From the Editor

All about green

The Man at 5-1-1

As this is written, State Highway 820 near Ruston is closed temporarily because of construction. I know that because the man at 5-1-1 told me so.I first discovered 5-1-1 totally by accident. Driving along the somewhat-monotonous stretch of Interstate 10 between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, I...

Women and Rings

What surprises me is that I actually have two stories on the subject of women fighting each other in Avoyelles Parish. The first is from my youth when, so the family story goes, an uncle who was a justice of the peace was called one Saturday to “The Lane” – a side road known as the home of rough...

From the Editor

In search of the “Good Ole Boys”

In the land of the cochon de lait

A sign on the edge of the fairgrounds announces that Mansura is La Capitale de Cochon de Lait. That claim has remained unchallenged by other capitals including London, Moscow, Rome or Paris. Nor is it questioned by El Mansura, Egypt – the town to which Napoleonic solders who had received land...

How crawfish got famous

After the waters began to recede from the great flood of 1927, some refugees who had spent time at a Red Cross camp began to return to their homes in rural central Louisiana. What they saw was bleak. Water lines reached the ceiling of their damped, mildewed homes. The flood had overturned jars of...

Highway 1 – 25 years later

Louisiana’s Lost Season

Football in Louisiana was just not the same in 2005. Games were played, bands performed, cheerleaders did their acrobatics and occasionally the crowd would roar. Nevertheless, the season must have been what it was like when boys tried to play soccer on the streets of Berlin right after the war....

"This, too"

Finally, the future. For too many Louisianians, over too many days, the future stalled. Too many hours, filled with too much uncertainty, was too much to take. “This, too, shall pass.” Who first said that? Was it Jesus? Buddha? Moses? Whoever it was didn’t say how long. A week? A...

Tolls of War

by ERROL LABORDE