The Runaways

No, that isn’t me. And no, that isn’t my pet elephant.

On the other hand, it could have been me and it could have been my elephant, or so I imagined as a toddler when a serious infatuation with Dumbo led me to run off to join the circus. I’d forgotten that sudden childhood impulse until I came across the story of Lilly and Isa, a pair of  elephants who traveled years ago with the Carson & Barnes Circus.

I first heard of Lilly and Isa when I visited the circus’s winter quarters in Hugo, Oklahoma.  As young elephants, they became famous for running away from the circus, not toward it.  Still, there were similarities in our experience. Neither of us had a clear destination in mind when we decided to make a break for it, and neither of us had a real plan. We simply saw our chance and took it, hot-footing it down the road for all we were worth, determined to outrun our pursuers and evade capture. Lilly and Isa were more successful when it came to long-term evasion, but by the time it was over I suspect all three of us had decided that one escapade was enough.

Victor, Hugo and the Elephants

For years I’d been side-stepping Hugo without a thought. Heading north from Houston toward the east side of Kansas City, my route never varied: Lufkin, Nacogdoches and Paris in Texas, a quick slide through Oklahoma on the Indian Nation and Will Rogers turnpikes, a swing around Joplin and an easy final leg up to Blue Springs.

Tucked into a bend in the road at the southern terminus of the Indian Nation, bereft of glitzy billboards or even a retro gas station at the intersection, Hugo is all but invisible from the four-lane. If you’re just passing through with no reason to take the business route into town, you could be excused for thinking Hugo resembles other hamlets clustered along the Texas-Oklahoma border -  Powderville, Arthur City, Frogville.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find in Hugo, but I’d had my curiosity piqued and decided a visit was in order. After all, the Evergreen Cemetery in Paris may have Willet Babcock’s fancied-up tomb topped with a life-sized Jesus wearing cowboy boots, but Hugo’s Mt. Olivet boasts three world championship rodeo cowboys, the original Marlboro Man and William Edmond Ansley, one of twenty or so midgets who made a career of promoting “Buster Brown” shoes across the country.

Built to Burn ~ Les Feux de Joie

Standing atop the levee in Butte LaRose, a long, narrow settlement on the western edge of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, my traveling companion and I considered our options.  Breaux Bridge and Bayou Teche lay well behind while St. James Parish, home of the Christmas Eve bonfires we’d traveled to see, still lay ahead. Before us stretched an intricate web of bayous, canals, river and swamp, the natural heart of Cajun country.

With a good boat, good weather and a guide raised up in the swamps, we might have been able to thread our way eastward by water, to the other side of the Basin. But for the automobile-bound, topography is destiny. To cross the Atchafalaya and reach the Mississippi levees, we’d have to trade gravel and blacktop for concrete, throwing in a few bridges along the way. “I guess we’ll head north to I-10, take it across the basin and then head south again at Grosse Tête,” I said. “Sounds good to me.” My friend brushed the last crumbs of French bread from her lap. “I was hoping you weren’t going to wait for James Carville to show up on his flaming alligator.”

Over the Bayou and Through the Swamp

My friend Sabine, French and unflappable, introduced me to the phrase.  “Plus ça change,” she’d murmur with a wave of her hand, “plus c’est la même chose.”  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sometimes that’s true. My great-aunt Fannie, who just happened to be in the Louisiana State Capitol the day Carl Weiss put a bullet into Huey Long, never tired of telling the story. He wasn’t the first or the worst of the politicians she’d known, she liked to say, but he certainly set a standard of some sort for those who followed. Rolling her eyes heavenward as she ticked off the names of politicians who’d ticked her off, she’d heave a great sigh and remind us:  “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

More recently, several of us were sitting in a restaurant when another friend began fussing at the sight of some scantily-clad young lovelies lounging at the bar. “Who let them out of the house looking like that?” she said. “I don’t know,” said another. “Who let us out of the house with our skirt waistbands rolled up and our bobby sox rolled down?”  We grinned at one another, and it occurred to me to think again, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”.

The Foreign and the Familiar

It was, I thought at the time, rather like going to church. The spare, sweeping space of the galleries, the click of heels across marble and wood, the sound of parents shushing children into silence and the sight of impassive, stolid guards lined up along the walls like ushers felt familiar, even if the painting and sculpture did not.

I was young and slightly timid, well-educated but inexperienced in the arts.  With an eye still incapable of discerning distinctions and little appreciation for technique, my first experience of a “real” art museum felt like a visit to a foreign country.  I might as well have been in Tanganyika, a country that still existed the year I found myself plucked from my familiar, everyday world and transported to the National Gallery of Art.


Previously, my museum-going had been confined to the Des Moines Art Center.  Building additions, including one designed by I.M. Pei, have changed its appearance over the years and expanded the space available for exhibits, but in its original incarnation it was positively cozy. With creamy stone facades, immaculate lawns and lush trees, it could have been any upper-middle class home in any upper-middle class Iowa neighborhood. It was as familiar as the neighborhood playground or the Dairy Queen, and as comfortable. It played to its audience, and did it well.