The Power of a Pig Roast

How do you score happiness in a community?

Last month a paper released by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research identified New York City as the most unhappy city in America. To anyone who has spent extended time paying rent in New York, this may not come as much of a surprise; but the reason the article was so widely noted in our part of the world was because of the cities that appeared on the other end of the scale. The study concluded that not just one, but all five happiest metro areas in the study were in Louisiana. In order, they were Lafayette, Houma, Shreveport-Bossier, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria. Big Apple, how do you like them apples?

The researchers’ conclusions about why people in some cities were happier than others were not reported. But in a state so accustomed to bringing up the rear on scales measuring things like median family income, poverty rates, life expectancy, infant mortality, access to quality education, and other indicators of social and economic wellbeing—perhaps it’s worth throwing out a guess or two.

One possibility occurred to me last Sunday night as my wife and I were leaving St. Francisville’s first pop-up dinner. Presented as a fundraiser for ArtsForAll, a community-supported organization that provides arts education for area children and adults, the inaugural Saint Frank Dinner was a blazing success. Organizers Daniel Kelly and Susan Woodard Kelly had convinced James Beard Award-winning Chef Devlin Roussel to build a cinderblock pit in the parking lot outside Birdman Coffee, then spend twelve hours lovingly barbecuing a 180-pound Berkshire hog, which Devlin then served, accompanied by various beautifully crafted side dishes, to about a hundred appreciative diners.

The Birdman, bathed in golden light with tables clad in white linens, looked breathtaking. The meal was spectacular, presenting a riot of local flavors assembled in creative ways. There were even commemorative tea towels printed with a handsome “Saint Frank” pig logo to take home. Anyone interested in enjoying good food in pleasant surroundings would have been more than happy to part with the $30 ticket fee.

But there was another feature that elevated this event above being just another nicely styled dinner. The attendees, most of whom know one another as members of a tight-knit community, threw themselves into the celebration with the knowledge that their participation and their money were not only buying a memorable evening but also a part in a larger, collective effort benefiting the community. That enthusiasm suffused the event with goodwill. And in a town with a highly developed muscle for community building, this was a familiar feeling.

Is that what makes people here happier? St. Francisville will never, God willing, be described as a “metro area.” But whatever their sizes, many Louisiana communities do seem to encourage close-knitted-ness. We tend to live closer to one another. We know who everyone’s people are.

Having moved to Louisiana from somewhere else, I used to think this was strange. But I’m beginning to think that perhaps this kind of close-knit living builds a scaffold around which not just families, but also entire towns, get to grow themselves. When your society is built around broad-reaching family units that extend beyond your own four walls into other streets and neighborhoods, you are compelled to care about the wellbeing of environments beyond your immediate one. That doesn’t mean there can’t be new blood. Saint Frank organizers Susan and Daniel Kelly, Chef Roussel, and half the dinner attendees were folks from other places. But there is still that scaffold upon which to hang everything.

In that kind of environment, putting on a community-building project might not be changing the world, but it might be changing your world—the one that you live in and that matters to you. And being part of something like that does make you feel happy.

Interestingly, New Orleans—the state’s poster child for all that is cool, cutting-edge, and culturally exciting in Louisiana culture—did not appear on the happiness index until about mid-list, in position fifty-nine. New Orleans’ cool factor certainly has increased dramatically in the past few years; and as the city’s economic fortunes have rebounded, thousands of people from all over the country have moved in to call it home. This has changed the face of many neighborhoods, increased competition, and also driven up the cost of real estate to levels unheard-of before Katrina.

I adore New Orleans and relish its array of physical and cultural attractions on every visit. But I wonder whether part of the explanation for other Louisiana cities’ higher happiness scores mightn’t simply be that, when you choose to live in a New York or a New Orleans or another of the country’s cultural lighthouses to which generations of strangers are drawn, you end up trading that sustaining community scaffold for things like higher incomes and access to the cultural attractions of big city life. And maybe those things aren’t actually what happiness is made of after all.

In the end, I suppose it all comes down to a question of what you value most. Personally, I’m not sure I know, but the question of what makes a place a happy one does seem worth staying curious about.

—James Fox-Smith, publisher