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Notes on Having Moved to the Deep South
From Fred Cole’s curiosity, to Rod Dreher’s podcast appearance people seem to be asking questions about the South on Ricochet. As I recently relocated to Zachary, Louisiana, I thought I’d oblige.
First, some background. I lived in Colorado for 28 years where I married, had children, divorced, and remarried. I participated in the Colorado lifestyle, skiing, biking, and enjoying the outdoors. Then my second wife (who is from Alexandria, LA) asked me last November whether I might consider relocating to Houston so that she could find a job closer to her core competency, Chemical Engineering.
I was not excited. Houston has a slightly less-than-nice sounding reputation for people in Colorado (it rhymes with “bell” or “well”) but, I tried to have a positive attitude. There are are certain advantages there, including lower cost of living, no income tax, and the fact that schools are likely to be based upon a more traditional curriculum. These were serious considerations for us, what with our two soon-to-be-Freshman Girls and a Soon-to-be-Middle school son.
So, we began the process of looking, which didn’t run smoothly. We both would have had to replace our jobs in addition to the other difficulties of changing schools, houses, and the like. So I quickly suggested that we might consider Baton Rouge. This idea had a ton of advantages. Mrs. Majestyk’s family still lives in Louisiana, she went to school at LSU, and I wouldn’t have to change jobs as my company has an office there.
The pieces quickly fell into place. My wife found a job at a plant which offered her a generous relocation package. My job graciously allowed me to transfer offices. We found a house in the number one rated school district in Louisiana.
The house went on the market on January 1 and we were under contract by the first week in February. Between packing, chucking the things that we didn’t want to move, selling the rest and everything else, the next month was a whirlwind, culminating in a drive through Texas in an ice storm.
We arrived in Louisiana in the midst of a rain storm and headed to a new home which I had never seen before, my wife having picked it out on her interview visit. The drive from Baton Rouge to Zachary takes you through areas which simply don’t exist in Colorado; I spent the first couple of weeks here in mild shock.
While our house is beautiful, there are many areas around it which are decidedly not so. I live about 15 miles away from Rod Dreher who is in St. Francisville.
You can buy a lot of house here, for those who don’t know. Here’s the view out of my back window:
For those of you who’ve never been to Colorado, you should. What you’ll notice immediately is that everything is… beautiful. People guard that beauty jealously, and with good reason. Sightlines are a precious commodity. Mountain views are worth thousands of additional dollars on the sale price of your home if you have them.
Sightlines aren’t a thing in Louisiana. To be fair, it’s really flat here, so seeing more than a couple of miles is rare. Rural sightlines are obscured by walls of foliage. I mean like “rainforest.” Traveling down some highways gives the impression that they were tunneled through forests which grudgingly gave way to pavement, what with walls of trees just as opaque as stone on either side.
Urban sightlines here are obscured by… overhead distribution lines. Or by dilapidated buildings stained with mildew. Trash is omnipresent on the sides of roads. There’s an overwhelming sense of decrepitude in a lot of places; as if things were just let go, and the mold and vines have taken over. Siding falls off of buildings. Windows are tinfoiled. Weeds choke the yards.
Concrete — which I am accustomed to being bleached white in the high-prairie sun in Colorado — is everywhere a dingy, permanently wet, grey, and frequently blackened by lichen here.
There is poverty. Grinding, intergenerational poverty. South of my office on Government Street there is a ghetto which is probably every bit as scary as Compton or Watts. Shotgun houses with ramshackle porches where garbage, broken toys and old furniture teem.
There are churches on every corner here. All manner of churches: Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Catholics, and Pentecostals abound.
People are friendly, though. They want to talk to you over your fence. Within five minutes of meeting them, our neighbors asked us what church we were going to attend. This experience has repeated itself whenever we explain to people that we’re new to the area. Like the lady at the utility department in Zachary. Or the checker at the grocery store (LeBlanc’s… you should try it!) Our neighbor even gifted Rediscover Catholicism to us. We politely accepted this gift, even though we can’t help but snicker at this, slightly.
What strikes me is that — despite the unrelenting ugliness of some of the places — there is a beauty all its own here. The Atchafalaya Basin is an amazing sight to behold. What is considered a river in Colorado is a pathetic stream here.
There is opportunity here, too. If a person wanted to have a job, it’s here for the taking, so long as you keep out of a bottle or off of a bong. The amount of industry here is nothing short of amazing. Every major petrochemical company either has a refinery or some industrial presence on the river. Dow. Exxon-Mobil. PPG. They’re all here. If you are willing to work, they’re willing to pay you – and pay you well.
That doesn’t even begin to touch what’s happened with the shale revolution. Driving on county roads or state highways you frequently see on one parcel of land (in this order) a run-down trailer, followed by a modest house followed by a grand abode… followed by a gas recovery site. Fortunes have been made in fracking, and this is no doubt responsible for raising the standard of living across the South, where such things are possible.
I’ve only been here a couple of months but it’s becoming home. You could always get back to me in August, when I’m told the outside is like the inside of a pressure cooker and maybe my opinion will be different, but at least I’ll be able tell you what it’s like from my pool.
There are problems here, to be sure. But there is possibility; such things are possible in the South.
You should give it a shot.
Published in Culture
I grew up in Colorado, but a number of my relatives lived in Kentucky, so I would go back there for a few weeks every summer and then again for Christmas. I loved the South so much I only applied to schools in the South and ended up in Nashville. My relatives that lived in Kentucky relocated to Mississippi and I spent many a happy weekend visiting them there. Yes, even in the middle of summer.
I moved to NYC after school for no good reason, and now I live in San Diego, but my husband and I are counting down the days until we can move back to the South (unfortunately there are more than 365 of them). The only question is where…
Not so hard.
Majestyk, your complaint that the trees obscure the view is echoed by my South Dakota wife.
But those beautiful woods are the view, honey.
Grumble, grumble. But she won’t even consider moving to the cold now.
Second huge downside of the south: Too many men wearing flip flops.
That is one of the things I like about living in south Mississippi. Where I am is equidistant from Mobile (which is my favorite “big city” down here), New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast.
I spent a few weeks in Baton Rouge immediately after Hurricane Katrina working on restoration efforts for my company. Despite the enormous upheaval in their lives, my coworkers in Baton Rouge quickly adopted me and were very friendly. I ate some fantastic food (some of it home cooked and brought in by coworkers) and would definitely consider returning to Baton Rouge in the future.
Ft Meyers is great. My sister owns a house on Sanibel we stay at a couple of times a year – we absolutely love it there!. We’re hoping to get down there at the end of June for a week and would love to do a Rico meet-up.
You make a good point when you say you have moved to the Deep South. I live in Charleston which is certainly part of the Old South but not the Deep South which consists of rural Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and the Carolinas share many southern traditions with the Deep South but there are many differences in each area due to the presence of a diverse economy. I recommend that you join one of those churches that are on every corner and sign up with a reputable heating and A/C service company.
Frank: Air conditioning.
Ha! I guess I can spill the beans: The Great Ricochet Southwest Florida Meetup, 2015, was pure bluff!
Not anymore!
If you ever come down feel free to reach out. Any other Ricochetoise in the near vicinity?
Frank, this may seem horrific to your delicate yankee sensibilities but when my father was in school as a kid in Largo Florida(’20s & ’30s), they didn’t bother with shoes until high school.
I’m with Frank – nobody wants to see those ugly man feet!
It is unpleasant but we’re tough down here.
Shhh…the type of flip flops you wear mark you as a true southerner or a liberal faux intellectual…..shhhh
Welcome to La – We live in Benton.
Stad: Air conditioning bills.
I know more than a few retirees who have moved from Louisiana to South Carolina.
I enjoyed reading this! I love the south. A small country town in a southern state sounds ideal to me, even though I’m a life long New Yorker. Big northern cities have problems too, as you can see in Baltimore. I love the friendliness of southern towns, and I love the religious people. When I retire I hope to move south.
Nowhere is perfect. If you aren’t cooling, you’re likely to be heating. In Colorado, the weather is so variable that you never know from one month to the next if you’ll have $150 worth of AC or almost nothing. Same goes for the winter.
Dude, I’ve run my furnace and AC — on the same day!… several times already this spring. The last few nights we’ve gone to bed with the AC running and then turn on the heat in the morning. Springtime in the Rockies, baby!
Heh. I can relate to this.
Husband and self, both working in academia, moved from Boston to Houston. This was in the 90s. We took a lot of ribbing from friends and colleagues.
We loved it. (My husband is a bona fide “Yankee” and I’m from Maryland, btw.)
I’m probably the only academic in the world who finds Boston to be a highly overrated city.
We’ve since moved on from Houston, but both of us think of it as “home” based on our seven years there and would gladly return should the opportunity arise.
I beg to differ. San Diego weather is perfect. You just have to put up with Californians!
Give me Wisconsinites and cold weather. No more Californians!