Driving through Louisiana is a strange experience worthy of numerous posts, worthy of a novel. I have made the trip from Dallas to New Orleans on a few occasions and if it is something you are thinking about doing – at some point when New Orleans becomes inhabitable again – I would like to impart some well meaning advice:
1. You can never go wrong with Led Zeppelin on a road trip, but there’s something about that stretch of road that is just calls out for two albums. The Last Waltz by The Band sets that trip up so right you’d think divine providence was involved. And American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, genius. Yeah, I’m prepared for you Dead haters, but seriously this album just matches the swampy, melancholy-hopeful anticipation of arrival down in the French Quarter.
2. If you’re not so into fried food, do not stop for a snack, well almost anywhere, but in particular gas stations.
A vast amount of Louisiana is dark, swampy darkness. Along that lonely Interstate 49 are a few “bright” spots, places like Natchitoches and Opelousas. These are places that rang alarm bells in the parts of my brain that had thoroughly soaked up 80’s horror/slasher films. Yup, people could easily disappear in these remote places. People could disappear at the hands of people that said “yup” a lot.
In Natchitoches is a gas station that apparently felt that the bobble head animal market was just getting ready to explode. They had a bobble head version of every animal on the planet; bobble head turtles, bobble head mongooses, bobble head giant squid. They also had their own restaurant which served only fried food. Deep fat fried food.
Fried chicken, fried shrimp, fried catfish, fried pickles, fried okra, fried potatoes, fried corn. I’m saying whole cobs of corn were battered and deep fried. If you did not want your food of the deep fried variety, you did not eat here; unless you were eating salt and pepper.
That’s all fine and well, you do not eat in a gas station if you are concerned about how healthy you are eating. And man, I like me some fried okra, that shit is good. Not so good though when it’s been sitting around under a heat lamp for what I would guess would be thirteenish hours.
So my advice on this fine Thursday, if driving through Louisiana: bring The Last Waltz and American Beauty, if you need to stop in a place like Natchitoches or Opelousas get out as quickly as possible, and for the love of god don’t eat at one of their gas stations.
That’s probably just good advice all around though…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment