On Saturday we drove down to Natchitoches for my high school reunion. It's a beautiful town - Steel Magnolias was set and filmed there. (They called it by a different name in the movie.) The town has grown some since I was there, mostly the area around the university. Our high school has added a beautiful new building and made some renovations to the ones we had. It was graduation weekend and alumni weekend so there were a lot of people around. The family event that afternoon was a crawfish boil. Alex didn't want to eat them, but he did ask one of my classmates if he could sit and watch her peel and eat them. He was fascinated by the process, but not enough to eat crawfish. One of my other classmate's daughters (who is fearless, apparently) led the rest of the kids outside to the caterers' trailer to see if they had any live crawfish to inspect. They had a whole bag. She showed one off. This is as close to one as Art would get. He did better than another girl - she ran back inside screaming.
We went downtown to do a little sightseeing and shopping. Alex was on the lookout for postcards to send his classmates. He picked out one with an alligator on it that said "Louisiana Yard Dog." I'm sure they were impressed. We didn't last too long downtown. The heat index was 102 degrees. After getting some ice cream to cool off, we headed inside.
Mimi and Paw were nice enough to meet us at the school and collect Alex so that Art and I could go to the LSMSA Prom Revisited - our official reunion gathering. The Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts (LSMSA) is located on the campus of Northwestern State University. Our prom 20 years ago was at the university union's ballroom, and we were in the same space again. (With a photographer, even.) We had a very nice time. We ate some not-yet-oil-tainted seafood, talked with a lot of people we hadn't seen in 10 years and then had a nice presentation. Some of my classmates who couldn't make it to the reunion sent pictures or videos that they played for us all. The school was nice enough to put our class video and several other clips from our school years onto DVDs for all of us. I haven't had a chance to go through the whole thing but at least now I can get rid of the old VHS tapes I have.
Alex had to visit next door before we left. Aunt Mona was hard at work in her yard when he and Mimi rode over in the golf cart. Alex drove a little but no one has forgotten the tree crashing incident of June 2009. As he admits, he does not have a driver's license yet. Before we left we promised that we wouldn't wait an entire year before we came back next time.
Here's Alex surveying the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, MS. It was awfully high when we went through. We got to see several barges and a tug boat go through. The water was so high that all the barges were using a pilot tug boat to steer them through. We watched for a while but it was entirely too hot to stay outside long. We're glad to be settled back in at home now. I've got more from this week but I'll sign off for now.
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