The Poisoned Ink Well

Friday, October 25, 2002



So we made the national spotlight, again.

I say a lot negative things about Baton Rouge.

I am bitter about my childhood, and about being made an object, even to this day, of ridicule and scorn over something that I could not help and something that I cannot change.

The town itself isn’t responsible for this. It’s sad to say that it could have happened anywhere and does. I am nothing special. Children are cruel and often grow into crueler adults. That’s just the way it is.

There are certain things that I think about when the name Baton Rouge is mentioned, like the rolling green lawns of the State Capital grounds and a childhood spent climbing in the branches of it’s oak trees and playing hide seek in the bushes and picking illegal flowers from the gardens. The smell and taste of crawfish boiling at the Country Corner on Perkins Road. Dancing in the streets with a bass playing blind friend named Joel while listening to Marcia Ball. The way we all gather peacefully into a multi cultural, multi racial, and multi class, group when we hold a festival and how everyone smiles and chats and dances and eats. It’s not such a bad place, at least the people aren’t all bad.

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