I grew up in a small town in Louisiana. I find it arduous to explain exactly where I’m from when asked. Most people when they think of Louisiana think of New Orleans. Which is fair. There’s not much else there. Baton Rouge has LSU. Shreveport had the Hayride. But those two aren’t on anyone’s radar like New Orleans.
The difficulty in explaining where I’m from in Louisiana is the difficulty of explaining a region not well known to not just other Americans but to other people from the South. I grew up in a town called Bastrop. Founded by Felipe Enrique Neri, an accused embezzler, and all-around scoundrel, he actualized himself the Baron of Bastrop when he fled to New Spain.
Louisiana was part of Spain once. It went from France to Spain and back to France, then it was sold to the U.S in 1803. The state still holds onto its French roots, having Parishes instead of counties. But Bastrop is anything but a little French village, or a Spanish pueblo. It sits in the northeastern part of the state known as the Ark-La-Miss.
I can see people tune out when I tell them I’m from the Northeast corner of Louisiana. It’s like a thin film slips over their eyes and you’ve lost them in haze of questions they can never take back. But they asked and you finish answering because you want the place where you’re from to seem interesting even though you’d have to be Mark Twain to make it so.
Bastrop was a little, boring paper mill town. Nothing but tall Slash pines ready for pulping. It stank to high heaven. It was the pulp mill that made everything smell like baby diapers and rotten eggs. But the paper mill shut down years ago and now it’s just a boring ghost town. This is where I’m from. Pretty exciting, right? I see the film sliding over your eyes.
It’s okay. This is going somewhere, I hope.
Josh Mayhall 