Columns

When Prohibition became the law of the land, it was not very popular in south Louisiana. I’m told that some of the best illegal whiskey made anywhere during those supposedly dry days came from communities along Bayou Teche, and that smuggling in factory-made stuff was a substantial enterprise along parts of the Louisiana coast and in the Atchafalaya Basin.

Given our new and presumably long-term emphasis on social distancing, the thought occurs that this might be a good time for the revival of drive-in movies. They offered “movie going in a casual manner,” according to one industry promotion, and were quite the rage before regular theaters lured everyone inside with air conditioning.

Steamboats were first introduced onto Bayou Teche in 1818, largely because the commerce from big sugar plantations made the bayou and its neighboring waterways busy places in the years before the Civil War. But it wasn’t easy getting to south Louisiana from New Orleans or any other place on the Mississippi River.