For meals they stopped where
they could milk Carrie and build a small fire. At night they put
up the tent, unless a farmer or a policeman ordered them to move
on.
At first it seemed more of a peekaneeka than any of their
adventures thus far. They met and passed many old cars like
their own, and the children counted the strange things that were
tied on car or trailer tops while Grandma counted license
plates-when Sally was not too fussy. There was always something
new to see, especially when they were passing through Louisiana.
Daddy said Louisiana was the one state in the country that had
parishes instead of counties, and that that was because it had
been French in the early days. Almost everything else about it
seemed as strange to the children--the Spanish moss hanging in
long streamers from the live oak trees; the bayous, or arms of
the river, clogged with water hyacinths; the fields of sugar
cane; and the Negro cabins, with their glassless windows and
their big black kettles boiling in the back yards.
"But the funniest thing I saw," Rose-Ellen said later, "was a cow
lying in the bayou, with purple water hyacinths draped all over
her, as if it was on purpose."
After a few days, though, even this peekaneeka grew wearisome to
the children; while Daddy and Grandpa grew more and more anxious
about an angry spat-spat-spat from the Reo.
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