268. Winnfield, Winn Parish (LA14)

The first thing you notice when you come to Winnfield is their love of the pig.

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As you can imagine, pork and pork products are an important part of the area’s economy, so much so that every year the town puts blank stone pigs in front of businesses and decorates them (as you can see above). And these are only the ones I bothered photographing. But you know what they love more than pigs?

Their native son, the one and only Huey “The Kingfish” Long, the assassinated socialist Democratic Governor of Louisiana. A still controversial figure, he managed to come within a hair’s breadth of running for President before he was gunned down in the State Capitol. Heck, I’ve even accidentally driven over a bridge named after him back in Shreveport. As I walked around, I saw placard after placard about him, whether it was a memorial, or noting his old law offices, or just saying he did something of note here. No doubt in our current times he would be quite popular but nowhere near as controversial. But he was a man of his times and he managed quite a career so good on him. Of course, he is buried in Baton Rouge at the Capitol. This may mean that my cache for the city is already decided since there is a virtual there. There’s also a virtual at the Kidd, too, so maybe not. Of course, porque no los dos? But that is way, way putting the cart before the horse at this point. Maybe I should find a cache here before I go shooting off to the capitol?

Find one I did somehow. The first one I went for, well, I found the magnet it was once attached to. The next one, well, that lamp skirt was busted open and empty. But the third one! That was there, on a tree growing through a stone wall in the front lot of a dry cleaner a few blocks down the road from the courthouse. After almost losing the cap and the contents, I managed to get it signed and reassembled for the next in the long line of cachers who would grace this location.

Here, I made a choice. For reasons I don’t particularly want to go into, I realized that I wasn’t going to get to a bunch of other parishes I had originally planned on. I had originally set off for Louisiana planning to come back with somewhere around 35 parishes done. Well, I dropped a good handful the day before, and I ended up slicing off some other parishes near the ones I would be returning to anyway. I would also have to return home earlier than planned so I would have to drop some the next day, too. My point here (and I do have one) is that I would be skipping some of the nearby parishes for another time. But there was something I still had to do today and by hook or by crook I would! Therefore, instead of continuing north, I would turn east towards my goal. And since I was passing through it anyway, I took time to stop in…