...well, at least that's what my friend Natalie calls it.
It's two weeks into my summer with the Park Service in Louisiana. I'm living in this little town called Natchitoches which is one of those places with a name that no two tongues pronounce the same... most folks say "naka-dish" though. It's also one of those places that you can see in a day(or an hour) but never really understand until you live there... eh, maybe no one ever gets it! The locals exude a nice air of southern-style politeness and strangers will go out of their way to wave and say hello... one bloke actually stopped his push lawnmower to wave good morning to me last Saturday. (Those damn things can be a royal pain in the patoot to get started again.)
I've been neglectin' this bloggin' thing for awhile, so here's a rundown to catch everybody up:
The first night, my host welcomed me with the traditional birthing of the kittens., I was introduced to some delicious Cajun sausage called boudin that had rice (and who knows what else) in it, and some random guy jumped in a hammock with me... awkward!
I met the coworkers the next day and my boss, a handkerchief totin' guy cut from the same cloth as I... good people all around.
Friday night was a trip to some resturant out in the boonies with a singing deer head mounted to the wall, waiters dressed in RealTree (trade mark) camouflage (my host was surprised that I could identify the specific pattern), children singing karaoke, and a po' boy sandwich the size of a cat! Oh, and my friend Billy revealed that he was taught how to fish by his mother's boy friend, a chap who just happened to be one of Louisiana's most infamous serial killers but, in all other respects, was a real nice guy.
Saturday held a trip to the gator farm with a gift shop that stocked the most extensive medieval arsenal outside of the British Museum: check out some pics
Best part about the gator park... not the alligators, their succulent flesh, or the random animals in the petting zoo but, some guy wearing cowboy boots with short pants. You can't get more Louisiana than that!
That night, took a trip to a swimming hole called "the falls"... when you've lived in Ithaca, a six foot drop does not a waterfall make! There my party and I had the unfortunate experience of witnessing a redneck orgy. (shudder)
What else?... The other interns and I took a field trip to a couple of cotton plantations where I learned that the ol' Creoles liked to keep fancy pigeon coups what for to supply youngling birds for a classic French delicacy... squab on toast! What's that? You're disgusted? Well, that's all the more for moi!
That pretty much brings us up to last night when I met Lafayette Zach, Tim (who doesn't beat his old lady, just old ladies in general), and Brother Michael, a harp-playing, nude-painting, robe-wearing, vodka-drinking, monk, at a bar downtown... the only bar downtown! Brother Michael, now clean-shaven because people were confusing him with a rabbi or Russian Orthodox priest, invited me to his "hermitage" which he described as being two blocks away, next to Texas, with religious statuary in the front yard. I plan to visit... if I can walk to Texas from here?
This summer promises to be interesting to say the least.
And so I'm off on another Chopstastic voyage.... Ah-eee!
