pt at large

The Radio Kings

The Radio Kings at Sally O'Brien's in Somerville,MA
October 27, 2009

There are two things you can be assured of when The Radio Kings hit the bandstand. They’ll surprise you with the breadth of their catalogue and they will play music that begs you to get up and dance.

Last Tuesday’s gig at Sally O’Brien’s was a case in point. Brian Templeton and Company - Mike Dinallo/guitar, Andy Plaisted/drums, Dean Cassel/bass and Templeton wielding guitar and mouth harp, got into a first set groove that veered from swing to blues and ballads.

I’ve known The Radio Kings as a killer blues band that covers Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Slim Harpo and adds their own originals. Tonight they went country, with grit and finesse. When they play a song by Luke the Drifter, a pen name Hank Williams used early in his career, you know they're inquisitive, adventurous, and willing to stray from the well trodden path.

Perhaps incongruous to country-averse listeners or listeners of highly commercial playlists on country radio stations, this genre is a rich source of dance music. The handful of dancers tonight polished their moves in country swing, west coast swing, two step, and slow hold-her-tight ballads.
 
Templeton can croon and growl then pick up his harmonica and stake out the boundaries of the song. Dinallo, innovative and playful, takes up where Templeton leaves off. Veterans Plaisted and Cassel keep the train on the tracks with steady drum and bass beats.
 
The Radio Kings are right at home in Sally O’Brien’s in Somerville and Toad in Cambridge, two of the best funky neighborhood bars in the area. The regulars respect the music, and the great beer and ale on tap in both places is as rich and varied as the music performed there.
 
First set partial list:
“Hello Trouble” - Hank Williams
“Lovesick Blues” - Hank Williams
“Six More Miles” - Luke the Drifter, (early Hank Williams pen name)
“The Shelf “(Hard To Love Somebody When You Can’t Love Yourself} - Brian Templeton
“Run With The Blues” - Dave Clarke
“Can’t Go On Without You”-  Fats Domino
“Nervous Breakdown” -  Eddie Cochran

 

Key West: Treasures, Trinkets, and Trash

Gentle readers, that summarizes the southernmost town in the USA, Key West, Florida. Forget that it’s Hemingway’s adopted hometown. It is now a tiny retail carnival town aiming for the lowest common denominator to people who’ve come from afar to reduce fractions. This gloriously decadent island winks, blinks, and hardly ever blushes. It’s a ton of fun.

The epicenter of Key West is Duval Street, a 3/4 mile stretch where the sacred and profane spill into each other with worldly insouciance.

On a post-lunch perambulation, I'm hailed from a darkened doorway by a lovely black woman in a paperclip bikini who promises visions of tawny sugar plums if I venture inside. It is 3 PM. My sweet tooth notwithstanding, I decline with a smile and an air kiss, both returned, by the way.

Across the street, a high-end Coach store flashes a wanton display of plush leather and fashion accessories like a retail store gone wild.

Voluptuous mannequins with postage sized bikinis ogle passersby from tiny storefronts.

And shapely girls at The Bull are ogled by enthralled tourists.

T-shirt and knick-knack shops elevate tackiness to an art form and punctuate every block. The best T-shirt logo, at least the best one I can write into this public blog is “Key West is a drinking town with a fishing problem.”

Bars flourish in this town in which the thermometer has been stuck on 86 degrees for several months. Music blares from Sloppy Joe's, and Cowboy Bill’s Honky Tonk Saloon, and the The Bull and Whistle Bar, where clothing is reputedly optional on the roof deck.

Out of the obligation for journalistic verification, I climbed to the third floor and observed well-formed nakednesses at the bar and lying Cleopatra and Caesar style upon chaise lounges one sunny afternoon. Key West is definitely laid back.


St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the oldest in the Florida diocese, its whitewashed exterior shimmering brilliantly in the afternoon sun, seems to tolerate the frivolity. Sooner or later, penitents may enter to make amends.

An evening stroll down Duval Street is short on nuance and long on neon. Whether you’re straight, gay, or somewhere in between, there’s a seat at some bar for you. Downstairs at The Bull and Whistle Bar, it could be all in the same place. Music pours out of bars and spills into the street, a not too subtle siren call enticing you inside. Not that most of us need much of an invitation.

Parade is the default mode for Duval Street. On any given night, straight piped earsplitting Harleys, bicycle rickshaws, tiny electric glorified golf carts masquerading as mini cars, and ancient convertibles with babes of all persuasions throwing trinkets advertising girlie bars and pole dancing establishments cruise up and down.

This is a Noah’s Ark kind of town. Observe long enough and you’ll see all the species of the known earth: tourists, locals, all manner of certifiable characters, street people, teens with the ubiquitous skate board, shills in front of strip clubs, and very few kids under twelve.

One or two humongous cruise ships are usually docked here. I wonder what the folks from Iowa wearing shorts, white socks and walking shoes make of all this. It’s either Gomorrah or Eden with a guilty conscience. I imagine it might be like walking around a zoo with no bars between the visitors and wild creatures.

Say one thing about Margaritaville, everyone seems to get along. My first night in town, the captain brought me to Mallory Square, THE place to be at sunset in Key West. The seaside bar at Ocean Key Resort and Spa is jammed with patrons, their eyes on the horizon and hands cupping beverages. Great music from a live band hones the edge of the anticipated sunset.

“Have a beer!” A jovial middle-aged couple with enough beers on their table to start a game of checkers offers me a cold one. The sun sets, a million pixels pulse from scores of cameras. And the band plays on.

By the wee hours, Duval keeps humming with the hardiest partiers. By daylight, the whole spectacle begins anew. It never gets old in Key West. More than a few pilgrims have declared this paradise and never left

In case you wonder, there are museums, art galleries and quaint architecture to be seen in Key West. You just have to get Duval Street out of your system first.

Photos by P. Tamburello.

Mallory Square photo courtesy of http://www.sunsetcelebration.org/

The Bucking Toilet: En route to Key West

October 18, 2009

When’s the last time your toilet acted like a bucking bronco?  Leaving aside that time you hoisted way too many margaritas, it would be the last time you were attempting to sit on the throne as it was rolling through the swells in the ocean. Like the bronco, the waves are unpredictable. You immediately grasp the reason the “head” in a sailboat is so small.

With no reins to hold onto, you get leverage with your feet against the wall in front of you to keep from pitching forward in your yawing, rocking, rolling, little bathroom on Neptune’s ceiling, then stabilze yourself laterally by pushing against the walls with your arms while doing your level best to ease the release button on one or both of your nether sphincters. 

Your adventure has just begun, matey. There’s the matter of filling and flushing the little apparatus. Since, aside from the accomplished captain,  I am the only crew on this beautifully maintained Valiant 37  blue water sailing vessel, I live in fear that I will, in a careless or flung-around moment, apply too much pressure and break the little intake lever under the pump in/out handle. It does not require a nautical engineer to figure the consequences.

There are many no-no’s aboard a sailboat. Over my ration of grog on the second night out, I confessed my hyper level of concern while operating the ingenious contraption.

Tangle the jib lines? Forgivable - as long as you can untangle them before they’re needed next. Leave a fender over the side after you’ve exited the dock? An embarrassment to the captain, who scoffs at passing boats who’ve been negligent, but tolerates it since I’m on board for only two weeks and will learn fast. Screw up the propane stove? Not good. But, there are always canned goods. 

Render the head inoperable? As the captain, a college buddy who decided two years ago to chuck it all, buy this classic-design sailboat and become a ‘live aboard,’ said, ”That is a walk the plank offense.”

Presently in Marathon Key, 200 miles from where we began six days ago in Fort Pierce, FL, we are about 40 miles from our destination, Key West, FL. The plank has remained stowed.

 

Life at Five Knots: Fort Pierce to Key West, FL

Life at Five Knots:
A 240 nautical mile cruise from Fort Pierce, FL to Key West
October 13, 2009

Sailboats go nowhere fast. The first few days on a twelve-day cruise require serious adjustment to Life As We Know It.

Compared to highway speed of 65 mph, five miles an hour is tedious. It feels like the equivalent of being stuck behind an eighteen wheeler on a winding narrow road with no way to pass - for hours at a time. 

Out of Port Everglades at 7 AM on the second day of a leisurely trip down to Key West, the impressive skyline of Maimi Beach appears on the horizon by late morning. An hour later, still there. Two hours later, still there, but coming into focus. By the time we’ve put the skyline on the beam then the quarter then our stern, the sun is headed for its late afternoon tea time.

Human nature adapts. Adjustments must be made. Sailing is the equivalent of the slow food movement applied to nautical travel. One must learn to embrace it, find the rationale for being out here where nothing happens in a hurry. 

But, there's a world of change going on around me. Wind subtlely changes direction. Sails need to be adjusted to compensate. Waves have different periods and shapes that change the way you steer over them. Against all odds way offshore, the boat that appears as a dot on the horizon an hour ago is on a collision course with your boat. You change course.

My college buddy Jeff, who chucked it all in Boston, bought "Skate,"  a  37-foot Valiant blue water sloop and is living his dream sailing the east coast of Florida and the Bahamas, invited me on a cruise to Key West.  Tonight, we’re  headed for No Name Harbor at the southern end of Key Biscayne.

To our consternation, a lobsterman has dropped a few thousand traps on the waypoints we’re traveling from nautical buoy to buoy. By late afternoon, the sun’s glare makes it nearly impossible to see them. Abrupt changes in course ensue as the skipper or I spot one on the bow twenty yards away.

Of course the wind is coming from the direction we are sailing. We are motorsailing with the main sail keeping us steady in the seaway and giving us a little extra power. Running over a lobster buoy and the lines to the traps under it could foul the propeller, stop us in our tracks, and require a dive overboard to untangle. Dangerous.

After a few days, impetuosity declines. The urge to ‘step on it’ dissipates. I actually start enjoying the pace. I begin monitoring the wind and sails. I don’t panic when the buoy that is supposed to be over there is over here.

Living with suspended judgement becomes an art form as I scour the charts to identify that mystery buoy and find the one I want. If danger becomes imminent, or uncertainty could result in disaster, we change course based on our best dead reckoning of where we’ve been and where we want to go. It dawns on me that plodding along at five miles an hour doesn’t guarantee that we can’t get into trouble. Helps with the concentration.

I begin to understand the zen of sailing. Pay attention. Breathe. Notice things.

It’s taken time but it’s ok with me that a forty mile trip will take eight hours. I let go of the niggling fact that it would take me one hour, in lousy traffic, to achieve that mileage in my trusty automobile.  Compared to this thoroughbred blue water Valiant 37, my car operates at the speed of light.

That little gyroscope in my body has started to spin more slowly. My multi-tasking mentality  is still present but recalibrated to boat speed, Sails fill, water whooshes by the hull, lunch rolls off the little table in the cockpit when we slice through a string of higher waves.

I begin to hear the boat talk to me. Chitchat like the slap of halyards against the mast or sails, the deep throated whisper of the wind slipping over the sails, the humming vibration of the line tethered to the dinghy behind the boat, the clatter of winches ratcheting as I tension the jib sheets.

When the edges around daily life soften, I realize I’ve settled into a new dimension, a five mile an hour dimension. My entire life is encapsulated in a thirty seven foot footprint of bed, bath, dining, working, relaxing…and just being. Life has expanded and collapsed at the same time.

Some days are glorious, sunshine in the tropics glorious. Other days are miserable. Rain, choppy seas,  wind “on the nose,” and “Skate” bucking through it.

Living life at five miles an hour is many things. Boring is not one of them.

 

The skipper and live-aboard sailor, my college buddy Jeff
 
  
Once Miami appears on the horizon, it takes hours to put it astern.
 
 
Early morning, squall approaches, get ready to batten the hatches... evening, get ready for a steak and a beer.
 

Blue Plate Café: Uptown New Orleans From Scratch

Blue Plate Cafe
1330 Prytania St., (Uptown)
(504) 309-9500
Mon Fri 8 am -11 am Sat 8 am - 2pm
 
 
Walk into the Blue Plate Café on a warm New Orleans summer morning and the first thing you get is the idea someone put a lot of love into putting this place together. My companion and I had hopped on the St. Charles Street trolley from Canal Street on the advice of a local who lives nearby. “This is a neighborhood secret,” he said. “We won’t be able to find a seat when it’s discovered.”
 
Two minutes from the streetcar stop, the colorful exterior comes into view. Inside, it appears we’re going to dine in an artist’s studio. Sunshine splashes in from two plate glass windows facing Prytania Street giving the place an airy appearance and highlighting the décor.
 
Look down. Those glass and blue tile inlaid tables were made by the owner. Walls are different colors, and that stained glass door that hangs on the far wall? Made by the same hands that’ll be making our breakfasts. The place has sass. Need I say New Orleans?
 
Everything here is made from scratch.  I opt for the scrambled eggs over crawfish cakes and quartered baby potatoes. My companion goes for the shrimp with creamy grits. The food is served on handcrafted plates. And tastes great. Other possibilities include pumpkin pancakes, pain perdu, five eye opening omelets; various permutations of eggs, ham, grits, biscuits; three dessert items - pecan pie, Blue’s Shortbread and Brownie a la mode; and a terrific Kids Breakfast (everything from egg, bacon. toast; to PB and Jam; chicken tenders; or grilled cheese with fries or fruit for $4.50).
 
The lunch menu includes soups, salads, burgers, and a great selection of “Blue Plates” and “Two Fister” sandwiches. Vegetarians and Vegans can eat here. The whole menu tops out at $12.95.
 
An upper split level houses the bar, thermoses, table supplies, and an inlaid tile bar.  Guess who made that. I peek into the kitchen to comment on our fine breakfast. Locks of her blonde hair stick to the owner/chef's damp forehead.
 
She’s all business, shuffling orders with another line cook, and doesn’t seem to want to talk. Before I turn to tiptoe out, I mention how I loved the countertops and hand made door as well as the delicious food. She pauses. Her face softens and she smiles.

 The Blue Plate Café opened two years before Katrina, took a year to recover and clean up the mess, and has kept open ever since. You can clear the debris with brooms and shovels. Heartache is another matter. It took guts to keep on keeping on. Compliments from appreciative customers help. 

 

 

LSU: Hold That Tiger

Louisiana bleeds purple and gold. From September to bowl season, the collective psyches of the citizens of  Louisiana appear to live and die with the fortunes of the LSU football team.

In my twelve day road trip from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Lake Charles and back, nearly every gas station, market, restaurant, bar and grill pledged allegiance to the LSU Fighting Tigers. Caps, mugs, inflatable tigers, pennants, and t-shirts dangled from hooks, hung on walls, and surrounded cash registers.

While using the Internet connection in the Lafayette, Louisiana, Days Inn lounge I was startled to hear a whoop from the office around the corner. A moment later, Miss Sondra, the usually composed desk manager, apologized for the outburst when she realized I was present. It wasn’t embarrassment that flushed her face. The game was on the line against Georgia. If a  sixty mile shout from Lafayette to Baton Rouge would help, Ms Sondra was gonna shout.

Her loyalty is permanent. She informed me of the large purple and gold tiger tattoo over her right sho ulder blade (which I didn’t ask to see to satisfy journalistic curiosity).

During lunch at Poor Boy Lloyd’s in Baton Rouge three days later, the three plasma TV screens played endless loops of the game’s final moments as Louisiana State University defeated Georgia 20-13. 

The LSU campus in Baton Rouge

The Louisiana State University football stadium in Baton Rouge is on the scale of a Mayan Temple. Even considering the sprawl of the 650-acre, 250 building leafy campus on the banks of the Mississippi River, its footprint is monumental.

Mike is a major attraction. He is the sixth tiger to reside here since 1936.

 The only thing the fans left home was Mike VI, a two-year-old 300-pound Siberian-Bengal tiger who lives in mini-savannah captivity in the shadow of Tiger Stadium across the street. When full grown he’ll close in on 700 pounds. During this reporter’s trip to the campus, a continual stream of intergenerational admirers visited Mike.

Mike's penthouse across the street from Tiger Stadium

Speaking of streams, while two undergraduates and I were admiring him from one of the viewing arches that surround his compound, Mike turned his tail to us and puckered up a certain sphincter. An arch of fine golden droplets sparkled in the late afternoon sun and covered us with Mikey-ness. Perhaps  this is Mike's way of inducting Yankees into the Tiger fold.

 

To quote an LSU web site, "Eight nights a year, Tiger Stadium becomes the fifth largest city in the state of Louisiana as over 92,000 fans pack the cathedral of college football to watch the Tigers play.” It is the sixth largest college stadium in the country.

Immense and meant to impress by sheer weight of concrete and steel, cathedral would be the appropriate term.

Since 2000, the Tigers have a record of 49-7 at home. Visiting teams think of Tiger Stadium as ‘Death Valley.” Tickets for Saturday’s game against Florida are being scalped for one grand apiece.

Most ticket holders would rather live on close rations for a week than give in to the temptation to sell.This Saturday, number 4 ranked LSU faces number 2 ranked Florida. It’s a safe bet that every one of the 21,000 undergraduates and tens of thousands of boosters will pack Tiger Stadium.

Game night at Tiger Stadium

One alumnus informed me that LSU has a reputation as the biggest college tailgate community in the country. Twenty thousand, with or without their tailgates in tow, traveled to the game against Washington in Seattle in September. Is the word fan derived from the word fanatic?

Photos, except night shot of Tiger Stadiium above,  by Paul Tamburello

From cradle to dance hall in Southwest Louisiana

 
When’s the last time you saw six-year-old kids on the dance floor? Or little girls or boys being whirled around the dance floor in their daddy or mommy’s arms?
 
If you lived in Louisiana that would have been last Friday or Saturday night at Randol’s in Lafayette or Saturday afternoon at The Coffee Break in Breaux Bridge.
 
Music and dancing is a huge way of life in southwest Louisiana. Who needs Arthur Murray when you can learn from everybody in the dance hall?
 
Friday night, a young brother and sister alternated sitting in the dining room with their parents and grandparents and skipping hand in hand to the dance hall in the next room.
 

The Cajun band Jambalaya (which played in the Lowell, MA Festival a month ago) kicked out one joyous song after another, all in Cajun French. Some kids sat on one of the wooden benches that surround the hall, visible through the glass partition between the dance hall and the dining room, and watched the adults styling to the music.

A shy blonde eight-year-old girl was busy taking digital photos of every couple that passed by - until her grandfather leaned over, took the camera out of her hands, and led her around the floor in a waltz.

On Saturday night, a pair of six and seven year olds stole the show. Got right out there and did their version of waltzing and two stepping. Adults applauded the two kids as if they were contestants on Dancing With The Stars. They beamed with the attention.
 
Earlier that day at The Coffee Break, the children who came to the Pont Breaux Jam, the weekly Saturday 11 AM to 2 PM celebration of Cajun music, were treated royally. While little brother was being danced around to the Cajun music by his dad, little sister was getting an impromptu waltz lesson by one of the men who’d come in from the Café des Amis.
 
Maybe that explains why places like Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, Angelle’s Whiskey River Dance Hall, McGee’s Landing, and Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf, all in Henderson, and many more places throughout the parishes of southwest Louisiana, are so popular.
 
If there’s a zydeco or Cajun band on the stage, you can bet there’ll be a roomful of men and women working up a lather two-stepping, waltzing, and slow dancing for hours at a time.
 
Music and dance are the glue that holds towns together all over southwest Louisiana. Some day, these little shavers will grow up to be the adults teaching their own kids to dance at Randol’s or The Pont Breaux Jam, or a facsimile thereof. 

Floyd LeBlanc: A Cajun Original

Practically all the regulars who come into The Coffee Break at noon in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, know Floyd LeBlanc. A handful of them who’ve been dancing since 8 AM at the Café des Amis drift in here to listen to more Cajun music. Floyd doesn’t miss much when it comes to fun. He was dancing with as many women as he could fit on his dance card at the café.

He certainly didn’t miss a chance to dance with my pretty traveling companion. That’s when he found out we were out of towners.

“I hear you’re from Boston. Ask me anything about Breaux Bridge you want”, he says and shakes my hand with a solid grip.

“Well, let’s start with the Café des Amis. How long has that place been having dances on Saturday mornings? “

“I’ve been coming here for around 12 years since they began the Saturday dance”, Floyd says. “You know, the place used to be a funeral parlor in the early 1900s. They made caskets on the second floor. Did you see the hand crank rig overhead when you walked into the café? That’s how they got the caskets down from the second floor. Did you see the church across the street? The caskets went from there to the church for burial in the cemetery next to the church. Pretty efficient setup. “

Floyd’s a natural born story teller, After listening for fifteen minutes I could tell that there are three things that Floyd appears to love, dancing, women, and living by his wits. He’s been married 55 years to his second wife. He’s flirtatious, rambunctious and, if the stories he tells me are true, a bit of a rascal.

“I was born in Breaux Bridge and raised in Henderson Levee”, he says, and begins to tell stories. Life was hardscrabble when Floyd got out of the Air Force as a twenty year old. No ready resources, no problem. Floyd began running his own card game and playing pool for money. I get the impression he could size up a mark in a few seconds. Beneath his easy going smile is a man completely aware of his surroundings.

In his gambling days, I believe Floyd would have been capable of beating you into the ground if that was the best way he saw to recoup his money, or get the hell out of a place fast, if the odds of getting it were too long. The fact that he’s 83 years old doesn’t mean this is any less true. He’s about 5’9” tall, maybe 160 pounds and hard as nails. His weathered face has the map of Acadiana etched into it.

Like many men from here, Floyd can read the Atchafalaya Swamp in Henderson like a book. “I bought me a shotgun with my winnings and got into the duck business”, he says.  “I carved a duck call out of wood, set up a blind about a quarter of a mile into the swamp right where Whiskey River Landing is now. I’d call in the birds from my duck blind, shoot them down and row out in my pirogue to get them. People in their cars on the levee used binoculars to see how many ducks I shot. I sold the ducks for $1.50 each.”  His eyes twinkle as he talks and reads my reactions.

Supply and demand doesn’t depend exclusively on money. Floyd had a constant supply of ducks. “I bartered for gas, meat, and occasionally for favors from women," he says with a sly grin, leaving me to guess exactly what that barter worked out.

After Sunday mass in Breaux Bridge, Floyd says he stationed himself at a gas station across the street. Two fingers from a passing car, he handed over two ducks from his morning hunt. Four fingers four ducks, and so on, at $1.50 each.

In time Floyd got a steady job, worked on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for 13 years. For 21 years after that he signed on with the city of Lafayette, was in charge of maintenance and the town’s electricity.

“I’ve been gone from there for 21 years and the lights are still on, Either I did a good job or they didn’t need me,” he says with another impish grin.

About twenty men and women in the Coffee Break’s next room are playing fiddles, guitars, and triangles and singing traditional Cajun music and here I am listening to the life and times of a Cajun original. I’m not leaving till Floyd gets tired of talking.

“I had my first dance when I was 12 years old, “ he says. “Went to a dance hall in Henderson and watched from a balcony on the second floor. I saw an older woman who looked good and asked her to dance. She said ‘Do you smoke?’ and I said why. ‘Give me a cigarette and I’ll dance with you’, she said.

Floyd pauses a moment. “I said, ‘you wait right here and don’t move.’ I got a cigarette and got my dance with that older woman. (Pause). She was 14.” We both laugh.

Floyd’s father spoke French, his mother French and English.  He went to school when he was five. If he spoke French in school, he got a whipping.

Listen carefully and you’ll still hear thick Creole Cajun spoken around here. It’s certainly kept alive by the songs the players in the next room have been singing all morning and by one woman who sang lyrics to me as we danced in the café this morning.

Floyd married his first wife before he entered the Air Force. He settled in with her in a house next to his mother in law. “She was a bitch,” he says.

One day I told my wife we need to move. She said no. I took off my wedding ring (here he begins to mimic removing his ring) threw it in the wastebasket and said I’m gone. And he was.

When it comes to cards and pool, Floyd calculates the odds. When it comes to women, right from the age of 12, he made his own odds. Floyd first saw the woman who became his second wife at the Catholic church service in Breaux Bridge.

“She was very pretty. I saw her again at a social event and asked who she was and where she lived. I asked a friend to drive me to her house. She was sitting on the porch with her family and walked out to see me in the car. That was it. We’ve been married 55 years.”

The entrepreneurial spirit spreads throughout his family. Floyd helps his daughter run a bed and breakfast place in town, gets on a tractor and mows the lawns of the two houses his son-in-law built nearby.

Floyd’s one of those people who are good at whatever they take on. “I took up golf when I was thirty-seven,” he says. “Been shooting my age since I was 75.”

The jam session is winding down around 1 pm. “Gotta go see the boss,” Floyd says. I don’t know whether that’s an honorary title or whether there’s a power sharing arrangement in the LeBlanc household but I do know that there haven't been many dull moments in Floyd's life.

New Orleans: Donna's Bar and Grill

New Orleans is famous for neighborhood bars where you can hear great music played by local musicians on a postage-sized stage. Some of these places serve unbelievably good food from tiny kitchens. Some people call them dive bars. I call them major attractions.

Drove to Frenchman Street in Faubourg-Marigny  in search of said attractions. Nothing doing for us in Snug Harbor, or The Blue Nile, or Dba's. Not the kind of music to inspire a trip to the dance floor. Might as well be looking for the Lost City of Cibola.

On the way to Frenchman Street, I had happened to look down St. Anne Street to North Rampart several blocks away and saw the dazzling site of the Louis Armstrong Arch.

The arch may not look like much in broad daylight but at night its illumination is as bright as Satchmo’s smile. And a terrific photo opportunity. My travel companion, a Louisiana native who knows the turf, directs me to North Rampart Street so I can salvage the night with some great photos.

 I stand on North Rampart Street’s neutral ground to get a good shot of the arch. Behind me, I hear strains of some funky blues. Must be from a nearby apartment. Whoa! It’s coming from that dimly lit building across the street. Little sign over the doorway  - Donna’s Bar and Grill. Peer in. Live band! Blues! Dance music!

Hustle across the street waving wildly. “Lock the car! We found our dive bar!” I rave.

The next hour and a half approximates a little slice of heaven on earth. Our saxophone savior, Les Getrex and his trio of electric piano, bass, and drums rocks us in the arms of Gabriel with ultra danceable rhythm & blues, swing, and down ‘n dirty blues. Condensation drips down our bottles of cold Dixie beer. No point in wasting time sitting down while St. Les is blowing.

Between songs, Les starts a Q and A with the patrons, “Where y'all from?” The answers astonish. Along with the two twenty-something girls who came from the neighborhood, the answers were Milan, Kentucky, Phoenix, Hawaii, Philly/Atlanta/LA, and Boston. We aren’t the only pilgrims to have found this place.

There’s more. Every Monday night, chef/owner Charlie Sims puts out a table of free red beans and rice and BBQ chicken after the first break. This happens to be Monday night. You’ve heard the expression “died and gone to heaven.” That would apply to us.

Charlie and his wife Donna have owned the place for 17 years. “After a while you want to give something back, “ Charlie says when I see him peering out of a pass through window into the kitchen. “I’ve been doing the Monday night feed for the past 12 years.”

Donna’s went dark for a few weeks recently when 74 year old Charlie was hospitalized with a stomach ailment. The bar re-opened Thursday through Monday when his son stepped in to help keep the doors open. Charlie returned recently to run the business and keep putting out the Monday night dinner.

Donna’s Bar and Grill turns out to have a storied past. I’m not especially religious, but for a place with this much soul I’m praying Charlie, and Donna, stay healthy for a good long time.

Chef/owner Charlie Sims

Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, City-Wide Garage Sale

The biggest draw on a Saturday morning in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana is the zydeco dance from 8 AM to noon at the Café des Amis.

That is unless you happen to drive over there on the day of the annual Breaux Bridge Citywide Garage Sale.  To say this is a popular event is understatement in the extreme.

Bargain hunters, browsers, and people looking for a good morning’s worth of entertainment piled into town from every town within fifty miles of Lafayette parish.   

No wonder. Garage sales, yard sales, neighborhood sales, and parking lot sales were happening on every street leading into Breaux Bridge and peppered in areas around the entire city.

Merchants along Main Street and Bridge Streets set up merchandise on tables on the sidewalks in front of their stores. Oh yes, and an flea market with more than 40 vendors flourished in Veteran’s Park at the intersection of Berard Street and Martin Streets.

Food? This is Louisiana, honey. Nothing, including funerals, happens in Louisiana without food. We’re talking red beans and rice, BBQ pork, po-boys, funnel cake, and home made lemonade to go along with all American burgers, dogs, and snow cones.

The sidewalks are full of friendly chatter. A woman passing a couple having lunch at a table squeezed onto the sidewalk outside the Chez Jacqueline Bar and Restaurant stops in her tracks, leans over and asks the name of the food on a diner’s plate, “That’s cous cous, Charlene!” she says to her fellow shopper. “I’ve heard of it and never seen it!”

This kind of easy camaraderie bubbles along all over town. The teenage girl in front of Glo’s Fashions sells chess pies that her grand mama, who happens to own the store, made for the sale, and shyly tells me the ingredients. People who've never met exchange opinions about sale items arranged on the sidewalks.

Breaux Bridge has morphed into a village shopping mall. You could probably walk up to a resident’s house and bargain for the rocker on the front porch. On sale are antiques, collectibles, lamps furniture, dishes, embroidery, plants, glassware, purses, bows, pottery, antique tools, and anything no longer held hostage in someone’s attic, cellar, or garage.

The best thing about this citywide garage doesn’t cost a cent. It’s the feel of an America in less complicated, less polarized times.

The range of  political views held by the people walking around town might be narrow but it's there. Probably lots of sons, daughters, fathers or mothers from this parish are serving their country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The sunshine and massive array of merchandise for sale has neutralized the sharp edges of politics. For this one morning in America, the differences of opinion are secondary to finding a good deal or an item you just found out you couldn't live without . Maybe we ought to consider having a nation wide garage sale.

The Central Grocery: New Orleans Home of the Muffuletta

Central Grocery
923 Decatur St
New Orleans, LA 70116
Right across the street from the French Market

The Central Market is home to the famous muffaletta, a super sized round loaf of Italian bread stuffed (operative word) with salami, provolone, capicola and a briny olive salad (tons of olives and pickled cauliflower).
   
Sicilian immigrants began arriving en masse in New Orleans around the time civil society on that island became tenuous. Like other immigrants, they came in for their share of discrimination. And like other immigrants, they organized social clubs and many of them lived in run down apartments in the French Quarter.

One Sicilian entrepreneur opened The Central Grocery on the perimeter of the French Quarter in 1906. Hearty, filling, and with the smell and taste of the old country, the muffalettas he made became a staple of workmen.  Before long, they became popular with a wider community.

If you were blindfolded and led into the grocery store, you'd swear you walked into an Italian deli. The aroma of cheeses, meats, and olives are as thick as the humid air outside on an August afternoon.

In order to get to the muffalettas, you have to walk a gauntlet through a gauntlet of boxes, jars, and cans of as many kinds of mushrooms, olives, tomatoes, pasta, sardines and tuna fish, capers, hot sauce, hotter sauce, and spices from around the world.

 
If you're lucky, you'll find a vacant stool at one of several long wooden countertops. This being New Orleans, you will definitely start talking to the local of tourist at your elbow while you try to open your mouth wide enough to take a bite out of the muffaletta, which is cut into quarters. I never saw anyone knock down more than half, an entire stuffed loaf is out of the question.

 

Locals have their favorite places to eat everything: po boys, muffalettas, fried chicken or fish, shrimp etouffees… the list goes on.

"We're just local yokels," one of the three women said to me as they dug into their lunches. "We like the muffalettas better here than at the Napoleon House," said another.

That's when I found out that some establishments, like The Napoleon House, serve muffalettas hot.

"Cold is better," I'm advised by the third woman. "There's enough olive oil on one of these to preserve it for 12 hours. Don't try to take one on the plane with you," she says, "everyone will be wanting to know what smells so good."

Later in the week, my traveling companion and I head to The Napoleon House for dinner. I'd never tell my local friends, but I liked the hot version better.

Everything in the sandwich got married together in the heating process and elevated the tastes of all those salty, spicy, tangy ingredients…and of course, was dripping down my arm by the time I finished it, just like a good Louisiana sandwich should.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

A Pimm's cup is mighty refreshing complement to a hot muffaletta at The Napolean House in the French Quarter at 500 Chartres Street.
 

The Napolean House inside - outside in atrium setting

Central Grocery: New Orleans Home of the Muffaletta

Central Grocery
923 Decatur St
New Orleans, LA 70116
Right across the street from the French Market

The Central Market is home to the famous muffaletta, a super sized round loaf of Italian bread stuffed (operative word) with salami, provolone, capicola and a briny olive salad (tons of olives and pickled cauliflower).
   
Sicilian immigrants began arriving en masse in New Orleans around the time civil society on that island became tenuous. Like other immigrants, they came in for their share of discrimination. And like other immigrants, they organized social clubs and many of them lived in run down apartments in the French Quarter.

One Sicilian entrepreneur opened The Central Grocery on the perimeter of the French Quarter in 1906. Hearty, filling, and with the smell and taste of the old country, the muffalettas he made became a staple of workmen.  Before long, they became popular with a wider community.

If you were blindfolded and led into the grocery store, you'd swear you walked into an Italian deli. The aroma of cheeses, meats, and olives are as thick as the humid air outside on an August afternoon.

In order to get to the muffalettas, you have to walk a gauntlet through a gauntlet of boxes, jars, and cans of as many kinds of mushrooms, olives, tomatoes, pasta, sardines and tuna fish, capers, hot sauce, hotter sauce, and spices from around the world.

 
If you're lucky, you'll find a vacant stool at one of several long wooden countertops. This being New Orleans, you will definitely start talking to the local of tourist at your elbow while you try to open your mouth wide enough to take a bite out of the muffaletta, which is cut into quarters. I never saw anyone knock down more than half, an entire stuffed loaf is out of the question.

 

Locals have their favorite places to eat everything: po boys, muffalettas, fried chicken or fish, shrimp etouffees… the list goes on.

"We're just local yokels," one of the three women said to me as they dug into their lunches. "We like the muffalettas better here than at the Napoleon House," said another.

That's when I found out that some establishments, like The Napoleon House, serve muffalettas hot.

"Cold is better," I'm advised by the third woman. "There's enough olive oil on one of these to preserve it for 12 hours. Don't try to take one on the plane with you," she says, "everyone will be wanting to know what smells so good."

Later in the week, my traveling companion and I head to The Napoleon House for dinner. I'd never tell my local friends, but I liked the hot version better.

Everything in the sandwich got married together in the heating process and elevated the tastes of all those salty, spicy, tangy ingredients…and of course, was dripping down my arm by the time I finished it, just like a good Louisiana sandwich should.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

A Pimm's cup is mighty refreshing complement to a hot muffaletta at The Napolean House in the French Quarter at 500 Chartres Street.
 

The Napolean House inside - outside in atrium setting

New Orleans: Music for the Soul

Like the Mississippi River, music has a profound effect on New Orleans. Walk far enough through the various neighborhoods of the city and you’ll hear just about every kind of music. Take an evening stroll down Royal Street or Chartres Street and the streets crossing between and you’ll hear violinists, accordion players, guitarists, and someone playing a reed or brass instrument.

Walk down Bourbon Street and you’ll hear country, R&B, rock and roll, and Top 40 at decibel levels that you feel in your rib cage. There’s a good chance you’ll see a ragamuffin brass band playing for tips at the corner of Bourbon and Canal Street. Bourbon Street is delightfully and shamelessly vulgar. We’ll leave that for another story.

Dive bars abound. Good ones. Probably hundreds of ‘em. Street buskers like Brother Hank Bartholomew and blind Grandpa Elliot hang out around places like the Café du Monde.

Grandpa Elliot, harmonica legend in New Orleans

Grandpa Eliot plays for money and pride. Brother Hank for Jesus. One minute he’s blowing some very funky gospel tinged trumpet and the next he’s sounding somewhere between Al Green and Marvin Gaye.

After enjoying Brother Hank’s performance just beyond the edge of the café’s outdoor patio, pt at large walked over to drop some green into the man’s hat - and was offered a CD to take home as a memento. Hank says the proceeds of his work go to his church, and youth and educational programs. I believed him and parted with $20 on the spot.

Brother Hank’s quiz about whether I believed in Jesus was from the heart, not an act of a street hustler. My response satisfied him that I didn’t need saving then and there. I can work on it as I play his CD when I’m on the road to Lafayette.

New Orleans: Died and Beignet-d to Heaven

Café du Monde
800 Decatur Street
New Orleans, LA 70116

The Original Cafe Du Monde Coffee Stand was established in 1862 in the New Orleans French Market. The Cafe is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It closes only on Christmas Day and on the day an occasional Hurricane passes too close to New Orleans.
The Original Cafe Du Monde is a traditional coffee shop. Its menu consists of dark roasted Coffee and Chicory, Beignets, White and Chocolate Milk, and fresh squeezed Orange Juice. The coffee is served Black or Au Lait. Au Lait means that it is mixed half and half with hot milk. Beignets are square French -style doughnuts, lavishly covered with powdered sugar. In 1988 Iced Coffee was introduced to the cafe. Soft drinks also made their debut that year. (from Cafe web site)

Ask anyone who’s been to New Orleans about food to try when you visit New Orleans and right up there with po’ boys, muffulattas, gumbo, and crawfish cakes will be a beignet from the Café du Monde.

As with the above exotic items it helps if you have no idea what to expect and you’re willing to try them because that’s one of the reasons you packed your bag and headed to this version of Paris in America.

A rare slack late afternoon moment...

So you find the café’s green and white striped awnings at the edge of the French Quarter and have a seat in the cavernous, covered outdoor patio - the ubiquitous fans whirring high overhead, tourists and locals chattering away inside, and the rest of the world parading down Decatur Street outside, your own little everyday Mardi Gras Parade.

Soon, a waitress swoops over to your French bistro table with the retro green vinyl seats and chrome tubular frame, and sets down a little plate with three delicate looking square pieces of slightly browned fried dough covered with a mountain of confectioner’s sugar. They’re puffy, delicate looking, and you still have no idea what’s in store for you.

At the advice of your travel companion, a Louisiana native, you drape a large napkin over your lap before picking one off the plate.

First surprise, they’re warm! Just the right heft between a cloud and a doughnut. Open mouth, bite off a corner. Notice a cascade of powdered sugar dropping to the table and onto your lap. Feel your taste buds do a jig and holler “Hey, we’ve never tasted anything as softly tender warmly sweet airly-textured - ever!”

Your companion laughs. Says you look like one of those milk commercials, a big white mustache over your top lip. 

Well. The rest of the natural world recedes for the next five minutes as you devour, in slow chewy mouthfuls, these warm little nuggets. By the time you’re done you’re not sure whether you should go to confession or a Laundromat. 

White powder is all over your face and fingers. You’re aware you’ve had a peak food experience that borders on rapture. Oh yes, somewhere between bites you’ve sipped a cup of New Orleans famous cafe au lait but somehow it doesn’t register.

As you get up to leave, you notice that underneath nearly every one of the fifty little white composite round table tops is a dusting of confectioner’s sugar. You visit the rest room to hose down your face and hands .

The remnants of the taste of those beignets has vanished. The memory, ahhh, that’s another story.