NATCHITOCHES AFTERNOON

Note:  I cut my cross-country trip short to return home for the hurricane. In the next week I'll be writing about a few of the unique places I visited after leaving Texas.     

    Natchitoches, Louisiana, is one of the nicest little towns you never heard of.  The state's oldest settlement (1714), it is nestled along the Cane River in plantation country. It's a tiny New Orleans echoing the old south with its restaurants, jazz bars, and
 
 riverfront slave farms (plantations). I has stopped by for a quick meal but ended up staying much longer (party invitations can do that).



    




NOTE:  SOMETHING'S MESSED UP ON THE BLOG PROGRAM THAT I USE.  TRY WHAT I MAY, I CAN NOT ENLARGE THE TYPE BELOW.

YOU MAY NEED A MICROSCOPE OR, AT LEAST,
READING GLASSES.

SORRY...




The Louisiana
Sports Hall of Fame was having its grand opening.
      I was invited to tour this new, modern building, to learn about the state's history of sports worship, and to enjoy conversing over endless glasses of dark stout.

    The locals and I talked about LSU's "Pistol Pete" Maravitch, Billy Cannon, and popular Shreveport native, Terry Bradshaw. There is an entire exhibit devoted to the NFL's Steve Gleason. The former Saints player is now fighting Lou Gehrig's Disease. It includes the special wheelchair that two teammates used to push him up the trail to Machu Pichu.
   And there was this fantastic car, "Hell on Wheels". A local mechanic built it out of a '56 Thunderbird and set a world speed record. He is a Louisiana sports hero too.    



    If you go there, bend you mind into pronouncing "Natchetoches" as "Nack-a-tish". It's how the locals say it and if you don't, they'll never stop correcting you.  Like the town or its southern belles, it's unusual and kind of cute, a southern thing.  
     The following day I headed southeast again.  My next stop would be something novel that also opened recently, our country's first slavery museum. 
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