Naturally when Isaiah said we'd be drunk by 10am I didn't believe him. How wrong I was.
The town of Mamou is the Cajun music capital of the world. We won't dispute their claim. If someone could do better, we wouldn't survive to tell about it. We hurried to get a spot at the bar before 8:30 am, when Fred's Lounge fills up. Our seats were fortunate as we made friends with the bartender/drinking partner Alex and spent our morning taking shots with Tante Sue (Grandma Mamou to me). Alex talked of squirrel hunting, showed us knifes, and gave Isaiah boudin Cajun sausage (so good). By the end of the morning Alex had invited his girlfriend to come down to hang out and meet us and Sue had told us she loved us.
After being given an hours notice to assemble a band and getting a flat tire on the way over, Don Fontenot, the Cajun bandleader, and his group played for over 4 hours and the performance was broadcasted over the radio. The band was Alex's favorite. To prep us for the show he played us one of their videos from Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qncJIc77i_M
My drunken dancing attracted the interest of a local biker and the sweetest couple invited us over to the dance hall across the street following Fred's 1p closure.
Fred's does an incredible amount of business, only being open on Saturdays from 8a-1p. The bar is not just a local favorite, but internationally known (we sat next to Canadians but many countries are well represented in their guestbook, though we were told we were the first Oregonians to visit) and this is clearly because of Tante Sue. A local hero in the town (literally painted on the town's Wall of Heroes) she is a firecracker, an 82-year-old who kisses everyone on the cheek, but who does not allow "lip kissing" in her establishment, who takes and shares shots and after each pumps her fist and yells "hot damn!" She gave us several free drinks, even more kisses and won our hearts.
Next to the after party (mind you it's only 2 in the afternoon) we once again ran into Tante Sue who took a couple more shots before she had to leave to pick up a friend at the nursing home for Saturday mass. She was serving communion and couldn't be late.
Also impressive was the band. People shuffled instruments, members of the crowd came up and sang or swapped out with a musician for a bathroom break. Everyone knew all the songs, everyone could play, everyone could dance.
We were done, but the town wasn't. There was another cajun radio show later in the afternoon and we were invited to an evening performance as well. We, sadly, could understand little of what anyone other than Alex had to say to us, but the town's kindness was universal. However because of the language barrier we couldn't find the next bar for more dancing. It might have been for the best, we were exhuasted.
The only thing that could dampen our day was the movie Ted. Since when does a racist teddy bear make for a good movie? How can someone treat the whole world as stupid and mock everything about it and not turn that criticalness to their own creation, how could McFarlane not recognize his work as at least as stupid as most of the things he spends his time judging?
Wall of town heroes
PROST! My kind of place!
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