Editorial/Op

What an Amazing Place

By  | 

    The new home of Cooking in Central makes its debut this weekend.  It is a 16 acre open field at 10305 Blackwater Road.  I have driven past it going to and from church several times each week most of my life and it never struck me as Amazing.  It fronts on Blackwater Road and wraps around in an L Shape behind the home of a friend and sits just beyond the back yards homes in Monhegan Subdivision.  It is lined with trees but is really just an open field.  So why has it been named “Amazing Place?”
    I have driven and walked the property for the past 18 months, watching and photographing the slow progress of grubbing out the rocks and stumps, leveling the ground and filling in the holes.  Plumbers and electricians have donated time and resources to service the brand new 12,000 square foot, cement-floored, metal-roofed pavilion.  Surveyors have worked the drainage over and over to be sure parking is solid.  Roads have been created and worked to give access to the entire property to make Cooking in Central a safe and enjoyable success.  I guess I could say that all of this work has been Amazing, and it has been, but that is not why this is an “Amazing Place”.
    I got a glimpse of the Amazement Monday evening at the wrap-up meeting of the Cooking in Central members and volunteers in preparation for this weekend’s event.  A hundred friends and neighbors gathered under the massive pavilion in perfect spring weather to work out last minute details, share a meal, and just visit.  We had a great time, but far short of the kind of Amazing that this Place will be this weekend.
    Show up Friday evening for Central’s biggest crawfish boil of the year…Amazing.  Spend three or four hours visiting with your family and friends and meet a few hundred or a thousand neighbors you didn’t even know you had…Amazing.  Come out Saturday and experience the greatest Cooking in Louisiana, watch Central’s young talent entertain on stage and enjoy the biggest silent and live auction of the year…Amazing.  Turn the kids loose in the play area provided by Central’s up and coming young leaders…Amazing.  Be a part of our City’s single largest display of as tens of thousands of dollars are raised for Veterans, Schools and Children in need…Amazing.  By the end of this weekend I think thousands of people will agree that Central has an “Amazing Place”.
Related Items