The Red Sox won the World Series. We'll all have stories about where we were when it happened, who we were talking to... Personally, I was in a bar, the Fox and Hounds English Bar and Grille in Baton Rouge. The place is about as English as David Ortiz. Three big rooms full of smoking LSU students. The game was spent on the phone with my brother Andy. In the ninth, my father and mother did a two-line conference and my brother three way called me in, so all four of us were on the phone together when it ended. And yes, I wept like a three-year old girl.

I literally have no feeling right now. I'll ask again--how do you feel when you get what you've wanted for your whole life?

In the meantime, it was all work for the last couple of days.

I've got a few minutes to talk about Donaldsonville (which I'll be calling D'ville for the sake of sanity). D'ville is halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a comfortable number of miles off of Insterstate 10. For one magical year in the 19th century, they were the capital of the state of Louisiana. I know this because everyone there told us. So, once the state capital moved, they traded on their proximity to the railroad between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It wasn't like the capital heyday, but they did quite well. Then Eisenhower went and built the damned Interstate, which allowed people to get from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and bypass D'ville entirely. They were screwed.

But not entirely. Two petrochemical plants moved just outside of town, keeping most of it employed for the last thirty years or so. Except one of them closed recently and the other one is scaling back. Uh-oh. NOW they're screwed.

Here's the thing, though--they've got some legitimate history to make some money off of, and their downtown is ALL upside. Almost every building in town could be unbelievably beautiful and I don't just mean the business district. We saw some shotgun houses on a street where, if they were restored, you'd see tourists driving up and down taking pictures. As it is now, only one has been fixed up. It leaves you with a little taste of the potential. Hollywood has noticed it, too. They'll be shooting scenes from the new "Dukes of Hazzard" movie there in December, and in January the remake of "All The King's Men."

("WHY??? WHY???" you cry. "Why in God's name remake 'All The King's Men'?" And I tell you they have Sean Penn, Jude Law, and someone else who I can't remember, but impressed me when they told me. That said, I don't know why they have to remake "All The King's Men." It doesn't make any sense.)

We drove into D'ville at about 11:00am and immediately stopped at the Railroad Cafe for lunch. They have an old fashioned open kitchen type of diner and the BBQ Sausage Po-boy was amazing. Actually, all the food in D'ville is amazing. Their other big restaurant is called Grapevine and serves Cajun-style food prepared by a 22 year old who learned to cook in the Air Force. He is going to nursing school and cooks four-star food as a hobby.

There's a bar there called Hambonz, opened by a guy who moved back to Louisiana after years away and wanted to have a place where all the folks in D'ville could come together to get drunk and sing karaoke. So he opened one, and then decided to run for president of the Chamber of Commerce. This guy should be mayor. He has a crystal clear vision of how to change the town for the better, and I hope he gets to implement it.

One thing about D'ville is that it seemed borderline dangerous where other towns have not. The police we talked to mentioned the possibility of random violence after dark, and some of the residents in the dicier neighborhoods spoke about rampant theft, burglary, and shooting. Atmore, for example, doesn't seem to have this problem. They feel like warmer people there overall, but maybe that's just lousy hindsight on my part.

We stayed last night in Baton Rouge and today drove 500 miles all around the state through some brokedown small towns. Our last stop was our most promising--Clinton, Louisiana. We met a very nice racist woman who gave us a delicious pie. I'll tell that story tomorrow. Right now, I just want to watch Baseball Tonight over and over again.