Monday, March 30, 2015

Angeles Plantation . . .

Old Angeles Plantation is heating up.  We think  the old place was built in 1910 or so and still stands patiently on its spot along the Mississippi River in Pointe Coupee Parish. The plantation, the land, is the holdings of my Grandfather, Walter Christian Morrison.  The original land holdings of the Morrison's lies to the west of Angeles, Angeles was inherited by my grandfather from Brunswick Plantation, the  pre-civil war holdings of Jacob Haight  Morrison and his wife, Corrine Landry.  Walter Christian was but one of many children.  Today both Jacob Haight and Corrine's portraits hang in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

My grandfather insisted on his share being given to him.  The others left theirs to be handled by his brother, Edward.  Edward eventually lost Brunswick and the Thibaut family owned and farmed Brunswick for years.   Today, Brunswick belongs to Jobie Beaud and he will be the new leaser of Angeles.

Walter also  acquired his half sisters share, Matilda.  Sister Mat's share and his share comprise one half of Angeles, the remainder were acquired by Walter Christian over time roughly doubling the size of the present day land holdings.  Angeles, I believe is 18 Arpents wide and 80 Arpents more or less deep.  Generally the place faces the Mississippi as Mississippi flows from west to east, so Angeles is oriented north to south.

The Mississippi River levee fronting the plantation was moved back but since the house was located close to the river, the levee kind of goes around it.  The levee for years had an off set in front of the east side of the place.  The Atchafalaya Levee Board in the early 60s adjusted the levee at that knee.  So it is not so apparent now days and the new levee orientation makes Angeles off square with the levee.  And it is perilously close to the levee forcing the paved road in front of it to be sited right next to the levee.

In the 1980's my father, a registered Civil Engineer, surveyed the plantation, tying the property markings in with the existing markers on the back of the place.  The rear property line fell into the middle of the "portage canal" with runs east to west providing drainage for the local region.  So he installed an offset line well within our present day holdings and the canal. That allow a future spoil bank for cleaning out the canal.  In  surveying the property line he detect a 20 second error and accommodated that into the modern day survey.  He then filed the survey at the Clerk of Courts office and now it is an official and legal description of the plantation.  Since it coincides with other properties it is locked in.

No one of the family lives full time at Angeles anymore.  It is now a family corporation with the original ownership converted to shares.  We no longer farm it, but we do rent it to farmers.  We just recently changed tenants and are letting it return to sugar cane  My grandfather was a sugar cane planter, so it is appropriate.

I was named for both of my grandfathers, William deGraffenreid and Walter Christian Morrison, so I am one of the many WC Morrison around except it is William Christian not Walter Christian.  They, for the most part, are Walter Christians but not me.  I do carry Walter Christian Morrison's nick name, Chippy.  He was known to pack a pistol and only his close friends ever called him by his nick name.  No other Morrison carries the name Chippy.  But there are a host of William C's and Walter C's floating around the states.

So Angeles house is over a hundred years old.  It is showing its age.
















































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Sunday, March 29, 2015

A Bad Week . . .

Wednesday, I got a cell call about 10:00 AM from Judie, saying please come home.  She was feeling bad.  She had an episode at her exercise group and barely got home.  I was on my way home anyway, so sort of speeded up.

I called her back and said, " Do not lie down, stay sitting up.  And take an aspirin immediately"  She did that but said she threw up the aspirin.

When I got there I piled her in her car and took her immediately to Weatherford Regional Hospital.  She was immediately entered into the ER and started treatment.  They hooked up the EKG, gave her more aspirin and took blood samples.  The EKG looked okay but the blood samples showed increases in enzymes.  A young doctor came in an looked at everything, the computer enteries, etc.  He did not say much but ordered up more blood samples.

The second set of samples showed an "alarming increase in enzymes."  I had watched her pulse go from 99 down to 80 to mid 70s.  Her normal pulse is about 62 to 65.  Her blood pressure also dropped from 145 over 80 back toward what is normal for her, or close to it.

After the second set of blood samples were read, she was admitted to the Cardiac section of the hospital.  A Cardiologist came in and said she was number three, two ahead of her but that he was going to do a Catheter later that day.

About 6:00 PM, she was rolled down to the Heart area of the hospital.  And they did a Catheter, resulted in an Angioplasty and installation of a stent into her "Widow Maker" artery.  That artery was 95% blocked, it feeds the lower anterior arteries that service the heart muscles.  Those three arteries were not impacted or effected.  Her color was immediately better.

She spent Thursday in ICU recovering, but her equilibrium was off.  The Cardiologist determined she had had to much Nitro Glycerin.  They kept her an extra day and the effects of Nitro has dissipated.  She came home Friday.

We dodged a bullet.  Her family has a history of early demise due to heart problems.  She had made it to 74 years without a problem.  Now she got the whammy.  Good news is the heart itself is undamaged.  So with the stent things should gradually return to normal.

She is fighting off post heart attack depression.  Bad day Saturday but looks like a more normal day today.

Had this been 20 years ago she would have been consigned to an early death.  Today, she will go on for years and hopefully something else will take her from this earth.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Ole Man River . . .

It is that time of year again.  My wife's nephew, Paul, teaches school in upper Pointe Coupee Parish.  He told me the river was rising fast, the Mississippi River.  He must cross the bridge at Morganza that spans the Morganza Spillway every day on his way to Batchelor, Louisiana.  That is where he teaches school.

Upper Pointe Coupee is unique to the flood control of the lower Mississippi River.  It lies below Red River Landing where all the Old River flood control structures exist.  A billion dollars worth of flood control structures lie just above the upper Pointe Coupee Parish.  It is where generally the Mississippi dumps water into the Atchafalaya River.  The mother river for the Atchafalaya is the Red River flowing down from Texas and Oklahoma through central Louisiana.  But it is the Mississippi that keeps the water flowing in the Atchafalaya River, the Red River is not much of a contributor to the over all water flow.  Old Man river is the king.

The Mississippi River measures flood stages from Minnesota south to the delta, key points along the river where the river depth or flow is carefully monitored by the US Corps of Engineers.  The river is divided into two major districts referred to as the upper and lower districts.  The division point is Vicksburg, MS.  The lower district is under the Corps of Engineers in New Orleans where my father worked for years.

The stages are located a key points where in general the river is restricted.  There are many locations between those stages where the river can spread out and absorb a great deal of water.  But the river is restrained at Cairo, IL, Memphis, TN, Vicksburg, MS, Red River Landing, LA and Baton Rouge, LA south to the mouth of the river.  Cairo is special place as on one side is the Mississippi and the other side is the Ohio River, a tributary to the Mississippi.  The Missouri River flows into the Mississippi just about St. Louis, MO many miles above Cairo.

The flood periods of the lower Mississippi are April and June.  The April rise is caused by the thaw of the Ohio valley.  The June rise is caused by the thaw in the Rocky Mountains that feed the Missouri River.  Neither one of those rises pose a threat to the lower Mississippi.  But when the thaw is early in the Rockies and late in the Ohio valley, all hell breaks loose in the lower Mississippi River valley as it must absorb all that water at once.

But even worse, just below the Old River flood control structures lies upper Pointe Coupee Parish, an enclave of territory surrounded on all sides by protective levees.  It naturally drains to the south and at that point there are pumps to lift excess water into the Atchafalaya River.  There is no natural drainage, no where for the water to go by itself.  The pumps can not handle a crevasse.  More that one flood of that region started with crevasses along the Atchafalaya side of upper Pointe Coupee.  The last time that occurred was the infamous 1927 flood.  And it happened several times before that.

So upper Pointe Coupee is always in a perilous position and a high water along the lower Mississippi  is a threat.  It is farm country, and Pointe Coupee is not overly populated but those in upper Pointe Coupee are sitting in a dangerous location.  Far more dangerous that say a levee failure at Lake Providence.  There is just no where for the water to go.  It will fill up like a great big lake and take a very long time to eventually dry out.  In the mean time the residents have no where to go, their homes and farms will be under water!

Below upper Pointe Coupee lies the Morganza Spillway but it truly protects the lower Mississippi valley from Morganza to the Gulf of Mexico.  Above upper Pointe Coupee is the Old River flood control structures designed primarily to keep the Atchafalaya from capturing the flow of the mighty Mississippi River.  I have driven across the structures and levees with water on both sides of the levees.  

I would not want to be the Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District commander and have to make the decision to blow the levees at or just below Red River Landing.  There is a potential if doing so to protect say upper Pointe Coupee could result in the Mississippi being diverted down the Atchafalaya.  That could be disaster leaving Baton Rouge and New Orleans ports high and dry.

From Red River Landing to the mouth of the River is perhaps 200 or so miles of river bed when going down the Mississippi.  If you go down the Atchafalaya to its mouth, well maybe the river bed is a 100 or so miles,  Thus water would flow faster and the Atchafalaya could capture the flow of the Mississippi.  That is the reason why so much has been spent to control the flow of water into the Atchafalaya from the Mississippi.
              
Jerome Kern's song Ol' Man River comes to mind.  He says, "Ol' Man River he must know something but he don't say nothing, he just keeps rolling along."

Saturday, March 14, 2015

A Morrison Family Peculiarity . . .

The Walter Christian Morrison family owns Angeles Plantation (aka Morrison Farm, Inc.).  Today, as stated we own the plantation as shares of a corporation.  Future ownership will be determined by acquiring shares from one's parents or buying them from a family member. 

Before the final deaths of the four siblings of Walter C. Morrison, our grandfather, they crafted a Usufructs and Habitation Agreement.  A family document.  It was created by my father, John Landry Morrison, SR.  Due to the premature death of my brother John Landry Morrison, JR, the lawyers stepped in to the realm.  It was an outside stimulus, but the attorney noted the risks and took action to remove those risks.

Louisiana is governed by Code Napoleon law, its state constitution is different than the other 49 states of the union.  Simply said, Code Napoleon is "codified law."  That means, it has have in the constitution code that describes the law.  The agreement made by the family was not really legal at the time it was written.  By the way, the state constitutions of the states are contained in two volumes, one for the other 49 states and one for Louisiana.  Everything under Code Napoleon has to be written down in specific code to cover the situation.

Wesley Steen, a lawyer retained by my father, re-wrote the agreement and had a peer review conducted by other Louisiana Constitutional lawyers.  They made a few changes and that cleaned up the agreement.  Then Wesley Steen put forth new code to the Constitution of the State Louisiana that described a Usufructs Agreement and it was adopted by the Louisiana State Legislature.  Thus the use of a Usufructs agreement became Louisiana Law as it was not codified in the Constitution.  English Common Law used by the other states of the union, in general does not apply to Louisiana though that is slowly evolving towards English Common law.

The agreement was between the siblings of Walter Christian Morrison and their heirs.  The fours siblings, John (my father), Walter, Edna and Farnham all signed the document with each signature of the siblings being notarized and witnessed.  The sons and daughters of the original four siblings also signed the agreement.  The agreement which also had some specific language on habitation of the family home on the plantation.  The document was duly record by the Clerk of Court, Point Coupee Parish.

The agreement expires at noon, 27 May, 2020 well after the deaths of the original four siblings.  It is still enforce and honored by the family.  Until recently many of the next generation have not read the document and there are now third tier usufructees (or as the legals refer to it as subusufructees)  For example, the children of my deceased brother are participants but are not signatories of the agreement.  You might say they have inherited it.

Thus we, the Walter Christian Family, so to speak own a little piece of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana.  Others can make similar agreements now and they will stand up in a court of law.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

I Am Dismayed . . .

I am dismayed to learn that two police officers were gunned down in Ferguson, MO last night.  They were allegedly "ambushed."  And when fellow officers went to help, they were allegedly taunted by the bystanders.

I was dismayed that the Attorney General of United States of America did not stand up and forth rightly say in his so call "scathing report" that the police officer involved was indeed innocent. I was dismayed that the Attorney General did not validate directly the Grand Jury's determination. I was dismayed that the scathing report did not forth rightly come out and say the young man shot did not have his hands in the air and was not surrendering to the officer he had just assaulted.  Where is the integrity?

I was dismayed that the President of the United States stepped into the fray and stirred it up even more.

I was dismayed racial icons took falsehoods and drove them across our great nation to further raise racial irritation. 

Where was the peace?  Where was the truth?  It was all buried in racial diatribe by the leading politicians of our nation.  How disgusting.

How many more people have to be shot and wounded in Ferguson, MO?  I blame the Attorney General of the United States of America.  His biased report has furthered the already bad situation.  He could not just stand up and face reality, and worse would not do what he actually acknowledged in his report.

Yes, racial bias remains.  But it is not white on black, it is black on white.  The roles have changed but the name of the game has not.

I wish I knew the answer.  The President certainly does not know it.  The US Attorney General does not know it.  The Democrats certainly do not know it.  I pray for those who are trapped in this mess and who can not get out it.

Monday, March 9, 2015

A Rip Snorter . . .

We had the family meeting again at the Plantation.  It was a brisque meeting to say the least.  As a family we witnessed a sort of catharsis by one branch of the family, had to decide on whether to lease to a new person and try to sort out the cell phone tower doings.

We did indeed settle the new lease deal but the results are not for me to discuss.  It was interesting in that we had the two competitors stand before us and make their offers.  It was interesting and we had lots of questions.  I am sure to some extent both were somewhat dismayed that they had to perform before a large audience of owners and not just before a couple of old geezers.

It was interesting in that there were lots of folks there, several generations were represented.  Babies to grandparents were in attendance.  I thought that was out standing and well received by all.  We had folks from California, Texas, Colorado, West Virginia and of course, Louisiana.  Getting to be a big dynasty now.

The cellphone tower gets to be more and more intriguing.  More money offered to sign up now but longer terms and over all less rent.  Even threats to reduce the rent and our answer is, "Okay, take it down."  One of our many young new in-laws had a working knowledge and he said they would do just about anything not to take the tower down.  Very hard to get licenses, etc. and of course location is important.  So we finally had a committee of techs to evaluate and recommend what we should do.  The tower location covers a lot of turf including coverage well into West Feleciana parish across the river from us.

We also enjoyed fine food.  Well prepared and very tasty.  Lots of snacks including pralines, cracklings and crawfish dips.  It was unending and all good to eat.

We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Walter and his wife for all that they have done.

The good news is the beat goes on.



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Thursday, March 5, 2015

Bright and 24 This Morning . . .

So much for Global Warming, it is March and we are eight degrees below freezing with a couple of inches of snow and ice on the ground. Not nice.  Al Gore really got it all wrong.  I could use a ton of that Global Warming right now.

We are hunkered down again, I see but one set of tracks in the street so that tells me, no one is going to work this AM except maybe the doctors.  Every body else is buttoned down and staying inside.

It is clear, visibility is said to be 9999 miles this AM.  Actually it is quite a bit more as one could see the Moon.  But no clouds, and lots of sun.  So the temperature is rising and will probably be around 40 this afternoon.  The TV is blaring all the road closures and wrecks. 

North Texas is not equipped for this kind of weather.  I mean the people do not drive correctly and the road crews do not have the plows and salt/sand trucks to keep the over passes open.  So semi trucks can not make it up the ramp or skid out of control on a down ramp because the roads are not treated.  And other drivers just go careening out of control bashing into each other.  I am sure the repair shops are loving it with all the extra work that is going to be available shortly.

I noted when I got up the temperature in my work area was 58 which is not bad.  That is the temperature in the garage.  Over in one corner where my work table is located there is a oil bath heater and a little ceramic heater.  They struggle to keep the temperature at 58 degrees.  When I go out I then fire up the propane heater and it warms the area up pretty quick.  It can get pleasant in about 40 or so minutes.  I do not stay long, so I shut the propane down and return to the inside and ideal comfort.

I filled the Finch feeder bags and note this morning they are having a great time dining deluxe on their favorite food.  Other birds come by to see what is going on, scares off the Finches but they soon return.  The bigger birds just fly off knowing they can neither get at the food nor is it food they like.

I hope it melts off, we have to drive to Louisiana Friday and I do not need all those kinds of road problems to deal with in our travels.