April 11th – Day 11

I mucked up my accommodation booking dates. I still have a day to stay here on Sth. Rampart but found out that I am due to arrive at my normal apartment today as well. I will go to 1123 Bourbon St as it is in the Quarter and I will not have to battle the St. Charles Street Car tourists. Once I got to my familiar abode it felt more like being back at my second home.

I went straight down to EnVie’s for French Toast and Iced Coffee, real nice, with Buddy Guy playing on the radio. Gotta be back by Noon as Stew is coming to pick me up and take me to a couple of spots that are not in the tourist guides.

Kate will be happy when she arrives at the apartment. The T.V. has all the movie channels available.

Stew was right on time. I now have some new music memorabilia including, the book ‘Backbeat – Earl Palmer’s Story.’ Earl was the greatest session drummer of his era. He is a Rock ‘n’ Roll hall of fame member. He has worked with the biggest names in the business as well as working on major file scores and T.V. series. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Palmer .Two Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown C.D.’s both signed and a full bottle of whiskey with a Willie Nelson pick around the neck and Willie’s autograph on the label.

We headed over to Frenchman St as Stew had not eaten today. We sat for an hour at Dat Dog and chatted. Stew then took me to an upmarket hotel on St Charles called the Pontchatrain Hotel. Very classy establishment but the surprise was the top floor bar and balcony area. The view of the CBD is fantastic. I should have brought my camera!

Next we drove to a Cancer research hospital. The reason being that their is a cancer survival park called the Richard and Annette Block Cancer Survival Plaza. Lovely statues and columns dedicated to different places around the globe. Check out this article or Google Richard Bloch an inspiring  philanthropist. 

http://www.nola.com/homegarden/index.ssf/2013/02/the_bloch_cancer_survivors_pla.html

We drove down (stop reading here Kate) to Decatur and found a park and went to Cafe Du Monde. No big line to get in today. The bad news is I have on a black shirt! 

We sat and talked and I asked Stew about his air force days and more particularly how he became a jet pilot. Stew was a Major during the Vietnam war and trained to be a pilot at Selma Alabama. He was there when Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. led the freedom march across that infamous bridge. Stew flew Boing 707 mid air refuelling jets known as KC – 135 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-135_Stratotanker

I said to Stew that  flying those type of jets would have been scary. He said that flying war time jets was commonly described as 90% boredom and 10% sheer terror.

At 6:45 I headed down to B.B.King’s club which is now where the old Margaretville was. Grabbed a seat at the bar and waited for the 7:30 band to start up. The Kenny Brown Trio. I thought it might have been the Kenny Brown that played alongside R.L.Burnside, alas is was not but they were still pretty good.

I had a feed of Nachos with an abundance of Jalapenos washed down with Lady Magnolia Southern Pecan beer. The young bar dude is from Arizona and he is a guitarist and has come to learn more in the music capital of the world. Nice guy. At the end of the night I asked for my bill to be ‘closed out.’ I thought he had made a mistake as I only got charged for 3 beers. I must have looked puzzled, he looked at me and smiled and said ‘there may be a few beers missing, I enjoyed talking to you!’