Its never too early to start planning the road trip from Chicago to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. One mandatory stop is Chamoun's Rest Haven Restaurant in Clarksdale, Miss. I called yesterday to make sure they are still open. They are.
Here's an edited version of a story I wrote from a visit in early 2004. I was hungry. I had spent half a day talking to musician-producer Jim Dickinson at his North Mississippi compound. Then I went to this classic diner to eat Lebanese food. I think Mississippi is an underappreciated state.
CLARKSDALE, Miss. -- The parched terrain surrounding Chamoun's Rest Haven Restaurant is best-known for nourishing the blues. John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters all came from this part of the Delta, 75 miles south of Memphis. Blues are not usually linked to Lebanese cuisine. But the Rest Haven has been serving kibbies in the Delta since 1947........
.
.....The traditional Lebanese dish consists of ground round steak, cracked wheat, onions, pepper, salt and olive oil. Kibbies are served fried, baked or raw. Homemade pita bread is served on the side.
The Rest Haven is at 419 State St. (Highway 61), just blocks from the Delta Blues Museum. When Muddy Waters was a young man, he sang on the corner of 4th and Sunflower, a mile and a half northwest of the Rest Haven. The restaurant is owned and operated by Chafik and Louise Chamoun (sha-moan). Chafik's cousin Woodrow and his wife, Amra, built the restaurant in 1947. Their parents were born in Lebanon.
The Rest Haven is as quaint as a Route 66 roadside attraction with its long evergreen awning and clean white brick that was cast in nearby Indianola, Miss. The same brick can be seen in a motel across the street and a nearby subdivision. The Rest Haven seats about 120 customers in a cafe and a separate dining room. "I'll tell you, 99 percent of the people who come here from the Netherlands, Germany or Boston know about our food better than the locals," Chafik Chamoun says while sitting in the diner on his Sunday off day. "Did you hear about the tabouli?" Well, no.
"Tabouli is our appetizer salad," he says. "You get parsley, cracked wheat, green onion. You can put a tomato in it and put some olive oil and lemon juice on it." Blues lovers from all walks of life have found the Rest Haven. "I don't know if you know the ZZ Top?" Chamoun asked. "They were here."
He walks over to a wall of fame and points to a picture of the bearded Texas trio eating kibbies and grape leaves. Chamoun continues, "I was busy making a living. I didn't know anything about the ZZ Top. It was 10 in the morning and these guys with long beards walked in. I asked my wife, 'Who are these people?' My wife said I better not say anything. She said, 'These people are famous. They are the ZZ Top.' They have been good to this town. They raised money for the blues museum. They've been here three or four times."
ZZ Top had a hit with "Tube Steak Boogie," but to my knowledge they've never written a song called "True Delta Kibbie." The meat is at the core of the kibbie. "It is not hamburger," declares Chamoun, a ringer for the late Anthony Quinn. "And it's not ground beef. You get the leanest meat you can get."
A local butcher trims off every piece of fat for the Rest Haven. He then grinds the meat not once, but twice. The cracked wheat is prepared by Ghossain's, a Lebanese bakery in Youngstown, Ohio. The bakery owners are from Zahlee, Lebanon, the hometown of the Chamouns. The wheat is boiled, dried, cracked and shipped to Mississippi.
"We get 40 packages of wheat every other week," Chamoun says. "Each package has six loaves. That's what we go through in a week's time here."
Chafik, 72, and Louise, 66, studied at the American School in Zahle, Lebanon, during the 1950s. She was an American citizen. Her father died when she was young and her mother reared the family on a farm in Lebanon. "I wanted to go to America more than anything," Chamoun says. "You were looking for a better life. You read about the United States. You think money grows on trees. There is more to it than that. You have to work."
Chafik works at the Rest Haven between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. six days a week. Around lunchtime Chafik will head home for a 20-minute nap. Louise doesn't come around the restaurant much anymore, but she does drop in occasionally to see how the kitchen is going and to make sure the premises are clean.
Every morning the kitchen makes homemade chocolate, strawberry and coconut pies, each one stacked with an Elvis pompadour of meringue.
The Rest Haven breakfast crowd is known for fetching the coffeepot to serve themselves and their neighbors. And check the words of wisdom from Louise's needlework behind the diner counter: "By the Time Your Children Are Fit To Live With, They Are Living With Someone Else."
Chafik and Louise were married on Nov. 29, 1953. They haven't been too busy to have children: Mona, 39, is an educator in Tyler, Texas. Paul, 41, is an engineer in Conway, Ark. Elizabeth, 45, is a nurse in Ashland, Ky. Vivian, 47, is an assistant principal in Cleveland, Miss. Robert, 50, is a Memphis attorney. And Paula, 43, works at the Rest Haven. She is also a dietitian. "The kibbie is real healthy," she says. "It has bulgur pure cracked wheat and there's no fat in the meat at all."
Chafik and Louise arrived in New York on May 5, 1954. The newlyweds came to America on a Greek passenger ship. They had about $200. They ate the nightly special of pickled fish and spaghetti. The trip took 21 days. "There were 1,800 people on the boat," Chamoun recalls. "The ticket was only $300 per person, so you didn't expect the Queen Mary." They did have the good fortune to run into some Lebanese people who brought along kibbies and cabbage roll. "We were in heaven!" Chamoun says.
Lebanese people have immigrated to northern Mississippi since the 1880s. They opened grocery stores, peddled goods and worked on farms. "There used to be many Lebanese here," Chamoun says. "Now, there's 20, 25 families." (Clarksdale's population is 20,000.) Chafik's first job was to help an uncle run a Clarksdale nightclub, circa 1955-56.
"People came from the farm on Saturday and would go to downtown nightclubs to hear the blues," he says. "On Saturday night it was like Broadway. People were walking everywhere." But a new world opened up when Chamoun's grandfather gave him $300 to buy a green 1951 Plymouth. Trouble was, Chamoun did not know how to drive a car. "A friend of my uncle's taught me," he says. "His name was Oxodine. We drove a 15-mile radius on Highway 49. We didn't park, he didn't show me how to pass, we didn't do anything. We came back and he said, 'You know how to drive'. I went to visit one of my kinfolks. I was so proud of my car, I didn't want to park in the street. I was scared somebody would hit it, so I parked in the driveway. When it came time to go, I didn't know how to back up the car.
"But the hardship is the best experience."
Using his newly acquired skills, Chamoun became a traveling salesman for Raleigh Products. Locals knew him as "The Raleigh Man." Chamoun drove up and down Highways 61 and 49. He would get nervous every time he drove past Parchman, the Mississippi State Penitentiary on 46 acres along Highway 49. Blues guitarist Son House did time here (1928-30) and Elvis Presley's dad, Vernon, spent eight months at Parchman in 1938 for forging a check.
Most of Chamoun's clients were farmers. He sold on credit, but farm people always paid back on time. "It was like Avon," he says. "I would go house to house. I sold hog medicine. Perfume. Pie fillings. Sometimes the farm people would buy stuff from me just to help me, too." Chamoun kept his goods in the trunk. He stopped at a house, opened the trunk and customers would gather around the car. They pointed at what they wanted to purchase. He would point at the price. Chamoun takes a drag off a thin brown filter cigarette and says, "I could speak a little English. But I couldn't understand everyday English."
In 1968 Chamoun found a burst of energy from his kibbies. He opened a small grocery store on Friar's Point Road, outside of town. He built on a 25-seat diner, which is where ZZ Top discovered kibbies. "I was making pita bread," Chamoun says. "Then we made a kibbie sandwich. That brought people in. After that, I sold cabbage rolls and grape leaves. The next thing you know, I'm selling lunch."
Chamoun also sold Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles in a Highway 61 dealership. And during his remaining free time Chamoun was still "The Raleigh Man." In 1990 Chamoun and his wife took over the Rest Haven, which was operated by a cousin. Of course, it would be a cliche to say the rest is history. Every meal at the Rest Haven is a new celebration of America's cultural crossroads.
Chamoun's Rest Haven Restaurant is open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily except Sunday. Reservations are not required (662-624-8601).
Rancho de los Caballeros ("gentleman on horseback") corral foreman Tom Secrist sized me up. I did not look like a cowboy, even though I was tumbleweeding around the 60-year-old ranch in Wickenburg, Ariz., 55 miles northwest of Phoenix. I wore my faded Cubs cap, shorts and blue Chuck Taylors.
I looked like an extra in "Bleacher Bums."
I told Secrist I had been on a horse twice in my life. He told me I was going to ride Custard though the high Sonoran desert. If Custard was a train, he would be Amtrak. The 1,200 pound custard-colored horse moved slow. As slow as molasses. Or custard.
In some rusty quarters he would have been called lazy but I will call him leisurely......
....."Once we see someone is more experienced we can upgrade them," Secrist said from under the bill of a cowboy hat. "If you put someone on too much horse at the beginning you will ruin their whole
vacation." There are nearly 100 horses in the ranch stable. They have unique names like All Righty., Boysenberry, and Toupee (who looks like he's wearing a bad hair piece).
Adults and kids who visit the ranch on an annual basis often request the same horse from a previous vacation. The rides are breathtaking. Cowboys and cowgirls meander through the hilly desert. There's black tailed jackrabbit, coyote, muledeer and cactus wren (the state bird of Arizona). During my ride I saw a red tailed hawk regally perched atop a saguro cactus.
Speaking of hawks, why isn't Andre Dawson in the Baseball Hall of Fame?
Rancho de los Caballeros is 2,400 feet above sea level and my excellent wrangler Norm Lilley told me we rode as high as 2,600 feet. Gold, silver and some copper were mined in these Arizona hills. Native Americans first settled in Wickenberg, followed by miners and then ranchers.
Secrist either owns or has purchased the horses.
"You can never have enough good horses," he explained. "What makes a good horse is reaction time. I'll get on them, wake 'em up and find out how quick they shut down. The ones that keep slingin' their heads and can't shut down---they don't make dude horses. People got it wrong when they think buckin' is so bad in horses. Buckin' is the easiest thing to fix in a horse. Runnin' away is the second one. You got a horse that rares and is sticky with his feet? Don't even mess with him if you're trying to make him a dude horse. Somewhere in that horse's makeup something will happen. And if they react, its going to hurt somebody. I've learned that from a lot of other horsemen."
The ranch wrangler picks where you will go on the ride. Lilley knew the history of the area and recited classic cowboy poetry during our rest stops---or stops where Custard suddently decided to eat.
"You can come here and see all this, but if you don't know anything about it, it doesn't mean anything," Lilley said. "A lot of people don't realize this all used to be a part of Mexico. That's why we have a lot of Spanish names here. I just like to know about my surroundings."
The key to riding a horse is just like getting through life: stay balanced.
You pull back on the rein to stop and a kick on the side serves as a gas pedal to go. Wrangler Caroline Markham later told me, "You put one leg on each side and your mind in the middle."
Rancho de los Caballeros is a secret find. The spacious laid back feel of the ranch reflects a 1950s or 1960s Phoenix. You expect to see Barry Goldwater coming around the corner. Today Wickenburg is known for its recovery centers. There's the Remuda Programs for Eating Disorders and The Meadows. Its not uncommon to see Hollywood types wandering around Wickenburg after visiting loved ones.
The 20,000 acre Rancho de los Caballeros involves deeded land and some long term leases from the state and federal government. The ranch started cattle ranching in 1953 as a steer operation, later developing into a cow-calf operation with the purchase of 100 cattle from the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.
"You put all 20,000 acres together and you have a ranch," said Rancho de los Caballeros owner Dallas "Rusty" Gant, Jr., whose father founded the ranch. "You don't own all 20,000 acres. You own about 1,600. We ranch cattle but we don't raise our own food. Ours are more grass fed and they need to go through mid-term steps before they go to market."
After my 90-minute ride, I adjourned to the ranch's bar for a very unique Prickly Pear Margarita. The bright red fruit is picked from prickly pear cacti in the summer. The cacti grow throughout the ranch resort. The berries are then soaked in tequila so the alcohol absorbs its flavor.
Here's the secret recipe:
1 1/2 oz. tequila ( I recommend Cazadores), infused with prickly pear cactus fruit.
1/2 oz. premium triple sec liqueur (Cointreau).
1 oz. lime juice.
Cheers!
And don't drink and ride.
For more on Ranchos de los Caballeros, 1551 South Vulture Mine Rd., call (800) 684-5030, or visit www.sunc.com. The ranch is open from October through mid-May.
I first visited the Double JJ Ranch in Rothbury, Mich. in November, 2006. The historic ranch was a gentle, rural escape from the madness of Muskegon, 25 miles south. I returned with my girl friend on New Year's Eve 2007 to find a new indoor water park and pizza parlor. The vibe was sort of Wisconsin Dellsy. We avoided soggy kids and came away impressed with the ranch's New Year's Eve fireworks show.
But now this?
ROTHBURY--a sustainable camping festival that features the Dave Matthews Band, Jakob Dylan & the Gold Mountain Rebels, Primus, Snoop Dogg, John Mayer and more than 60 other acts (www.rothburyfestival.com) is scheduled to be held July 3-6 around the ranch. Its like Burning Man for the Heartland. Besides the music, there's daily yoga sessions (one with Michael Franti & Spearhead) face painting and DJ master classes. Nearly 50,000 people are expected to attend and there's camping available on 300 acres of land that surround the ranch.
I'd check out Conscious Alliance's effort to get into the Guinness Book of World's Records for the "World's Largest Canned Food Sculpture," which will also generate 40,000 cans of food to be donated locally. The sculpture will be on exhibit all weekend. So if you're planning to go to ROTHBURY or some more tranquil time here's the backstory on the JJ Ranch, whose name is derived from Jack & Jill. Or now its Jack and Jerry as in Garcia....
This edited story appeared in the Nov. 26, 2006 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times:
ROTHBURY, Mich. -- The folks at the Double JJ Ranch & Golf Resort in wild western Michigan rope you in with the tagline "Outside the Ordinary."
Where do I sign up?
The 2,000-acre resort north of Muskegon celebrates its 70th anniversary next year. It features heated log cabins, hotel rooms, horses, three lakes and a natural cranberry bog.......
....The resort opened as the Jack & Jill Ranch and has been a getaway for generations of Chicagoans, including George "Cheers" Wendt. Late country singer Waylon Jennings stopped at the Double JJ to get
off the road.
I'm a dude who had never heard of this ranch.
But I knew this would be an unusual experience when I arrived at the ranch. I was lost. Sheriff Glen Pine approached my car singing Tom Paxton's "Can't Help Wondering Where I'm Bound." Well, he was
playing the role of a sheriff. He wore midnight black sunglasses and his baritone had the bottom of an empty wishing well. Pine turned out to be a former Chicago folk singer who appeared at Cal's Corrall at 78th and Ashland in Chicago, run by country singer Cal Starr.
Rothbury (population 438) is a mile-square town, only six miles east of Lake Michigan. It is definitely outside of ordinary and inside of nowhere.
In 1988 Detroiters Bob and Joan Lipsitz purchased the adults-only Double JJ dude ranch. They partnered with Wally Wojack, a 79-year-old Canton, Ohio, businessman who had been coming to the
ranch since 1950. The trio added a golf course and a family ranch. The Double JJ has been family owned for its entire 70 years.
This weekend the resort debuts its New Frontier complex that includes a 60,000-square-foot mining-themed indoor water park with a 57-foot-high water slide -- the tallest water slide in Michigan
-- a wave pool, interactive waterfall, row bridges and a family raft ride.
I can't wait to see Govt. Mule on the water slide during ROTHBURY weekend.
"We were the largest winter resort in the country that didn't have an indoor pool," Bob Lipsitz said over coffee at the resort's Sundance Saloon & Steakhouse. "Now we've gone way over the top."
The ranch also offers sleigh rides, a snow-tubing hill, cross-country skiing and horseback riding. The ranch makes its own snow for the tubing hill and snowboarding. Call ahead if there is snow on the ground because the ranch tends to fill up.
There is also daily horseback riding in the winter. The ranch houses 140 horses (110 private, 30 public), and equestrians can bring their own horses. The trail leads to Lake Michigan and people
can ride horses in the lake. The Double JJ is one of the largest horse resorts in America.
The ranch also has 120 new condominiums available for nightly rental along with 32 hotel rooms. The ranch is west Michigan's only four-season full-service resort. There's even a convention center that has hosted Kodak and Motorola out of Chicago. When the Double JJ Starbucks opens this weekend, I
bet it will be west Michigan's only Starbucks.
The ranch was founded by Michigan farmer Joseph Stousch and his wife Mary. The operation was taken over in 1939 by their sons George and Bob Storm, who were based in Chicago but owned a livery
in Whitehall, Mich. "They'd bring horses out for the weekend and the kids would ride horses through the cherry trees," said Wojack, the ranch's resident historian. "The ranch was named Jack and Jill in honor of those little kids. George and Bob also wanted a name that was more Americanized, which is how Stouch became Storm."
Wait. It gets better.
George's wife was a singer who went by the name Sunny Storm.
During the 1960s and '70s there were Double JJ Clubs in Chicago and the suburbs. "The first club was in Chicago," Wojack said. "At one time Chicago had 950 members. Cleveland, Detroit and Indianapolis
also had clubs. The ranch had no offical connection with the clubs. It stayed the Jack and Jill Ranch until 1973 when it became the Double JJ."
Lipsitz added, "In the early days a bus would take people from Chicago and Detroit into the Greyhound station in Rothbury. A horse and wagon would pick them up and bring them here. They had barn dances on Saturday night and the guys would line up on the road to be screened to dance with the girls. Up until the 1980s our population was 70 percent female. It wasn't necessarily 70 percent single female. The guys were going golfing outside of town. The women were riding horses on the ranch. When we built the golf course in '93, we started attracting more couples. We still have the gals weekend without the guys -- and the guys weekend without the gals."
And when there's lots of guys and gals there soon will be kids.
"In '98 we built the Back Forty ranch," said Lipsitz, while looking out a window at a dense grove of pine trees. The Back Forty has 41 family cabins, 23 log homes and kids-only 10-bunk log cabins, Conestoga wagons and tepees.
"Basically we provide grandma and the adults can go play," Lipsitz said. Men's Journal rated the Thoroughbread 18-hole championship golf course as one of the 10 most challenging courses in America. The course was built in the dune ridges, which account for its rolling hills. The rock band Hootie and the Blowfish has stopped in to play golf at the ranch.
Lipsitz is not a cowboy, nor is he a Double JJ veteran. He had been to the ranch only once before he became owner. His intention was to start a boys camp. "The land and the tradition was too valuable for that," he said. "I was in the kid's recreation business and at first ended up with adults here. But I've always appreciated horses and I rode horses as a teen." The Double JJ even presents public rodeos from id-May until mid-September.
Lipsitz, 51, builds the buildings and his wife decorates the interiors. He never hired an outside contractor until the water park/entertainment center expansion. The restaurant chandeliers are
adorned with the Double JJ logo and they are are made by the anch's blacksmith. The steakhouse seats 170 with panoramic views of the golf course and wildlife that includes bluejays, fox and hungry wild turkeys.
Nighttime activity on the ranch currently includes a small bar at the Sundance Steakhouse and the Silver Dollar Saloon on the shores of Big Wildcat Beach. (The bar is seasonal; it will reopen in May.) "We're western," Lipsitz said. "The Double JJ has a 70-year tradition of being a ranch. We want to keep that feel. Glen Pine has worked for all four owners. Where do you find that? This is history."
DIRECTIONS: By horse or car, from Chicago, take Interstate 94 east to Benton Harbor, Mich. Travel north on U.S. 31 and take the Winston Road/Rothbury exit east to Water Road, then turn left (north). The Back Forty is on the right (east) side; the Double JJ Ranch is just beyond that. Continue one more mile to reach the Thoroughbred Golf Club and Conference Center.
CONTACT: For more information, visit www.doublejj.com or call (800) 368-2535.
4:15 p.m. Feb. 8
Spring Training starts next week. People always ask me about the Pink Pony, a staple of Cactus League Spring Training and one of my favorite baseball restaurants and bars in America. I've been to the Pink Pony a dozen times, but truth be told, I've had dinner there just once. Here's my edited backstory which originally appeared in the March, 14 2004 Chicago Sun-Times.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Gwen Briley misses her husband, Charlie.
Charlie died in the winter of 2002, but every time spring comes around he is as near as the crack of a bat and the crease in a glove. Charlie died of complications from pneumonia at age 87. Charlie had a great life, but that goes without saying. He was a baseball fan........
.....Charlie was cremated. Longtime Oakland A's traveling secretary Mickey Morabito gave the eulogy at Charlie's funeral. He quoted the line Roger Angell wrote in the New Yorker about Charlie's restaurant: "The Pony is the best baseball restaurant in the land." It is a baseball place.
"I've tried to keep Charlie's memory going for over a year now," Gwen says during a morning conversation in the back room of the Pony. "So last spring training I put his ashes in little pill boxes and labeled them. I gave them out to representatives of different teams. "Charlie is in 20 major league ball parks now. He's in St. Louis. Cards General Manager Walt Jocketty got some ashes. Charlie's in Chicago. We gave some to Yosh Kowano, the Cubs' beloved clubhouse manager. And Yosh ran into ex-Cub Jerry Morales."
Morales was coaching first base for the Montreal Expos. Last summer when the Expos came to Phoenix to play the Arizona Diamondbacks, Morales called Gwen at the Pony. Gwen smiles and imitates the former Cub center fielder: "Hi, 'Mama Mi, I put Charlie's ashes in Montreal!' I said, 'You mean his ashes are in Canada? He never spent a day in Canada. Now he's there."
Charlie purchased the Pink Pony in 1950 when it was down the street from its current location in Old Scottsdale. The Pink Pony was Scottsdale's first restaurant. The original Pony sat along a dirt road, and the dusty path was bordered with water troughs for horses. A previous owner had named it the Pink Pony as a spoof on Scottsdale's rugged cowboy reputation. (Although when a horse's gums appear light pink, he's a good bet in a race.)
The Pony moved to its present spot in 1971 and it has evolved into one of the best baseball hangouts in America. The mood is always win, place or show. You can tell when Gwen is in the house. Her white El Dorado Cadillac has the Arizona vanity plate MS PONY.
"Ex-Cardinal pitcher Dizzy Dean was a good friend of Charlie's," Gwen says. "They went bird hunting together here. Charlie was still down on the corner, but Dizzy was the one who started talking it up to the baseball guys." The late Gene Autry (former owner of the Anaheim Angels) soon took over the black vinyl "Millionaire Booth" (No. 3 in the dining room). His wife, Jackie, still sits there today whenever she is in Scottsdale. Former Cubs Fergie Jenkins and Glenn Beckert were visitors earlier this month. Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams used to drink at the Pony.
One night baseball commissioners Bowie Kuhn, Peter Ueberroth and Bud Selig were dining with National League president and former Cardinal Bill White. Harry Caray led a "Happy Birthday" sing-along at Charlie's 71st birthday party that featured a mariachi band, strippers and ballplayers. "In fact, ex-A's manager Billy Martin and another customer hired the first stripper we ever had in here," Gwen says. "She was a young blond who had knockers as big as my head. Forget the food that night. All my help was outside the kitchen, standing on booths watching the show."
The Pony is known for its sirloin steak, with soup or mixed green salad, baked or french-fried potatoes and hot biscuits and honey and filet mignon, 14 oz. market price. The restaurant's cornfed beef comes from Nebraska. The restaurant seats around 140 people. It is a three-block walk from Scottsdale Stadium, the spring training home of the San Francisco Giants.
Scottsdale Stadium is the best place to watch spring training in Arizona. The intimate brick-and-block park is surrounded by tall Shamel Ash and Palo Verde trees. The original stadium was built in 1956 and was the spring home of the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's. The new stadium opened in the same spot in March 1992. Scottsdale Stadium holds 11,200 people, including 4,500 bleacher seats. The Cubs trained at Scottsdale Stadium between 1977 and 1979. This bleak version of the Cubs stayed in the colorful Hotel Valley Ho, just a few blocks from the Pony.
"When the Cubs trained here, every player was in every night," Briley says. "Charlie gave a free steak dinner to anyone who hit a home run. Jerry Morales saved his little free steak tickets and at the end of spring training he bought a crew in and said, 'Charlie, this night is on you.' Walking into the place is like falling into a Chicago steakhouse, circa 1960.
The inside of the Pony is pitch black, the drinks are strong and the tales are tall. "We haven't changed to the Southwestern look in all these years," Gwen says. "It's full of baseball things and that's the way Charlie wanted it." The walls are lined with authentic baseball jerseys, bats and hundreds of caricatures of baseball stars done by Don Barkley, a staff artist for Disneyland. Barkley's work also appeared in the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles. After Barkley died, Charlie recruited his wife to try her hand at the caricatures.
"I loved to paint, but I wasn't into that," she says. "He asked me to try it. So he comes home one day and I'm doing A's pitching coach Art Fowler. He told me it looked like a photo. I said, 'Charlie, wait a minute. I'll get his nose red and his ears red.' After about two drinks Art's nose turned like a strawberry. Fowler was a fast friend of the late Billy Martin. Charlie liked it and I did them from then on. They're watercolor."
Charlie met Gwen in Riverside, Calif., where the she was selling mobile homes, specializing in the Fleetwood and the Westerner. Charlie's previous wife had died of an aneurysm. "Charlie was with one of his cowboy friends, calf-roping," Gwen says. "My girlfriend knew his friend, so we all went out to dinner. Of course, Charlie wasn't a cowboy. He comes walking out of the hotel in alligator shoes and a cashmere coat. We had more fun..." She stops, then says, "I wouldn't have spit on the best part of a man at that time." That is the best line in my journalism career. After I regain my composure, Gwen continues, "I had some bad experiences. It was like, 'Uh-oh, I don't need any of this crap.' We dated, going back and forth between Scottsdale and Orange County. After a year we got married. Before we married he told me I had to learn how to drink and I had to learn baseball.
"When we were dating we were watching baseball -- of course -- on television. They announced this guy was a switch-hitter. I said, 'I don't believe that on national TV they announced this poor guy was a switch-hitter.' He told me I didn't know what it meant, that a guy can bat left and right. He told everybody here at the Pony that story. He had more fun with that. We almost made it 30 years. I lost him right before Christmas."
Gwen tears up when she is asked what she misses most about Charlie. "I just miss him," she says in a rare whisper. "I really do. He was my soul mate. We laughed, we had our little arguments, too. He guided me in so many ways. Charlie was always there for me."
Charlie knew the depth of tradition and the breadth of a good time.
He was a baseball fan.
The Pink Pony is at 3831 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, (480) 945-6697.
1 p.m. Feb. 6
Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport----I've got time to burn.
I was supposed to leave two hours ago and I don't know if I'll make it home because of snow at O'Hare. How can I complain after the lingering Katrina devastation I saw along the Gulf Coast and yesterday's tornados that ripped through Arkansas and Tennessee?
Time to burn. It's now 1:07 p.m.
Burning calories is a big deal (no pun intended) down here because of the proposed legislation that would prohibit restaurants from serving obese customers. State Rep. John Read co-sponsored the bill and maintained no harm, no fried fowl. "I was trying to shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi," he said.
But last night I had dinner at Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant, Magnolia and Water Streets in Biloxi, where owner Mary Mahoney spent her lifetime trying to educate outsiders on the intellectual and spiritual depth of people from Mississippi......
...... "I tell people my mother had a doctorate in social endeavors," said her colorful son Bobby Mahoney, Jr., who runs the seafood-Creole restaurant today. "How does one receive a doctorate in social endeavors? You have to be well read. For over 30 years my mother sent my Daddy to the newsstand on Tuesday to get the Sunday New York Times, My mother read that magazine section pillar to post for 30 years."
Mahoney died in 1985 from a brain tumor. She was 61 years old.
Purdue University named a hospitality industry scholarship in her honor. Mahoney was the first woman president of the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce. Mary Mahoney's Old French House is featured in John Grisham's novels "The Runaway Jury" and "The Partner." Elvis Presley liked the home cooked food at Mary Mahoney's.
For a Yankee, I consider myself something of an expert on gumbo. Mary Mahoney's has the smoothest seafood gumbo I have tasted. It is easy on the rice and went well as the set-up for my stuffed snapper (lightly seasoned filet of snapper, stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat and then baked---served with pasta and crawfish etoufee). Actor Denzel Washington always orders the gumbo when he's at Mary Mahoney's.
Mary Mahoney's parents were born in Yugoslavia and she was born in Biloxi. She married an Irishman from Biloxi. When they met he was the night auditor at the Tivoli Hotel not far from the current Old French House restaurant. "A guy was running hookers out of the hotel lounge and the owner kicked him out," Mahoney recalled. "My mother was rather attractive and the owner asked my mother if she would be interested in running the lounge. She did that for about eight years.
" She spun LP records in that lounge. If you loved music, you gravitated to Mary Mahoney's Bamboo Lounge. She spun male vocalists, female vocalists, Broadway shows, operas and instrumentals. She would give artists beer to paint and musicians beer to play. She'd ride by this place every day. Steve Wynn said vision is seeing something that's not there. Mother saw a vision in this place."
The restaurant is set in one of the oldest houses in America (built in 1737) and the oldest home in Biloxi. French colonist Louis Fraiser built the house with high ceilings that recall the Vieux Carre apartments of New Orleans. Fraiser used hand-made brick with wooden pegged columns of cypress. Slate for the roof arrived as a ballast in the holds of French sailing ships. It's like having a fine dinner at Lafite's pirate bar on the fringe of the French Quarter. The Old French House remained a residence until 1962 when it was acquired by Mary, her husband Bob and her brother Andrew Cvitanovich. The restaurant opened in May, 1964.
Katrina devastated the restaurant with eight feet of water. Mary Mahoney's reopened on Nov. 3, 2005, only 65 days after the storm hit the Gulf shores. The restaurant is protected by a 2,000 year old oak tree locals call "The Patriarch." There's at least 2,000 warm stories at Mary Mahoney's.
9:20 p.m. Feb. 5
Biloxi, Miss.-----Human connection is a fuel that inspires and upholds.
This was clear on Fat Tuesday when I rode on a Mardi Gras float sponsored by the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau. I tossed beads out to many in what the CVB estimated were 100,000 people who lined the streets of downtown Biloxi and its outskirts.
I have been on the receiving end of these colorful trinkets in New Orleans and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Biloxi was different. Many families and elderly lined the sidewalks and streets. I threw a long gold bead to a rotund nun to turned it over to a little boy. Near the Beau Rivage Casino on Highway 90 warriors in wheelchairs stood strong against a brisk wind coming off the Gulf of Mexico.
Not one woman showed me her tits......
.....I shall never forget the eyes of the people on the parade route looking up at our double decker float (no. 87) on a semi-trailer. These eyes were medallions of hope and hurt. People shouted 'thank you' after catching a bead. They all smiled.
Someone was trying to make a connection to something lost.
Old Biloxi was wiped out after Katrina. The 26-mile stretch of beach from Biloxi northwest to Bay St. Louis is the longest man made beach in the world. There was no beach before 1950. There are only a few homes left today along I-90 which borders the beach.
The Gulf Coast took the brunt of Katrina. Biloxi is on a 12-mile long penisiula. The 2000 population of Biloxi was 50,644, today it is 44,322. Neighborhing Gulfport dropped from 71,127 in 2000 to 44,315 in 2006. More than 75,000 homes were lost in Harrison County (189,161 population in 2000 of Gulfport, Biloxi, etc.).
The theme for this year's Gulf Coast Carnival Association (GCAA) parade was "Toasting 100 Years." Biloxi hosted parades in the late 1800s, but the GCAA formally launched the regular parade in 1908 with 17 floats and 150 flambeau carriers. This year's parade had 112 floats and bands and it took about 90 minutes to snake through 3 1/2 miles of Biloxi.
Our float was situated behind "Motley Krewe" and ahead of "Krewe of Bowlegs" pirate ship from Ft. Walton Beach, Fla. We were across the way from the colorful characters on "Party Tyme." When the women on "Party Tyme" weren't making out with each other, they stepped out onto Esters Street to do the electric slide to Marcia Griffith's "Electric Boogie" and Clarence Carter's "Strokin'."
The Krewe of Neptune and the perky Queen Ixolib (Biloxi backwards, get it?) led the parade. I talked to the 22-year-old Queen about Bob Marley and Talking Heads before the parade launched. It was difficult to hear the Queen over Toots and the Maytals "Here I Am" rolling off her float, which explains why she bristled when I double checked her name as Amy Anderson. She is Annie Anderson of Gulfport.
Its important for all bead tossers to pay attention. One guy was stationed atop our float to make sure people like me ducked when we rolled under low hanging power lines and signal lights.
We had 177 boxes of beads on our float. Before tossing, I jammed my can of Bud Light into a purple Mardi Gras coozie that promoted future Mardi Gras. Here you go: 2009: Feb. 24, 2010, Feb, 16; 2011, Mar. 8; 2012: Feb. 21 and 2013, Feb. 12. Thank you.
I will return to Biloxi, Gulfport and Ocean Springs before the next Mardi Gras. People here still need help in rebuilding their homes, locals can use some good tools and the schools are looking for volunteers to read to children and challenged residents. My Mardi Gras memory is not that of revelers who touched my airborne beads, but the celebrants who touched the depths of my heart.
