TALES FROM THE SOUTH SIDE

1/6/10

In my last (or next, depending on how you are reading this blog) post, I informed readers that I will appear on NCTV’s “Authors Discovered” program with Becky Anderson on the following dates:

Monday, 1/11/10 at 10:00 A.M.

Tuesday, 1/12/10 at 11:00 A.M.

Wednesday, 1/13/10 at 10:30 P.M.

with perhaps more to follow. NCTV streams live on the internet at NCTV17.com.

I noticed, while perusing the NCTV’s schedule, that another south side Irish character, George Wendt, whom most of you know as Norm on “Cheers,” will also appear on Becky’s “Authors Discovered” at the following times:

Thursday, 1/7/10 at 7:30 PM and 10:00 PM

Friday, 1/8/10 at 8:30 AM, 4:00 PM, and 6:30 PM

Saturday, 1/9/10 at 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM

Sunday, 1/10/10 at midnight and 10:00 AM,

all times are CST.

While I will be discussing my book and politics, Mr. Wendt will be discussing his book and beer. Beer and politics, by the way, were, and remain, perhaps the two favorite subjects of discussion in the old neighborhood, broadly defined, that George and I share. George grew up in the far northern reaches of the neighborhood, in Christ the King Parish, and I grew up in the far southern reaches of the neighborhood, in St. Walter Parish. George is a more than a few years older than I, so we didn’t know each other in our teen years.

This gives me the opportunity to tell my favorite George Wendt story, which might or might not be all that interesting to my readers:

It is January, 1986, and I am in New Orleans for the first appearance of the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl. (For those purists out there, there was no Super Bowl in 1963.) The Bears were clearly the best team in the NFL that year, with a ferocious defense that had shut out everyone in the playoffs leading up to the Super Bowl and a running back named Walter Payton. That the team had very little offense, besides Mr. Payton and the guys that blocked for him, made little difference. That team, coached by the inimitable Mike Ditka, might have been the best team ever in the NFL, at least up to that time, but I digress. On the night before the game, my friends and I are leaving a restaurant (It might have been K Paul, but I don’t remember; I don’t remember a lot of things about that weekend.), and, as we are leaving, we notice George Wendt (You can’t miss George Wendt.) sitting at a table with a small entourage. As we pass the table, one of the guys at Wendt’s table yells “Hey, Quinn! Quinn!”

First, I am not, nor have I ever been, anything approaching a celebrity. No one would know me in a crowd who didn’t know me from somewhere else. Second, I had no idea who this guy was who was calling my name, though, from the look of him, I felt I should know his name; you’ve all had this experience. This was a mysterious combination of facts. So I feign like I know the guy, but I think he’s onto me. He says “Quinn! It’s great to see you again! You know me; I’m a friend of John Barajas!” Well, to appreciate that comment, you have to know John Barajas. John was, and remains, perhaps the most likeable and well regarded guy in St. Walter Parish. He still lives in the old neighborhood; in fact, he still lives in the house in which he grew up, which he bought from his dad. John was recently in the Chicago Tribune in an article about fanatical Bear fans; John has a blue and orange RV that he drives to every Bear home game in order to tailgate for hours before, and after, the game, almost always with some of the other guys with whom we went to grade school, including John McErlean, whose last name you might recognize from my book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics. Though the pivotal (and even more pivotal in the upcoming sequel) character Jimmy McErlean in the book is not John McErlean, I would be less than honest if I denied that I wasn’t thinking of John when I named Jimmy. The same can be said for another character in the book, Alderman Ralph Barajas. But I digress. My point is that everyone knows John Barajas; someone saying he knows John does not make that person the least bit unique. So I have no idea who this guy is, which perhaps was attributable to it being New Orleans, Super Bowl weekend, and my being a much younger man indulging at least one vice that I have since abandoned with a degree of recklessness commensurate with the occasion. Further, I was pursuing that particular pastime to a heightened degree at that very moment owing to my discovery that evening of something called a Cajun martini, which I found to be an excellent chaser to beer, which, at the time, I drank in the volumes in which, for those of you who know me, I quaff iced tea today.

At any rate, this guy insists that I sit down and join him and Wendt’s entourage at the table. I demur, saying that I don’t want to intrude on their dinner. But George grabs me by the shoulder and says “Hey, you gotta sit down and have a beer with us! You’re from the old neighborhood! You know John Barajas! We gotta talk about Beverly! C’mon, have a beer with us.” So I sit down and join the guys in a series of often ribald stories from the old neighborhood. At that time, the concept of ONE beer was completely alien to me, so our conversation lasts quite some time, and I gotta tell ya’, Wendt is a hoot. And to this day, I still don’t know who the guy was who called me to the table. But he sure was a good guy.