May 27, 2009
Adventures in New Orleans (Part Two)
The original plan for my brother’s bachelor party was to have it on the night before the wedding, but that was nixed immediately by him. In order to have a proper last hurrah, I ended up driving into New Orleans a full day ahead of everyone else.
I showed up around eleven and found my already intoxicated hermano on the side of Canal Rd with his newly acquired in-laws. We headed down Bourbon Street and started our descent into drunken stupidity. Instead of posting all those particular details which could come back and haunt me (Hi, Jen!), I’ll just talk a bit about our run-in with a local grifters.
In Austin, we deal with bums all the time but not ones the caliper of New Orleans bums. No siree, we have meager ones who can easily be ignored if you want. New Orleans have professional, slick masters of the swindle that will get you if you just so happen to allow them a half-second of your attention.
While maneuvering through a crowd, Rod got a tug on his shoulder by an aged man with grayish hair (for the purposes of this story, just imagine a freckle-less Morgan Freeman). The calm slickster started in with his rehearsed spiel, “Hey, man! Those are some nice shoes! I bet you I can tell you where you got them at!”
Rod looked over with a glazed, sloshed stare at the hustler and with his, “Nuh-uh!”, I immediately knew that he was caught.
The con-artist continued, “Yeah, not only can I tell you where you got them shoes, but I can also tell you what city and state you got them in!”.
“What? That’s impossible! How the hell could you tell me that?!”, my inebriated brother questioned.
“Easy, my brother! You got those shoes on your feet! And you got them feet in New Orleans, Louisiana baby!”, exclaimed the smiling man right before he began to polish my brother’s shoes. “Alright, that’ll be twenty dollars.”, the man announces to Rod.
“What? Twenty? For what!?”, Rod asks.
“It’s ten for the line and ten for the shine, baby!”
Welcome to New Orleans.
*Click HERE for Part One*
