I love those stories.
My grandfather bought a 500a. Sugar Plantation in the late 1930's. He had been an Electrician and Union Organizer and when he got sick , he realized there was nothing to leave to support his family. (BTW, family legend has it he knew NOTHING about growing sugar.) They made a go of it, probably helped that WWII drove sugar prices up at just the right time.
Another family legend says that during the War my grandmother (who was raised as a rich plantation girl, but married an electrician/ farmer) would get up early to drive down Bayou Lafourche to the POW camp to bring German prisoners back to work the farm.
My father was the youngest and all his siblings were leaving to start their families. When they started finding oil in that bend of the river, my Grandmother was terrified of how sudden wealth would have corrupted my father. A good Catholic, she prayed Novenas every night that the WOULDN'T find Oil. Well it worked. 80 years later they have still found no oil under that property.
It was sold recently and even though I hadn't been there in 20 years, I miss it already.
it says "intense" on it
