LETTERS FROM HOME: CAP'N WOODS AND A NEW ORLEANS MELODRAMA

Dear Julie,

I was telling a friend recently about New Orleans. She's job-hunting and has professed on her resume to possess a certain skill she has not quite yet acquired. Much like me and bartending.

Two weeks' practice behind the bar at the Jambalaya did not quite prepare me for the high volume of pina coladas at the dinner theater that hired me on the presumption that my bartending experience was a bit more extensive. Cap'n Woods, the owner, caught on to me real fast and called in the maitre d' as a substitute while I quickly learned to bus tables.

This wasn't any dinner theater, you see. Everybody had to be versatile because the building, a former motel, served as a nursing home, too.

Bert, the gruff old maitre d', was the nursing home cook by day, serving up minuscule portions of food so bland we could have been in a POW camp. Bert, in fact, had an impenetrable German accent and wore Birkenstocks and white socks with his tuxedo because, people said, he'd gotten gangrene during WWII. They also said he wasn't on our side.

Dale was the head waiter, and a presentable enough one. During the day, though, Dale removed the bridge where his two front teeth once were, the better to cradle a Marlboro.

He was the nursing home's head maintenance man and my supervisor. Together we ripped carpeting from rooms that were always flooding during rains or moved furniture about in time with the passings and new arrivals.

Cap'n Woods was always there watching us, making sure we didn't loaf or steal an extra piece of chicken at lunch. A insipid free lunch was one of the perks of the job.

At intermission during dinner theater nights, Cap'n Woods would remove the parrot from the cage at the end of the room and walk among these folks so devoid of hope they'd come here to see our poor melodrama. They'd admire the bird even though it squawked more than it talked.

Then Cap'n Woods would walk to the stage with the rolling gait of a sailor and lead the audience in a sing-along of old songs like "Dinah." Sometimes, my job was to run the projector that flashed the song's words and the bouncing ball on a screen. He didn't like it if the words didn't keep up with the singing.

The show would go on. The cast and the gay director/organist would take a bow. Lionel, the token black busboy, and I would bus more tables.

Cap'n Woods was unpleasant but I figured gruffness and meanness could just become the way of a seafaring man. I thought that until Dale told me that the only thing Cap'n Woods' had ever captained was a seafood restaurant in Baton Rouge. And that the rolling gait was just a bad knee.

I worked there a month for minimum wage until the day Cap'n Woods told me to vacuum his office. I wasn't snooping. The Nazi magazines were right there in plain view. Suddenly, everything made sense. The poor treatment of the elderly folks unfortunate enough to be spending the ends of their lives in Cap'n Woods' care. Bert, who had the scared eyes of someone always looking over his shoulder. The Cap'n's pampered son, who drove a fast car and made a point to treat Lionel the one iota worse than he treated me.

New Orleans was good for a year, but that experience told me it was a good place to rot.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.