On June, 11th, 1999 I embarked on an adventure that would end up shaping my future forever. My family had fallen apart, everyone was parting ways. Myself, only in the third grade, had no choice but to go along with the change. My grandma and I were moving to Louisiana! The south, the horrible, disgusting, segregated, shit hole I thought it would be. Those were the first thoughts of one of the most exciting, memorable, two and half years of my existence on the earth.
I made it to Louisiana after a hellish four day journey, through rock, water, fire, sand and much more. I hated the state; I hated the people, the attitudes, and the climate, I even hated how much hate there was between the people, more or less, between the colors. There was one aspect of Louisiana that I discovered very soon after I arrived, the wildlife and the weather. Have you ever stood one foot away from a western diamondback rattlesnake, or come to face with a tarantula the size of your hand? How about trolled through a swamp in a small alumiweld, which soon seems much smaller and less protective as the alligators rush off the shore and circle like vultures waiting for there next meal? Louisiana offers some of the most frightening and wildlife in the United States.
That doesn’t even come close to my most exciting, dangerous, invigorating experience in the Deep South. It was August of 1999. I had only been in Louisiana a couple of months. It is the summer time that they experience the worst storms because of the crazy heat. The climate in the south is like a forty year old woman on menopause with terrible mood swings. It rages, destroys, and never makes up its mind.
My grandma and I lived in a small town of Trout. We were only about one mile from Goodpine, two miles from Jena. It was august; It was one hundred degrees outside and had been pouring down rain for two days. Lighting strikes had been chewing at the ground and sky for days, the rumbling thunder had been shaking the trees out...