There's less people and far more trees on the Louisiana side. That's simply because the plantation system started earlier in Mississippi than in Louisiana. Much of the Louisiana side was still hardwood forests up until the 1960s. Today, you can drive Highway 65 through the Louisiana side of the Delta, and you'll drive through many miles of cotton fields, but you'll also drive through mile after scattered mile of primeval forests. Even the huge cotton fields aren't totally cleared.

Out in the middle of 5,000 acres of cotton, you'll see scattered large and small patches of forest. Lots of those patches of forest are what Southern folks call "heir property." That means that, oh, say, 50 people scattered all over the world might own 40 acres of woods in the middle of a cotton field. Every section 16 (640 acres, 1 square mile) of every township belongs to the local school board. Many of those school board sections are managed for tree farming instead of cotton farming.

Due to all that forest, there's a major hunting tradition on the Louisiana side of the Delta, even among the black folks. My blues buddy James Baker from Newellton, Louisiana, belongs to 3 hunting clubs: 1) on Baker family land; 2) on 400 acres leased by him and some of his black friends; and 3) as the only black member of an otherwise all-white 200 acre hunting club.

James said, "I charged ‘em $400 a year to keep their roads graded, so one day I said, ‘Hey, why don't I charge y'all $250 a year for grading the roads and y'all let me hunt?'"

So the deal was struck. "The only time they hunt is opening weekend," James added, "so most of the year that club is mine all mine."

The Louisiana side of the Delta, in my opinion, is a generation behind the Mississippi side in race relations. Here's a deer hunting example. An elderly and filthy rich white man told me, "The n______s is ruinin' the huntin' clubs."

"How's that?" I asked.

"They'll take 7 or 8 mangy ole dogs an' turn ‘em loose in 200 acres of woods in a cotton field. They'll run every deer out of that 200 acres of woods."

I wanted to say, Sir, isn't that exactly what you and your buddies do? But I said nothing. In a round about way, the old man was stating his opinion--white folks own the deer.

Let's look at some photos from the Louisiana side of the Delta. Remember--click on the photo for a full-size version, and use your "Back" button to return.

These red-brick sentinels stand all over both sides of the Delta. They stand until some tractor driver nods his head or drops his cigarette. This old chimney is located about 100 yards out in a cotton field on the east side of Highway 65 a couple of miles north of Goldman, Louisiana. You can see it for several miles before you reach it. Notice the pale, golden yellow blooms of the cotton and that the lower branches of the plants have started making bolls, white gold.

The picture doesn't show the rounded, melted edges of the slave-made brick and the way the slave-made mortar has melted from between the bricks, all caused by low-quality home-made materials and uncounted rains over uncounted years. If our tractor driver doesn't ram this chimney, it will melt in about 200 years.

I'm betting that some of General Grant's boys burned this house when they marched through here in the summer of 1863. Damned Yankees.

Here's the childhood church of Jerry Lee Lewis. It's located at 801 Texas Avenue in Ferriday, Louisiana, 71457. I wanted to go inside and get a picture of the piano, but the door was locked. This is a neat and well-maintained little church.

One of these days I'm gonna attend Sunday services at this little church. Y'all, of course, can read all about it right here in Junior's Juke Joint.

Here's 2 juke joints on Levee Street in downtown St. Joseph, Louisiana. They ain't neat and they ain't well-maintained.

The juke joint on the right, W.D.'s Lounge, opens around 8 pm on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Stop in for a beer. I stopped in on a Saturday night for some beer and live blues.

You'll find it in the Roadtrip! section or Click here and go straight to the W.D.'s Lounge page.

Here's close-ups of the front of both juke joints. I peeped throught the broken window of the juke joint on the left. I saw a bunch of broken chairs and ragged booths, lots of trash of all descriptions, and the mangled top cover of a jukebox. All of the above covered with a thick layer of dust.

You artists out there take note of the juke joint on the left. Wow, what a painting this juke joint would make. To me, it looks like a French Impressionist painted the front of the building.

Over on the right, take a look at my blues buddy James Baker. He's having a cold Bud at the bar in W.D.'s Lounge on Friday night, September 4, 1998. We twisted each others' arms and forced each other to drink a few too many.

James played guitar in probably the most famous band on the Louisiana side of the Delta--the now-defunct Hezekiah And The House Rockers. They rocked the White House in 1987.

"We about to start playin' for all those people at the White House," James said, "an' Hezekiah looked at me an' said, 'We shore the poorest folks in this place tonight."

These two closed juke joints are on the same block of Levee Street as W.D.'s. The vacant lots beside these juke joints once contained other juke joints. In 1962 at the tender age of 14, James Baker played guitar in the juke joint that once stood on the vacant lot at the right. "Boy," the owner told James, "if the cops come in the front door, you go out the back door." James said, "Levee Street on Friday and Saturday night back then was like downtown Memphis--people everywhere!" The bottom photo shows the side of the juke joint on the left. Colorful, huh? With a little roof work, someone could open these juke joints.

Check out the Louisiana side of the Delta version of a 4-hole outhouse. In case of emergency, you'll find these behind and near W.D.'s Lounge.

Hey, you never know when you gotta go!

Inside those doors you will find white porcelain commodes connected to the St. Joseph sewerage system.

All you writers out there pay close attention to what follows. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

The old house on the right is located--as of this moment--in downtown St. Joseph, Louisiana. Looks like it came straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, doesn't it? Notice the height of the foundation piers. The porch floor is about five feet above the surface of the ground. If you see a Delta building built like that, you can assume that the building was built before the levee system was built. The 1927 flood breached the nearby Mississippi River levee, but it did not quite reach the floor of this house. The owner somehow got his Model-T Ford up those stairs and safely on the porch. The bottom photo is a close-up of the turret. Check out the gilded rooster on the weather vane. Check out the rotted curtain in the upper window. Eerie, huh? There's a hell of a story behind this decaying Victorian monstrosity. The original owner, a Mr. Davidson, purchased it sometime around 1880 for one of his two daughters. He purchased it in St. Louis, Missouri, as a kit. Think about that--a Victorian house in a kit.

It came down the Mississippi River from St. Louis in three sections on three barges, and they erected it on its present location in St. Joseph, a block or so from the Victorian home of Mr. Davidson's other daughter.

Unfortunately for Mr. Davidson and in spite of all the careful planning this enormous project surely required, he did not consider the vanity of some women, even some daughter-women.

Alas, this house was smaller than the other daughter's house. So Mr. Davidson sold this house to a Mr. Clarke, the great-grandfather of the present owner, and built his vain daughter a larger house. This house has been called "The Clarke House" ever since.

There's more to the story. After coming down the river on a barge in 1880, this house will soon, in 1998 or 1999, go a little further down the river. Its owner, at an estimated cost of $20,000, will soon move this house to Lake St. John near Ferriday, Louisiana. The most direct and least costly route is via the top of the Mississippi River levee.

I found this little cabin in woods near St. Joseph and safely above flood waters on top of a truncated Indian mound.

It's in a lovely location, surrounded by giant pecan trees. Although obviously unoccupied for many years, it appears to be in good shape and would make a fantastic little hideaway. Indian spirits won't bother you--unless, of course, you start poking around with a shovel.

Someone had recently mowed the grass on the sides of the mound and in the nearby field. There's a couple of barns behind it and a tractor shed, so someone keeps an eye on this little cabin. That's why I didn't walk up the side of the mound for a close-up. I ain't afraid of Indian spirits, but a man with a gun is another story.

Here's a couple of Delta sentinels. I found them west of St. Joseph and a mile or two from each other way down a narrow black-top road, Highway 573, near a dot on the map named Cooter Point, Louisiana. Cooter Point was once the location of Cooter Point Plantation, Cooter Point Store, and even a US Post Office. Waterproof, Louisiana, bluesman Frank Roach and some of his blues buddies once played on Sunday afternoons at the Cooter Point Store. If there's anything left in Cooter Point, I couldn't find it. The chimney is modern, probably 60 or 70 years old. Notice that you can see through the window of the old barn to the cotton field beyond. The burned snag once stood behind a burned-down modest house, probably a shotgun house. Note the 10 acre patch of woods in the middle of 500 acres of cotton.

Take a look at Henry McKeal, the owner of Waterproof's Disco 86 Lounge and the loving husband of Annie Mae McKeal, the owner of Annie Mae's Cafe, located inside the Disco 86. This was around noon on Sunday, September 6, 1998. The Disco 86 is closed, but Henry's about to step inside to get his buddies some 22 oz bottles of beer. They're all sitting beneath the shade of a huge sweet gum tree out of sight to the left. The bottom photo is me leaning on Henry's pickup and wearing a pair of $80 Ray-Bans. Nope, they ain't mine. You know better than that! They belong to some younger guy I call "Cool Shade Dude." He let me try them on. Then he said, "Hey, man, you cool." So I handed him my camera and had him snap my photo. What y'all think? Am I cool?

You'll find this lonely Delta sentinel on the north side of Highway 84 about halfway between Wildsville and Frogmore, Louisiana. To use a larger town as a reference, it's about 12 miles west of Ferriday.

I've watched this towering old relic for many years while traveling Highway 84. I've always wondered at the tales it could tell if bricks and mortar had voices. For the past few years, I couldn't find it, and I assumed that time and gravity finally claimed it. If you'll notice, it leans to the right, to the east. In a few more years, it will become a huge pile of rubble.

Lo and behold while returning from a Delta excursion, I glanced out of the Bluesmobile's passenger window at both the exact right place and moment in time and there the old relic stood, almost invisible inside a camouflage of vines and trees.

I screeched the Bluesmobile to a halt and, camera in hand, walked across the plowed-under corn field and up to the thicket hiding the towering old relic. Maybe, I thought, my scant knowledge of archaeology will give voice to bricks and mortar.

These 3 photos were taken from approximately the same angle on the south side of the chimney.

The chimney and its surrounding thicket stand about 3 feet above the surrounding corn field on probably a small Indian mound. The Tensas River flows no more than 75 yds on the other, north, side of the chimney. The town of Jonesville, Louisiana, once a major river port, lies only about 10 or so miles downstream of the chimney. The historic site, the chimney and its components on top of the prehistoric site, is some kind of industrial site, not a house site.

The area of the Indian mound is too small for the large house which would have surrounded such a large chimney. There's no evidence of brick piers. The hearth of a house in this flood-prone area would be about 6 feet from the ground. The hearth of this chimney, located out of sight to the left, is about 2 feet from the ground. Also out of sight to the left and about 30 feet to the north, lie the crumbling and moss-covered brick foundations which once supported some kind of machinery. Threaded and twisted iron rods protrude from the crumbling bricks.

It's an industrial site, and it is not very old. The chimney's bricks have sharp edges and show little evidence of age--factory made. The mortar between the bricks shows no evidence of water deterioration; thus it's high quality and factory made. So here's my guess: The chimney dates from 1900 to 1920. The site manufactured something that either came on the river as raw material or left on the river as finished product.

I'm guessing sugar.