Lake Providence, Louisiana

Finally the post everyone and their mother have been waiting for, if only because we’ve said we were posting it next at least two times over 20 days ago.

 

Andy has some long lost relatives that he had never met before, nor had his eastern shore family talked to since a long time ago.  They live in Lake Providence, Rhode Island.  Or maybe it’s Louisiana. We rolled into town on September 9th and did some detective work at the Lake Providence welcome center. Somehow, we were the only tourists that day, which meant we got the full attention of the woman working there. Andy threw out some names and she knew exactly where to send us.  It worked out quite nicely.

Andy’s last relative in the area, Flo Genard, lived in an old plantation house named Arlington, which just so happens to be the last antebellum house in the town. Flo was no where to be found when we arrived, so we took a bunch of pictures, left a note in the door, and headed up the road to Arkansas.

As fate would have it, we were delayed in Eudora, Arkansas by fried food and free refills of sweet tea at the aptly-named Eudora Dairy Bar. When we drove out of a dead zone, Andy received a voicemail on his phone. It was Flo! She graciously invited the second-cousin twice-removed she’d only just met over the phone and some girl into her home.

We sat down with Flo as she filled Andy in on her side of family history. We’ve got some footage of that, but suffice to say that Andy got shafted on the good genes. Apparently they’re all pilots/doctors/sports stars. Oh well.

Before dinner, Flo gave us a tour of the house. Those plantation owners sure had it made. Too bad the Union burned most of their houses down. Arlington survived only because some of Grant’s officers had taken up residence there.

We’d read a little about some of the sordid history of Arlington at the welcome center. Back in the days of old, a girl named Narcissa Jane fell in love with the son of the work-overseer (read: slave driver). Her parents were the aristocrats who owned Arlington (no relation to Flo or Andy) and so, of course, it was a forbidden love. Narcissa Jane’s parents decided to lock their sixteen-year old daughter in the attic, without food or drink, until she renounced her love. Three times a day they climbed the attic stairs to offer her a meal in exchange for her renunciation, and three times a day she sent them away. Apparently, she’d never read the ending of Romeo and Juliet, because she ended up starving to death. Or, rather, they starved their daughter to death.

Naturally, when we saw the attic stairs, we asked Flo if Arlington was haunted. She laughed (everyone asks her that) but was adamant that there are no ghosts, and said if there are, they’re not bad ones. The porch light sometimes turns on by itself, and she and her husband used to think that some spirit might be doing it, but it is an old house with old wiring.

 

The only other potential ghostly encounter that has happened in the house occurred in the room pictured above when Flo’s niece was sleeping there. When everyone woke up in the morning, the little girl asked who the lady in the purple dress was. They didn’t know what she was talking about, but she was sure that the lady had stood at the bottom of the bed and watched them, silently.

Upon hearing this tidbit, what choice did we have but to stay in this room for the night? 

 

Whilst Caitlin sat upon the toilet in this very bathroom, she decided to extend her sympathy to Narcissa Jane for the manner in which she died, er, was murdered. She told Narcissa Jane that if she wanted to make her presence known in any way, that it was okay to do so. Immediately, the bathroom light started flickering and then promptly turned off. Had the bulb burned out? She checked the light-switch, which was still in the on position, and when she flicked it off and on again, the light came back on. Old wiring has eery timing.

Later that night, after dinner, Caitlin went out to the car to get a few things. She had a hard time because it was completely dark outside, and as she was telling Andy this as they stood inside looking out, a light directly over the car turned on and then instantly turned off.

 

 

Andy was pretty skeptical of all this until it was his turn to use the bathroom. The walk from the purple dress room to the bathroom was already creepy at night, but it took you past a window overlooking those attic stairs. He thought he might give talking to Narcissa Jane a try and asked her if she felt a bit foolish for dying over a teenage crush. That’s when Andy heard breathing — consistent inhales and exhales — and murmuring all around him.

Thus ensued a stressful night of sleeping with flashlights and taking bathroom trips together. We weren’t visited by a lady in a purple dress or anything exciting like that. There’s always next time.

The next morning, Flo cooked us a hearty breakfast of egg, cantaloupe, and pork roll. We didn’t mention anything to do with ghosts as we were pretty sure that it’s bad guest etiquette to insist that your host’s house is a portal between this world and the afterlife.

 

Andy took a few minutes to spend some quality time with a descendant of the lizards his ancestors had lived alongside.

 

On a side-note, Flo is a prolific whistler. She could out-whistle a flock of canaries. Canaries whistle a lot, right?

 

Andy and Flo on the balcony. Guess which one is imagining he’s a plantation owner wearing a straw hat and drinking mint juleps.

But, here’s the kicker to the ghost saga. When we went to bed, Caitlin — who is notorious for losing the backs to her earrings — made extra sure to place both earrings and both backs into her jewelry bag. In the morning, one of the backs had gone missing and in its place was a tiny, silver, equal-armed cross that neither of us had seen before. Either Narcissa Jane was giving us an object of protection, or we’d been visited by the Knights Templar. Later, we decided to review the video we’d taken at night in our bedroom. We’d taken quite a bit of footage, documenting our giddy, sleep-deprived fear, but the tape had only recorded a few seconds.

 

Hmm.

 

Next time on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp:

BBQ, the Blues, and lots of homeless people. It’s Memphis, Tennessee!

In Memoriam: Molly

Once upon a time, in a city of lots of tiny, tiny apples, there was an even tinier thud against what was thought to be a lovely looking 12th floor open-aired office but what was actually a very clean – and very hard – window.  Not too long after, a hobo and princess were exploring this delightfully smelling opolis when they encountered a colorful flower bed with one very floppy sparrow flying circles inside of it.  Sensing that something was not right and that leaving her there would enrich no one’s life, the two with 10 fingers and 10 toes each took the one with two wings and a seemingly broken something to be cherished and cared for until the day she died.  Which came much sooner than expected.  

We had a wonderful 4 days with Molly.  After a couple days, she started chirping again and she hopped about in an adorable fashion.  We loved her so much that we even snuck her into a hotel and shared our tent with her during the two-day downpour.  We buried her in the state capitol of North Dakota.  We hope she had a pleasant last couple of days.  We definitely enjoyed it…except for the death part, of course.

 

This is where sparrows come from.

 

Puff puff goes the chilly puppy.

 

One night, she hopped onto Andy’s foot while he sat crosslegged, cuddled, and fell asleep.  She was lovely.

 

She accompanied us to the giant buffalo!  (More on that at a later date…)

 

Little puff cute ball.

 

That’s her hopping over my shoulder!  She went from Andy’s left hand to his right one which just so happened to be waiting behind my back for one very puff ball cutie pie pants.

 

Outside playtime.

 

The love of our lives for a whole 4 days.

 

 

RIP

Molly The Sparrow

? – October 7, 2008

WE FOUND ARCHIBALD!!!

Once upon a time, there lived a gaggle of girls and their gnomes.  A certain hobo we all know and love had one particular job.  And that was to hide one said gnome.  Now said hobo is out exploring the country and said gnome was so well hidden that said gaggle of girls cannot pinpoint his exact location.  In the meantime, hobo and his princess found a whole town dedicated to this gnome.  This post is dedicated to our friends and roommates from way back in the day in Ithaca, NY, and to that happy little gnome, Archibald.  May they find you soon.

Archibald, Louisiana.  There is such a place.  And it’s quite small.

 

But it has a church!

 

And this place.

 

It has many churches!

 

That sign in the background is for another church.

 

The hider has found the town where it all began… one hundred and nineteen years ago.

 

Now back to our regular programming…

New Orleans!

It seems like we’re getting worse and worse at writing timely posts. Just to set the record straight, the following events took place between Saturday, September 6 and Monday, September 8. A lot of exciting things have happened between then and now. Here’s a little bit of foreshadowing for disbelievers who don’t think we’re actually doing any wanderlust romping: there are Paneras even in Minneapolis, MN.

When we arrived in New Orleans, residents had been allowed to return just days before on Thursday, so the place was still a little…unkempt. (Read: trees across roads.)

 Below is a nice picture of Cinderella’s castle…

 

 

The princess and her hobo in the heart of the French Quarter.

 

Well, we didn’t actually find the heart of the French Quarter on the first night…but we did find this super awesome bridge! It goes  somewhere for sure.

 

With New Orleans came our first hostel experience (or, as Caitlin has told everyone we’ve talked to since, “hostile” experience). We stayed at a place called the India House. Above is a picture of our room, named The Jezebel Room. It was a colorful place, to say the least.

 

The best part of the India House was a pond in the courtyard with this super friendly turtle, Mr. Toots.  (Name changed to protect actual identity.)

The courtyard.  Notice all the people that want to be our friends.

 

The dining area.  There’s our hero, Andy, and Caitlin’s trusty computer.  It’s blogging time, dudes and dudettes.

 

Careful observers can see Mr. Toots lounging on the log.  It is unclear whether the doors in the background lead to rooms or a secret lounge where all the hostel employees and the guests they thought were cool enough hung out. We had originally thought that it might be fun to get jobs at a hostel (work and clean a few hours for a free room) so we could stay longer and get to know the Big Easy, but everyone there was too interested in pretending to be Buddhists than to make new friends.

 

On our second day, we took a ferry to Algiers.  Africa is much closer than you think.  Here Andy tries to lift a rope.  He is successful.

 

On our first night, we were walking back to the hostile hostel (hahahahahah!) and came across a cat not unlike the one pictured above.  It was skittish.  But Andy attempted to win it over by feeding it Caitlin’s left over shrimp.  It only half worked.  Then, the next day, we learned that a whole family of kitties lived under the pier by the ferry. Andy’s fears were allayed when he discovered that some good Samaritan gives them heaps of kibbles on a regular basis. Andy has been talking about these cats ever since.

 

In the French Quarter, a disgruntled street performer gave up for the day and cast a balloon in the shape of a sword aside. Andy rescued it and turned it into a likeness of the beast that lives at Uncle Kevin’s.

 

Some hobos made a ruckus and caught Andy’s attention.

 

The sun sets on the French Quarter.

 

The skyline of the old and the new. Ooooo.

 

Andrew Jackson?

 

Back to the Magic Kingdom.

 

A nice picture.

 

 

Sweaty and exhausted, we used our Lonely Planet guidebook to find K Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen. We didn’t know it at the time, but it’s owned by Chef Paul Prudhomme, the creator of the Cajun blackening technique. They sat us in the very back of the restaurant, but when we started ordering the strangest items on the menu and asked to film, we went from pain in the ass to high class in their eyes. Who else would want to film their dinner and sample the most unique dishes but very important food critics from a prestigious news source? By the end of the night, we’d received a complimentary order of fried oysters, a guided tour of the kitchen, and a gift package including Chef Prudhomme’s Magic Seasoning Salt (which we’ve found goes very well with baked beans). It was by far the best dining experience we’ve had on our trip thus far.

 

You can’t even tell that’s a man!

 

Another nice photograph by Caitlin Marie Downey Haffert, Esq.

So what did we think of New Orleans? It wasn’t nearly as sinful as we’d hoped. Maybe we’ll go back during spring break.

 

Next year on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp, we explore the bowels of Louisiana and discover Andy’s long-lost relative, and the murdered ghost of a sixteen year-old girl. Stay tuned!