NEW ORLEANS TRIPS

When the sisters were here, we reminisced about some of our trips that we took over the years. The first two were to New Orleans probably about twenty years ago. It was a favorite place for all of us to visit so what better city than that?

First of all, we borrowed a luxury van from Jerry’s brother so that we could all travel together in comfort. He told Jerry that there should be no drinking, no smoking, and no cussing in his van. All of us nonsmokers said, “Well, at least we can keep one out of three.” We started out on our trip early one morning in July.

We entertained ourselves part of the way by listening to Lewis Grizzard tapes. I remember one particular part of the tape where he talked about servers in restaurants. He told about going into a place to eat and a waiter sashayed up to him and said, “Hello, my name is Keith.” Lewis said, “What am I supposed to say to that? ‘Hi, my name is Lewis’”? We all laughed at that and other jokes he told throughout.

About five o’clock we were about an hour from New Orleans, and BJ took over the driving. She was the only female who knew how to drive the van, and the men were tired of driving. Besides, they were ready for happy hour. So we broke out the wine and chips and dip and started in. We set the onion dip on a little table that had miraculously appeared from somewhere, and it wasn’t two seconds later that BJ went around a sharp curve. That dip flew off the table and landed upside down on the spotless carpet--- but luckily, no wine spilled. That would have been disastrous!

BJ somehow made it into the city and kept asking us for help in directions to reach our hotel. By that time, no one could help her – we were way too jolly. I don’t know how we ever made it to the Dauphine Hotel in the French Quarter, but she got us there.

The next morning we had reservations at Brennan’s, the famous breakfast restaurant, at 9 o’clock. So we got up and dressed and walked over, arriving right on time. We were ushered in and seated at a great table overlooking the inner courtyard. Our waiter walks up, begins to pour the water, and says, “Hello, my name is Keith. I’m going to be your waiter this morning.” Can you just imagine the looks on our faces? And how we reacted? I’m happy to say that actually we exercised great self control, but we surely have laughed over it many times since.

The second trip was every bit as enjoyable as the first, but that’s for another day.