[Music] among the landmarks of louisiana there are faded reminders of what we've lost or even forgotten common places that seem familiar but distant even blurred the old stores and signs and town squares can still be found along the smaller roads but in just a few more years they will all be gone it's too late to save many of the things our grandparents thought would last forever maybe the best we can do is enjoy them while we can in saint martinville people still remember the story of evangeline waiting for gabriel a landmark oak here marks the spot here she waited and she still does in a way for someone to come along and remember her story the disappearing landmarks of louisiana all wait for someone to come along and remember their stories in this program we have a few for instances a few examples of places we are saving places that are dying and places we should all miss dearly people and places and stories of lost louisiana [Music] evangeline waits frozen in time she waits for someone to read longfellow's story about her once again like a faded picture she waits still very still one of the most prominent photographers of our age chronicled a lost louisiana for many years fallville winans passed away a few years ago but the images that he captured for all of us to enjoy will live forever the luminous black and white images of ballville widens are finally being appreciated but why only now is it a need to return to the clarity they picture or is it for their artistic value alone the state we know is changing so fast has changed so dramatically that all of us at some time have wished we could hold progress in check well a photograph does that at least on paper artists among us like profits it said are not recognized in their own lifetimes faunville was and is still enjoying international attention for his classic photographs the critics are still raving what do you think of that i don't give any thought okay uh i don't consider this in a class with art i mean if somebody else wants to think it's art or okay but to me it is not made for that to me it's dismayed for the because i saw something that it was interesting i just photographed it that's all in 1931 fallville and two friends sailed off in a 25 boat to explore the gulf coast and the inland untamed waters of louisiana he was 20 years old and piloting his own boat was the definition of freedom you can go anywhere anywhere on the coast the lounge and stuff like that anywhere we'll go back in the swamps the boat was 26 feet long and i could uh sleep on the boat and cook on the boat and i had a compass to come to some some of the big lakes along the way he photographed whatever caught his eye this is the lighthouse at eugene island which is uh south of uh south of morgan city those oyster boats are coming in from the river see the river in the background there just somebody on the waterfront at morgan city i just walking along in that polls or anything i don't know them never heard of never saw him again tony christopher [ __ ] he's an artist man made in 1934. i had very little film so i could not afford to take like like two shots of this i just take one it's a good picture fine it's not it's okay with me i didn't mean for it to be a classic it just turned out that way he used no artificial light he didn't have one he sailed to new orleans and being a texan found the celebrations fantastic there's a moment in each of his photographs that's a little breathtaking for his many years and many miles traveled fallville was genuinely humble about the importance of his long and far-ranging document of a lost louisiana in fact their popularity has been amazing to me absolutely amazing because i just took them for granted i had taken so many progress it's unbelievable it's just in hundreds maybe thousands all these started out in the in the depression when i didn't have any money or films or anything so i don't know how i managed my films on his boat the pintail he putted through the wetlands in the early thirties and spent scarce motion picture film on scenes that now look a century old he cut it into a film called the voyage of the pin tail and took it around to schools in texas until so many children were spending their lunch money to see the exotic swamps and gators that he had to stop now we present a rare glimpse at a truly lost louisiana the surviving reels of the voyage of the pin tail okay hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] twice muslims princess oh i've done so many things it's hard to know where to get more in this great big sea of information preserve your memories they're all that's left well not always all that's left in most towns folks seem to take pretty good care of their city hall well most towns in baton rouge the story of renovations at the old state capitol reads like a fairy tale once upon a time there was a castle on a hill and the people would gather there to make decisions about all manner of things but one day they built a shiny new castle and forgot about the old one for many years until a wise man came along and said look the old castle is still beautiful and the people agreed they said let's patch up the old castle and paint it like it was new and that's just what they did exactly like it was new this is our castle the old state capitol as photographed just before its restoration it was in pretty bad shape but still haunting its halls with a ghost of our collective history we've been able to to move quickly and we've been able to accomplish a great deal in a relatively short period of time so i've been pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of the people involved roger busbys has been leading the restoration for more than two years well we've had a few minor surprises for example when we were restoring the basement we discovered two cisterns that we had not known existed prior to this restoration of course they were examined by the state archaeologists uh we found some hard pottery shards a few other items uh nothing really uh significant from a historical perspective but still it was interesting and of course it's been interesting just to see the building returned to its 1882 grandeur busba says he loves this grand dam and grand it certainly is rising from the first high bluff on the mississippi river this hill was a meeting place for the houma and bayougula indians it's a weird-looking building for its time and ours it's an anachronism the legislature of 1850 christened it fistfights were common over political issues here they caught a passion for politics from which we've never recovered this is the second most important building in louisiana from a historical perspective second only to the cabildo and sometimes i'm not willing to yield that point this building is the heart and soul of louisiana and that's not hyperbola that's the literal truth in january 1861 louisiana seceded from the union here the next year confederate authorities abandoned baton rouge the yankees moved in and those sons of boston burned it leaving only the walls of brick three feet thick in 1882 after nearly 20 years of neglect architect william farrett completed the refurbishment of the castle now we of course took samples of the paint from the walls from the woodwork from the floors in some cases to make sure that we had the the correct color the right kind of paint the right kind of consistency we also examine journals correspondence and other items that describe the building after the ferret restoration so you've restored all of these little everything possible this of course is a marble uh metal over a coal burning fireplace and uh this was very carefully restored and reconstructed it's very nice was it pretty cracked it was in fact parts of it were literally in pieces this was the scene of bitter battles between reformers and old liners year after year they fought with southern gentility and an occasional caning legislators from the hill country of north louisiana from the bayous of south louisiana traveled here by by boat by train by horse owned horseback by carriage and so on uh when you're in this building you can almost see across the the chasm of time and this is the chamber of the house of representatives one of the most historic rooms in louisiana it was in this chamber the original chamber that the secession convention met it was in this chamber after the 1881 restoration that there were bitter debates over the first louisiana lottery and here in 1929 the impeachment proceedings against huey long began and these windows really do give it well so give some rooms a feeling that it's a cathedral in a way exactly are these the original by the way original to the ferret restoration in 1881 1882. now many of the pains have been replaced but the window itself and the nature of the painting is the same as in 1881 1882. and of course ferret tried to reproduce what the original architect james dakin had done in 1849 and of course that window looks out actually over the mississippi river and the gothic revival architecture of the building enhances the cathedral essence of this sort of a cathedral of political history huey long was nearly impeached here it gave him such a sour taste for this symbol of the old that he simply built a new state house this building was traditional it represented what he considered an older louisiana a more aristocratic louisiana he wanted something that would be a little more magnificent something that would emphasize what he intended his administration to be that's right in fact uh huey put up those wpa style murals in the new capital to celebrate the common man whereas maybe this was more of an edifice all right a castle on the mississippi again associated with that more aristocratic tradition but a tradition that was typical of the south and typical of louisiana and really represented again in many cases a sense of true public service dedicated public service but hurry long preferred the the skyscraper with the the murals as you said that bring to mind thomas hart benton and others and how do you know really that that was a peachy kind of salmon color very careful scraping we made sure that we got to the the bottom layer of paint and then reproduced that bottom layer exactly 1882 lives right here even with all this exacting restoration despite the thorough history displays there are still stories to tell about the old castle here at one of the upper towers we're about four stories now above ground level in one of the upper towers the pages those young men and later young ladies as well who would assist in delivering memos on the floor of the house of representatives etc well those folks used to use this as something of a romp room and it seems that they wanted to immortalize themselves along with the legislators they served names like jb sullivan from 1911 jay rieger from what looks like donelsonville louisiana put his name to these walls on april 26 of 1913 it looks as though rey silverton was an indian from new mexico who also lived in edgard louisiana walker ronaldson loves marguerite rose i am from new orleans i am a page in the house and my name is joseph smith i am here july 3rd 1904 but god knows best where he will be july 3rd 1906. billy porteous jr was a page in 1912 1914 1916 and 1918. he called himself the kid that knows some stuff i'll bet he did know some stuff horace long from floyd louisiana was a page in 1904 he wrote think of me for you will never see me again when you're in this building you can almost see across the chasm of time now someone will say you know times are lean for louisiana right now and we've gone and spent money fixing up that drafty old monstrosity well to the people who appreciate things like 1850 castles the money it cost to restore a gothic cathedral isn't all that important this building has seen louisiana history and it's grandeur and in its tragedy it's just something you have to see to feel lost louisiana will continue [Music] it's hard to ignore the crumbling landmarks of louisiana a hollowed-out barber shop in jonesville's nearly abandoned downtown an old clinic is one symbol of a vanishing age but look closer inside lies another rolled up and discarded white picket fencing one icon of a lost louisiana nestled inside another before our eyes so many places are becoming icons of a past age on the way to new orleans generations of travelers have known airline motors restaurant it closed in december of 1993. living battery and for many years after mass we'd come here and have breakfast and every now and then we'd come and get the hondura gumbo and just love their food and it's a nice drive coming from battery to here just getting away from the city i've been coming to this place a long time when they used to have lsu ball games football and people would stop here and get something to eat then when we got when i got married we leave metairie to come over here at lunchtime i mean it's sunday or something like that it's a real nice place and i was surprised to see it in the paper i said i can't believe this i got to read it over again so today i said let's go now because where they make they may leave before we get there we'll miss this place ed lestrade and dave losch work off and on at the refineries around here it's a sad thing to see happen whenever you lose something like this so it's like kind of losing a fred you know this is going to be hard to take but we kind of know the good places to eat up and down the river it's been it's been a wonderful place to come you know frequent over the years when i was a kid when laplace drive was running we should stop here and eat breakfast and that's 30 years ago [Music] so come on in you have to sit here right here and meet margaret watkins she's been working at airline motors for 28 years and she's glad you dropped in but i can say it now see it that's it that's it [Music] you can sit anywhere you want this morning the lunch crowd hasn't really picked up yet in fact that's been part of the trouble the lunch and dinner crowds have been getting smaller lately and the owner lou wood says it's just gotten too hard to keep it open especially 24 hours a day gave a serious thought he had no choice what's happening just decreasing volume decrease in volume runs up your labor cost different other cost expenses no he can't keep it open even for the tradition even if it is a part of the river parishes as much a part as bonfires on dewey crawfish the gumbo fried shrimp that's what i ordered today frank my grandmother worked here for 42 years and we practically had to take her out on a tray with a little garnish around her because she just she did it until she absolutely could not do it any longer this was like the police station and the fire station and everything you didn't have these big time deputies there was one and every the whole time would call here for information it was a bus stop at one time is when airline motors opened franklin roosevelt was pledging neutrality in the european war and amelia earhart just turned up missing joe lewis knocked out james braddock to become the world's heavyweight champ and automobile and steel workers won their first big contracts arson wells scared the whips out of the nation with war of the worlds and john steinbeck published the grapes of wrath most of the country was being wired with electricity small promise since few people could afford such luxurious home appliances it wasn't nearly the end of the great depression in louisiana most people were still farmers and all farmers were dirt poor in california photographer dorothea lang snapped a few photos of a 32 year old homeless widow named florence thompson she gave the depression a human face and that face is still burned in our national memory an icon of an age an icon of an age my hamburger was 15 cents right a bold gumball was 50 cents and when you think of the price of it today and like a plate lunch was 40 cents and when you worked on the night shift you used to give us some little bitty bags and you had to put a level spoon of sugar in it you couldn't get sugar you know because it was rationed yeah in the water when i started and then the beer little beer we got we saved it for the long sherman when they got off every thursday and friday there was pity for different groups the cash they check in case they check over there come in here we'd make hamburgers and put them in a big dish pan all right we'd hand them a hamburger and collect because we had a register used to collect and then go to the bar and get their vehicle the ball was right across back here just to keep our beer for thursday friday in the 40s dippy is how most of her regular customers call her the nickname's origin is lost now dippy scoots around tables and dashes orders into the kitchen faster than waitresses decades her junior the other workers know to stay out of her way 12 hour shifts when i started that's why everybody said what are you gonna do i don't know i guess i'll still get up at four o'clock there's a job to do and dippy does it well dippy has worked here for 47 years 1937. h.c kotem jr goes way back with airline motors too he surveyed the land before it was built it started out as a chevrolet dealership then in 1939 they added the first coffee counter today he's just another guest who just had to return before it closed captioning not [Music] available i built that myself now that has wings on it to go way back under the roof to support it keep it from what's it made of it's made of steel it's all the welded you did all the welding too i did the world of myself yeah and these uh what is the design it's supposed to be a musical note or that's what it is musical now a musical note right this trim along the front of the building here is stainless steel that's been up there ever since about 1957 oh it's never rusted anything like that for a long stop here bill dodd was a regular attendee because at the time it was practically at least a half a day trip from new orleans about on the airline right you have to stop for lunch somewhere that's right and have a good on doing a chicken dinner gumbo which we did they all came to say goodbye leslie vicknair pumped gas here in 1949 and they always had a good dinner you can always bet on it whatever we liked it was here what did you love i used to love the steak and the butter beans and then they had always got good snap beans i used to enjoy that therese vicner brought her daughter and grandchildren out to eat here one last time this is actually the cheapest place you could eat and we enjoy the food it's the type of food that we cook at home did people simply stop coming sometimes we would come we would come at night and there was only five tables so you know you could see the declines and the people coming well why don't you love me like you used to do how come you treat me like a worn-out shoe they did go elsewhere to shonies or mcdonald's the chains again eclipsing the local color in fairness though airline motors was once the big new restaurant of its day smaller diners of the 30s didn't boast shiny aluminum stools bolted to the floor airline motors enticed the hungry with the promise of air conditioning it was convenient and pleasant and now it's overtaken by the more convenient but more pleasant does anyone express loyalty to chain restaurants like these patrons do for dippy's service and airline motors traditions biggest hotels in in new orleans brag about food and everything but you're not going to find the cooking any better than what you're going to get right here after it closes down you might not find this kind of cooking at all anymore no that's what we're afraid of that's what we're afraid of we come every sunday we've been coming every sunday now for 15 years some people have been coming here for 50 years airline motors picked the girls up and we took them down to the army base to dance and bring them back home again in the evening they're well chaperoned too well i'm nice girl airline motors opened 57 years ago and now it is gone forever leaving just an empty feeling in saint john parish and on the jukebox one more song as an appropriate final score of course it wasn't oldie but goodie a song called for the good times you can still find a few of these in louisiana these diners this is granny's home of the home style plate lunch the sign says it too is in a great location the town of devil has been since the forties they say in the real estate trade location is everything but while being on a well-traveled highway was good for airline motors and is fine for grannies being only near a well-traveled road is doing in a lot of small towns along our highway one it's a familiar lament across america so many small towns have already disappeared the whole question of preserving them can seem futile when an interstate highway is built paralleling an old two-lane road the towns along it enter an economic drought it happens every day somewhere in america one more person leaves one more business folds cars and trucks still pour through north louisiana but they take i-49 now rolling past exit ramps without a seconds thought to stop him and you can well imagine they are missing something of the real louisiana each time they decide not to roll off that comforting concrete ribbon we might take 49 for speed but there's something special about the original 300 mile layout we can't take for granted of all the roads it's our most historic starting or if your perspective will allow you to say it ending here in grand isle highway 1 cuts in almost completely diagonal path through the northwestern part of the state ending up eventually at a point where texas and arkansas intersect just north of shreveport it does more than cut directly across the heart of louisiana it embodies it and the people who live along louisiana's highway 1 talk of little else these days but how sad it is to be forgotten well i run the store 20 years and then i've been here making hamburgers since april how has business changed oh it's changed considerably but the type of business i'm in now the local people keep me up and if it wasn't for the local people i wouldn't be here ruby fuller is holding on in the small town of derry sparse times have whittled her general store into a lunchroom the shelves along the wall stand empty but testify volumes about lost prosperity the local farmers drop by to talk but travelers no not anymore hardly anyone out there now we had a grocery store guests and everything people come here to get almost anything they needed now they can get the hamburger so the traffic just disappeared traffic disappeared went just went right on by the cattlemen here share a kind of sour grapes attitude we got along before the out of towners and we'll do it again they say but the last time derry was disconnected from a well-traveled road was in the 1930s before highway one it's the same story for most of the little places this used to be one of the most profitable gas stations just north of alexandria here in a town called boyce now highway 1 traffic used to pass right in front of the gas station and it was doing very well i-49 wasn't completed into alexandria didn't quite touch the northern part of town when the interstate was finished so was this business 50 miles north in armington the corner of highway 84 and la-1 used to support four gas stations already one is closed and with traffic patterns down 70 to 80 percent it can't be long before one of the three remaining goes as well in harmony you can't tell when the grocery store went under in pow hatton the number of cars is down so drastically the one-man police force is astounded oh yeah about about i'll say eight or ninety percent of it well sometimes don't look like nobody in in the country in the world then sometimes they have ball games and then that you have a pretty good type of that time are you one of these guys that sits out there that's right i'm the one i'm the bad man set up there that's what they call it a speed trap town normally a town that some would call a speed trap doesn't like to talk about how much it collects from law breakers but this is different the speed and ticket fund took you out of town i can tell you that now i wrote a miniature ticket i've seen time where i'd write two three books of them and uh take in maybe twenty thousand dollars a month i did do it you couldn't look out the door and not see a car faster now there's one maybe ever fifteen twenty or thirty minutes so the number of people passing on one is way down way down strangely business at this store hasn't changed they didn't stop they were traveling through oh they never stopped in the first place in the first place most all local people up highway one a few more miles looking for signs of life in the 1950s the blue light inn was home to country blues men and rockabilly bands it was still hopping in the 1990s but the owner says the people who pass through looking for a good time now pass by on the way to shreveport on i-49 the traffic on some rural highways around here is down 80 percent since 49 opened but there doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do about it to pull travelers off the interstate you have to tell them about the place and billboards are forbidden along scenic 49 a tourism campaign to advertise this country charm is only just starting that's years too late for some small towns as sad as this abandonment seems there are pockets of hope along some of those main streets yeah i'm joe sampson mayor of niagara how you doing let me give you one of those souvenirs where y'all from france is good give him one knock at this sees a winnebago in his town he flags it down and gives anyone inside a big country howdy slapping i love knacketish stickers everywhere he goes they'd only spoke french joe they didn't know you were the mayor that's right all right you have to admire that sense of enthusiasm it's a widespread feeling in this narrow river town instead of waiting for interstate travelers to find nakadish the town went to the interstate pushing the city limits two miles to meet 49 and reap taxes from a major off-ramp not all towns can do that of course but where there's a spirit of success there must be a way on the way south we stopped where everyone stops lee's pies in lecompte the owners bought a plot of land by the new interstate and thought about moving out there but business come to find did not turn down some of the waitresses have been here so long that they're heating bottles for parents that they used to eat bottles for the parents so it's a tradition you know for them to stop here and why because it's real when did you start and you started in cheney [Music] what was that tell me about 1928 well like i said that they didn't even have a good highway through here at that time that came after we moved there and nobody had any money and there was very little traffic so it didn't take too much to get going you know money and experience and liam would get out on the front and a car would come by and he'd haul her at him you know and and then some of them turn around come back to see why he yelled at him you know and he'd say well how can you spend money with me going by here 60 miles an hour and it would turn out to be good customers maybe lee johnson had the right idea 60 years ago do anything to make them slow down and look before we may notice it though many towns will be disappearing before that happens there's still an opportunity to visit before the sun sets on another scenic highway there is still time left in the day to travel louisiana's road less taken [Music] you