Photography and random writings from some crazy Cajun with a camera!

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Welcome to Day 2 of Jimbaux’s Spring Break 2012 Eastern Great Plains Road Trip, which follows the initial northward journey through Louisiana to Oklahoma on Day 1. Due to the large size of the quantity of photographs made this day, Saturday 31 March […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Welcome to Day 2 of my 10-day Spring Break 2012 Road Trip.  This is Part 1 of two parts for the pictures taken on Saturday 31 March 2012. As we ended Day 1, we started Day 2 in Heavener, Oklahoma, right next to […]

There was a very specific point to today’s outing: photographing the LDRR 1709, presumably in action, on this specific date, today. For reasons that I learned only today but that could easily have been foreseen, the “in action” part was not to be, though I did photograph the locomotive with other action happening proximate to […]

Jimbaux does have to live like a refugee. Today was an emotional day, and this will be a long post with plenty of pictures.  I went to the homeland.  As I was driving back westbound to the homestead, I heard the song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve, “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind played shortly […]

Jimbaux is fighting hard to hold his ownJust can’t make it all aloneIs holding on, can’t fall backIs just a calm ’bout to fade to black Is beggin’, beggin’ youPut your loving hand out, babyI’m beggin’, beggin’ youSo, put your loving hand out, darling. New Iberia just sucks. Also, I don’t particularly like that song, […]

Greetings, and welcome to the February 2012 Sampler essay. Wednesday, The 1st There were still a couple of weeks left in my final hopeless quest to pursue an engineering degree long after what would have been the optimal time for me to do it, and that’s why I was heading north of I-610 in New […]

It was weird to be essentially foaming by the track today, even though there were no trains on this track and even though I had no expectation or even hope that there would be one. I wanted to get shots of the last of the sugarcane trucks coming from west of Bayou Vermilion, where the […]

Greetings, and welcome to the January 2012 Sampler essay. This is the start of what may be the last year for which I do these “sampler” essays, as I hope to resume all-out all-good-pictures-from-every-day postings in 2013, which I think is possible since I took much fewer pictures that year, which would give me a […]

Greetings, and welcome to the December 2011 Sampler, an almost-welcome anti-climax to the “November 2011 Sampler” essay. This one will be relatively brief, particularly for a set of images that I made in the month of the winter solstice, and is an anticlimactic way to end a tumultuous year. Thursday, The 1st All of the […]

I was hoping to bag some good train shots today, but friendship won out, thankfully, as I returned home for the first time in only three days!  I really didn’t understand friendship until the Trump Era, though.  I did get some railroad pictures and even photographed one moving train, though. I learned about Rock 97.7. […]

Jimbaux knows that we’re told this is the golden ageAnd gold is the reason for the wars we wage. I left the house at about 7:39ish, but only at 7:52 did I start moving from a position a mile from the house due to being stopped by maritime traffic at the bridge, something that won’t […]

Greetings, and welcome to the November 2011 Sampler, with 21 pictures from as many days (one from each day, following the pattern), and I believe that this is the largest sampler essay that I have ever done. Because I took the unusual step of adding a few retrospective blog essays of October 2011 pictures after […]

It’s Saturday 29 October 2011, the day after the funeral and burial of Marie Anne Ory Dupont, around which I got some pictures and had some thought. She died on October 23, and I read her obituary on the 26th. So, on this day, the 29th, with life and death on my mind, I just […]

Jimbaux wonders what the hell he is doing here, He doesn’t belong here. The Mid-City Marine, a great friend whom circumstances have prevented me from seeing for a few years, and I had scheduled to meet at Schriever this weekend, but the weather was too damn warm. I suggested that we meet in Hammond, where […]

Today is Monday 18 October 2021. The Duke and I had some construction-related errands to run today. Hopefully, this will become more common in the future, without The Duke. Yesterday, in New Iberia, I noticed that there was no UP local train, and I got worried. According to Perry, the train didn’t run, because no […]

It was both a sign of the times and a sign of one’s reactive male youth, albeit fading, that prompted the outcomes from the incident on the afternoon of Friday 14 October 2011, and it was also an “it had to happen” thing. The pictures started during a break from workplace that morning, probably to […]

Jimbaux knows that Life is a waterfall,We drink from the river,Then we turn around and put up our walls. Today is Saturday 11 September 2021, and you know what 20-year anniversary today is, but it’s also a 10-year anniversary of a large set of pictures that I made on a big picture outing that I […]

They told Jimbaux to run, but just how far?Can he go wearing the black mask of fear? At first, I wasn’t going to go out in the heat to chase a steam locomotive among a bunch of other people photographing it, but I decided a few days ago that, today, Thursday 19 August 2021, I […]

Greetings, and welcome to the August 2011 Sampler essay, which neatly follows my “July 2011 Sampler” essay that documented my last days in the Washington area and then my first days back home and which (this essay) will foreshadow the direction – almost literally there – in which my life would later go. At first, […]

Welcome to the July 2011 Sampler. “Just come home,” Dad wrote to me on the afternoon of 29 June 2011 in response to my description of my situation and my options. So, I relented and, less than a month later, came home, and it was such an obviously correct decision in retrospect. So, this post […]

Today is Wednesday 16 June 2021, and, today, as I make my last train pictures before I put away the camera – or, more accurately, stay away from the track, because I am sure to take more pictures of personal things – for a while, I reflect upon a vivid dream that I had 10 […]

Okay, this set of pictures, being not of an actual train or anything “action” related, was not included in the real-time posts from 2020 here. So, it is being included one year later, and it requires a little bit of background information. So, as you may recall, the rice mill in Abbeville, Louisiana, closed in […]

Today is Monday 31 May 2021, Memorial Day, and I tried to get some quiet meditation by the track for the last time until the weather cools off in the fall, but it wasn’t that great. Yesterday was rather cool, and I perhaps should have tried to do this yesterday. Six months ago yesterday was […]

Today is Monday 24 May 2021, and I had to meet with the folks right before my departure for the track, which made me miss the outbound Port Rail train from the port this morning. I got gasoline, apparently after realizing that the train was arriving into the interchange yard, and then to Gerstner just […]

This one will be brief and insipid, less interesting than the previous month’s sampler essay. Saturday, The 7th I was on my way to do a photography project at the 1920 Club in Washington, DC, when I grabbed this image along 14th Street at Swann Street NW. That was really the best part of the […]

Today is Wednesday 14 April 2021, and I got a few shots of some Port Rail action in Lake Charles this morning. The rainstorms today were dramatic, with the lightning and the sound of bowling above, but this storm caused some fatalities, as, tragically, a boat in the Gulf Of Mexico near Grande Isle capsized. […]

Today is Thursday 1 April 2021, one year to the day after I got my “Just A Fool To Believe” post, and, today, I got the kinds of pictures that I had hoped to get yesterday. Two days ago, I got a memorable “hat trick” of Acadiana Railway action on the branch from Eunice to […]

Today is Tuesday 30 March 2021, and I came today to Lake Charles for the first time since February 10. Beginnings And Ends I left the homestead right at 07:00 CDT, bound for Eunice. The sky was overcast, humid, and cool. It’s beginnings and endings. I’m trying to get her off of my mind, I […]

Greetings, and welcome to the “March 2011 Sampler” essay, which will have more than twice the nutrients that the “February 2011 Sampler” essay had. All of the images in this sampler essay were made in the Baltimore-Washington metro area, all from either the District Of Columbia, Maryland, or Virginia. Friday, The 4th As I wrote […]

Wet And Scratched So, today, Wednesday 10 February 2021, a day after I photographed a lumber movement on Port Rail for the first time, I photographed another lumber movement on Port Rail. I got wet and scratched in the process. Yes, we’ll get to the pictures, but, first, you must see some tweets from friends! […]

Jimbaux hangs his head, Drowns in fear, Till you all just disappear. Today is Monday 8 February 2021, and my goal this morning was to see and photograph a Port Rail train hopefully carrying lumber in the centerbeam flatcar that I saw moving to the port on Friday. This morning was the first time that […]

Today was a really difficult day. All that I will say about the difficulty is that I learned today of the Melbourne-Evans Collision and my personal connection to it, and I can tell you that trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a real thing. The pictures that I took today, Tuesday 2 February 2021, were […]

Just as I did 15 days ago, when I foamed the BR Job and witnessed a grade-crossing collision, I executed a plan today, Saturday 30 January 2021, that I had had in mind for a while: I made a return to Schriever. It’s Not The Same As I was staring at the eastern sky this […]

Jimbaux knows that slow change may pull us apart. Think Of The Tender Things That We Were Working On Well, so begins life without my Samsung Galaxy Tablet that I got only in November 2019 as a replacement from my 2015 tablet that finally crapped out, but at least I am getting a replacement one […]

Happy new year. Let’s hope 2021 is better than 2020 was. We still have a few weeks of a Trump Presidency left, but we’ll be dealing with its effects for ages, Biden is kind of a loon and not all that trustworthy, and the planet is burning. Just as I did six days ago, I […]

Jimbaux got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. I thought that I had used that title already. Today is Friday 31 December 2020, the last day of a crazy year. I moved out of New Orleans permanently, I got probably my last pictures in Mobile, I got maybe my last pictures in Gulfport, a […]

Jimbaux knows that though the course may change sometimesRivers always reach the sea. Today is Saturday 26 December 2020. Four days ago, I made a big chase of the train on the Acadiana Railway branch from Eunice to Crowley, getting a colossal amount of pictures in the process, my first-ever chase of any train on […]

Greetings, and welcome to the December 2010 Sampler essay. As was not uncommon for me at that time of the year at the time, the first decade of the Third Millennium, I took plenty of southeastern Louisiana pictures in the last month of 2010, though not a huge quantity of them but a decent quantity […]

Greetings, and welcome to the November 2010 Sampler photo essay. The year 2010, especially the last few months of it, was, so to speak, the end of the beginning of my time living in New Orleans. As seen in the October 2010 Sampler photo essay, on October 23, I broke a three-month streak of not […]

Jimbaux doesn’t have to live like a refugee. Today, Tuesday 13 October 2020, two days after we trekked eastward to the aunts due to Hurricane Delta, it was time for The Choir Director and I to head back west, away from our homeland to the homestead, an end to our Hurrication Delta. The Godmother had […]

After a dormant August and September (and even early October), which was after a colorful and tumultuous July, I made a comeback in October, in late October, 2010. Sunday The 3rd I was driving East-Bank-bound on the Huey P. Long Bridge and looked downriver and saw this. That’s neat. Friday The 8th This is Nashville […]

Here is a brief set of images that didn’t make it into my postings from real time in August 2019. Having to go to Imperial Calcasieu for a bittersweet family-resource experience, I wasn’t able to see or photograph the Abbeville Branch train of Wednesday 21 August, and I really wanted to see it, after seeing […]

This was a very strange and difficult period for me, a period of transition. The few pictures in this essay, both individually and as a whole, are relatively insipid, and it’s a reflection of how defeated I felt at the time. I started the month of August 2010, the month after the month in which […]

Me being around the Abbeville rice mill early in the morning is rare, and I knew that, with early morning summer sunlight, a lit view of the mill and the railroad cars parked at it would be great. I just needed to get myself there! And get myself there I did, one day after I […]

Yesterday, we went to Beaumont, and I got some shots of Union Pacific’s job on what remains of the SP Lake Arthur Branch in Lake Charles. With those tasks done, today, Tuesday 16 June 2020, I returned to the homestead in the afternoon via a long, circuitous diversion via places that I had not visited […]

The year 2010 was tumultuous for me personally. I am reminded of such as I look back on these images, and I seem myself and my strengths and weaknesses more clearly. Tuesday The 1st I was still going to events and taking pictures and interviewing people at the events for a publication that I had […]

This will be one of the most insipid sampler articles that you will see here, just as insipid as the one from one year ago this month. Here, on Saturday The 8th, is a view down Bayou Lafourche at the Bellevue bridge south of Lockport, where I was for some family gathering. That is home. […]

The End Of An Era – An Emotional Day EDITOR’S NOTE:As I learned only five days later, this would, in fact, not be the last freight train to the Planters Rice Mill.  That happened on the 20th, and I was fortunate enough to chase and voluminously document the return trip the next day.  However, this […]

April 3 has often been a weird or memorable day in my life. So, too, was it this year, today, Friday 3 April 2020. I went to Walmart, to the pickup thing, due to the coronavirus. Then, I went by the rice mill in Abbeville and got three cell-phone pics from the truck. Yes, it […]