This Is What Life Is Like In Small Town Louisiana

it's a it's a good place to raise children and have a nice nice home you know this is your home so you know I just the hospitality there you go that's the word that's what I like the difference between Chicago and the South Hospitality I love it look at this the most Charming little southern town you've ever seen all these older historic buildings that look just like they did in the 1800s very impressive this is how things used to look all over the Deep South this place didn't used to look this good just a short time ago it was a real wreck they're lucky because we're in Louisiana most of the places here that went off the rails never recovered it's actually the story of most small towns in America just goes to show you that if they can do it in little old Natchitoches Louisiana anyone can do it cities like this just need somebody to care thank you [Applause] [Music] that's a plantation well it used to be a plantation we don't really have those anymore they were a big deal back in the day though all that cotton was big money I tell you this whole part of Louisiana was a very wealthy place in the 1800s but then the Civil War ended all that and much of the South has never really recovered pretty cool that a lot of that old history is still around though huh so where in the Louisiana are we anyways well we're in nakadish that's how they say it here it's a Native American word for a type of chestnut tree we're kind of way out in the middle of Louisiana surrounded by farms and trees it's really pretty out here you may have heard of Natchitoches before it's been talked about in all the trade magazines for years now what is it about nakadish that draws you in narrow roads and brick streets walking from here to there no schedule to follow sitting laughing lingering this is the oldest permanent settlement in the original Louisiana Purchase this was originally a French Outpost where they traded all their crops it was a pretty big deal a long time ago Indigo tobacco and of course cotton were grown all over this region but by the time 1950 came they didn't need as many Farm enhance so people started leaving when the 1970s arrived the businesses started boarding up and the place looked pretty bad we know the story happens all over the U.S but in the late 70s the then mayor was like we have this historical town why don't we fix it up and make it into a tourist destination so they've rolled up their sleeves and got to work soon hotels and shops started opening and then bed and breakfast sprouted up and now it's this a small town of 18 000 people that's a really popular tourist spot as we'll see all this fancy can only go so far in this town you could say this Glam is a distraction from the wealth disparity in high crime but we'll get to all that later this is Front Street it's the main Center for all the tourism they have some little souvenir shops and some Antiques and artsy stuff along this road this main streets want all sorts of awards for the restoration that's taken place here the architecture is really cool here it's very European because well that's who built the place this is actually the original French Colony for the entire Louisiana Territory if you can believe it right here where I am right now a million people come here a year to look at all of this during Christmas it's really pretty here's what that looks like back in 2015 USA today's readers voted this as the best small town in the south it's like this all over nakadish so much history some of the homes here are so cool they should be in a movie well they are this is what they call the steel Magnolia's house remember that movie from the 80s right here in that house is where they shot a lot of that flick it's an Airbnb now it's like 300 a night last I checked so I called and asked about Stan and the person who talked to me was actually kind of snobby about it she was like we don't need any extra publicity we're good thank you doesn't look like there was a single person staying there I think they really did need the publicity because all the other airbnbs had guests just saying bnbs are a real thing here there's more than 40 bed and breakfasts throughout this area this is where I stayed it's called The Queen Anne super cool place lets you see exactly how people lived back in the 1800s they don't make houses like this anymore do they here's the view from my balcony it's in a historic part of town where everybody takes care of their yard the birds seem really happy here foreign there's history everywhere here you really feel the energy from all this spooky stuff that's happened here I showed that Plantation already it's called a Melrose Plantation and it's now been turned into a museum they do tours here where they explain the difficult slavery days it's kind of sad nearby is an old school house this was actually the first all-black High School in the parish where the children of slaves once learned but what's it like to actually live here well I'll show you the run-down part of town the west side of the river soon but we're going to start over here on the nicer side here's what an average neighborhood looks like in a small sort of restored Louisiana Town the average home price in Natchitoches two hundred and thirty thousand dollars and that's very affordable it's actually been called a very retiree friendly place and you can kind of see why and this is what the fancy part of town looks like even everything over here is still really affordable somewhere close to 350k I'd imagine a lot of these people are retired because there's not a lot of good jobs here but I guess there's enough to keep some people busy here's the most expensive home in town they're asking a half million bucks for this place nice house with a big yard along the river good for you guys and by the way if you want to move here and need some guidance or a real estate agent email me I can help we'll be right back so this is probably a good time to talk about one of my sponsors look I stay up on the news and I keep hearing about this financial crisis that's going to happen like Bloomberg and BlackRock and even Wells Fargo saying we need to change our financial plans some are saying the US dollar won't be the world's currency other news is saying we're due for a recession but almost everything you read says something's Brewing one way to have a good backup plan is to invest in gold and silver a lot of experts say the cost of gold is going to go through the roof soon Patriot Gold group is a top rated gold and silver coin dealer that helps customers invest in physical precious metals if you think we're going to see a financial crisis a good alternative is a no fee for Life 401k or an IRA that's backed by physical gold and silver a lot of top experts say gold and silver is going to hit record highs I'm telling you I'm doing it the link to Patriot gold is in the description and let them know Nick Johnson sent you and now back to the show a chunk of the city's population's college kids there's 10 000 students that go to little old Northwestern State University it's a really quiet quaint campus it's actually pretty nice I bet there's a lot of kids who like to go to a school this small it's kind of comforting here I don't think they're going to stick around after they graduate though I mean driving around there just aren't very many places for them to live that's a big stadium for a little town [Music] there's a few bars in town I know about that I spent some time at one of them for quite a while they also have a bowling alley in a movie theater and like 10 Mexican restaurants but that's just about it for fun I doubt the college kids head down to Main Street and shop for knickknacks so this is all just great right well maybe not a big part of the place looks just like any other small poor Louisiana Town and the reality of Louisiana really Creeps in when you get out there a little bit just about half the towns in pretty bad shape as I looked into the place more I was like nakedish is super poor and dangerous like the sixth most dangerous city in the state the violent crime here has almost double the national average and the property crime is double the national average one website gives it a big old fat f for crime I mean shoot they had six murders here in 2020 six in a little town of 18 000 people that's almost as high a murder rate as New Orleans per capita and the burglary right here is three times higher than in New Orleans I didn't feel threatened here or anything but wow and it's super poor here the average family brings in about 24K a year one in three peoples on welfare and that's three times higher than the rest of the country if you want to press your luck there's some deals to be had on this side of town here's the cheapest place in town this can be yours for forty thousand dollars everyone I'll tell you what seeing all this abandoned stuff on the west side of town really does make you appreciate the improved downtown more kind of makes you admire the hard work that went into bettering at least part of town foreign [Music] every time [Music] so in order to understand what a small town values you have to go into the mom and pops and it's pretty clear what these people are into when you go into the area restaurants here's the bathroom got a picture of the guy that caught the fish the other guy that caught the fish kid that killed the snake damn that's a big pig you really start to realize how much they like to kill stuff in Louisiana in case you can't tell Louisiana loves to hunt you don't see this where you live I bet they got all the stuffed animals from the crap that local people brought in they're so proud of their local kills that one guy that shot the gator and the famous local buck and the gar there's stories for all of them I bet the person who cut that big fish still talks about it to this day he might even get free beers bought for him one night at a place called Mayo's I ordered the blackened alligator the owner came out and immediately confirmed my suspicion that folks here know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to game he told me his Gator's so good because he only gets the back straps that's the tender white meat along the spine that hasn't been toughed up he said the rest of the Gator is dark or greasy or just plain bad to eat he also told me squirrel tastes like owl and I was like what's owl taste like but it's like that all over town seems like all the local bars and restaurants downtown have some sort of local kill on the walls but it's not just hunting stuff there's little shops along Main Street that are the opposite of that nakadish has the oldest General Store in the state of Louisiana it was built in 1863. it's called Kathy Frederick they have everything you need if you're into General Store stuff it smells old in here I'll tell you that and it sure does sound like the oldest damn General Store in Louisiana too well I was out and about in Natchitoches I did a lot I was here for a day and a half as soon as we got to town we saw this drive through Daiquiri Place have you ever heard of a drive-through Daiquiri Place well it's a thing in Louisiana let me tell you you drive in and you order these booze slushies and you don't even have to get out of your car they bring it right to you so we would like the smallest one that I can buy it is a 12 ounce for three dollars right now wait yeah drive through doctor you're not supposed to drink and drive but the passenger can and let me tell you these things are really good I couldn't even taste the booze in my strawberry daiquiri and that is dangerous so for dinner I had to get the local fair well maybe I heard the popular joint in town was a place called T Johnny's Cantina which has all you can eat crawfish for 25 bucks I was like oh hell nah I hate crawfish but I had to try a meat pie everyone has to try the meat pie it's one of the official state foods of Louisiana come on people I heard the best place for local meat pies this is a little joint called lesnions all the famous people go here [Music] pies are really good they're a pastry stuffed with goop made up of ground beef and pork and onions and taters I added some local gumbo and some cornbread mmm um it's funny though right before we left town I was talking to a woman about how much I like meat pies she was like the best meat pies are at the gas stations so the day after we left nakadish we stopped and I tried one at a rundown gas station about 30 miles north of town I think she's right why don't you like crawfish anymore Nick because Mappy that one time in Georgia I talk about it all the time you eat gas station food too remember the last time we were down here and you ate that gas station hot sauce and just about burned your little paper tongue off yeah that hurt I didn't just eat my way across the county I saw some history too everyone I checked out the Oakland Plantation which was built in 1818 it sat on only 42 Acres making it a relatively small Plantation back in the day nakadish also has the oldest cemetery in the state of Louisiana so many things here are the oldest in the state there's Graves that go all the way back to the 1700s I try to find those but didn't want to creep around here too much but I found some Graves from the early 1800s all these headstones and tombs are literally crumbling I wonder if the families ever visited or if they were even around anymore and look at the curbs these are the highest curbs I've ever seen in my life my God I guess that's how they made the roads back then though [Music] so on our last night in town I sat out on my balcony and I watched the storm roll in that big cell right there was supposed to hit us but we got missed I didn't know it at the time but that same storm would eventually get massive and it would hit a part of Mississippi that I'd stumble onto a week later and this whole area is destroyed pretty clear how dangerous Springtime is down the South when you watch a thunderstorm form right above you and then see it turn it down into Rubble 100 miles away that's for nakadish this place is just lucky I guess the people who live here today are lucky a generation before them had a vision and turned their town around I suppose if you live in an old Louisiana town that hasn't been fixed up you might be kind of jealous of this place that's a lesson just care it's good to see that there's still places in the country that can be inspirational because most places in the U.S do not get better anymore like the following stop the next place I went to was a real Downer there would be no optimism greet me there no way as I discover shreef Port would set the scene for the ups and downs I'd began to see on this road trip it was a real relevation about how bad things can get down here in the Deep South talk to me about how nakadish has changed over time since you have been aware of that okay well here I've been here now 25 years this past December and actually it has did a dramatic change um you can tell the difference between like Southern towns when you just got nothing but dirt roads and it's just a blink of an eye you through the town but the past 20 years they when I say the streets have grown they got bigger now uh since the Hurricane Katrina that's when everything pretty much just sprouted out um you know people had places to go and negatives was one of the places they did come to so it did give us generate more people in Natchitoches and it did bring more jobs more you know it brought a lot and like I say dramatic change uh I'm not gonna get with the kids yet but for the most part me I came here to raise my children and when I got there it wasn't nothing you walked it wasn't nobody out walking it was just I ain't gonna say dead because this town here I found out is just pretty much retirement if you take the college out of town it's completely dead but the college and the retirees is really what makes this town whole so for the most part you know it's it grew when I say it grew it grew um a lot of department stores uh Kaiser is like really big now we have oh I didn't think we would ever get this uh the coffee shop Starbucks we gotta start negative with a Starbucks wow um Chick-fil-A is is it's getting big we have a big chip Chick-fil-A now and it's pretty much better than the one I know in Alexandria um it has the big drive when you walk when you drive through oh my God it like I say it's for me it is a change and it changed for the better better But we have our youngins growing up now so it's I want to say you got your bad everywhere I mean no matter where you go you're gonna have you know some parts where yeah this part of town is bad but everything else is good all around Natchitoches you have a few here a few here a few here it's not like okay you go to Chicago you got a whole section you know it's bad and then you don't even want to go on that part negative is not really like that in certain parts you don't want to go in but it's only one but for the most part you got the city or the police station right there you got the shelf right there so you know the square is not really a square it's part of negative but people make it the way it is and we do have a whole lot of good people 90 good people and maybe 10 bad so like I say everywhere you go you're gonna have where oh you don't want to stay here it's bad we get that name sometimes but you know it's the children you know you got our generation you know done grew up and you know some of us we're not we don't want nobody beating on our kids we don't want nobody you know we used to hear the word a British raised kids um I'm still with it it takes a village but negadish is that Village I don't care who you run into uh my husband is a coach um at Nexus Junior High and he's for the kids so like I say once you get that one person that's gonna grab a hold those children then you'll have the rest of us you know enjoying the town you know we ain't got to worry about gunshots at night we ain't got to worry about hand up you know you're gonna hear fire trucks and ambulances everywhere you have people that down 9-1-1 because they're sick it's not because something unhappening you know or somebody had a wreck or something that's anywhere but negatives I pick negatives because I raised five children here and it's a it was a nice place to raise children very nice my kids are grown now doing good like I said I've been here 25 years I couldn't pick nowhere else to go but negative now that's just coming from me you know I don't know where if you go somewhere else in negative and speak to someone but for the most part this has been the most good experience I've had in life and 22 years in Chicago and hang on compared to this hill she walked down everybody's so pleasant hello how you doing you don't even know this person like you oh hey how you doing you know it's just that type of scenery nothing else I didn't know about it until I moved to the South so you have some towns that's friendly but then you have some that it I don't care it could be anybody um that's oh I don't want to talk to them or I don't you make the place the way you want to make it so for me standing a small town it's the way I like it it's I like less noise um believe me I love the big um how should I say high-rise buildings you know I love the water you know but they have water here um I love the fishing um I mean it's it's it's kind of like a a settle you know you just you're comfortable and for me it was it was comfortable staying here in a small town and watched it grow you know it before my eyes so just to say for other people moving to a small town if you just like you know less quiet I mean you know less noise you know less people um more getting together this is what small town is for me you know we all come together we have you know the Christmas festival you know everybody comes together because it from everywhere um we have the Mardi Gras um uh we have a couple of other things that brings everyone together in Natchitoches and they've been doing it for years even before I even got here so uh being in a small country town is is for me is the the best life to have never knew nothing about it I knew about country towns because like I say I'm a city girl myself but I really consider myself country as of now because I've been here now 25 years so I've been here longer than ever been from a home so uh that's pretty much the way I feel about country life you know it's just a little mellow it's nice it's not rushing here Russian now you got to go you know it's it's just mellow everything is just nice final question the difference between Chicago big city the values that people have up there versus yes ma'am no ma'am that's the biggest thing um you know you you got your since I've been down here is is how you doing sir you know the certain man just takes over the whole thing it's all about respect you know um you get that and actually you you hear you know you I don't care you kill a person with kindness you know this it's more about being kind to people and stuff like that and that's what I got from being here today yes ma'am no ma'am you know how you doing you don't get that in Chicago you just walk right on by like you just like you the dirt you're the ground or you just a car just sitting there you just walk right on by here they don't do that they look at you oh you you doing okay today huh hey everything's fine and I just love it I don't get me wrong I love it are you looking to move and need advice I do Consulting that's right I'll sit down and talk about where the next perfect place for you and your family should be I do it all the time together let's find you a new home that's safe and checks all your boxes and I can also help you find your new house too email me and I'll work with you on not just helping you figure out where to move but I can help you find your perfect home too that's right I know awesome reliable agents all over the country and I'd love to connect you to somebody who can help you search for that perfect home hey guys if you learned something new about America or what it's like to live in America great you should think about subscribing and turning on your notifications you can also click one of these videos or playlists for more this is manager this has been a Corner House Entertainment production

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 279,374

Keywords: louisiana, natchitoches, louisiana travel, louisiana hotels, louisiana realtor, louisiana homes for sale, what is louisiana like, louisiana crime, new orleans, shreveport, baton rouge, louisiana history, plantations, slavery, southern living, deep south, road trip, moving to louisiana, louisiana tourism, steel magnolia house, cemetaries, northwestern state university, louisiana culture, louisiana hunting

Id: a4-Vmum9Ado

Length: 30min 6sec (1806 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023