Nathen & Terra, 11-23-08

As you may or may not know, the last few days we have ventured forth to the south. I had a job interview (over the phone) with Temple-Inland. They make liner board (a heavy brown paper) and then have it converted into shipping boxes. After the phone interview, they invited Terra and I to go down to Bogalusa, LA and visit them for an on-site interview. I accepted, and on Thursday 11-20-08 we flew down to New Orleans, and then headed up to Bogalusa for an interview. The travel schedule had us flying down on the 20th and back on the 22nd with the day of the 21st being the interview. The trip was fun. I always enjoy being shuttled around in aircraft (even if there are hoards of others enduring the same experience). Luckily the flights were relatively short in duration especially since we had Rachel with us for the trip. We left our house in Taylor at 7:45 and headed to Phoenix, where we caught a plane to Dallas, then another plane to New Orleans, and from there drove a car up to Bogalusa. We then arrived at our destination at 8:00 that evening. The layover in Dallas was just long enough to get off the plane, use the rest room, take the train around to the other side of the airport, and get there just as 1st class was boarding the aircraft.

This is what is referred to as a muffuletta sandwich. After getting into New Orleans, it was dark, and we wanting to find our way to Bogalusa as fast as we could decided it best to eat after we found our way to our hotel. Once in Bogalusa we stopped at the local Winn Dixie (grocery store) and purchased a Louisiana traditional sandwich (also the only freshly prepared sandwich in the stores deli). It is a round sandwich and has sliced ham, turkey, and cheese on it as well as a mixture of carrots, olives, green olives, onions, and peppers all cut fine and in a pickled sauce. We decided to give it a try and taste the local culture, and the first quarter was rather good. After we weren't so hungry we tried the second quarter and both of us could hardly stand to eat it. It is amazing how good things taste when you are hungry.

Rachel did very well on this trip. She was very calm and content while on the planes, and even did fairly well in the cars. By the last plane on the way home, she was starting to get ready to be off of the plane and have some space to her self where she could lay down and go to sleep. In fact when we got off in Phoenix she slept in the car all the way until we arrived in Taylor.

The Bogalusa paper mill is located right in the middle of downtown Bogalusa. It was built in 1918 to support the worlds largest sawmill that was built there in 1911. As it goes, the sawmill now no longer exists, but the mill is still producing paper. You could literally walk from your office 200 yards and you are standing on the downtown streets. The town itself it about the size of Showlow/Pinetop area. It is located amongst many rivers, and streams in a forest consisting of pine/oak/maple/willow, etc trees. The elevation of the town is 95 feet above sea level.

If you look in many of these pictures you can see the plumes of steam that is being produced from the mill. We took pictures that were typical of what we found as we drove around the area. Basically when I wasn't in the interview we were driving around just taking in what we saw. Bogalusa is located about 5 miles west of Mississippi, so we just had to venture over there and take a look around. Although not shown, we even found a hand full of houses that were flying the confederate flag on their property.

This sign is part of the Hurricane Evacuation Route (I know self evident) what it means is when an evacuation order is given for New Oleans, this street becomes a multiple lane one way road away from the coast. If you choose not to evacuate, that is fine, but stay off of this road, because once on it, you cant exit and must proceed with the flow of traffic to where ever it leads to. It is interesting that people are accustomed to what ever they are used to. What I mean is that everyone there doesn't mind hurricanes. It is the fires that terrify them. In Iowa, tornados are great, but they would never live in hurricane country. In Arizona, fires aren't that bad, but who would ever live where there are tornados...

The vegetation was very dense and prevalent. You couldn't tell that you were in major populated areas even when you were. That is not surprising since it takes trees and water to make paper. Snowflake is really the anomaly in the paper world. With that being said, they still use 13-15 million gallons of water per day from underground wells, and now use old paper to make new paper from instead of logging from the near by forest.

The mill was neat. It was nicer than the one that I currently work in, some ways and worse in other ways. Our mill is laid out better, but when you're land locked like this one is, it makes some items challenging. It also gives the town in which you reside a nice odor.

Given the current market conditions and economy in general, I doubt that they will make me an offer that I just can't refuse. The day I interviewed, another paper mill about 5 hours from there in northern Louisiana was announced that it will be shutting down and putting 550 people out of work. This other mill is owned by a different company and makes different grades of paper, but with that many people looking for work, it is hard to think that they can entice me to move 1,500 miles from my current job. Now don't get me wrong it seemed like a fun place to live and work. The southern people are very friendly and I think that it would have been a really fun adventure to live among them. Like I said, the current economy will most probably prevent it.

Between New Orleans and Covington is a lake - Lake Pontchartrain. This lake is fairly big, and I don't know if it contains fresh water or salt water, but everyone referred to Covington as the North Shore... since this lake is fairly big, you have three choices to go north from New Orleans. You can either drive left around it, right around it, or straight through it on the Causeway.

The causeway is 21 miles long and a bridge the entire way. It has many (7-10) hills in it where I suspect that boats can cross the road, and there is even one draw bridge (for large boats). This road is a toll way, and as we left New Orleans, our directions told us to cross it. Since it was dark we thought that we had better stick to the printed directions and not venture forth in uncharted territory so we decided to cross it. Well it was dark and there was no toll. Since we tried it once in the dark, we wanted to see it in the day light so on the way back to the airport we crossed it. Any guess on the toll? I thought $0.35 - $0.95, and so I made sure that I had a pocket full of change, well I was wrong. It costs $3 to cross the blasted road and if you have a car that is taller than 7' it costs $5. Like it really is more damage to drive a taller vehicle across the bloody road.

Well to add another editors note to the letters, the last letter posted had a section where I was supposed to write prior to my posting it. Well, I asked Terra if the letter was ready and she told me that it was, and we wanted it to get posted prior to our departure for Bogalusa, so I just posted it and failed to read it. So here is the blurb that was left out:

Margie asked me to build a contraption that could be used to transport wood and coal up to the second story window of their house to fuel their fireplace. This way they could by pass the task of carrying it through the entire house and inevitably dropping many pieces along the way. With coal that could make a little bit of a mess.

So what happened was I built a box (with the same measurements of the window opening) and using some pulleys and a boat trailer hand hoist put together a system that should lift contraband from the ground level up the second story and vise versa. The box is unproven, and time will tell just how good it will work. If you are interested in viewing it, is located on the southwest corner of Mike and Margies house in Eager, AZ.