Friday, December 9, 2011

Building Pyramids

We headed to St. James Parish and Gramercy, LA, to check on the status of the town's special project.

It was an overcast day as we pulled into this small (pop. about 3000) town on the eastern bank of the Mississippi.



Our first task was to find the home of the finest potato chips around. We knew there were no tours of the Zapp's factory, but we had to at least see it. What we found was probably one of the most modest structures for such a renown product. A simple "Zapp's" was all that identified this building.

This home, though not typical of the town, spoke of the history associated with the town.

Gramercy also is the home of a sugar refinery whose structure is shown here. We assumed that its many "arms" served to move the finished product to ships on the Mississippi.

It was the bridge and the ships in the Mississippi that provided the backdrop for the special work of the town's population.

We were struck by the similarity of the bridge's structure and the wooden pyramids on the riverbank.



We had made the trip to Gramercy and nearby Lutcher to see the construction of the pyramids. The photos shown here the capture various stages from the "shell" to the finished product. We passed maybe three dozen of these structures in various stages of completion.

Among the group, we saw structures that were completed in a very orderly, almost rigidly, manner; others were completed with less attention to a specific pattern. Still others "got the job done."









And others broke the pattern completely, building a structure, in this case, resembling an air boat.

We traveled along the River Road (Route 44) to view the early stages of the pyramid building and will return at a later date when they are completed.

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