MYSTERY AT MYSTIC BAYOU

Yesterday afternoon, I visited with my author friend Morris Raphael as he and his wife Helen had invited my friend Vickie and me to come by for drinks before we depart for Tennessee next week. Morris and I always refer to our friendship as a mutual admiration society – he reviews my books; I review his – and, as readers know, I blogged about him in two previous blogs.

The weather yesterday was perfect, and from the wide windows in the living room of the Raphael’s home , we could see the tranquil bayou meandering by their backyard, which slopes down to the banks of the old stream. Visits with the Raphaels, as any New Iberian can tell you, are pleasant, hospitable occasions filled with good wine, tasty hors doeurves, and books and writing discussions. Yesterday, Helen offered us boudin and hogshead cheese, a wonderful Havarti cheese, and an Australian chardonnay Morris had ordered for her at Christmas.

The highlight of the visit was our book exchange: I gave Morris copies of my recent books, NOTHING FOR FREE, and MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM, and he found for me a copy of MYSTIC BAYOU, which he published in 1985. I had loaned out my treasured copy of MYSTIC BAYOU years ago and whoever borrowed it made me think again about Mark Twain’s “It’s better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.” I hadn’t been able to find another copy anywhere. “You’re getting a collector’s item,” Morris reminded me as he again inscribed a copy. He has only a few copies of this edition and doesn’t plan to reprint it.

I’ve always felt that Morris should send this slim volume, along with a screen treatment, to Hollywood because of the unusual, yet plausible, story that unfolds in it. The narrator is “Ti’ Maurice,” who is Morris himself, and a secondary character named Placide LeBlanc, a salty Cajun swamper who lives on a houseboat in the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana. Placide tells Ti’ Maurice a bizarre story about Hitler surviving the final days in Berlin through a plan executed by Goebbels and other top officials in Hitler’s chancellory, in which a Hitler “look alike” volunteers to die for the Furher. Hitler takes off in a cub plane from a strip near the chancellory and succeeds in getting through Russian anti-aircraft fire. Several high-ranking Nazis await him on the North Sea coast, and they all escape in a submarine to some point on the Atlantic coast of an undisclosed South American country, then surface along the Louisiana coast. The Fuhrer is then brought into swamp country and hidden. Placide is part of a caretaking operation for Hitler, and though Ti’ Maurice has his doubts about the authenticity of the story, he can’t seem to discount the possibilities that such a bizarre survival tale took place.

During WW II, many U.S. ships were sunk off the Gulf Coast by German U-boats, and stories about trappers or fishermen, who aided in the refueling of German subs, persist in south Louisiana. Sixty-nine ships were sunk in the Gulf of Mexico by only a half dozen U-boats. They were sunk near the passes south of New Orleans and off the coast of Terrebonne parish, according to Morris’s account. Placide tells Ti’ Maurice about the sinking of the Cities Service Toledo ship, a story that purportedly coincides with authentic reports made by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Maritime Administration in Washington, D.C. One report is included in Morris’s MYSTIC BAYOU.

As I said earlier, Morris’s book intrigues me, and I wish that I could help him find a producer to film a story based on his book. South Louisianians will recognize bayou country sites of the lower Atchafalaya Basin, Morgan City, Berwick, Verdunwille, Centerville, Franklin, New Iberia, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

A retired project engineer, Morris knows all the waterways in Louisiana and Mississippi and includes a map of the area he writes about in the beginning pages of MYSTIC BAYOU. He has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers and has authored thirteen books, many of them about Louisiana history and culture. He was honored with the Jefferson Davis award from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1979, and in 1991 Morris received the Cajun Culture Award for his efforts in advancing Cajun culture. More of his credits are contained in a previous blog.

The cover for this volume was rendered by George Rodrigue, an international artist who has won awards for his work throughout the U.S. and Europe. Rodrigue is a native New Iberian and his art includes paintings of intriguing characters who stand motionless, as if hanging in space, and who evoke a haunted feeling in viewers. In Italy, Rodrigue was awarded a gold medal for outstanding creativity, and in France he was awarded an honorary medal at a Grand Palais show by Le Salon art exhibition. Most art lovers appreciate his “Blue Dog” work, which features a blue dog that appears in the foreground of many of his paintings.

If you don’t own a copy of MYSTIC BAYOU, you’re missing a good read; however, I’m definitely not loaning my precious copy out again!

IN THE ELECTRIC MIST

Yesterday, I went to a matinee of the movie version of IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH THE CONFEDERATE DEAD, a mystery written by New Iberia’s native son and best-selling author, James Lee Burke. My primary interest in the movie was to see the locations and scenery that the director had selected from sites recommended by my good friend Janet Faulk who had shown the film crew locations for movie scenes.

Janet, who lives in an apartment in my backyard, is a woman who has always admired the name “Scout,” the name of the young girl in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (her favorite novel and movie), and earned that name in the list of credits at the conclusion of the movie. A former CEA for the previous New Iberia City government and now President of the Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce, Janet was hired to work with the production company of IN THE ELECTRIC MIST through a personal endorsement made by her friend Greg Guirard, a nature writer and photographer who lives in the Atchafalaya Basin. Intrigued by the idea of “sense of place,” Janet has an intuitive ability to find appropriate places for things to happen in Acadiana, and the majority of the scenes in ELECTRIC MIST are her “finds.”

The story line of this movie centers on a Hollywood crew coming to town to produce a Civil War film. The movie stars Tommy Lee Jones as Dave Robicheaux, the fictional New Iberia detective who tries to link the murder of a New Iberia woman to a New Orleans mobster returning to his home town. Shots of downtown New Iberia, St. Martinville, and environs give the movie cultural authenticity, and Janet traces the effect produced to the movie company’s goal of looking not for New Iberia’s most beautiful scenery, not for a history lesson, not even for the purest sense of culture, but to tell a story,” to create a medium for James Lee Burke’s novel,” she said. “Rather than ask to see historic landmarks, they wanted to see places like a house with a long driveway…a strip of rural road with water on both sides.” Janet remembers her most humorous morning working as a scout as one in which she looked at her schedule for the day and discovered she’d have to search for morgues and men’s restrooms. Some of her sites involved weeks of searching, but other searches revealed perfect locations during the space of one long day.

When the last James Lee Burke novel became a movie, it was filmed in New Orleans but its authentic setting should have been New Iberia, so producers of IN THE ELECTRIC MIST decided to film in Iberia Parish and four other Acadiana parishes. Janet says that they wanted to create the film in its indigenous setting and this drove the creative process to keep the integrity of the story intact. The film company also used existing property rather than building sets. This made Janet’s job a bit harder and the search daily became more intense for her. However, most of the locations were within a thirty mile radius of the Queen City on the Teche. Scenes were shot in locations along the West Atchafalaya Basin levee from Catahoula, Louisiana to ten miles south of the Charenton Boat landing near Charenton, Louisiana. A few of the scenes were shot in New Orleans.

I was in New Iberia when “Scout” Janet worked on the scene sighting and know that for several months she worked from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., and longer. Some nights she “scouted” for good restaurants to feed the movie crew, especially for those that offered crawfish. Some days she worked alone, and other days she traveled in a van with crew members and showed them sites they had chosen from photos or description. She was challenged to find the most authentic looking house of Dave Robicheaux, the movie’s hero, and spent several days riding along LA Highways 14 and 347.

When Janet summarized her experience about her job as” Scout,” she praised area people: “One thing I already knew about the people I encountered while scouting for movie sites is that their personal character is very similar to southern Alabamians (she’s a native Alabamian) in that they’re generous and helpful…hospitable as southerners can genuinely be.”

One of the interesting aspects of attending the movie, IN THE ELECTRIC MIST, in a New Iberia theatre is that you get to sit near your friends and hear them exclaiming over, or wondering where certain area sites are. I came away thinking that the movie was an unbeatable combination of good writing, good production, good acting, but, most of all, great location work by “Scout” Faulk (pictured above).

THOUGHTS EVOKED BY VETCH

Yesterday, I went outdoors to inspect the raking job the leaf man had done in the yard and found patches of vetch, its tendrils clinging to the ground everywhere. For me, the conspicuous green foliage with purple flowers always announces Spring. It’s early yet to declare Spring, but there it was, a gracious plenty of vetch growing in my backyard.

For some reason, I suddenly recalled a Spring in the desert of Iran where I experienced my first “Nowruz,” the traditional New Year holiday celebrated there, a celebration marking the first day of Spring and signifying the beginning of the Iranian New Year.

During the last month of winter in the Persian calendar, preparations called “Khoune Takouni” take place. Iranians initiate an extensive house cleaning, buy new clothes to wear for the New Year and purchase flowers to celebrate the rebirth of vegetation in the natural world. I remember that my houseboy, Jabar, requested a new set of clothes which I provided for the 13-day celebration of Spring. He asked for American-made pants and shirt, the pants of which I had re-tailored in Karun from my spouse’s larger ones. In fact, I provided five sets of clothing and a pair of new shoes!

During my first celebration of the New Year in Iran, I didn’t prepare a “Haft Sin” table that includes various items of food and which is more of a display of items corresponding to seven creations and the holy immortals (like our saints) protecting them. If you’re interested in reading about the “Nowruz” traditions, you can find a description in my young adult book, SOPHIE’S SOJOURN IN PERSIA (buy at Amazon.com).

Here in south Louisiana, it’s difficult for us to visualize a desert in southern Iran coming alive like the vetch in my backyard, but the red poppy that abounds on the plains of Khuzestan in Spring creates a miraculous show on the “desert’s dusty face.”

Below is a bit of free verse from one of my unpublished poetry manuscripts entitled FARDA, which is about my sojourn in this fascinating mid-eastern country:

KHUZESTAN COLOR

Touching down on flat Iranian plain,
the aircraft enters another West Texas,

a stark landscape of sand and stone.
“Where did all the flowers go?”

the tune replays in my mind,
but it is a fleeting thought,

this question about landscape,
some weeks later, I have seen

Lale’, the wild tulip
growing spiritedly at Masjid-I-Suleiman,

blooms of beauty taken to Europe
during the Crusades,

and wild garlic with its red and green flowers
clustering in flower stalls, not vegetable bazaars.

Goats have stripped the stark plateau,
leaving only globe and artichoke thistle,

a few anemones and yellow daisies,
they have bypassed the caper plant,

spicy night bloomer,
its large white flowers wilting in sunlight,

at night its pickled buds
enhancing salads at dinner parties.

Plants within our reach,
wild marigolds at Andimeshk near Choga Mish

and further into the Zagros Mountains
at Hamadan, Iran’s red poppy,

closer home, cultivated gardens
of Persian cyclamen

showing off its heart-shaped base.
In my own garden,

the yellow rose of Texas struggles,
is the household joke

that I was lured to Iran by a spouse
who sang at my arrival,

“I didn’t promise you a rose garden,”
then grew a neat row of yellow and pink blooms.

We dare not neglect the almond and pistachio,
or the tall Lombard poplars favoring Isfahan,

nor do we forget the poisonous oleander,
nemesis of Ahwaz gardeners

that gave me a case of hayfever,
a plant endemic to more tropical climes,

reminding me of home…
Teche country, lush enclosures.