Café des Amis
Bridge Street
Breaux Bridge, LA
Way early in the morning
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Café des Amis is the closest I’ve ever come to zydeco heaven on earth. There’s a certain symmetry to the fact that the café on Bridge Street was a funeral home in one of its previous incarnations. Every Saturday morning from 8 AM till 12 noon, a fabulous zydeco band shows up and conducts what must be described as an experience that borders on the religious.
Today’s deacon is accordion royalty Leroy Thomas, and his acolytes, The Zydeco Road Runners, on washboard, bass and lead guitars, and drums, are supplying the rapture. Their altar is an eight-foot wide, four inch high ledge inches from the storefront’s plate glass window.
Six other days of the week, the café is a sleepy dog, mellow kind of place. A well-worn wood bar is to the right, a bunch of tables and chairs on the left and an eclectic assortment of décor hangs on the walls in glorious disarray. Overhead fans whir, an AC unit does its best to wring out the humidity that covers the land in summer like a wet blanket.
Oh, and that contraption hanging from the ceiling is what used to lower the coffins from the second floor where they were constructed down to the first floor where they became occupied then hauled to the church across the street. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
On Saturday mornings the damndest transformation takes place. Some of the tables are pushed to the back of the room and what appears is a Cajun clown car kind of dance floor from which astonishing numbers of couples exit after every dance.
Have you ever waited for an elevator and not even thought about trying to fit inside when the door opens because the wall of people inside looks impermeable? That’s what the dance floor looks like if you wait to wade in more than thirty seconds after Leroy Thomas begins to play. The floor gets packed. Everyone except the tourists watching from the breakfast tables wants to dance.
My partner and I squeeze into the syncopated chaos. To this day, I don’t understand the aerodynamics of how we all fit in there. I suppose people didn’t grasp how Jesus fed the multitudes with only five loaves of barley and two fish, but were impressed with the result. We are inches away from other couples, grinning, winking, and dancing without fear of causing injury or hard feelings to others. This may not be a miracle of biblical proportion, but still, I'm impressed.
This is actually my favorite part of the morning, that and the fact that every single woman I ask to dance says yes …and they’re all fabulous, even the ones who came from someplace where they thought zydeco meant some kind of southern hot sauce. They don’t have a clue what to do, but lock into the rhythm of the dance as if it’s been imprinted on their motor neuron circuit boards.
A vigorous zydeco song ends, the floor empties, and the miracle of the density-defying dance floor happens again. It’s quite uplifting to see around thirty or forty identical miracles reoccur within a four-hour stretch. Restores your faith in the fourth dimension.
Same thing happens when the band cues up a waltz or a slinky bluesy number. Everyone in the elevator is dancing languidly, fluidly, ethereally, an elegant organism with a sense of direction, rhythm, and self-preservation. Totally glorious.
This is the kind of joyous music that prompts me to hug my partner after each dance. And go forth in the world to unleash random acts of kindness.
If I could find StarTrek Scottie, I’d have him beam me to Breaux Bridge every Saturday morning.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
The artwork is a wonderful mishmash of styles and subjects...
Time to go home...
and come back to Breaux Bridge next Saturday morning.
Great to meet up with you and to hear how much you are enjoying your stay down here.
I must make sure to circulate your writings to a wider audience - you write so well about the place we love & live in.
Posted by: Bernard U. | October 19, 2010 at 05:24 PM
Oh, Paul, it's not that you're having TOO much fun, it's that you're having enough for you, me, and everyone I know....
Posted by: Sarah Cross Mills | October 20, 2010 at 12:36 PM