March 16: Toledo Bend Lake/Alexandria, LA.

We pulled into Toledo Bend about 1 1/2 hrs. after leaving Lake Charles. We're working our way north slowly. Toledo Bend opened up in 1969 and has become a huge fishing lake. There was a tournament going on while we were there.

In my younger years, I grew up in a great neighborhood probably typical of any neighborhood in the 50's. I grew up with boys - no girls my age anywhere close. I leaned to play ball - any kind of ball; I leaned to love snakes, lizards, frogs (never did get close to spiders), hide & seek and kick the can. The kids I grew up with were great. All we wanted to do was play outside (mostly some kind of game involving a ball), ride our bikes and run over to the river to play there. We dug holes (forts) in the railroad that ran behind out house and killed many an enemy playing "army" or "cowboys and Indians".

One of my good buds, Norman, lived in New Orleans. He is now moving to Treasurer Island, Florida on the coast. His home in New Orleans was flooded by Katrina but he's rebuilt it and sold it. He and his wife, Sharon, have been in Europe for 7 months but returned to New Orleans to visit Sharon's relatives. They are now on their way to Kansas to visit relatives. We met them in Alexandria LA. We ate lunch at Ryan's and had a great visit. Talked about old times and our current situations. Now we can only hope that someday, we'll get to visit them again in their new home on the east coast.

We got into Alexandria about 9:30. We had lots of time to kill so we looked up the Chrysler dealer to replace a head light on the Crossfire. The only dealer in town did not have a Crossfire trained tech so they couldn't touch it. We're driving the car only during the day until we can find an authorized dealer. Lord knows how long that will take.

To kill time, we went to the mall and ate a small lunch. Then drove to Kent Plantation House. This home is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is an authentic Creole plantation house built around 1796 prior to the Louisiana Purchase. Standing on the original land grant from the King of Spain to Pierre Baillio II, it offers a glimpse of the French, Spanish and American cultures that have influenced Louisiana. All three flags fly over the entrance. Also, Spain only gave land grants to Catholics so we know that Baillio and family were Catholic which was apparent by some of the furnishings in the house. The picture on the left is of the front court yard--looking out to the area where I took the picture on the right.

The plantation house is one of the oldest standing structures in the state of Louisiana. Together with its outbuildings, it preserves the homestead of a successful Creole family typical of a Louisiana colonial era working plantation. Alexandria was burned to the ground by those "damn Yankees" in 1864. This home and a Catholic church were the only two structures left standing. The home owner kept his family and a few slaves in the home to keep the soldiers from burning it down. Plus the home was along way from Alexandria at the time. The Catholic church was left standing because the priest stood on the front steps with a shotgun in his hands. Apparently God was on his side.

Construction of the house was completed in 1800.

The house, originally only six rooms, is typical of Louisiana colonial construction. It is raised off the ground on brick pillars to protect it from the flood waters of Bayou Rapides. All of the materials used to build the house came from the land: the clay used for the brick pillars, cypress for its sills and beams, and mud, Spanish moss and animal hair for its bousillage walls--sort of a French stucco. It was then white washed.

In 1842, Robert C. Hynson purchased the house from Baillio heirs. He had come to Louisiana from Kent County, Maryland and the house was named for that area. He added the two square wings on each side of the gallery.

This is the dining room. I took this for all you antique geeks out there. I knew you would love the buffet on the side with secret drawers and the table laid for dinner. Note the board over the table is a shoo fly fan - goes to a cord over in the corner and operated by a small black child.

This is the master bedroom. It is in the square add on on the right side of the home. The bed is a rolling pin bed. If you look close enough, you can see the rolling pin on the head board. In the morning, this was lifted off (and I'm told it's quite heavy) and rolled over the feather bed to get the sunken spots out from over night sleeping. Again, this was a slave function.

The small chair at the foot of the bed had a name but I can't remember what it was called. It was used for saying prayers and rosaries. Laid across the top of the chair were hand carved wooded rosary beads.

This is one of the out buildings. It was where the slaves did the washing and ironing chores. The object in front that looks like a small stool with a long handle on it was the agitator that was worked back and forth in the wash tub. Our guide is showing us the lye soap molds. See all the irons on the bench - they are all different weights.



Another crop besides King Cotton, was sugar cane. The cane was worked down to a syrup (another story) and boiled in this building in four different sized vats. They started with the biggest and worked their way back to the smallest. The syrup was boiled down for molasses for their own use. The rest was then boiled further and would form a crystal on the top. This was allowed to dry and was collected and became brown sugar.





More on our hike on the 16th later.