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After San Antonio, we set out for Big Bend National Park.
Eventually we came to the Pecos River. We were pretty close to the Mexican border, and there wasn’t much to see in any direction. A cross on a hill just above the highway suggests that some traveler never reached his or her destination.
Next: Big Bend National Park
Welcome to Texas.
We visited Dallas and Austin to see family and friends, so no photos from those spots; but San Antonio was something else. It was much more of a pleasant city than I expected, insofar as it wasn’t overly built up like Dallas, and the architecture reminded me of eastern cities (I’m provincial that way). It also has a fantastic river walk that leads to the site of a former brewery, which now contains multiple funky shops and restaurants.
Of course, it is still the south in some respects.
The big attraction of San Antonio, of course, is the Alamo, which is downtown, the city having filled in all the space around it. The original Alamo complex was much larger than the small fort we see today (and the iconic façade was the fort’s church), which explains why the battle took as long as it did.
So here are some fun facts about the Alamo. First, a lot of the items in the Alamo Museum collection—papers, weapons, other metal goods—were donated by the musician Phil Collins, who has been obsessed with the Alamo ever since he watched the Disney series Davy Crockett as a child. Second, when the guide told us the story of the Alamo, he cited an eyewitness account of the battle given by “Joe,” servant to Commander William Travis. However, General Santa Ana had given the order to give no quarter to the men of the fort. So why did Joe survive? Because Santa Ana spared the women, children, and slaves. One of the unmentioned causes of the Texans’ revolt against Santa Ana was that the Mexican government wanted to ban slavery in the state of Texas, and the Texans weren’t having it.
Next: more Texas.
Next: San Antonio.
Finally, it was time to leave New Orleans and go to Texas, but first we stopped at the Tabasco plant on Avery Island, which is not an actual island, but a 2,200 acre site elevated above the surrounding marshes. (Avery Island contains a rock salt deposit “thought to be deeper than Mount Everest is high,” according to the Explore Louisiana website.) Tabasco sauce was created by Edmund McIlhenny, a Southern banker whose career was destroyed by the Civil War and who turned to making hot sauce as a way of making a living enlivening southern cuisine. Of course, the story of Tabasco sauce’s origin has been romanticized and is also disputed; it’s entirely likely that McIlhenny took an acquaintance’s recipe and bottled it as his own.
Whatever the story, the company branched out over the years, and there are 12 varieties of Tabasco sauce on the market at present, from the “family reserve” and a raspberry chipotle to “Scorpion Sauce,” which ranks 50,000 on the Scoville scale. (Regular Tabasco sauce falls between 2,500 and 5,000 on the scale; the actual Tabasco pepper itself falls between 30,000 and 50,000, while Habaneros start at 150,000 Scoville units.)
Next: still toward Texas.
When you think of Louisiana and the Mississippi River, the first thing that comes to mind might not be petrochemical processing, but that shouldn’t be too far behind. These plants are situated about 100 yards from the edge of the Mississippi, about 50 miles upriver from New Orleans.
Next: on toward Texas.
Whitney Plantation is an educational center that discusses plantation life from a slave’s point of view.
The Whitney Plantation—originally the Heidel Plantation, named for the original owners—was active from 1752 to 1975, in other words, both before the Civil War and then after the war, with sharecroppers working the land. At its height, 100 slaves lived on the Whitney Plantation and produced sugar cane for the Heidel family.
Here is the plantation house. It is not a grand plantation house; it is only one room deep (with a rear balcony). Note the painted decoration, including the painted marble effects.
And compare that to the slave quarters.
Sugarcane production was brutal. “Slaves in the Louisiana sugar cane world lived what the former slave and civil rights activist Frederick Douglass termed a ‘life of living death.’ The average life span of a mill hand was said to be only seven years — a message that circulated widely among enslaved people who feared being sold into bondage in sugar fields.”1 The leaves of the sugarcane stalk have sharp edges; slaves harvesting sugarcane plantations often suffered deep cuts as they worked the fields. Meanwhile, the slaves who pressed the cane into juice could lose limbs if they got themselves caught in the mechanical rollers; and the slaves who boiled the juice to crystalize it into sugar risked being scalded. It’s all awful.
We attended another carnival parade, that of the Krewe de Vieux. Krewes generally contain multiple sub-krewes—so here we saw the Krewe of Underwear, the Krewe de Mishigas, and the Kazoozie Floozies, among others. Below are a lot of random images; they probably make more sense if one understands what is happening in New Orleans culture or politics. Some themes, however, require no explanation.
The Pharmacy Museum in New Orleans is a fascinating look back at medicine when people’s ideas about it were, I don’t know, a little funny. For example, if you were a normal person, the pharmacist would compound your pills for you at his compounding station; but if you were on the wealthier and more ostentatious side, when it was time to take your medicine, you’d grandly produce the gold- and silver-coated pills you’d had the pharmacist make for you in front of your friends—because precious metals make everything better. And then eventually you’d poop out the gold and silver pills with their contents still in them, one-hundred percent, because our stomachs don’t digest precious metals.
Here we have a portrait of Louis Dufilho, Jr., the first licensed pharmacist in Louisiana, along with his certificate (“0001”), and the city’s first soda fountain. Pharmacists used to pour liquid medicines into soda drinks to make them more palatable. Everyone knows that Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine, but did you know that 7-Up used to contain lithium?
Heroin and opium were popular medicinal ingredients to treat aches and pains. Bayer advertised heroin alongside aspirin; Pond’s infused tampons with opium to manage cramps. Doctors also prescribed lead nipple shields for breastfeeding mothers; “the lead shields were advertised as soothing to the mother’s breast through the creation of lead lactate.” This may explain a lot. Plus, other things to put up inside oneself if one has “piles, constipation, nervousness, dyspepsia, sick headache, neuralgia, rheumatism, insomnia, asthma, indigestion, eczema, all diseases caused by sluggish circulation, mal-nutrition, defective elimination, and the abuse of cathartic drugs.”
As I mentioned in the last post, many people consulted voodoo practitioners as well as doctors, and the practitioners had their own pharmaceutical products. I can’t tell from the photo whether the 71st potion in the collection is a love potion, or whether the pharmacist got up to Love Potion No. 71. These probably would not have been for sale at the original pharmacy, but they’re in the museum.
Finally, at the museum, I learned, first, that untreated syphilis can lead to nasal deterioration, including inflammation, ulcers, and the collapse of the nasal bridge (also known as “saddle nose”). I also learned that one can replace the nose by surgically attaching the finger to it and stretching skin over the attachment: reportedly, the surgeon then detached the finger from the hand and left it where the nose was. (A Pinterest post says that the patient lost his nose from being struck in the face, not from syphilis. (a) I don’t know, and (b) either way, wow.)
It is said that New Orleans is one of the most haunted cities in America. Haunted hotels, former slave quarters, voodoo priests and priestesses—the place is a minefield of paranormal activity.1
For example, the Andrew Jackson Hotel supposedly sits on the site of an orphanage that was destroyed in the New Orleans fire of 1794; today, guests complain that they hear mysterious children laughing and playing in the halls. “Some guests have even claimed to be on the receiving end of harmless pranks, such as turning televisions on at night and other ghostly hijinks,” says the website of the hotel, which clearly is playing into its haunted status. There are other allegedly haunted hotels in the city as well, but they don’t like to advertise their ghosts.
A more gruesome, and apparently true, story concerns the LaLaurie mansion, pictured during the carnival parade I blogged about earlier. In 1834, when a fire broke out in the mansion, Madame LaLaurie refused to turn over the keys to a locked upstairs room. Firemen broke into the room, and they found, according to an account in the New Orleans Bee,
Several slaves more or less horribly mutilated, were seen suspended from the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other. Language is powerless and inadequate to give a proper recollection of the horror, which a scene like this must have inspired. We shall not attempt it, but leave it rather to the reader’s imagination to picture what it was!
According to one website—and it’s on the internet2, so it must be true—
Some believe that Dr. Louis LaLaurie and his wife were conducting horrific medical experiments on the slaves.
According to accounts, the victims were men, women, and children, and included a caged woman who had her limbs broken and set at unnatural angles so as to resemble a crab; a mutilated sex change operation; a woman whose limbs were removed and odd circular pieces of skin removed to resemble a human caterpillar, and some had pieces of their faces removed to resemble gargoyles. Seven were suspended from their necks and were badly mutilated. Two of these survivors died shortly after their rescue.
To the right is a woman dining in a side room at Muriel’s restaurant. The story here is that the building was once the house of a Pierre Antoine Jourdain, who lost the house in a poker game and consequently hanged himself in a room on the second floor. According to legend, Jourdain never left, and he was deeply offended to discover that the new owners were hosting dinners to which he hadn’t been invited; as a result, the restaurant staff would open the building to prepare for a night’s service and sometimes find that dishes had been smashed all over the dining room. After holding a séance to find out what the ghost wanted, the owners began setting a table aside for Jourdain so he feels included, and guests can book the table to join him—but they have to be respectful, otherwise he begins smashing things up again.
These photos show the séance room at the Hand of Fate emporium, where one can go for tarot readings. If you click on the second photo, of the skulls, and look above the right skull, you will see a small blue dot. According to our tour guide, this is not a lens flare or a reflection, but rather a paranormal energy orb. She even showed us photos on her iPhone of other energy orbs that she had captured. One can believe it or not, but I think it’s more fun to believe I caught something, just as, when we were above the arctic circle to see the Northern lights, the lights looked grey to the eye but in photos were bright green.
Next: more fun and creepy stuff.
They’re pretty much everywhere. If they’re not playing in clubs, they’re playing in streets. If they’re not playing in streets, they’re carrying their instruments in the streets. Music is a serious business; still, the musicians often don’t look like they’re enjoying themselves.
That said, they sound good.
Next: spookier stuff.