Thursday, May 13. Prom Night Revisited For The Forty-Third Time. A Flat In The Dark. The most important days of my life so far--plus one more--are as follows:
1. July 18, 1988: The day I began my radio show at WSMB. That led immediately to my meeting Mary Ann (who hired me, not yet knowing me) and marrying her. And then to having two children.
2. Mardi Gras, February 6, 1951. The day I was born.
3. A date to be determined: The day I die. With luck, it will be after February 6, 2035, the first time since I was born that Mardi Gras falls on my birthday.
4. August 28, 2005. The day we left town in advance of Hurricane Katrina. It set in motion all sorts of new forces that dramatically enhanced the lives of both our children, and changed the dynamics of our family.
5. May 13, 1967. That's forty-three years ago today. It was the night of the Jesuit Junior-Senior Prom, about which I have already written much. I became a man that night, but not because of the usual event cited for that crossover.
Prom night has slipped down the list as years go by. But I still remember it every year. Using the skills I learned from years of wanting to be a radio disk jockey (and actually being one for about six months), a few years ago I assembled a four-hour mix of the music that was on the radio on Prom Night, complete with the authentic jingles from WNOE and WTIX at that time. (Those were the two dominant top-forty stations in 1967.) I listened to it all day, and the sixteen-year-old part of my brain reconnected with my consciousness and puts me into a virtual time machine.
On this forty-third anniversary, I left the radio station and drove out to the lakefront. A good portion of Lakeshore Drive was closed to traffic; that had happened on Prom Night, too. I continued east on Hayne Boulevard, which was a bumpy, two-lane blacktop road next to an algae-covered ditch in 1967.
My goal was to have dinner at Deanie's on Hayne. It's not associated with the more famous Deanie's in Bucktown, but with the older Deanie's in the Warehouse District. A number of listeners have called me about Deanie's on Hayne lately, with glowing reports about the food. These are credible; the Warehouse District restaurant has always been good.
But Deanie's on Hayne was closed. Apparently they only serve dinner on Fridays. I continued on, thinking I'd have dinner somewhere in Slidell. I rounded the corner in Little Woods, where Hayne ends and Paris Road begins. On Prom Night, Paris Road was really wild, completely undeveloped, and I was a little nervous being out there in my unreliable 1960 VW. The fading out of the radio stations added to the tension.
I thought the foreboding I felt tonight was just the time machine working. But I really did have a problem. As soon as I made the turn onto I-10, I felt it: a flat tire. Rear, driver's side. I pulled onto the shoulder, got out my flashlight and my can of Fix-A-Flat. It was completely dark by now. But I could see that the tire was ripped up from riding on the rim at I-10 speed, and would need to be changed.
I thought about calling AAA. But this is the anniversary of the night on which I became a man. I took off my tie. I would do the job myself. While, some ten feet away, eighteen-wheelers zoomed by. It was nice to have their headlights illuminate my work.
The job went easily. No trucks ran over me. The lug nuts came right off. I mounted the little doughnut spare, threw the ruined tire into the hatch, and after twenty minutes I was rolling, the air conditioner cooling my sweaty brow, into the deeper darkness of New Orleans East. I thought about what Mary Ann would say when I got home and told her of my ordeal. "Serves you right for still doing that stupid Prom Night ritual."
I was too dirty to go to a real restaurant. I allowed myself a stop at the Krystal in Slidell. The Krystal on Airline Highway was one of two food stops I made on Prom Night. The little, square, oniony, mustardy hamburgers tasted exactly the same as they did forty-three years ago. I didn't need the time machine to make my mind register that.
