BOSSIER CITY -- Mom isn't too worried about her granddaughter, my 22-year-old niece, who she and her friend Paula watched ride in the Louisiana Quarter Horse Association's Sugar Bowl Extravaganza on New Year's Eve.
(My niece, who doesn't like publicity, at least not the sort of publicity that these all-the-news-from-Lake-Woebegon columns I write about my family engender, won two first places and a second, even though it was the first time she'd competed in more than a year, and the first time she'd done so with her new horse.)
And after Mom and Paula watched my niece dominate the quarter horse circuit, they repaired to Harrah's Louisiana Downs Casino & Racing in Bossier where they spent much of the evening surreptitiously photographing, um, boldly dressed party people. "Ever see that blog 'People of Walmart'?" Paula asks as she starts to thumb through the shots on her phone.
Another family tradition is born.
But back to my niece, about whom nobody is worried. A couple of months ago she bought a house, a nice new construction garden-type home on a narrow 25- by 50-foot lot in the Southern Hills area of Shreveport. During the negotiation, she regularly texted Mom, who was impressed when she didn't ask for help with the down payment and that she'd saved her money, got an FHA loan with an interest rate below four percent, and made the decision to buy the property all by herself.
She just wanted Mom's advice on whether she should, as an investment, also buy the lot next to hers.
Mom allowed she probably shouldn't; there were plenty of other vacant lots in the new subdivision with land still to be cleared. Someone who wanted to build there wouldn't pay a premium to live next door to my niece; so many other options would hold down the price. And there was no guarantee that the subdivision would grow; that lot might sit empty for years.
Besides, my niece's master plan only has her staying there seven to 10 years. Not much risk attached to buying the lot, but there wasn't much potential upside either. The money could be put to better use.
Maybe Mom was thinking about a little parcel of land on Lake O' the Pines---the reservoir outside of Jefferson, Texas-- she'd paid taxes on for about 40 years. My parents bought it in the early '70s, planning to build a cabin on it. They drove the old RV out to it a couple of times; my dad took his bass boat out on the lake a few times, but they never did build that cabin.
Last time I saw the plot--more than 30 years ago--it was still at the end of a lonely dirt road. Elsewhere around the lake there were a few fish camps and some nicer cottages, and a lot of pine trees. I saw a sign for the Longview Yacht Club, which I thought was funny (and which would make a good name for a band).
A couple of years ago a man got in touch with Mom about buying the property, and she let it go for $1,000. Which she figured made her a profit, considering they'd only paid something like $400 for it in 1973. So you understand why my niece wanted to avail herself of Mom's real estate acumen.
Anyway, Mom tells me all this by way of explaining why my niece probably isn't going to have dinner with us tonight; she has to work to pay for her new house and the new refrigerator that Lowe's cut her a $600 break on because it had a dent that you couldn't even see on top of it. (Mom only seemed a little disappointed that she couldn't buy her granddaughter/my niece a refrigerator as a housewarming gift. Instead she bought her glassware. And a shower curtain. But she needs some sort of window treatment too -- if there was anyone living on the vacant lot next to her they could see right into her kitchen.)
Plus the first message we got from Mom--though it was actually sent by Paula (who you might remember from previous columns in which we described her theory that eating off a higher table could save you time because the food didn't have as far to travel to get to your mouth)--suggested that dinner be at 5 p.m. at BeauxJax, a relatively new brewpub in an old brick storefront on Traffic Street a couple of blocks away from the Horseshoe Casino where Mom had a room because she and Paula are obviously what those in the gaming entertainment industry call "whales."
(Being urban sophisticates, Karen and I pushed back on the idea of eating at 5 p.m., negotiating a 6 p.m. leave-the-hotel time so we could go for a walk and stretch after making the drive down from North Little Rock and have a glass of wine in our free hotel room, the selection of which I kind of screwed up because when offered a choice between a high floor and a low one, I chose low, in part because I already knew the magnificence of the Shreveport skyline. But I should have chose high, because the higher floors had real glassware and all we had were plastic cups.)
BeauxJax, despite its worrisome name, turned out to be a really nice place. The owners are hopeful of opening more. They might be coming to Arkansas. That would be nice.
Mom flew into New Orleans in mid-December and spent a couple of weeks with my youngest sister and her husband who live in Chauvin, south of Houma in the Gulf of Mexico. My brother-in-law Carl works as a boat captain for the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, which means he takes scientists out into the bayou in his pirogue and shows them around. During alligator season--late August through late September in Terrebonne Parish--he hunts and traps them and I avoid his Facebook posts.
When we met Mom in the casino, she reported that all was well with my sister and brother-in-law, though their dog was too fat and my sister had just retired from her job as a schoolteacher and was already signed up to sub at the Catholic school and had a job waiting at the Montessori school in the fall if she wanted it, which she wasn't sure she did. Meanwhile they'd found a renter for their house in Coushatta (located about four and a half hours northwest of Chauvin) who might be interested in buying it.
I do not know why my sister has this house in Coushatta, though I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that Red River Parish was for many years one of the Chicago mob's favorite places for dealing with the remains of associates who'd proved nettlesome. (As a police reporter, I had some exciting adventures in Red River Parish.)
The upshot is that all was well, at least with the part of the family that Mom hadn't left back at home in Savannah. We didn't really have time to get into them.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 01/07/2020