Before coming to LSU and moving to Baton Rouge, I assumed our fair Verona was merely an overgrown backwater town with a football problem. After almost two years of driving around town daily to alleviate my malaise, I realize how wrong I was. This mid-sized Southern city is damn quirky.
For example, has anyone ever noticed the state capitol building is a giant phallus? Not to be crude or delve too far into Freudian psychology, but I can’t help to wonder if Huey Long thought building the nation’s tallest state capitol building would prove he was literally the biggest man in United States politics once and for all. Or perhaps he just wanted the Senate and House to be giant testicles?
I don’t know and couldn’t find anything on the matter in T. Harry William’s doorstopper, but the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism’s website on the capitol articulates “[t]he architects used symbolism throughout the design of the building.”
From the Mississippi River Bridge, the white limestone art deco government building tottering over Baton Rouge’s horizon looks like 450 feet of pure man to me.
Another one the city’s quirks (such as psychoses) is its religion. If I had no self respect or my mama didn’t teach me any better, I probably would get enjoyment out of spray painting lewd pictures on the not officially abandoned buildings of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries on Bluebonnet.
Oh Fortuna! What ironical misery to which you have forsaken fellow Baton Rougian Jimmy Swaggart. Swaggart says his ministries purpose is encompassed in the book of Mark: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” After denouncing fellow members of the clergy for their sexual peccadillos, Jimbo himself was caught with his pants down for his involvement with a New Orleans prostitute. Now Swaggart really is preaching the gospel to a plethora of creatures–spiders in his pulpit, dirt-dobbers on his presses, ants in his flag enshrouded fountain–because no one else is listening.
Driving by the Ministries today is as surreal as stepping into a ghost town of the Old West, but what can you expect from a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis?
For another excursion, a fellow Reveille columnist brought to my attention the crucifix monstrosities of the Bethany World Prayer Center South Campus as seen from I-10. When I first saw them, I wanted to fall to my knees and repent because surely Jesus had returned and I was going to a bad bad place.
Later that day I went to Wal-Mart and it seemed like the crosses were originating from Sam Walton’s mecca of American consumerism itself. I consider myself a spiritual person, but I just couldn’t understand what the hell God was trying to tell me by consecrating crosses from Wal-Mart.
Researching for this column, I found out that Pastor Larry Stockstill, whom I vaguely remember watching after the morning news during my elementary years, is the new king of Baton Rouge evangelicalism as head cleric at Bethany.
Although I don’t feel I have had any type of catharsis like Robert DeNiro’s character in “Taxi Driver”, I know I’ve learned a lot from driving around Baton Rouge late at night.
It may be bad for the environment, but in the chaos of the modern world perusing the avenues and boulevards can teach you a lot about the place where you live and maybe even something about yourself.