the Mississippi, that River would naturally take the shorter course, which would leave Baton Rouge and New Orleans and many other towns along the River, dry and devastated. As a consequence the Federal Government spends a large sum of money annually, maintaining a lock structure where the Atchafalaya forks off from the Mississippi. The flow of water is controlled by this structure. Some experts predict that this defiance of nature will ultimately prove futile.
Morgan City is the base for the offshore oil business in the Gulf of Mexico. Its waters teem with supply ships and barges. Near them the land areas are crowded with mini industries of various types.
Shortly after leaving Morgan City and turning in a more northerly direction to the northwestern part of the compass, one enters the lush Parish of St.Mary. Although it has coastal frontage with the usual marshes, oyster beds, and oil fields, the northern part of the Parish is composed of some of the finest agricultural land there is, being alluvial deposits that have migrated from Illinois, Missouri and other places.
After Morgan City, one passes the town of Patterson where the airport has a memorial to Wedell and Williams two pioneer aviators who won many air races before numerous spectators in New Orleans and other cities. Franklin is the civic and business center of the Parish. There lives Foster who recently served two terms as Governor and as a principal stockholder in the St. Mary Land Company received over a million dollars a year in oil royalties. His father had also been Governor.
Terrebonne and St/ Mary are two Parishes of Louisiana which evidence large plantations or fields devoted to agriculture. As demonstrated in this trip there is a transition occurring in Louisiana from that of a primarily agricultural State to a primarily industrial one. The history of the cultivation of sugar cane in Louisiana is closely entwined with its economic history, which in turn, molded its social setting.
The principal crops grown in south Louisiana were rice and sugar cane. Some cotton was grown in north Louisiana, but none in the southern part. It may have been that the soil was too moist but the principal reason was probably that there was less profitability in it. Both rice and sugar cane required considerable investment and nurturing of the crops in order to derive a profit.
In the case of rice, after planting which did not require planting in rows for the seeds could be spread randomly, the growing rice had to develop under water, which meant that along the River large pumps were installed on the batture and the fresh River water was pumped into a “borrow pit” which was the name given to the ponds that were formed when the levees were constructed and earth borrowed from the batture to build them.
From the “borrow pit” the water was siphoned over the levee in large siphons or pipes. There was usually a hand pump affixed the apex of the siphon on top of the levee. After the hand pump would start the flow the water would siphon itself over the levee into the “flume ditch”. From there it was channeled into the rice field where it would remain until near harvesting time.
Rice depleted the soil of ingredients essential to its growth and could only be grown at the same location for three years. After that it was necessary to allow the land to fallow for several years. For that reason, my grandfather who was one of the largest planters of sugar cane and rice along the River would in addition to using the plantations that he owned would lease land up and down the River. For example, when he leased Ben Hur plantation, now near and owned by Louisiana State University, he would move his entire family there during the growing season.
Sugar cane also required considerable investment. It was cultivated in rows and harvested by hand. One planting would result in three annual crops, bursting from the soil each spring on its own. This would contrast with Cuba where the cane will sprout without replanting for ten or more years.
The cane was chopped of by many, as they were called, “colored folks” with huge sharpened cane knives, and then hauled in big wheeled carts pulled by mules under the guidance of the driver, who rode atop the cart, to the “sugar house”. The “sugar house” was a big sugar mill, which during harvesting in the fall, would grind the sugar cane day and night, and extract from it the syrup, some of which was sold “as is” for consumption, but the bulk of which was retransported to a more specialized mill where the syrup was transposed into sugar.
One of the great enjoyments of boyhood was to go to the sugar house at night when all of the lights in it were blazing, and watch the cane being dumped from the carts onto the giant conveyor that brought it into the sugar house where it was ground by various drums and treated in various tanks and boilers. The tang of fall in the air and the sweet smell of the sugar cane and syrup permeated the atmosphere as did the pleasant noises of the busy machinery.
My grandfather’s sugar house was such a busy place that on the official United States maps the location on the Yazoo and Mississippi Railroad that passed by was designated LeBlanc. He shipped so much that he and all of his family were provided free passes by the Railroad which they used to frequently visit New Orleans.
To witness the transformation of Louisiana from a primarily agricultural State to a primarily industrial one, is in many ways, to witness a decline, not necessarily in dollar income, but in life style. The change of Louisiana from an agricultural State to one that is recognized more as a producer of oil and gas and its products, has been a mixed blessing. I have contributed to it a tid bit, for better or worse.
My good friend, DeLesseps (named after the builder of the Suez Canal) “Chep” Morrison, told me, how he had gone to Brazil and talked with Henry Kaiser who was visiting there at the time. Chep had heard that Kaiser was contemplating building some aluminum reduction plants, plants which convert the bauxite into aluminum. They consume an enormous amount of electricity and Kaiser was contemplating building them in Oregon or Washington and using the generative power of the Columbia River.
Chep told me that he had talked Kaiser into building them in Louisiana and using natural gas. Kaiser did build the two plants, the first at Chalmette, below New Orleans, near the famous battlefield, and the second at Grammercy, midway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I realized the significance of this since if an aluminum reduction plant was flooded it would have to be rebuilt from scratch. This move underlined Kaiser’s confidence of the ability of the United States Corps of Engineers to prevent a disastrous flood on the lower Mississippi. As the first installations exhibiting such confidence this would lead to an invasion of other industries to locate there. This started a program which led to my selling industrial sites along the River to a large number of industries.
The agricultural business in Louisiana has always been subsidized. Aside from the fact that the “planters” in Louisiana had considerable political clout, it was also essential in ensuring that a good part of our agricultural products were home grown.
Without the subsidies the planters in Louisiana could not have competed with their counterparts in Cuba and Brazil. Even when soybeans were added to the crops grown in substantial quantities in Louisiana, the competition by the Brazilian growers has hovered over the situation. The Congress has always granted subsidies, without which the Midwestern farmers could not have existed.
But as the rich land of plantations and farms in Louisiana is shifted from an agricultural use to home and industrial sites, which is clearly visible on a trip like this, one wonders what impact the new uses of the terrain will have on the society of Louisiana as a whole, and on the individual lives of its citizens as they live under a contrastingly different drumbeat.
As one leaves St. Mary Parish one passes through Jenarette to Iberia Parish. There do not seem to be many Spanish settlers there, although Spanish is probably more widely spoken in Louisiana now than French due to the influx of Cubans, Nicaraguans and other Latin Americans.
We pass the Acadian Regional Airport. It is a large airport which was a former Naval Air Station. A gentleman from Washington had come into my office and said the government was looking for a site on which to build a Naval air station in South Louisiana. He probably came to see because of my knowledge of River properties and other properties in the region. I suggested to him that he go and look in the New Iberia area, that the terrain there was much more suitable for the purpose than the properties in our area. I believe that the upshot of it was the selection of the site near New Iberia.
New Iberia brought to mind another incident which I passed on to Jacqueline. My father had walked into the lobby of the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans as was his wont. He was approached by a very attractive young lady who grabbed him and kissed him. Then she backed off and said, “I thought you were Joe Daigre!” My father said, “Kiss me again, that’s my cousin.” The young lady was Joe Daigre’s daughter in law. Joe Daigre had been elected mayor of New Iberia many times, as was also his son Allen. My father had a physical resemblance to Joe.
There is much more evidence of industry in Iberia than there was in St. Mary Parish. One passes countless industrial and warehouse type sites, many geared to the service of the oil industry, particularly offshore, including helicopter and drilling businesses. Lafayette is the regional hub with a university, some hotels, restaurants and many offices. We went around it, having visited it many times.
In the sojourn from New Orleans to Lafayette one encounters an almost complete panorama of the Louisiana scene. One has visited the largest and most historic city, the rivers, the marshes, the swamps and the finest tillable land, excellent airports, ocean going ships, and river and offshore tugs and barges, and numerous structures and warehouses of the mushrooming industrial base.
As we were bypassing Lafayette Jay asked whether I wanted to take the scenic route home. Since the route through Breaux Bridge is no longer than the prosaic one on Interstate Ten, of course, the response was in the affirmative.
At Breaux Bridge one steps back in history. The natives will not surrender. It is a Cajun island in an encroaching Anglo-Saxon sea. The town is small but doesn’t change. The houses are old and modest.
It was mandatory that we stop in at La Poussiere. The old and rather large structure contains a large wood dance floor with a raised dias at the end from which a true Cajun band was playing. There were the usual instrumentalists including a fiddler and a washboard player. The music was loud but good. There would be a fast piece followed by a waltz. The floor was crowded with dancers who moved in a giant counter clockwise circle. There were a few young dancers but the bulk of them were of retirement age or close to it. They all seemed to be in heaven.
They would go to Mass on Sunday and repair to La Poussiere where they would dance the afternoon and part of the night away. When I went to the restroom, two of the natives were engaged in a lively conversation. Their speech was priceless, not only from their modes of expression, but also from their accents which was true Cajun. Cajun, which is a corruption of Acadian, French is a unique patois which is disappearing as the descendants of its practitioners go to college or are employed in English speaking industries .
Cajun music is also distinctive and special. It is a lyrical type music that probably evolved from the French country music to the Acadian and then into a Louisiana version. It is in general upbeat and is a response to the sufferings endured by the Acadians who were forced to migrate to Louisiana by their British conquerors. It is not as interesting as Jazz which had its original development in Louisiana from where it spread upriver to Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago, which also emerged from the creative spirit of a subjugated people. Whereas Cajun music derives much of its impact from its repetition of tunes well known to the listeners, Jazz is never the same. Its great players never look at sheet music, and intellectually improvise various chords and harmonious notes. It is very stimulating to an appreciative audience.
There were good jazz players in some of the towns along the River above New Orleans. Usually they would play for community dances. I remember the astonishment I encountered upon my first experience on Cape Cod when there was an audience that simply sat and listened. This, of course, has now become a national, as well as international approach to the music as the subtleties of jazz have come to be recognized and its unique contribution as an outlet of man’s creative spirit has come to be appreciated.
One of the attractions of Breaux Bridge, is the prevalence of French although of the Cajun variety. There are probably more residents of Louisiana now that speak Spanish than speak French. Proper French would be encountered mostly in New Orleans, where many of those who spoke it had ancestors that had come directly from France and not from Nova Scotia as had the bulk of the French populace in Southwest Louisiana.
One of the many shortcomings of those who have governed Louisiana was their failure to pursue the bilingual history of Louisiana. The schools and colleges have emphasized “English only”. Between that and the fact that the new industrial base was also “English only”, the use of the French language in Louisiana has almost disappeared.
Breaux Bridge was a fitting final fling at this rapid but recapturing tour of South Louisiana. From there we rode home on the elevated Interstate Ten as it crossed the giant Atchafalaya swamp.