Barrooms: (Crescent City Chapter 2)

If you’re not into football, which I’m not, then the only reason for a young, redneck kid living in St Tammany Parish to cross the Causeway into New Orleans is in search of buddies, beer, or women. (As an aside it is so incredibly hard not to write “buddies, beer, or babes” but that feels cheap.) Coming from a family that hated New Orleans and not being a big city guy myself, I was the rare High School kid who didn’t try to sneak onto Bourbon street at least once. In fact I probably never would have driven into New Orleans on my own if it wasn’t for my buddy “Craig.”

Craig may be my photo negative. In a lot of ways he’s an inverse of me. I’m lazy. He’s hard working. I shoot from the hip. He’s detailed oriented. I’m profane and rowdy. He’s calm and reserved. Picture in your head an Irish Catholic altar boy, honor student and boy scout who became a military officer and now works in a high level security field. Now shrink that image down to under six feet and imagine just enough hair to part. Congrats. You know “Craig.” At least you know what he looks like.

That description is…mostly…true. I’m not sure Craig was ever actually a boy scout. But Craig wasn’t just an altar boy or an honor student. He was also a talented artist and painter, making cartoons of killer clowns battling each other with blimps and hand grenades. He liked indie movies and books. It was Craig that kicked off my juvenile love of B Movies. It was Craig who found the dollar theater showing of “Napolean Dynamite” and told us we had to see this crazy film. Later it was Craig who drug us to Canal Place for one off showings of small documentaries and the occasional Oscar bait film. The last time I was in Craig’s apartment he had William S Boroughs next to Ayn Rand next to Karl Marx on his book shelf. As outwardly, overtly, Republican as he appeared Craig always had some kind of connection with the hippy girls and small town, wannabe anarchists and communists in our high school. He kept up relationships with them that seemed to survive for years, even after we all found ourselves fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan or the narrow streets and open deserts of Iraq. He stuck around long enough to watch them become Republicans.

Craig was a born leader. When he was around he was in charge whether we were doing good or evil. He planned charity events and beer busts with the same enthusiasm and in a group full of kids who proved to be natural leaders he stood ahead of us all. To the best of my knowledge none of us ever resented it. Craig had a talent for people. He never forgot a name or a face or a story. I’ve already detailed, and I’ll detail again how we spent a significant amount of our time wandering around looking for someone he knew from High School, and always finding someone, even if it wasn’t the person we were looking for.

An example of this occurred when I was stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. One fine, tropical, Saturday morning there was a knock at my barracks room door and when I opened it Craig was there with a friend. They were on the island training as part of some ROTC program that allowed them a few weeks on a Navy ship. In their limited down time Craig located me, rented a car, and convinced another ROTC cadet to travel to the backwater of Wahiawa, far from the beaches and bars of Honolulu and Waikiki, so they could spend an afternoon sitting on a shitty, dumpster rescue couch, in my even shittier enlisted barracks room.

That’s the kind of guy Craig was. While John S, Steve, and I joined the military as enlisted immediately after graduation Craig earned an ROTC scholarship and moved across Lake Ponchatrain to New Orleans for school while the rest of us shipped off to Fort Benning, San Diego and Cape May, New Jersey. For those of you who don’t know there is a largely invisible but very real divide between enlisted and officers. Normally when a member of a group of friends goes to ROTC while the rest go to Basic Training the friendship is over. The officer, surrounded by wealthier, college educated peers and indoctrinated to view themselves as a gentleman, loses touch with us enlisted swine. But that didn’t happen with Craig, he wasn’t that type of guy.

I would have never ventured into New Orleans on my own, but Craig was there and every time I came home on leave he invited me down. We’d pick him up at his dorm, and later at a series of ramshackle apartment buildings Uptown, and we’d hit the town. At first we went to the college bars, the places we knew we could get a drink under age. Those nights inevitably ended at The Boot, one of the single worst bars in New Orleans but the kind of place where even a baby could buy a beer if they could brave the crowd of under aged, over indulged, Ivy league wannabes and local predators to get to the bar.

Or we’d end up on Bourbon street where the night always started, for some reason, in a leather and chains heavy metal bar called The Dungeon. Then we’d wander down to the far end, where store front windows were lit with pink triangles and rainbow flags. We’d grab a beer at Laffite’s Blacksmith Shop, then make our way back along the river. Somewhere in between we’d land in the gaudy tourist bars with neon lights and neon colored cocktails, usually in search of someone Craig new from High School. At the end of the night, in that gray space between late night and early morning, we’d end up at an Irish pub who’s name and location I can’t remember.

Later, when we were twenty-one and could buy a drink in the “good” bars Craig would lead us around the wealthier parts of Uptown where the streets were flanked by mansions and shaded by live oaks covered in Spanish moss. We’d start at Cooter Browns and the other bars where St Charles and Carrollton intersect by the river. Then we’d find ourselves at a high end place like The Columns, where I would stand awkward and out of place, nursing a light beer and watching the local TV weatherman get plastered on over priced cocktails and chat up débutantes from Vanderbilt. It was at the tail end of one of those long, hazy, nights where we stumbled into an infamous Uptown dive bar called Snake and Jake's. I don’t remember where the Columns were. I never knew where Snake and Jake's was. It was probably less than a mile between the two bars but they might as well have been on different planets. The Columns was in a posh mansion, wrought iron and white columns and hardwood floors. Snake and Jake's was in a low roofed, leaning old building, almost a shed. The crowded interior was dimly lit with old Christmas lights and the bar stools and tables were mismatched and wobbly. At The Columns you saw local celebrities. At Snake and Jake's you saw a naked man calmly sitting on a bar stool drinking a beer. Of the two I preferred Snake and Jake's.

After Craig commissioned, New Years eve lined up with our military leave schedules and became something of a tradition. We’d meet at his parents place in St Tammany Parish then drive to whatever ramshackle mansion his old college friends were living in Uptown for champagne toasts before making our way to Bourbon street, where we’d repeat the usual route, with the added stop of Pat OBriens for Hurricanes and a stop in Jackson Square to watch the ball drop. I kissed a girl there at 12:01 on January 1, 2000. Only time...okay only the second time...I’ve ever kissed a stranger. The next year Chris found an old buddy from high school that neither one of us had seen since graduation and invited him out. That night went so hilariously far off the rails it deserves it’s own essay, but it’s a story I’m not sure I can ethically tell without written permission. At some point we ended up drinking with Swiss tourists in that Irish Pub who’s name and location I’ve never been able to remember.

Within ten months our nation would be at war, I’d be fighting to stay alive, and Craig would be in a desert somewhere.

We did New Years eve in the French Quarter one last time with our high school buddies Ryan and Steve in 2005. By then we all had a little money, so we stayed in the Wyndham hotel downtown. We made the same route, though by then the bar names had changed. Ryan got hit by a cab, the side view mirror smacked his elbow as we wandered down a side street. On New Years Day 2006 we drove out of town, taking I-10 East to Slidell, passing through the Hurricane Karina ravaged portion of New Orleans East that would never fully recover from the storm. As best I can recall, it was the last time all of us were together for a drink.

There were little things you don’t think about when you’re a young man, things you miss that are important. Craig often ran with a different class of people than I did. He was an honor student. He went to an important university. He became an officer and a gentleman. He worked for a law firm and went to work for the federal government at a level I am not qualified to achieve. As I said in the beginning, Craig was my photo negative. The light to my dark. The officer and gentleman to my enlisted barracks rat. But it wasn’t until I was a middle aged man that I realized he never once introduced me that way.

Future media personalities, officers, West Point and Naval Academy Cadets, local celebrities, débutantes and wealthy classmates he introduced me proudly to them all. He introduced me like they needed to know who I was and not the other way around. He introduced me like I had something to say that they needed to hear. When you’re a young man you miss this distinction, at least I did. Craig seemed to know everyone, and he introduced me to them like they needed to know me, and that’s no small thing.

After I got hurt and after Craig went to war and after we both had our DD214 in hand we found ourselves in New Orleans once again, mostly alone. I was working on getting into the Sheriff’s Department and he was working on joining the federal government. We were in our mid-20s. We had a little money. We were both living in crappy little apartments, him in a converted Uptown Mansion and me in a vastly different type of modern shit hole in Metairie. Both of us were in long distance but committed relationships, so our nights out were tamer. We went out on slow weeknights. We didn’t chase girls. We spent more time in weirdo coffee shops. The bars changed. We didn't go to Bourbon street anymore. We’d grab food somewhere, PoBoys from Mother’s or Nachos at Superior Grill or hamburgers from Port of Call and then we’d hit smaller bars and pubs. We spent more time in the Marigny and Uptown. We drank way too much Abita Beer. We walked around the night time streets like noisy ghosts. We spent a lot of time sitting in corner booths or at the bar, hunched over a pitcher of local draft, talking.

By then we’d been through enough, wars and injury and hurricane Katrina. We were older. Our friends were moving on, moving out of state. Charles and Jess were gone, moved to Massachusetts. Steve and Ryan were gone, moved to Houston. I remember realizing at the time that something was different, about Craig, about me, about the way we moved through the city and the things we did. It was mellower somehow, almost melancholy. It’s only recently that I’ve recognized it for what it was, a type of therapy, a crutch, or maybe a helping hand as we transitioned out of military service and faced our future. At least that's what it was for me. We’d been through so much and still had a long way to go so we leaned on each other because we could. New Orleans was a convenient and near perfect backdrop as we worked through things without ever admitting that we were working through things.

Eventually the girls who became our wives moved to town and we double dated a bit. But work picked up. Life picked up. I got on with the Sheriff's Department and he got on with the feds and for a while we worked vastly different jobs in the same neighborhood. Eventually my wife and I moved to Texas and the only time we saw Craig was when work brought him to Austin. He left New Orleans mere weeks before we moved home. We saw him one last time at his little suburban home in Metairie, not blocks from where we used to live. My kid was still an infant. His kids were just starting to walk. We haven’t seen each other since.

I regret that. I regret that Craig and I haven’t kept in touch and I regret that our kids don’t know each other. There’s a reason, a private one that reflects far more on me than Craig and which I can’t and won’t share here. One day, maybe soon, he’ll retire and as soon as he does I’ll be waiting with a case of Abita Amber and a laundry list of questions. We’ll have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t know where he intends to retire but I hope it’s back home to New Orleans. I can’t drink like we used to and I don’t care to anyway but I’d still love to wander the streets with him once more. I’m too old for The Dungeon, but we could still start at Pat O’s and take Hurricanes to go as we make our way down to Laffite’s Blacksmith Shop then back along the river. I don’t know if that Irish Pub is still there, I’m not even sure where “there” was, but if it is I bet Craig can find it and I bet he can find someone he knows there. Or maybe we’re too old for all that. Maybe we should stay Uptown, in the quieter, hole in the wall dives and dimly lit, low roof, lounges where tourists rarely wander. We’re probably too old and tired even for that and the safer bet would be grabbing beignets and coffee while our kids play in City Park.

Either way, I will always appreciate Craig introducing me to the city. I’ll always cherish the memory of those nights wandering the streets with him. I miss that feeling, and I think its New Orleans at it’s best. Not Mardi Gras, or Jazz Fest, fancy cocktails, or strip clubs, but wandering with your best buddies and a six beer buzz, telling jokes and talking about life and girls and telling stories about the people you knew and the places you’ve been. Everyone deserves, at least once in their life, to be introduced to a room full of people like you’re someone they ought to know. Everyone deserves, at least once, to be the destination, someone that people like Craig seek out. Everyone deserves, at least once, to sit at the corner of a bar in some low roof dive in the dim light of a string of old, white Christmas lights and tell war stories to a buddy who’s been there. Because of Craig I got to not only do this, but do it in New Orleans, and that’s a miraculous, rare, and special thing.

It's always hard picking a song to end these. Do I go with what I'm into? Do I try to find something that "fits" the theme? "Craig" was always into brass band music in a way that I was not. I think he invited me to go see Rebirth a half dozen times and I never went. So I guess this one's for him.