Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans And miss it each night and day I know I'm not wrong this feeling's gettin' stronger The longer I stay away Miss them moss covered vines, the tall sugar pines Where mockin' birds used to sing And I'd like to see that lazy Mississippi hurryin' into spring
The moonlight on the bayou, a creole tune that fills the air I dream about magnolias in bloom, and I'm wishin' I was there
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans When that's where you left your heart And there's one thing more, I miss the one I care for More than I miss New Orleans
-Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter
Thinking of things more uplifting than politics on this beautiful February afternoon. The demagogue in chief just announced a proposed tax break in Florida for the purchase of gas ovens, based on the false report on Fox News that the Dems are planning to ban them, as if that's even possible. Gotta own the libtards. This is what passes for policy in 2023.
But enough of all that.
Last weekend P and I spent a delightful weekend in New Orleans. The place stands remarkably cleaned up after Katrina, walkable and dazzling in Mardi Gras colors and a fresh coat of paint. We ate fire grilled oysters at the Acme, drank sazeracs in the Garden District, crawled all over an antique boat we were thinking of buying in the swamps on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, marveled at the World War II Museum, and got to spend a little time with Peg's godson who just moved down to the Big Easy. It all was a welcome respite.
The trip left me thinking of a television show that was beloved and formative in my younger days, Frank's Place. Never heard of it? The show didn't last long, running from the fall of 1987 into 1988 when it was cancelled.
I pondered whether to call it a "situation comedy", and decided against it. The show was so much more, with complicated characters and storylines that shed light on some facet of life in New Orleans among a black community that was as foreign to me as if it were another planet.
The storyline for Frank's Place begins with a black, Ivy League educated professor from Boston who learns he's inherited a restaurant from his estranged father that is something of an institution in black New Orleans. He tries to get rid of his inheritance, but a voodoo curse forces him back to NOLA to take the reins and learn how to navigate the complexities of life in that community as he also figures out how to run a restaurant. The place is populated with characters who've frequented or worked at the Chez Louisiane for years, including Miss Marie the septuagenarian waitress who only waits on customers who've been eating there for at least two decades, Big Arthur the boxer-turned-cook ("Don't call me a chef", he snorts), Tiger the elderly and wise old bartender, and my favorite character, Sy "Bubba" Weisberger, a bowtie and seersucker wearing Jewish street lawyer who always seems to have sidled up to the bar for a Bloody Mary when he probably should be billing. The show could've made these folks into comic book characters, but instead there's a depth, and a willingness to take the time to develop them as people, that one doesn't find much in modern video media.
I remember watching the show when I was twenty-three and on the cusp of graduating from pilot training--by that time I could actually sprawl on the couch and take in a little evening TV instead of studying and worrying about washing out all the time. Back then I was sort of a William F. Buckley conservative, of the ilk that should be smoking a pipe and wearing a cravat. I subscribed to the National Review, voted for Reagan, and carried around a view of race relations that was formed in the Atlanta suburbs and the dangerous streets of south Los Angeles while I was in college.
Frank's Place changed all that. The mostly black cast of characters were well-dressed and well-spoken. There was Lamar Boysenberry, the LSU quarterback now just finishing his fellowship in orthopedics at the Tulane hospital. And the lovely Hanna Griffin, heir to the family funeral home that carried outsized weight in that community in New Orleans. Preachers lived in stately homes and wore their suit jackets to dinner; women met for lunch at the Chez in hats and gloves. This was not the black community I thought I knew. I was completely transfixed by the show, and watched it pretty much every week until it was cancelled the following year.
And along the way, I suppose looking back my politics began at that moment to begin their drift from right to center. Conservatism carries with it a level of certitude that Frank's Place eroded. Soon I was listening to 10,000 Maniacs and Natalie Merchant's northeastern, somewhat frumpy sensibilities embodied in lyrics decrying capital punishment, domestic violence, and media spewing hate for lucre, anticipating Fox News by a couple decades. Sing along with those songs, and pretty soon one's brain gets rewired I reckon.
I just looked up the band and saw that they were from Jamestown, New York, right down the road from Corning and best known as the childhood home of Lucille Ball. Nice folks up there.
So this week after we got home to 407, I found Frank's Place on YouTube after finding it was unavailable through any streaming service. The images are grainy, but from the time Louis Armstrong starts crooning "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" as sepia images of the city scroll across the screen, you can just feel the kindness of the production fill the room. P and I need that these days. I'll miss these long-lost friends when we reach the last episode.
Comments