I had some of the most interesting encounters as I visited graveyards in Louisiana or did research at various archives. Upon leaving a newspaper office where I was researching historic articles, after a news cast on Christmas Eve described my old Cadillac with a baby doll’s head on the bumper and me alone as the three black man evading capture in the getaway car after robbing a plantation bank – I saw the newscasters pointing their camera at me, me turning looking at them gawking at me – that part they left out (Southern Humor can kill ya!). At that time there were no “northern” banks in the south (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other national banks that no longer exist since the recession) and I couldn’t get a loan because my parents did not live in the country, they lived in Arizona and Hawaii! I mean we are talking “deep” south. This bank robbery was broadcast after a Dateline like expose on Cancer Alley and How you too might have Cancer living along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. I immediately called the Baton Rouge police to identify myself – but someone had already done that for me, perhaps a competitive graduate student. After that, doing county records search in areas where the KKK was/is prevalent was nerve racking – I mean because everyone carried a gun or had one in the rear window of their truck, and how do you retract something like that from the minds of rednecks. I was dogged for taking pictures and driving an old Cadillac with California plates in areas that want nothing to do with government – areas where I could not receive satellite signal because of intereference. I mean lawn jockey country, home of the KKK, Livingston Parish and David Duke’s home.
Someone would see me taking pictures of what appeared to be an abandoned cemetery and when I went back to the cemetery it was cleaned up – cemeteries that are not well kept can be fined $500 and/or imprisonment – and thus, I had to revise that cemeteries status to “in use”. Often, this results in everyone disclaiming any knowledge of who is buried in an unkempt cemetery or having any relation to them. And, illegal burials – of dogs or in one case someone who did not survive surgery – a skull with saw cut at entrance to cemetery. I could smell the decaying flesh of burial grounds before I arrived. In one instance, an elderly woman invited me into talk and have coffee. And, in another, the Cadillac started sliding into a ditch while I was walking around the graveyard taking photos – I jumped in just as the last two wheels with traction took hold. After that, and for need of air conditioning in the sweltering southern humidity, I mostly stayed in or near the car. I did most of the field survey during the hot humid summer, in the dead of winter graveyards that I could not see before were very obvious, i.e. above ground 1800s brick crypts (ovens they call them) next to a frequented highway. Cemeteries that were in the swamp or inside a petrochemical plant were impossible to access, and sometimes guards would chase me away as soon as they saw the camera.