Teenaged memories 2: No Smoking Section

In 1978 I was attending Tulane University in New Orleans.

One day in the University Center, I smelled and saw someone smoking in the non-smoking section. Four men in dark suits were seated at a table with the smoking man, a stocky late middle aged guy in a sports-coat. They didn't look like faculty. Visiting relatives of a student, I guessed. There was a a ring of empty tables around them.

I walked up to them. The four men in dark suits straigtened up and watched as a approached, but the smoking man paid me no mind, continuing to talk to the others until I reached the group.

"Pardon me, sir," I said as he stopped short and turned to stare at me with at "WTF" expression. "You're in the non-smoking section, sir," I said gesturing to a clearly visible sign. No reply. Gesturing to my right I continued in a polite but firm tone, "I see there are plenty of free tables in the smoking section."

He straightened up in his chair and loudly snarled at me: "I'll do what I want! I'm the mayor around here! Get outta here!" The other men glowered at me.

I shrugged my sholders, turned, and walked away with a shake of my head. What a jerk, I thought to myself. What an absurd thing to say, "I'm the mayor around here"; I could tell he was neither Dutch Morial, the new mayor, nor former mayor Moon Landrieu.

As soon as I'd turned the corner to be out of the line of sight of the table, another man approached me and asked "Do you know who that is?"

"No."

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Yucatan in the early 1970s

(another in Froggy's youthful memories series)

In 1973 I was with my family in Mérida, Yucatán. The city did not seem significantly less modern to me than the U.S.A. or London, but the countryside was quite a different matter. Mérida had the peninsula's modern international airport, back when Cozumel still had a gravel landing strip served by small prop planes, and Cancun was still a dream in developers' imaginations.

One day at a market with my older sister, we were talking to a country Maya woman who came in to the market. She asked if we two blonde haired people came from far away. Did we come by bus? No, Sister explained, we came by airplane. "Airplane," the woman repeated looking at us for a moment, then asking, "Is it true that the sky has no end?"

One weekend my Dad took the family to the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. We drove west on a well paved two lane road, which most people drove down the center of, except when passing vehicles going the other way. Piste was the town nearest the ruins, and my Dad had been informed he could get the gas tank refilled there. He went up and back the length of the small town without seeing a gas station, so he asked someone. He was directed to a non-descript shop building, where he knocked on a door. The man who answered asked how many liters he wanted, then came out with a big metal milk can of gas, a smaller can used to scoop and measure, and a funnel.

So, yes, I am old enough to remember my dad getting gasoline for his automobile at the hardware store, before these newfangled gas pumps had popped up everywhere.

A Jazzy Start to 2010

New Years Day Party Jazz Band.
(Clive Wilson, Tommy Sancton, Seva Venet, Lawrence Batiste. Great music!)