[Music] when louisiana has visitors they visit the usual things the french quarter a plantation maybe hui long spire of a capital the brightly lit places wind up on tourist brochures we who live here know some other places little corners of our broad state visitors seldom see outsiders may search for the real louisiana we know they'll never really find it the way that we can that's why i'd like you to come with me now to visit just a scattering of special places i've found travel this state and you'll see things are changing travel this state some more and you'll see some things never change there is still a lost louisiana in all the small places there are still sites across louisiana that can make a traveler slow down and wonder what was that what was here who loved this place and why does it seem unloved today travel the smaller roads of this state and you'll certainly wonder what's behind all those rusted screen doors what came before the paint began to crack and peel on quiet autumn days when the north louisiana air hangs cooler and the sun's rays hang around longer then the run down corners glow the late afternoon shows the wrinkles and the wear we wonder what's inside what's the history it may be easier not to ask as long as we walk past we can keep the romantic wonder if we stop and ask about the old place there is a risk of hearing bad news in hawton we took that risk and found the town's oldest landmark was condemned some of mack crawford's ancestors built it as a saloon a century ago well they think that it's an eyesore for one thing and it is it's not it's not real pretty looking or anything but it has been standing for over 100 years and i'm sure it would stand for a lot longer it might last another 100 years but it really needs to be restored and made out of some kind of museum for the area or something like that because there's no other place like it the lawrence store has fallen into disrepair since anyone used it three decades ago it leans it's filled with junk some of it quite old it's a public hazard they say those town leaders who want to tear it down it's not just a landmark but it has so much history wrapped up in it a real history of the people in the area it's not just a fabricated landmark that's been that's been overdone and a big story put up about it but it really has a lot of feeling in people's hearts and their memories and there were other stores around here but this is the last one standing it may come down soon and where it now stands another hole would then testify only that there was once something here a gap next to the railroad tracks like so many other gaps besides so many other railroad tracks few people even remember what this once was if it is torn down fewer will ever know will allen remembers well i'm 99 and it was when i remembered myself it was setting here that bone raised right there in the woods behind us all right and we didn't have no water well there used to be a water wheel right along here and here what we got our drinking water and the man that fresh owned it the wheel holland was he had a saloon in there the paper's on the wall now then the next man got a hold of it was dr lawrence he was a doctor he uh big farmer you know for this people to fall and then mr umphrey lawrence and mr lawrence took it up over the grocery store it's been a long time ago and you still see under the butt board there originally says saloon the old old writing on the wall up there says saloon on it the lawrence store and probably the saloon before it lent credit to the farmers around this town white and black will allen recalls used the front door there's one of the five people to farm from this color people farm feed you you make the crop then when you sow the cotton three and four cents a pound for it they got that money and give you what you had coming if you had any coming the lawrence store sold the simple fixings of dinner for families in hawton did four bits a day buy you anything in this store oh yes sir i'd be glad to get that food for you what did you get give you some meals five and some lard maybe some glasses and a piece of dry salt meat white is your shirt two three pounds for two cents a pound all fat yeah living good you can feed a family on that huh that's your daddy or nothing in shreveport at the lsu archives you'll find the ledgers of the old lawrence store 99 ledgers going back a ways the simple stuff sold every day written down in pencil sugar flour bacon sardines a you price there's so many women these days and times and me and two don't know how to cook a biscuit if they already made up and no double put the stove them dude they'd make them biscuits from scratch and this is the store you'd get the flower get the flower from lord just a dry sword and maybe have a counter suit among the ledgers are a few pictures and a few words about the young town of haughton when the lawrence store was already old when the boys of north louisiana went off to war the first world war they threw their names from the trains as they passed through haughton in front of the old lawrence store people picked them up and they wrote after the town built a highest school in the 20s the kids stopped in at the old lawrence store for sodapop nothing special same as anywhere just an old store just another store 70 years ago but at one time this was the center activity for the whole area being where the railroad track was did people hang out here oh yeah they hung out there with no party here they hung out and right there on that corner it used to be a hotel right on that corner right there the old store in hawton is not much to see it hardly has the charm we find interesting no presidents slept here no fancy trim no fanciness at all it is not pretty it may not be restorable we restore pretty things don't we it's easy to appreciate the old bank of mangum even in its outcast state it's easy to hope that the pringle theater in glenmora will be showing movies for a long time to come we are less likely to see the hidden grace in just an old store in hawton there may be enough folks around to remind us not to say what we usually do that it's just an old store old stores and old stories live in the small corners old men wave to strangers in small towns like saint francisville the tourists visit saint francisville for the sites for the quaintness and country manners they tour the courthouse or the church to breathe in history and with it a sense of perspective but all the while the town's best history and perspective is sitting on the front porch we've been been here a long long time [Music] oh yeah not long enough no each afternoon a group of men gather here at the real estate office and they talk as you might expect about the old days and old characters they remember like murphy drear's wife's uncle clint they say he drank he was a character wasn't he uncle slow got caught in a lady on him drinking water was clean as hot said he told you i have a drink of water he said let me tell you something that would be a bridge for water patch on the wood and they talk about old times when heavy rains would make the creeks unpassable and he was a huge character we used to afford the stream now to have bridges that don't get up you don't have to build a big fire and stay there all night to the stream run down and study your lessons be ready to go to school in the morning the town of course has changed people from far away moved in i would go to new orleans go to bed and stay all day two or three days wide never had a key shut the door i said i don't even have a kid you can't do that now no but a kind of country trust comes through when the men think of the new neighbors one by one but we have to find people to move in i'll tell you they fit right in they're willing to work at the pilgrimage they won't leave they're telling down promotions and their companies stayed here and retired here right we've got a group of people like that and the men talk politics every day roma didn't get any support at all from that legislature about that knowing that david they didn't get much we didn't get much i love east and west from the china i think that two of the greatest parishes in the state and two of the most beautiful paris i don't see the most beautiful i'd say two of the most beautiful that's the way a politician would put it i think so i love the people up here and long before the sun starts setting over the mississippi i'm going home after all is said about the new people in this old town after they've gossiped and joked enough i imagine most of us going home and eat going on by that time it'll be a time to eat the town's elders will ramble back home to wives and grandchildren to ponder the important stories of the day and other philosophical questions go home and look at the bowl games i like to watch people until tomorrow afternoon is this town north or south it said there's a difference but the warmth of small corners belies any we see it's the landscape that tattles in the north our next landmark was not made by man it's not as far north as mount lebanon but then it's not as far south as bryceland if you hit pratt you've passed it up somewhere south of gibbsland we'd say the exact summit of mount driscoll is so hard to find we had to find an expert on the terrain and there were times he wasn't certain either are we here now well we're going to have to check and find out we're either on the highest peak of it or it's just one peak over you're confused oh yeah it's changed if you see how young these pine trees are it hasn't been that long ago this was big saw log timber clear-cut planted back and this is how fast it grows bill conley took care of the trees in bienville parish for 33 years as a retired forest fire spotter and forestry officer we asked him to help us find the peak of louisiana's highest mountain we get on top of the peak we can kind of tell if we're on the peak i really think it's going to be across this swag we'll make that louisiana's only mountain oh we can go on across there you can in a minute you get up here you can see the next peak we find out which one what what's the difference five or six feet very very very little well let's kill this you got i hope you got your climbing boots on and your ropes it's very muddy in the winter and the hardest of rock in the summer like this is you can see here this is normally a hog waller but it's dry as a powder keg now whoa it is it is pretty hilly right here oh yeah before we left base camp conley had some warnings one thing about this time of the year the snakes are too hot to care much about biting people and don't touch the three-leaf plant either as a guide conley was perfect pointing out which were the dogwoods yeah and which were huckleberry actually there's no berries on it now but look fine let's see a little of everything here mulberry a french mulberry or spanish mulberry it's one huckleberry the one thing we've got an awful lot of these french mulberry it was late afternoon it had taken us all day to find him in the first place in the long rays of the sun it seemed every leaf on the slope of mount driscoll was showing a final burst of green before autumn oh this you know i'm not sure what that is that's all right this is a place no one really pays much attention to anymore the forestry people are through here now and then on their rounds but no one lives here anymore sampling the terrain it's hard to imagine anyone ever farmed it yet for a long time whole families did as far as history goes as very few people i think even here realizes that at the end of the war between the states north louisiana was the only place i guess in the whole south where we were winning the war we routed them at mansfield mansfield pleasant hill nakadish alexandria right on down and we're still winning when they just decided to quit and go home see the original settlers that came uh there was too much down in the lowlands where the land is rich there was too much malaria yellow fever and so forth they came from alabama georgia so forth and it passed over this oh yeah rich ears and settled in the hills because they wanted to never have that again right never wanted to get in the swamp again exactly didn't want to be a swamper anymore so they but they wound up in the poor soil and then about i don't know i guess the turn of the century so many of them around home left the hills here in bienville parish they started clear cutting and farming the rich bottom lands over like in tennessee country but this was all all cotton land you might think this ridge of hills that cuts across bienville parish isn't anything special anyone from the western states would laugh at this pitiful mound but to folks like bill conley who's from ringgold and for the people who once farmed and lived here it's home and elevation above sea level or someone else's way of talking about it doesn't matter much when you call a place home you're looking i think it's a peak now one thing bill did ask me before we started this trek if you remember was if i had the right shoe it is i thought he was kidding it is deep and slick wrong shoes is what it is apparent straw is kind of like mud at last we reached the summit of the highest point in louisiana there was no flag whipping in the cold wind there wasn't even any wind and it wasn't cold either yep definitely there we have made it folks in new orleans are jealous they're like 14 feet under but someone had left a circle of stones to commemorate their achievement undoubtedly it's not a camp fire i don't see fire anywhere well ashes anywhere happy to see somebody up here enjoying it i sure wasn't aware people were using this but it's nice got a nice uh dogwood tree right right smack on the tip top of it too this this one over here it's unique louisiana oh yeah special spot this is nice this is real nice in actual feet how what's our attitude exactly right this right here this should be 5 35 this is the highest point at here in and it's the highest in the state now that there was some argument a few years ago from some guy i don't even remember who that said there was one or two peaks in claiborne parish just north of here that might be higher but i think that was completely dispelled so there was some kind of competition like between mount everest and k2 that exactly exactly that must have been a hot argument up here i think people are okay to settle that they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt this is still the highest spot in the state of louisiana and just when we'd had enough just as we were talking about how we reckon no one comes up here anymore jim arnett jim jeff dua yes all right and you are from nashville a tourist you're just walking up here to well i'm just sort of have all the highest points in my atlas circle and if i'm ever get anywhere nearby then i'll try to go by and see what it looks like so what do you think it's not too too tall i've lived in colorado and just got back from alaska so this is a little different as far as peaks go and do you know the elevation here 535. the curious have a way of meeting in curious places we figured we took a picture of our somewhat mediocre group on this somewhat mediocre mountain then with no great rush the tourist left on his way across country to find the highest point in texas and we simply went home leaving the mountain unspoiled for another batch of geographical adventurers whose biggest challenge will be just to find this place [Music] actually after we scaled down the heights of mount driskill we did discover that was really the false summit just a few dozen yards away towers the real peak but we will continue to find the genuine lost louisiana in all the small places from the top of mount driscoll to deepen the basin the real louisiana that's found in small places is slipping away and giving away to a national culture old crumbling beauty in every small corner falls into ruin with each wave of time let me show you a light a beacon of sorts that calls us to take care of what we have lost [Music] in manshack you can see time on the march interstate 55 rises above highway 51 and they both parallel what's left of the old hammond highway burned out pilings sprinkled across the pass landmark middendarf's restaurant has a new building a new one aside the old time marches on but in its wake leave signs of its passage through pass manshack virginia riccosi cuts bait for the crabbers and trims fish for the visitors high on her shop wall is a painting of a lighthouse near here it doesn't mean as much to people today like he did when i was growing up the lighthouse was really handy for people once a person got lost in the swamp they would uh ring that that fog bell and they'd come out on that fog bell the schooners would come up in and tie up and load up the staves and go back to new orleans sometime we'd take them a month to get back because of the they had to wait until the wind change to sail back they had no motors like they have now and that was the stopping and going place right there this is the pass manshack lighthouse today it's crumbling and leaning to the northeast it's one of only a few surviving lighthouses built more than a century ago now of course it's mostly forgotten by the rest of us that's part of why it may soon be gone forever there was a time when gulf coast inlets inland rivers and many lakes of this part of louisiana were littered with lighthouses the one at pass manshack told steamers and schooners where to turn north if they were headed into lake marpa are south if they were headed toward new orleans the pass is sometimes not easy to find ben taylor is a ponchatoula businessman trying to save the lighthouse now everything's so fast-paced we have these outboard engines where you can zip you can end up out of the swamps out of the lake back home in no time but back then it took quite a bit of time and uh so this was an important uh place it wasn't something you just passed by and glanced up at a later date there was several steam packets that made a trade between wadesboro port vincent springfield and points eastward the city of new orleans obviously through bayou st john all the way to mobile this was part of an important trade route these are the remains of the keepers house there has been a beacon here since 1839 but this tower is not that old it only dates back to 1857 a little bit of anxiety considering next time i try to come back here there may not be anything left imagine the life of the keeper isolated out here a two-story house attached to the tower a shed for storing the fuel that fed the lamp we don't have to imagine actually louis barbier can describe it 102 years old he was keeper of the flame for 30 years it's a whole lot of danger if you want if you're going in the channel right you'll get stuck on the ball out there and you stay out there until some other big boat comes pull you off i told him i said pat there's somebody out there needs help uh you see that white flag oh you just imagine that i said come on we're going out there no you said we ain't going i said i am i'm going by myself so i went i went out there and this lady she seen me coming she pulled off all cold but the underclothes and we remember and i come out there said my god she says you're the only one come see about us she says we've been out here four days what was your daily routine what would you do every day for the lighthouse well on sundays you had to light the light and put it out in the morning and the folk bill if it got folded and then climb up there every three hours on the phone bill and uh if it got foggy you have step that whining and the light you have to put it out every morning and light it up every night barbier's daughter violet lives in iowa now she fondly remembers growing up on the small peninsula that led out to the lighthouse it was a very nice home we had fireplaces in the living room and upstairs and i had my playhouse upstairs in one of the domes that went up to the tower and i liked it there we did a lot of swimming we had relatives come down to visit us and it was nice i enjoyed it it was like the swiss family robinson you're all by yourself yeah because it was seven miles to the nearest highway and up by manchac there and the railroad you know and in fact when i was a kid there wasn't even a road there yet it was just a railroad that we had to go on i would like to see them restore the tower and you know so there's a landmark there you know of the old lighthouse because it re they really did do a lot of good i mean the fishing there were a lot of fishing and hunting people who who traveled through there and and when the weather would get or their boats would break down he would have to save them high atop the tower there is still a mount for the last light it had been automated since 1941 the coast guard decommissioned this sentinel in nineteen eighty seven no agency really wants responsibility for it anymore taylor ricosi louis barbier everyone who can recall the important lighthouse in its glory agree that it sure would be nice if someone could at the very least stabilize the tower well there ain't no white house there now just a tower yeah oh i want it where it is they had talked about different things about moving it you know it'd be easy to restore i said well it needs to be where it was built it needs to be there that's the place for it and i think once they get it restored maybe they'll light it up again and i'd be happy we're losing a bit of maritime history with each salty wave at pass manchak you can see the passage of time a lighthouse by its nature is a lonely and brave thing ironic still it's a thing built to be noticed after more than a century it seems too few of us are noticing its passing the lighthouse now belongs to the state freed at least from some bureaucracy so that the people of manshack can do what you and i know they must when we started this journey i promised you a scattering of small places that you probably haven't thought to visit our final selected corner is a secret site to behold and a magnificent one as well [Music] you wouldn't even know it's here even some of the people of crowley don't know it's up here up above the dixie hardware store there is a tangible slice of bygone fun a dusty husk of wide-eyed splendor a tattered and sun-dried shell of a gilded age this is the crowley opera house yes the opera house even the people of crowley have forgotten is here there are trap doors through which a vaudeville magician could evaporatize there is still graffiti on the walls of dressing rooms and still a calmly balustrade of turned cypress there is left one old flying backdrop against which traveling show people could mount a sappy romantic comedy it's all right if you're not old enough to remember vaudeville or the ragtag touring companies of second-rate actors we asked some folks to meet us here on a cold day in crowley to remember for us laura french culpepper roos and mary alice freeland i came to see a minstrel show i just vaguely remember that the thing i remember best are the westerns mr lyons had many westerns and this was something children were allowed to see so we came to this uh place for you know often sat in the seats and they had uh you know the high steps i can remember thinking the steps were very very elegant very nice i like that well we came here to silent movies also i saw the first talkie up here with al jolson i also saw vaudeville shows on the stage with animals that sort of a vaudeville that children would enjoy the crowley opera house was built in 1901. by a flamboyant showman named david lyons he had been a farm hand deputy and a stable owner yet he somehow afforded to build this of brick and cypress costing eighteen thousand dollars you know that in 1901 eighteen thousand dollars was a lot of money he even tore down a successful livery stable to build it a full year in construction then it opened when i was very small i can remember walking by this place and mr lyons was always in front he was a large man very very severe he was interested in what he was doing and he kept the place in very good order you know there were people around all the time it was very popular place in crowley well the dogs would jump through hoops and that sort of thing man was on a bicycle riding around the dogs would ride with it but it was interesting that was that big entertainment for a little town big entertainment for little town that's right [Music] down the 12 foot wide center aisle the people were ushered all 1500 the opera house could hold the seat smelled of handcrafted oak above your head the smooth ceiling wafted pine from a curved vaulted ceiling of one inch slats 42 000 of them there wasn't any color photography from the time in which this opera house was built and flourished that's why i want to call your attention to something way up here on the balcony made of cypress painted a light turquoise along with copper gold mill work and these this is the last of the sconces along the balcony you can see that well most of them have either been destroyed or lost this one is plaster of paris through which a light bulb would shine illuminating the audience in what must have been a wonderful warm copper glow in that glow the people of crowley enjoyed their opera house where they saw babe ruth and huey long stand on the stage their stage and orate i guess the first time i ever went up there was when i was about maybe 10 years old not everyone liked the flamboyant showman david lyons mrs mildred unverse act well when i was a teenager there were beautiful winding stairs that went up and supposedly in those days they said his girlfriend was a ticket taker you know she sold the tickets and then on the other side downstairs was a big popcorn machine and then we'd go upstairs and he was very illiterate his grandma was bad he was uneducated and he'd say you malicious boys in the behind instead of the back i'm going to put you out and of course as teenagers we thought that was hysterical we all just died laughing i don't want any talking here but it was beautiful i mean they had movies later on but you see between houston and new orleans this was a wonderful stop-off place it was jack dempsey but that was too early for me i don't remember that but i know that's in the history jess willard and they had irene done and they had real big shows that came in but my vivid memory is the home talent they had minstrels where the white men liking their faces you know and they had they had big minstrels real good and a friend of mine wasn't married then she played the piano and another girl sang we thought that was absolutely fantastic you the box seats on each side you would have to buy special tickets for that 1901 can you imagine on the southwest side of south louisiana in a little town fast becoming an important trading center there was an opera house in this rare film specially commissioned by david lyons a 1915 film crew took their bulky camera around the place for five days this is the result amazing too that a flickering testament survives there are so many befores available to describe this place in time before television before rock and roll before radio before the great depression before houses had electric light before the first world war these were the train stations this was the fire house the horses were named rock and riley this crowley high school is no more harvesting rice the fairgrounds racetrack grandstand and exhibit hall this was the last year they had the fair five cents bought a dance for charity segregation oh yes and some on both sides proud of it on this day a wild west show complemented the stage show at the opera house this is how long it has been that crowley has had such a theater in 1946 it closed but it's still alive up there above the hardware store there are the hangers on diane reich huff power is far too young to remember any of the shows has never seen a movie here yet she occasionally drops in just to feel the history a lot of folks know what's inside here quite a few people i just word of mouth mainly i don't know that that many people have toured it actually or actually walk through here of the ones that did i'm sure they would get us the same nostalgic feeling that i get it's uh it's an incredible piece of history now what do you mean by nostalgia because you're not old enough i'm not old enough to remember these these vaudeville acts or even the movies that played here there's just not that many things around in the south or the united states or anywhere that can compare to this place uh no there's an opera house in wilmington north carolina but it's not nearly as elaborate as this place it's just all over you know there's enough of the place that's left or whatever is here that gives you a feeling of the history and that the wonder that was here if you have no sense of sentimentality you would call us all crazy for gathering here to tell such ghost stories you'd have to feel for yourself what has stayed in the mill work a spirit has taken up in the press tin above the opera boxes there is a phantom in this opera it's made of the leftover wonder it's all the applause a century of small towners gave to this fancy place that feeling remains well i think it's extraordinarily attractive it's very it's very reminiscent of the time and there are so few things that have been left intact as long as this has it's great to the credit of the people who've owned the building that they've managed to keep as much of it as they have i think it's uh i think it's important you know that people remember the days before they had talkies the days before they had uh you know other kinds of entertainment this was an important place in the community everyone knew the opera house everyone came and i think it's important that we you know keep those memories well i just have enjoyed coming back and seeing it again it'd been years since i'd been up here and i thank you a spattering of applause has stuck to these walls like paint on wet fresco like a haunting sorrow remains in a beloved house you can't stand to leave behind applause and sorrow that the show is over where are all the forgotten places all the small corners we are driven to see well they're in every backyard sit out on an old porch sometime and unfurl a state map close your eyes and point these are just some of the shadows of some of the grandeur you can still find when we search for lost louisiana look for the treasure in all our backyards all the small places are still there look deep and farewell [Music] um you