Forty-Two

Baton Rouge, Lousiana

Rocket fuel – real and metaphorical – is the order of the day.

First, I slipped back into Mississippi to see the John Stennis Space Center where all rocket engines since the Saturn V have been tested and where engine testing is ongoing for both the current Space Shuttle and the Ares I and V lift vehicles that are supposed to be the future of the United States Space Program.

I think I’m well on my way to becoming a chronicler of ghost towns. Not necessarily the boom and bust mineral towns of the Old West but the places where things just went sideways and blew a seemingly established community out of existence: St. Joseph, Florida, Frederica and Sunbury, Georgia, [five towns removed by Stennis]. Surely the stories of these towns deserve more than a few pictures on a wall in some seldom visited museum or tourist attraction; surely these stories deserve to be told. Like the one about the old lady who loaded her house on a flatbed and rode in her rocker on the back porch as the truck wheeled down the highway to escape the inevitability of the Space Center. Or the immigrants that ran a tavern and possible cathouse and vanished into history along with the once-thriving town of Frederica.

And after thoughts like that a man needs a drink. Northeast of Lake Pontchartrain is the little town of Abita Springs, the birthplace of the second best beer known to mortal man: Purple Haze. The weekday tour is the way to go. For a good thirty minutes I was the only guest, pointed to the cups and told to pull myself a brew from any one of about fifteen taps because “There ain’t no bartenders here.” Then I got to shoot the shit with one of the seven brewers about trips to Bavaria for home brew and Jimmy Buffet concerts and cornering Jimmy himself to make him say hi to an old lady. Then you get to go see the beer being born. With a beer in hand. And more back in the bar. And it’s free.

I thought the Anheuser-Busch tour was pretty sweet. A pleasant walk through the brewery with two free beers at the end. Even if it was Bud products. This tour was a mosey, mostly a conversation among friends enveloped by the smell of malting barley with as much booze as you could handle out in the middle of the Louisiana bayou country. There ain’t no downside here, folks.