It was very early on a Sunday morning. I had been in southern Louisiana for a Swamp Pop music festival. Great week-end but now time to make that six hundred plus miles back home to Tennessee.
I had just left my hotel in Gonzales, Louisiana when not too far into my drive I saw the sign. Sign saying Ferriday, Louisiana. I thought "I've got to go there." There is not another town in American of that size, population 3,511, who has produced three characters such as these guys. That was my thought as made my way to Ferriday. The three guys they are all first cousins to boot.
"Jimmy Lee Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley: These were the three cousins, born within the breath of four seasons, whose names the town fathers would someday paint with pride upon signs that told the world, or whatever displaced and devious-cruising part of the world happened to pass through this fading place on Highway 84, that they were now entering and being welcomed to Ferriday and that this was the town where these three cousin had been born. The signs said nothing of hellfire or salvation--just that this was the town of these cousins' birth."
Hellfire--Nick Tosches
"Paint with pride." Hum, I wondered.
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July 26, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson