Columns

Your journey on the road thorough life is not always smooth. There are potholes, obstacles, breakdowns, traffic, bad drivers, detours, wrong turns, and fender benders. Sometimes you even get lost and have to ask for directions. Just like any automobile trip, you keep going in spite of what you encounter.

Practically every south Louisiana community had a store in the middle 1800s like D. R. January’s Crescent Drug Store in Crowley that offered “chemicals, perfumery, fancy stationery, toilet articles, soap, garden seeds, pipes, tobacco, cigars, paints, oil, glass, and everything usually found in a first-class drug store.”
But, most importantly, it sold patent medicines that worked so magically it’s a wonder they are no longer with us. If the old advertising claims were true, we would have no need for today’s expensive prescriptions .

The celebration of Rayne’s Old Spanish Trail Day on September 23 is a reminder of how important that roadway (essentially the old Hwy. 90) was to south Louisiana, and also of the town’s connection to a significant bit of OST history.
The event has been organized for some years now by Eddie Palmer (epalmer@bellsouth.net).