This year’s loop around the South was something like the loop I drove 10 years ago, but with key differences. For instance, I was by myself that time, and bypassed such places as New Orleans and Nashville. Instead I spent time in smaller places, such as Lafayette and Baton Rouge. In the capital, I visited the house — the state house — that Huey Long built, Louisiana’s art deco state capitol.

It’s a handsome building. Long hired a Louisiana architect, Leon C. Weiss, to design the building. No relation to his assassin Weiss, apparently.

The garden front of the capitol, whose centerpiece is a memorial to the Kingfish, is also a cemetery with one occupant, Huey Long himself.

The observation deck on the capitol’s 27th floor, which charged no admission when I was there, has some splendid views of the Mississippi and the city.

Looking south toward downtown Baton Rouge.
North toward industrial Baton Rouge.
Petrochemicals. In fact, much of the view is taken up by ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge Refinery, one of the nation’s largest such facilities.