N.O., N.O., N.O., and 4 Bottles of Rum

If you’ve ever read the lyrics of “Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Bottle of Rum,” you know that that rum can prove perilous.  

With rum, one runs the risk of pirates run riot.  (Try saying that 3 times fast after you’ve had a shot or so.)

After much reading and re-reading of lyrics, and a little vocabulary acquisition (A “boozy ken” is not Barbie’s boyfriend after he’s had a few, but rather a 19^th century alehouse.  And a “plucky jade” is my new favorite word for floozy), I’ve determined that this is what the song is about: 

Some sailors come across a pirate ship where the whole crew of 15 has murdered each other in the most gross-out, gory ways possible.  Really, it’s Shakespearean in scale, this mass murder, only more creative.

How did the pirates go?  Well, the bosum was “brained with a marlinspike,” someone strangled the “cookey . . . with fingers ten,” the skipper “lay with his nob in gore,” because “the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore” (ouch.) and the scullion, apparently, got “stabbed four times.”  (And you thought The Raft of the Medusa was bad . . . ) I’ve never read Treasure Island, the book where the lyrics originated, but from the song alone it’s never clear what caused all the hubbub.

Is the brawl about booty? 

(“But which booty?” my friend Leah asked as we puzzled over the lyrics.  “Are they fighting over the dead man’s chest full of Spanish gold or the plucky jade on the bunker cot?”)

“Ohh!  I know what the problem was!”  I volunteer, all Nancy Drew-like. 

“So, counting the plucky jade, they had sixteen people . . .

And only one bottle of rum.” 

It’s the kind of poor planning that could cause a mutiny. 

Especially if their liquor tasted anywhere near as good as the kind my roommie and I sampled on our last trip to New Orleans.

A couple of weeks ago, the two of us had the pleasure of visiting Old New Orleans Louisiana Rum, the only rum distillery in the Southeast.  And, having suffered through many brewery tours in a few different countries for the sake of a free beer, I have to say that regardless of your opinion on rum, this is a treat. 

Bienvenue . . .

My favorable opinion began a few hours before the tour when I learned that the distillery offers a pick-up service from two locations in the quarter.  Logical, right?  Why have tourists taxi out to Gentilly, when you can genteely offer them a lift?  Or why risk tipsily trekking homeward, when a bus can deliver you back to a place where you can take public transit?

The second thing that distinguished the Old New Orleans Rum visit from any other form of alcohol-inspired tourism I’ve tried was that our tour guide offered us something to sip as soon as we arrived.  A few minutes in, we were sampling a glass of Cajun Sweet Tea (spiked, of course).  So, immediately, it felt like we were being hospitably shown around someone’s home while leisurely having a drink.  

Cheers!  In the winter, you get something warm.

Often, on tours, I realize about halfway through, that as much as I enjoy a glass of wine or a pint of beer or a flute of champagne or a shot of whisky, I’m less interested in its past life in a cave or vat or barrel.  Then, I get the fidgets like some kid.  I wonder how much more education I’ll have to endure before they break out the booze.  Not so, on this tour.

 While we learned about the science of rum-making, the emphasis is more on artistry and improvisation, which makes since given that the owner, James Michalopoulos, is an artist who (enviably) divides his time between Paris and New Orleans.  Roommie and I look at each other and nod.  This Michalopoulas knows what’s up. 

Imagine molasses.  That's the aroma of this pirate's potion.

 That was the first reason to like Michalopoulos, despite having never met him.  The second reason was that he could paint an old truck in a way that captured all its noble romance.  I turn to Roomie after we stare at one canvas in the lobby for a minute.  “Wanna pool our student loans and get this one for the living room?” The third reason to appreciate Michalopoulos was the names of his paintings, which all attest to an affinity for assonance and alliteration.  And wordplay, more generally. 

Examples: An image of the river sloshing against a boat, then sliding back toward the shore is called “Lap Dance.”  A night light vision of a saltwater-taffy shaded balcony houses is “Moon Swoon.” A giraffe against a swirled sky is “Starry Safari.”  And another I liked, though I’ve only half-decoded its double entendre title, is a close up of a cow’s called “Vashmont Beau.” 

In French, vachement colloquially means “very,” a hipper version of très.  Though literally, it translates to something like cow-ly.  It was the first slang word I learned after arriving in France.  So, is Vashmont, the town where the cow’s found?  The name of the pasture’s owner?  The beast, itself? 

Our tour guide, Bob Songy, was a Louisiana native and had the kind of sonorous southern accent and teacher’s talent for storytelling that made me want to sit up and take notes.  

Our tour director, Bob Songy, showing up the watermark for the flooding during Katrina.  Note the change in color on the beam.

In fact, I took so many that he started getting curious about all the jottings in my little book.  “Send me a copy!” he said and handed me his vertical business card that resembles a replica of the distillery’s door in miniature (which matches the label of their award-winning spiced rum).  Down to the smallest details, there’s artistry in everything there.  I tuck it into my journal.

“The joke around here is that Bacardi spills more on the floor than we make in a year,” he said.  Right now, Old New Orleans Rum makes 55,000 bottles annually, though within the next few years that sum will double. 

Still Life in Primary Colors

Here’s another detail I loved: The neck of each special-edition bottles is hand-dipped in a crock-pot of blue wax, which runs down the sides differently on each one.  

Post-dipping, they’re stamped with Louisiana’s signature fleur de lys, which also marks all of the barrels. 

Oak barrels that held bourbon before they came here.

“What is it with you people and the fleur de lys?” Songy quoted all the out-of-towners asking. 

Fleurdelisé is a French word that means covered in fleurs de lys, and it’s the perfect adjective for New Orleans.  It was the symbol of the Bourbon dynasty when France owned Louisiana and it has stuck, since.  You can purchase cookie cutters in its shape, have it tattooed on your arm, even buy fleur de lys diapers, Songy notes.  (Where else, besides New Orleans, could a football team get away with having a flower as their symbol?)

My favorite part of the tour was seeing the rows of labels and varied bottle types Michalopoulos designed.  Eventually, Songy said, they told the artist he’d need to settle on something and stick with it for the purposes of product identification. 

In case you're wondering, 29/90 is the longitude and latitude of New Orleans.

The winning design.  Print inside.

We concluded the tour with a dégustation of four types of rum:

1) A light Crystal, with a sparkly vanilla taste

2) A blended Amber, aged three years and caramel coated

3) A Cajun Spice, a cayenne peppery potpourri of perfection

4) A 10 Year Special Edition, aged in oak, ripe and reddish, and “steeped in the tropical heat of New Orleans,” to cite the phrasing on the place page

Know what rhymes with rum?  Yum.

They even poured a few extras, in case we were still thirsty. 

Unlike on the pirate ship, there was enough to go around.

Cutting up, after the tour.

**Thanks to Roommie, who contributed much of the photo documentation.

Parisian Prison Breaks, Saints, and Sinners

“Sailing past the Conciergerie’s floodlit towers on an evening boat cruise, it is hard to imagine the fear that lurked within its walls during the five centuries it served as a prison. But step inside the gloomy main hall, and the sense of oppression is palpable.” –Fodors’s See It, Paris

Tuesday, I broke into a prison, the front hall of which conveniently resembled a church, and because I’m not good at being bad, I immediately confessed, pleading for a pardon that should have been invalidated by the fact that I was actually delighted to be inside.

Like many sins, it began innocently. On a self-guided stroll, I came to the Conciergerie, a castle of a cell which had once housed Marie Antoinette and other enemies of the Revolution, pre-beheading. Discouraged by the line that snaked along the building, I peered in through a side door, wondered if it was worth it. It was an exit door. Visitors kept bustling out. After the second or third person held it for me, I just slid inside, tiptoed down the stone stairs, and waited vaguely to be arrested. But no one paid me any attention . . . they’d seen worse.

Standing there, under the ribbed vaulting, glancing at the security guard inspecting the bags of everyone who hadn’t stepped in through the out door, in the fashion of a Led Zeppelin album, I remembered what Andrew said. At the close of our Nineteenth-Century Criminal Fictions class, he annotated a class photo of all of us from the last day, saying which characters from Hugo, Dumas, Dickens, and Balzac we most resembled. Of me, his caption read: “Tara=Jeanne de la Motte. She looks so sweet in this picture, but I get the sense she could sly her way around if she needed to.”

Jeanne de la Motte claimed to be a long-lost descendent of the Valois line who won Marie Antoinette’s favor then betrayed her in a scam that involved forgeries, lookalikes, and a diamond necklace originally commissioned for Louis XV’s mistress, and eventually sold for parts, its jewels supposedly scattered across the continent.

Unlike Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and their children, Jeanne de la Motte evaded la guillotine. Two of the walls of the Conciergerie named all who hadn’t. An expansive plaque reads “Les Guillotinés de la Révolution,” with the bizarre subtitle, “Liste générale et très exacte des 2 780 condamnés à mort à Paris.” I laughed when I read “très exacte.” Who exactly had come along and scoffed, “Why, that’s merely an approximate list!” to be met with such a haughty, passive-aggressive reply?

Of the executed, there were perruquiers (wigmakers), brasseurs (brewers), jardiniers (gardeners), prêtres, (preachers) and many, many ex-nobles. Though the list of condemned might be exact, I have read that the guillotine wasn’t always. That it sometimes took more than once.

I ponder prisons each time I exit my metro stop, Bastille. The building once the dwelling place of Voltaire and the Marquis de Sade, is now only a ghost of an outline, painted on the place, its stones scattered and lost like the rocks in the necklace.

I wonder, how is Paris a prison? Like the Conciergerie, it is also externally breathtaking, but how does it lock one in?

Hmm . . . maybe it locked you into a kind of perpetual tourism. Even when you knew the city, people could treat you as a tourist, insulating you from authenticity by speaking to you in English, for example, even if you persisted in speaking French.

The first time I’d ordered a sandwich jambon-fromage, on that first field trip to France, the practiced phrase echoed through my head for the quarter of an hour I stood in line (Je voudrais un sandwich mixte, s’il vous plaît. Je voudrais un sandwich mixte.) I was met with a dismissive, “Yes. What else?” in a stand-off of textbook language phrases.

I believe in reversal rituals, that you can undo one experience with another, so I decided to choose the most touristy place I could find and vow to have a purely Parisian untouristy experience. Luckily, it didn’t look long. Right outside of the Conciergerie sat a café called “Les doux palais.” Given that the menu was posted in six languages, it clearly catered to out-of-towners. I’d order the most typically touristy thing I could think of (a croque-monsieur) but do it in a place only a local would, (at the counter).

Commander au comptoir is the French equivalent of ordering at the bar, except you don’t linger as long since you have to stand. Your reward? A cheaper price. A 4.60 meal instead of one for 6 euros.

I have never seen a French person order a croque monsieur and suspect Americans are only partial to them because they use loaf bread instead of baguettes, but still seem exotic enough with their mix of melted cheese and béchamel on top. Besides, they’re as familiar as foreign food can be. Heavily featured in French I textbooks, they’re the lunchtime equivalent of a croissant. Croissants for breakfast, croque monsieurs for lunch, and escargots for dinner. Wasn’t that what French people ate? How many restaurant-themed skits had I seen my own students perform that featured this simple little sandwich in a starring role?

-Vous désirez, madame?

-Je prends un croque monsieur, s’il vous plaît.

I revealed I was an amateur to counter culture by squeezing into a space too small. The barman gallantly glossed over my gaffe and gestured to my right where a man with a half-drunk cup of café perused Le Parisien. Ici, madame, vous pouvez faire de la gymnastique ! (Here, Madame, you can do gymnastics!)

I strolled over, stretched my arms out in appreciation, claiming the space, and wondered if I should oblige him by cartwheeling down the shiny, silver counter. Last January, when the Saints scored the final touchdown of the Superbowl, a girl at the wings joint in Baton Rouge where friends and I surveyed the spectacle climbed onto the bar and slid into a split, her arms waving over her head like she was in the fast bend of a roller coaster.

New Orleans and Paris intertwine in my mind. An undergraduate in the LSU French department once showed me her tattoo, a scrolly Latin phrase, that wound up her right side. Fluctuat nec mergitur: “Tossed by the waves, she does not sink.”

It’s Paris’s motto, she said, but it reminds me of New Orleans. Of Katrina.

New Orleans, too, has its signature sandwich, the muffaletta. All the tourists made sure to eat one at Central Grocery on Decatur Avenue in the French Quarter. Back in Paris, I ate my sandwich the non-touristy way, with a fork and knife. I people-watched, paid, and left.

In an hour’s time, I’d broken into one prison and out of another.