Retracing Papa's History...Day 2

Woke up this morning and checked out of a very lovely hotel. We really liked this room and the bed was sooooo comfortable. We made our way back to John and Wanda's home to pick up Papa for the next leg of our journey. We found them all around the table having a nice visit. 

They stayed up late playing music and visiting. Papa was up before anyone else this morning, as I would have guessed. John made them breakfast. They were just having a great visit like good friends do after not seeing each other for a very long time. We visited for about an hour and then we headed down the road.

The drive to Winnfield was a straight shot south from John and Wanda's. We just got on Highway 167 and stayed on it. We made one stop in Ruston for lunch. Along the highway we came to this interesting view of the highway. I thought it looked like the road to no where!!

Papa has been fascinated by all the orange barrel markers for construction for two days now. He can't believe there are so many and that they go on for miles and miles with absolutely no sign of any work being done where they are place.

Claude is definitely doing the hamburger tour. Each day at lunch he has had a different kind of burger.

I am doing the 'no paper towels' tour. Each day at our lunch stop after washing my hands I have reached to get paper towels to dry my hands and found the dispenser completely empty. With my hands raised like I'm a doctor headed in to surgery, I have returned to the counter to tell the establishment they have no paper towels in the ladies room.

We made it to Winnfield in good time and headed straight to Edna Jean Strickland's home. She is John Finney's sister and also a dear friend of Papa. We visited at her home for just a bit and then we all piled into the car to visit the old home places that Papa remembered from his childhood. I had asked Papa what they would be as we drove to Winnfield and written them all down so we didn't miss anything. Can't imagine all this driving and then missing trying to see something. Between Papa and Edna Jean we were able to find most of them. Most are overgrown with vegetation because they were located out in the woods and homes have been abandoned and nature has taken over.

Here are some of the very few pictures I took.

We found the Conner Road.  There were two places Papa lived on this road. If memory serves they were the Banks place and the Bright Place.  If that is not correct, I will correct it with tomorrow night's blog. Neither home was there. We did find where a road went back to one of them. We drove down this road to the end and turned around and came back.

On Conner Road we did find Aunt Annie's home. It is abandoned. She was Carl Edward Lawrence's sister. Carl Edward Lawrence is Papa's father.

The road that ran perpendicular to the Conner Road had this stream along one side.

This stream is important because in the woods behind here Papa and his friends blocked the water, dug a pit deep enough to dive into, made two things to serve as diving boards at two different levels and then released the stream to fill the pit for a swimming hole. Don't tell anyone but Papa says he learned to skinny dip in this stream. That is way Too Much Information, isn't it. Edna Jean said she was baptized in that swimming hole. Lots of history there. We didn't see the swimming hole, if it is even still there, but this stream would have fed into it. It had a precious little turtle sitting on a rock and when I came back to take the picture it literally jumped into the water.

 

We tried to find the '20' which was a piece of ground the family owned and different members of the family had different sections of it. We also tried to find Freddie Lee's home in Milltown and did not locate that.

 

It was interesting to listen to Papa and Edna Jean try to find places and then drift off in stories of remembrance of living in Winnfield as kids.

 

We did go to Winnfield High School. This is the actual building Papa went to high school at and graduated from. (Lots of prepositions in wrong places in that sentence but I'll leave it that way anyway.)  I cheerfully told Papa we did find one building standing from his childhood. He chuckled.

This is Edna Jean Strickland and Papa standing across the street from Winnfield High School in Winnfield, Louisiana.

Eventually they decided to give up the search for more places from their childhood. Poor Papa was having to come to grips that it was all either grown over or demolished for newer homes or roads. For a man in his waning years, this is a big thing with which to come to grips.

We headed back to Edna Jean's and air conditioning. When visiting John, he reminded Papa of how Papa used to climb up in an old Sweet Gum Tree on the Finney property with his scriptures and sit there in the branches reading and studying his scriptures. This was a new story to us and it brought back lots of memories for Papa. He determined we should find that Sweet Gum Tree when we got back to Edna Jean's.

We walked to the back of her property and could not find that tree. They both felt it was out in the woods along the side of her home and closer to the corner of where the property would have been between her home and the acre of ground Papa's family lived on. Edna Jean had us walk back to her home and around to the end of the lane thinking there might be a clearer view there. This ended up being full of undergrowth and trees and not near enough back in the woods in Papa's mind.

Then Papa looked at the situation and determined if he hiked back in those woods he would be able to see the Sweet Gum Tree, if it was still standing. My 85 year old father on unsteady feet, not listening to the three of us telling him it was not a good idea, plunged head long into the undergrowth to find this tree of his childhood. I handed Claude my purse and, with camera in hand, plunged in after him. I was never so grateful in my life to have him stumble on a fence that eventually allowed him to understand it was not a good idea to proceed any further. Here is Papa determined to search out this special tree.

Claude is a confident male and, actually his shirt and my purse were quite well coordinated.

We rested and cooled off in Edna Jean's home. Then we all went into Winnfield and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant Edna Jean suggested. Dinner was delicious. We drove her home and then found a gas station as it was time to feed the car again.

We checked into our hotel. Papa was worn out. He told me he learned two things in the last two days. First, he feels his back will be able to handle flying to Utah to see Junie. Second, he now knows how important his little cat naps are throughout the day and he was really missing them.

We got him to his room, I got ice for his ice bucket and he figured out a foot stool for the chair in his room, I got my listerine for him so he could sooth his sore gums after getting some food caught under his dental plate, we made sure he had an Ensign (church magazine) to read, a remote control by his side for the television and our room number on the pad by the phone in case he needed to call us.

Claude proposed he and I stroll across the street to the Sonic for an evening treat. We did just that and spend an hour just the two of us enjoying root beer floats and chatting.

Another full day. Some things were successful. Some things were realized and will need some time to digest. We are all going to get a good night's rest and then be ready to plow through day 3 of this journey through Papa's past.