page9, highway 61
Angola Prison is located on the banks of the Mississippi River on the edge of Tunica Hills . Well every Sunday in October huge NYC type traffic jams develop all up and down highway 61, because of the the Angola Prison Rodeo.
My great-grandfather actually died of pneumonia there back in the 20s after being framed for murder near Spring Hill and Cotton Valley in the North Louisiana hills. That is not too for from Texarcanna which is about 20 miles form Louisiana. Hum, I wonder who wrote that song.
Once I actually considered taking a job at Angola, swatting mosquitoes, the Louisiana State bird. That and sitting in the saddle with a 30/30 rifle in my lap watching the inmates make little rocks out of big ones. Actually they plant and harvest their own food. On my brief tour I noticed that the prison population is above 75 % black. Hum is this because only black people commit crimes or something to do with the fact that they can't pay for good lawyers?
Here lately I think the prison system is busted. I strongly oppose the death or the deaf penalty and think prisons don't serve any good at all except maybe to keep a few unfortunate people of the street. And I might add that I come from a family of cops. My daddy was a cop for 20 years and retired from teaching Law Enforcement at LSU. My brother also retired for the force where he ran an elite group called the 700 club to try to make life difficult for drug dealers in Baton Rouge. He now works in a small town in North Louisiana for the DA.
I was in a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie, "The Old Man" which was set in 1922, the great Mississippi River Flood. It was about a convict that escaped during the flood and fell in love with the charming lady. I had a bit part as the pilot of a shrimp boat. If you have the movie on tape, I was the man in the tall leather hat. I was wiping my face and beard with a red bandanna the front of a shrimp boat in the dock.
I had it figgered out that if I stayed next to the main actress, she was not,t bad looking, that I would surely be in the film more instead of ending up on the cutting floor. Well during the next 24 hours of walking off that boat, going down the wooden walkway of the dock in the blazing July 100 degree Louisiana sun in Covington, I got my courage up and struck up a conversation with her. I figgered maybe she would invite me into her dressing room for ice tea or whatever. I said," How long you been acting?" She responded,"This is my first film. " "Really, how does it feel?" She looked off at the sun across the bay that doubled as the Mississip in flood stage and replied, "I am a double, I read the paper and responded the same as you."
I was wondering why she was using a doll for a baby in the movie. When the real actress came outside her air-conditioned dressing room trailer to actually film the part, she had a real baby, she wouldn't speak to me, neither would the actor, who looked like Pop Eye the sailor. Incidentally I couldn't get within a country mile of the actress when she walked down the walkway past the camera. I was actually in the television movie 3 times but they cut my head off so you could not' tell I passed my self.
Hallmark - Hallmark Hall
Of Fame - Old Man. Here is a picture of me
taken during a break in the filming. 
The movie was filmed at the marina in Covington, at the Old State Capitol, The Atchafalia Spillway, and here Alligator Bayou:
Alligator Bayou Is located just southwest of Interstate 10 and Highland Rd. You can take lovely canoe trips there and sight see, bird watch, or fish for bass, brim, and white perch. The best bait is grass shrimp which you can catch in the grass growing over the water.