Rheta Grimsley Johnson fell for Cajun Louisiana when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sent her there to write about a wild boar hunt.

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During her time in Atlanta, Rheta Grimsley Johnson's biggest disappointment was the politics. 'I found it to be the most radically right place I've ever lived,' she said.
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Rheta Grimsley Johnson's 'Poor Man's Provence' is a memoir of her life in Cajun country, with its critters and characters.
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Despite that bloody assignment, the bayous haunted her, and she soon returned to buy a houseboat and then a cottage in Henderson, a blue-collar town on the edge of the Atchafalaya swamp near Lafayette. Her attachment to her part-time home only grew after she left the AJC, where she was a columnist from 1994 to 2001.

Johnson, 54, has written a memoir of her new life, "Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana" (New South Books, $23.95), that teems with critters, characters and lessons from the road less taken. She spoke about the book from her other home, in Iuka, Miss., where she spends the warmer months with her husband, Don Grierson, a retired journalism professor.

They reserve Louisiana for winters, when things aren't as buggy and muggy.

Why do you love Cajun country so much? It can't be the boars.

No, I don't care for blood sports. But I love our little town of Henderson because most of the people are still connected to the swamp. They're crawfishermen or shrimpers, or they work at a catfish plant or repair outboard motors. They're connected to nature. I find this area exotic. It's the most different place you can go without a passport. I'm a Francophile, and it doesn't get any better for me than turning on the radio and hearing someone sing Hank Williams in French.

But you call Henderson the ugliest town in America.

It was created in the great flood of 1927. There aren't many beautiful old buildings or live oaks. Everything is relatively new and grungy. Drainage ditches flank the main roads, and the litter rises with the water. It's like a 7-Eleven of debris. And yet the natural beauty is great. They've got plants I've only seen in my dreams. Azaleas taller than buildings. It's a primeval landscape. And you get a lot of yard art you don't get anywhere else. For a long time, this one yard had a pole with an alligator head on it.

Too bad you couldn't find a house on Old Trash Pile Road, like you were trying to.

Yeah, Don said we'd never get a credit card offer in the mail again if we lived on Old Trash Pile Road.

Henderson sounds as different from Atlanta as you can get. You say something in the book that you could never quite admit here: That you didn't like Atlanta. Why not?

I was a Georgia native and a newspaper person, and I always wanted to work in Atlanta. And there were parts of it I wouldn't trade for anything. But you've got to remember that I came to Atlanta from Iuka, Miss., which had the same number of people in the whole town as the AJC building had working in it. I didn't cope well with the traffic, the crowds. I kept forgetting and speaking to people in the elevators. My biggest disappointment was the politics. Mississippi is conservative, but Atlanta is neo-conservative. I found it to be the most radically right place I've ever lived, and I didn't feel like I fit in.

You more or less replaced Lewis Grizzard a few weeks after he died in 1994. You say that if you had hung onto all your negative mail, you could have published a book called "Grizzard Is Dead and I Don't Feel Too Good Myself." Was your reception here really that bad?

It was venomous. I went to buy two new dresses when I first moved to Atlanta because I wanted to look nice. I went to a small clothing store in Douglasville and asked the woman if she would take an out-of-town check. I told her I was about to start work in Atlanta. She asked where, and I told her, and she said, "You're not that girl from Mississippi who's going to try to take Lewis Grizzard's place, are you?" I didn't think she was going to sell me the dresses. At that moment, I thought I may have made a mistake. I think people wanted his column slot left empty. They certainly didn't want a woman or an Auburn graduate or a liberal. But I've pushed a lot of that out of my mind.

Your reception in Cajun country helped. Have they given you nicknames?

They call my husband One-Duck Don. They accuse him of going out hunting day after day and coming back with the same duck to show off at the bait shop. They've called me Boo, which is an endearment they have. They really embraced us when we bought a house and they could see we weren't just going to take alligator tours and go home.

What do your friends from Mississippi think of your Louisiana home?

When people visit from Iuka, which is dry, they want to ride through the drive-through daiquiri stands again and again.

Is there anything you miss about Atlanta?

I miss the traffic reports. I remember one about a fatal wreck. While they were investigating the scene, they found a body in the weeds. I think it was a murder victim. And I remember thinking I was glad to get out of there alive.