Sultry Helps

* * *

"We are playing who-can-get-out-of-bed-first," Norma yawned into the telephone. “So far, no one has won."

L. A. Norma’s Daughter and Son have been in Town from Los Angeles. We met at Café Brazil for Sunday’s "Nickel a Dance." Next morning on the phone, Norma said her Son, "Kept thinking he should pinch himself to find out if he was really here."

We spent the day on Frenchmen Street. At Café Brazil’s bar we gyrated with specific dancers on the floor, and swayed aimlessly with the music spinning the room. Music, thy elfin muse, what a life affirming effect you have! Not to mention the affirming powers of Medicinal Red. The Daughter said days like this do not happen in Los Angeles.

At the end of the bar stood Kermit Ruffins. He took our hands and praise with the grace of a great artist. "Keep listening," I told Norma’s Daughter, "out of Kermit Ruffins’ trumpet floats a new New Orleans legend.” He went through the door, fedora silhouetted against Frenchmen Street’s glow. We followed outside and stopped on the sidewalk to tell GAMBIT critic Geraldine Wyckoff that we had just met Kermit Ruffins. She told us we could hear him later at Joe's Cozy Corner, 1532 Ursulines in Faubourg Treme.

“How does it happen here?” Norma’s Son asked. I said I didn’t know, but sultry helps it along. It oils the spirit and loosens the soul. A lady in a blue dress and holding a small blue umbrella patted her forehead with a white second-line handkerchief and danced with a pillar. A younger man stepped forward and the two undulated off across the floor. Another couple put their foreheads together and walked back and forth like crazed Tango dancers.

“Nickel a Dance” is a City treasure, Café Brazil is its vortex. It is a spirited thing – even a spiritual one – like those first Congo Square Jazz Fests. Like those jam sessions in the sky. There were old people, young people with children, music makers and storybook fakers. It is not to be missed. “Nickel a Dance” happens but a few days in the Fall – during the time of hurricanes. (Perhaps there is a connection?) In any case, mark your calendar now.

From Café Brazil we got no further than the Spotted Cat down the street. There the house gave up bowls of three-beans with ham and Tasso, rice and music. Ambrosia trickled down our throats, good vibrations rattled our ears, and Life’s aroma filled our nose – cigars were permitted!

“Yes, sultry helps,” Norma said, “and being in New Orleans.”

* * *

Later in the week, we joined FRENCH QUARTER FICTION publisher Joshua Clark (www.frenchquarterfiction.com), at the Cabildo, for a National Geographic Society book party that would have featured Stephen Ambrose had he been able to come. Three days later he died of lung cancer, at sixty-six.

I thought Ambrose a great man, but have no illusions about his perfection. He was charming, engaging and thoroughly delightful. He was also (sigh!) one of the first Nixon apologists. And he flattered generals. But he saw the folly of Vietnam, and he said so at the time and later. Perhaps I'm less critical of his purity than some because I did not see him as an objective information machine. I saw him more as a knowledgeable yarn-spinner. (Besides, I don’t really believe in objectivity.) I liked him, and the World was better for his having been here. I hope they can say that of you and me when our final chapter's writ.

* * *

I’m sorry to have missed the thirtieth anniversary meeting of the Faubourg Marigny Association. Sore butts will cause such absences. I heard from Steve Halpern that the largest turnout ever saw films of yore, and heard Councilmember Jackie Clarkson and Faubourg Marigny’s own duo of restoration Lloyd Sensat and Eugene Cizek.

I took a hard fall stashing courtyard wing-ables inside the slave quarters as Hurricane Lili approached. Slippery slate, and down I went like two hundred pounds of spinning yarn. The only damage was to the most important asset a writer has, his butt. Butt-time has been seriously reduced for a while. Judicious treatment with Medicinal Red promises to return it to full use. Prognosis is for a good life filled with more of everything.