longwood general store

Longwood General Store

Blanchard, Louisiana fancies itself the modern-day Mayberry. A rural southern town, it exists in the No Man’s Land between one big place and another even bigger place. People only know of Blanchard if they’ve happened to have broken down there before, if they’ve had a really great burger there, or if they were given the dubious pleasure of a childhood within the town limits. I happen to fall into the latter category.

The unofficial town center, a quarter mile of buildings huddled close to the highway that leads to Urbana, includes a bank that closes by five on weekdays and remains stubbornly unopened on weekends, a post office with one worker prone to napping at the desk, and a long flat building dubbed the town hall--that also doubles as the water department. The town’s pride and joy are its three schools: an elementary, a junior high, and a high school—all of which still reflect the questionable aesthetic choices of the 1960s. In the warmer months, the baseball fields are packed full of fathers who pulled coaching duty for the season. The phrase “RUN YOU IDIOT,” can often be heard over the wail of passing coal trains. And the first stoplight in the town proper was installed in 2015, when the new Krispy Kreme caused an unprecedented influx in traffic. Blanchard is the remnants of an aging Mayberry, from the town’s personal Barney Fife to its one-stop-shop called Longwood General Store.

A film of age clings to Longwood General Store like the smoke from a Marlboro; it’s shown in the way the whole building sags with exhaustion, the vague tint of mold that permeates the foundation, and the emanating sound of drawling accents softened with time. The only condition to entering Longwood is the ability to traverse the uneven parking lot, dotted with haphazardly parked trucks and boats. I have noticed that the universal outfit for this is exemplified by a loyal customer’s Wal-Mart work boots (for the rocky terrain) and hunting safety orange (to warn the distracted truck drivers). From the parking lot, a person is welcomed onto the store’s best feature—its wraparound porch. The porch can pass for sturdy, as long as one isn’t foolish enough to peek between the wooden floorboards at the non-existent support beams, and instead chooses to indulge in the creature comforts of drooping couches, rocking chairs, and Folgers smoking cans. A place meant to encourage socializing, the porch is routinely populated with ancient good ol’ boys exchanging fishing stories, cigarettes, and the idle gossip that makes Blanchard run. With the people at Longwood, it’s easy to forget the passing years. At twenty years old, I can always count on some variation of “Hiya Sweetpea” greeting me at the porch. Shortly followed by, “You still sellin’ those Girl Scout cookies? After extricating yourself from the chitchat of the front porch, a brave soul, or experienced customer, is then privy to the delicacies that Longwood has to offer indoors…

Callie Fedd Class of 2022