Travels with Sweetpea

Homer was named for a Greek writer that no one remembers Homer, the first southern town where I lived, is half the size of Crossett and twice as hard to capture in a short blog.  With a population of about 2,500 people this small town continues to shrink, but it is the county seat for Claiborne Parish, so there is a historical cache to the place, starting with the Greek Revival courthouse in the center of town.   The ante-bellum Courthouse Courthouse Square Homer's court house is one of only four pre-Civil War buildings still in use in Louisiana. It  anchors the town and gives it an old-fashioned gentility that is missing from suburban strip malls.  Despite the grand architecture, Homer is a poor town and unlike Crossett, this place long ago abandoned any commercial ambitions it may once have had. Most of the residents have never known prosperity. City Hall is an ornate brick building with a turret When we lived here, there were still sharecroppers growing cotton and picking it by

"I was raised in a small town..."  I was born in Chicago and I've lived in Michigan for over 50 years, so I am a bona fide midwesterner.  But when I was a little girl between the ages of 4 and 13, I l ived in Louisiana and Arkansas.    I considered myself a Southerner and  I never wanted to leave.  The Crossett years We moved from my birthplace to Crossett when I was just 4 years old.   Nicknamed the "forestry capital of the south with two pine trees in the logo of its name to prove it,  Crossett is a company town. It  is home to a paper mill and lumber industry that supports a town of 5,500 people. More accurately, it used to support that population. When Koch Industries bought out Georgia Pacific, they cut the workforce by half.   About 10 years ago, the plywood factory burned down. The Koch brothers, The ruined plywood factory David and Charles, decided not to rebuild. This leaves Crossett residents facing the same grim economic circumstances that face hundreds of

Don and Donna Caleb and Stone  Two builders and a blueprint Downstate Drop-off (Day 1):  Our first stop was downstate to Utica, our old home tome where our son still lives. We dropped off Garfunkel our cat. Six weeks is a long time for a cat to be alone and Stony graciously offered to cat sit. It was a perfect opportunity to share dinner with our grandsons, catch up on family news, and kick off the vacation with board games   

On our way to the southwest. We are trading Michigan's cold and snowy spring weather for the warmth of New Orleans and then on to the southwest desert. Along the way I'll visit my childhood homes in Arkansas and Louisiana. Please join us for our travels.  Our last Michigan hike to the Elberta dunes before heading south.