26 Search Results for "missouri"
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Childhood Jealousy
- From: greyfalcon2112
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Description:
Legos, Bicycles, Computers, Cars, Motorcycles, Barbed Wire and a really good Poke in the Ribs
My best friend growing up was a kid named Patrick Charles Emerson, a kid in the weirdest situation I had ever come across and to this day, I admire him for ever having been able or strong enough to withstand our childhood. Patrick, or Pogo as he was called as a kid, (God only knows why or who gave him the nickname) and I fell together by a strange bond. I was the tall, lanky, skinny kid who was to old to fit in and Pat was the pudgy kid with glasses who was to young. We both laugh about it now, but people just look at you weird when you end up at 16 years old and your best friend is only 12.
We were both single kids. I was being raised in the home of my great-aunt who was the most thoughtful and loving, albeit quick tempered and stubborn woman I have ever encountered and Patrick grew up in a large multi-story boarding house that was lorded over, and I do mean lorded over by his grand-mother, the singularly most spiteful, mean-spirited, yet amazingly sweet old lady that has ever walked the face of the earth and her counterpart, Patrick’s mother, another cut from the same mold as the previous quasi-villain but with a self serving streak so wide you could not see across it. Now I realize that I am making both of those ladies sound like the daughters of Satan himself, but be warned that neither could hope to compare with Patrick’s aunt, a seemingly endless fountain of self proclamation on her virtue and that of her equally boorish husband, all the while extending to you her vast knowledge of what your faults were, just in case you had missed them. All in all, my great-aunt was a mom to everybody she met, his grand-mother was but a marginally sweet natured thorn in our side, his mother a grumpy distraction, and his aunt only an occasional, but rather thorough pain in the ass.
At any rate, Patrick and I fell together through a semi-painless process of having mutual friends that thought it was fun to pick on him and I always felt, as the oldest of the kids in the area, to kind of look out for him and let the other kids know on no uncertain terms that I didn’t like them picking on him. I liked the kid. Sure he was a little on the chunky side and wore Coke-bottle glasses but so what? He was honest with his friendship and I was honest in my enjoyment of being around him. Pat has always been old for his years, intelligent beyond most his age, and for most of his childhood, had difficulty with kids who claimed to be his friend but quite often turned out differently.
So like most kids who don’t have a lot of friends, we both enjoyed indoor activities and Pat had the absolute ultimate kid thing that existed in the early 1980’s. No… not video games, but Legos. Boxes and boxes of Legos. I cannot begin to tell the amount of hours that we spent building and destroying different creations, traveling to distant galaxies within our minds and discussing Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and George Lucas. Pat was, and still is, an old school Sci-Fi fanatic and I was simply a Star Wars nut, but at any rate I was also something else; insanely jealous. I had, for all my years on him (a grand total of four) not one stinking Lego block to my name and that was the source of all of my envy. I however had a gift Patrick lacked. Patrick’s mind was that of an engineer, someone who could put things together in almost miraculous fashion and make them work, so long as he had a blueprint. I on the other hand could envision wondrous things completing fabulous feats of amazement but for the love of me I could not understand the complexities of their construction. Viola. The perfect team. A designer and an engineer. A pairing of minds where one would go, “This is so cool check this out this idea.” while the other could use his analytical brain to stick in his two cent’s worth, “But it won’t work like that exactly, but if we do this…” and come up with what I could never build on my own and what he could never think up on his own. But still all in all, I was horridly jealous.
I got back at him though. Patrick’s grand-mother was such a frugal old gal… no, she wasn’t frugal, lets call it what it is, she was so damn cheap that when it was time for Pat to have a bicycle, she hunted the entire town for a used one, probably spending more on the gas to drive her old Chevy Impala around looking than she saved on buying the damn thing. And damned thing it was. Single speed, old-style street frame, pale blue, painted with a spray can, ill-adjusted wheel spokes that made the wheels shake when it rolled and sporting a huge wire basket on the front, it was without a doubt the most hideous bicycle in all of creation. To this my answer was a jet black BMX bike with yellow 5-point aluminum mag wheels and all the trimmings. He never said so, but I think deep down he hated my bike, and probably hated his too. There were times I would feel superior to him because of my prized possession, then all to often the terribly bitter taste of what I was doing to my friend would take over and I would let him ride my bike, just to see his smile because he was the only neighborhood kid I ever let on it. I like to think that he got immense pleasure from getting to do what none of the other kids would have ever dared to ask for, swooping around the street, up driveways and down embankments smiling at his tormentors knowing that he alone was the single other authorized rider of the two-wheeled steed, the squire to the knight, and to my amazement, for once, the subject of their jealousy because my unwitting elevation of his position in the neighborhood hierarchy.
Now as it would happen, because of his purely analytical mind, Patrick discovered computers in the mid 1980’s and spoke endlessly of them. How they worked, why they worked, what they could do, what they were going to do, anything and everything about computers that his endless sponge of a brain could intake and process like the very machines he was enamored with. About this time frame, he started planning what he would do with one and started making friends that were doing the same. Nerdy friends I might add, think old school geeky nerds from those horrible ‘80’s films and you get the picture. Once again, I was jealous. Not that he was interested in computers and I didn’t understand them or his fascination of them, but the fact that my friend was forsaking me for the friendship of a thing called a Commodore 64, whatever the hell that was. So I set upon myself to rectify that situation and I bought a SV something or other, basically a Commodore 64 clone and his reaction was “All this time I’ve been trying to get Mom to buy me a computer and you get one!?” Needless to say I let him use it, I simply didn’t know how. I did learn a lot from him though but as luck would have it, later that year he trumped me and got a Commodore 128 for Christmas if my memory serves me correctly.
To say he grossly enjoyed being a computer freak would be the understatement of the century. I cannot begin to count the number of times I would ride from one end of town to the other, on literally the two biggest hills in the damn place only to get to set on his bed watching him play some turn-based RPG type of game for hours on end, asking what we were going to do and getting the same old, “Yeah in a minute…” response followed by more hours of game play. So not long after I turned 18 and had the cash on hand, I bought a car and raised the stakes of our friendly little chess game… again.
Now you would have though that by the time we were both steadfastly in our 20’s we would have forgotten the game, especially since we both had a car, but as fate would have it, damn the bitch, we hadn’t. I was beginning to read motorcycle magazines and admire the photos of a Kawasaki 454 LTD and I was probably as bad about the thing as Pat had been about the computer. Then one day I heard a buzzing sound whipping up and down the road and went outside only to see, you guessed it, my good friend, no my BEST friend riding a motorcycle, not just a motorcycle mind you but a Kawasaki. It seems that he had found it for sale in the local papers and he and a mutual friend were looking it over before he bought it. It was like having your best friend start dating the woman you lusted over, it sucked, it wasn‘t fair in any sense of the word. I wound up hoping that he would wreck the damn thing so we would be on an even keel again. I came to regret that wish a short time later when he actually went and purchased it from the owner.
The gentleman that owned the little Kawasaki lived on State Highway P between Desoto and Festus, Missouri, which is as crooked a little chunk of asphalt as you will ever find. Narrow, blind corners everywhere, the occasional cow in the road or jackass in your lane kind of place that makes your butt clench like a vise to keep from having a problem you haven’t had since you were a year and a half old. We traveled out in my girlfriend’s car, a well worn old barge of a Plymouth, and Pat did the deal and paid the cash amount they agreed on for the bike, strapped on his new/used helmet, fired up the Kawasaki and took off like there was no tomorrow, although probably preoccupied with how he was going to sneak the bike into his grand-mother’s/mother’s house without it being seen. As he jetted off into the afternoon heat, I slumped into the passenger seat of my girl’s car, and I remember telling her as I pulled cap down over my eyes, “If you see him in the ditch, pull over.”
I don’t think I more than had that out of my mouth when she said, “Oh shit, he’s in the ditch.”
Now I sat up thinking that was really a bad joke and was ready to chew her out when I lifted my cap from my eyes and there he was ahead of us, three quarters of the way through a double S-curve, bike still in the ditch, with his shirt and jeans shredded like he had gone ten rounds with a gasoline weed-eater, blood, dirt and grass stains from head to toe, frantically yanking at the handlebars with all of his strength in a desperate attempt to get the death-dealing machine from out of the remains of a five strand barbed wire fence and back on the road before we caught up with him, pausing in his efforts only long enough to glance over his shoulder to see if we were anywhere near catching up.
When he saw us and knew there was no way to hide it any longer, he threw up his hands in disgust and just waited for us to come to the rescue. He was a sight to behold to be sure, grass in his pockets, shredded skin from head to toe, blood everywhere and a stupid sheepish look on his face. I started chewing him out about what the hell he was trying to do fighting to get out of the ditch, why didn’t he wait for us to help him instead of taking the chance of hurting himself more than he was. His simple reply was, “I didn’t want you to see me, I thought you’d laugh.” We piled him in the car, I gave my girlfriend some cash for medical supplies and sent them off while I proceeded to ride the battle-scarred little Kawasaki back home, which come to think of it, was a pretty good chore considering the bars were about forty degrees from straight on one side with the rear brake pedal bent until it touched the frame. I got it home, we got him home, patched him up, patched the bike up and eventually we did laugh about it, and still do to this day.
Now that things were calmed down, I was beside myself, I was not only jealous, I was green with envy on this one, almost sick to your stomach kind of thing. But, like a trooper, I sucked it up and put on a happy face, and true to our friendship level of almost being brothers, I rode it from time to time, but try as I may, I could never find one for sale that I liked or wanted. I felt that I had been finally been beaten and could no longer even compete. I mean come on, Legos, bicycles and computers were one thing, but this is a motorcycle. This is the big leagues people, no more “But everybody has a pony.” thing that kids do, this is serious “competing with the Jones” stuff and I had no cards in my deck to play so I just gave in and grew up some, got married, had kids and time marched on.
Childhood friends often separate as years pass and while I’m still in Missouri, only about an hour’s drive from where we had our great childhood adventures and misadventures, Pat now lives with his family in Florida. Unlike most childhood friends I am happy to say, we can call each other and start talking like we were at each others house yesterday. I called him in 2004 to say I was being deployed overseas in Iraq with my military unit and to take care of Renee, my girlfriend who had patched him up and who was now my wife in case the worst would happen, we talked more like brothers than old friends and not long after, I packed up my bags and went off to war.
I got the motorcycle bug again while I was deployed, reading motorcycle magazines provided by the USO and found my dream machine, a 2005 Honda Shadow Spirit, which was to me the absolute epitome of what a motorcycle should look like. Long, low, V-Twin, dual pipes on one side, mag wheels, everything I ever wanted and as luck would have it, after I got home from a fifteen month separation from my family, my pretty wife shared my enjoyment of the pretty bike and we found a used 2004 Shadow Spirit, bought it and proceeded to dress it up some.
I hadn’t told my best buddy that I had bought the bike of my dreams until the day he called and we were shooting the breeze about mostly nothing when he popped off and started telling me about his new Honda. My heart sank. I was trying to think of a way to justify what we had bought, you know, something like, “Well, I didn’t want the expense of a new one until I found out if we really liked it.” when he started telling me how much stuff fit in the back. In the back?
I could almost hear the angels start singing when he told me his new Honda was a Honda Element, a kind of boxy, square, and not really attractive, but very useful SUV type of thing. I remember saying something along the lines of, “That’s cool Bro. Renee and I found us a 2004 Honda we really like.”
Pat’s voice perked up and he replied with, “Oh yeah? What is a Civic or something?”
“No. It’s an eleven hundred Shadow Spirit.”
“An eleven hundred? A motorcycle?”
“Yep.”
“Fucker.” He didn’t hang up but I could tell he wanted to.
So here we are, still playing the game. I’m forty-two and he’s thirty-eight. He’s supposed to be coming to Missouri for his High School reunion this fall. Knowing my luck it will be on a Gold Wing, a Honda Fury Chopper or a tricked out full dress Harley.
Which got me to thinking.
Wouldn’t it be better if we just forgot the game and got on with things…?
Nah. Not while I’m on top.
- Blog post
- 2 months ago
- Views: 85
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MDMagna
- Member
- Points:295
- Views: 23
- Since: 4 months ago
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Missouri WOW Group
- From: indyn
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Description:
- 4 months ago
- Views: 73
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Missouri Wins Mileage Award fo
- From: indyn
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Description:
This award was given to Missouri Chapters @ the International Women on Wheels Ride-In, July 9, 2009, in Kerrville Texas.
- 4 months ago
- Views: 64
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B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber
- From: Keith2268
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Description:
The 2.1 Billion Dollar B2 Stealth Bomber was flying at Wings Over Whiteman air show at Whiteman Airforce Base in Missouri this year. The bomber flew over us at very low altitude and air speed and you couldn't hear anything until it was about a 1/4 mile past us. The home of the B2 bombers is about 80 miles North of where I live.
- 4 months ago
- Views: 113
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The Test
- From: greyfalcon2112
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Description:
I wish that I had the writing talent of my friend who wrote this... It's priceless... He rides too and he works with me in a State Prison. Really warped individual live most of us there.
The Test
When I decided to apply for a job as a Corrections Officer I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I suppose I had the vision of swaggering around in a uniform being mean to people and getting paid for it. All of my experience with prison life was limited to television, movies and books.
Applying for the job was easy enough. I just went online and found the DOC website, filled out a form and clicked the mouse. It took a week or so to receive a response with the date of the video test. I made another trip or two in the truck as I waited for the test date, trying to imagine what a video test would consist of.
The day of the test arrived and of course, I got lost trying to find the testing site. This raised my anxiety level to a fever pitch so that when I finally made it to the testing room on the second floor I was out of breath and badly in need of a cigarette. The test was actually quite interesting in that the video showed different scenarios involving CO’s and offenders and asked how you would handle each one. I almost over-thought it though, by trying to guess which answer they were looking for instead of just marking the answer as I would handle it with no training.
Apparently, though, I did well enough to be called back for the physical evaluation. This was the part that I had been dreading. I had no idea what to expect but I knew that I had sat in a truck for 25 plus years and smoked 3 to 4 packs of cigarettes a day. I was in shape alright, the shape of the Pillsbury doughboy. Anyway, at last I knew what I was up against: go up two steps, across a platform, down two steps, bend and retrieve an object under the platform , set it on the platform, run 300 yards, drag a dummy weighing 150 pounds 18 feet. No problem, until I read the part about doing it in two minutes and sixteen seconds! Have they lost their collective minds????? I am a fat old truckdriver, this is gonna kill me!!!!
300 yards works out to 3 football fields or 5.77 times around my tractor/trailer. Ok, now that isn’t so bad. Wait…5.77 times around the truck? I have to take a smoke break after walking around it once to thump the tires. This is not good. I sat down and had a cigarette.
When I finished that pack, I crawled into the car and headed to Wal-mart to buy a pair of tennis shoes since the test would take place in a gymnasium. I circled the parking lot, puffing on a Camel, waiting for one of the handicapped parking spots to open up. I drummed my fingers impatiently on the dash as an old man struggled to get his oxygen bottle on its little dolly into the car with him. I could tell he wasn’t really handicapped because he wasn’t using a wheelchair, so I honked the horn at him to get things moving. He finally backed out of the spot but before I could slide in some woman in a van took it. Those cripples get all the good parking spots. I gave up and took a spot further down the row. I wanted to kick the leg out from under her walker as I passed her near the front door.
It had been over 20 years since I had worn anything but cowboy boots so the choices in tennis shoes was simply astonishing to me. There were shoes for basketball, running, soccer, shoes with little airshocks in them, shoes with headlights and taillights and the ones that really worried me, crosstrainers. Who knew they made special shoes for transvestites. Anyway, I bought the cheapest shoes I could find and headed home.
I got home and decided, by the time I bent over far enough to tie the damned shoes, that I should have bought the ones with Velcro instead of laces. I leaned back and lit a smoke as I rested from the stretching. I had 9 days to get ready for this marathon.
The next thing I had to do was measure out 300 yards on the street in front of the house. I finished my smoke and wandered out to the truck to get my tape measure. I grabbed the 50 foot tape measure and my calculator, since the tape was in feet and I needed to convert that to yards, I knew the math would probably trip me up.
I strung out the tape behind me as I walked down the street, using pebbles to mark each 50 foot section. My back was beginning to ache from all that bending over and my hamstrings were tightening from the walking so after I got 100 feet measured out, I sat down on the curb and rested. I realized that I had left my cigarettes on the porch. Well, I needed to cut back a bit.
An hour or so later I awoke from my nap, stiff and sore from all the exercise and sleeping on the concrete curb. Thankfully it grew dark before I finished so the game was called due to darkness. I made a pledge to myself, as I shuffled back to the house, that I would do this. I would get up early the next morning and get this distance measured and I would run that 300 yards or die trying.
True to my word I arose at the crack of 11:30ish the next morning and sat on the porch in my boxers and brand new tennis shoes, smoking and drinking coffee. I was very aware, from some of my reading, that long distance running is a mental game, and that all I had to do was visualize and it would be so. I leaned back, closed my eyes and pictured myself bounding down the street, strong and determined, elbows close to my side, my sleek athletic body in perfect rhythm. I awoke when the Camel between my fingers burnt them.
I began my stretching by bending down and tying my shoes. It took a bit of time but I finally found a way to sort of lean around the belly lying in my lap to reach the laces. At last I was ready. I stood at the start line, filling my lungs with the cool, fresh Missouri air, saturating my blood with oxygen. After the coughing fit I got all that cellulite headed in the same general direction and sort of waddle/jogged my way down the track.
At the 50 foot mark I had built up a head of steam like a locomotive. Oh, it felt so good, this was it, I was on my way. Somewhere around the 55 foot mark, my belly began to outpace my feet. I lost the rhythm. I would push off with the trailing foot, but could get no really altitude because at the point my belly was on the downward stroke. Then, disaster struck. I tried to stop to get back in sync but my caboose overran the locomotive and I went down in a heap. My neighbor gave me a ride home.
I sat on the porch, smoking a cigarette and pondering the situation. I realized that I had tried to do too much too soon. After lunch and a short 2 hour nap, I was back out there, walking down the street. I made it to the halfway point before the calves of my legs began to cramp and I had to use the cellphone to call Barb and have her come get me. She helped me into the house as I wondered aloud if I could go to Wal-mart and find the old man with his oxygen bottle. I lay gasping on the couch until she left for Bingo and then I duct taped her electric mixer to the side of the bathtub and made myself a sort of mini-whirlpool to sooth my aching muscles.
As I lay back in the warm water, smoking, I bumped the mixer and it fell into the bath. The electricity shot through my body, I bounced from the tub and out the front door, screaming like a banshee, stark naked, and ran that 300 yards in 15 seconds flat. Somewhere around the 290 yard mark I had an epiphany. Motivation is the key to success. I knew now that I would pass this test.
The day of the test I arrived early, having reconnoitered the location the previous day to avoid any confusion or undue stress that might in anyway hamper my performance. I watched with the utmost patience as others huffed and puffed their way around the cones placed on the gymnasium floor. The tiny button concealed in my hand assured me that I would not, could not, fail this test.
Finally, I stood at the start line. The tester gave me the instructions, I surveyed the platform, the steps, the object to be retrieved and the dummy lying there in wait. The whistle blew and I glided the first few steps to the platform, ascended it with ease, flowed down the opposite side, bend and retrieved the object and placed it on the platform. I then turned to the cones and began my journey, blasting down the straights and slowing slightly for the turns at each end.
At the halfway mark, I felt my body begin to tire, my legs to feel like rubber, my breath was wheezing, I was dying. With grim determination I pressed the tiny button in my hand, just a quick push and release. The business end of the stockprod that was duct taped between my ass cheeks sparked and I shifted gears as though my tailfeathers were on fire.
I was bounding around the track now, strides lengthened, a high pitched scream on my lip as I pressed the button each time a foot hit the floor. The cones were a blur as I flew past. I made the final turn, slid to a stop before the dummy, grabbed the rope, leaned into it and hit the button in a long sustained burst. As the stockprod shot fire between my butt cheeks I farted. Like a well shot rocket, I slammed into the wall fifty feet from where the dummy had laid.
As I lay in a heap, sobbing, the tester walked over and said, “You passed and , ummm, your tennis shoes are smoldering”.
Curt Patterson
May, 2009
- Blog post
- 4 months ago
- Views: 180
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Standard Gas ?
- From: onetopp
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Description:
The world's first purpose built gas station was constructed in St. Louis, Missouri in 1905 at 412 S. Theresa Avenue. The second gas station was constructed in 1907 by Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) in Seattle, Washington. Reighard's gas station in Altoona, Pennsylvania claims that it dates from 1909 and is the oldest existing gas station in the United States. Early on, they were known to motorists as filling stations Standard Oil began erecting roadside signs of their logo to advertise their filling stations.
- 4 months ago
- Views: 53
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chiefyeo
- Member
- Points:400
- Views: 67
- Since: 4 months ago
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Missouri WOW Ralley, St. Genev
- From: indyn
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Description:
- 5 months ago
- Views: 113
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OldSchoolOne
- Member
- Points:267
- Views: 32
- Since: 5 months ago
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For my favorite little old lad
- From: Hiwayprisoner
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Description:
While I know this is usually where we write to give each other ideas and tips or just swap jokes and stories. I wanted to take a minute to tell you about a little gray haired woman that had won me over. She was in her 70's but her mind was as sharp or sharper than alot of 20 and 30 somethings out there. This was a woman who would sit and share a pot of coffee with me and we would try to solve the worlds problems while we sat at the dining room table. Her wit was as quick as many gifted jokesters and her recall was amazing. The only thing that saddened me was the fact that I hadn't known her earlier in my life where I could have learned so much more. When I had said something about wanting to buy another bike, she didn't do the "bikes are dangerous" bit. Instead she had gone out and bought a porcelain piggy bank in the shape of a pig with a leather jacket for me to save money in. As I began to add chrome and other things to the bike she would look from her wheelchair and give her approval. Over the last year her health began to deteriorate. Much faster than I ever thought she would. And like alot of us, it took a toll on her. In my heart I want to believe that it was her body that gave out on her and that she didn't give up mentally. But I received a call tonight as I was parked in a parking lot of a Missouri truck stop that she has passed. As I sit here heartbroken about it I know there is nothing I can do. I try to reason that she no longer hurts but it's the family that now hurts. Most people aren't as lucky as I am to have had a mother-in-law that was also a friend. She was never one for the " I love you" type of stuff. I guess that's why as I sit here crying over her it's because I never told her that I did. Somehow I hope she knows. Belva, I pray that you're at peace, that you know you were loved and that I will miss you and that everytime I smell the new flowers of spring in the air as I ride that I will think of you. So for all my friends here that have been as lucky as I, enjoy and savor the moments you have with your loved ones. Mrs. Belva Snyder, thank you for treating me with the respect you always showed me. Thank you for letting me see a side that you didn't show many. Thank you for giving of your time to me when you could have easily been doing something else. Thank you for letting me be able to sit and watch as you and your daughter were in the kitchen and made each other crazy but still could show that you loved each other. And most importantly, thank you for the pots of coffee we shared and listening and sharing things with me those early mornings when I came in off the road. You will never know the impact you had on me, but I know that I will feel it for years to come. For all my friends here, thank you for letting me get this off my chest. To all, God bless and if you could, say a little prayer for my favorite little old lady.
- Blog post
- 5 months ago
- Views: 188
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sgtduckyboy
- Member
- Points:278
- Views: 20
- Since: 6 months ago
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Entering Louisiana
- From: Moorerk
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Description:
The State of Louisiana (
/luːˌiːziːˈænə/ (help·info) or /ˌluːziːˈænə/ (help·info), French: État de Louisiane, pronounced [lwizjan] (help·info)) is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties. The largest parish by population is Jefferson Parish, and the largest by land area is Cameron Parish.Louisiana (also known as New France) was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643–1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane, meaning "Land of Louis". Louisiana was also part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain of the Spanish Empire. The territory was acquired in 1803 by the United States through the Louisiana Purchase from France. Once part of the United States, the Louisiana Territory stretched from present-day New Orleans north to the present-day Canadian border. Part or all of 15 states were formed from the territory.
Early settlement
Louisiana was inhabited by Native Americans when European explorers arrived in the 16th century. Many place names in the state are transliterations of those used in Native American dialects. Tribes that inhabited what is now Louisiana included the Atakapa, the Boocana the Opelousa, the Acolapissa, the Tangipahoa, and the Chitimacha in the southeast of the state; the Washa, the Chawasha, the Yagenechito, the Bayougoula and the Houma (part of the Choctaw nation), the Quinipissa, the Okelousa, the Avoyel, the Taensa (part of the Natchez nation), the Tunica, and the Koroa. Central and northwest Louisiana was home to a substantial portion of the Caddo nation and the Natchitoches confederacy, consisting of the Natchitoches, the Yatasi, the Nakasa, the Doustioni, the Quachita, and the Adai.[12]
[edit] Exploration and colonization by Europeans
Louisiana regions
The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528. The Spanish expedition (led by Panfilo de Narváez) located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1541, Hernando de Soto's expedition crossed the region. Then Spanish interest in Louisiana lay dormant. In the late 17th century, French expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France lay claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
In 1682, the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor France's King Louis XIV. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now Ocean Springs, Mississippi, near Biloxi), was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French military officer from Canada, in 1699. By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named La Balise (or La Balize), "seamark" in French. By 1721 they built a 62-foot (19 m) wooden lighthouse-type structure to guide ships on the river.[13]
The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and north to French territory in Canada. The following States were part of Louisiana: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota.
The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase territory. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in Texas, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. Also, the northern terminus of the Old San Antonio Road (sometimes called El Camino Real, or Kings Highway) was at Natchitoches. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in a growing town, a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places.
Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the Illinois Country, around present-day St. Louis, Missouri. See also: French colonization of the Americas
Initially Mobile, Alabama and Biloxi, Mississippi functioned as the capital of the colony. Recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, France made New Orleans the seat of civilian and military authority in 1722. From then until the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase on December 20, 1803, France and Spain traded control of the region's colonial empire.
In the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River in a region referred to as the German Coast.
France ceded most of its territory to the east of the Mississippi to Great Britain in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War or French and Indian War, as it was known in North America. It retained the area around New Orleans and the parishes around Lake Pontchartrain. The rest of Louisiana became a colony of Spain after the Seven Years' War by the Treaty of Paris of 1763.
During the period of Spanish rule, several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia (now Nova Scotia,New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, Canada) made their way to Louisiana following British expulsion after the Seven Years' War. They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana. The Spanish, eager to gain more Catholic settlers, welcomed the Acadian refugees. Cajuns descend from these Acadian refugees.
Spanish Canary Islanders, called Isleños, emigrated from the Canary Islands of Spain to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783.
In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte acquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for two years.
- 6 months ago
- Views: 210
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You know you're from Illinois.
- From: Prop3
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Description:
If you're from Illinois, any of the neighboring states, or have traveled through it you'll understand these.
You know you're truly from Illinois when:
1) You often switch from heat to AC in the same day and back again.
2) You drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a blizzard, without flinching.
3) Driving is better during the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
4) You carry jumper cables in your car, and know how to use them.
5) You design your kids Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
6) You know all 5 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, road construction, and It's Hot.
7) You find 0 degrees a bit chilly.
8) You have more miles on your snowblower than on your motorcycle.
9) You measure distance in hours.
10) Down south means Missouri to you.
!!) You actually understand these jokes.
- Blog post
- 6 months ago
- Views: 154
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Truckin
- From: Stormryder
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Description:
Hey Riders, AAAHHHHH, home at last. For those of you that don't know I'm an Over the road Trucker. I left on the 13th and got back last night. My job like any other has it's good points and bad. On the good side is the fact that I have always been a wanderer, and this job lets me drive all over AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL, and it truly is. On this last adventure I've been down to Birmingham Alabama, Cincinnati Ohio, Cape Girardeau Missouri (where I spent last weekend), Totowa New Jersey, Staten Island New York,and many places inbetween. When I was over by Staten Island I was close enough to New York city to see it pretty good, It was the first time I've been close enough to the city to see it since 9 11. It saddened me and made me angry to see the city with out the Twin Towers. Years ago when I was married to my first wife and I had been in one of the towers when her and I were taking in the sites. She was from the Big Apple. The veiw from the observation deck was Incredible, Magnificent, FUCKIN AWESOME!!! I'm not a big city guy by any means, but it was cool as hell to see New York with someone that lived there. My first good veiw of the city she took me out on the Staten Island ferry and wouldn't let me look until we out on the water a ways from the city. It was night time and when she said I could look I turned around to see all of the great city laid out befor my eyes all lit up. I know not the words to describe it, best I can do is to say it took my breath away. Every part of this country has it's own special beauty. I don't always get to stop and smell the roses but I enjoy what I can when I can. you know what though, the best veiw is when I open the door to our home and I see my beautiful wife and my little boy comes running up to me yelling Daddy, Daddy, and jumps into my arms to give me a big welcome home hug. "There's no place like home" "There's no place like home" "There's no place like home" Well my coffee is gone that means it's time to go give the bike a bath and go for a ride. Go for a ride and soak up the beauty of the area you live in,go down that road you've never been on befor. Get in the wind, God bless. Stormryder
- Blog post
- 7 months ago
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busric
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- Since: 1 year ago
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kilpajim
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- Points:250
- Views: 6
- Since: 1 year ago
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Shadow Riders
- Created:1 year ago
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