Monday, October 1, 2007
Question: What have you learned about Baton Rouge lately?
Answer: Large orders of seasoned fries worth.
S ome of you have caught on and some of you have not. But here’s the truth: I’m a double-teamer here in this second-story office. Yep. I work for 225 and the Business Report. For the past six months or so, I’ve been working on content for Business Report’s special 25th anniversary issue. By working I mean reading every issue almost cover-to-cover, thus staining myself and most things in my home with newsprint residue.
It goes without saying I’ve learned many a thing I didn’t know and/or remember about this lovely land. And, well, some of it just didn’t make the cut into the special issue of Business Report.
Anyway, so as not to waste some of the hard-won factoids, here are some Baton Rouge nuggets of yore. Yore nuggets to savor, as it were:
• Gov. Edwin Edwards received the “State of Israel Peace Medal” May 31, 1984. You suppose he framed that?
• Rally’s announced in 1987 it would soon open its first Baton Rouge location on State Street and Highland Road. Come back, seasoned fries! Come back!
• LSU in 1994 unleashed the “Litter Getter,” a decorated golf cart equipped with a 45-gallon trashcan and a flashing light, that puttered around campus in search of litter. Can I meet the person who named this thing?
• Procter & Gamble in 1996 sent samples of olestra—their new synthetic, essentially fat-free oil—to Chef John Folse. A fat replacement? Folse is a chef who takes pride in his triple-cream brie.
• More than 10,000 romance novel fans, publishers and writers were expected in Baton Rouge for the 14th annual Romantic Times Booklovers Readers and Writers Convention at the Radisson Hotel & Conference Center in 2006. They were novel lovers. Har.
• Work began in 2001 on a new otter exhibit at the Baton Rouge Zoo, whose building costs were covered by Paula Garvey Manship in memory of Charles P. Manship Jr. I still otter visit that, so say the billboards.
• McDonald’s closed on State Street off Highland Road in 2004. I’m not waxing nostalgic for a McDonald’s, but it amazes me some LSU students will never know it existed.
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