Monroe, LA

Five years ago about 100 people where I work moved from Monroe to Austin. Our company was consolidating and closing that office. I quickly became friends with quite a few of them as they introduced me to Fantasy Football among other things. So for the last five years I've heard many stories and tales of the great city of Monroe. Well I finally had a chance to go visit this past weekend...

I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll talk a little about Monroe and a little about LA. Monroe is a small city that could have been a pretty nice city but slowly has become run down and pretty trashy. I saw a total of 4 garages as most homes have carports. I live in TX so I've seen my fair share of Rednecks, lawn decorations and cars on cinder blocks but Monroe simply put us to shame. (not in a good way) There was also just a sense of racial tension everywhere you went. I've never really experienced this, the majority of my childhood was in UT and AZ and they have very few African Americans and the large suburbs of Austin and Dallas don't have much racial tension either. But in Monroe you could just feel that there were years of hatred on both sides and neither side was about to act Christian and make amends. It really was quite sad.

LA was settled by the French and like all things French, it is about as screwed up as it can possibly be!!!!! First they want you to know that you are in their state. In Texas and the other states I've lived in we like to put a sign up saying welcome you are now entering a new state. In LA they decided to one up us, they designed all of their roads to be extremely noisy and bumpy to let us know for sure that we were no longer in TX. Then the decide to give everything names that no sane person can or should pronounce. And they even have a different legal system then the rest of the US. Having been there twice now I can safely say that as bad as the federal government screwed up Katrina (and it was bad) I have no doubt that the majority of the blame is on the French settling the state.

Now having ranted a bit, the trip was actually quite fun, I got to eat some pretty good food, participate in a fantasy football draft, and play 36 holes. Now the golf was nothing like TX. First I used to think playing golf in TX was like playing in hell. Well I was grossly mistaken. LA makes TX feel like Alaska! And the fairway grass was about 8 inches tall (I lost many balls in the fairway), the mosquitoes were as big as birds (donated atleast 2 pints of blood), the gnats were not very tasty (I only ate about 3 or 4 thousand as we were driving in the cart), the course was extremely wet and muddy and the water was very stagnant and smelled worse then a sewer. But it was golf and I enjoyed myself anyway.

Well that was my weekend...when/if I go back next year I'll be a little more prepared and will probably enjoy it even more.