Location:
United States

cajun, drinking, dancing

By Lily Filson

It’s 9:50 am, and our group is at least 4 cocktails into the morning, not to mention the empty bottles of whiskey and beer that I know are lying strewn around our rustic farmhouse from the night before. To some, this would be a scene of desperation, a red flag of neon Vegas-quality proportions, and our table is cluttered with fruit juices, vodka, Miller Lite, and cheap scotch in a demented parody of a Saturday morning junk food binge. An accordion stretches its arms in a raucous, polyphonic embrace; an elderly man deftly twirls his gray-haired sweetheart. Welcome to Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, Louisiana, open only from 8:00 am to the evening on Saturday mornings. Fred’s feisty widow, Tante Sue (de Mamou), sashays over with a plate of steaming boudin, pig intestines stuffed with rice and a mixture of spices that I would have sold my alcohol-soaked soul for. With one hand, she holds up the platter, and with the other, she gaily picks out her shirt in front of her substantial bosom. Everyone at the table laughs and eggs her on, but more importantly, we’ve caught her attention. She serves up the boudin free of charge with a smile and a tipsy, shuffling waltz step. The pig intestines barely contain the overflowing, pliant rice, and the boudin at Fred’s Lounge is like a ticking time bomb the moment you pick it up from the wax paper on its platter. With a final flourish and a wink, Tante Sue produces a dark bottle labeled only with the faded words HOT DAMN on it. She unscrews the top, tips back her silver-haired head, and pours some reddish-brown liquid down her throat. When Tante Sue comes back up for air with a wide grin on her shining face, she generously coaxes our entire party of six to have a shot. \Fred’s Lounge in Mamou is clearly not for the faint of heart or for the faint of hygiene; as the musty brown bottle passes from one pair of slippery lips to another, I tell myself that the alcohol content in Hot Damn is probably pretty Damn Antiseptic. When I grasp the dewy bottle, it reminds me of those brown glass cough medicine bottles from another era, and as the cinnamon taste of candy Red Hots fills my throat like lazy bubbles in an old soda can, childhood memories percolate through my whiskey haze. Just behind us, a determined man with a pronounced overbite clutches a triangle, hitting it vaguely in time with the music, but not a single sound escapes his instrument. Somebody has thought to silent the exuberant but hopelessly off-beat Cajun with some rags tied around the end of the striker. As I’m watching him go through the motions of accompanying the band, he gets progressively worse, and I can immediately appreciate the metallic cacophony he would be capable of. Nevertheless, his ardor is completely unaffected, and he stomps through the dancing crowd with Napoleonic confidence in his triangle-playing skill. Only two steps away, a hopelessly elegant couple glides past the Triangle Napoleon in a slow waltz over the waxed floor, now littered with sloppy boudin casings and tiny red stirring straws. When the music stops, the singer never lets go from of the microphone, and keeps slurring ribald lyrics into the speaker. It took a couple hours and more than a couple cocktails to realize that he wasn’t trying to continue the song past its expiration date; the regulars had already known that paid advertisements are crooned to the crowd in the same brand of lovesick Cajun French. While the singer is studiously looking down at his written notes, the black-haired fiddler gives saucy winks to the girls under forty in the crowd. Even at nine in the morning, Zydeco music is still the original Cajun Viagra. Fred’s Lounge is an anomaly of time and space; morning light doesn’t penetrate past thick plaid drapes, and I wonder if scientists will discover its unique properties if they ever have the chance to spend a Saturday morning drinking and dancing to live Cajun music. In the blink of an eye, Tante Sue, all-powerful in her temple, has the ability to make night go to day and back to night again. Mustering her troops of Harley Davidson bikers, dancing geriatric Cajun couples, earnest-faced working boys, and day-trippers like myself and my friends, we all are led out the front door of Fred’s lounge into the glaring morning light on the otherwise abandoned streets of Mamou. The sober sun beats down on us disapprovingly, and as we waltz, two-step, and jitterbug down the sidewalk and around the corner, inebriated hands fumble through purses and pockets in a frantic bid to find sunglasses and to put another barrier between reality and perception. For the unlucky few facing the light with bleary naked eyes, drinks disappear in double time down their tiny red straws. A grizzled, gray-bearded biker graciously gives his bandana-clad girlfriend his spotted aviator glasses, and the triangle-non-player stumbles in his self-assured steps, momentarily confused at the time shift. As we round the back corner of the bar, the music becomes muted by the thick brick walls of Fred’s, and the singer’s plaintive timbre disappears all together. As we squint and blink at each other and try to keep dancing without music, I can see that some of us in the group doubt whether dancing and drinking so early on a Saturday morning is a normal or even a healthy phenomenon. In stark contrast to Everywhere Else, Mamou’s weekly Saturday morning party is a last vestige of an exuberant lifestyle that once encompassed the region’s small Cajun towns and distinguished south Louisiana from her sober neighbors. When Tante Sue mercifully leads her disoriented disciples back into her Zydeco sanctum, everyone exhales a sigh that things are ‘normal’ again, and the band picks up, the men spin their wives to the fiddler’s beat, and Napoleon soldiers on with his muted triangle.

Further Information

Travel tips: Get there early- the bar is full by 9 am!

Must see/do at this place: Drinking and dancing are a must, and trying Tante Sue's boudin and Hot Damn take second place.

You should avoid here: Know your limits- it's easy to get carried away. Just because you're in Cajun country doesn't mean you have the tolerance to drink like a Cajun.