This Month's Story

We are so used to driving on I-10 now that we forget that there was a time when it didn’t exist and US 90 was the main road along the coast. I thought of that when I drove on 90 the other week on my way to Chalmette. I was curious to see how many fishing camps had survived the storm. Well, don’t bother guessing how many; there was none. A few diehards are building back, but essentially the road’s surroundings are reverting back to nature. Stella and I even saw a small group of White Pelicans.

Is this good? I don’t know.

Fishing camps are a family thing; something spread generations; which may explain the diehards; people remembering the fun days of their youth. The camps didn’t just happen; they grew with each generation. It usually started with a small shed to house a boat, then a small house on stilts to keep the wife and kids happy while the men went fishing. A generation later the house expanded over the water, soon rooms added when someone got married. Like Uncle Tom’s Topsy, fishing camps just grew. And by gosh, looking at one, you could see the stages of growth.

I didn’t have a fishing camp, but I remember 90. It was a long trip from New Orleans to the Bay using 90 in the 50’s when we would come to the Bay to escape the city. It was an adventure. We would pack the kids in the Plymouth Station Wagon with its heavy duty, clear plastic seat covers (remember them, heck some people had their living room furniture covered with the same plastic.) and we’d make a big day of it. Of course we would stop by the White Kitchen for coffee and cokes. Everyone did, it was a ritual, a sort of halfway house. You had to stop on the way and the kids would holler looking out for it. Of course going back to New Orleans, we didn’t stop, everyone was asleep and it would be foolish to wake them.

There is nothing left of the White Kitchen. It like the fishing camps is gone, but then so is Abraham Lincoln and we celebrated his birthday the other day, so tomorrow when you have your first cup of coffee, raise your cup as a toast to the days when you stopped at the White Kitchen and had a cup of ‘pure’ or regular (i.e., without chicory) and the kids had a coke in a glass bottle that cost a nickel.

We never drove further east than the Bay. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because of the toll bridge connecting the Bay with Pass Christian. They wanted twenty-five cents to cross it. I was only making $425 a month then, so that may have been a factor. I don’t know, maybe. But then the Bay had everything they had further along toward Biloxi, a sandy beach, warm shallow water and the same sun, so why waste a quarter? I had some pictures of the kids in the water then and also a couple showing the old Plymouth (it was new then and I was still paying monthly notes) parked on Ulman. Those pictures are gone now.

Speaking of the toll bridge, remember Benny Frenche’s? This was a well known watering hole near Annie’s on the Pass side of the bridge. Legend has it that when business was slow, Bennie would take a couple of saw horses out on the road blocking traffic. If it was say six o’clock, Benny would affix a sign to the sawhorses stating “Bridge closed till 6:45.” People would park and have a few with Benny until the allotted time.

Legend has it that, although Benny religiously removed the sign at 6:45, many of the customers made pleasantly happy by their forced stop, stayed much, much later. I suppose this made Benny happy as well.