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

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 […]

My life changed due to a cometic force that entered my life in April 2010 and left it only a few months later. I was still lying to myself and to the world, or, more forgivingly, I just didn’t know who I was, and I was, as I have been saying for these last few […]

Greetings, and welcome to the March 2010 Sampler essay. I hope that you enjoyed the first two sampler essays of 2010 – January and February – with my foray into trying to be someone I am not, which continues here and will for the next couple of months with intensity and continue in spurts for […]

I had a hunch that today, Thursday 27 September 2020, would be train day on the L&D Abbeville Branch, because there was a train one week ago today. I was helping The Duke move a chest freezer, and I heard the horns while helping. My arrival at the track was delayed because I was helping […]

Jimbaux is telling the same old story, doing the same old song and dance. Today is Wednesday 5 February 2020. The impeachment acquittal, it was a joke, happened today. Yeah, maybe you could try him for so many more things, things that actually matter far more than something that was indeed impeachable that he did […]

Jimbaux is a 21st Century digital boy. Today, I permanently moved out of New Orleans. I moved to the city more than a decade ago, not long after Hurricane Katrina after taking a job in the metro area and deciding to move to the city before Katrina, but, only a few years later, I left […]

Today is Wednesday 29 January 2020; two days from now, I will permanently move out of New Orleans. I awoke today in New Orleans, made a trip to the homestead with my truck loaded with plenty of my stuff, and returned to New Orleans this evening after getting a couple of new train shots today. […]

Jimbaux you don’t recognizeDesensitize and paralyzeSabotage headquartersBut your bloodlines we sterilize. It’s Not The Same Today is Friday 24 January 2020, and, as I am in the process of permanently moving out of New Orleans and retreating westward to the homestead after losing my home a year ago, I went eastward again to New Orleans […]

I had to go west this morning, Monday 20 January 2020, because I accidentally left my camera bag with the newer camera in The Duke’s automobile. Almost there, I used the old camera to get some shots of the hopper cars at the Farmers Rice Milling Company facility. This track is basically the old Missouri […]

Still quite tired from my big Mobile-Gulfport day yesterday, I got up this morning on this Monday 6 January 2020 to do more saying goodbye to the New Orleans area. I left the crib just after 08:00 today. I checked out what remains of Bernadotte Yard. These are self portraits at what remains of a […]

Today is Saturday 4 January 2020, and I went eastward from the homestead to New Orleans in preparation for heading east to Mobile tomorrow, one of the last chances that I get to do this now that this is my final month in New Orleans. Here is the LDRR 1500, the last CF7 on the […]

Hi. Today is Monday 30 December 2019, and, today, for the first time since my epic flying trip over the metro New Orleans area with Porkchop 11 days ago, I took out my SLR camera to take some pictures, and it would not have happened had people in the weight room not been hogging the […]

Today, Sunday 15 December 2019, I went to clean the last of my personal items out of the storage unit, meaning that, rather significantly, the last of my personal possessions has left my homeland. I stopped in New Iberia and saw that the Union Pacific Railroad has delivered three empty rice mill hopper cars.  The […]

“One hopper car! Two hopper cars! Three hopper cars!” – I said, driving southbound on State Street before turning right to get ahead of the train, today, Thursday 5 December 2019, as Terry was videoing the train’s passage of the same spot! The L&D Abbeville Branch is back! The LDRR 1709 has brought five empty […]

Today is Tuesday 26 November 2019, and I am in New Orleans. This will not last, which is a(n at-least) double entendre. That is some work being done around Saint Peter Street in New Orleans. Anyway, I went foaming on the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, and I found this. Yes, this is a job […]

Jimbaux hears the sounds of silence. Silence I listened to no music today, hence the choice of today’s song. These are my bell peppers. These are locomotives in New Iberia. This is the Louisiana & Delta Railroad. This is an eastbound BNSF Railway manifest train coming through Morgan City. Yes, I went eastward today. This […]

Sorry To Have Been Away, And Sorry To Be So Brief Now, But Greetings, and welcome to the November 2009 Sampler essay, which means, welcome back to the “Sampler” essays after the three-month – or, depending on how you want to define it, the two-month – hiatus that was foretold at the end of the […]

Yesterday, I returned to New Orleans. Today, Wednesday 23 October 2020, I walked from the crib down Bienville Street to Basin Street and took some cell phone snaps. All of the pictures in today’s post are snaps from my very cheap and weak cell phone. Like many things in life, this post seemed like a […]

I walked outside to go to the gym today, Thursday 17 October 2019, two days after I returned to this land, and then, at 13:51, to my great surprise, I heard train horns. I then uttered the sentence that is the title of this post. I guess that the gym will have to wait. So, […]

Abscesses And Absences, Racists And Races, Geuydan And Lake Charles The Duke was emergencily hospitalized, with an abscess that could have killed him; so, today, when Louisianians went to the polls to determine who the governor would be, I drove from the homestead to Lake Charles, my first time driving my own automobile on this […]

Death And Stupidity Today started with death – well, more accurately, with the dead, but, more broadly, with the concept of death weighing on the mind – and ended with human stupidity. Nihilism is a terrible philosophy, but the rest of humanity surely does validate it for me. The Duke and I ate shrimp poboys […]

I Still Got It These pictures were made on Wednesday 1 October 2019, and this was a heck of a day, very memorable – and very long – with an injury, a visit to some friends, a long chase of a train led by a neat locomotive, and a chance drive-by encounter with another southern […]

Today, Friday 27 September 2019, five years to the day after Weekend Whoadification Won, I photographed the Louisiana & Delta Railroad’s Abbeville Branch train. Here it is, behind the LDRR 1846, at South Young Street in Abbeville. There was some industry here served by the railroad years ago, and there is still piece of track […]

Disenabled I had to write a letter to The Duke. I lost that job. This brutal neurotypical society is literally killing me and other people. I just can’t do this. I feel defeated. I was good at what I was doing and liked it, and I asked for help, but me not “getting it,” like […]

Bernadotte and The Berrie Today is Monday 9 September 2019, and am headed back west from New Orleans to Bayou Vermilion, after a workshop for a new job on Saturday and after a strange encounter at the Tchoupitoulas Wal-Mart; there have been shades of the year 2012 in my life in the last few days, […]

Today is Thursday 5 September 2019, and the Louisiana & Delta Railroad’s Abbeville Branch was served today afternoon for the first time in nine days.  LDRR 1846 arrived in Abbeville late in the afternoon with two empty hopper cars, one of which had arrived in New Iberia on the Union Pacific local train on the […]

Jimbaux is prepared now. Today is Saturday 31 August 2019. This is already getting to be a habit, this same old routine of shooting pictures in New Orleans in the morning and heading west in the afternoon, and part of the reason that I am actually stepping it up even as I feel that it […]

Yesterday, a week to the day since the previous train to Abbeville, I was scoping out the Louisiana & Delta Railroad yard in New Iberia thinking that there would be an Abbeville Branch train that day, and there somewhat was, as the next train for the Abbeville Branch was made and then brought onto the […]

It was really hot today, Thursday 8 August 2019, 10 years to the day after I visited the farmers market in Corvallis, Oregon, before returning to New Orleans from an epic two-week trip to Minneapolis, western Canada, and Oregon, that started in late July 2009. There Is No Hope For the first time, I took […]

It’s Sunday 4 August 2019, 10 years to the day after I boarded a southbound Amtrak train at King Street Station in Seattle after arriving there by bus from Vancouver, British Columbia. Yesterday, I got a few shots of a BNSF Railway train on the Huey P. Long Bridge, and, today, just three days after […]

Jimbaux is convinced on the inside something’s wrong with him. Today is Thursday 1 August 2019, 10 years to the day after BobE and I saw, chased, and photographed Canadian Pacific Railway trains east of Kamloops, British Columbia. With tears in my eyes due to a feeling of hopelessness in life, I left the homestead […]

We were returning to the homestead from Lake Charles, where, due to the recommendation that a few people gave The Duke, we ate at a place called Darrell’s, that didn’t match up to the hype. The food was not bad, but we won’t be back. After we left Gueydan, we saw, in the open skies […]

As I was desperately waiting news about jobs from those two schools at which I had interviewed or applied, today, 22 July 2019, we went to Intracoastal City. Hurricane Barry made landfall here fewer than two weeks ago. These are shrimp boats. Most of the people who work on these boats are of Vietnamese ethnicity. […]

Hey. It’s Monday, and I am heading west from New Orleans to the homestead, and I spied something interesting at Garden City. That is the Union Pacific Railroad’s relatively-new New Iberia Turn, with some locomotives that are unusual not just for this area but for this train: FXE 4602 and FXE 4604. I don’t see […]

After my Lafayette images yesterday, I awoke today at the homestead hopeful and optimistic about the job interview that I have tomorrow in New Orleans, one of my last chances to stay in New Orleans, and anticipating relief about getting an overdue dental checkup out of the way today. I stop at the L&D headquarters […]

This is all so exasperating. I went to a job interview today, one week after breaking out of prison; this will be one of my last chances to stay in New Orleans. I feel that my time here is coming to and end; well, it already came to several ends before, but it’s coming to […]

Jimbaux realizes he missed a dayHe’s too wrecked to care anywayHe looks around and see this faceWhat the hell has he lost my tasteDon’t want to find outJust want to cut out. I broke out of prison today and enjoyed my time in this greater wallless prison. I am truly burned out of a violent […]

Today is Thursday, Holy Thursday, 18 April 2019.  I am at the homestead for spring break, and I was supposed to go east today for a dentist appointment and then maybe visit my homie Bill afterward, but, with severe weather forecasted for Acadiana, I had to cancel the appointment. That ended up being fortuitous! The […]

Here Jimbaux goes again on his own, going the only road he’s ever known. Hey, good morning. Is this my rewhoadification? Is this all that there is to it, and all that there was going to be to it? Because, this ain’t it, chief. It’s Saturday 30 March 2019, and I have chased two northbound […]

It’s Mardi Gras Week, and I am spending time at the homestead, my future place of exile, in the rice-sugar transition zone around Bayou Vermilion. It’s Ash Thursday, 7 March 2019, three days after my photo-filled Lundi Gras trip here, and the lately-once-weekly Abbeville Branch train is running! I arrive at my perch on Bob […]

Here are some pictures from Saturday 2 March 2019 in New Orleans. The first several are cell phone snaps. I walked down Esplanade Avenue to City Park, to the area in front of the art museum, a special place for me. There is plenty of fog this morning. The annual big Endymion parade is happening, […]

Water, Fuel, And Trains – Past, Present, and Future Jimbaux wishes he could be the one you could be proud of. I’m Losing Heart Again There is a reason that I used the Pearl Jam song “Indifference” in my 25 November 2012 blog article, a reason that has become clear to me only recently, now […]

As foretold in the “End of 2018 Review” piece on Patreon, now that the blog that you are reading has returned from the dead, the new year is a good time to bring these monthly sampler essays back to the blog itself, with its black background. These monthly sampler photo essays are just that, a […]

Jimbaux has been driven under. Hi.  I spoke erroneously when I claimed that my chase of the Abbeville Branch train on Friday was the end of my holiday travel. https://www.facebook.com/145765538814006/photos/a.262928767097682/2112634788793728/?type=3&theater   Unexpectedly, I got a few more photos today “back home” before I have to return to the Big Uneasy and continue throwing my life, […]

It is Friday 28 December 2018, and I am in New Iberia, Louisiana, preparing to chase the Louisiana & Delta Railroad’s train on the Abbeville Branch. The humint that I had that day suggested that the branch, which is served sporadically but about once per week or so, would be served on this day.  So, […]

This year, it just doesn’t feel like a holy night, but that is still a great song. Really, while this night about 2,000 years ago might have been holy, this night 50 years ago was holy. Anyway, merry Christmas, my dear readers.  Ten years ago this morning, I photographed Amtrak’s westbound Sunset Limited at Chacahoula […]

Jimbaux wants to be the magazine she bases life on. After the intense week that I had the week before Thanksgiving, I had another eventful and memorable week of Thanksgiving. Wait, don’t I say stuff like that often?  I wonder if it is a function of the “hypersensitivity to experience” that is a hallmark of […]