Idealized Impressions of the South: Tangipahoa Parish

House 1

Triangular house 1

Graveyards in the neighborhood

While I have no love for Tickfaw in general, the houses here are beautiful to look at. It's literally as if I've stepped into Big Fish. While continuous ponds dot backyards, large oak trees consume entire front yards. A beat down truck covered in moss rest underneath a full willow tree. A graveyard is kept behind the tool shed. Triangular houses stare at each other across a field like calm fighter ready to go at it.

Today, my mom and I headed for a library in Independence, a town next to Tickfaw. Although it was only 15minutes away, we'd never been there before. Upon entering, it seemed like we stepped straight past two decades. I wish I could capture the architecture. The town can be summarized by one street--the street that led us into and out of the town. A rail road track ran parallel to the main road, separating all else into halves. We were searching for the library on 3rd street, but soon we realized that there were no markers labeling the streets. Since the town was so small, we could pretty much guestimate the street numbers, which we did fairly accurately. We came across a few buildings that we thought were the library, but each of them turned out to be a church instead. We cruised up our-hypothetical 3rd st twice, 4th st and 5th st too, but could not find the library. We eventually found the library in a neighborhood distant from the downtown, inconspicuously snuggled between some residential houses and fairly. It was definitely smaller than the churches we saw.