Friday, June 12, 2017.
Mother, Son, And A Great Steak Tradition.
Our last radio show of the week focuses on Mother's Day, but in a unique way that Mary Ann thought of. The guests are Krasna Vojkovich and her son Anthony. Krasna was the wife of Johnny Vojkovich, the founder (in 1934) of the Crescent City Steak House. As is traditional in many Croatian families, Krasna is much younger than her husband, which explains why she is still on the job most days, cooking up the sides and desserts and showing off a smiling face to the regular customers. Mary Ann thought this would be a good story to preface Mother's Day. Krasna and I are very good friends for a variety of reasons, one of which is that she makes tripe stew for me and all the Eat Clubbers who join me for dinner on Mardi Gras every year.
In other words, we have here a great example of a New Orleans family-operated restaurant. Which is one of the things that the regulars love about the Crescent City, both the town and the steakhouse.
Crescent City Steak House. Mid-City: 1001 N Broad. 504-821-3271.
[divider type=""]
Saturday, May 13, 2017.
The Day Anticipated For Fifty Years.
On this day fifty years ago, when I was sixteen, I was stood up by my date for the Jesuit Junior-Senior Prom. I rented and wore my tuxedo anyway, thinking that surely a date would appear. I had her corsage and prom favor and the formal invitation, and I was ready for fun. But I left my family's house and drove in the general direction of the fete. I stopped at Bradley's Pharmacy on the corner of Carrollton and Claiborne. I often stopped at the soda fountain for a cheeseburger, fries (really good fries), a cherry Coke and a slice of apple pie a la mode. I lingered at the fountain awhile, showing off my spiffy attire. Finally, I changed into street clothes in the drugstore's bathroom, got into my blue, 145,000-mile Volkswagen Beetle, and followed my nose for the next six hours. I traveled along the lakefront to Little Woods, drove all the way back to River Ridge, listening to the rock music on WNOE and WTIX. By the time I was halfway along this route, I knew that this night would be at the least memorable, but more likely would be the night I became a man--although I couldn't say why.
By the time I returned home (after midnight), I had no doubt about this, even though I'd done almost nothing but drive around town all night long. In the months to come, I found myself driving the same route, as if it were a sacred rite. I kept that up sporadically as years went by. For the twenty-fifth anniversary of the event, I created a playlist of the music on the radio that night in 1967. Some of these records were difficult to find, but I did get all of the top forty. My cassette tape also included the jingles that WNOE and WTIX used in those days. If I say so myself, the play list is a masterpiece for anyone who was a teenager in 1967. Playing it while traversing the old route--without a map or even thinking about it hard--was as close as I have ever been to going back in time. The nostalgia washed over me magnificently.
After that, I remembered my Prom Night ritual now and then. I didn't ride it again for years. Some years, I forgot about it entirely. But almost since the beginning, I had my eye on May 13, 2017. The fiftieth anniversary. It would fall on a Saturday, as the original Prom Night had been. I would be sixty-six. How to pull the sixteen-year-old and the sixty-six-year old together? Just do it.
I had some relics to worth with, which Mary Ann helped me with. She thinks I ought to get professional help regarding all this. Somehow, I had saved the informal clothes I wore as I drove around town in the original. A yellow oxford button-down shirt. A pair of white jeans. (Nobody but farmers wore blue jeans in 1967.) Hush Puppy shoes (saddle and suede, rubber-soled). A narrow tie with a Scottish plaid. None of this was the same kind of clothing I wore: these were the very clothes I wore on Prom Night. And a bottle of Jade East after-shave, which now smells like nothing. Amazing!
Finally, the car. I had a 1960 dark blue VW Beetle with a sunroof in 1967. I had a 2016 dark blue VW Beetle this night. No sunroof, but both cars had stick-shifts and clutches.
Many parts of the original tour had disappeared or changed dramatically. Since Bradley's soda fountain was long gone, I had my cheeseburger, fries, Coke, and apple pie a la mode at the Camellia Grill. Close enough.
Down St. Charles Avenue to the expressway. Across the city to West End. Along the lakefront to the airport there. Then up Hayne Boulevard, which in 1967 was a rough two-lane highway next to a big ditch. I remember that there were hardly any other cars, and that Paris Road was equally remote. The I-10 had not been built yet. In its place was another sparse, two-lane blacktop. WNOE and WTIX were fading out. Scary.
To Mid-City, and a stop in front of Jesuit High School, which was dark and empty. Everybody but me was the prom, I guess. Then to Claiborne Avenue, which become Jefferson Highway. Citrus Road--then made of gravel--to Airline Highway and the Krystal, where my friends and I went after school every day for piles of square burgers. I ate three of them now. I made my way to the home of my best friend Bill McCarthy. I thought he might have wrapped up his prom experience, but his house was dark.
I made my way back to West Metairie Road where, before my eyes, I saw a traffic signal suddenly change its intelligence from the usual green-yellow-red rotation to flashing yellow east and west and flashing red north and south. I had never seen that happen before. I wondered if this portended anything in my future. Maybe it did. A few weeks later, Jesuit told me I would not be invited back for my senior year. (I wound up at Rummel, which was a lot different from Jesuit.)
And so the tradition ends. I will never drive that trail again. After the fiftieth anniversary of anything, there's rarely much to celebrate, as even the memories disappear. My thinking about the whole Prom drama is that if I had gone to the prom, it wouldn't have been more interesting than not going. Indeed, in the days to come, several of my classmates said, after I told them my story, that they wished they had done something like that instead of hanging with some drippy, nervous girl.
