Andrew Jackson Slept Here (And So Did I*)

"I'm sorry, but breakfast will be late this morning," the hostess at The Cottage Plantation informed us as we enjoyed the misty morning view from the main building's back veranda. "It's going to take a little while to get this skinned and into the pot."

"This" turned out to be a raccoon that got busted in the night while trying to steal the plantation cats' food, and now sat regarding us calmly, if inquisitively, from the confines of an animal trap.

Much to all the guests' (and the prisoner's) relief, 'coon really wasn't on the menu and we were all soon sitting down to a full Southern breakfast of eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits with homemade jam and fresh blueberries in the formal dining room, while the captive 'coon (who was actually damned good company) was transported to the surrounding woods and set free.

So began the 4th of July -- with life, liberty and pursuit of happiness -- just like our forefathers promised us.

The Cottage Plantation in St. Francisville, La., is not quite as old as our Nation, but comes close. The original four-room cottage was built in the last decade of the 18th century. And while George Washington never slept here, another future President, Andrew Jackson, did stay a while on his way back to Natchez from the Battle of 1812.

While the term "plantation" calls to mind a certain grandeur, The Cottage is really more of a really nice, if genteelly shabby, farmhouse. Unlike a neighboring plantation, Rosedown, which underwent a multi-million renovation some years ago, the historic sections of The Cottage wear a slightly worn mantle of benign neglect.

This was a little like staying in your grandmother's house, if your grandmother was a Southern aristocrat who lost her money long ago.

It was certainly a cut above my accommodations during my last trip to St. Francisville as a Girl Scout 40 years ago. Then, I had to cook my own dinner over a campfire and sleep in a screened tent with a bunch of other pre-pubescent girls. Here, I was served in-room coffee in demitasse cups with fresh-cut flowers on a silver tray.

When in St. Francisville, you tour a lot of plantation homes. In addition to The Cottage, I also caught tours at the much-fancier Rosedown, where I was charmed by a nest of resident baby barn swallows, and The Myrtles, America's most haunted house.

Other than that it was lots of good Louisiana cooking, a ferry ride across the False River to Cajun country and the scenic route home through fields and fields of sugar cane, eating boiled peanuts while smelling 4th of July barbecue roasting over dozens of roadside pits.

All in all, it was the perfect 4th.

*But not at the same time.