Blue Highways: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe make a quick stop with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) in Breaux Bridge for some crawfish in the Crawfish Capitol of the World.  Read on and join the spicy feast!  If you want to consult the map to see where Breaux Bridge lies in Acadiana, click the thumbnail of the map on the right.

Book Quote

"The menu claimed the catfish were fresh because they had slept the night before in the Atchafalaya. All well and good, but it was little crustaceans I was after. As journalist Calvin Trillin once said, the Atchafalaya swamp is to crawfish as the Serengeti is to lions. The waitress wore threads of wrinkles woven like Chantilly lace over her forehead and spoke her English in quick, rounded Cajun measures. She brought a metal beer tray piled with boiled, whole crawfish glowing the color of Louisiana hot sauce. I worked my way down through the stack. The meat was soft and piquant, sweeter than shrimp, but I had no stomach for the buttery, yellow fat the Cajuns were sucking from the shells.

The waitress said, 'Did they eat lovely like mortal sin?' and winked a lacy eyelid. 'You know, the Cajun, he sometime call them 'mudbugs.' But I never tell a customer that until he all full inside. But the crawfish, he live smilin' in the mud, he do."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 11

Downtown Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Click on photo to go to host site at Wikipedia.

Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

I finally get to write about, at least in the context of Blue Highways, about a place I have been.  And yes, it involved crawfish in the "crawfish capitol of the world."  This blog is not only about journeys chronicled in the books I map, but also about where those journeys take me in my own experiences and imagination.  While I have a lot of imagination, it's nice to sometimes be able to write about a place where I've actually been.

My experience of Breaux Bridge involved a long drive, a campsite along the bayou, a whole mess of crawfish, and some weed.  While living in San Antonio, I would say the year was roughly 1993, my wife and I made plans to meet friends, a couple from Wisconsin who we met during my wife's graduate studies at Marquette, in Breaux Bridge for a weekend camping trip.  It was only the second time we'd driven into Louisiana - the first was a trip to New Orleans - and we didn't know what to expect camping.  We knew that Breaux Bridge was close to the Atchafalaya Basin, so I was picturing swamps.  We knew that it was in Cajun country, which was quickly confirmed when we crossed into Louisiana and heard the Cajun French of DJs on radio stations and the accordion driven sound of music.  From San Antonio to Breaux Bridge was roughly a 7 hour drive, as I remember it, and involved negotiating the traffic of Houston.  But, after leaving early on a Friday we took Interstate 10 all the way across and found the campsite by late afternoon.  I think that Dave and Leann were already there, so we set up our tent and spent an enjoyable evening next to a bayou that ran behind our tents.

Bayou behind our Breaux Bridge campsite. Photo circa 1993 by Michael Hess.There were armadillos in the vicinity, and I had never really had much of a chance to observe these little critters.  They looked like something out of the Pleistocene or other prehistoric age.  They have long tails and snouts, and an armor shell to protect them.  They snuffled around our campsite like little armored pigs, and I wasn't sure what they were after.  If one of us startled one of them, it would jump straight up in the air, and run off.  I also heard that when threatened they can curl themselves up into impenetrable little balls of armor, but I never saw that.  I was a little bit wary to go near them, because I had heard that they can carry the bacteria that causes leprosy.  The last thing I wanted was a disease that would cause my extremely helpful extremities and other parts to rot off.

One of our party brought some pot with him, and in the spirit of things we smoked a joint with him.  I was a little nervous, thinking that Louisiana State Troopers would show up any minute, bust us, and then I'd have to figure out how to keep myself safe in the Louisiana State Penitentiary or something, but of course I was overimagining things.  It was actually quite nice and mellow.

My wife, Megan, holding a freshly scrubbed live crawfish. Photo circa 1993 by Michael Hess.But the real treat, and an all day affair, was getting a 25 pound bag of live crawfish at a local store.  We spent pretty much the entire day scrubbing the little guys with toothbrushes to get the mud off, and then throwing them into a pot with crab boil to season them.  I kind of hated throwing them into the pot, because I got kind of attached to them, but they made for great eating and there were a lot of them in 25 pounds.  Of course, the dead ones got thrown away into the bayou - you have to eat live ones because the fish spoils so quickly in the heat of the day.  But there weren't that many dead ones and the feast we had was really nice.

It was definitely a unique experience in camping for me to boil up some crawfish and eat it.  I can't remember rightly but I think we may have gone to Mulate's in Breaux Bridge before we left for some Cajun cooking.  Mulate's is a pretty famous place, and is also known as a place to hear good Cajun music.  It has a branch in New Orleans, but the restaurant in Breaux Bridge is the original.  If this is the restaurant that I am thinking of where we ate before we went our separate ways at the end of our camping trip, it is the same place where I learned a very valuable lesson.  I will put my lesson on its own line so that you don't make the same mistake:

Michael's Law #52

Never let Louisiana Hot Sauce touch your fingers before you go to the bathroom.  You'll begin to feel intense prickly hotness where you really don't want it!

Words to live by, all you Littourati out there.

If you want to know more about Breaux Bridge

Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival
Breaux Bridge Live
Louisiana Travel.com: Breaux Bridge
Visitor's Guide to Breaux Bridge
Wikipedia: Breaux Bridge

Correction to above

Megan informs me that we went to Prejean's in Lafayette after our camping trip, not Mulate's in Breaux Bridge.  But if you are in the vicinity, think about visiting either or both of these fine establishments for good Cajun food.

Next up: St. Martinville, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Lafayette, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapTrying to find Cajun music at night in rural Louisiana, we end up with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) in a bar listening to chanky chank, watching a guy play the bones, talking with a Minnesotan, and finally finishing the night with some beer and gumbo.  Not a bad day, if you ask me.  Where does this take place?  Near Lafayette (pronounced Laugh-yet), Louisiana.  Click on the map thumbnail to locate Lafayette, and listen to some good Cajun music while you read - I've included a link to a Cajun internet station down below.

Book Quote

"Then a red glow like a campfire.  A beer sign.  Hearty music rolled out the open door of a small tavern, and a scent of simmering hot peppers steamed from the stovepipe chimney.  I'd found Tee's.  Inside, under dim halos of yellow bug lights, an accordion (the heart of a Cajun band), a fiddle, guitar, and ting-a-ling (triangle) cranked out chanky-chank.  The accordionist introduced the numbers as songs of amour or joie and the patrons cheered; but when he announced un chanson de marriage, they booed him.  Many times he cried out the Cajun motto, Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 10

Downtown Lafayette, Louisiana. Click on photo to go to its site on Destination360.com.

Lafayette, Louisiana

I am cheating a little bit on this post.  I'm really combining two stops that LHM made near Lafayette into one.  If I were to map it most correctly, I would probably first highlight his first stop at a bar in Lafayette where he has a Dixie Beer and asks where he can hear some "chanky-chank," or Cajun music.  His second stop was then a rural bar named Tee's where he finds the music he is looking for.

However, I am not going to do this in two separate stops because I cannot find Tee's - perhaps the bar has closed down in the intervening 30 years.  There is a Tee's Lounge in Sunset, Louisiana about halfway between Opelousas and Lafayette, but that would have involved LHM going back in the same direction, and its location doesn't really make sense because it is right off the freeway, and LHM clearly is following a bartender's vague directions , trying to find Tee's in the dark on rural roads.  So, since I don't really know, I'm not going to speculate and be wrong.

"I wound about, crossing three identical bridges or crossing one bridge three times.  I gave up and tried to find my way back to town and couldn't do that either."

Having lived both in Texas and Louisiana, I often found that the best places for live music often lay in rural, out of the way places.  I can remember trying to find a dancehall in Texas once.  We drove and drove through the dark rural roads and, like LHM, accidentally stumbled upon the place when it seemed like the best thing to do would be to just give up.  But once we got there, it was an amazing experience.  Cheap but good beer, and a wonderful time dancing to great music.  These places just seem to materialize out of thin air - like Brigadoon, Avalon, or any otherworldly place - just when you need them to be there.  And, almost as if they belong to another dimension, if you don't pay attention to how you got there, you may never find your way back again.  They seem to exist at the end of time, where pleasant people and fine music mix in a heady ambience so much so that you lose track of time and place, and like the mythical drug of the Lotus Eaters, you may never want to come back.

And the music you will find in these types of backwater dance halls is amazing, about as authentic as any you'll find anywhere.  In Louisiana, you can look for Cajun and Zydeco bands like Beausoleil, Bruce Daigrepont, Buckwheat Zydeco, Wayne Toups and Zydecajun, Dwayne Dopsie, Feufollet...you name it.  These are bands that will make you dance, literally, because you won't be able to stop from moving  your feet.  If you are a woman, you will often be politely steered around the room by a Cajun guy in a fast Cajun two-step or waltz, and chances are you won't get to sit down all night.

And if you are lucky, you get a little of what Louisianans call "lagniappe."  Lagniappe is just a little something extra added onto whatever you already have.  For instance, if you went to a bakery to get a dozen donuts, and the baker decided to throw in a thirteenth free, that extra donut is lagniappe.  LHM describes his experience of lagniappe, though he doesn't label it as such probably because nobody used the term around him:

"....Everybody went home.  The barmaid watched us wearily.  "Okay," she said, "come on back for some hot stuff.

"Is this where we find out why they call themselves 'Coonasses'?"  I said, and we laughed again, holding on to each other.

"All right, boys.  Settle down."  She led us not to a bedroom but to a large concrete-floor kitchen with an old picnic table under a yellow flourescent tube.  We sat and a young Cajun named Michael passed a long loaf of French bread.  The woman put two bowls in the oil cloth and ladled up gumbo.  Now, I've eaten my share of gumbo, but never had I tasted anything like that gumbo:  the oysters were fresh and fat, the shrimp succulent, the spiced sausage meaty, okra sweet, rice soft, and the roux - the essence - the roux was right.  We could almost stand our spoons on end in it."

Such stories, to me, are the essence of Louisiana and the graciousness and generosity of the people I found there.  In New Orleans, especially around Mardi Gras, you can walk down the street and complete strangers will invite you into their house to a party or to share in their meal.  It isn't just "letting the good times roll."  That in itself would be special enough.  No, the extra specialness that I found in Louisiana consisted of that lagniappe that appeared unexpectedly, without warning.  The memories of those that, on a whim, invite you to participate in something extra and magical - those are the memories that we carry with us.  LHM finishes that passage with this wonderful tableau about eating gumbo after hours in Tee's:

"The woman disappeared, so we ate gumbo and dipped bread and no one talked.  A gray cat hopped on the bench between Seipel and me to watch eat bite of both bowls we ate.  Across the room, a fat, buffy mouse moved over the stove top and browsed for drippings from the big pot.  The cat eyed it every so often but made no move away from our bowls.  Seipel said, "I've enjoyed the hell out of tonight," and he laid out a small shrimp for the cat.  Nothing more got spoken.  We all went at the gumbo, each of us, Minnesotan, Cajun, cat, mouse, Missourian."

All quotes in this entry from Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 10 

If you want to know more about Lafayette

The Advertiser (newspaper)
Lafayette Conventions and Visitors Bureau
Lafayette Independent Weekly (alternative newspaper)
Road Food America list of Lafayette restaurants
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Wikipedia: Lafayette

Next up: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Opelousas, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe sidle up to stool in a bar in Opelousas with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and watch as he becomes the uncomfortable butt of a joke.  What he really wants to find is a place with Cajun music.  That's our next stop.  To see Opelousas on the map, click the thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"'By the way, junior,' he asked casually, 'ever had yourself a Cajun woman?'

"His question silenced the bar. 'Don't think I have.'

"'Got some advice for you then - if you find you ever need it.'

"It was the quietest bar I'd ever been in. I answered so softly no sound came out, and I had to repeat. 'What advice?'

"'Take off your belt before you climb on so you can strap your Yankee ass down because you'llget taken for a ride. Up the walls and around.'

"Now the whole bar was staring. I guess to surmise whether my Yankee ass was worth strapping down. One rusty geezer said, 'Junior ain't got no belt.'

"Walt looked at my suspenders and pulled one, letting it snap back. 'My man,' he said, 'tie on with these and you'll get zanged out the window like in a slingshot.'"

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 9

A place in Opelousas, Louisiana where LHM could have stopped today to get crawfish. From the Rebouche blog. Click on photo to go to host site.Opelousas, Louisiana

I'm not sure what to say about this one, since I've never been to Opelousas, nor a bar in the environs, nor have I ever been in any kind or relationship with a Cajun woman.  It's really the only thing that happens to LHM in Opelousas - except that the guy, Walt, who asks him whether he's ever had a Cajun woman, tells him a paragraph later that he should never take offense at what a "Coonass" says.  Coonass, of course, is a nickname and sometimes pejorative for a Cajun.

The etymology for the word "Coonass" appears to show that there are disputed origins, and its acceptance among Cajuns often depends on how high on the socio-economic ladder a Cajun stands, with people at the bottom of that ladder wearing it as a badge of pride and people toward the top viewing it as an ethnic slur.  It is like the infamous "N" word among African-Americans: a case where it started out as a pejorative term, but then the affected culture appropriated the word.  Just as younger blacks, especially among the hip-hop crowd, refer to themselves and each other with a variant of the "N" word but often take offense if an outsider uses the term, so might Cajuns refer to themselves as Coonasses but view it as a terrible slight should a non-Cajun call them by that term.  Given the word's unclear beginnings, I'm not sure that I'd want to use it anyway since I don't know exactly what it means - one can often infer meanings of things from inside a particular culture that are invisible or not understandable from the outside.

As for LHM's experience in the bar, I'm inclined toward the "boys will be boys" school.  The fact is that when you get a bunch of men together there will be questionable humor.  I learned this working in a lumber mill.  Humor that was sexual and scatological was rampant throughout the mostly male workforce in the mill, as were actual sexual paraphernalia such as magazines.  I remember walking into a "tally shack" where the tallymen added up their figures after a truck was loaded or when they were getting an order ready, and the walls were covered with so many Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and other magazine centerfolds that there was no sign of the wood underneath.  Of course, being a high school boy at the time, I was thrilled at seeing naked women in various erotic poses.  I think it provided an outlet for those guys that they didn't get at home because they had to temper these activities and proclivities in the presence of wives and family.  It's often made me wonder whether men are just hard-wired for visual sexual imagery in a way that women are not.

Perhaps men are also hard-wired for explicit and frank talk, since I am stepping into the quicksand of generalities.  Sexual and scatological jokes among groups of men seem to be de rigeur.  In the lumber mill where I worked, if you related a good joke that people liked and felt it worth repeating, you gained a little bit of respect.  Being in high school, I didn't have that many good jokes, but I learned a few.  Too bad that, now that I'm in my late 40s, I've forgotten a lot of them.  Those that I do remember turn out to have been not that funny anyway, and some were downright disgusting, but perhaps I've just gained a more sophisticated sense of humor.  Somehow, I doubt it - give me a good fart joke and I'm laughing like a fiend.  If I've shocked some of you, I'm sorry.

In that context, LHM's experience of getting ribbed in a bar in Opelousas with reference to a sexual situation is not abnormal, but there are always those people who take it too far, who seem to believe the myths that are propagated by such humor and talk, and of whom such behavior reveals a real fear and/or hatred of the opposite gender.  So in that regard, boys may be boys, but there can be a fine line between boys being boys and boys being beasts.

If you want to know more about Opelousas

I had hoped that I could find that the Plantation Lounge, where LHM said he stopped, was still operating, but alas, I couldn't.  Here's some other information about Opelousas, though:

City of Opelousas
Daily World (newspaper)
Opelousas and St. Landry Parish
Wikipedia: Opelousas

Next up: Lafayette, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Ville Platte, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe cross into Louisiana with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) on his journey across the U.S. almost 30 years ago.  I'm sure that the rural communities of the area have changed since then.  For the better? You decide as we explore disappearing cultures.  To see where Ville Platte is located, click on the map thumbnail at right.  And go out and get some Cajun food to excite your humors!

Book Quote

"I switched on the radio and turned the dial.  Somewhere between a shill for a drive-up savings and loan and one for salvation, I found a raucous music, part bluegrass fiddle, part Texas guitar, part Highland concertina.  Cajun voices sang an old, flattened French, part English, part undecipherable."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 9

Building in Ville Platte, Louisiana. Click on the photo to go to host site.

Ville Platte, Louisiana

I remember the second time my wife and I drove into Louisiana.  The first time we drove into Louisiana was to make a trip to New Orleans from San Antonio, where we were living at the time.  We had three friends with us and conversation with them took up the leisure time in the car.  But the second time, it was just me and her.  We were heading to Breaux Bridge (which was visited by LHM and will be covered in a future post).  Near Breaux Bridge, we were meeting some friends who were living in in the Midwest and we were going camping out in the swamp along a bayou.

So, with just us in the car on a six-seven hour trip, we had time to listen to the radio.  And it was there, in the middle of Cajun country, that we heard a DJ speaking in that patois known as Cajun French.  My wife, who had French lessons in high school and could recognize a lot of words, listened for a moment and then said "That is unlike any French that I've ever heard - I can hardly recognize a word."  To me, it sounded like French as if spoken by a person out of the American South or perhaps Texas - with a kind of twang.

We had heard Cajun music before.  I was introduced to the high energy accordion, fiddle, bass and drums with the distinctive rhythm when I lived in Milwaukee, but it wasn't until driving through Louisiana on the interstate and truly listening to the radio did I hear the dialect in its full glory.

Later, when I lived in New Orleans, Cajun was still a novelty.  New Orleans is not really a Cajun town, even though you might think it is.  Rather, New Orleans is a Creole and immigrant town and the food and music reflect this.  Jazz, blues and creole cuisine were the norm, not Cajun music, though you could find Cajun music around town.  Tipitina's on Napoleon Avenue had Fais Do Do's on Saturday, I think, where you could go dance to Cajun music.  The patois you were most likely to hear was something called "Yat," which when I first heard it sounded almost like a New York, Brooklyn accent.  But it wasn't.  In fact, I grew to love the Yat way of speaking.  So I didn't hear Cajun spoken often, except on Sunday afternoons.  The independent local radio station, the wonderful WWOZ, had a DJ on Sunday afternoons named Johnny.  Johnny was a Cajun and played Cajun music, and he had a great Cajun tone.  Lot's of "Oooooooh - weeeee's."  He'd play something he liked, and he would belt out "Johnny like dat!"  I understood that Johnny lived across Lake Pontchartrain and would commute in to the station, but I wasn't really sure if that was a rumor or not.

However, Cajun did permeate my life.  We have good friends with whom we still stay in New Orleans, and Brenda is from a small town down in Cajun country - St. Rose.  You could hear her accent in her speech, and when I met her father who was a tried and true unwatered-down Cajun, you had to strain to hear him because he talked softly but it was a sweet and melodic Cajun lilt.  In New Orleans, Cajun cooking could be found in the backyards where occasionally, you could participate in a crawfish boil, where a picnic table is covered with butcher paper and then a steaming pile of crawfish, seasoned in crawfish or crab boil, with corn and potatoes mixed in, is dumped on the butcher paper.  Everyone gathers around with their Abita Ambers and dig in, mouth burning from the seasoning as we "pinched dem tails and sucked dem heads."  There has never been anything in my experience quite like it.

As LHM alludes to later in this chapter, Cajun culture is coming under assault on all sides.  The bayous and wetlands that provided them with a way of life are disappearing, first human activities like dredging and building shipping channels for extracting oil out of the area.  Extraction activities led to the massive BP oil spill, which damaged wetlands, killed the animals living there, and hurt shrimp and oyster industries that provide many Cajuns with a livelihood.  Such activities also weaken the natural defenses against natural disasters, as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita showed.  I once heard a statistic that a football field of wetland disappears from Louisiana's coastline each hour.  The one time I went on an airboat ride, the person who took us on the tour said that areas where he used to hunt and fish have vanished so that he does not recognize them any more.

Numerous analyses post-Katrina and the oil spill have talked about fragility of Louisiana wetlands.  Less focus has been given to the potential loss of a unique culture that depends upon those wetlands.  The Cajun culture and way of life should be treasured and protected, not left to die in the name of progress and energy efficiency.  As for me, I look forward to going back to Louisiana in March where I hope to make myself fat on one treasure they have given us - their cuisine.

If you want to know more about Ville Platte

City of Ville Platte
Evangeline Parish Tourism
Evangeline Today (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Evangeline Parish
Wikipedia: Ville Platte

Next up: Opelousas, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Vicksburg, Mississippi

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWith William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) we visit the "Key to the South," Vicksburg.  Why is it the key, you may ask?  Read on, fellow traveler and Littourati, and it will be made clear.  If you want to see where the key was turned so many years ago, click on the thumbnail of the map to the right side of the page, and feel free to comment on anything you want!

Book Quote

"...and drove northwest to cross the Mississippi at Vicksburg. South of town, I ate a sandwich where Civil War earthworks stuck out on a bluff high above the river. From these aeries, cannoneers had lobbed shells onto Union gunboats running the river. Anything - a rock, a stick - falling from that height must have hit with a terrible impact."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 8

Confederate cannon in downtown Vicksburg. Click on photo to go to host site.

Vicksburg, Mississippi

Vicksburg sits at a strategic point on the Mississippi River.  From on high it overlooks the river where it bends around a peninsula.  This high point made the city a terrible gauntlet that Union boats had to run under withering cannon fire from the city.  By holding this area, the Confederates maintained a unified country stretching from the Georgia and Florida coast to Texas and beyond, and also kept the Union from being able to run supplies up the Mississippi.

Not only that, but the city was fortified from the land side by earthworks and defenses that made it a formidable place to try to take.  But in 1863, Ulysses S. Grant and his sub-generals, including William T. Sherman, decided to try to take the city.  The Confederate forces, depleted by battles, retreated into the city, and after several unsuccessful attacks, Grant settled down for a siege.  The Confederates hoped for help from another Confederate army to the east, but that help never came.  Eventually, tired and starving after a siege of just over a month, the Confederate army surrendered on July 4th, just one day after Robert E. Lee was defeated by Union forces at Gettysburg.  Grant allowed parole to all prisoners, who he expected never to fight again after the horrors of the battles and the siege.  As a result of the battle, the Confederacy was cut in two, never to be reunified.  It marked the turning point in the American Civil War, and truly shaped the character of the South and helped define the nation's path forward through history.  The surrender was so emotionally and politically charged that the city of Vicksburg refused to celebrate the U.S. July 4th Independence Day for eighty years.

The Civil War interests me because it was probably the first modern war.  While previous wars had been fought according to specific guidelines - armies lined up in ranks shooting at each other until one or the other broke - the Civil War was an all out contest where the rules of war were redefined.  In a sense, the United States had gained experience in fighting such a war in the Revolutionary War, where the Colonial Army sometimes fought according to the established rules, but sometimes used guerrilla tactics to fight as well.  The Civil War was much more of an all-out fight, from what I've read, with the true horrors of war made possible by advances in engineering and explosives.  In the siege of Vicksburg, for example, the Union soldiers tunneled under Confederate defenses and packed over a ton of gunpowder into the shaft, exploding it and breaking through the lines.  The resulting crater was 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep. All in all in the siege, casualties were numerous.  The Union casualties were close to 5,000 men, and the Confederate casualties numbered some 3,500 men with 29,000 surrendering.  Deaths over the entire campaign for Vicksburg numbered about 10,000 Union killed and wounded, and just over 9,000 for the Confederates. 

Many times it was better to die on the battlefield than have to face infection, gangrene, the loss of a limb, and perhaps even addiction to painkillers.  The lyrical excerpt below is from a Michelle Shocked song called Soldier's Joy, which recounted the horrors of the battle aftermath:

I took a rifle ball in my shoulder
But my entire body filled with pain
I pleaded with them all at the field hospital
Oh god, another shot of morphine.

Soldier's joy, oh what's the point in pleasure
When it's only meant to kill the pain
Lay down my arms and take the coffin's measure
Or take up arms and send me out to fight again.

Shaking hands, was I a coward, was I brave?
Shaking hands, I took the bitter pill
Tell the story on my grave, my soul they could not save
What the bullet couldn't kill, the needle will.

Michelle Shocked
Shaking Hands (Soldier's Joy)
from Arkansas Traveler

While the Civil War was a defining event in American history, it also cost more American lives than any war before or after. In 1865, those deaths accounted for almost two percent of the U.S. population, and these are just estimated deaths as record keeping wasn't very precise back then.  If you add in the wounded, the number of Americans and American families affected by the Civil War is even greater.  To compare, World War II deaths only accounted for three-tenths of the population of the United States.

Vicksburg is thus an important place in our American history.  As LHM sat on the bluffs over the river, imagining the cannon shot raining down on Union gunboats, I'm pretty sure that he was aware of the importance of the city.  As for me - well, it took me blogging this book to realize just how important Vicksburg is.  It's pretty lame of me - but when I make that trip into Mississippi I promise I won't pass up a chance to visit. 

If you want to know more about Vicksburg

Destination 360: Vicksburg
Vicksburg city website
Vicksburg National Military Park
Vicksburg Post (newspaper)
Vicksburg Tourism
Wikipedia: Vicksburg

Next up: Ville Platte, Louisiana