I get to travel a lot for my job. So I take my camera along for drive-by photography. It seems to me that the economy in Louisiana moves East and West along I-20 and I-10. And I live in Central Louisiana. One of the recurring themes in these photographs is decaying buildings. I don’t go out of the way to find them, I have to go out of my why to find new construction. One of the things I like to imagine is what these buildings were like in their prime, with people bustling in an out of them. What kind of clothes did they wear? How did they talk? What did they eat for lunch?
I imagine this was once a thriving little grocery store. The painting makes the pain worse for me: It is fake.I thought this man was interesting. He was shuffling material from one medical building to another across the street. The crack in my windshield somehow makes this picture better. The kind of obscure photograph that you imagine a special agent gets on those old detective radio shows.Cows have a special place in my heart.“These cars always reminded me of fighter planes.” That’s what the man driving one told me once at a gas station 20 years ago. His was green though.I wonder what kind of art is produced here. I like that old chair.Something about the colors on this building speaks to me.It was exhilarating being this close to a train.This is probably my favorite picture from this week. I love this time of the morning. I imagine this is a scene from a book that you can’t put down.I love these little lizards. Anything that eats bugs can hang around my house.Name the title of the book that this could be the dust jacket for. That’s the kind of thing I think about when I am composing a shot. Another good cover for a book about a haunted house.
I had to drive in the fog this week. I’m not talking about the kind of patchy fog you drive through while you’re crossing a bridge and then you are back in the sunshine. No. I drove for two and half hours through the kind of fog in which Edgar Allan Poe set all of his stories.
I had to drive in the fog this week. I’m not talking about the kind of patchy fog you drive through while you’re crossing a bridge and then you are back in the sunshine. No. I drove for two and a half hours through the kind of fog in which Edgar Allan Poe set all of his stories. At least that’s the thick fog that I imagine when I read him. So naturally, I decided to do some drive-by photography. I love a good foggy morning; it makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes. A damp haze like this gives me a craving for a good mystery. For whatever reason, fog pulls on my creative nature. I was feeling pretty inspired and artistic in this dreamy landscape until I passed a big chicken truck that had turned over in the ditch just outside of Natchitoches. That wreck halted my daydreaming and caused me to slow down and give my undivided attention to the road, at least for a little while. Then I began to wonder if any of those chickens made their escape into the mist. I hope they did. I love a good escape story as much as I love a foggy morning. Maybe they took up with the herons in the swamp.
As much as the fog tugs on my imagination, I’m glad that it isn’t foggy all of the time. It can be stressful when you cannot see very far ahead of you. I imagine that’s what happened to that poor truck driver. He probably had to take evasive action to avoid killing someone he only saw at the last split second. Who knows?
The wrecked truck reminded me of something I learned about as a teenager following the progress of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the newspaper; The Fog of War. Originally a German term, it describes how the chaos of battle brings confusion and situational uncertainty to soldiers—and even top brass—who often become disoriented and are unsure of what to do next. I have never been in combat, but I have been in a lot of fog, and I can appreciate the analogy. My cousin Mark got disoriented in the fog on the Coosa River once during a fishing tournament. He navigated his bass boat by GPS right up out of the river and into the woods. I think the problem with disorientation is you don’t know you are disoriented until it is too late.
The vicissitudes of life can put us in a fog. The beauty of that fog and the creativity that it inspires is hardly ever seen in the moment except by the rare longsighted optimists, or the visionaries who are gifts to humanity. The rest of us only see the beauty in hindsight-that is if we make it through. There have been a few-and thank God only a few-truly foggy patches in my life. Times when you can only see as far as the next step and you aren’t fully sure of that; when you have all but lost direction; and when the mist has nearly halted any progress you thought you were making. It may take a while, but eventually we can look back and see the beauty of those times. And, with a twinkle in our eye and compassion in our voice, even recall them with joy and hope, and tell about them to someone going through their own fog.
We are often tossed and driven on the restless seas of time
Somber skies and howling tempests oft succeed the bright sunshine
But in that land of perfect day, when the mist has rolled away
We will understand it better by and by
This fog the other day covered a large swath of Louisiana. A friend who was working on the other side of the State that morning was telling me how foggy it was for him too. I’m glad I wasn’t in it alone. Eventually the fog “burnt off” as he put it, and it turned out to be a bright sunny day. But I’m glad I got these pictures. I didn’t want you to think I was exaggerating.
“I hope this the one that got them free boudins today.” The man holding the door for me said as I stepped into the gas station. You say boudin just like it’s spelled boo-dan. I didn’t know him from Adam’s house cat, and I wasn’t planning to even go inside but the pump didn’t print my receipt, but he had me asking the same question: what about them free boudins? I like gas station food. I’m not talking about Funyons and a Grapico, or anything you get off the shelves-I like that too-I’m talking about the food that they have by the counter. That rotating pizza in that little glass display case always always makes me stop and have an internal dialogue: To eat or not to eat, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous hunger, or to take arms against the sea of cravings and and by opposing end them…To eat, perchance to snack-ay there’s the rub…
Here is the man finding out that this was not the day for free boudins.
One of the reasons I started cycling is I got into the habit of getting a pork tenderloin biscuit at the gas station on the way to work.
I’m used to gas station pizza, biscuits, and the crockpot full of boiled peanuts, but since I have relocated to Louisiana I realize that many people here take gas station food seriously. They even have jargon for it: “Hotbox.” Maybe that’s what it is called everywhere, but I also know another definition for that term.
Admittedly, the gas station food I grew up around often tasted a little like compromise with an aftertaste of regret. That is not the case in the Central Louisiana region. I will not go so far as to say it is healthy, but how often do healthy and good really coexist, especially in the context of food? We could probably square up with one another on deciding whether the food is good-there is no accounting for taste- but I think would all have to agree that the food is consistently hot, which is more than I can say about many fast food restaurants.
My brother has lived in Louisiana so long that he prefers the gas station fried chicken over Popeye’s and KFC. I’m not sure if he has gone native enough to believe that it is better than Cane’s or Chick-Fil-A, but we don’t have a Cane’s or a Chick-Fil-A within 30 minutes of where we live. I tried that gas station chicken the other day for the first time-Krispy Krunchy Chicken-and it is hard to argue with how good it is. They are in gas stations all around this area.
Did you know that Louisiana is in the Diabetes Belt?
“I had one of the best fried pork chops I’ve ever had in my life the other day at a gas station in the ghetto in Delhi.”-Joe Bowen
I’m not really sure if we’re supposed to say ghetto in 2024, but the next time I’m in Delhi I’ll look for that gas station.
These Hotboxes have caused me to ask some serious questions about fast food: Why should I pay a premium for cold food and poor service? I don’t mind waiting on hot fries, but why would I pay to wait for cold fries? Most of the gas stations will whip you up a fresh batch of fries, boudin balls, chicken, or whatever you want if you don’t mind waiting. I think the biggest question is whether fast food is worth the money in today’s economy. That is a serious question when you are feeding a family of five.
I understand that people don’t make Central Louisiana a vacation destination. But the next time you are “passing through”, don’t be afraid to try some gas station food. It’s going to be a lot better than you think.
Look at that country fried steak!Those little meat pies are really good.
Bumper stickers are a mystery to me. You would think that you could tell a lot about about a person by what kind of bumper stickers they have, but really you can only tell that they are bumper sticker people. And that is the mystery for me: is this bumper sticker accurate? I’ve always thought it would be funny to put bumper stickers on the vehicles of unsuspecting Wal-Mart shoppers at random. But I cannot bring myself to act upon these low juvenile thoughts. Although it does prove the point that a sticker does not necessarily define an individual. It is simply a label that has been applied by the driver. Or perhaps by hooligans in the Wal-Mart parking lot. You can label a jar of peanut butter chicken noodle soup or hominy but it will just be mislabeled peanut butter.
The label that I am most suspicious of is Salt Life. Especially if I see it on a car a long way from the beach. I have a hard time reconciling Salt Life bumper stickers and Tennessee license plates. How much of the Salt Life can this person really be living? People that are indeed living the Salt Life are probably on boats-or golf carts- and certainly not sitting in rush hour traffic seven hours from the coast. But we as people feel like that the bigger the sticker the more true it is. You’ll see a whole back window of a truck letting everyone know that the driver of this Silverado in Fort Payne, AL is living the Salt Life.
When I see a vehicle with a Salt Life sticker I usually make up a story for that driver. And then I imagine that story as a bumper sticker in place of Salt Life.
I went to the beach on vacation in 2016 and we chartered a fishing boat and I caught the biggest fish in my life and I really enjoyed my trip.
I go to Gulf Shores every year for this conference at work and I think it would be cool to live there.
I go fishing every year in Pensacola with my cousinsand that is the only real fun thing that I dosince my divorce.
I went to Panama City for my Senior Trip last year.
I am thinking about launching my own bumper sticker enterprise: Realist Bumper Stickers. Among other things we will offer a more accurate alternative to Salt Life. It is going to say: I Wish I Lived On The Coast. Alas, they probably wouldn’t sell. Bumper stickers are not the media of facts, but of ideals. We put them on our cars to in an effort to convince ourselves that things are not as they are but as they could be.
Mostly From Memory 