I Heart NOLa, Part I: Food

Our 10:30 a.m. departure from Longview, Texas, was planned so we could hold out on food until we reached The Best Stop Supermarket just outside of Lafayette in Scott, Louisiana.

It was worth the wait.

A little over three hours into the New Orleans trip, a trek we anticipated would yield heavenly culinary experiences, we hit the jackpot at Best Stop. According to its Web site, Best Stop's boudin and cracklins have been voted No. 1 six consecutive years by The Times of Acadiana's reader poll. Best Stop sells approximately 2,000 pounds of boudin every day.

For those of you out of the loop, boudin can come in boudin noir (blood sausage) or boudin blanc (the regular, white kind). The version we bought two pounds of was boudin blanc, which consists of pork, pork liver, chicken, and rice.

By the way, it's cooked inside a pig intestine.

And it's good. Really good.

But not as good as the cracklins.

I could eat cracklins until my heart exploded. Best Stop's cracklins were otherwordly. We each ate a pound of boudin, then I ate most of the half-pound bag of cracklins. I love anything that comes from a pig. After all, the French were on to something lo those many years ago when they opted to base their cuisine around Good Ol' Porky.

There's nothing like cracklins, the crisp residue left by the rendering of hog lard. The definition even sounds glorious.

The only thing we regretted about the boudin and cracklins were the belches that began about 15 minutes after starting the feast. The guzzling of Coke didn't help.

For more on Best Stop, check it: http://www.thebeststopsupermarket.com/.

About three hours later, we arrived in New Orleans. First stop: Acme Oyster House.

Unfortunately, the boudin and cracklins were still with me, so I just ordered my usual, the Peacemaker Po-Boy - fried shrimp and fried oysters on French bread - and left it at that. It never disappoints, and it didn't this time, either. A couple of years back, Maxim Magazine named the Acme Peacemaker as the No. 4 sandwich in the country, a well-deserved honor.

Here's Acme's Web site, a fun, informative, and full-sensory experience in itself: http://www.acmeoyster.com/.

That was pretty much the extent of eating the first day. The boudin sat heavy. I wanted more cracklins. I savored the Peacemaker.

Day 2 rolled around, and after we checked out of our free room at La Quinta on Camp Street, we found a place to park near the old Jax Brewery along the riverfront and walked up Decatur to Central Grocery for what is supposed to be New Orleans' best muffaletta.

I had always been told to eat a muffuletta in previous trips to New Orleans, but never had, so I decided to go to the source, Central Grocery, for my first muffuletta experience.

It didn't disappoint.

I ordered half a sandwich and a bottle of Barq's, another local favorite, and dined inside Central Grocery, an outlet for Italian, Greek, and Creole sustenance since 1906. The muffuletta is somewhat of an acquired delight: It's loaded with olives and an olive oil-loaded olive salad that soaks into the thick sesame-seed muffuletta loaf. Throw in some provolone and assorted Italian deli meats, and you've got a genuine, Central Grocery muffuletta.

Talk about strong. I could only eat a quarter of the sandwich. The olive salad sat heavier in my gut than the boudin and cracklins, but that's probably because my internal organs are far more accustomed to dealing with pork fat than olive salad.

Verdict: pretty dang good. I prefer the Peacemaker, of course, but the Central Grocery muffuletta is a must during a trip to New Orleans. To learn more about the sandwich and the store, check these wikipedia references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffuletta, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Grocery.

A trip to the new Southern Food and Beverage Museum, which is located at the south end of the Riverfront Marketplace mall, was informative and reflective. It was fun seeing exhibits on food items I've known since I was but a small, chubby, Southern hobbit, but also little-known facts about how some of those familiar foodstuffs came about in the rural Deep South.

After the educational stop, muffuletta was still sitting like a 12-pound ball inside my stomach. So instead of walking back to the original Cafe Du Monde location, I did the lazy thing and stopped at the mall location - indoors, not 92 degrees with 70 percent humidity, and plenty of comely ladies walking by as they shop.

For anyone who has never experienced the glory of a beignet, you have no clue what you're missing.

The beignet, or French doughnut, is the epitome of Southern and French food decadence (though they're politics in the modern-day world may greatly differ, the American South and France share an healthy obsession with great food. In fact, if you're a foodie in the United State, thank the Good Lord for the French and everything they've contributed to international cuisine).

Beignets are like high-quality funnel cake batter in a sopapilla shape, only solid ... and covered in powdered sugar. And when I say covered, I really mean it. When you finish an order of beignets (three), the pile of powdered sugar remaining is so disturbingly grand it appears that Tony Montana has sneezed all over your table.

For the record, I went to Cafe Du Monde's original location - across from Jackson Square, facing Decatur, the same place it's been since 1862 - three times after the mall trip during the remainder of my stay in New Orleans. Cafe Du Monde is as unique an experience as you'll find anyone.

Check the site for more info: http://www.cafedumonde.com/.

Since my first exposure to Cafe Du Monde, the romantic in me has always hoped that some day my courtship of a God-fearing, intelligent, funny, and pretty young lady would involve taking her to Cafe Du Monde and indulging in beignets and cafe au lait on a summer afternoon while watching the mule-drawn carriages haul people down Decatur in front of the wrought-iron boundaries of Jackson Square with the immaculate St. Louis Cathedral creating a memorable backdrop.

But I digress.

That evening, the Crescent City Brewhouse (http://www.crescentcitybrewhouse.com/index.html) provided supper. A baked oyster sampler was excellent, and the house pilsner was a pretty good complement. Crabmeat-stuffed shrimp was presented very well, and tasted just as good. The only drawback was the price for the amount of food you get, but I'm willing to pay decent dollar for good food in New Orleans, even if it is a little skimpy on the servings. Most places in New Orleans give you so much food you eat yourself into a coma.

Friday was the big day: reservation at New Orleans landmark, Commander's Palace, one of the most recognizable restaurants in the landscape of North American cuisine.

Previous executive chefs include Louisiana legend Paul Prudhomme and the current definition of celebrity chef, Emeril Lagasse. Reserving a table for lunch is the thing to do if you want to avoid a bill well over the century mark. Plus, jackets aren't required at lunch (they aren't technically required for supper, but they're "requested").

The cab fare from the hotel at the corner of Bourbon and Canal was just under $11, so reasonable. I knew if I was eating at Commander's Palace - a huge, old house on Washington Avenue just off the St. Charles streetcar line in New Orleans' Garden District - I had to try the trademark appetizer: Turtle soup.

It was unlike anything I'd eaten before. It was thick, but not quite a stew, with small chunks of turtle meat suspended in the dark, almost rouxy concoction. It was great, and it was quite filling for an appetizer soup. Its richness was exacted by the shot of sherry the waitress tossed in table-side.

My main course was gulf seafood cakes. I've had my fair share of crabcakes/seafood cakes at other restaurants, such as the crabcakes from Copeland's I love so dearly. The breading in your usual seafood cake is a key component.

That's what separated these from all else. There was no breading.

Lump crabmeat, shrimp, and couple of other seafood delights were molded into a puck-shaped cake that was so tender, moist, and seafood meaty, I can honestly say I've never eaten anything prepared so exquisitely. The cakes sat atop a bed of baby spinach with two probably-complicated sauces drizzled over the greens. A pineapple salsa accompanied the cakes and accented the sweet seafood perfectly.

For dessert, I selected the dish suggested to all patrons by executive chef Tory McPhail: Creole bread pudding souffle, which is topped table-side with a bourbon-based creme sauce. I'm not a dessert guy at all, but it was simply superb. White and purple raisins were embedded deep within the souffle and were so tender and un-raisin-like I could hardly believe they were raisins. It was rich, but not overpowering.

Overall, I can say I've never experienced dining like Commander's Palace. I dislike dress codes and stuffy, upper-crust schools of thought. I have strongly adverse feeling for all things upper class, such as country clubs.

But I can't emphasize enough how incredible Commander's Palace is. And the wait staff is unreal. You'll have to dole out a bigger tip, but that's because you've got half a dozen people taking care of you: Different person for water and tea, different person for menus and entree presentation, different person for appetizer and dessert presentation, different person for taking plates and utensils away. You're treated like royalty.

Simply put, if you visit New Orleans, you must go to Commander's Palace. Here's the link for easily the greatest restaurant I've ever experienced: http://www.commanderspalace.com/.

Hopefully Commander's Palace will be where I take that lady on the evening after our afternoon bliss at Cafe Du Monde.

After Commander's Palace, I really didn't expect much else out of the trip from a food standpoint. We're talking New Orleans, too.

After waiting a good while to recover from the Commander's Palace extravaganza, Coop's Place was the night-time destination for supper. Nestled in along the seemingly endless strip of Decatur Street, an absolute gem of a thoroughfare often overlooked by outsiders, Coop's Place was a dark, rustic bar with a full restaurant menu.

In other words, greatness.

After asking an attractive young brunette girl sitting near me at the bar what she was eating, I ordered what she was having: Jambalaya Supreme, the traditional Creole rice dish brimming with sausage, shrimp, crawfish, pork tasso, and rabbit. It was awesome, and borderline overwhelming spicy, but not quite too powerful that I couldn't eat every bite. Offbeat Magazine rated Coop's Place's Jambalaya Supreme as the No. 1 jambalaya in New Orleans. Check out Coop's Place, where you don't wanna cross the bartender, at this Web site: http://www.coopsplace.net/.

My final full day in New Orleans had me wanting to try something I hadn't come to the city knowing about. I had several suggestions, including Coop's Place, from others who were seasoned New Orleans veterans. Fortunately, the concierge at the Crowne Plaza pointed me to Oceana Grill at the corner of Bourbon and Conti.

A friendly, boisterous local implored people to come inside and eat, so and stopped, looked at the menu, asked him what to try, and went in.

He told me I had to try the barbecue shrimp. I'm glad I followed his advice.

It's not barbecue shrimp in the fashion you're probably thinking - overcooked shrimp wrapped in partially cooked bacon with some bottle sauce thrown on top. Nothing like that.

Instead, it was large, unpeeled boiled shrimp soaking in a thin, soupy, Worcestershire-based barbecue sauce full of unrecognizable fresh herbs and spices. The key was to not only peel the shrimp, dip them in the liquid, and consume, but to take the sliced french bread brought to the table and dip it enthusiastically into the liquid and herbs.

I ate two and a half baskets of the slice bread, which translates to 16 slices. That's how good the sauce was.

And the barbecue shrimp was only the appetizer. I got a fried shrimp po-boy to accompany its boiled shellfish brethren. Of course, I also dipped the sandwich into the sauce, too.

The meal was surprisingly good and just what I was looking for on my final night in the city. I was glad I had taken the gamble on a spot I hadn't heard of until about 20 minutes before going there. Learn more about the hidden gem at http://www.oceanagrill.com/.

That pretty much wraps up my food tour. I left out a few things - Abita Amber, Abita Turbo Dog, Hubig's Pies. All good stuff.

But what I've chronicled here should give a good idea of what I ate, how it tasted, and whether or not it should be tried during your next top in the Crescent City.

In summary: Try everything I just mentioned. It's New Orleans.

Bad meals don't happen.

I Heart NOLa: A Series

My return from New Orleans has prompted me to construct a three-part miniseries of posts involving what I enjoyed during my trip to New Orleans.

Monday night/Tuesday morning's blogging that evolved (or devolved, depending on how you look at it) into a love letter to New Orleans' unmatched artistic experience made me realize that it's far too difficult to just write a blog talking about my trip. Instead, it needs to be compartmentalized; well, compartmentalized as best as one can categorize such an intensely hard-to-classify locale.

My first entry in the I Heart NOLa miniseries will delve into the food experience I enjoyed while in the city. Everything from savory, market-style sandwiches to high-brow dining to vintage desserts will be chronicled.

The second entry will focus on the music I heard, and the third will be the human encounters I experienced.

As I return to the work before me, I leave you with a New Orleans icon ... the one, the only ... Professor Longhair.

New Orleans

I was trying to think of a creative introduction, or impressive alliteration, or metaphoric portrayal of life in New Orleans.

I couldn't.

There's just too much to encapsulate when you're trying to introduce the uninformed into a world of overwhelmingly transcendental sensory experience.

Cuisine. Music. Architecture. Diversity. The River.

Everything about New Orleans is unique. When you grow up in a literal and figurative black-and-white, rural Deep South small town, a place such as New Orleans is fresh and lively, yet relaxing and comforting at the same time.

New Orleans is different from other cities. Come to think of it, New Orleans is different from everywhere.

While a small-town upbringing makes you think just about any large city is overwhelming and diverse, no place makes as significant an impact on your senses as New Orleans. It's not your typical major U.S. city, i.e. Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, etc.

None of those cities are more than 300 years old. None of those cities have been directly ruled for significant portions of time by the British, French, and Spanish. Throw in the Haitian-voodoo culture, years of Catholicism-based practices, and pinches of Italian, German, and Greek cultures, and the city's heritage reveals a broader spectrum of customs and deeper layers of influence.

The amalgam of cultures results in one label - Creole.

Creole is not Cajun. Creole is more urban, Spanish, and West African. Cajun is more rural, poor, and white. Both have a strong French base, but many people believe the terms are interchangeable, and often label New Orleans as a Cajun city.

Cajuns do exist in New Orleans. However, New Orleans is Creole. Lafayette is Cajun. Baton Rouge is Cajun. New Orleans is not. In fact, it's hard to label New Orleans as anything but a city made up of countless ethnic groups that have all somehow retained their individual characteristics while avoiding homogenization. Yet at the same time, there has been somewhat of a homogenization, otherwise there would be no Creole.

But perhaps the most striking difference in New Orleans to me is its deeply rooted cultural base in one frame of thought/being/academia that consists of so many branches: Arts.

When most people hear arts, they think artists: Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Remington, Da Vinci, Van Gogh.

However, that's just a limb on The Great Tree of Arts. The first definition for "art" on dictionary.com is ...

"the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance."

Doesn't that sound awesome? And doesn't that sound like New Orleans?

I admit. I'm not a well-traveled person. But of the places I've been, no place comes close to representing the epitome of arts or the complexity in the capability of the human mind than New Orleans. Everything is an art form in New Orleans.

Masterpieces are seen throughout the realm of the human experience in New Orleans, from the grand scope of the local cuisine, to the European architecture, to the assortment of musical genres, to the people who make their livings on the street: Children tap-dancing, adolescents and adults playing trombones, trumpets, tubas, guitars, and harmonicas, the artists who hang their hand-crafted pieces along the wrought-iron fence of Jackson Square.

It's all art. It takes a mind capable of understanding the abstract, how a mind can start with nothing and create it into something others enjoy.

When I was in college, I would have never said that what I do - sports writing - is an art.

It is.

Any kind of writing is an art, as long as the writer puts his or her time into it. That doesn't mean all writing is art, just like you can't throw water colors at a piece of paper, make something up explaining it, and call it art.
Photography is art. Sport is art. Public speaking is art. Poetry is art. Art is why the Greeks were so intellectually far beyond the Romans despite predating them by so long.

But if an individual is genuine and sincere about throwing paint onto paper, explaining what it means, and being proud of making nothing into something, it is indeed art.

And that's what's different about New Orleans. The people you encounter in the city - mind you, a city still recovering less than three years after the worst natural disaster in American history - are genuine and sincere. From the folks working in the restaurants, to the men hauling luggage up and down hotel elevators, to the musicians honing their crafts in French Quarter clubs and bars, they're genuinely and sincerely glad you're there with them experiencing the experience that is New Orleans. Sure, they may be extra nice because they want a tip or want you to spend more money during your visit, but that's the cost for arts. Not everybody is capable of comprehending the abstract, of making nothing into something, of taking a few raw materials and making them into a grand creation, or simply appreciating the aptitude it takes to do so. Therefore, yes, it should cost something to attain the arts, or try to even if you're not truly able to understand them from an internally intellectual standpoint.

I love statistics. I'm a sports freak, and I love number-crunching. If I see something on TV telling me Tim Duncan has more playoff double-doubles than any other player in the past decade, I'm happy because I know those figures are concrete and they're supposed to please me since I'm a Duncan fan.

But when I hear the blues, something hits me inside; the notes, the sound, the words, something about the abstract creation of an aesthetically-pleasing art makes me happy in a way concrete values don't. What would seem like a five-minute soliloquy of self-pity to an individual incapable of comprehending that art is a five-minute romp of happiness for me. The feeling of understanding another person through the genuine expression of arts creates an intangible connection, almost a relaxation, that figures and facts can't elicit.

I'm a logical, reason-based person. But I'm the first to admit, our current world is dominated too greatly by the concrete: zeros, decimals, digits, figures, facts, ratings. Those incapable of thinking in abstract terms dismiss the arts as meaningless, baseless, illogical, pointless, soft, when in fact, numbers lie. Facts aren't always facts because you can't get the same thing out of a string of numbers you can a string of letters.

Numbers make values; letters make words. Values make more values; words make stories, stories make books, books make novels, novels make epics, epics make volumes, volumes shape history.

Therefore, while the concrete may appear solid on the surface, it often lies more than the abstract. Sciences can't explain everything; arts don't try to. That's why they're more genuine.

New Orleans doesn't care if you don't like it. It's just going to keep on doing what it's been doing for 300-plus years ... making memories, shaping lives, and existing in a genuinely abstract and good-hearted collective soul.

Back from the Ozarks

I took a full week of vacation last week, hoping to recharge my batteries while anticipating next week's trek to New Orleans.
***
Before I start, I'd like to point out that I hate it when people say "recharge my batteries." It's a sickening cliche that should not be allowed to be printed or published. So, instead of simply going back, deleting "recharge my batteries," and typing in something else, I wanted to point out this mental hiccup (another fairly stupid cliche) so the average reader could understand the thought process of one who is self-editing.

Therefore ...
***
I took a full week of vacation last week, hoping to pump fresh life juice into my weary digits, limbs, torso, and skull while anticipating next week's trek to New Orleans.

Last Monday (June 30), I traveled to my cousin's house in Marshall for the first time since his family had moved across town. I arrived at 1:30 p.m. I departed at 3:45 a.m. That's what happens when my cousin and I have a day to ourselves with Nintendo and Super Nintendo at our disposal.

He received a small contraption that plays eight-bit and 16-bit games, which are the formats used by the original NES and Super NES, for his birthday. We played original Tecmo Bowl and RBI Baseball, along with the NES's Bases Loaded II and the original NCAA Basketball for SNES.

Finally we settled on Tecmo Super NBA Basketball, which uses the roster from the 1991-92 season. Boston being his favorite team, we started an 82-game season with the Celtics. Unlike the current version, I'm a fan of the old-school Celts. Our starting lineup is Dee Brown, Reggie Lewis, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish, with Kevin Gamble, Ed Pinckney, and Joe Kleine coming off the bench.

I know. It's scary.

We jumped out to a 6-0 start, and shall commence our season the next time we can coordinate an off day and secure the TV for a full 12 hours.

Tuesday I watched some 7-on-7 football and saw Carthage beat Elysian Fields and Marshall. The ole alma mater is playing in this weekend's 7-on-7 state championship tournament for Class A, 2A, and 3A schools.

*Side note: Although I am an objective sports writer specializing in the coverage of East Texas high school athletics, I'm really looking forward to seeing Carthage play in the new Bulldog Stadium. Carthage opens the new stadium on Friday, Sept. 5 against arch rival Henderson. Great way to open the new stadium. Love scheduling your No. 1 historic rival for your stadium opener. (No, I'm not being sarcastic. It's glorious. Unfortunately, I'll be watching Pine Tree at Paris. No comment.)

Wednesday, my family and I left for Missouri. We traveled north to Texarkana, on to Little Rock, and up through the small burgs of North-Central Arkansas: Greenbrier, Damascus (as my dad says, "A little piece ... of the Middle East"), Clinton, Marshall, Harrison, etc., deep into the Ozarks.

We arrived in Springfield, Mo. - the city in which I entered this earthly realm and one of two significant metropolitan areas in the Ozarks - just before 9 p.m. As soon as we checked in, I rode with my parents to Hong Kong Inn for another edition of the Brooks Boys' favorite Springfield tradition - cashew chicken.

Before you judge, I want you to know this cashew chicken is better than any other Chinese food I've ever had. And although cashew chicken is more of a Chi-merican concoction, it's delightful if it comes from Hong Kong Inn. Vietnam War-era immigrants from Laos and Cambodia deluged the Springfield area, resulting in the present-day existence of more than 100 Chinese food outlets in greater Springfield.

And if you're visiting Springfield, you better find a good Chinese spot. That's about the only good food you'll find in Greene County. Also check Max Orient in Battlefield Mall for some decent Asian dish. Good fried rice.

With a two-bed motel room, I refuse to sleep in the same bed as my 16-year-old brother. It's not happening. So after much trial and tribulation, a roll-away bed was procured from motel staff. I spent the night reliving the nightmare Elaine Benes experienced while visiting Jerry's parents in Del Boca Vista, Fla. The bed had a thick, iron bar running horizontally across the mid-back region, a few inches below my shoulder blades.

Wednesday night's sleeping - or lack thereof - gave way to Thursday morning's disaster. We drove a block to McDonald's for breakfast. I ordered two "Southern-style chicken biscuits," and soon regretted it. I ate a biscuit and a half, and then felt like crap for the next four or five hours. I never threw up, but I came close. I took a quarter of a tablet of Phenergan. For those of you unaware of the power of the world's choice for preventing motion sickness and nausea, Phenergan comes in tiny tablets.

For good reason.

Phenergan is powerful. I took a quarter of a tablet, which is equal to half a Bacon Bit, and after my stomach sickness subsided, I felt like someone had caned me for half an hour. Not only was I drowsy, but I couldn't feel my extremities either.

It sounds cool. But it's not. It's awful, especially when you're wading through Yankee outdoorsmen at the Bass Pro Shops headquarters in Springfield.

Somehow, I survived, and we then went to Battlefield Mall, where I couldn't partake of my usual Max Orient fried rice because of the McDonald's/Phenergan/Bass Pro fiasco. After that, we went to El Chico. Don't get me started. I like El Chico. I grew up on it. But you're telling me that we travel 500 miles to eat at a bland, tasteless, Yankee version of a Mexican restaurant when we can drive to Marshall and get the actual stuff?

The woman sitting behind us with her two children was unbelievable. Typical you're-serving-me-so-you-better-please-me Midwestern hag. She ordered the fancy guacamole that that waitress has to prepare table-side, allowing the customer to dictate how much of what goes into it. After eating it for 30 minutes, she determined it was too spicy. The waitress warned her not to order the chimichanga if she didn't enjoy spicy foods, but she said she could handle it and ordered it anyway.

Olga sent that back after eating half of it. I have nothing left to say except that none of us at our table could taste the hot sauce, so we figured the guacamole and chimichanga probably didn't have any heat either.

We then traveled 45 minutes east to the town of Mansfield, where my mom's parents live. Waiting for us was ham. I'll eat anything pork-related, chicken biscuits and El Chico be damned. The ham was just the beginning of a stay at the grandparents' house that featured bacon, eggs, sausage, and biscuits and gravy for breakfast, along with fried chicken, barbecue chicken, and chicken and dumplings for various suppers.

I now weigh 532 pounds.

But seriously, it was good. I think Nanny decided to fix more Southern-oriented fare since I was there.

A visit to my uncle's country house filled Friday, along with a trip to Springfield landmark Steak 'N Shake. For the record, I hate Steak 'N Shake. A bad experience in Arlington before a Rangers game has forced me to ban Steak 'N Shake forever, so I sat there, drinking water while my family ate.

My brother got really mad at my dad and me, as did my mom throughout the trip, for making fun of the locals constantly.

When our waitress walked up to take our order, she asked my dad what he wanted on his double steakburger. The following exchange was absolute hilarity. Apparently, these things come plain. Since nobody has ever encountered a place that serves its hamburgers plain to start with instead of loaded, we were dumbfounded.

After the awkwardness of my family ordering, the waitress came around to me. I said, "I don't need anything. I'm good."

She looked at me as if I had just stated that I enjoy throwing kittens into wood chippers. Apparently nobody, especially with my accent, had ever set foot in Steak 'N Shake and not wanted any of their horrific food. Thankfully, I couldn't spot anyone eating the establishment's trademark spaghetti dish that is COVERED IN CHILI AND A POUND OF SHREDDED CHEDDAR CHEESE. You read that right. Apparently ground steak-cheese-bean pasta is to Midwestern Yankees what fried chicken is to Southerners.

Saturday saw a return trip to Springfield. We went to the mall, I bought some shorts and a pair of jeans, we ate at the food court. I made the mistake of trying Pan Pacific Grill instead of the usual Max Orient. Bad move. As we left the food court for the parking left, a very comely blonde standing about six feet tall with makeup on - that's a big deal for girls up there - open-toe shoes, nice jeans, and a fedora stood in line at Max Orient waiting to order. I knew that was a sign that I should have stuck with my guns.

The girl brings me to another point: The male-female courting dynamic in mid-size metro Midwest is quite different from that in the South. At home, I'm painfully non-aggressive, making eye contact repeatedly only to draw the conclusion that the girl probably has something wrong with her medically or psychologically, or that I'd just be wasting my time. Men make eye contact, maintain eye contact, and commence to follow their female targets visually as they walk by and traverse the next 30 yards.

Up north, I'm The Big Bad Wolf. Men don't look at women up there, and if they do, it's out of the corner of their eyes. So there I was, resembling a character from O Brother Where Art Thou, and looking at every attractive girl I encountered. The look I received several times was, "How dare you have the audacity to look at me in that manner?!"

I know it's hard to believe, but I was intimidating.

I was relentless.

I was myself.

Apparently geographic location has a lot to do with your role in the male-female courting dynamic. Simply put, I'd be unstoppable up north. It's all in my gait and my accent. It's science.

After the sociological study, we went to watch Hancock at a local theater. The tickets were $5 apiece. It made me feel like I was watching a bootleg in Latvia. The girl tearing the ticket made me momentarily drop my ticket stub, causing her to grab it, which caused her to cup my left hand with both of her hands ever so gently. She giggled, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry." I looked up and said, "Naw, that's all right. You're fine."

She melted. Either this cute brown-haired, brown-eyed young lady thought I was so pathetically clumsy I couldn't hold on to a ticket stub, or the essence of my Southern charisma was so potent her limbs didn't work properly.

I'm going with the ladder.

I knew she had melted because as we left, I made long eye contact with her again, and she held it - much different from other Springfield women. She had nowhere to go. I was on top of my game, which was to have no game, but to simply be from the South, have an accent, and be a fleeting novelty of a human encounter in another random Saturday at her job.

Sunday, we departed from Mansfield a couple of bills richer thanks to my Papa. He's awesome, but not just because he gives us money. He's 80 and he still runs an AC/heating business. His Southern Kentucky/Cumberland Mountain upbringing has served him well.

We traveled south a different route, through the other significant metro area in the Ozarks: Bentonville-Rogers-Springdale-Fayetteville, and later Fort Smith. In other words, Hog Heaven.

Knowing we'd be passing through the heart of Razorback country, I wore my T-shirt that has "LSU" on the front and "GEAUX TIGERS" on the back the entire day. We stopped in Fort Smith for lunch. I stepped out of the car, proud of my clothing choice for the day, and rubbed purple-and-gold glory all over the south side of Fort Smith.

To my surprise, the Ozarks extend much further south than I realized. We didn't get out of the mountains until somewhere between Mena and DeQueen. Like every return trip from Missouri - by the way, this was my first trip back to the Ozarks since Christmas of 2004 - when you see that Texarkana city limits sign, you feel a comforting sense of home.

We stopped in Jefferson for gas, then shortly arrived in Carthage, road weary but with a satisfying trip under the belt.

Next up for me is New Orleans. I'll be going next week for a four-night stay. I could possibly eat myself into a coma.

The Big Easy will be a different story on the male-female front. There, I'll be a young fawn, innocent to the questionable thoughts and practices of attractive women. Maybe instead of the aw-shucks Southern boy, I can play the aw-shucks-I'm-too-nice-a-guy card on this trip.

Wait, that's not a card. That's actually me. Bummer. Or not. I don't know.

Once I return from New Orleans, I'm sure I won't want to return to work. I'll need some rest, although I won't get it, to recharge those batteries again.

I mean, pump fresh life juice back into my cells and their mitochondria.

Happy 95th, Pinetop

Blues piano legend Pinetop Perkins turned 95 years old today.



He can't read sheet music and plays completely by ear. He was not educated past the third grade, and says he can't read much of anything. It's incredible he's still alive considering he's smoked since his mother starting buying it for him when he was nine.



www. pinetopperkins. com
http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Pinetop_Perkins