I wrote this for Louisiana Life magazine a few years ago. Thought everyone might enjoy seeing it again.

“It’s gone!” That’s what town hall employee Jan Marshall told the fifty or so motorcyclists gathered around the abandoned building on the east side of LA 1 in Morganza, Louisiana that warm August morning in 2005. We had ridden to Morganza to see Melancon’s Café, the site of a pivotal scene in the iconic motorcycle classic “Easy Rider”.

Anyone who has seen the movie knows that is where Wyatt (Peter Fonda), Billy, (Dennis Hopper) and George (Jack Nicholson) flirted with a group of cute teenage girls under the scornful eye of a local deputy and a couple of townspeople. It was perhaps one of the most important scenes in the movie because it set the stage for the brutal deaths of all three characters later in the movie and helped to create…