Kindra and I had just stepped out of a restaurant in the French Quarter Friday night.
That was when I saw the lady standing at the corner of Bienville and Royal streets.
She was with a man and young woman who appeared to be her husband and daughter and she was looking up the streets as if deciding where to go next.
It took a second, but I realized: I recognize her.
So I walked up and said “Please don’t think this is weird, but weren’t you in Lafayette on Wednesday night?”
Kindra and I had been in Lafayette as part of our 8-day trip through Cajun and Creole country and had been told about a Cajun music jam session at a place known as the Blue Moon, which turned out to be a shack in a residential neighborhood.
It was the highlight of the trip for me, with some outstanding Cajun musicians and a crowd of about 50 people evenly split between locals, many of whom spoke French to each other, and people like us, travelers fortunate to get a tip about the music.
And someone had made and brought a pot of gumbo. Spooned over rice, it was the best thing I ate the whole trip.
The musicians included an accordion player whose dog napped at his feet most of the evening, a really good doghouse bass player who said he’d put himself through college playing the upright, a couple of guitar players, two fiddlers, two people playing triangles, a lady playing an upside-down pot lid with a pair of brushes and my favorite – a man playing two wooden spoons.
During a pause, I struck up a conversation with the fellow playing the spoons, which looked like a pair of rice paddles.
He played them by tapping their backs against each other, with an occasional scrape or rub thrown in for rhythmic interest.
He’d played them long enough to have worn down the backs so they were almost flat. They made a surprisingly loud clack that kept the time and enhanced the music.
“Can you hear them ok?” “Yes, very well,” I said, and complimented his timing, which was impeccable.
After I sat back down and was eating my gumbo, a tall man who was wearing dreadlocks and later took a turn on the accordion walked by and glanced at my bowl as I took a bite.
“C’est bon?” he asked. I wasn’t about to try to answer in French at a Cajun jam session, so I nodded emphatically as I chewed.
A bit later, the lady, her husband and daughter showed up. I noticed her because she was immersed in the spirit of the music and was twostepping by herself at the edge of the crowd.
It took her a second or two in the French Quarter, but she remembered the guy from the Cajun jam with the old camera and young wife.
“Yes! At the Cajun jam,” she said. “Wasn’t that fun?”
Yes, ma’am, indeed it was. Most fun I’ve had in years.