The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir

Chapter Nine: Travels With Papa Dad

108 C H A P T E R N I N E TRAVELS WITH PAPA DAD DAD WAS PROUD OF HAVING BEEN AROUND THE WORLD FIVE TIMES. He spent months at a stretch in Havana and Acapulco and traveled frequently back and forth between them and New Orleans. He lived in Cuba in the 1950s during the Batista regime, the time of Hemingway and the La Floridita Bar famous for its daiquiris and mojitos. From my dad’s traveling and sporting world, I learned a few things. How to find my way around a bathhouse. Where to sit at a baseball game (first base side where most of the plays are) or a bullring (on the sombra, or shady side). To appreciate the beauty of a veronica pass and a well-killed bull, what a trifecta was, how to bet on the fast-moving game of jai alai. I would come to know from experience that the front row seats for Thai kickboxing in Bangkok were a must if you were to witness, at close quarters , the men’s prayers before the bout, their teeth being kicked out, and the warm hugs afterwards when the bloodied opponents renewed their friendship. One could do without such knowledge.And yet somehow it has served me well. Dad first took me to Europe when I was fifteen. It was 1965; Mom had just opened her restaurant. Dad was not yet the Gorilla Man. I had just gotten my driver’s license—back then, you could drive at fifteen in Louisiana . We were flying on my birthday so Dad enlisted his state trooper friend Lenny Ferrara to license me a day early. But even a license didn’t make me quite legal to drive in Europe. Dad wanted a driver, however, and TRAVELS WITH PAPA DAD 109 I was dying to drive in Europe—all those M roads and autobahns with no speed limits! We tacitly agreed that we wouldn’t ask Hertz if I was street legal. Through Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and France I did most of the driving. Not through Spain. My driving was over by then. Dad was a well-seasoned, though difficult, travel companion. He had a penchant for carrying oddball props. A golf club was one of his favorites. You don’t want to lose your swing, he would say as he stroked imaginary balls in airport concourses waiting for flights. (Imagine now getting a golf club through the TSA’s metal detector.) Then there was the garlic. As we drove through the Norman countryside that first day after landing at Ostend , he made me pull over to a farm stand. Garlic, fresh garlic, he rejoiced and repeated the inevitable lecture as he peeled the cloves and popped toe after toe into his mouth. I opened the window, to fill my lungs with the sweet air of the countryside and my ears with the sound of the road. Surprisingly, traveling was a way for Dad to close, rather than open, doors. He traveled in order to develop new prejudices. The Irish were this and the English were that and the French, oh my God, the French. . . . To Dad, the Scots weren’t thrifty, they were cheats. While I was buying a forest green cashmere sweater at the Pringle Factory, Dad was getting a 9.1 The future Gorilla Man meets his match. TRAVELS WITH PAPA DAD 110 tip from the sweater salesman on the Derby, the biggest race of the British Isles. Not his usual chalk bet, but a long shot. Dad played it on the nose just for fun. When it won, he was told long distance that his prize was £80 for his £20 “show” bet. He had expected £800. He swore that he had wagered on the nose. I couldn’t convince Dad it was a misunderstanding, caught between the bookie’s Highland and his own New Orleans brogue. He would have none of it. The Scots are cheats. By the time we hit Basel, Switzerland, he added a new twist. “The Swedes,” he announced,“are very rigid.” “Dad, they’re Swiss.” “The Swedes are very rigid.” “No, Dad, they aren’t Swedes. The Swedes live in Sweden. In Switzerland it’s the Swiss.” “They don’t care what I call them.” “Dad, what if someone called you an Armenian rather than an American?” “I don’t care what people...