The Great American Saloon Series / Nick's Big Train Cafe
Duggan, Joseph P.
"The Great American Saloon Series / Nick's Big Train Cafe" in the world: Rommel by James Mason, Napoleon by Marlon Brando, the Mandi by Lawrence Olivier, Lawrence of Arabia by Peter O'Toole, Dwight Eisenhower by Soupy Sales; none of them will do for me....
...We assented...
...down on Poydras Street some 83 years ago, he told us...
...They age well, giving young adults a necessary foundation for reclaiming their cultural birthright, while helping them to define aspects of it as religious, historical, ethical, or literary...
...How's that...
...John dribbled my Weller into a glass...
...That hamburger really had been too much for her...
...Otherwise the bar would've been wrecked...
...Retelling them (or even selecting editions from which to read them aloud) requires thought, discrimination, timing, and a knowledge of one's child...
...it preserves some of the majesty and earthiness of the King James and Hebrew originals...
...It's science fiction they want these days, isn't it...
...In doing so, we hope to provide not only useful advice, but also some insight into the workings and frolics of nineteen extraordinary minds...
...JOSIAH LEE AUSPITZ Writer...
...THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES by Joseph P. Duggan Nick's Big Train Cafe At 2800 Tulane Avenue in New Orleans, across from the Dixie Brewery, stands a blighted little frame building with peeling paint and a disclaimer hung above the door: "WE DO NOT SERVE DIXIE BEER...
...It was obvious, from just that one remark, that Grant was hopelessly out of touch with the mass taste...
...I couldn't blame Grant...
...You should pray every day to St...
...And when wecame back"—she pointed to a corner of the ceiling—"there was one Strega bottle_ holding up the ceiling...
...Jimmy was sloshing more bourbon into my...
...The tiny saloon enjoys wide renown for its smooth and flavorful drinks, and that night, as always, the place was crowded...
...Bible stories deal compactly with an epic range of experience not to be found in contemporary books for juveniles...
...Miss Dora peered through her ancient rimless glasses...
...I have been too busy writing a book to read a book...
...The trinitarian Christian A Child's Bible (Wolfe Publishing Limited, 10 Earlham Street, London W.C...
...and a Ph.D., and was she ever proud of him, and her granddaughters, were they ever beautiful...
...Author of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism and The Coming of Post-Industrial Society...
...Our visit to Nick's was nearly a year ago, and Eric writes me now to say that Nick is back on his feet again...
...It was a side of Grant I had never seen before...
...Yes, he was born right here in N.O...
...Father of Rachel and Benjamin Auspitz, aged 10 and 4. Telling Bible stories to one's children has several advantages for parents who do their homework...
...Bible stories thus force parents to enter into the minds of their children, as well as into perennial problems of scholarship and morals...
...Joseph is the patron saint of happy families and a happy marriage, and your patron too...
...24 The American Spectator December 1977 And there was Nick's wife, a fragile woman, barely tall enough to see over the bar and garbed Italian mamma-fashion in black...
...I ain't feelin' well...
...I have been working through (one does not read these documents) the nine volumes of The Information Economy, prepared by a research team of the Office of Telecommunications, of the U.S...
...Joseph...
...Nick muttered where he wished Tex would go and he murmured Italian blandishments to the blonde...
...Nick said he had slipped coming out of the can and broken his hip, but that wouldn't keep him laid up for long...
...Miss Dora, can't you tell me a little about Nick and the old days...
...Her son, she told us, was both an M.D...
...He really had learned how to talk turkey...
...He poured freehand like he always does...
...But in '57 the hurricane tore the second floor off...
...Christmas Book Recommendations We offer here gift suggestions from some of the authors whose writings would top our own list of recommendations...
...Army in Italy, come back and opened the bar in 1924...
...The drinks were powerful and tasty, and Miss Dora regaled us with stories...
...I can't seem...
...She was outfitted complete in nurse's garb, cap and white sneakers and all...
...Anyway, it was easy enough to agree on Redford and Hoffman, but that muleheaded Bobby Lee insisted that he should be played by Redford...
...Have you talked to Lee about it...
...I looked the place over...
...Joseph P. Duggan, former assistant managing editor of The American Spectator, is an editorial writer for the Greensboro [North Carolina] Record...
...We had just seen All the President's Men and we knew that Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmanwould be the perfect pair...
...Nick could fill one of these with thirty-two layers of different liqueurs...
...I asked...
...That's my name, Joe...
...If you The American Spectator December 1977 25...
...Eric, could that be...
...Many of the stories themselves appeal immediately to children...
...Miss Dora choked...
...Maybe he'll have an idea or two...
...The next thing I knew she had clasped her hand in mine and given me the card...
...And he didn't use no gadgets or no eyedroppersor nothin...
...glass and I asked him if somebody could tell me more about the place...
...Would she reminisce, tell a story or two, I inquired...
...Eric had told us how Nick, the Grand Mixmaster himself, was out of commission with a broken hip, and filling his place behind the bar we found his younger brother John, who is 82 years old...
...And he produced another sheaf of papers, much thicker than the first...
...I tried again...
...well, maybe Redford and Paul Newman would have been better, but we couldn't get Newman because he says it's against his political principles to play generals...
...Now there is no upstairs at all...
...As soon as we began to discuss it, I had the worst argument of my life with him...
...Thanks to Supreme Court rulings and to the marked inferiority of the sacred to the profane in television programming, the Bible is one realm of a child's experience that can remain relatively within a parent's control, even after the child enters school and passes from the age of innocence to that of barbarism...
...They brought me a hamburger with onion on it for supper and I never should've eaten the whole thing...
...The blonde ordered a Black Velvet Smash, I a Weller and water...
...You oughts talk to Miss Dora," he said, pointing to his left and downward...
...Can you imagine that?—especially since Robert Redford is so obviously the perfect me...
...Marc U. Porat...
...If Robert Redford ever starred in Grant, that would sure button MacArthur's lip...
...Is that a picture of St...
...to remember what else Miss Dora told us, but I know she said plenty...
...Maybe we can still work something out," Grant concluded...
...He even gets in back of the bar now and then, and his pouring arm is limber...
...Sitting beside him in a straight-backed chair and holding his hand was a hangjawed woman with big glasses tumbling over her nose...
...After the War he won first place in a contest in Rome pouring pousse-cafés against bartenders from all over Europe...
...It would be hard to get financial backing for the kind of project he envisioned...
...Then a blush of uxorial pride colored her face and she began to recount the memories...
...They were mostly from Tulane and Loyola, flush-faced frat rats in rugby-striped alligator shirts and smooth-faced, slender girls, quiet and tastefully coifed...
...What's more, I have a special problem...
...I made introductions...
...I asked for the Bayou Bomb, made from whiskey imported from Evangeline's old digs, Acadia...
...2, hardback and paper, 1971) provides an abridged text rewritten in simple language by Anne Edwards and illustrated by Charles Frontand David Christian...
...As it is, I have an option on Steve McQueen...
...Two ceiling fans, one missing a blade, spun over our heads...
...Okay, sweetheart," he said, "what ya got here is the next Star Wars, a genyoowine blockbuster that's gonna rewrite all the records, ya understand...
...His feet were propped up by a pillow that rested on a case of Falstaff empties...
...It's Nick," he said, and we began to shove our way across the floor...
...A towering Negro named Jimmy, wearing a white, busboy's coat four sizes too small and whose hair was buzzed like a Marine's, shook the blonde's creamy drink...
...What about Prohibition, we wondered...
...High on the wall across the room was a mural, painted in a sort of urban primitive style, of a big train...
...Joseph that you have a happy marriage...
...We caught a lot of elbows from the crowd...
...I asked...
...Well, all right," he muttered...
...Miss Dora was tired on her feet...
...It must have been near two in the morning when the cab came to take Nick and Miss Dora home...
...I nudged Eric and pointed...
...It is," she said...
...She stepped away a moment to make change at the cash register and as I followed her movements I saw mounted in a slot on the register what looked like a holy card—the kind you get at Catholic wakes or that the nuns gave you when you behaved in school...
...A crapulous fat fellow in cowboy clothes who called himself Tex harassed the blonde in Cajun accents...
...They invite a wealth of interpretation, elaboration, legend, and lore...
...It took us several minutes of determined squirming to reach the bar...
...She asked us if we'd come to the back room with her and if she could treat us to a round of drinks...
...The St...
...Son-of-a-yellowbellied-rebel...
...Robert E. Lee is a large part of the story, so we will need co-stars who mesh...
...She scurried the length of the bar back and again, carrying the greenbacks she collected to the cash register...
...This is Nick's Big Train Cafe, a celebrated watering-hole in a city famous for its fonts of refreshment...
...As a result, they raise difficult questions, which a parent must be prepared to answer...
...1977 Josiah Lee Auspitz DANIEL BELL Professor of sociology at Harvard...
...It was like my grandmother back from the grave...
...Here, you take this," she said...
...And beneath it on an overstuffed easy chair sat a frail man, up in years...
...My friends had the house specialty, Nick's Golden Spike, of which the chief ingredients are scotch and Lochan Ora scotch liqueur...
...Grant understood as much from the look of concern on my face...
...There used to be rooms upstairs...
...He's too modest to speak for himself...
...Fact is," Grant answered, "Bobby and I aren't speaking...
...He'd gone overseas in the War, served with the U.S...
...In a many-culted country one hesitates to suggest "background reading" or specific editions to a general audience...
...It's this damn movie...
...My friend Eric Wedig had been urging me for months to come and visit Nick's...
...Wasn't enforced...
...this is one of the penalties of advancing middle age...
...The nurse warned us not to get Nick too excited, and since my Weller had gone watery, I decided to inch back toward the bar...
...She pulled a one-ounce pousse-café glass to the counter...
...Joseph's Guild comes around every year for a collection and they gave us that...
...Still, Professor Nahum Sarna's Understanding Genesis (McGraw-Hill, 1966) shows, from a Judaic point of view that should appeal to a broader audience, how modern criticism can be used to enrich the homiletic purposes of the narrative...
...They would come all the way from Hollywood to see Nick...
...We had no problem figuring out the co-stars who ought to play us...
...I should've cut it in half, you know ?" I retreated and tugged on the Weller...
...There's so many stories about this place," Miss Dora resumed...
...And with Eric's company and that of a blonde schoolmate I did...
...The best anybody else could do was twenty-four...
...Department of Commerce, funded by the National Science Foundation's RANN/ Division of Advanced Productivity Research and Technology, and authored principally by Dr...
...Narrow wooden slats sticky with chipping varnish made up the ceiling, and out of them poked four naked incandescent bulbs...
...I had often thought how wonderful it would be to be played by Robert Redford...
...Nick Castrogiovanni...
...He's the greatest bartender that ever lived...
Vol. 11 • December 1977 • No. 2
