Walter Eagles:  

Life Winnfield, Louisiana was historically a singularly independent town, the capital of Winn Parish ('county' for other US states). After the "South" declared their secession from the Union, Winn Parish re-named itself "The Free State of Winn" and promptly seceded from Louisiana and the Confederate States. I was born in this town during the Great Depression on August 26, 1934, to Walter Randolph Eagles and Gladys Mai Lasyone Eagles, and was the second of five children. By the way, Winnfield is also the ancestral home of the Long dynasty of Louisiana politicians (Huey, Earl, Russell etc.) My father worked for the Carey Salt Mine in Winnfield from the time of my earliest memories, where he stoked the boiler that created the heat to dry the crushed rock salt as it came up out of the belly of the earth on a conveyor belt that ran day and night. Largely a self-educated man, "Pete" carried a harmonica in his shirt pocket all of his life, and knew tunes and words to several hundred songs. He had a special love for poetry, and could recite folk poems and song lyrics from memory. Earlier in his life he had been a log-cutter, a carpenter (like his father before him), a farmer and a railroad track workman. My mother had been a bookkeeper and practical nurse, and also had a passion for singing and piano playing. She could read music, but knew many songs by memory like her husband. My older sister Lou Anne Eagles Smith, an accomplished pianist as a young girl, had also become a journalist even in high school, and she has been...Expand for more