St. Francisville ... Where It All Began
A reminiscence by a former editor
"Up and down sunny fields and meadows, sheets of goldenrod frame the roads. Scattered among the yellows and golds are the tall blue and white Eupatoriums. In low places purple Ironweed and pink Joe-Pye weed wave rainbow colors. Asters are everywhere, blooming until frost, a gentle mixture of white, lavender and blue. Near the edges of the woods, complementing the fields, are the glossy purple clusters of French Mulberries."
—Edna W.C. Womack, Vol. I, Issue I
Like many people, my first interactions with Country Roads in the early ‘00s came through meeting James and Ashley Fox-Smith. As delightful as they are as professionals (and human beings), it wasn’t until I went on a trip to St. Francisville that I truly understood the heart and soul of the magazine.
The plan was simple. As a newly minted managing editor who’d moved to Baton Rouge from Texas only a couple of years earlier, I would set off from the magazine’s old office building in the big, bustling capital with Dorcas Brown, the magazine’s founder and then publisher, to what someone affectionately referred to as “the mother ship,” the town where Country Roads first sprang to life.
It was almost as if the flora were as vital a part of her life’s work as the people, businesses, and organizations she’d been instrumental in highlighting over the years.
On the surface this seemed like a pretty straightforward task, but it proved to be quite the adventure. I’d been to St. Francisville a couple of times, yet I was more than willing to go along if only to see the sites again. Ours was not a quick trip down the main streets, however. No, Dorcas insisted we pull into places like Grandmother’s Buttons to learn about their business, eat at the legendary Magnolia Cafe, and walk around the grounds of local historic sites. It took hours, most of the day.
It was time well spent.
Watching Dorcas interact with everyone from shopkeepers to groundskeepers to wait staff was a lesson in local journalism as an essential fiber in a community’s tapestry. She knew the story behind every façade, the name of everyone we encountered, and more than a few plant names were dropped. It was almost as if the flora were as vital a part of her life’s work as the people, businesses, and organizations she’d been instrumental in highlighting over the years.
My all-too-brief time with Country Roads was filled with all sorts of “adventures close to home.” There were dinners, opening nights, sparklers at twilight evoking scenes from a Fellini movie at the Fox-Smith country house, and the arrival of the first baby boy to Dorcas’s family in, I believe, a couple of generations. I recall, too, a certain little girl dressed in a faux leopard coat traipsing up the stairs and waving at us in the production room as she headed to the adjacent nursery with her nanny. There was the arrival of baked goods, tomato plants, and the star of Herman’s Head to our offices. Once our work was interrupted by a second line bursting from the funeral home across the street that pulled us from our monitors to marvel at the culture that makes South Louisiana such a vibrant place to live. Somehow, despite all of this excitement, we managed to crank out a print magazine every month brimming with stories, events, recipes, and advertisements. The work is, let me assure you, a lot more demanding than most people realize. Still, we had a lot of fun with all of it.
More often than not, when I reflect on my time there, I recall with greatest fondness the stories that Dorcas shared that day about everything from rumored ghosts to savvy women entrepreneurs to where and when it was best to catch the azaleas in the spring. To this day I remain grateful to her for sharing personally her corner of the world with me, if only for a day.
Pamela Price is a San Antonio, Texas-based writer and the publisher of TheTexasWildflower.com. She still misses those gorgeous azaleas in the spring.