You Boys Ain't From Around Here, Are You?

Plantation belles. Southern gentlemen. Cotillions. Slavery. Plantations conjure the South’s most graceful images and disgraceful history. Nothing on the Random Roadtrip is predestined, but I don’t think anyone gasped in surprise when Ben made our first stop the Houmas Plantation.

One of the region’s largest, wealthiest and, in more recent times, most visited and most photographed sugar estates, the Houmas Plantation is now owned by one Kevin Kelly.

We arrived just before 8:00 p.m., in time for the last tour. Mr. Kelly and his dogs Grace and Sugar Baby, who live in the old mansion, were just getting home. Our tour actually startled them. I couldn’t help wondering about this man, a kind and intelligent looking man with healthy cheeks, a jolly round belly and reading glasses hanging around his neck. I did a little homework and found out that Kelly, a native of New Orleans, is president of a company called Port Services that warehouses a great deal of the coffee entering the United States. What a gracefully old school way to make a fortune.

Mr. Kelly is less famous, though, than the house’s canine residents, especially the elder dame of the manor, Grace. In 2003, Kelly staged a publicity stunt to mark the plantation’s reopening to tours. In an elegant garden ceremony, Princess Grace (Kelly, naturally) wed the handsome Dutch labrador King Sam. ABC News and CNN both covered the event. Now a widow, Grace has aged as gracefully as any fine plantation mistress. Mr. Kelly gave us a moment to wish her hello and rub her belly.

As an old building, the mansion is every bit as elegant as other old buildings of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Mount Vernon. Monticello. They all have the same historic curiosities: the bric-a-brac, the curiously low dining room tables, the perilously high four poster beds and the fine mirrors distorted with age.

The Houmas Plantation, though, is a living museum – home to Esquire’s 7^th best restaurant in the United States and Mr. Kelly’s home. Kelly has good taste and one hell of a private art collection. Turn around in the dining room, and you’ll spot an original Gaugin: an unsigned painting of the artist’s Tahitian mistress on Tahitian wood. Outside in one of the manicured garden’s pavilions is a Chillui chandelier. The plantation has all of the 19^th century charm one expects, but plenty of more recent attractions to surprise and delight the visitor who knows a little about art.

And the guide, George, was every bit as charming as you could hope. He casually dropped references to the “War of Southern Independence” like the best of them, and he had a fun anecdote about very little artifact in the house. All one had to do was ask. When one fellow tour goer asked about the status of house slaves (versus field slaves), all George had to do was point to the “Uncle Tom” painting hanging on the wall behind her. George also had a few thought provoking facts to share. This student of history was well aware that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves. (The 13^th Amendment did, which the Southern States were forced to ratify in exchange for readmission to the Union.) I did not know that parishes like the Houmas Plantation’s were allowed to keep their slaves until 1872, a reward for voting against secession.

After the guided house tour and Louisiana history lesson, George encouraged us to continue traversing the beautifully landscaped gardens, peppered with gazebos, fountains, flower and herb plots, and ponds. While dark, the gardens and live oaks allowed us to bask in the charm of a crisp southern spring evening.

Baton Rouge had few to none non-chain, cockroach-free lodging options which prompted our stay at the Magnuson Hotel (no presumed relation to world’s strongest man, Magnús Ver Magnússon). While we considered attending the U.S. Bowling Congresses Bowling Championship, being held that evening in Baton Rouge, we intelligently resigned to a quiet evening at the hotel, looking forward to our first hangover free morning together.