Wanting to See Ghosts
During our first year in St. Francisville, we lived “out” in a neighborhood called The Bluffs. It took a little longer to get “to town” and to school. but I have come to miss the commute. A commute in a town like this means an 11-13 minute drive as opposed to the <5 minutes it takes me to get to any place that I ever need to go. The drive is beautiful. Thick woods and the types of rolling hills that require quite a few double yellow line sections1 On some mornings there would be a light fog to enhance the charm of the journey. On one such morning, just as I turned on to the highway, something caught the corner of my eye. Framed in my sideview mirror through the morning mist, I swear that I saw what looked like a line of union soldiers walking single file along the side of the road. Their heads and shoulders just visible behind the top of the hill that I was descending. I turned my truck around at the next wide shoulder but as I crested the hill again, they were gone. I turned my truck again headed for town. I am not sure what I expected to see when I went back. Utility workers that had for some reason looked like soldiers due to the mist? A line of cyclists who make regular early morning visits to one of the few hilly places in this part of the state. Whatever I thought I would see, nothing could have thrilled me more than seeing NOTHING. It provided a few more minutes for my imagination to run wild. It felt like Christmas Eve in 4th grade when I heard faint jingling sounds outside. I convinced myself that maybe I had given up a little too soon on Santa Claus, my blood ran delightfully and instantly cold as I lay there in bed in 1990.
Just before I made my next turn on the 4-lane Highway 61 (Yes, that Highway 61 of Delta Blues and Bob Dylan), I saw a banner for a Civil War History event2 that was taking place that weekend in June. That was that. Some of the participants must have walked back into the woods while I was doubling back. But, I still got the tingly feeling, I still got the few minutes of *maybe not everything is as it seems.*
One thing that I have learned about myself over the years, and one of the main reasons that I have enjoyed writing these little substack articles is that life is better for me when I take the time to imagine there is a story behind something.
Maybe standing before a congregation every week trying to say the same thing in so many different ways has rigged my imagination with a hair trigger, that becomes even hairy-er when I am by myself out on a country road. I think that could be why I have learned to always be looking for stories, or maybe that is part of why I ended up as a preacher, probably some of both.
Walker Percy famously said, “There are two types of people from Louisiana, preachers and story-tellers.” He advised people to become story tellers because there are “enough preachers”. Maybe he is right about that. He also made up a place called “The Felicianas” based on the parish in which I live, and in which at least for a very special 3 to 4 minutes of my inner life, lines of Union Soldiers might appear on the highway and then vanish into thin air.
Double Yellow Lines (in the US) mean “do not pass” because you cannot see enough of the highway ahead to assume there is not oncoming traffic.
The Day the War Stopped is a yearly remembrance of an event that took place in West Feliciana Parish during the Civil War See More here: https://countryroadsmagazine.com/events/day-war-stopped/