Madison Parish Courthouse

You know how it can be so frustrating to try to find something and you can't, right?  So, I took this photograph on my return trip from Texas in February.  It is in Tallulah, Louisiana.

Sad thing, is I did not remember being in Tallulah, Louisiana.  I spent hours--and I do mean hours, as in lots of them--trying to find this building in Mississippi Department of Archives and History...convinced that I had taken the photo in Durant when I stopped off to take pictures of the Durant Post Office and its New Deal mural.  I must have gone down the street I thought I was on using the Google maps street view at least 10 times, and then, tried every other street leading into Durant.

I had stopped off in Canton just before Durant, so thought perhaps I misremembered and this picture was from Canton.  I knew I had been seeking out New Deal sites that I had researched while spending the night in Monroe, Louisiana the night before, but I just could not track it down.

Today, while looking for something in my bag, I found the list of addresses I had compiled in that Monroe hotel room, and there on the list were two addresses in Tallulah, Louisiana.  Oh, yeah, right, I forgot I had detoured off the Interstate just past Monroe!  Sure enough, there it was, the Madison Parish Courthouse, built in 1939 by the Public Works Administration (Robert D. Leighninger, Jr. (2007) Building Louisiana: The legacy of the Public Works Administration. Jackson, MS: University Press.).

So, wait a minute here--then why don't I have a photograph of the mural in the post office?  Oh, yeah, right...because the New Deal post office is not the post office any more, and the mural was moved to the new post office, only when I went in the new post office, there was no mural there.

I was clearly more tired than I knew, which was why I had stopped to spend the night in Monroe in the first place.  And just think, this Friday, I get to make that trip all over again.  Yes, I just sighed.  But, at least, I know where I was even if I did not remember where I was.  Reminder to self: write down where you were when you were taking the pictures, just in case...