weekend in Baton Rouge

I travel to the New Orleans area a couple-few times a year to see family, but I hadn’t spent a significant time in Baton Rouge in years — probably not since I left LSU in 1991, to be honest. I would drive through on the way from/to Austin and notice changes, and sometimes I would even stop to visit friends. I drove through campus once or twice, and when Beau and I visited New Orleans last November, we had lunch at The Caterie. But I hadn’t seen much of Baton Rouge.
We drove to Baton Rouge last weekend for a couple of reasons, and I still didn’t see much of the city. But that was all right, we had a good time at two rather different events: a ballet and a book signing/reading. My little brother was in the ballet, and I was part of the event for the book Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, because it includes an essay I wrote about NO-area movie theaters.
The drive is 420-plus long and boring miles. The first part down Hwy 71 was more charming than usual because it’s currently wildflower season in Texas. Sections of grassy medians were tinted blue, pink, yellow or orange from all the bluebonnets, primroses, firewheels, Texas paintbrushes, and other flowers that I have no idea what they’re called. Whole fields were blanketed with wildflowers. I must never have driven down the highway at this time of year before because I don’t remember such startling masses of flowers. The first time I drove to Austin was in May of 1991, and I remember seeing lots of wildflowers, but not like this.

After we left the wildflowers and it grew dark outside, the drive became more tiresome. My car is too old and unreliable for the trip, so we had to take Beau’s car, which is a standard shift, which I can’t drive. I really ought to take a class or something, because it seemed terribly unfair to make him drive the whole time. He was exhausted by the time we finally found our Baton Rouge hotel on Friday night.
The hotel where we stayed was nice, but a little odd. I hadn’t realized it allowed pets, so it was a surprise to hear dogs barking in the morning, and to see a guy on the elevator with his dachshund on a leash. The staff had been rather rude when we checked in late on Friday, and I chalked it up to post-K staff shortages. But for the rest of the stay, everyone was extremely friendly. Also, the hotel seemed to host a lot of conferences, because we kept seeing big groups of people all wearing the same style/color shirts.
The ballet on Saturday was worth the trip. I hadn’t ever seen my brother in an actual staged performance. I saw him dance as part of his summer ballet school’s recital last year in San Antonio, but those were more like exercises than choreographed dances. This time he was dancing in Cinderella, and better yet, he had a role that required not only dancing but acting: he played one of the ugly stepsisters. I wish I had asked someone sitting around us if they realized the stepsisters were actually guys, because I felt that they managed to create the illusion of being female quite well. My brother had some astonishingly graceful hand and body movements. On the other hand, when they had to strip down to camisoles and bloomers to change onstage, my brother’s upper-body build probably gave away the fact that he was a guy … unless the stepsisters spent a portion of every day at the gym working on their triceps and pecs. I wish I could post a photo here of him in costume, but I think I had better get his permission first.
The stepsisters were wonderful comic relief from dance after dance of girls and women in pretty ballet costumes with their hair pulled back in the same way. In fact, they looked similar enough that it wasn’t until the intermission that I learned one of the fairies (there are a ton of fairies in this ballet, led by The Godmother) was someone I’d been to high school with. She’s married now and has a few kids, one of whom was in the ballet. When the second act started, I picked her out easily. You would never have known that she’s my age. (I looked around for her after the performance ended, but couldn’t find her.) The guys performing in Cinderella, except for the Prince, all had the most fun roles.
The ballet took place in the downtown area of Baton Rouge near the old state capitol, an area I used to know well because I was a political reporting intern out of the new state capitol. It was the only time on the trip I noticed a lot of familiar sights, like the old Frostop.
After the ballet, we spent the evening with my parents, my brother (after he took off all his makeup and fancy clothes), and my sister and niece. So we did get a yummy seafood dinner at a place called Parrain’s, which I don’t think was around when I used to live in Baton Rouge. I had fried softshell crab, which I hardly ever get to have in Austin and which I love. We got back to the hotel pretty tired, and switched between X-Men 2 and The Jerk before bed. (Beau had to give me a lot of backstory on the X-Men, which I know very little about.)
The book signing was on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, it was at the same time as the second day of the ballet, so my little brother couldn’t go. But my parents drove back into Baton Rouge to watch me read an excerpt from my essay. It is a little strange to read something about your parents when they are sitting there in the front row. (Someday I think I’d get a kick out of reading a certain essay aloud with them present … the one called “Sheltered Lives” that has been nicknamed “The Wank.” It’s mostly a phone conversation with me and my mom.)
I finally got to meet Ray, which is funny considering we both live in Austin. I also met two of the other writers in the book, Sarah Inman and David Rutledge, as well as the book’s publisher, Bruce Rutledge. And I got to see Toni again, and introduce her and Carl to Beau, which was awfully nice.
The book signing took place at a Barnes and Noble that hadn’t been there when I lived in Baton Rouge. In fact, the entire area around the B&N was newly developed — several strip malls full of chain restaurants and Starbucks and boutique-ish stores. It was a little surprising, this part of town that could have been Cedar Park or Katy or anywhere, really. We stayed in a hotel across the highway from the B&N and honestly, the only thing in the area that I remembered was a Chili’s, which used to have a reputation for certain politicians eating there all the time and flirting heavily with the waitresses. Nearly everything else was new.
The reading went quite well. I got to start, which made me a little nervous, but it went fine. I could hear my dad laughing a lot, so that was a good sign. (My mom did not object to my claim that she used to consult the local Catholic newspaper’s weekly ratings before we were allowed to see any film; later, she wondered why she’d been so hardline on it. Heh.) Toni and Sarah read some touching excerpts from their essays, and Ray’s excerpt had everyone laughing again. Have I mentioned recently that this book is extremely good and you ought to buy it if you haven’t already?
And if you’re living in Austin, it looks like we may do a book reading/signing here in mid- to late May. We’re trying to persuade Toni to drive here for the reading. I can’t wait. I will post more info as it becomes available.
The Baton Rouge reading was the first time I’d ever signed books. I realized the nuns were not very successful in their attempts to improve my handwriting. I am quite envious of Toni, who has a simply gorgeous signature. Mine looks a little cramped and wobbly, especially after I’ve signed it a couple dozen times. The reading/signing was well attended — nearly all the chairs seemed to be full — although I realize family and friends made up a lot of that. Still, a line of people queued up to have their books signed, and Toni claims some people walked by the reading, got interested, and spontaneously bought the book. That’s wonderful.
After a late lunch at Semolina’s with my parents, we started the drive back home. We decided to split the drive in two, and stopped for the night in Beaumont. Beaumont was the logical place to stop in terms of geography, but it was not exactly a bustling metropolis. On the other hand, I’m not sure where we could have stopped on that drive besides Houston that would have been better. We drove downtown to see the “revitalized nightlife,” but on a Sunday night, the place was dead. I wish I could have had a closer look at the renovated Jefferson Theatre — I wondered why they didn’t show movies there, like the Paramount in Austin does, but if the area is that deserted I guess it would not be worthwhile. We did see a huge ship and some interesting buildings.
On Monday we started the drive home. It took longer than usual, because construction often caused some misleading-looking offramps and we took the wrong road twice. Still, it was a gorgeous day. The accidental detour in Houston took us around a very pretty part of town, all trees and parks. The wildflowers seemed to be even more blooming on the drive home. By the time we got back to Austin, it was nearly dark. Rufus the cat was very needy, poor guy, and he may never let me leave the house again.