I have had no reason to remember my discharge from the navy in the spring of 1946 but oddly my recent research into Huey Long's career brought events around my discharge, especially my trip home from New Orleans, to mind. I traveled by train to New Orleans but hitch hiked back, along with a man I had never met allthough he lived two or three miles west of us on the Bellvue road.
We caught a ride with a man who turned out to be an engineer and an interesting person to talk with. Some way Huey Long came up and I expressed my dislike for Long and his machine. The engineer countered with praise of Long's road building program, declaring that the state had almost no decent roads until Long took over. One of the things he said that stuck in my mind was that Long made concrete roads 18 feet wide rather than the standard 20 feet, thus getting more miles of road paved for the same money.
At that time and until the past two weeks was I interested enough to check on what the engineer claimed. I went to a site friendly to Long and discovered that Long had indeed converted miles of dirt roads to concrete or gravel.
In 1928 the state had 300 miles of paved roads, only 60 miles of which was maintained by the state. Long launched his building program and by 1932 the state had 5,000 miles of new paved and gravel roads. Four years later 9,700 miles of new roads and 111 bridges had been built . It was possible to go from Shreveport to New Orleans in a day, Before, it took at least three days, and three nights in a hotel to make the trip.
We caught a ride with a man who turned out to be an engineer and an interesting person to talk with. Some way Huey Long came up and I expressed my dislike for Long and his machine. The engineer countered with praise of Long's road building program, declaring that the state had almost no decent roads until Long took over. One of the things he said that stuck in my mind was that Long made concrete roads 18 feet wide rather than the standard 20 feet, thus getting more miles of road paved for the same money.
At that time and until the past two weeks was I interested enough to check on what the engineer claimed. I went to a site friendly to Long and discovered that Long had indeed converted miles of dirt roads to concrete or gravel.
In 1928 the state had 300 miles of paved roads, only 60 miles of which was maintained by the state. Long launched his building program and by 1932 the state had 5,000 miles of new paved and gravel roads. Four years later 9,700 miles of new roads and 111 bridges had been built . It was possible to go from Shreveport to New Orleans in a day, Before, it took at least three days, and three nights in a hotel to make the trip.
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