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ing through the inverted “V’s” of oaken chevaux de frise which left the drivers of larger cars fuim'ng in impotent fury.
Rumbling into La Place at high noon, I found the swamp route north toward home blockaded by a plank and sandbag barrier festooned with a bunch of those fat black Balkan-type bomb-looking flares all afire at mid-day. I got out and tried to sit on the hood of the VW, but I slipped off, so I walked over to read the big sign on top of the sandbags. It said:
Don't know one go thru v	heah cause you 71 die and
'	ah 7/ hafta spend my time
a trying to fine yore body The Shurf
Or words to that effect. I stood there thinking bad things and trying to compute the mileage to Jackson via Omaha when up roared a powerful red sporty car with an “Ole Miss” sticker on the back window. The car was still rocking when this dude in a blue blazer, gray slacks, and wide striped tie got out and headed straight for the barricade. He maneuvered through the mud puddles and debris to a point within range of the two end flares. Taking care not to muss his spit-shined Weejuns, he nudged them, and they tumbled end over end and down the embankment to hiss out in the swamp water. A well placed kick with the flat of his shoe knocked enough of the barricade away to allow the passage of his car. As he passed me on the way back, I queried, “Don’t they teach ya’ll how to read up there at Oxpatch?” He stopped and flashed a big Pepsodent smile. The sun glinted off the frat pin on his shirt. He sniffed, gazed at my back window, and then he laid it on me. “I perceive that the color of your U.S.M. sticker is as yellow as that of the Pike crest affixed underneath it. Did not those people in H-burg teach you anything other than the anatomical definition of guts?” That did it. The guantlet was down for “University, Equality, Fraternity.” As he got into his car, I yelled, “Roll on Romeo. Ah moan be right on your tail!” My challenge, containing a Shakespearian reference, let him know at once that he was dealing with a member of the intelligentsia and likewise had the salutary effect of relinquishing to him the “point position” in our upcoming duel.
The raised rear-end of the red roadster hundered down as Romeo burned rubber, slid off the tarmac, and roared around the barricade,
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peppering me and my VW with bits of shell from the road shoulder. I went through right behind him.
I felt good about the challenge. If the water on the road proved too deep, or if a bridge were washed out, I could smirk conspicuously as he turned back. If he ran off the road or crashed through a bridge, I could mumble something Biblical over the ripples marking the pool of his demise and be magnanimous enough to give the sheriff the location of the corpus delecti. Hot dog! I had his cotton-pickin’ hide nailed to the wall.
The road from La Place to Pontchatoula runs through one of the worst swamps in Louisiana. Even in the best of times it gave me the creeps. Deep black bayous parallel it on either side. Every few hundred yards short narrow bridges mark the points where they are bisected by lateral bayous which feed the sluggish waters of Lake Pontchartrain into stagnant Lake Maurepas. Hugh Spanish moss draped cypresses tower over a soggy mess studded with palmetto and matted with God knows what all. I had seen moccasins hanging like sausages on a smoke house wall out there on previous trips. The road is arrow straight but it undulates. On this day the black water on the east side of the road was so high that it was flowing across the low spots into the bayou on the west side. In some places the flow area was as long as a football field.
The road reminded me of a huge snake I had seen in a Tarzan movie during one of my pre-adolescent Saturday night forays into the cavernous maw of the Strand Threater in Durant, Mississippi. One look at that big devil anticline-synclining its way through an Afircan river for a city block had sent me double-timing straight up the aisle for a head to belly collision with a fat lady frer.h from a visit to the concession stand. Popcorn, Cokes, and Sugar Babies rained in my wake as I vacated the premises. Now, I was riding the back of that snake.
Romeo did not even slow down for the first sheet of water. He went in, throwing spray far out into both bayous. I tried the same thing, but the water shot up the curved snoot of my beetle, stood my windshield wipers to attention and blinded me.
The next sheet of water was much worse. Romeo eased into it in first gear, and I followed. Mid-way through I saw water flow over his hood. He shifted into second gear and sent a small tidal wave radiating out into the swamp. Suddenly I felt lightheaded. I felt as if
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