Byron Marshall reports on Pineville, LA

[Michael Eisenstadt]

Dear Mike,

very interesting, and LOL.

  * * *

You can also see how small and limited, "small time",
we are compared to say Austin.

Or about anywhere else.

When the visiting arts sorts visit us from Baton Rouge
(as they did Friday) and we show off our PAC building
rising from the ground and the Kress Theater, they
just sort of go goggle eyes without words for a
moment.

Then they say, with a drawl, "how ... ni-i-iice." What
they are thinking is, what pathetic dwerps these
people are, to think this amounts to anything. Twenty
new buildings just went up around our state office
building in the last month, they are thinking.

Then we take them to our one downtown coffeehouse,
which is a little hole in the wall maintained by two
black guys and where, on the tables on the
sidewalk--the actual sidewalk, not a patio--and across
from the parking garage -- the typical small group of
college students (it has to be a small group; we don't
have many college students hereabouts) sit and wave
their tongue studs at each other and talk about how
dissolute they are and how funny the tv show was and
oops they have to get a ride home-- and after seeing
this outpost of culture and urbanity, the arts types
just roll their eyes and promise themselves a fifty
dollar dinner tonight back in Baton Rouge to make up
for having soiled themselves in the slums.

Byron