When the Saints Go Marching In

Just a quick update this week as I continue my journey up the Mississippi River.

I’ve been walking the River Road all day as it winded along the foot of the levee. It was a pleasant walk, with cool air. Keeping me company were cattle and horses grazing peacefully on the levees under rich blue skies. I’m currently on the west bank of the river opposite Louisiana State University.

It’s late, almost 10:00pm and I’m looking for a place to bed down. I can hear screams from across the river coming from the campus. Sounds like a big party or something. While checking into a cheap hotel just under the I-10 near Port Allen, I asked the clerk, “What’s going on out there”?

There are cars honking outside and I can hear more shouts from the hotel rooms. The clerk told me, “the Saints just kicked Atlanta’s butt at the Superdome. It’s the first time they played there since Katrina. They now have a 3 – 0 record. I bet’cha New Orleans will be a crazy place tonight.”

I bet it will be, too. New Orleans, at least for now, is not thinking about anything else but football. Good for them.

Well, I look forward to the road ahead of me. It will be fresh, away from the places I’ve known since childhood and college times. The state of Mississippi is in my sights and I look forward to crossing over to the east bank.

More later.

Brian

Nottoway Plantation

I start off in the morning walking north, near lunchtime I’m walking west, then south, then west, a bit northerly again… so it goes along the Mississippi River Road, snaking along at a moderate pace, watching the barges being pushed and the ships chugging along, above the levee, high on the Mississippi River…

I made it to Donaldsonville slightly ahead of my predicted time so kept walking through. I did stop to read the historic marker in the city: “Town founded by William Donaldson, 1806, on farm of Pierre Landry. Began as trading post about 1750, Home of Governor Francis T. Nicholls and of Dr. F.W. Prevost, who performed first Caesarian section, 1824. Parish seat of Ascension. Capital of Louisiana from January 1830 to January 1831.”

Donaldsonville is located at the confluence of the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche. I grew up at the other end of Bayou Lafourche, way “down on the bayou” as we say it, in a town called Cut Off.

Past Donaldsonville, closer to Baton Rouge is a small town called White Castle. The community was named not for a hamburger joint, but for a plantation.

Just 2 miles past White Castle sitting on the edge of the river is one of my favorite places, Nottoway Plantation. It is one of the largest antebellum plantation houses in the south, composed of 64 rooms, 7 staircases, and 5 galleries. This 53,000-square foot plantation home, constructed by John Hampden Randolph in 1858, is a fine example of an antebellum home.

This is where I’ll be tomorrow… sitting on the porch in a rocking chair with a tall glass of iced tea, resting my feet and rocking slowly, in the cool breezes beneath the Live Oaks.

******


John Hampden Randolph planned and built Nottoway, but it was his wife Emily Jane who saved it from destruction.

Emily Jane Liddell Randolph was the mother of ten children when the civil war erupted. In 1862 Randolph took his slaves and went to Texas to work a cotton plantation there in order to keep himself solvent. The Randolphs sent their teenage daughters away to safer territory, and Mrs. Randolph remained on the plantation with the younger children, two visiting lady friends, and a few of her slaves. One of her daughters, Cornelia, kept a diary. It is from this diary as well as from preserved letters and documents that we know of Emily Jane's courage.

At one point in 1862, when she was 45 years old, she faced down the Union Navy. Gun boats were sailing by the house, and union troops had begun to bivouac on the lawn. Armed only with a dagger which she tucked into her belt, she went out on the front gallery. She was determined not to let the union troops into her house. Many houses along the river had been abandoned. These deserted houses if not burned, were destroyed by looting and vandalism. As she stood on the front gallery a group of Confederate soldiers opened fire on the Union troops.

The gun boats on the river returned the fire. Though they were not aiming at the house, much of the fire hit it or landed on the grounds. When the firing became heavy, Emily Jane gathered her children, friends, and slaves and took them all to the ground floor where the walls were four feet thick. When the barrage was over, she alone had the courage to mount the stairs and assess the damage. It was in that same year that Emily Jane gave birth to her eleventh and last child, Julia Marceline. Although the Union army encamped several times on the lawn in the course of the war, they never entered the house except to search for weapons.

Nottoway served as inspiration for the filming of the movie Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O'Hara fashioned her dress from drapes very similar to those seen above hanging in the Randolph study.

Heading North, or is it West?

Well, I’m still walking along the mighty Mississippi River. I’m currently on the West Bank of the river on road LA 18 heading towards Donaldsonville, and further along, Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s state capitol. Sometimes it seems like I’m walking in circles because this river meanders like a snake being chased by a weasel.

Industrial developments line the river along my walk with small communities strung along the river road. So far it is a pretty boring walk between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. So to while away the time I’ve found a few facts about the river that I thought interesting:


1. Length: River length is a difficult measurement to pin down because the river channel is constantly changing. For example, staff at Itasca State Park, the Mississippi's headwaters, say the Mississippi is 2,552 miles long. The US Geologic Survey has published a number of 2,300 miles (3,705 kilometers), the EPA says it is 2,320 miles long, and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area maintains its length at 2,350 miles.

2. Speed: At the headwaters of the Mississippi, the average surface speed of the water is near 1.2 miles per hour - roughly one-third as fast as people walk. At New Orleans, on 2/24/2003, the speed of the river was 3 miles per hour.

3. Depth: At its headwaters, the Mississippi is less than 3 feet deep. The river's deepest section is between Governor Nicholls Wharf and Algiers Point in New Orleans where it is 200 feet deep.

4. Sediment Load: The Mississippi carries an average of 436,000 tons of sediment each day. Over the course of a year, it moves an average of 159 million tons of sediment. Averages have ranged from 1,576,000 tons per day in 1951 to 219,000 in 1988.

*** A raindrop falling in Lake Itasca would arrive at the Gulf of Mexico in about 90 days. ***

Hale Boggs Bridge

Just a quick update. I’m officially out of New Orleans and have lost the weight that city’s food placed on me. I’m crossing the Luling Bridge (Hale Boggs Bridge - See 'Who was Hale Boggs?' below). This is a Cable-stayed bridge over the Mississippi River on I-310 west of New Orleans, near Luling. I decided to cross over to the west-side of the river so that I could bypass Baton Rouge and any temptations to loiter around that University City (I graduated from LSU). Also with this capitol city’s increase in population and crime rate due to the influx of people after Hurricane Katrina, I thought it might be wise to give the city a miss. Though I have family living in Baton Rouge, I’ll just have them meet me at a restaurant across the river.

Who was Hale Boggs?

Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., (February 15, 1914 – October 16, 1972) was a member of the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana. In 1972, he was the House Majority Leader when, at age 58, the twin engine airplane in which he was traveling over a very remote section of Alaska disappeared. The plane presumably crashed into a mountain or ravine, with no survivors. Congressman Nick Begich was also presumed killed in that accident.

During his tenure in Congress, Boggs was an influential player in the government. After Brown v. Board of Education he signed The Southern Manifesto condemning desegregation. He was instrumental in passage of the interstate highway program in 1956, and was a member of the Warren Commission in 1963-1964. He served as Majority Whip from 1961 to 1970 and as majority leader (from January 1971). As majority whip, he ushered much of President Johnson's Great Society legislation through Congress.

As Majority Leader he campaigned tirelessly for others. He was aboard a twin engine Cessna 310 with Representative Nick Begich when it disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska. Begich's aide and a pilot were the only others on board. The four were heading for a campaign fund raiser for Begich. In the largest search ever mounted by the US military, Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force planes searched for the party. The search was abandoned after 39 days. The men's remains were never found. The accident prompted Congress to pass a law mandating emergency locator transmitters (now called emergency position-indicating rescue beacons) in all U.S. civil aircraft.

Both Boggs and Begich were re-elected that November. House Resolution 1 of January 3, 1973 officially recognized Boggs' presumed death and opened the way for a special election. In 1973 Boggs' wife since 1938, Lindy, was elected to the second district seat left vacant by his death, where she served until 1991.

The events surrounding Boggs' death have been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. These theories often center around his involvement with the Warren Commission, but some tie his death to alleged corruption charges or his outspoken opposition to powerful FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Some, including several of Begich's children, have suggested that Richard Nixon had a hand in Boggs' death in order to thwart the Watergate investigation. None of these theories has ever been proven.