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Day 36 - Monday, November 10, 2003, Lafayette LA, 86 miles driven Lafayette is the center of the Cajun Culture and we spent the day visiting various historical and educational sites to help us learn about the Cajun history. We started the day at the Acadian Culture Center which is a part of the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park. Here we watched a 40 minute video entitled "The Cajun Way: Echoes of Acadia". The French settlers of Nova Scotia were driven out by the British in 1755 with entire families separated and loaded on ships and dispersed to the other Atlantic colonies in the Americas. Thousands perished from disease on the journey. Many of the colonies would not accept the Catholic French and their future was bleak. Other Acadians were taken to Britain and jailed. Eventually these were repatriated to France but they didn't fit in after their 150+ year history in Nova Scotia. The French made various attempts to resettle the Acadians in other French speaking colonies with little success. In the 1780's control of Louisiana was turned over to Spain who agreed to take in the Acadians. In 1785, 30 years after the dispersion, the French Acadians in France were resettled in Louisiana. It is also believed that many of the Acadians relocated to the other colonies gravitated to the French speaking region around New Orleans. Into this mixture of people came West Indians, Haitians, Chinese and Africans. All these cultures mixed a piece into the Cajun way of life. From the Acadian Culture Center we drove over to St. Martinville to visit the Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site which is a state park developed around a former plantation Maison Olivier built around 1815. The plantation house is of original cypress with minor modifications such as the brick floor on the ground level which was originally packed dirt. In addition the original house had a ladder to take you up to the second level as steps were taxed separately from the house. We were given a guided tour around the house. The house was furnished with many pieces to the era but none were original to the house. The house and grounds were beautiful. Many live oaks and other trees with Spanish moss provided shade to the house. A relocated Cajun cabin was also on the site to give you an idea of how the Cajun's houses developed. Large porches were a characteristic of the cabin. Obviously much work was done outside the house. In the town of St. Martinville is the Evangeline Oak. Longfellow wrote his poem about the Acadian's plight based upon real people. The real life counterpart for Evangeline (Emmeline LaBiche) supposedly met her former love in Acadia under the tree only to find that he had married. The tree is supposedly the most photographed tree in Louisiana. I believe it. It is beautiful. Emmeline died from heartbreak and is buried at the St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church. The church was established in 1765 with the present building dating to 1844. It is a beautiful church- inside and out. St. Martinville is a beautiful town on the Bayou Teche which at one time was the primary way into and out of the area. From St. Martinville we headed to New Iberia to visit the Konriko Rice Mill. We took a tour of the mill which is the oldest operating rice mill in the US having been built in 1912. We watched some workers packing 10 lb bags of rice into 50 lb packs and then got an explanation of the rice processing steps. From the mill we had the obligatory visit to the gift store where rice products are sold. Since the tour wasn't free, our admission fee also included a 30 minute slide show of the Cajun history. Rice was only briefly noted in this presentation.
Day 37 - Tuesday, November 11, 2003, Lafayette LA to New Iberia LA, 75 miles driven Today we continued our immersion in the Cajun culture by going to Vermilionville which is a folklife park characterizing Cajun life from the mid 1700's to the late 1800's. There are 17 buildings on the site, five of which are original and have been moved to the site. The others are reproductions. People in costumes work on crafts and also interpret the village. There are also musicians and a cooking demonstration. We both said this place was a Cajun Millbrook. The first person we ran into was a young man that works with Spanish moss. He explained that Spanish moss was used for many things such as mattress stuffing, furniture stuffing, rope and also mixed with clay to produce a solid building material which was placed within the wall timber cavity to produce a solid wall which could be then plastered. The Spanish moss is soaked for a period of time to permit the outer grey material to rot. After washing and drying you are left with the black inner fiber of the moss. The wall timbers are prepared for the moss/clay patties by cutting indents in the timbers on opposite sides and then inserting a one inch rungs in the indents. The moss/clay patty is then inserted in the space between the dowel and clapboard and bent over the dowel to hang like towel. The patty is made long enough and thick enough to fill the entire space and also bond with the patty that has been placed and dried below it. This craft is called bousillage. There was a model of the typical Cajun chimney which was made from wooden poles stuck in the ground and then having cross members covered by the moss clay patties. In the schoolhouse a Cajun accordion player was holding court. He played several tunes for us and we moved on. We talked to the woodcarver at length. He was carving small duck figures from spalted hackberry. He had a lot of his work on display and it was beautiful. A very gifted carver. From here we took in a cooking demonstration where the cook prepared a fried corn dish while explaining the birth of jambalaya and other foods. Jambalaya came from making meals out of leftovers by mixing all the leftovers together into one dish. The fried corn was good. At the church replica a fiddle player was explaining the difference between a violin and a fiddle. There is none - its the manner in which a violin is played determines if it is a violin or a fiddle. He could play both the fiddle and the violin. The church while a replica is used for weddings even though it is not a blessed church. A woman in one of the houses was making baskets from pine needles and also displayed corn husk dolls that she had made for the gift store to sell. She was a scream. She explained that Cajuns would paint their chimneys white if they had a daughter old enough for marriage - age 12 to 15. That way anyone coming by would know where the available maidens were. She was so full of stories about the old way of life that mom spent a lot of time just talking with her. The oldest house in the village was the Armand Broussard House which dates back to 1790 and was moved here 25 miles. It is the largest of the houses in the village with a huge front porch with four sets of doors opening into the living space. Similar doors are placed on the back wall thus giving plenty of ventilation for the hot weather. Armand was a patriot of the American Revolution and also fought in the Battle of New Orleans when he was 58 years old. At the time of his death he left an estate of over $65,000 which was a great sum for those days. He fathered 13 children in this house with his second wife. It was a very quiet and enjoyable way to spend the day. We didn't rush and took plenty of time to talk with the interpreters. By this time it was 3:00 PM and we only had one thing left on our agenda for the day - the St. John's Live Oak tree in Lafayettte which is estimated to be over 450 years old. The tree is huge - not in height but in diameter and limb spread. At its widest the tree covers a circle with a 200 foot diameter. The largest limb is estimated to weigh over 72 tons. The bottom branches have steel jacks holding up the branch. We also visited the St. John's Cathedral which is right next to the tree. Quite a tree and church. Dinner at the Seafood Connection in New Iberia finished the day. Only the locals dine there as there is no signs on the outside but we managed to find it with some trouble. Food was good.
Day 38 - Wednesday, November 12, 2003, New Iberia LA to Biloxi MS, 278 miles driven The plan for the day was to reach Biloxi Mississippi by the evening and make stops at two ante-bellum Plantations along the Mississippi river above New Orleans. The first was "Nottoway Plantation" in White Castle, LA and the second was "Laura Plantation" in Vacherie, LA. On the way we ran into the Jennarette Museum which concentrated on the local sugar industry. The southern part of Louisiana is heavily involved in the growing of sugar cane and the processing of the cane into raw sugar and molasses. At the museum we watched a 15 minute video on the sugar production process and some information on how the fields are planted. A sugar cane farmer works fields in series of three, one of which is inactive. After a field has been fallow for a year, cane is planted in the fallow field. Twelve months later the field is harvested either for "seed" or market to the sugar extraction plant. The field is left in stubble and comes back next year with a second crop. Then the field goes inactive again. Sugar cane is not planted from seed. To get new cane, harvested cane is laid in trenches and covered up. The cane has nodules on the joints which generate new cane. The video showed the cane coming into the plant where it is shredded and ground to extract the juice which is then boiled in vacuum tanks to remove the water. Additional boiling then crystallizes the sugar and a centrifuge separates the molasses from the sugar which is dried and stored in warehouses in piles. The molasses at this stage is not fit for syrup and is sold to cattle feed operations. The raw sugar is then shipped to a sugar refiner such as Domino. Here additional heating and boiling removes the remainder of the molasses to make powdered sugar or the regular white sugar or even brown sugar. At one time the sugar cane fields were worked by slaves or huge amounts of migrant labor as in the old days each cane had to be individually cut. Now big machines take care of this. Still the sugar industry employs 32000 in Louisiana and generates 1.2 billion into the economy. All along the roads we could see the trailer trucks carrying raw sugar cane to the processing plants. You could recognize a sugar extraction plant by the huge amounts of steam that is generated from the plant. You can see them for miles around. The fuel providing all that steam comes from the ground and shredded sugar cane after it is dried out. In all my pictures I never did take a picture of sugar cane on the hoof. The guide at the museum informed us of the bakery in town which is the oldest operating commercial brick oven bakery in the US. The bakery has a little red light on the sign which blinks when the bread is ready. We had to investigate this and went back to sure enough see the red light. On the door of the bakery was the designation as a US Historical Landmark. We bought a loaf of the French bread (hot from the oven) and within the next hour and a half we demolished the loaf while on the way. It was delicious. We arrived at the Nottoway Plantation on the Mississippi River around 12:00 noon wanting to take a tour. Just as we got out of our car a tour bus with about 40 people piled off and started to walk into the grounds. We got our tickets and thought that we would be outnumbered by the tour group. We lucked out. The tour included a lunch at the plantation restaurant and they all turned left while we headed straight to the house. What a house it is. It is listed as the most ornate of the plantations on the Mississippi and while I haven't seen them all I don't dispute their claim. It was build in 1859 for Mr. & Mrs. John Hampden Randolph and their 11 children. The house covers 53,000 square feet and has 200 windows and 165 doors. The guide said an opening for every day of the year. The Randolph's made their fortune in sugar cane for which they had a plantation of over 7000 acres. During the Civil War, John Randolph left the plantation in the hands of his wife and family and went to Texas to raise cotton for the confederacy. Sugar cane operations ceased during the war. The Union forces did fire on Notoway from the river but the commander of the union forces happened to be a former visitor to the plantation and recognized it as belonging to his friends so he spared the house and prevented any looting here. After the civil War, John Randolph had to pay $20,000 for a pardon for his activities with the Confederacy. A tidy sum indeed. John died in 1883 at age 70 while his wife died 6 years later at the age of 85. The house has been restored to magnificent shape. Part of the reason is that the house was never unoccupied. After passing through 5 owners after the Randolph's, the house was bought by an Australian for 4.5 million bucks. The mansion is really an inn and you can stay in any of the rooms that we visited. The highest price was $250 per night and the cheapest was $135. When we walked into the house, the woman at the door said no interior photos so in the beginning I obeyed. Then thinking that an overnight guest has full run of the upstairs rooms and who would stop them from taking pictures in their room, I started to take some pictures. No-one stopped me either. It was definitely worth the $10.00 entry fee per person. From Nottoway we decided that two plantation tours would be too much in one day. We had seen the other Plantation about 6 years ago and decided that it was time to head to Biloxi and arrived there at around 5:30 PM. The beaches along the Gulf Coast are beautiful. It was in the 80's here today and had cooled to around 65 by around 8:30 PM. After dinner we visited one of the casinos and basically came out even. We listened to a group performing 50's and 60's music - "The VanDells". They were very entertaining. On the way out of the casino mom heard a local couple behind us saying "Can't you just feel it, Winter is here". I hope she was kidding.
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