COURSEY HARRELLS FERRY MILLERVILLE OLD JEFFERSON PA R K V I E W SHENANDOAH TIGER BEND WHITE OAK
ADVOCATE THE SOUTHEAST
T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M
|
W e d n e s d ay, J u ly 16, 2025
If you would no longer like to receive this free product, please email brtmc@ theadvocate.com.
1GN
Danny Heitman AT RANDOM
Zydeco with breakfast a great way to start a weekend My wife’s birthday arrives each June, when small summer road trips seem like a good way to celebrate. Our destinations are often no more than a couple of hours away, which allows us to make other plans back at home. Those short hops have connected us with different parts of Louisiana over the years, reminding us that this corner of the world isn’t just one place, but many. For one birthday, when our kids were small, we traveled to a bamboo nursery in Washington Parish. Light rain fell as we parked our van within a thicket of towering canes and waited for the weather to break. We all felt, I think, as if we were resting within summer’s deep, green heart. A couple of years ago, I toasted my wife’s birthday at West Feliciana Parish’s St. Francisville Inn, a lovely old Victorian house that’s been reimagined as a lodging and restaurant. In the quiet creak of the floors, we could hear the past murmuring its little secrets. For my wife’s birthday last month, we rose early, packed the car with mugs of coffee, and drove to Breaux Bridge for zydeco breakfast at Buck & Johnny’s, a restaurant and performance venue that serves up eggs, biscuits, hot cakes and live zydeco music each Saturday. Folks often arrive early to wait in line for the doors to open at 8 a.m. Eavesdropping on the other customers who gathered outside was an entertainment in itself. One woman noted with pride that her mother’s recent confinement to a wheelchair hadn’t stopped their social life. “We just wheel Mama wherever we go,” she said, “and we pass a good time.” Another regular mentioned that not long ago, she had followed her zydeco breakfast with more dancing down the road. “It was 4 in the afternoon when I looked at my watch,” she sighed. “I wondered where that Saturday had gone.” Saturdays seem to float by easily at Buck & Johnny’s, where we were handed a cocktail menu as we took our seats. You know you’re in Louisiana, I thought to myself, when a
STAFF PHOTOS BY ROBIN MILLER
The Sarto Old Iron Bridge crosses Bayou des Glaises along La. 451 in Avoyelles Parish’s Big Bend community near Moreauville. The bridge was built in 1916 and served as an escape route for community residents during the Great Flood of 1927. The bridge was restored in 2011, and visitors are allowed to walk across it.
CROSSING TIME A walk over Louisiana’s Sarto Old Iron Bridge that connects past and present
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
Brittany Bowman walks across the Sarto Old Iron Bridge to work each morning. The walk from her home to the Adam Ponthieu Grocery Store and Big Bend Post Office Museum, where she works as the manager, takes about six minutes. It’s the same bridge where she and her cousin spent childhood Bowman summers jumping an iron blockade to play on its rotting planks crossing Bayou des Glaises. That was in the 1990s, when only a sign stating “Historic Bridge” along La. 1 at Moreauville pointed drivers to the deteriorating structure that once stood as an Avoyelles Parish landmark at the halfway point of the 40-plus-mile loop that is La. 451. The bridge has been there since 1916.
The Adam Ponthieu Grocery Store and Big Bend Post Office Museum stands across La. 451 from the Sarto Old Iron Bridge in Avoyelle Parish’s Big Bend community. The museum not only tells the story of the bridge but also the ä See BRIDGE, page 3G history of the surrounding communities.
ä See AT RANDOM, page 2G
Why does Covington have world’s largest Ronald Reagan statue? BY JULIA GUILBEAU Staff writer
At 9 feet tall and 1,300 pounds, a bronze statue of the 40th president of the United States has for years served as a record holder of sorts, towering over those passing through the Covington’s Tammany Trace Trailhead. The larger-than-life statue of Ronald Reagan, who stands with a smile and a salute, is reportedly the world’s tallest — 2 feet taller than those in the U.S. Capitol’s Rotunda and Budapest, Hungary. What’s Reagan’s special connection to the northshore city? There really isn’t one. The former Republican official and Hollywood star never visited Covington during his eight years as president, though he did make several stops in New Orleans.
The memorial’s creation instead starts with Patrick F. Taylor, an oil tycoon, Louisiana philanthropist and close friend of Reagan. The pair’s friendship dates back to when Reagan was still California’s governor and was sparked by their mutual love for cowboy boots, according to Patrick Taylor’s wife, Phyllis Taylor. After Reagan died in 2004, Patrick Taylor set out to find a way to commemorate him in Louisiana, offering to pay for a monument in his honor. That dream came true in 2008 when the bronze Reagan was officially placed in Covington.
“The donation of this beautiful statue commemorates the deep friendship the Taylors had with President Reagan,” then-Mayor Candace Watkins said in a TimesPicayune article, written the day the statue was officially erected. Taylor, however, never got to see his grand project finalized. He died three years before the memorial was complete.
So... why Covington? St. Tammany, like much of Louisiana, had flipped from its former Democratic leanings by 1980, transforming into a GOP stronghold where Reagan easily won in that year’s election. And in the decades after Reagan’s presidency, support for the GOP and Republican officials only
STAFF PHOTO BY JULIA GUILBEAU
A large bronze statue of Ronald Reagan, titled ‘An American Hero,’ ä See STATUE, page 2G overlooks the Covington Tammany Trace Trailhead.