Tales from the Tavern: A Life Spent in New Orleans

At first glance, this might seem like a guide to local drinking venues. While such establishments certainly played a significant role in my story, it’s not about the businesses themselves but rather how life evolved around and through them. For starters, in New Orleans, we don’t refer to these places as “taverns.” They’re affectionately known as good old “bar rooms.” The term “tavern” dates back to the 1400s and generally describes a place to drink alcoholic beverages as well as an inn with living quarters. While at times it may have seemed like some of us spent more time at these bars than at home, no one actually lived in them, except for a few family-owned establishments with adjoining living spaces. But it was undoubtedly a way of life, and just as I and many of my friends progressed from one stage of life to the next, so did our experiences with these bars.

I began writing my memoir and documenting these experiences 28 years before it was finally published. I first wrote about my childhood and early college years in 1995, completing four chapters on what is now an antiquated floppy disk. At the time, a lot was happening in my life, as you’ll eventually learn, and I needed an outlet to process certain things, a way to keep a few “demons” at bay. These were things no one knew about or would ever imagine. And let me tell you, it was damn fine therapy! I wrote those first four chapters and then put the project on hold for a later time… which turned out to be much, much later.

Over the years, I mentioned my little project to acquaintances, and when people would ask me what happened to the book, my reply was always, “It’s on hold, but I’ll get to it one day.” Since writing those first chapters, I moved three times, and the floppy disk moved with me. I knew it was packed away somewhere, but I had no idea where. Every now and then – more “then” than now – I’d get the urge to dig through boxes in storage from one of my moves, hoping to find it, but I failed every time. Then, about a year ago, while looking for something in a cabinet in my dining area, I came across a Tupperware container I didn’t even remember packing. Out of curiosity, I opened it, and there were about five floppy disks, with the one on top labeled “book.” At last, my long-lost treasure had been found! I don’t even remember what I was originally looking for at the time, but I came looking for copper, only to have struck gold.

With the rediscovery of my long-lost treasure, I now faced two challenges: one was to get my creative juices flowing again to pick up where I had left off three decades ago, and the other—perhaps the bigger challenge—was converting the files from the floppy disk to a modern format I could work with. Since I’m not very technologically savvy, I had no clue where to begin. Lucky for me, I knew exactly what to do, which was to call on my sales assistant at the office, Brittany, who always seems to have a solution for everything. She found a device that would let me plug the floppy disk into my computer and use an adapter to convert it. Buying the device was the easy part; doing the actual conversion was a different story. Brittany asked if she could take some time to figure it out, and off we went on a new adventure.