Review by Mack Hassler
“Vermilac, (Worm Lake); “Pointe Aux Loup Springs (Wolf Springs)
History tells us that if it had not been for the French and Indian War, which took place ten years before our War for Independence and which the British won, the whole continent from the East Coast to the Pacific would have been a French-speaking nation. Before coming back to teach in Ohio and before buying our Camp in the Upper Peninsula on Lake Vermilion in Baraga County, my wife and I lived and taught in Quebec and spoke some Québécois, or Quebec French. So we knew that our place was on “Worm Lake”—“vermi=worm.” And “loup” means “Wolf” in French or the Cajun French in the people’s language still spoken in southwestern Louisiana and East Texas.
Jorgensen is a very practical writer. He writes for his readers. A couple of years ago, I read and reviewed a popular book he wrote about Snowmobiles in the North Country called Make It Go in The Snow: People and Ideas in the History of Snowmobiles, where the trails for riding one’s snowmobile off to get a beer or two are good activities he judges wisely people might want to read about. That marketability in Jorgensen reminds me of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Foundations of Tarzan by Jon C. Stott, which I reviewed and which was posted here last Sunday. Burroughs could describe the world he imagined as Barsoom on the distant Planet Mars just as well and as expertly as the adventures of the human boy raised by the Mangi Apes of the “darkest Africa.” If it would sell, Burroughs would write it. Jorgensen is more practical. He is describing real Snow Machines and real Hot Springs that give people joy in his books.
Jorgensen, with his detailed descriptions of hot sulfur springs used for healing purposes, reminds me of the Robert Penn Warren novel All The King’s Men about the assassination of Huey Long [governor of Louisiana in the mid-thirties; the novel was published 1946]
“The last visit to Hot Wells Sulphur springs by Earl Long, a cousin of the governor and a political operator himself, after he had made campaign stops to surrounding Parishes as he sought the Louisiana 8th Congressional seat. He died in his room…and a female companion was reported to be with him at the time…later identified as Blaze Starr, an attractive New Orleans show girl who had a long-time relationship with Earl and claimed they were engaged to be married” (p.21)
Jorgensen does not shy away from casual innuendo about why people visit the sulfur springs. And to visit them was not expensive. At the Berthard’s hotel in the late 1800s, “The hotel rate was one dollar per day which included meals” (p 95). A more serious topic is the nature of the deep wells themselves and their “rotten egg” smell. The book describes trap doors that allow access to the mysteries below but one of the more interesting is a large and heavy concrete flange forged to protect the opening undergound. It was so heavy that a team of mules had to drag it to the opening that it was made to protect. It sat beneath a gazebo built to protect the flange. “ it was noted… and that hundreds of crutches and canes had to be hauled away after being discarded by cured patrons….if the wind is right, you can still smell the familiar ‘rotten egg’ odor of sulphur ….just as [they] did in 1898” (pp 99-100).
Early in Hot Wells and Other Mysterious Louisiana Waters, Jorgensen describes legislation to establishing “The Hot Wells Hospital of Rapides Parish’ along with an appropriation of $150,000.” (p 14) It is a mystery of healing from deep within our Earth. Jorgensen’s book is no mystery, however; it is full of fine innuendo and many clear pictures of the buildings and people. Many of the buildings look rotting and decaying in the region’s heat and humidity. I love his decision as a writer to move from the heavy Arctic winters of the Snow Machines, where everything is frozen and preserved, to the mysterious rotten smells and decay issuing from beneath our mired feet to make us well. I think this man is a writer for all seasons. Look at his work. The balanced contrasts are very interesting.
Review of Hot Wells and Other Mysterious Louisiana Waters, by Larry Jorgensen (Modern History Press, Ann Arbor MI 2026) 138 pages, PBK, $19.95.
