Mississippi River 2021

Mississippi Cruise Day 6 – Baton Rouge and on to Natchez

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Ever wonder where the name Baton Rouge came from? Even the most casual student of French can figure out Baton = Batton as in stick and Rouge = Red as in the River Rouge in Detroit that ran red with Henry Ford’s effluents. The French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville came to the present site of Baton Rouge in 1699 and discovered a red stick stuck in the ground. He determined that the stick delineated the boundary between the hunting grounds of two Indian tribes. The Indians would hang their bleeding game on the pole, hence its red color.

I learned this on my walking tour this morning with Emily and two other passengers as we walked around Baton Rouge from one end to the other – 2.5 miles in 2.5 hours. Meanwhile, Judy and Sharon did a bus tour around the city and visited the museum at the Capitol building. Carolyn, Rolande and Steve visited the Rosedown Plantation in St. Francisville. It features one of the few and largest privately maintained formal gardens of the 19th century.

The Old Capitol Building came into being when Louisiana moved its capitol from New Orleans to Baton Rouge in 1847. It seems elected politicians went to New Orleans not to transact the peoples’ business as much as to transact their own private business deals. They also fell to the allure of the French Quarter and the various forms of dalliance available there. A law was passed that the capitol had to be more than 60 miles distant from New Orleans. Baton Rouge, at 61 miles, eventually won out.

The building was designed to look like a castle (see the pictures). Mark Twain thought it looked pretentious. Emily doesn’t think it’s all that bad; I come down on MT’s side.

The Union army used it as a headquarters, prison and garrison. Some genius decided to place the kitchen in the basement. The building burned twice, gutting the interior, and leaving it vacant until after the war. It was then restored by another genius who decided to place wrought iron battlements on the roof. The structure couldn’t hold the weight, the place began to leak, and the iron was removed. The spiral staircase and stained-glass dome were retained. We entered the Old Capitol later in the tour and you can see pictures of both. Later in our walk we got to see the interior.

That brings us to Huey Long, governor from 1928 until 1932 and Senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. During his term as governor he, among many other things, was instrumental in the construction of both the new State House and the new Governor’s Mansion.

The new State House took 14 months to build and, patterned after Wisconsin’s capitol, it is the tallest state capitol in the U.S. when Arkansas threatened to build a taller one, Long added more to his to keep it tallest.

Long approached the legislature to build him a new governor’s mansion. They refused his request. So, in the dark of night, Long marched prisoners from the nearby penitentiary down the street to the old mansion and had them completely dismantle the building and throw the furniture in the Mississippi. By morning nothing remained but a vacant lot. Huey returned to the legislature and said, “See here. The constitution says the legislature must provide the governor with suitable living quarters. There is nothing but an empty lot where the governor’s mansion should be. Build me one!” So they did.

In the interim, Long established a suite of rooms in a downtown hotel to serve as his residence. To make his comings and goings secret he had constructed a tunnel linking the hotel, now a Hilton, to the Old Capitol building. He also had constructed a tunnel across the street to another hotel. Some think that tunnel provided easy access to his lady friends living there.

I always thought of Huey Long as a typical Southern politician a la Strom Thurmond. But in fact Long was an ultra-progressive. He opposed Roosevelt’s New Deal because it wasn’t progressive enough. He proposed the Share Our Wealthprogram in 1934. To stimulate the economy, he advocated massive federal spending, a wealth tax, and wealth redistribution.He was a virulent opponent of Standard Oil, claiming it dictated American foreign policy. And, according to Emily, he wasn’t a strong supporter of Jim Crow policies. He advocated separate but equal solutions to racial inequality.

Long was elected to the Senate in 1932 but rather than turning the governorship over to his political rival, the lieutenant governor, deferred his swearing in to the Senate and remained governor until someone more to his liking won election to the governor’s post. Long’s election to the Senate was, according to Wikipedia, brought into question. “There were accusations of voter fraud against Long; voting records showed people voting in alphabetical order, among them celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth.”

On September 8, 1935 Huey Long was assassinated by Carl Weiss, the son-in-law of Judge Benjamin Pavy. Long had returned to the Louisiana capitol and even though he had no official capacity in State government, he orchestrated efforts to gerrymander Pavy out of office. When the gerrymandering bill passed, Weiss approached Long in the hallway of the capitol building and shot him. Long ran from the building, hailed a cab to take him to a nearby hospital where he subsequently died of his wounds.

Spanish Town is a section of town originally occupied by people from the Spanish Canary Islands who came to Baton Rouge shortly after the Louisiana Purchase around 1805. Emily claims Canary Island blood. Spanish Town houses were largely destroyed during the Civil War. Today it is the host of Baton Rouge’s biggest Mardi Gras parade. The pink flamingo is Spanish Town’s mascot

Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers is a Baton Rouge success story. Two guys submitted a business plan for chicken fingers made from the most tender part of the chicken breast to a professor at Louisiana State University. The plan received a C- grade. Today the chain has 559 stores and $1.5 billion of revenue. When I taught business classes I graded business plans on the quality of the analysis, not on my guess as to whether or not the business idea was sound.

Here’s what Judy had to say about her trip with Sharon on the Baton Rouge City Experience bus tour.    We drove by the Old Governors Mansion and through several neighborhoods. There were many beautiful parks around the city with lakes that give the city a nice green feel.

We then drove to the New State Capital building.  I enjoy visiting as many capitals building as I can, so Sharon took pictures of me in front of the Louisiana Capitol building. We were not able to go inside. 

We then visited the Capital Park Museum which gave us Louisiana history including the Louisiana Purchase, the Acadian, Creole, and Cajun peoples and Mardi Gras.   There was a large section on the history of music which we both really enjoyed.   We learned more about Huey Long. There is a large statue of him facing the State Capitol building where he was assassinated. 

We then drove around the LSU campus.  There are huge parking lots as I think he said 90% of the students drive to the school.  Freshman are required to live on campus, but I suspect they do not live there after that.  The Tiger is their mascot and we got out to see the real tiger that is in a fenced in area.  He was not visible today.  A Huey Long story says that the federal government was giving out money to build living quarters for students and Huey wanted to enlarge their stadium, so he got the money and built the dorm attached to the stadium and used the leftover to expand the stadium.  A very ingenious person.

We cast off from Baton Rouge at about 12:30 PM and are fighting our way upstream toward Natchez, watching refineries, barge flotillas and the bayous pass by. Judy, Rolande, Sharon and Dave played cards on the Deck 4 stern veranda. A wine party in Dave and Ro’s cabin, dinner and a show recapping 80 years of Broadway musicals and we’re all ready for bed.

Mississippi Cruise Day 5 – Plantations & War

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Today we divided and conquered. Dave, Ro and I went walking down the levee to the USS Kidd while the others visited the Houmas House Plantation. In the afternoon Judy, Carolyn, Steve, Sharon and I went to the Oak Alley plantation. Dave and Roland relaxed aboard ship. It was a beautiful, sunny day hitting a high of 75 – perfect for outside activities.

The plantations are half-way back to New Orleans – an hour’s drive each way from our berth in Baton Rouge. Both were built using two key assets: sugar cane and slavery. The homes are very fine examples of antebellum architecture and furnishings, and the grounds include formal gardens and ponds. Both feature majestic 300-year-old live oak alleys leading to the houses.

The tour at Oak Alley, in particular, focused on the role of slavery in the antebellum period of roughly 1830 through the Civil War. Tulane University built slave quarters on their original sites at Oak Alley and equipped them with period fixtures. Informative signs told the stories of slaves, giving their names, family situations and plantation duties. The information is presented in a matter-of-fact way without passing moral judgement. It isn’t a great leap, however, for us to appreciate what a terrible, dehumanizing practice slavery was.

Our tour guide on the bus to and from Oak Alley, Harry, was quite a character. He’s worked in the oil industry and delt in antiques and rides on Mardi Gras floats, throwing swimming noodles to the kids rather than beads. 

He told us a lot about the sugar business too. Originally, sugar cane was grown to produce rum, which of course played a significant role in the slavery trade. When the refining process was invented sugar became a sweetener. It’s considered a high-risk/high-reward business – lots of ways the crop can fail but big rewards when the crop succeeds. Slave labor was the engine behind the industry in the antebellum period. The life expectancy of a sugar field worker was six to eight years. If the sharp edges of the cane stalks didn’t get you the bugs and snakes in the fields did. 

On and on he went, including stories about his mom, dad and stepdad. (Mom promised his stepdad she’d bury him at sea. When he died she flushed his ashes down the toilet. “He’ll get to the ocean eventually,” she decided)

To get to the USS Kidd required walking up a ramp to the top of the levee – a good thirty or more feet up. Dave hitched a ride in a golf cart to save his back. From there it was a level walk of a quarter mile or so to the USS Kidd Museum and the ship, following a very nice bike and hiking trail.

The ship, a Fletcher-class destroyer, is named after Rear Admiral Kidd who went down with the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. It was built in 1942 and served in WWII and Korea. It was hit by a kamikaze at Okinawa in 1945 with the loss of 38 lives.

The overriding impression I had from touring the ship was the incredibly tight quarters in which the men – typically 16 to 24 years of age – lived. Every inch of space was utilized. Sleeping quarters consisted of a sea of cots hung three high with virtually no space between them. The bathroom facilities – the “head” – made the Onawa Halfway House two holer look like the epitome of privacy.

The young lady taking tickets at the ship graduated last May from LSU with a degree in history. She’d like to become an attorney and become a military JAG officer. She needs to convince her dad, who’s all over her case to get a real job – that she should take the LSAT a third time to make the cut for law school. A nice gal who I hope finds a way to fulfill her dreams.

This evening a Cajun band, a man and woman playing accordion, violin and guitar, entertained us with Cajun and country and western music. They sang the Cajun tunes in French. Judy and I were struck by the similarity of their music with music we’ve heard in Nova Scotia. That’s not surprising, I suppose, since Cajuns (Acadians) left Nova Scotia to escape the British in the late 18th century and ended up in Louisiana. 

Please don’t worry about us: we’re all healthy and taking nourishment, maybe more nourishment that we ought but we’re all having a great time nonetheless.

Mississippi Cruise Day 4 – On Board the Jazz

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Today was a transition day: from solo exploring New Orleans, where each hour presented a what-where-how decision, to falling into the lap of American Cruise Line where every minute of every day is planned. The only question of any import is “how much will we eat this time?”

My morning started with a before-breakfast walk to do the one thing we hadn’t done in three days in New Orleans: view the Mississippi River. So about 7:30 AM (taking advantage of the fallback bonus of the time change), I walked down St. Charles Street, which became Royal Street after crossing Canal and entering the French Quarter, to St Louis Street to see Antoine’s Restaurant. Royal Street had been recently hosed down to remove the dredges left by partiers the night before. From there I walked a few blocks to Woldenberg Park and then up the river to the Riverwalk Outlet Mall and the beginnings of the Port of New Orleans docks. Then it was a 10-minute walk up Poydras Street to the Intercontinental. It was a beautiful clear and crisp morning – a great time of day to see the Quarter without the throngs..

We spent the rest of the morning eating breakfast in the hotel, taking a Covid test and then two-hours of down time before leaving for the ship a little after 11. Just enough time for a little email work and a nice morning snooze. A 20-minute bus ride to the docks and we were on board and ready for lunch by noon.

They gave us a briefing on what to expect during the week, especially the land tours. The ship lecturer told us about the Mississippi and what we would see on our journey. He started explaining the difference between port and starboard and worked up from there. He gave some graphic examples of how the level of the river can change. We are at a relative low water level now; in the Spring the water level can be tens of feet higher. The other feature of the river at this point is the industry on shore and the barge traffic on the river. Flotillas of 20 and more barges, pushed by a single motor craft, are common.

And indeed, the real attraction of this afternoon was watching the river traffic and the huge chemical and refinery facilities on shore. The Mississippi is navigable by ocean-going vesicles as far as Baton Rouge and we saw those ships as well as lots of barge traffic.

All seven of us met around 4:30 on the open deck area next door to our staterooms. We chatted for an hour, got cocktails and wine at 5:30 and reported for evening mess at 6:00. The dining room has four tables for eight people, so we had a fun time socializing, talking about our kids and grandkids and repeating oft-told stories about each other.

Tomorrow is a full day of touring with frequent caloric injections of pretty good grub to keep us going.

Mississippi Cruise Day 3 – Jacki

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Three days in New Orleans and three standouts: Day 1 was the city tour, Day 2 the WWII Museum, Preservation Hall and the French Quarter (OK, that’s three highlights, but work with me) and today, Day 3, the highlight was visiting with Jacki Hemman at Tulane University.

Judy and I have now seen three Onawa kids at school in the past few weeks: Alex Kennedy at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, NH; Brenna Kennedy Fairfield University in Connecticut; and now Jacki at Tulane. We’re planning on a trip to see our Reagan in San Diego next January. It’s really a blast to see these kids we’ve known since they were born now transformed into bright, energetic and motivated college students. And seeing them in their university environments unleashes memories of those days so long ago when I was living through my first semester away from home at Lehigh University. I’m pretty sure I don’t have today what it takes to do what they’re doing. I must have done so because that person 51 years ago named Jon Rick somehow graduated, but that’s not today’s Jon Rick.

Dave and Rolande are indeed here and joined us for breakfast down the street at the Streetcar, another greasy spoon with good New Orleans food. They are off on a bus tour of the city like the one we did. We all agreed that the tour would be the best way to get a feel for NOLA in the time available to them.

Tulane is perhaps a 30-minute car ride, but we don’t have a car. Rather than falling back on Uber we stepped across the street and hopped on the St. Charles Street trolly that took us to Tulane. Actually, we hopped on a bus which, due to reconstruction of the trolly line, took us the first few stops. We then transferred to a real trolly and rode on it the rest of the way. It costs $1.25 every time you board a trolly ($3.00 gets you a 24-hour pass). For seniors like most of us (Sharon is still a kid under 65) it’s $0.40 or $0.90 for the pass.

The trolly took us through the Garden District so we got to see the grand old houses we saw the other day on the bus.

Grandpa Steve called Jacki and she met us with her roommate Kate. They gave us the campus tour, ending at their dormitory. It’s a beautiful campus with moss-adorned live oak trees. The buildings are a mixture of old traditional brick buildings and modern steel and glass structures. The business building is a prime example of the new style. It’s shaped as an ocean wave with undulating curves and dark glass and steel. No doubt which department has the most money at Tulane.

Jacki is majoring in environmental sciences but expressed interest in architecture. “I want a major that will allow me to help make the world a better place,” she said. It’s great for her to have an objective that drives her career choice. Other college kids choose majors based on a personal passion or a major that has the biggest financial payback. I think Jacki is on the right path.

I really envy Kate, too. She’s majoring in international business and will spend her junior year abroad in a Spanish speaking country, probably Spain and somewhere in South America. I envy her the chance to become immersed in other cultures, to say nothing of becoming fluent in Spanish. The engineering thing worked out OK for me, I guess, but still . . .

If I had a nickel for every google search we did looking for the perfect restaurant for luncheon with Jacki we could ride the trolly for a month. Carolyn and Steve of course wanted to treat their granddaughter to something special, not too fancy but something out of Jacki’s ordinary routine. The closest we came was a take-out crepe joint. Noon came and we hadn’t found anything we liked.

But we were looking at it the wrong way. The goal was not to feed Jacki but to see Jacki’s world from her vantage point. When Jacki said, “The crepe place? It’s right next door to the hottest club at Tulane, the Boot Bar and Grill,” the die was cast. The crepes were great and Steve and I even got a glass of Huge Ass Blue Moon ale. We sat outside (it’s in the upper 60s here) and had a great time. Jackie and Kate loved the crepes. Best of all, it was only a seven-minute walk to the trolly.

The trolly ride home was crowded – standing room only. Everyone was masked, but still . . .

We met in our room for wine at 5, all but Rolande and Dave, who’s city tour ran long. They also got left off at the wrong spot and had to take a cab to the hotel. They opted out of dinner so the rest of us set off for a restaurant I had googled rather than going to the $50-a-steak joint across the street.

We ended up at the restaurant next door to the google choice called Daisy Duke’s. The owner was greeting people at the front door and I asked her which was better, her restaurant or the place next door. She said, “Ann is a good friend of mine and her place has oysters but otherwise it’s about the same.” A guy came out at that moment and said, “that burger was a lot bigger than I expected.” That sealed the deal.

Alex was our waiter – a really fun guy who took great care of us. The gumbo was a tad spicey for some (I loved it – full of sausage and shrimp) but everything else was fine and the price was right. The only downfall was chocolate mousse cake and bourbon bread pudding. But hey, we’re on vacation, as we keep saying.

Tomorrow we board our ship, the Jazz, and sail for the distant port of Baton Rouge (it’s 1:15 by car).

Mississippi Cruise Day 2 – WWII and Jazz in NOLA

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Come to New Orleans for the World War II Museum and stay for gumbo, jambalaya, etouffee and pralines. The museum is that good.

Originally, it was the D-Day Museum, a private institution housed in the former factory of Higgins Industries. Andrew Higgins designed several landing craft used in both the European and Pacific theatres of WWII. The best-known boat was the LCVP (Land Craft, Vehicle, Personnel); “Higgins boats,”  soldiers called them. You’ve seen them in the movies: box-like boats whose prow drops down allowing personnel and vehicles to land on the beach at Normandy on D-Day.

The museum has since been expanded considerably to include exhibits and videos of virtually every aspect of the war. Each exhibit room has a two-to-five-minute video that runs continually. Displays of photographs and artifacts, far more than you can hope to absorb unless you have a particular interest in that aspect of the war, are on display.

I won’t attempt a blow-by-blow recitation of what I learned today about WWII. But the overarching impression I came away with is the enormity of the task the United States took on, fighting, in reality, two wars simultaneously, one in Europe against Germany and Italy and one in the Pacific against Japan. The scope of the war effort is obvious to the casual student of WWII but this museum, for me, brought that fact home to me quite emphatically and graphically.

The museum is a 15-minute walk from our hotel. On our way we stopped at Mother’s Restaurant for breakfast. It’s a “po-boy” greasy spoon-style restaurant in an old brick building that must have been some sort of factory in times past. You stand at the counter to place your order, which is brought to your table by wait staff. Good breakfast food: omelets and flaky biscuits almost as good as Judy’s Bakewell Cream biscuits. We all left food on our plates. It’s a famous restaurant, too. Lots of politicians and entertainment celebrities are pictured on the walls.

Sharon was particularly interested in C-47 aircraft. Her father flew C-47s in WWII, towing gliders across the channel on D-Day to land in farm fields behind enemy lines. My interest was in Liberty ships; he served on the USS Antelope in the South Pacific. We saw some bomb sights similar to those Judy’s dad worked on in Bremerton, Washington.

On the way back to the hotel we walked by Aunt Sally’s Creole Praline Shop. Yes, we sampled the wares and took home a few packages. This is, after all, a cultural studies tour. Right?

After a 45-minute break in the action we hiked over to the Quarter, down Bourbon Street to St. Peter’s Street and to Preservation Hall. We were early for our 5:00 PM reservation even after flubbing around finding the place. We walked right by it; it’s very nondescript.

Fortunately, there was a Rouse grocery store on the corner. Rouse’s is a local tradition touted highly by our bus driver yesterday. They carry crawfish (imported from Asia), southern veggies and Creole hot sauces plus all the usual grocery store stuff.

The jazz performance was a highlight of our trip so far. Three traditional Black New Orleans jazz musicians, a trumpet player and leader of the band who sang, a bass player who also sang and a really talented drummer. The pianist was a white guy who was a fill in. The fifth member, a trombonist, was a Japanese woman who, it seems, is something of a regular with the group. She studied at a New Orleans jazz school in Tokyo, of all places, and came to the U.S. to study with this group, the Preservation All Stars. The performance was excellent and fun: the leader encouraged audience sing along for the refrains of well-known tunes, e.g., “You Are My Sunshine.” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” etc.

We chatted with the band members briefly after the performance. They confirmed that they had no set program and that much of what they played was improvised.

Being in the heart of the French Quarter dinner options were plentiful. We ended up seated on a traditional Bourbon Street balcony at the Cornet restaurant. We had the traditional New Orleans grub we’ve become accustomed to. I had a crawfish etouffee (some say crayfish, others say crawdads; same thing) that was very good. The crawfish was somewhat chewy, something like lobster meat. We all sampled fried alligator to claim bragging rights back home.

We walked home down Bourbon Street and sat in the hotel lobby debating tomorrow’s schedule, the highlight of which is a visit to see Jackie at Tulane. About 8 PM who should show up but Dave and Ro, in from a somewhat delayed flight from Portland, ME. The gang’s all here!