Louisiana's Ouachita Valley

When those of us older than 40 remember Monroe, in far NE Louisiana, and the small burgs that surround it in Ouachita and neighboring parishes, we think of comfort foods like fried fish and fried chicken and fried corn; and we think of white only signs, or wordless pictures featuring a single pointed black finger directing those of color to back or side door services. Those who are younger have a slightly different view of the area. Now that NE Louisiana has caught up with tourism beyond fishing and shooting, you can eat and drink as much Louisiana lala in this area as you can in New Orleans. Rice is no longer a cereal eaten with sugar, beans are no longer a side dish served with crumbled up cornbread and gumbo and shrimp poboys, flow like the old Ouachita River itself. Black kids and white kids go to school together, and many of them have met and maybe even mingled with a person of Asian or Hispanic descent. Fried rice and chow mien were foreign phrases that were just not pronounceable back when, more less something you ate; now you can find exotic whatever at buffets scattered around the area. At a glance we think, wow, life up here "sho' is different", but in all truth, it's simply returning to what it was way back in the day when the then massive chunk of earth called the Ouachita was full of Africans, Choctaws, French and Spanish soldiers, and just about anybody else who was brave enough to venture and squat in that then rough and tumble place, where the living was easier if you were an enslaved or free black, or an ex French or Spanish official looking for somewhere to hide out, or a white person from the colonies, looking for some land you could get your hands on from free to a little of nothing. It was a colorful place back then in the early days, it settled down and became southern, squalid and stupid with anti-everything, only after folks steeped in those kinds of traditions started pouring in after the Louisiana Purchase. So that's where my stories start; back then when Monroe was the Ouachita Poste, and Charlot Roi, an important though everyday and little known black man was born and the Ouachita was full of innocent and intentional mischief and mayhem.