|
|
|
Got a question
about New Orleans
Ask
Us |
|
|
|
Visions of Gone With the Wind are whirling around in my head
as we drive across the bridge to the River Road to St.
James Parish and into plantation country.
It's my first real visit to the South, and the possibility of touching the
romance and mysteries of mansions and giant oaks excites me.
Imagining the grandeur of white columns, sweeping staircases and
spacious verandahs, I am shocked (and a little disappointed) with my first
encounter with Laura.
Laura is sitting on stilts! Instead of the gracious white
exterior, it is a harsh yellow, red and other colors. Instead of
grandiose, it is modest. The columns are utilitarian pillars and the
quarters are not elegant, but comfortable and practical.
But the story! Now there's the romance. . . and the ugly
realities, and the real
stuff of life in the South in the 1800s.
We meet our guide, a pretty young girl with dark brown hair, wearing a
beret tilted on her head and looking very French, which, we
discover, is the idea, as she spits out French words and phrases with
ease.
|
|
Her stories, full of details, and told with an energetic personal
touch, bring the Laura Plantation to life.
|
|
Click on any of these images for a
larger look!
chuadron a canne a sucre
Sugarcane Syrup Kettle
|
When a member of the family decided to
resign, retire or leave the plantation, for any reason, they were required
to move out of the house.
This is the home (soon to be a bed
and breakfast) built for Laura's Grandmother, just a few feet from the
main house.
|
|
Not unlike their neighbors on the river, Laura was a working sugar
plantation. The family stayed from June until September, then
returned to New Orleans for the winter social season.
Built in 1805, Laura is named after one of her mistresses, Laura Locoul,
who lived from to be 102 until her death in 1963!
The plantation was given it's name in 1874 after Elisabeth, Laura's
grandmother, divided the plantation between her two children. Emile,
Laura's father, took the half with the manor house but the mill was on the
other half.
He had to construct a new sugar mill on his half. After the
completion of the mill, in 1874, he through a grand party and invited
guests for Laura, then 13 years old. Each guest was asked to bring a
suggestion for a name for the newly built mill.
Laura's best friend and cousin Lily LeGendre brought a sugar cane stalk
with the name "the Laura mill" tied on it with a ribbon.
At that very moment, Emile changed the name of the plantation from the
Duparc Plantation to Laura Plantation.
Later, as an adult, Laura resisted running the mill and chose instead to
live in New Orleans, until circumstances forced her to return. Ten
years later, at the age of 29, she sold the plantation and moved to St.
Louis.
Her life and experiences never left her, however, and our guide tells
us that she wrote her memoirs - Memoirs
of Laura (which are being published as we speak) - after reading a few
pages of Gone With the Wind, and declaring with disgust that it was
a sham, and like no plantation she had ever seen!
|
|
|
A refrigerator! The pot was lowered into the ground
until only the lip showed. Perishables were kept cool from the
scorching summers of the South.
|
|
The Laura Plantation may be the only plantation known to have been run by
women for 200 years!
Although built by a Frenchman, he died in 1808. The plantation
was then run by his widow, their daughter and finally, their great
granddaughter, Laura.
They were ambitious women with excellent management skills.
Laura's mother, having married a Frenchman with a winery, orchestrated
shipments of wine and turned the cool underbelly of the house into a wine
cellar.
She made a small fortune from wine sales alone.
|
| The 'stilts' I mentioned earlier are actually piers
that extend 8 feet into the ground and widen into pyramids at the base,
touching each other to offer support to the house. The piers
protected the house from the floods that occurred every spring.
They also
served as a sort of air conditioner, allowing the cool air from the soil
to circulate in the hot, muggy summers.
The men and women each had their own section of the house.
Visitors were invited first into the bedroom for conversation, a
smoke and perhaps a drink, before joining the rest of the family for a
meal. From the dining room, two doors, provided exits, one narrow
for the men, and a wider one to accommodate the women's skirts. |
| After the tour, we are
invited to look around on our own. The Laura Plantation
has a rare collection of twelve buildings that are on the National
Register. |
|
Blow this picture up to see what I am talking
about.
|
Six of these buildings are former
slave quarters. The Laura Plantation is not into
Southern myths. They are proud to exhibit the slave
quarters.
Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest in a little town
named Selah - just about as far from the South as you can get in
this country - the condition of slaves and how they lived has
been a textbook account for me.
|
|
Now, as I stand here in
the midst of these broken down shacks, I am overwhelmed with a
sense of sadness. I will never really know what it was
like to live with so many people in small rooms, without
privacy, running water or modern conveniences. But my
vivid imagination slaps of realty and I know I will always
remember this day.
The slave quarters have
still another story - a more famous story about a very famous
rabbit.
A hint of the story greets visitors as they first enter the
Laura Plantation. A big sign hangs on the fence with the
words "The American Home of Brer Rabbit." This
is apparently up for debate,
but our guide tells the Laura Plantation version like this.
Out in the cabins, one of the slave Daddies gathered up the
children and began telling old African tales that had been
passed down to him as a child. One of those stories was
about a smart mouth rabbit who got stuck on a "tar
baby." This was, of course Brer
Rabbit and the Tar Baby Story, or Compair Lapin tales.
It was here, around the 1870's that folklorist Fortier first
heard these stories from former slaves, began recording the
Creole French version, and later had them published in his Louisiana
Folktales.
Some experts feel the Laura Plantation has exploited the
story and that Georgia is the home of Brer Rabbit, and that Joe
Chandler Harris deserves credit for it's publication.
Who will ever know?
Leaving
the plantation, we stop along the road to sample the sugarcane. It's not
harvest time, so the stalks are still tough and the sweet flavor is mild, but unmistakable.
Lunch
stop - Spuddy's |
