Taken Friday, August 11, 2017, when I was on my way with Rita and her parents to New Orleans by way of Greenville and Highway 61 in Mississippi, and East and West Feliciana parishes in Louisiana, seeing occasional beautiful plantation homes and almost constant ugly poverty while avoiding Baton Rouge and traveling east to I-55 by way of backroads. The bus was moving when I took this photo. I was in the back seat of Rita's parents' 2015 white Impala, Rita was driving (we shared driving duties), and I quickly pulled out the small Kodak digital camera I had with me. Didn't actually take many photos on the trip. Rita took a lot.
Walker Percy's fictional parish in his novel The Moviegoer, which is set in New Orleans, is called Feliciana. In his disclaimer at the beginning of the book saying no real people (except actors) or real events are referred to, he acknowledges the existence of East and West Feliciana parishes but says he knows "not a soul" in either one. Dr. Charles McDermott (1808 - 1884) was born in West Feliciana parish, and would have been someone Dr. Percy might have liked to know, but McDermott was long dead by the time Percy (1916 - 1990) was born.
