Jim Bradshaw
Drought, dried up prices, surly neighbors and a bundle of dynamite made for hard times in the early days of rice farming in parts of southwest Louisiana.
One of the biggest losers was Charles Lowry who in 1893 bought 7,000 acres on the Mermentau River around the “Green House,” the historic residence (still standing) said to be one of the oldest houses west of the Atchafalaya Basin.
Am I misremembering (it happens regularly after a certain age), or are the mosquitoes late this year? We haven’t had a substantial rain at my house since the middle of April, and that may be why I haven’t heard the perennial summertime buzzing in my ears. But it seems to me that the mosquitoes have not paid close attention to dry times in the past.
The elevated span of Swamp Expressway that carries I-10 across the Atchafalaya Basin is a remarkable thing, but there were plans afoot to build an even more remarkable roadway across the huge wetland well before I-10 was even on the drawing boards.
In fact, the Sunshine Bridge across the Mississippi River near Donaldsonville was originally conceived as part of a toll road that would run from Lafayette through St. Martin, Iberville, Ascension, and St. James parishes to Lutcher, where it would cross the river and link to the Airline Highway and New Orleans.
Some recent editorials and news stories have falsely characterized regulatory review efforts currently underway at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, apparently without having actually read the proposed revisions. One editorial in the Houston Chronicle expressed worries that many, including the U.S. Government and our agency, commonly referred to as BSEE, might have forgotten the lessons of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy and other offshore incidents. For the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement nothing could be further from the truth.
His career was apparently winding down when Edward LeRoy returned to Lafayette to walk a wire strung high above the high school campus.
“Mr. LeRoy has been walking the high wire for many years,” the Lafayette Advertiser reported on July 5, 1941, “and states that he first learned to do this high-wire walking in Lafayette when he was a boy.” His act, the account said, “will consist of various tricks on the wire” and that “he states he is the only man who is able to perform some of the more difficult stunts.”
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