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Baton Rouge Stories
Sleeplessness
On Wednesday night I didn't finish my packing and writing responsibilities until nearly two a.m. Shaving for the trip took another half hour. I still needed to wash and dry my hair, but I was so tired that I figured I'd get up even earlier than I already had to, and do it in the morning.
I lay down in the guest room - I didn't want to disturb Nonelvis by creeping into the bedroom, I figured one of us should be awake while we tried to negotiate the trip to the airport in the wee dawn.
I slept maybe an hour and a half, all told. I got up at five, and as I was getting ready to wash my hair, Nonelvis came out of the other room. She couldn't sleep any more either.
I didn't manage to sleep on the plane, either going to Baton Rouge or coming back. I can't get comfortable enough to sleep in airplane seats, no matter which way I try to arrange my body or tilt my neck. It's not just the legroom.
I can't sleep well in my mother's guest room either. The bed is too short; I'm about four inches longer than it is, and if I just try to stick my feet over the footboard, it cuts into my ankles. It's also not a very wide bed, and I can't sleep well if I'm too near someone else. I am always either dodging Nonelvis or the edge of the bed. One of the nights, I got out of the bed, unable to sleep there; tried to sleep on the living room couch and failed; then went back to the bed.
And when I came back on Sunday night, I had so much catching up to do that I didn't sleep until nearly two am.
All in all, it's not surprising that it's Wednesday and I am just now getting to the point where I feel caught up on sleep. I don't mind going on four hours of sleep a night, but any less than that and it begins to tell on me.
One Metal Detector
The Baton Rouge airport is undergoing expansion. Right now it has four working gates. I believe, after the expansion, it will have ten. When you get a rental car, they hand you a key and tell you which parking space it's in, and you walk over to the lot. No shuttles needed. Thrifty has a shuttle, but only because its lot isn't actually at the airport.
East Baton Rouge parish - which is also basically the city limits - only contains about 400,000 people. I forget this sometimes.
To get to the Boston airport we take the Red Line to Park St (the center of the system), then we take the Green Line one stop because the Red and Blue lines don't intersect each other, then we take the Blue line four stops to the airport. The airport has several terminals, so we must wait for an airport shuttle to take us to the correct terminal. Shuttle buses for various car rental companies are all over the place. Taxis abound. There are lines for everything - at the ticket counters, at the gate counters, and on the day we got there, there was a line just to get through the metal detectors.
We saw a little man in a gray pullover look at the line for the one manned metal detector, scowl, and make a call on his cellular phone. Three minutes later, another metal detector opened and the line started moving really fast. I really wish the man's airport badge hadn't been flipped over - I'd have liked to have seen his job title.
The Baton Rouge airport has one baggage carousel and one metal detector. It does not list arrivals and departures on monitors. To see if your flight's on time, you go to the ticket counters downstairs, where the board is updated with sliding numerals. By hand.
I love infrastructure - I've spent some time just wandering around the Boston airport, watching everything happen, just as I have done with the New Orleans airport. Nonetheless, the Baton Rouge airport has a definite appeal.
Time slows down when you go to the South.
Good Sense and Gender
My mother is a nervous wreck, my sister is too. It's anyone's guess which of them will kill the other first. The rest of us are keeping our distance if we can. My mother is griping about how she's had to do all of the work for this wedding herself, how she's gotten no help at all.
I try to discuss some of the gender stuff with her, but she's in no fit state. She fusses about the earrings a little on Friday night, when we go to a party given by the groom's parents ... because the groom's father is a very conservative person with near-fundamentalist ideas (the way my sister tells it), and I might offend. Since I expect the man to detest me on sight anyway, and am dreading meeting him, I frankly could care less. I figure I might as well go for broke and just piss him off. But I go for a slightly subtler earring, just for Mom's sanity. Still dangly though. No studs.
Later, we do manage to talk about it a little more - I think she doesn't understand why I want to talk about it. Her attitude is: It doesn't really matter what she thinks of my habits - I'm going to do what I want anyway. I tell her that I want her approval. She says I already have that. She says she doesn't have to understand my reasons to know that my judgment is usually pretty good.
I suppose that's the best I'll get, and I don't know why it's not fully satisfying. Maybe I want her to understand.
It's funny, though - we talk about these things mostly while we're in the bathroom. Her bathroom has two sinks and two mirrors, and the two of us take longer to get ready than anyone else. I do not actually put on concealer or lipstick in front of her - though I do use both at various times during the weekend - but I do everything else. At one point, she gripes about not having enough time to shave her legs properly, and cuts herself due to her hurry. I tell her about having my legs waxed. She's not shocked, but she does exclaim grumpily that she doesn't have an extra sixty bucks to spend on waxing her legs. (She does, but it's not something she'd ever seriously consider doing for herself.)
I wonder what my mother's life would have been like if she'd raised two daughters instead. Would things have been different in some crucial way, or would she be where she is now? She seems happy enough. I'd hate to endanger that.
My mother comments several times this weekend on my stability. She doesn't worry about me anymore, she says; she hasn't for years. She says that when she first visited Boston, she and my stepfather, and saw me with Nonelvis, and how we were living and acting around each other, my stepfather said to her, "Well, that's it. We don't need to worry about him anymore."
She told several people how glad she was when I called her and said, "Mom, don't worry about getting us at the airport, we've decided it makes more sense to rent a car." "Thank god for children with money and sense!" she exclaimed.
Nonelvis vs. the Mosquitoes
The rental car was indisputably a good idea. It was cheap, and we'll do it again next time we visit. You can't get around Baton Rouge without a car, and since we tend to burn out on my loud, noisy family fairly quickly, it's nice to have the ability to leave the party when you want.
And when we unexpectedly discovered that we had Friday to ourselves, we used it to get in a little tourism. We made a trip to Avery Island, so that Nonelvis could finally fulfill a dream of hers - a pilgrimage to the Tabasco sauce factory.
Now, I'd seen the factory before. (School kids in Louisiana sometimes go on field trips to it.) In fact, I was a little disappointed, because large groups can get actual tours of the factory (there is no smell on earth like the huge room where the barrels are aged), and we just got a little promotional film which ejected us directly into the souvenir store.
Frankly, I felt the film was a little disingenuous. (I kept expecting Troy McClure to do the narration.) One of the exhibits in the little museum was some tokens that the company used to use to pay its female workers in the bottling plant. These tokens were then traded for goods at the company store. Nonelvis points out that this is a classic dodge to avoid paying workers real money or real benefits. The McIlhenny family stopped doing that long ago, of course, but to see it presented as a proud bit of Tabasco heritage is a little rattling.
Similarly, the tour makes much of the fact that, since the peppers are only at their best when they are precisely the deepest shade of red, the pepper pickers are each given a little wooden stick that's painted the exact shade they want - all other peppers are left on the bush to ripen further. "And of course," I whispered to Nonelvis, "given that their pickers are Latin American migrants and probably illiterate, that makes a certain practical sense."
Call us suspicious of large companies, even ones still family-run and as quality-conscious as this one.
Afterwards, we went to the Jungle Gardens, a botanical and wildlife preserve run by the McIlhennys elsewhere on the island. We didn't see any alligators, although there are plenty of signs warning tourists to keep their distance from them. We did see a moving trail in the water at one point that could have been a gator - until it came out of the water and we realized it was just a nutria. (A nutria looks like an otter-sized rat, only somewhat cuter. I don't think they're common outside Louisiana.)
We got out of the car for about two minutes. Nonelvis has always claimed that mosquitoes seek her out and find her - she's the only person ever to get bitten by them in Massachusetts - and I didn't believe her. Now I believe her. She had barely stepped out of the car when they began swarming her. She was jumping up and down, dodging around, trying to get them off her.
We didn't get out of the car again except once, to check on the egret sanctuary. No egrets. Too late in the year, I guess.
By the end of the day, my mosquito bites were gone - they only last a couple of hours on me. Hers had swollen to hard masses the size of silver dollars. Nonelvis interacts poorly with nature.
Grinding Season
October is when the sugar cane harvest begins. In the area of the state we drove through to get to Avery Island, sugar cane is the only major crop. We passed fields and fields of it. We saw tall mesh-sided trucks carrying huge loads of it to go to the mills. We saw one field being burned off after the cane had been cut down, leaving enormous clouds of sweet-smelling smoke. (Cane roots are so tough that burning out the fields is the only practical way to clear them for next season.)
All along the highways, everywhere we went, was sugar cane debris - either stalks of cut cane that had fallen out of the trucks and been crushed under car wheels, or bagasse (what's left after the crushing) scattered along the sides of the road.
We didn't manage to make it to the Steen mill - pity. Best cane syrup in the world. Of course, I already have a supply, and it goes slowly. Cane syrup is an acquired taste. Just as real maple syrup has an unique flavor that no substitutes can approach, so does cane syrup - and that flavor is a little bit metallic, like some kinds of molasses.
If I'd gone to the Steen factory, I'd have gotten some "la cuite," the last of the syrup boiling, so thick that you can't pour it. It's a semi-solid, so sweet it makes your teeth hurt. I don't know what I'd have done with it if I got some.
Not a Good Weekend for Insect Life
On Saturday - the day of the wedding - we arrived at the place early to do the decorations. That was enjoyable; a lot of banter and horseplay, and few enough people that Nonelvis didn't get nervous.
After setting up, we went to have lunch. My stepfather had been trying to talk one of us into riding with him in his truck. He is an incurable trash-picker, and he had seen a hubcap on the side of the road he wanted. He needed a passenger to ride with him to get it. I refused, not wanting to encourage him, and initially Nonelvis refused as well ... but after lunch, perhaps mellowed by her Wendy's chicken sandwich, she agreed.
I got in the car with Mom, she got in the truck, and we headed our separate ways. It wasn't until we all got home again that we found out what had happened. Nonelvis had fetched the hubcap all right, but after she was back in the truck, she noticed there was a spider in it.
A black spider.
A black spider with bright red markings.
By this time, Nonelvis was trying to jump up onto the back of the seat to get away from the hubcap. Not to worry, the black widow did not actually bite her, and my stepfather killed it at the next stop light.
I also bear in mind what happened when we were playing miniature golf on Saturday night. We got to one of those holes where the ball passes through a hidden tunnel and comes out somewhere else. Her ball took a long time to come out. Eventually it did emerge - bringing with it a large cockroach who was apparently a little upset at having his nap interrupted by this large rolling object.
Perhaps it's nature that doesn't interact well with Nonelvis.
The Groom Stammered Nervously
The wedding itself was - well - exhausting. I saw people I hadn't seen in ages, and Nonelvis tried to hide a lot of the time. Poor Nonelvis. She comes from a small family; I come from a loud noisy one. There were two hundred or more people in that building, they were loud, and the band was loud. Even people with proven tolerance for noise were stepping outside at intervals for a little relief.
It didn't console Nonelvis when I explained that there were so many different groups of people represented there (bride's family, groom's family, bride's co-workers, groom's co-workers, parents' friends, et cetera) that no one else knew who anyone was either, and while I probably knew two-thirds of the faces in the room, I knew barely one-third of the names. Who cares? At a function like this, it is no sin to admit that you can't remember someone's name, especially if you haven't seen them in ten years.
Nonelvis is doing pretty well. She can remember the names of all the cousins now. It's the extended family in the older generations, not the younger ones, that gets her. There are still plenty of relatives of my grandfather's generation around - some of my "aunts" and "uncles" are actually great-aunts and great-uncles. My Aunt Ina is my late grandmother's sister - I think. I don't worry about those things much.
We left the wedding once the cake had been cut and dispensed, saying our goodbyes, and went to play miniature golf and eat a late dinner at Shoney's. Simple pleasures are best, sometimes. I hadn't played miniature golf since before I left Baton Rouge.
Nonelvis didn't understand why I kept saying that a wedding scared me. She kept saying that "keep it small" meant under seventy-five people. My idea of "keep it small" is under ten people. I personally want to have a civil wedding and not invite anyone. After seeing this crowd - and this wedding was quite minimalist for my family - Nonelvis is beginning to see my point of view.
When we got back to my mother's house, all the cousins were in sleeping bags in the living room, watching Rush Hour. Apparently two of them had to spend the night there, so all the rest wanted to as well. No problem - the guest bedroom is fairly far from the living room.
Toni and Coffee
On Sunday morning, before heading to the airport, we went to Louie's, a diner that's played such an important part in my life, to have omelets and meet Toni. Not necessarily in that order.
Toni is adorable. We talked for nearly two hours - fortunately we had suspected as much and allowed plenty of time - and we probably could have talked for another two. Toni is one of those people where it's probably dangerous for me to have met her, because now I'll wish I could talk to her on a regular basis. (This same thing happened with several of the people we met in San Francisco in April. Why can't you all just live in Boston, eh?)
Toni has written already about my vivaciousness, but she doesn't realize that I'm not like that around a lot of people - only around the ones who bring that part of my personality to the surface.
Although we talked of many things, the subject that I remember the most is film. Since I don't talk with Jette much directly anymore - alas - I had forgotten what it's like to have a film discussion with an Avowed Film Zealot. I'm not one of those - I'm just an ardent fan - but I like talking to them.
Among other things we discussed why film theory classes are so divorced from practical reality - although we didn't say it quite that way at the time. Maybe I'll rant about that one day. Of course, I've only taken one film theory class, so maybe I should leave that to the professionals. On the other hand, as a critic once said, "You don't have to eat a whole apple to know it's rotten."
My compliments to anyone who can name the critic.
© Columbine
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