By Liza Yellott
I met three Australian gentlemen at the North American Petroleum Exposition conference in Houston (NAPE SUMMIT 2019). They visited our booth to see what services my company offered because they were intrigued in the live painting that artist Jody Thompson, of Sulphur, was creating of seismic data (imaging of the subsurface layers of the earths structure).
Since they had traveled all the way from Australia, they asked what city was I from. I get asked this a lot and always say, “I live in Houston, but I’m from southwest Louisiana.” The latter part is much more interesting to most people and is sure to generate a more meaningful conversation with strangers. These gentleman were visiting Houston and attending the conference in an effort to sale an oilfield they owned in Australia.
When I mentioned Louisiana, they became very excited and said they had wanted to take a road trip and asked where to go, how to get there, and what to visit.
To be continued.
Submitted by Chris Hodge
As told by Silver Fox, Rock God, and the Irishman
What a day it was. We are from Perth in the state of Western Australia and were in Houston, Texas to attend an oil and gas conference.
The following day was a Saturday and we wanted an adventure before flying on to London. We were getting confusing advice from anybody who would care to listen, but then appeared Liza from Louisiana with this strange sounding southern accent who told us that Louisiana was the best place in the world – we wanted to experience small town Louisiana in a nutshell – we needed to go to her home town of DeQuincy. She painted such a charming picture of its friendly people, the ‘gators, the gumbo, the railway museum, crawfish, cajun prawns and swamps – we simply had to go.
And go we did. The 270 mile round trip was nothing to us Aussies who regularly travel 500 miles just to get a pizza. So off we set in our Avis rentacar with s broken rear windscreen. Remembering to drive on the right hand side of the road – most of the time.
Thanks to the power of the internet we received detailed on-the-go updates from Liza… we had to visit Mary at the railway museum, go to the T-2 hair salon where Liza’s sister works, go to Prejean’s for lunch at 2 p.m. (oops – change that Fausto’s at 1.30 p.m.)… “you must meet my family, Kelsey, Gregg, Toby, and Vernon, they all want to meet you.” Go to the Iron Horse pub. The pressure was on – particularly as we had to get back to Houston airport by 7 p.m.
Crossing the border into Louisiana from Texas was suddenly exciting. There were swamps, lush undergrowth, ‘gator signs and strange dead animals beside the roads (possoms and ‘coons apparently), little wooden houses with no fences and more churches than we’d ever seen.
DeQuincy finally arrived and we made straight for the railway museum where Jeff met Mary while the other two met Julie, a barmaid, and played pool in the darkness of the Iron Horse Pub. The funniest thing was free beer when a train clanked past.
To be continued.
