In the early ’80s Baton Rouge still felt in many ways like a small, rural town. Spanish moss hung thickly from trees like bearded wise men standing guard over the imperial swamp. Neighborhood kids spent most of their free time engaging in watermelon seed spitting contests or sliding down the muddy slopes of the Mississippi River bank. Life just seemed to pass at a slower pace, like it was meant to be savored over a big pile of steaming crawfish, which my sister and I hauled home in old Coleman coolers from the booth at the corner of our street.
Memories are funny things. And people tend to treat them one of two ways: either glossed over and saved like a polished stone, or harbored with shades of black that color the disposition well into adulthood.
Despite a number of things that went very wrong, I tend to remember the decade I spent in Baton Rouge fondly. Even though I have no desire to live there again, largely due to the intense humidity and my predilection for straight hair, I also have developed a sort of kinship to the culture and mindset of my birthplace.
So, when my younger sister Bridget announced that she was going to college at Louisiana State University a couple of years ago, I took it as a sign that it was time for some sort of homecoming. My family has never been the type to “go back” anywhere. We all seem to intrinsically be propelled forward. Forever kinetic.
Maybe this was Bridget’s rebellion. She always did enjoy going against the grain. When my mom offered to help us make Halloween costumes one year during elementary school, Bridget resoundingly decided that she was going to go to be photosynthesis for the school carnival. Mom was initially impressed that my seven-year-old sister had taken so well to her curriculum and added such a big word to her vocabulary, but I knew that her ulterior motive really was to see mom try to find synthetic chlorophyll.
I didn’t actually get my chance to return to the Red Stick City until after Bridget’s junior year of college. I was living in California by then and had impulsively decided to spend a part of my summer in a town even hotter, if not more humid than where I was living. By then, my memories of Louisiana were so distant they were almost like one colorful blur. Something warm and spicy, with shades of aubergine.
But then I stepped off the plane. And it was like things hadn’t changed. At all.
We drove down a series of tar-spackled streets to the house my sister was sharing with another girl at the time. I craned my neck, eagerly looking for the graying mustaches and beards of the trees lining the block. The wise men smiled sleepily at me in the summer sun. The air felt heavier too, and we wore it like a second skin. I soon settled into the hammock in my sister’s backyard and watched as she watered a ragged patch of backyard tomatoes and baby watermelon.
We took a lot of walks around town that week. Stood on the pier at sunset and stared at the Mississippi. And in many ways it was like rediscovering a long lost lover. Certain things would take on familiar hues, like the way the grass felt on bare feet or the sidewalks cracked at the end of each curb. And yet, I was also looking at the city anew. I gaped awkwardly while staring at our old house, the trees still young and spindly, not the giant oaks I had remembered. Perhaps a change in stature also had something to do with it.
My sister acted often as a walking tour guide, pointing out favorite spots for a bowl of grits with butter or student art installations. More often than not though, she would lower her voice, roll her eyes and explain the latest condo construction project in the works down the street.
Baton Rouge, it seemed, was in flux. After the mass exodus of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, many of the Big Easy’s former residents had taken refuge up north, pushing the capital city’s existing housing constraints to the brink. This provided quite a boon to developers, but not for many longtime residents of Baton Rouge – residents who wanted to preserve their beloved city’s small town charm.
And so we walked. Through the midst of clashing cultures. The clamor for old and new. My sister looking forward. I traveling back in time.
Jill Tydor lives and works in the Bay Area.
