Fine Foods

 

Mount Cheaha

 Every so often I drive to north Alabama to take in the mountain roads and long-range high elevation vistas. While there are a number of good views and curvy roads up around Chattanooga, the best combination of those are found over on Mount Cheaha near Anniston, which features "the highest point in the state."

I find myself going back to Mount Cheaha State Park every few years, just to sit on the overlook balcony and watch the sunset. I lived near there when I was an editor for the newspaper in Pell City, and even then I would drive over to Mount Cheaha every other week to take in the scenery. It helped that the state built a lodge, a picnic grounds, a campground, a motel, and a great little restaurant with a great big window you can look out of while eating. 

Here are some photos:

The roads are steep with a lot of sharp turns, but once you get there it is worth the effort. There is even a four story stone tower at the "highest point" that you can climb up to the very top and be the highest person in the state, out of breath for sure, but still the highest person if you don't count people in aircraft. 

I went there a few weeks ago, and the place was about deserted. There were only about four people staying in the 120 room motel, the restaurant was closed due to a shortage of people to staff it, and the buildings looked a little shabbier than when I last saw them. Perhaps that was due to smaller maintenance budgets, perhaps due to the buildings getting older, or perhaps my memory of them being too forgiving since the last time I saw them. 

CovID 19 threw the state park for a loop, no doubt. Probably  not many people drive their motor homes and travel trailers up the long winding roads any longer.  I hope it will bounce back and revive. Until then, I will hold onto my memory of eating a full Thanksgiving dinner at the mountain top restaurant, looking at the fantastic view of the mountains receding in the distance, but for the same price of a meal at Shoney's down at the interstate exit.

What To Do With Leftover Grits

 If you live in the South, you are bound to have come across the question of what to do with leftover grits. There is no such thing as cooking too much (many?) grits, since a full pot of grits cooking on the stove provides just what you want to eat that morning (night?) plus the extra benefit of having leftover grits.

Since a full pot of grits takes just as much effort to wash and clean afterwards as a half pot of grits, you may as well cook enough grits for you and the family to eat right then and there, then whatever is leftover can be put in the refrigerator. That's right, northern friends, cold grits are almost just as good as warm grits. 

Cleaning a pot out in which you have cooked grits is a real challenge. Let's just say the automatic dishwasher is next to useless in this case. Pots with cooked on grits on their insides just laugh at automatic dishwashers.

Of course, fresh warm grits taken right out of the pot are somewhat fluid (depending on how long you cooked them), and when you scoop a pile of grits onto your plate and put a pat of butter on top of it, the butter begins melting rapidly, then slides down the side of the pile of grits as it finds the path of least resistance. Soon, what's left of the pat of butter sits at the side of the pile, thinking it has escaped.

But, no, that's when you take your fork and lift the butter up and smash it back into the steaming pile of grits, giving it a slight stir. By the end of this procedure, you wind up with enough butter mixed in with the grits to make them taste more buttery than gritty. Some like it more one way than the other, but to each his own. 

But the grits that are leftover in the pot, the grits that didn't get scooped and put on the breakfast plate, these are the grits that begin an adventurous journey into the refrigerator. They are scooped up and dumped into a glass (or other suitable container), then put in the fridge to cool. Sometime later, whenever the desire for grits arises again, just take the glass out of the fridge and slide the now solidified mass of grits out of the glass onto a plate.

The path now diverges. Some people will take a fork and start prying off chucks to eat right then. Some people will attempt to pick up the whole solidified mass and try to eat it like some kind of grit popsicle. 

But my wife tells me her family would take the cylinder of cooled down grits, cut it into rounded slices, then throw those into a pan greased with bacon grease and fry those puppies. I personally have never done that, being of the group that likes to eat their leftover grits straight out of the refrigerator. Probably with a fork. At that point, however, putting butter on the cold grits does absolutely nothing. It just falls off to the side. 

And such is the fate of leftover grits. It's just another episode in the "Greatness of Grits," soon to be a major motion picture. Some friends tell me that the word Grits is also an acronym that stands for "Girls Raised In The South." I suppose that's possible, but not what I was talking about above. 

Screaming Yellow Zonkers to The Rescue

 When I went to college I managed to avoid taking speech class until the very last semester. It's not that I don't like speeches, I go to them often and even listen to podcast speeches once in a while. It's just that I don't give speeches. The operative word is "give." It's more like a speech has to be pried out of me.

I have made speeches in the past. People have asked me to speak and once in a million requests I agree to it. It's just not my favorite thing to do. 

Anyway, along came "speech" class and I was required, once a week, to give a speech to my fellow college students. 

My first speech was about the evolutionary miracle that is the human hand. It was mind-numbing.

I remember only one other speech, and that was the time I read the front and back of a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Now SYZ was some kind of popcorn snack that I was fond of at the time, and noticing that I had a speech to make the next day, it would seem appropriate (and extremely entertaining as well as convenient) to just read the quips and jokes found on a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. 

The time came, I got up, and after a brief introduction (which was not necessary since everyone was consuming large amounts of Zonkers daily), I launched into a dramatic reading of the front and back of the box, humorous stories, puns, a zany cartoon or two. I think I threw in a side panel for a bonus. (I did not read the ingredients list. That would have been a bummer.)

But the speech was well-received, especially afterwards when I passed the box around for anyone who wanted to sample the product. 

So my suggestion is, if you find yourself pressed for a speech topic, turn to snack food. Always a hit with the crowd, especially if you pass some around at the end. 

 

St. Bernard Parish Bird's Eye View Map

The new pictorial cartoon map of St. Bernard Parish is finished. I was born in Chalmette, so it was kind of a personal project. I learned much about the amazing history of the parish and the dedication and endurance of its residents.

Click on the video link below to see a time-lapse video showing the colorization of the map.

 

Northlake Welcome Center

In a never ending quest to provide people with information about St. Tammany Parish, a few friends and I opened the Northlake Welcome Center on North Causeway Approach in the mid-1980's. It was located in a small tan brick building on the east side of the major roadway, just a few blocks from Lake Pontchartrain.

We filled it with brochure racks offering brochures and business cards of a wide variety of businesses, motels, tourist attractions, real estate agents and other items of interest to people driving off the north end of the Causeway.

The Northlake Welcome Center staff included Karen Hays, myself, and a couple of others, but as time went on, those volunteers had others things to do than wait for people to walk in the door. 

It was successful at the beginning, but as time wore on, it became seasonal and the traffic dwindled. We were asking local community supporters and businesses to advertise on a monthly basis, but it wasn't enough, so we had to close the doors on the operation. 

A few years later the St. Tammany Tourist and Convention Commission opened up a tourist information center over on La. 59 north of Interstate 12, spending a lot of money on a building of considerable architectural presence, basically a backwoods camp style structure on pilings over a swamp near Koop Drive. 

It helps if tourist welcome centers have some sort of government funding in the form of a dedicated tax base, I guess. The Northlake Welcome Center did not have that and although it was fun to do and we met a lot of great people, it was just ahead of its time. 

The Lifetime Achievement Award

 Well, you know you are getting old when someone gives you a lifetime achievement award. It's actually a little embarrassing. I usually try to stay in the background, behind the camera. 

Most of my life has been about interviewing other people, taking their pictures, showcasing their contributions and accomplishments. So this award is really about them, the people of St. Tammany Parish. 

I was recently recognized by the Cultural Arts Commission of St. Tammany Parish with the President's Lifetime Achievement Award for 2021. I've known Mike Cooper for years, when he was mayor of Covington, and now is Parish President. I knew (and took many photos of) his dad Ernest Cooper back in the 1970's. 

The group asked me to provide some background of my life, and when I started compiling the list of things I have done, it kept getting longer and longer. So I shortened it considerably and here is the press release they sent out about this particular award. Click on the links in boldface for more information:

From the Cultural Arts Commission Facebook page:

"Our final featured recipient before the awards event tomorrow is Ron Barthet, Lifetime Achievement President’s Arts Award.

Ron Lamar Barthet was born in New Orleans, LA, and moved to Covington, LA in 1968. After attending Southeastern Louisiana University, he became editor of the Slidell Sentry News. He was named Associate News Editor at the Covington Daily News in 1972, and the following year Ron was promoted to editor of the Mandeville Banner, the successor to the Mandeville Bantam.

During this time he became active with the newly-organized St. Tammany Historical Society and the St. Tammany Art Association. In mid-1974 Bob Landry left The St. Tammany Farmer, and Ron was called in to work there as editor.

In his spare time, he traveled across the parish, making copies of old faded photographs, in an effort to preserve them. He would present to various civic associations across the parish slide shows featuring hundreds of old pictures, as well as aerial photographs he had taken on several flights over the area.

Ron served as president of the historical society in 1977, and again in the mid-1980's, and then again in 1997. He was elected to the board of directors of the Art Association in 1975, and he was a founding member of the St. Tammany Press Club.

His work history includes magazine articles published in several regional and national magazines, and his photographic work includes wedding and family portraits, pictures for legal cases, and slide shows for tourist promotion programs. For two years in the early 1980's he hosted a daily radio interview show over WARB in Covington.

In 1984, he drew a cartoon pictorial map of downtown Covington to show where various portions of the first "Olde Towne Festival" would be held, and the map was so popular that he has now drawn more than 70 additional "bird's eye view" maps of communities across the South. He has produced maps for the annual ChefSoiree held by the Youth Service Bureau for more than 20 years.

Barthet has written several books, some science fiction, and he dabbles in poetry and songwriting, one song of which was named the “official song of Covington.” His books have spotlighted history, Cajun comedy, and imaginary festivals.

Between 2000 and 2014, he managed the St. Tammany Parish Public St. Tammany Parish Public School System's website. Now retired, he currently takes pictures and writes articles for his "Tammany Family" blog, a daily look at the people, places, history and scenic beauty of St. Tammany Parish."

 

-------------------- End of press release

 

As exhausting as all of that was above, there are a few things that I left out that deserve mentioning.

 

The SLU Radio Program

 

Jim Martel and I started the first radio program for Southeastern Louisiana University, and it was called "Campus Modulation." WTGI Hammond radio station broadcasted it once a week. We played a few songs and mostly read press releases from the college's public information office.  Now the university has its own radio station.

 

Audio Cassette Recordings

 

One of the most demanding and least paid jobs I had was with an audio recording company in Los Angeles. For just over a year in the mid-1980's, I flew around the country tape recording speeches at a variety of conventions, trade shows, professional seminars, etc. Then I would immediately duplicate the speeches on cassette tapes and sell convention attendees copies of the speech, as they were walking out of the door of the meeting. 

 

I went to places like Orlando, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Los Angeles, and Fairhope (AL), staying several days in each location, many times in the fanciest hotel in town where the convention was being held. That job, while enjoyable while I was doing it, required all my time and paid very little money. I worked seven days a week, seldom got home for more than a day, and there was a lot of heavy equipment cases hauling around as well as late night plane flights. I had to give the job up because I was digging myself into a financial hole.  

 

Volunteer Audio Work

As my expertise in audio recording expanded, I began volunteering on the weekends to do audio duplication work for the "Kid's Jamboree" television and radio show in Baton Rouge. They were expanding their ministry into the Caribbean and needed someone to take the audio tracks from prior television shows and convert them to 15 minute radio programs. That was a time consuming process, but an enjoyable one. During this time "Kid's Jamboree" bought the old Singing Waters summer camp out in Holden, La., for its own summer kids program, and for a while I was planning to move to Holden and live at the camp. That didn't happen, but now the property is owned by John Schneider of the "Dukes of Hazard" fame, who has turned it into an independent film studio.  

I also did volunteer audio work for Bethesda Cassette Library in Covington, an operation run by Bill and Marie Knight who were distributing cassette tapes of various religious teachings to their library members around the world. I helped them print up their catalog, wrote an article about them, and did some narrating on the tapes. One of the bigger projects was tape-recording an audio version of the newly-published New American Standard Bible (just the New Testament). Pronouncing some of those Biblical names was a challenge. 

For two years I did a taped interview show for WARB radio station in Covington. Each interview was about 30 minutes long, and the radio station played five minutes of it every day. Back then five minutes was a long time to listen to anything on the radio, so it worked out well. I interviewed a wide variety of people across the community, public officials, the postmaster, artists, business people, etc. 

The Video Production

In 1996 I produced a two-hour documentary on the use of pesticides in the public school system. Many people were interviewed, including several state level experts, and the legislative effort to better protect children from pesticide use was explained. Randy Perkins helped me with the video editing for this massive project, and Ellen Winchell helped provide names of individuals and organizations that would assist the effort.

 

In 1997, I managed the Star Theater for several months, showing movies and eating leftover popcorn. That job ended when the tornado came through downtown Covington. At the same time, I had a little sideline business, putting together websites for local businesses who wanted to have some kind of presence on the new world wide web. That business was called Net Flyer, and basically I just converted their business pamphlet / flyer into a webpage, registering a domain name for them and the like. 

For some reason, I was still interviewing people with my own video camera, even though I didn't have an outlet for the finished product. I interviewed Warren Salles of the Star Theater and Nancy Bowen-Ellzey of Bowen and Associates who talked about her firm's study of downtown Covington's business potential. Many of the things she predicted in 1997 have come to pass. I'm glad I did those interviews because now I have posted them to my St. Tammany blog.

 

I worked at Lakeside Camera in Mandeville during December Christmas season that year, and while that was interesting, it was a little confusing with digital cameras coming into focus and 35mm cameras fading into the background.

 

One of the fun things I did that year was take a bunch of pictures of the St. Patrick's Day parade through downtown Covington.  

That was also around the time I served on a committee to come up with a name for what we now call the Three Rivers Art Festival. A lot of possibilities were tossed around, but we came up with Three Rivers Art Fest and that seemed to stick. Twenty five years later, the annual event seems to have created quite a following, both in artist participants and festival goers.

 

I then worked at Poole Lumber Company for two years, digitizing house plans into AutoCAD files and helping them use a new software program to size engineered wood beams. When that software came into general use with homebuilders and architects, my position was phased out, and I went to work as Linda Roan's assistant at the school board office. 

Eventually I became content manager for the School System's website. One of the first things I did there was put together a webpage featuring a "photo archives" of old school and classroom photographs taken over the years.  The new position also gave me the chance to go out to the schools on a regular basis and take hundreds of pictures of events going on across the parish. I did that for 14 years.

 

The Blog

Now I provide content for the TammanyFamily.com blog, pulling old photographs and negatives from my personal files, and taking new pictures of current events. Since Hurricane Katrina destroyed almost 3,000 of my printed photographs, this is not as easy as it used to be. Fortunately, I had 14,000 negatives and slides to go through, scan, and try to remember what they were showing.

 I thought it would be useful to compile a list of books I have written. Some of them are available in printed versions. Those are linked to the book ordering page. 

Here they are:

Reveling: science fiction about the investigation into alternate realities

Cajun Gold: comedy about a Cajun who finds 200 lbs. of gold in the woods

Smatterings: a collection of short stories, poems, and essays. There's a section of science fiction stories, some Cajun humor in the section on Tibert's Swamp Stories, and a variety of off-the-wall observations.

The Bridges of St. Tammany: information about the history of bridges in St. Tammany Parish.

The Southern Hotel: A Covington Legacy - History of the Southern Hotel

The History of Sun: An account of the history of the Village of Sun

Artists, Writers and Other Talented People of the Tammany Family

The Pictorial Maps of Ron Barthet: A Collection of "bird's eye view" cartoon maps, with a special section featuring Posters of Imaginary Festivals and Conventions: Humorous posters advertising non-existent events. 

Sharing Family Memories: A Guide To Interviewing and Recording

The Time When: A time travel novel about second chances

Going Knots: A coming-of-age story, 23 years after the fact. 

The Morning Mist Mystery: my first (and probably last ) murder mystery novel

Folsom: Yesterday & Today A scrapbook history of Folsom with maps and photographs

Abita Springs: Collection of Articles and Photographs Over the Years

Movie Memories on the Northshore: movie making and theaters of St. Tammany Parish. 

Mind Pivot is the story of a college student researching the reasons why people faint, when he comes across an incredible discovery. 

The Wedding Photographer is a novel that showcases a variety of wedding photographers over the years, some serious, some wacky, and some just amazed at the wedding and reception highjinks where they are asked to take pictures.

The Imaginary Bookstore is the story of a young woman who wants to do her job better, so she turns to her imagination for ideas. There she repeatedly visits an imaginary bookstore and asks a variety of people for advice. Only when real world events convince her to re-assess her life choices does she discover the answer she's been looking for. 

 

 

A friend from the early days of the St. Tammany Historical Society, Don Sharp, asked for my help several years ago to get his area research out into the world. He had published a large book on the history of Mandeville, but he had a tremendous about of information on Madisonville, The Amite River and Gulf Coast lighthouses. So I put together a blog for him Sharp History, and we have continued meeting on a regular basis, now doing video interviews since he is 95 years old. 

I've also helped Don Sharp publish a couple of books, one on the History of Lacombe and the other the History of the Amite River.

A newsletter from the Louisiana Society, American Institute of Building Design, April, 2001. Bob Sander, a house designer, asked me to help him computerize some of his more popular house plans

A Video of the Lifetime Achievement Recognition

Click on the Play Triangle to view the video. 

A Lion Greets A New Day

 

 

 

A lion breaks into song... 

Click on play triangle to view video.

This video was created with the software "Crazy Talk," which enables you to take anyone's picture and give it the ability to move, talk, blink eyes, etc. Even a lion....

The Actor Who Couldn't Act

 Every so often, I write a short story. Here's the latest one:

The Actor Who Couldn't Act

Doing business in Los Angeles is always a challenge, although a certain sparkle does come in your eye when your boss tells you he needs you to fly to LA to get some contracts signed. There are people in the world who still want to do business with you face to face, who don't trust the internet, and who, basically, don't mind making you spend a thousand dollars for plane tickets, a rental car and maybe a lunch or two just to spend ten minutes with them signing documents.

But there I was, exiting the West Coast office of  Fortner Provisions Unlimited, with next year's contracts signed, notarized and secure in the folder tucked under my arm.

I used to carry a briefcase, but they are obsolete now. Who needs a briefcase when there are only a few pages to carry, and besides, when you lug along a briefcase, you tend to put things in it you really don't need. And if it is stolen, as well it might be, you've lost the papers, the things you didn't really need to bring, and a relatively expensive box with a handle.

So I was hurrying down the sidewalk, heading for where I parked my rental car, and I saw a guy sitting in a doorway with a cardboard sign propped up next to him. The sign said, "Can't Act."

He looked a little down and out, not completely down and out, not a bum, but someone who was definitely having a bad day.

If you came to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming an actor, not being able to act is somewhat a downer. Los Angeles is, after all, the place where people go when they want to become actors and make it big in the movies. Hundreds of people, thousands of people go there, finding an overwhelming infrastructure of agents, acting schools, scriptwriters, publicity shot photographers, and all the rest of the support system for aspiring actors.

I stopped for a moment to read the sign, look at him and consider giving him a buck or two to buy a meal. "Can't act, huh?" I said, motioning towards the sign. "At least you admit it." I tried to sound humorous.

He raised his head and smiled weakly. "Didn't take me long to figure it out. One or two movies, and it becomes pretty obvious," he said.

"So you did get a couple of movies under your belt?"

He nodded. "Yes. Then I decided that acting required skills that I didn't have."

"Well, I hear they have acting schools out here," I responded.

He laughed a small laugh.

"As it turns out, I'm not bad at acting, I'm not good at acting,  I just cannot act."

I knew I was going to regret this, but I saw a diner next door and nodded at the stranger on the doorstep. "Come on, I'll buy you lunch, you can tell me what happened."

He tilted his head slightly. "I'm not a bum asking for a handout. I just put the sign out to let people know I can't act. Don't ask me to act, don't offer me money to act, I'm just not capable of doing it."

"Come on, I'm flying out of here in four hours, and instead of waiting at the airport, I'd be interested in hearing how you came to that conclusion."

He shrugged and stood up. He walked towards the diner door, not with the hunched-over resignation of a man with broken dreams, but with a certain air of authority. He  joined me at the door of the diner, and we went inside.

We took a seat near the window and the waitress brought us the lunch menu, single sheets laminated in plastic. He looked at the menu and laughed. "What's so funny?" I asked.

"Oh, I was once offered a script to read in which a super spy took a laminated plastic restaurant menu and cut a man's throat wide open." He chuckled and started reading the special for the day.

I sat in stunned silence for a couple of seconds and really began regretting inviting him to lunch.

He noticed my concern. "No really, I'm not trying to scare you. I really did read a script where this super agent fought off a whole bunch of bad guys armed with a laminated menu. It was so ridiculous I just tossed it aside."

I did manage a nervous laugh at that point, and went back to reading the menu. He ordered a chicken fried steak, and I chose the hamburger.

"So, what made you get into acting?" I asked, launching the conversation.

He pondered for a second, looking in the air. "Well, I guess almost everybody wonders at one time or another if they would be good at acting," he began. "You see a movie and you think, 'I could do that.' You know there are stuntmen for the action scenes and body doubles for the nude scenes, so you think, yeah, I did a play in high school, I could go to Hollywood and do movies, become a big star..."

I nodded. "Yes, that's the dream. Even I thought about it once..."

"When you were eighteen, right?"

"Yes, that's about when it hits you. Why work for a living when I can be rich and famous just being in the movies," I said.

He became a little more at ease and leaned back. "Yes, that's the dream. And I thought sure, why not try? So I came out here, did all the grovelling I could stand, got a few parts, even got second billing in some major productions..."

"So you did get some real acting gigs?" I asked.

He said," Sure. I was on screen with some pretty big names. I didn't have a title panel all to myself, like the big stars do, but my name was up there on the screen for a couple of seconds, so I was known, for a while."

"So what happened," I asked.

"You read the sign," he answered. "I can't act."

I must have looked puzzled.

"Those first two movies I was playing characters who were exactly like me, I was playing myself," he explained. "It takes absolutely no acting skills to play yourself."
I had to agree with that.

"Now there are some pretty big names in Hollywood, successful beyond belief, who got to where they are by playing themselves. They could sell tickets just being themselves, so nobody offered them a script where it required any real acting skills. The only movie characters they were tapped for were movies that fit them like a glove. And that's okay. Money was made, and bills were paid."

"But along came my third movie and there it was, a character that didn't really fit me, a starring role that I couldn't pull off because it required me to act. And, like I said, I can't act."

"But anyone can act, all of us act from time to time, surely you could take some acting lessons or something," I said.

He cringed a little. "Acting lessons work when you are bad at acting and want to become better. Me, I can't act, and you can't make better what doesn't exist in the first place."

"But you were good in the first two movies," I replied.

"Playing myself..." he reminded me.

"And acting isn't always what people think it is," he went on. "You not only have to pretend to be someone else, reciting lines from a script that someone else wrote, but you have to pretend that they are your own words, coming out of your own mind."

I thought about that for a moment.

"It's not easy," he said. "Here you have read a script, all hundred pages of it, everything you do and say are all laid out from beginning to end. Your emotions are all spelled out, how you are supposed to say the words, what feelings you are to convey. You not only have to memorize the words, but you have to say them like they just popped into your head. Not only say them like you mean them, but also say them like they are coming out of your mouth for the first time. Like a real person, a real person who doesn't think about what he's saying, he just blurts it out."

"Then there's the director and his take. How HE wants you to say the words. And if you don't get them right the first time, the director keeps shooting one take after another, each time a slightly different version of saying the same line. "

"A friend of mine once had to do a shot, a shot that was three seconds long, where he said 'well howdy.' You would think: how many different kinds of ways are there to say 'well howdy'? Well, it turns out there were 46 takes on that one shot, 46 different ways of saying 'well howdy."

I started to laugh, but he continued.

"The script didn't offer any hints whatsoever. It just said "Tex looks up and says 'well howdy.' So the director had free rein to decide what kind of 'well howdy' he wanted. They shot enough film to jam a projector, but they did 46 kinds of 'well howdy' and even then the director wasn't fully satisfied."

"Three seconds of screen time, but it took 46 takes, an hour and a half of saying 'well howdy' over and over again. Enough to make you puke. "

I stifled a laugh, because I could see this was a serious concern on his part. "But I'm sure the one 'well howdy' that got into the movie was the best 'well howdy' that's ever been seen," I said.

He shook his head no. "Naw, it didn't make it into the movie. My friend's entire part got cut. Nature of the beast."

He then recalled one script where he was supposed to look at a computer screen with 'alarmed indecisiveness.' "How in the hell does somebody look at something with 'alarmed indecisiveness?" he asked.

The waitress brought us our meal, and we set about eating in silence for a moment.
"Anyway, that's the real work in making a movie," he began again. "Not just memorizing and saying the lines, not just showing the right emotions, but saying the lines and portraying the emotions over and over again, for multiple takes, in minute variations each time according to the whims of the director. He's the boss, and when he wants a line said a certain way, then everything stops and the same shot gets done over and over and over until the actor gets it just the right way, according to the director's vision."

"The director's vision," he repeated in disgust. "Don't get me started on that. Everybody working on a film has a vision of what it should be, but his is the only one that counts. His and the budget office that tells him when he's going over budget."

The other big part of making movies is waiting, he said. "Nothing like saying a ten second line, then waiting an hour while the cameras are re-positioned and the lights are re-aimed. I've had some pretty good poker games while waiting for the director and the crew to get ready for the next shot."

I sighed. "Well what about you and your revelation about acting? When did that hit you?"

"Well, on that third film, the script was asking me to play somebody totally unlike myself. In other words, I was going to have to act, actually act. That was not pretty."

I took a bite of my hamburger and paused. "How long did you last? A day, two days?"

He looked up as if trying to remember. "Well, you have to realize that time is money in the movie-making business. If something isn't working, the director knows it pretty quick. He isn't going to do 46 takes of something that stinks to high heaven the first couple of times he calls Action! So it quickly became apparent that I was not going to be able to pull it off, my character."

"What kind of character was it?" I asked.

"Some slimeball, a jerk. Somebody you would think, well, I can do that. I can pretend to be a slimeball jerk. I know what a slimy grimy ripoff artist looks like and acts like. I can do that."

"And?" I said.

"I couldn't do it, I couldn't pull it off. No matter how much the director coached me, no matter how much he set the scene, made up some background for the character, it only took a few minutes for him (and me) to realize I wasn't carrying through. I am not a slimeball jerk ripoff artist, so I couldn't pretend to be one. "

I sat back and paused. "Because you can't act."

"You got it,"he laughed, taking another bite of his chicken fried steak.

"Well, if you can't act, then you really can't say you're an actor," I pondered.

"Oh, I'm an actor. I've got the movies to prove it, the screen actors guild card to prove it, and my mother tells everyone her son is an actor. There's just this one little problem..."

"Well if your mother thinks you're an actor then it must be so," I said.

He nodded. "Being an actor is not like anything else in the world. If you call yourself a plumber, then you damn well should be able to install and fix plumbing. If you're a lawyer, you're pretty much on the line for knowing the law and getting your client off the hook."

But acting is in a class by itself, he said. "Parents don't want their children to lie, don't want them to grow up play pretending to be someone else or mouth off words that aren't their own. But they are thrilled when those same children decide to become actors."

"What I'm getting at," he stated, "is that if you try hard enough you might be able to become something you're not good at. If I was good at flying a plane, I would have to be a pilot because you don't become good at flying a plane without doing some piloting along the way."

I was getting confused. "So what's your point?"

He carefully framed his words. "Being something and being good at something are two different things. Becoming an artist means you are capable of creating art, but having the skills for creating art doesn't make you an artist."

I disagreed. "An artist is an artist," I said. "Whether or not he produces art is besides the question."

"Or is it," he questioned. "Are you an artist if you don't produce art? Are you a pilot if you don't fly a plane? Are you an actor if you can't act?"

I frowned. I didn't like where this was going, especially since I didn't know where this was going. "Well, speaking of pilots, I have a plane to catch," I interjected, wrapping up the meal and the conversation. "I can let you have some money if you're tapped out," I said, standing up.

"Thanks, but I have some money saved up from the first two jobs I did, plus some other bit parts. I'm doing okay."

"But what about the sign?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised how many people read the sign and offer to buy me lunch because of it."

I laughed.  "Well, you sure got me. So this is some kind of acting exercise?"

"More like an investigation," he answered. "Actors are supposed to study people, but in trying to do so, I have discovered an amazing thing," he said.

"What is that?" I asked.

"In general, people are hard to 'study,' because every one is an individual. You can study an individual," he explained," but that's doesn't do an actor much good as far as learning what people are like and how they think and what they would do in specific situations. Individuals are a wild card. No telling what a real individual will do.

"Psychologists love to categorize people, stick labels on people, generalize and compartmentalize people, but everybody is different," he said, "and when a script calls upon you to be a particular type of person, a certain kind of character, you not only have to 'act' like this imaginary character, you have to 'not act' like anyone else. Acting not only requires you to pretend to be someone else, but at the same time you have to pretend to not be yourself," he said.

I began to think that this was getting a little too technical for me to comprehend, but he was obviously interested in his craft. Too bad he couldn't act.

In an effort to wind down the discussion, I said, "Well, you are lucky that most movies nowadays have enough special effects and stunt work to give the actors a break."

"It just makes it harder," he replied. "Fortunately I'm not the action hero type."

I laughed. "Few people are," I commented. "Well thanks for the movie business insights. I've learned a lot, mainly how I don't want to become an actor."

He stood and we shook hands. "Acting is grueling work, emotionally-draining, maybe financially-rewarding, and possibly the best damn job in the world," he smiled. "People are still giving my agent scripts for me to read. Hopefully there will be another one where I can just play myself. Otherwise I may have to find a way to make a living doing something useful."

My Tourism Promotion Gig

 In 1982, I joined the staff at Deep South Communications in Baton Rouge, which included a position with the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association (LTPA). I worked there about two years, editing several magazines and newsletters. 

 

 

I was named Director of Public Relations and Membership Services for the LTPA, which meant taking a lot of pictures and attending a lot of meetings, receptions, and special events around the state.

Some of the publications I edited while at Deep South Communications were the LTPA Newsletter (above), the Louisiana Motor Transport Association monthly magazine, and the This Week in Baton Rouge weekly tourist magazine. The last one required me to visit a Baton Rouge area restaurant every week and write up a "critique" of the food and surroundings. Since my main diet at that time consisted of hamburgers and french fries, that was a real challenge when visiting some of the capital city's more famous culinary destinations. 

 

 

 

Click on the images to make them larger. 

So during the day I worked at a printing company writing up copy for all these magazines, went out and took pictures to put in all these magazines, and often at night I attended all kinds of tourist promotion gatherings, mostly lobbying efforts for state legislators. On many weekends I went to various places throughout the state and set up trade show booths for conventions and what not. 

 

I stood in the booths all day Saturday and Sunday and handed out brochures. At the end of the trade show, I knocked down the booth, put it all back into its carrying bags, and headed home to start the week again on Monday morning. Home at that time was in a one room studio apartment in Baton Rouge.

Being with the La. Travel Promotion Association was a great learning experience and a lot of fun, since I got to go statewide to take pictures of tourist groups, attend Motor Coach Tour Bus association meetings, and do interviews with owners of tourist attractions, like the Mt. Hope Plantation House on Highland Road. I made slide presentations to show at meetings. Sometimes I was called upon to be "in the picture" when out on photoshoots at various locations. 

 

 

I met a lot of interesting people, took a lot of interesting photographs (trucks!), and got to go to a lot of parties. However working all the time,  I started burning out. I eventually got a job editing a newspaper near Shreveport and moved to north Louisiana.

 It turned out that this was not the first time I had done a slide show for the La. Travel Promotion Association. Eight years earlier I had put together a slide  presentation showcasing the tourist attractions of west St. Tammany Parish. That show had been given in 1974 in Slidell for a statewide LTPA meeting. I was representing the St. Tammany Fair Association for that event, and the slide show was a general overview of scenic and family fun destinations throughout the western half of the parish. 

Before the St. Tammany Parish Tourist and Convention Commission was established by the police jury, the St. Tammany Fair Association was doing promotional work on a regular basis spotlighting tourism opportunities. One of those outreaches was the "Discover St. Tammany Tour" for regional media representatives.

See also: 

Construction News Reporting