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FEED ME SOMETHIN’, MISTER!

FAMOUS GULF COAST CUISINE IN THE HEART OF THE FRENCH QUARTER

620 Decatur St, Jackson Square, French Quarter • www.LandrysSeafood.com @LandrysSeafoodHouse @LandrysSeafoodHouse Or visit us at our Lake location at 8000 Lakeshore Dr.

Please, No Excuses

Okay, listen up. Due to COVID-19 and the delays it has triggered, you still have time to register to vote. For more updates: sos.la.gov/ElectionsAndVoting/ Vote/VoteEarly/Pages/default.aspx

The April 4 Presidential Preference Primary and Municipal Primary Election will be postponed until June 20. Early voting will be conducted June 6 through June 13 (excluding Sunday, June 7). The General Municipal Election originally scheduled for May 9 will be held on July 25. Early voting will be conducted July 11 through July 18 (excluding Sunday, July 12).

Now is the time to get informed and to encourage friends and neighbors to turn out to vote this June 20. And due to the rescheduling of elections, you still have time to register. I am assuming you give a damn, that you have already registered to vote or will do so—unless you miss the deadline due to amnesia or abduction by aliens, or if you’re in witness protection and didn’t realize you would be sent to live here and can’t produce fake credentials in time. If any of these reasons prevent registering, then volunteer to help get folks to the polls that day. Use social media to remind friends about this important election. Donate money or time to the candidate you care the most about. But do get yourself ready to vote come November.

Is our presidential election process a bit confusing? Would you have trouble explaining it to the Martian who abducted you? Hell yeah. But sometimes, you must trust that your voice, your vote, your citizenry means something. Do I fully understand how a plane can defy gravity and transport me through the air? No. But I certainly will board that plane for my next vacation. Do I understand how beer becomes beer—could I make a pint myself? No. But I will support my bartender, buy a mug, and drink it with confidence. And, damn it, far too many folks through the years have fought and even died so that I could have this right to have a say in my government, my country, my life. So, if those people felt that the vote was worth risking their lives for (regardless of the system’s flaws or confusion), then that’s good enough for me. Let’s honor their efforts and sacrifices and take the time to vote.

I will have much to say about turning up to vote for November 3, 2020, in future columns, but, for now, I would like to have your attention, your valuable time, to make my pitch for June 20. Come show your engagement in a free society. I have heard every conceivable excuse for not voting and, frankly, each one is lame, lazy, uninformed, and downright selfish. You have a moral imperative to vote in the presidential election/the general election/ the election that determines if Trump will be voted out of a second term. Oh yeah, there is a tremendous chance he will win in November—do not think otherwise for even a minute.

A person can think all day long that his or her vote doesn’t matter, and, all the while, the other team (Trump supporters) knows that it does, and they do come out to vote. Someone is gonna win the White House— why not our team? Don’t you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you tried your best to make our world a better place? Think of voting as being a Good Samaritan. If you drove past a car wreck or a person collapsing to the ground clutching his chest, you would offer assistance and/ or call 911. So let’s think of the state of our world as dire and in need of our attention. And consider the candidate of your choice as that EMT needed to save us—or, at least, to contribute to making our situation healthier and safer.

I realize that I am addressing those who are not in support of the current president and that perhaps I should consider the reader here who might be across the political aisle from me. However, I make no apologies to anyone who is still a Trump supporter because this president has proven himself unworthy of you. But I will commend you for at least taking a stand and believing in the power of your vote. Certainly, I wish I could change your opinion, your vote, but that is what our democracy is all about—you have a right to vote as you see fit. It is the apathetic citizens, the lazy or the totally uncaring people, whom I wish to shake until they wake up and participate.

Since I doubt that I have the means or even the right to impose my views upon my Republican and Trump-supporting readers, I will return to those who share with me a moderate or left-leaning ideology. It is time to pick the best and most likely candidate to beat Trump at our polls June 20. And if you are visiting our fair city while reading this, then I assume you already know the date for your primary, if, in fact, it has not already been held. Every state has different dates and details to be aware of. Simply google for more information.

And remember that you have the power to effect change. If everyone who cares went out and motivated one other person to vote, then our numbers at the polls would double. Think about this: How many friends do you have? How many co-workers, neighbors, customers, students, family members do you know who are indifferent about voting or not yet registered? Inspire them, inform them, and if you garner just one new voter (if we all enlist just one new voter), then there you go—twice the voter turn-out.

Now go forth and be a fully engaged citizen. Remember that there is strength in numbers. We can do this!

There’s a place in New York City called Hudson Yards. It’s a new development described as a monstrosity. I was raised two blocks from it, in the projects—five kids, single mother, and father figures through the years (a story for another time). The point: A two-bedroom space at The Yard (as it’s called) starts at $20,000 a month. Conversely, our rent was $50.00 a month, and that translates to 400 months of our rent. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, how did this occur in my lifetime? Back then, rent wasn’t an easy nut to crack, even with the stipend sent to us by the government, but we made do; kids got basic educations, wore clean clothes, hustled for money as soon as able, and/or ran the streets. We showed up for dinner promptly at 5:30 every evening. Food was our currency and standing in our community. If you ate good, things were all right. Were we happy? We fought each other like tigers. We argued, bitched, cursed, and picked on and were picked on in our turns. But each night, we gathered at the table and exhibited our best manners, ate well-prepared and -served evening meals. Our best manners—or else. At 5:30—or else.

My mother cooked at least 350 dinners a year. The other times, as a treat, we may have gone out for pizza, Chinese, or Horn and Hardart automat google it. I was always hungry, although I never missed a meal growing up—a hunger of the soul, I’ve been told.

Mom being German/Irish, my father being Sicilian, and her third husband being Greek made for some interesting meals. Plus, the ladies in that building of 84 apartments on 27th Street (who all seemed to know each other) were constantly swapping recipes, gossip, and advice and letting each other in on what mischief each other’s kids were up to. Food that’s now called “ethnic cuisine” was just called “dinner.”

Apartment 10F was five rooms that housed seven of us. There was an elevator in the building that sometimes did and sometimes didn’t operate. Riding in the elevator was an olfactory adventure—a positive one if no one had used it for a urinal. You got a whiff of everybody’s dinner being cooked, from arroz con pollo to ham and cabbage, kasha varnishkes, and meatballs and spaghetti. In the morning, there was enough coffee being brewed in our building that you could get amped just breathing in. Of course, the same could be said for the second-hand smoke and lung cancer.

There were kids running and screaming, mothers yelling, fathers cursing, and hormone-fueled teens preening in a perpetual ghetto ballet. Then there were the busses, trucks, the Greek hotdog man, delis selling bagels and crullers, the hurrying to work and school, and the tango of shopping and procuring. The amount of laundry alone was almost suffocating, not to mention the never-ending bills, the interminable debts. It was not simply a matter of going to one store for dinner or food. There was a fish market, butcher shop, green grocer, Jewish deli, Italian deli, bakery—the boogie of daily shopping to put food on the table at precisely 5:30. Make no mistake, we all had breakfast and lunches also, and, in the interim, we had candy, soft drinks, potato chips. I used to steal from the green grocer because I was addicted to the sweet taste of a perfectly ripe tomato. There were penny candies that we could afford by scavenging for soda bottles and redeeming the deposits.

There was a knish man who came around on Saturdays, an Italian sweet shop that sold lemon ices, a delicatessen that made sandwiches from cold cuts and would save the ends of salami, ham, cheese, etc., for any kid who asked for them. We bought cups of coffee at stands before classes. We waited, caught in the transition from childhood to adolescence, for the ice cream man in the afternoon, took small jobs for extra money, and spent the earnings at lunch counters.

Mom made side money as a waitress, Pop was a cook, and that third husband ran a bar and grill. I started work in food service at 12 and continued on for 50 years; these days, I have time on my hands, so I’m looking to get back into a kitchen. Feeding people is who I am.

Most people aren’t aware of the inner workings of restaurants because most people haven’t worked in one. Most people only see this: arrive, sit, order, get served, eat, pay, tip, critique, leave. Badda bing, badda boom. Workers are invisible and bend to your will, and few customers care where they come from and, if anything, perhaps consider how simple their lives must be. You know, being unskilled and all, perchance they’re working their way through college, getting ready to get a real job. Isn’t that sweet?

As Janis Ian says, “Pity, please, the ones who serve, they only get what they deserve.” Don’t envy the service worker—the work is hard, the environment is tough, and the pay is sh*t. Hours are long, schedules are erratic, and the “my way or the highway” management style is par for the course. That waitress that you fussed at might only get $2.15 an hour and a schedule that screws any semblance of normalcy—so what? That dishwasher making minimum wage pulling his second job shift to make ends meet— tough noogies. That cook who didn’t graduate from high school but found a home on the range paying his bills with overtime sweat—and?

The 68,000 service workers in New Orleans are keeping this city running, fed, and watered. They aren’t paid well because what they do is not considered a “real job.” Where do we come from? I’ll tell you. Up the street and light years away from Hudson Yards. Our need to eat and your need to be fed. Truly, hungers of the souls. The Need to Feed or Tenement Symphony