LOCALE AS SETTING - KITTIE HOWARD LOVES LOUISIANA

Thank you, Denise, for letting me share a slice of Louisiana that's always in my heart. And, speaking of hearts -- yours is as big and warm as the Outback! The gracious and generous manner in which you open your blog to others brings smiles around the world. It's nice, really nice how you bring us together. Thank you!

When I started blogging, I had no idea the path would lead to writing novellas. But, little by little, my Louisiana stories seeped out. First came "Remy Broussard's Christmas," a fictional story with a very real setting. I sat where Remy sat in that rural, three-room schoolhouse with two grades to a room. Then came "Rings of Trust," a fictional story with a very real setting. The Ku Klux Klan had ridden against my grandfather to force him to sell off part of our farm. He didn't sell!

This September, "Bayou Princess" will follow, a light-hearted story about a young girl coming into her own. I'll then combine the three into a trilogy: "Remy's Bayou Road."

Everyone has stories. We were all kids who rushed home from grade school eager to tell our parents what had happened that day. Our eyes were wide. Our faces were flushed. We were excited.

Then, life being life, we got older -- and, little by little, we learned to control emotions. Perhaps we learned to see what others saw and not what we saw. Perhaps we got busy and no longer heard the train's whistle on a foggy day. Perhaps . . . oh, life's 'perhaps' is endless.

But the stories never died for any of us. Touch them, and they will jump to life.

Because my husband and I moved so much, both within the States and overseas, I had to keep touching my stories. Yes, we lived in some exotic places. But, still, outside of one's culture and one's language and away from one's friends and family, there were times, especially when dusk approached, when I needed to touch my stories. Without television, sometimes without a telephone (if so, no one to call), I needed to feel where I came from in order to grasp where I was. When I could hear myself giggle in my mind's ear, I knew the little girl in me was safe, and the bomb that exploded on the bus across the street the first time I went to Jerusalem hadn't injured her. Or the riots in Nairobi. Or . . . well . . . one learns that stuff happens. Life isn't always pretty. Imperfect people (that's all of us) have a way of messing things up now and then. And when that happened, I pulled from the stories I always carried with me in my heart.

Some snippets of what influenced my stories:

A dormant winter pasture on our family farm. When I was a kid, pecan trees and cattle were the main crops. But, little by little, hurricanes uprooted the trees. My brother didn't want to raise cattle, so some pecan pastures were cleared for crops, usually rotating corn and soybeans. When spring comes and there are fresh furrows, it's pure bliss to wiggle one's toes in the fresh earth.

Look closely. See those itty-bitty 'leaves' darker than the flatter grass? Those are stickers! When the weeds (for that's what stickers are) mature, little pointy things will stick into the bottoms of your bare feet. And you'll hop around to pull them out. We kids used to have fun, seeing who could run across a patch of stickers without hopping around. Stickers toughen you up in other ways -- no life is without stickers, mine included. I've learned there are times when one has to suck it up, do what one has to do, and get on with it.

My grandparents rest here, to the far left, in the lower middle.  More than any other single event, the years I spent on their farm (while my father commuted from LSU's Law School) influenced me the most. The setting is simple, uncluttered. But the stories on the stoop in the evenings ranged from silly kids' stuff to complicated issues of the day. And this is where my stories come from -- simple settings with the day's issues.

This was my father's first law office, located in a small town about 25 miles from the farm. (It's now a real estate agency). He later got a larger office, even dabbled in politics. Much to my surprise, politicians who 'attacked' each other in public were good friends behind the scenes. And few politicians practiced what they preached. (HA!) Anyway, the office is a tiny shotgun house minus a window on either side and so called because one could fire a shotgun from the front and the bullet would go out the back door. Shotgun houses in historic districts can be very expensive these days, especially in New Orleans.

Louisiana's water-logged. Bayous. Swamps. Rivers. Streams. Visitors fuss about the humidity all this water  helps create. But I miss it! I love the feeling of perspiration dripping down my neck and then a breeze comes along and ahhh! In all fairness, though, I think one has to be born into Louisiana's hot weather, especially what August brings.

Last spring, hub and I were leaving Avery Island, home of that Tabasco Sauce even Queen Elizabeth II loves,  and decided to stop and walk around a bit. This fisherman was happy to pose with the catfish he'd just caught. My grandfather taught me how to fish. In the beginning he'd cut and string my bamboo pole, but I always had to put the worm (or cricket) on the hook. Eventually I learned how to adjust the cork for a particular fish and so on. Now, fast forward -- hub and I are in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Africa, at a safari camp. One of the excursions offered was a morning (fly) fishing trip. Hub and I signed up, as did others. And, yes, the fish god was with me! I cast my line out, and, well, within minutes pulled in four gorgeous perch, the only fish caught that morning. The camp staff grilled them around the campfire that evening with "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" blasting from somewhere. Well, okay, we'd all had a few glasses of wine and were doing the conga line around the campfire.

This is False River, about 35 miles north of Baton Rouge and Louisiana State University. We'd pile into cars and head for False River on Saturdays to go skiing. Way Back When, the Mississippi River cut a new path and left this oxbow lake behind. It's about five miles long and a mile wide. This photo was taken in December. During the spring/summer, the water's smooth and warm. Nice!

Although Morel's restaurant is somewhat new, it's typical of the eateries around False River. See the kid fishing on the pier? He can sell his catch to Morel's. One of its signature dishes is red beans and rice with a filet of fried catfish on top.  But LA cooking travels with me. We had stuffed eggplant tonight (here in Virginia). It's really easy to make and is even better the next night.

Houmas House isn't far from Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital, and is one of many plantation homes that grace the area and are open to the public (admission charged). Others are family-occupied. My sister's godmother's family occupies Parlange Plantation, a working plantation, for example. I have fond memories of visiting friends and sitting with them on verandahs, like the one pictured above, and laughing and giggling, as kids do. We were too young to comprehend how old old really was, but we weren't too young to feel how the grace and elegance of old can soothe, sitting in a rocker and rocking away the afternoon with our chatter. Old was good, a part of our heritage that seeped in.

Christmas morning last year. Yep, I'm a Geaux Tigers diehard. My nephew sent me this LSU Tigers knit cap for Christmas. Hub and I were staying at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, two floors down from where my great-grandmother lived after her parents died in a Yellow Fever epidemic and the hotel was an orphanage. We've stayed in the same room three years in a row. Each year there has been what the staff calls a 'sighting' or an 'occurrence' on my great-grandmother's floor. Some are convinced it's because I'm there, the closest known relative of any orphan to stay in the hotel. Ummm, don't know.

But here's a photo of the 'sighting' (on the left) someone took last Christmas.

What can I say? It's Louisiana.

Thank you so much Kittie, for such an informative post on your settings for your writing.  Your stories throb with realism due to your incorporation of your known setting and characters. Here is a link to Kittie's blog if you want to know more...or to see her books. 

• How about you? Do you like to make your local setting real for your readers? Or do you like to read stories with setting as character?
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