Cajun Adventure, Post-Hurricane Rita
(continued)
Saturday Night: Randol's
Randol’s looked just as I remembered it from dancing there with Mike in ’03: a wooden dance floor, bleachers for resting dancers, diners beyond. What I recalled most vividly were the giant fans. When I had tried to describe them to Anna, all I could say was “They’re as tall as you are.”
There stood the fans in all their hugeness -- and even though it was winter, we needed them after dancing a while. The Lafayette Rhythm Devils squeezed accordion and sawed fiddle on the wooden stage, near a giant flag with the fleur de lis.
“The fleur de lis is coming to represent the rising New Orleans,” Joe said. Before this trip, I knew the fleur de lis only as a famous symbol of France and part of the flag of Quebec province. The image came to mean more to me as the week progressed.
Anna is a quick study, and soon she was following Joe’s lead like she had danced Cajun all her life. He introduced her to the fast Cajun jig (he called it “swing”), including a funny butt-to-butt move. Joe is a baby geezer like me, so after he got all sweaty dancing with Anna, I was his “rest stop.” He led me through measured waltzes and two-steps, not nearly as raucous as his dancing with Anna. Fine with me!
Joe said, “There’s live music every night in the Lafayette area, and all day Saturday and Sunday, with almost never a cover charge.” Amazing, especially when you figure that most dancers aren’t big drinkers. What keeps the dance hall owners going?
By the end of our time at Randol’s, Anna and I were both dancing with lots of different partners, most of them old enough to be Anna’s dad or grand-dad. She didn’t seem to mind. The music “had” her.
Anna looked like a princess on the dance floor. She wore a long skirt, open-toed high-heeled shoes, a strapless form-fitting top, and her dreadlocks in a big ponytail. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to warn her that Cajun music can be very active in the upper body, with lots of twists and turns. At one point, she confided to me that she started worrying she’d lose her top.
“Mom, I went into the bathroom and did hard-out dancing, kinda spastic, to make sure this top wouldn’t fall off.” She was secure. However, later she said, “I’ll never wear a strapless top again for Cajun dancing!” She would soon learn a similar lesson about open-toed shoes.