Christmas morning in Louisiana is not what would be expected from the picture book images of the season. I experienced that because for several years we would bring my mom in New Orleans to be with her sisters in the central Louisiana town of Marksville.
Not long after going through Baton Rouge we would connect to LA Highway 1, one of the state’s earliest roads which dissects Louisiana between Grand Isle on the Gulf and Shreveport near the Texas border.
We would not be dashing through fields of snow by any means. By Christmas the landscape, which in summer had been lush green, was now brown. The leaves had fluttered away, taking flight on the chilled wind. Nearby were fields, some of which only a few weeks earlier held a bounty of sugar cane. As winter approached, farmers would burn the canes’ exterior ruffage making it easier to get to the interior sweet pulp from which the mills would extract a liquid. That was the first step toward making granulated sugar. Adding to the sensory experience was the cane stalks that invariably had fallen to the road from the trucks heading to the mills. The crunching weight of passing tires sweetened the path.
There was a rustic beauty to the scene. On Christmas morning the landscape was quiet as though nature was taking the day off. A gray/blue winter sky colored the background.
While nature was quiet, humans, however, were busy. There are many small, primarily Black congregation churches in rural Louisiana. Pick-up trucks were parked along the road while the worshippers within walked up the road to rejoice. Back home Christmas dinner would be waiting, most likely featuring a roasted pig, itself a reason to rejoice.
(Christmas is best celebrated in different ways by different cultures. One year while driving along the same road, the traffic was slowed by a makeshift parade. Santa himself was sitting in the back of the lead truck waving to the passersby. He wore a fine costume, though there must have been a shortage of proper beards — instead he had to settle for a plastic King-Fu mask with a long menacing handle-bar moustache.)
At the town of Morganza the route takes on a strategic importance. This is where a spillway begins. Its floodgates were built by the Army Corps of Engineers to divert potential flood waters from the nearby Mississippi River to other streams and lowlands so as to prevent catastrophic flooding downriver including New Orleans. The road stretches along the top of the elevated spillway like having a highway on a levee. From there Marksville, and our Christmas dinner, is only about an hour away — unless something happens.
Something did. One Christmas morning there was a sudden thumping sound and the car was shaking. I pulled over. There was a flat tire. No day and few locations provide worse moments to experience a flat than a spillway on Christmas morning. I stood at the side of the car facing the daunting task of having to make the change though I was not sure of the quality of the replacement tire and the flimsy jack. And then the trunk, which was packed with gifts and luggage, would have to be unloaded. I needed a miracle.
“Just follow me,” a man in a pickup truck that pulled alongside yelled. He pointed to a nearby exit road and a cluttered yard. This was not a moment to be choosy. Though my car wattled on its three usable wheels we managed to make it down the road. The yard belonged to the man in the truck whose business was collecting used car parts — including tires. He had one that was the right size and began to make the change, having the benefit of a professional’s tire jack and knowing what he was doing. My job was to unload the trunk. He did the rest.
It did not take him long. He could have charged me whatever he wanted but, as I recall, his price was modest, though I did jack up the tip.
Once back on the road I realized that had my flat occurred only a few seconds earlier or later, I would not have been at the same spot when he passed. Also, that spot happened to be exactly above his place where he had used tires.
We made it to Marksville. The replacement tire got us there and back to New Orleans the next day.
We were only about an hour late for dinner — roast pig along with classic dirty rice.
We invaded the leftovers later after opening gifts. It was Christmas night — and all was calm; all was bright.
