Beignet All Day By David W. Brown
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUS0
Café du Monde is always a little confusing the nearer to the doorways you get. The line along Decatur is typically long, the sun is somehow always at high noon, and by the time you are near enough to the building to smell the sweet goodies inside, an organized disorder takes hold, with you focused on the food, the tourists staggering out (powdered white and slightly dazed at the delights they’ve experienced), and street musicians beating drums and blowing horns. The more mirthful are singing and dancing, and the whole thing is a sort of merry mayhem.
18 S E P T E M B E R O C TO B E R 20 20
I expect the usual when I visit one recent morning in July, and I do not find it. The magnificent band is still there, playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” for the 15 millionth time that day. Except for their music, however, it is quiet. No one is dancing. The line is too short and it all feels somehow like a sweltering, woeful winter. Faces are wrapped with masks and everyone is spaced in six-foot intervals. This poses problems for the musicians — it’s hard to get a party started when every person is two yards apart, after all — and though the singer does his level best, he and his jazz trio manage only to get a few bottoms moving.
