Not too far from my shotgun double on Julia Street was an old-fashioned diner, which catered mostly to the mechanics and dock workers on the nearby wharves: Quick Vic's, seven to seven, seven days a week, blue plate specials, lots of lard and gallons of coffee. Containerization eventually put the longshoremen out of work and Vic out of business. But during the five and a half years I lived across the River, it was never slow.
I guess you would have called me a regular, though I would go through periods when I seldom went. At other times I ate two meals a day there, depending on my schedule of school or work.
Vic's was, of course, a bit on the rundown side, with chipped white paint outside, and grease-colored walls inside. Most of the slats on the shutters in front were broken and the glass panes on the French doors were dirty. There really wasn't much to see out of them anyway. There were no other windows in the restaurant, though there might have been at one time. The dining room was relatively small, with something like eight wooden tables, 20 or so mismatched chairs and a small Formica counter. The kitchen was directly across from the entrance. The air-conditioner made a lot of noise in the summer, but at least it usually worked, which I couldn't say for mine.
As the story goes, or at least the story I was told, the building was originally a cottage, built just after the Civil War to accommodate some rich French guy's mistress, safely separated from the wife across the Fleuve.
It seems the neighbors were not really happy about the arrangement, nor were they enthusiastic when an Italian immigrant - damn Dago - opened a grocery in the then abandoned house. The grocery became a bar, the bar became a restaurant, the restaurant became a greasy spoon, and has remained that way ever since, under different owners, mostly Cajuns from Terrebonne Parish.
Vic took care of the kitchen, whence came thunderous screams and curses directed at cooks, dishwashers, waitresses amd/or customers - Vic also took time to yell at his wife who manned the cash register.
The waitresses were uniformly middle-aged and overweight, with varicose veins, bags under their eyes and hair of uncertain color containing a number of lost pencils. Their pinkish uniforms were usually dirty and stained with coffee, gravy and ink in front and oily hand prints in the rear.
My fourth summer on Julia Street, though, there came Frances: 14 or 15, reddish blond and with the required dirty, stained uniform. An embryo single mother of four if there ever was one. She had a pleasant smile and was very nice, but skinny and not really pretty. She would ask me questions about my job writing about sports and about college and such. I guess she was most surprised that I would live in Algiers, seeing as I was from the Lake Pontchartrain area, went to school uptown and worked downtown. I was flattered by the attention. By the next summer we had become friends of a sort.
By then, I was at last working full time at the paper, mostly seven to three, depending on what needed covering and who was on vacation. Afternoon papers always had good hours.
Late in the morning of the last Saturday in June, a rare Saturday off, I went over to Vic's for a quick sandwich before going to pick up my architect friend, Elizabeth Stern, whom I hadn't seen since exam week. Frances waited on me in the second booth from the window, and as I was finishing my ham and cheese she came and sat down on the bench facing me.
"I have a ten minute break," she said, as she lit a cigarette. She seemed too young to smoke, but what do I know? She then went on to explain the unfairness of split shifts. Worse still, she said, the bus to her house took almost 45 minutes of waiting and riding each way, so she would spent half her off time on the bus.
I guess that counts for a crisis for just about anybody, but especially for a teenager.
"Well there's a park around the corner. Or you could go down to the river and catch the ferry and walk around the French Quarter."
"No walking. I walk at my job," she smiled. "And my mother warned me about being alone in places like a park." She put out her cigarette, and stood up. "Please try to think of something. I need this job but the split is awful."
# # #
Elizabeth had just graduated from the five-year architecture program and was now learning about the real word of architecture by working at one of the bigger firms in the city. I still had at least one more year to go in the four-year B.A. program that had already taken me five years, with at least one semester to go - after four years the chemistry department decided I should major in anthropology = three more terms.
Elizabeth and I drove to St. Francisville just for the hell of it. We ate dinner at an old plantation manor and spent the night at a converted college building. Even with the top up on the TR, we were burned fire engine red, and Elizabeth's long, silky hair was a wreck, scorched and full of river sand.
We made up for lost time and love that night, and the next day we drove back, at least part of the way along the Old River Road. It was cloudy the whole way and ready to rain, which made the drive a bit more comfortable than Saturday's furnace.
"Why can't she stay at your place during the day?" Elizabeth offered after I explained the Frances problem.
"Are you trying to get me thrown in jail?"
"But you're not going to be there when she's there. And, I doubt if she's really just fourteen. Law says she must be 16 to work and that was last year. See, seventeen or eighteen."
"Do you think that makes a difference?"
"I promise to testify at your trial that you were with me."
When we stopped for gas at this store/café/garage/post office I went inside to get a couple of Cokes, leaving Elizabeth, my glasses and my keys in the car. When I went to pay for the gas and soft drinks, there was Elizabeth, watching the station owner making keys.
"I'm having two made: one for your little friend and the other for me."
"One for you? So you can let the in police while I'm banging a fourteen-year-old."
