While traveling across Louisiana, the low coastal delta where the Mississippi floods across the land it is hard not to reflect on the overly simplistic images pop culture paints of the South. Yes there are old timber houses, pickup trucks and churches everywhere. Some of them in traditional steeple form while others are cinder block bunkers and tin sheds with hand painted signs advertising God and hours of worship. The landscape feels old and wet, with oak trees dripping Spanish moss and narrow roads flanked by water and swamp cypress. Signs of human occupation are everywhere, from the above ground whitewashed graves that keep loved ones out of the high water table to ads for BBQ, ice houses and shrimp. 

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