The year was 1986 and I was 10 years old living in south Louisiana. My family had been living in Louisiana for generations and we had a long proud history in the area. I grew up in a little berg call Bayou Pigeon. The distinct accent of south Louisiana had missed me due to watching too much television and alot of speech therapy when I was younger.

School was like any other area of the country. You go to school all day, work hard, have a nice recess, deal with your share of bullies, laugh with you friends. When you got off that yellow bus in the afternoon the whole world seemed to open up. I lived near the levee that created the atchafalaya spillway, the man-made repository of flood waters from the mississippi.

Behind my house was a bayou, a slow moving river and in between there was dense vegitation and swamp. Heading in the woods gave me access to doing everything a little boy should. Mud fights, tree forts, and wildlife viewing were constant fuel for my imagination. When I look at my son in our suburban neighborhood I lament for the blessings I had growing up in south Louisiana.