March 2006 The Megaphone Page 10
23 Last Nights in New Orleans
by Dewey W. Smith
Last evening I watched a Food Channel show and it was Rachel Ray in New Orleans. She went to all those restaurants and none of them were there when I was there.
On New Years Eve 1944, I left Elwood and went to Indian Town Gap, Pa., a POE (Port of Embarkation). I was there for a couple weeks and then went by Troup Train to New Orleans. We stayed at Fort Jackson which was a warehouse on the river. We were able to walk out the door and we were on the peer. They said our boat would be in the next day. Sooo, we went to town and looked it over quite a bit that night. There was an eleven o'clock curfew. The next day the boat did not show up and we were told again that the boat would be in the next day. We ended up spending 23 last nights in New Orleans. All the big clubs had shills on the sidewalk telling every one how they had the best drinks or the prettiest girls or maybe even the best floor show. We checked some of them out and ended up eating at Tony's Spaghetti House. Here the price was reasonable and we would linger over a couple beers and the waitress's would come sit and talk with us if they were not busy.
This was a dry Parish. We could not buy a bottle. You could buy all the mixed drinks that you wanted. So one evening we got a cabbie to see if he could get us a bottle. He said, "Get in and we will see what we can do."
We saw very much of the city as he stopped several times to see friends. We finally asked about the bottle and he said, "Oh, I got that a long time ago." We had no idea which stop produced the bottle.
We went across the river a few times to Algiers. There was a nice little family tavern there which we enjoyed. The only problem was that the bartender had an eighteen year old daughter and he kept trying to get one of us to date her. There were three of us and we were all married and were not looking for dates. We never did see the daughter.
We all ran out of money as we had not been paid for a while. I called my mother and she sent me a couple of my postal savings certificates and I cashed them so we could eat and buy cigarettes.
We spent a lot of time wandering around the French Quarter and also spent some time in Washington Park. Usually there were some artists there and we could watch them paint.
We never did see a street car named Desire.
When we returned to New Orleans and got on a troop train to Camp Atterbury, a trainman came through and tried to sell us a half pint for five dollars. We had just come from Panama where we bought a fifth for two ninety-five. Some of the soldiers grabbed him and were going to throw him off the train. We stopped them from doing that but took three bottles from him and poured them out in front of him and told him to scat. Boy, did he ever scat. The liquor was poured out the window.
Dewey
W. Smith
The Old Dewey, Monon '39
Northwest Elwood
8:10 AM EST MMVI