I will occasionally post information about the various places I have lived and visited through the years and the wide array of larger-than-life characters I have come in contact with during these journeys. If you read the post titled So Wrong On So Many Levels then you’re already familiar with some of them. You can also expect me at some point to say something about some of the following people:
- The woman who “owns” The 24 Hour Church Of Elvis.
- The guy who used to be Elvis Presley’s pilot.
- Crazy Gary who used to own Sun Records Recording Studio.
- Big Barney the most fascinating character most people will ever meet in their life. He can even use the term “reprobate” correctly in a sentence at my expense. (Incidentally, I am not a reprobate although I can understand his point of view on the topic.) If you catch him at the right moment he is liable to use the term “social coterie” in a sentence along with several colorful four letter terms.
- Justin Timberlake who I met a couple of times before he went to Orlando to join The New Mickey Mouse Club.
- Dr. Hans Stoll – one of the few people I have ever met who stands a real chance of winning a Nobel Prize.
- Various former and current Vanderbilt athletes and coaches.
- Various crazy people I have worked for over the years. I have a way of attracting them.
- The folks out at Adelsheim Winery – truly the nicest people running a winery in the world.
- And many, many, many others.
However, tonight I wanted to talk about the people from the great State of Louisiana. I lived in Baton Rouge, LA until I was almost six years old. I then returned there in fifth grade and remained there through high school. Many of my fondest memories are from those formative years.
As anyone who has ever visited the State can attest it is like visiting a foreign country. I’ve often said people should be required to show their U.S. passport when entering Louisiana. The people are unique in many ways. For starters it is as close to being a truly classless society as I have ever seen — and I mean this in a very positive way. If you ever have a chance to go to the tailgate parties before an L.S.U. football game you should. I know of one group which includes a bank president, a politician, and the guy who sprays your house for bugs and you would be hard pressed to tell which one of them was in charge of the group.
They are also a loud gregarious people. If you don’t believe this simply wear some L.S.U. paraphernalia around your home town and sooner or later you will have a complete stranger who wants to talk Tiger football with you and who will appear to others to be one of your oldest and dearest friends. I have had this happen in Memphis, TN and on the ski slopes in Colorado among other places. Their fans are a friendly and warm group. They have never met a stranger.
Also you should know the party ALWAYS come first with these folks. I remember during my senior year of high school the State of Louisiana was rated #50 out of 50 states in public education, and we thought that was great. We’re #1 – take that Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia!
As you can tell, I am fond of the people who helped to raise me. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize their unique quirks as well. It should be noted that both Doug Franklin and the Brothers Dupuy of the now over-hyped So Wrong On So Many Levels post were all from Louisiana. Doug was from Shreve-pit and the Brothers Dupuy were from Red Stick. The fact that both groups of ash spreaders were from the same State got me to thinking about some of the other characters (too numerous to mention most of them) I knew from Louisiana. I thought I would use this time to tell you about a couple of my favorites.
First, there was the guy who was my classmate at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Let’s call him “Topher Raider”. Topher was from a small town located in the swamps of Louisiana. Like me, he grew up going to L.S.U. home football games. As anyone who grew up in this environment can tell you, it is impossible to not end up being an S.E.C. football fan. We simply love college football and everything it stands for, well, we really like the parties anyway.
As such, Topher and I decided to attend the first Vanderbilt football game of our first year of business school. Amazingly, the Commodores won the game and we decided to go out and celebrate in the manner most L.S.U. fans would. We went out to have a few more beers (there were several consumed before the game to “prime the pump”) and to have dinner at the local sports bar. While eating, Topher started looking at the food at the next table and he saw a dish that looked appealing so he asked the lady (who was old enough to be his grandmother) what she was having and she told him. He then asked her if she was enjoying the dish. She responded that she was and Topher returned to our conversation and the meal. After about ten minutes Topher turned back around to the lady and said, “excuse me again, but I’ve got to tell you that looks like one of the best dishes I have ever seen. Would you mind if I tried some?” We could tell the lady was really uncomfortable with the request, but what could she say so she nodded and said “okay” to Topher. She then started to look around for the waiter to get an extra plate when Topher told her, “aw don’t worry about it” at which time he promptly reached over with his fork and started eating directly off of her plate. In between the three bites he took he kept telling her what a great dish she had ordered and then asked her if she wanted to try any of his meal. She respectfully declined. To this day, I am pretty sure Topher thinks his behavior was not only perfectly acceptable, but normal as well.
Later that night I found myself trying to describe Topher’s behavior to my wife as not being all that strange considering his background. This caused me to relate the story of “Fat Alex”. FA was a guy I grew up with in Red Stick. FA went to a lot of concerts (as did I) and smoked a lot of weed (as I did not). Until 10th grade, I was convinced FA was just your run-of-the-mill Pink Floyd lovin’ pothead. Then in 10th grade we had our state mandated standardized tests. Turns out, from an I.Q. standpoint, old FA was in the top 10% of all kids our age. We were all amazed. After that some of us thought FA would straighten himself out, but that wasn’t the case. The lure of the mary jane coupled with the inflatable pigs at the Floyd concert was too much of an attraction to FA.
So both Fat Alex and I graduated from high school and went our separate ways. He wasn’t exactly the guy I ever thought I would keep up with, but two separate things happened. One day I was talking with a mutual friend of ours who tells me, “hey man, do you remember FA?” To which I replied, “of course.” Remember, I wasn’t the one smoking weed. So this friend then launches into this story about how he ran into FA at a 7-11 and after saying “hi” to him, he could tell FA had graduated to more serious drugs since FA didn’t recognize him, but felt comfortable enough to ask him for a ride to a friend’s house. The point of my friend’s story was that “the lights were on, but nobody was home” at the FA brain.
I might have forgotten this story if it weren’t for what happened next. The same friend called me the next day and told me he needed to read me a story from the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. The story involved the police getting a call about a barefoot, topless, obese man who was standing in the middle of Highland Rd. (a very busy thoroughfare in Red Stick) cursing at traffic. While the police were being dispatched the man apparently had found some bricks which he then started throwing at passing cars. By the time the police showed up he was now apparently a naked, obese, cursing, brick throwing man. What was amazing was that the police apparently could not catch said man until they found him hiding in a dog house. After getting him out of the doghouse, he apparently escaped again and ran into the middle of Highland Rd. again where he was promptly struck by a car and killed. It was believed the man was hopped up on goofballs at the time. Of course the man was Fat Alex.
I could go on and on citing example after example about the people I have known from Louisiana and how colorful they are, but I think you get the point. So now I’m left to wonder, is it something in the water and should I be concerned about myself?
Tags: 7-11, Adelsheim Winery, Arkansas, ash spreaders, Baton Rouge, baton rouge advocate, beer, Big Barney, Doug Franklin, Dr. Hans Stoll, Elvis Presley's pilot, Elwood David, Fat Alex, food, goofballs, Justin Timberlake, Louisiana, LSU, LSU football, mary jane, Mississippi, Nobel Prize, Owen Graduate School of Management, Pink Floyd, pothead, Red Stick, Shreve-pit, Shreveport, So Wrong On So Many Levels, sports bar, Sun Records, the 24-hour Church of Elvis, the Brothers Dupuy, The New Mickey Mouse Club, Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt Commodores, West Virginia
