Day Six

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me. Hunter S. Thompson

Today is a designated rest day. Three days on one day off is the plan going forward.

First thing on the agenda is to make groceries (that’s New Orleans speak for shopping for food) at Matassa’s on Dauphine Street, just a few minutes walk from my crib. I also picked up a take-out lunch, a deviled egg salad.

News came through that Fleetwood Mac, the replacement for the Stones, have now also canceled. Stevie Nicks has the flu, seeing as the gig date is some three weeks away, that is some flu! The festival organizers have been quick in naming a replacement, the Athens, Georgia, jam band, Widespread Panic. Still won’t change me from seeing Mavis Staples in the Blues Tent.

I had a bit of a laugh reading in the Picayune that a Rhino Poacher had been killed by an elephant and then the body was eaten by lions. A win for the good guys I’d say.

I have had a very frustrating computer day yet again. Such a slow Internet service and the damn Uber app is driving me crazy.

Mid afternoon and I finally got to do my favorite thing in New Orleans. That is just sitting out on my porch and watching the passing parade of Bourbon Street tourists together with a cast of eccentric locals. Mickey knows everyone that lives in our block. I told y’all earlier that Pat had given me some welcome back snacks. I can tell you now that Jalapeno Cashew’s are very moorish.

My friend, Tony Wood from Footscray messaged me to say he is now in Memphis. Tony was the man that put together the Gary Vincent tour. WOW punters will remember that Gary played a magnificent show with Fiona Boyes a short while back. For those that do not know, Gary suffered a heart-attack not long after our gig. He is fine now and back home in Clarkesdale, Mississippi. Gary did say that he was glad he had the heart attack while in Australia, He would never have got the medical assistance (stent) so quickly and cheaply if he had suffered the attack in the U.S.A. Poor Tony told me that a couple of days after Gary’s attack, that he himself has ended up in Western General Hospital. He had fallen over and fractured three ribs. When Tony and his lovely partner get to NOLA we will catch up.

DAUPHINE: Louis of France was the eldest son and legitimate heir of King Louis XIV of France and Marie-Thérèse of Spain. While his mother was in labor in 1661, Spanish actors and musicians performed beneath her window, which did not distract from the pain of childbirth, as she yelled out, “I don’t want to give birth. I want to die.”

But the queen and her child survived, and he became the Dauphin, or heir apparent. Although affable and popular, Dauphin was also considered lazy and frequently relied on his father to pay his gambling debts. He married twice, once to his second cousin, who died ten years later, and once to his lover. After his son Louis was born, he became known as Le Grand Dauphin (while young Louis was called Le Petit Dauphin). He died suddenly at the age of fifty from smallpox, predeceasing his father, who lost the only legitimate heir among his six children who lived past childhood. In 1852, New Orleans named a street after him. Many historians argue about how Dauphin became Dauphine, but historian Jas. S. Zacharie argued that since rue is feminine, the name became Dauphine for the sake of euphony. If it were actually the feminine Dauphine after the king’s wife, as some suspect, then it would have been translated to Dauphiness.

Asher, Sally. Hope & New Orleans: A History of Crescent City Street Names (Landmarks) . The History Press. Kindle Edition.