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THE NEWSPAPER OF AMERICA'8 ANTIQUE CITY
]acebook.com/theponchatoulatimes
www.ponchatoula.com/ptimes THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2013 34 t" YEAR
NUMBER 9 50 €
By BRYAN T. McMAHON
Three little letters could
ence in how we live. O-I-L
The potential news is so good
that those in-the-know drop the
sound of their voices to a whis-
per when you can convince them
to talk about it at all.
Listen very carefully attend-
ing some otherwise obscure
public meetings and you hear
hints in the pained way offi-
cials who really don't want to
say anything, talk about it, and
then only when they absolutely
must, under penalty of law, or
the 2013 Art Station Invitational --,-
°n display thr°ugh Saturdly ]
well make a world of differ- . ' ,
Artist and First Lady Kim Z Arotlon
Local artists'
due to their responsibilities in
planning for the possibility that
at least some of us will get to
play the part of Jed Clampett
in real life and not just in our
dreams of being one of the Bev-
erly Hillbillies.
And the beautiful thing about
it is that there is more than one
road to riches.
The simplest route would be
to make the gossip of a promis-
ing oil find in the vicinity of the
Louisiana-Mississippi border
come true.
L)k for the first real sig ff
a test well is.drilled, an incred-
ibly expensive proposition.
But a successful well there
would connect us to the fabled
Tuscaloosa Trend, that subsur-
face current of oil that has dra-
matically improved the fortunes
of local families we all know, if
only distantly.
And it could work its magic
even without us setting off with
shotguns and blasting away in
hopes of getting as lucky as ole
Jed on the TV show. Think jobs,
businesses booming, money cir-
culating the way it did during
Ponchatoula's last big boom,
when lumber barons came here
from Chicago and clear cut our
ancient forest of red tidewater
cypress.
Ponchatoula's big hotels
were built, and businesses were
hopping so much that you could
get a haircut at midnight on a
Saturday night iH downtown
Ponchatoula.
I've been writing a lot about
Port Manchac these past few
months, and not just because
The Times serves as the port's
official journal.
The Port of Manchae could
well become the necessary por-
tal for moving large quantities
!
a.b.
m
-- ! ¢
-- Zt--
• -IF. -.1
Black Gold:
A beguiling dream
of crude from here to anywhere
in the world, after accepting
crude oil from pipelines, rail
tankers, barges and the rest.
Consider this, if there is in-
deed a major strike say 50 or so
miles north of here, we in this
area with a port prepared for
the action will be as close to the
drilling rigs as are the refineio-
ries in Baton Rouge.
Serious-minded men and
women imagined a port that
would harness the capacity of
the largest railroad on the con-
tinent, capable of moving Cana-
dian crude to the Gulf Coast and
its refineries, and from there by
train, ship, or barge, to any port
in the world.
But of course such a system
would not require crude from
Canada.
Even without an oil strike
nearby, officials at the port
have been quietly putting to-
gether the infrastructure that
would be needed to move oil in
a variety of ways through our
local port.
The port board speaks of the
need to match the local port's
capacity to that of the Panama
Canal which, just incidentally,
is undergoing a vast widening.
Port Manchac has been engi-
neering bulkheads large enough
to accommodate major barges
which can in turn be filled by
railroad tankers already head-
ing here from all over the North
American Continent. Then the
barges are loaded aboard mas-
sive oceangoing freighters, and
without the legendary snarl of
traffic and delay and incapacity
at the Port of New Orleans.
My good Ponchatoula friend
Mike Whitlow who owns two
large Mack Truck dealerships,
one on the South Shore near the
airport, the other near Lafay-
ette, admits to getting excited,
and Mike Whitlow does not get
easily excited. He knows what
O-I-L can mean to all of us, and
PLEASE SEE PAGE 8
Art is for guys too!
Painter Jim Creel's normal medium is wood for his sculp-
tures, but he submitted this rare hot race ear painting for
this week's free art show at The Art Station. (Times Photo)
Councilman challenges
,, Zabbia cable decision.
..... Times Report
The Ponchatoula City Council at its regular monthly meeting
November 12 appointed the namesake grandson of well-known lo-
cal real estate appraiser Larry Wilson to a seat on the Ponchatoula
Historic District.
Larry "Jamie" Wilson easily won the council's support.
That, as it turned out, was the non-constroversial part of the
brief meeting.
Council gadfly Melvin Toom-
er of District D, noting there
was no public hearing called on
the subject, challenged Mayor
Bob Zabbia for not following the
lead of other Tangipahoa Parish
municipalities who have crafted
local ordinances charging busi-
nesses for the use of their mu-
nicipality's rights of way.
"I want to know what does
the city get out of it?" queried
the councilman, refering to a
private company's plan to profit
from the use of city property.
CityAttorney Ernie Drake III
fielded the question, since the
controversy grew out of a state
law which grounded Drake's
legal opinion that Ponchatoula
can't charge for-profit compa-
nies for using the taxpayers'
land to lay fiber optic cables.
Reading what he said was
the applicable portion of the
state law to which he referred,
Drake concluded, "This means
to me you can't charge them.
It is cut and dry. You can try to
squeeze money out of them all
you want. We don't need to go
there," said Drake, adding:
"We'll finally have some com-
petition for Charter (cable tele-
vision company)."
Mayor Zabbia came down on
Drake's side of the argument.
Apparently referring to a
passing reference in an earlier
Times report on the matter,
Tumor called to question the
propriety of Councilman Vergil
Sandifer "using his influence"
to side with Sandifer's brother-
in-law by writing a letter sug-
PLEASE SEE PAGE 8
Mayor Zabbia:
We got ours!
Sincerely, Mayor Ragusa
Independence Mayor Michael
A. Ragusa poses with a check
to the town for $550, payment
from a cable company that used
the town's right of way to lay its
cable. This is the first payment
under a new town ordinance
crafted to insure payment from
private business interests using
land that belongs to the citizens
of the municipality. Mayor Ra-
gusa told The Times that the
City of Amite earlier passed a
nearly identical ordinance that
he said has already provided
Amite with enough money to
buy that city two needed ve-
hicles. Ponchatoula Mayor Bob
Zabbia has refused to push
for such an ordinance for Pon-
chatoula, based on a legal opin-
ion on the subject by City At-
torney Ernie Drake III. Zabbia
and Drake stuck by that posi-
tion when questioned at Tues-
day's Ponchatoula City Council
meeting by Councilman Melvin
Toomer. (Times Photo)
display in Ponchatoula art
gallery through Saturday
Times Report
Ponchatoula exercises its claim as the Art Capital of Tangipa-
hoa Parish during an impressive, and at times fun, show hosted by
The Art Station, 146 W. Oak Street, noon to 5 p.m., to 3 p.m. Sat.
The invitational show began with an artists' reception Tuesday.
The show features the work of potters and painters.
Potters include: Pat Bender, Barbara Burns, Kenny Holden,
Raffy Rigney, Beth Bourgeois, Lucille Griffin, Sue Nichols, and
Rojenna Roberts.
Painters include: Mary Sue Adams, Charlotte Corkern, Jennifer
Davis, Denise Paj0i, Sondra Logan, Cricket Ayala, Jim CreL ]-
seph de cuir, Catherine Hoffer, and Brandi Newman.
OOR PONCHA TO I
By OLE HARDHIDE
The Alligator
So, what is going on at Port Manchac besides the oil that
Ole Pinchpenny loves to dream about?
Other big players whose sometimes invisible hand is busy
changing our future include the Octavia Group whose gener-
osity half a century ago took the form of donating the original
40 acres needed to create Port Manchac, and the same group
more recently added 100 acres for the port's expansion.
Who knows, perhaps the Cajun Curly Cutter (of all things
edible) made of Ponchatoula Acadian Cypress wood by Ham-
mond's David Bennett and Sherrie Taylor will reach all ports
of the culinary world from Port Manchac, and yes, our own
Tom Pittman who is remaking the Party in the Pits BBQ
event here in his own image and likeness, will be deserving
part of the credit, at least.
Sweet Southern Heat may have gotten its start here but it
has already taken the championship titles at festivals from
here to Pensacola. Smokin' Good Times by James Lirette and
Justin Proctor will also soon be needing a shipping barge of
their own.
The soft-spoken get-it-done hero of Port Manchac is its Ex-
ecutive Director Patrick J. Dufresne and his board who to a
man, take no salary for their work building our very future.
Their neighbors on the Pass are no slouches when it comes
to reinventing our local world.
Did I mention that Horst and Karen Pfeifer's latest big
business gamble, making their Middendorf's Restaurant on
Pass Manchac boat friendly, was a great notion altogether?
It is and all the new slips of visiting yachtsmen stay filled.
Of course we all have long suspected the real draw is Chris
Reeves, the restaurant's Deck Drinkmaster.
There on a recent afternoon The Times met and inter-
viewed members of the Order of Lazareth, which has been
kicking around doing good works since its founding in 1098.
Among its works are an ongoing effort to stamp out leprosy
worldwide, quietly helping to fund the work at Carville and
other locations, an ecumenical group that has ever so quietly
worked to better the world through random acts of "Christian
Chivalry."
,i