The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Holiday Hijinks in the Big Easy
Join us on the Outer Belt as we recount a hilarious holiday tale from New Orleans. From the lively ambiance of Bourbon Street to our own family traditions, we explore the delicious and sometimes unconventional ways people celebrate this festive holiday. Listen as Jerry shares his heartwarming trip to Upper Michigan with partner Don, and our spirited card games in Alabama, proving that the best gatherings are filled with laughter and love.
In the heart of New Orleans, we uncovered culinary secrets and ventured into vibrant city parks, discovering the enchanting magic of Christmas lights among century-old oak trees. Whether riding historic carousels or spinning on the Tilt-A-Whirl, our stories capture the joy and whimsy of holiday traditions. We take you on a journey through unique Southern delicacies, historical cocktails, and the unforgettable charm of New Orleans, blending our experiences with the rich cultural tapestry of the city.
But the adventure doesn't end there! We recount long-standing family traditions, like preparing special dishes for loved ones or navigating the wild world of Christmas tree shopping. From a lively taxi ride with a praline-making driver to nostalgic reflections on holiday travel, our episode is packed with amusing anecdotes and treasured memories. So, grab a seat at our table as we celebrate the warmth of family, the joy of community, and the spirit of festive preparations.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Outer Belt. I'm Patrick and you all know my friends Shirley.
Speaker 1:Buttermilk.
Speaker 2:Eric and Jerry and we're the Animal Crew. That's not right, are we? What do they call it? The Morning Zoo, morning Zoo. This is the Morning Zoo. Is it the Morning Zoo?
Speaker 3:We're the Eating Zoo, eating Zoo. When did we drop, did we it? The Morning Zoo, the Eating Zoo, the Eating.
Speaker 2:Zoo. When did we drop? Did we drop in the mornings?
Speaker 4:We do yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, clearly, I'm always the first download, clearly, clearly. Well, it's good to be back. It's been a hot minute. Lots have gone on, things have gone on. We've missed episodes. I mostly blame Jerry for that, but you know.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:We're back now.
Speaker 1:No, Well, you know work.
Speaker 2:It's been quite fun. So for those who don't know, in the yard or just in general, things are kind of like crazy busy. They always get this way towards the end of the year and, you know, it seems like a lot of people choose to change jobs or whatever around the beginning of the new year, so we get a lot and a huge influx of applicants and um going through all that and then also we, um, we like could, because christmas is so slow, we actually limit the time in december where we'll move teams into a truck, and if it's too late in the season you actually get bumped to january, and so it's like the mad rush between the cut before the cutoff to get everybody into trucks and get everything buttoned up and, uh, add on there the complication of thanks and it just becomes a lot. So that's what we've been doing and of course, I think last week, jerry, you had a family obligation and weren't able to be here, correct?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:For the holiday. For Thanksgiving, I was out of town. We went to see Don's family. That's nice. Where at Upper Michigan, not the UP, but the northern lower part of Michigan.
Speaker 2:So upper, lower Michigan.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you. They're like literally right Water separates them from Canada, wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, can they swim to it? No, can they see it? Yeah, can they see it? No, can they swim to it? No, can they see it? Yeah Can they see it? No, can they see it from their front steps? No, because you know, in Alaska there's places you can see Russia from.
Speaker 1:Anyways, Did you have turkey or ham or both? Turkey Very nice Gobble, gobble, Gobble gobble.
Speaker 3:It was good it had been last Christmas, since we had been up there Right.
Speaker 1:Did Don bake anything.
Speaker 3:No, he didn't what. He left all the cooking up to his mom.
Speaker 1:Was he a sous chef? Did he help?
Speaker 3:He helped clean up and wash dishes. That counts. He didn't cook.
Speaker 1:No desserts from Don huh, no, no bread.
Speaker 3:Oh, he did help make stuffing. Yeah, he was putting the bread in the toaster and breaking it up, so he did help do that.
Speaker 1:Very nice.
Speaker 2:You know that I was raised like when you're done with, you know done eating, if you are old enough a kid, go help. You know mostly teenagers you go help in the kitchen clean up and all that stuff and, as always, kind of being that person, I always just would go and help clean up and get plates cleaned out, use the dishwasher. If we had extra trash run to the road all that good stuff. It was a small Thanksgiving. I was down in Birmingham, alabama, seeing my family. There was only six of us there so it was a pretty small little gathering. There was enough food for 18 because we're an Alabama Baptist family and Thanksgiving's not complete unless you have all 14 dishes. No, turkey, though that was a little sad. We did ham.
Speaker 2:My grandmother's getting to the age where she has days where she can do stuff and days she can't, and if it's a day she can do stuff, don't you dare get in her way. So we were like trying to help put dishes away, stuff and she was like no, no, no, I got it, get out of my way, whatever. And you see 90 something year old, frail woman who just like is like no, do not do that. That because it's if she feels like it's undermining her right. Sure, I try not help.
Speaker 2:So it was it was one of those things like it's undermining her right Sure by trying to help. So it was one of those things where it's like you know, the right thing to do right now is to back off, and that's difficult when it's been, you know, beaten into your head of like you will clean those plates up and you will do this after and you will Don't make your grandmother work so hard or whatever To have to be like okay. Well, I have to let you do this, even though it's completely unnecessary.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But I had a great time. We played cards. I think I sent you all a picture didn't I, you did.
Speaker 5:There were a lot of cards, a lot of cards, a lot of cards. I thought there were multiple card games going on at the same table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's one game that we play and each person gets nine cards face down, plus there's four draw decks, one withdraw or discard stack, thank you, and I think the entire playing is like 14 decks of cards. Wow, it's a lot. That's crazy. Yes, it's a lot of fun. Typically, I do decent at it. I'm usually like dead center of the pack and this time I came in second only to my sister.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did Mel beat you?
Speaker 5:Yeah, she didn't say a word about that yesterday or today. I'm surprised. I'm surprised as well I am. She didn't say a word about that. I thought she'd be gloating the whole time.
Speaker 2:She was probably waiting for me to get there. Probably. You know I wasn't there today, so that's probably what it was, but no, it was a lot of fun. My uncle, who always wins, he came in third. Oh, it was beautiful. But yeah, I did the thing. You know the thing.
Speaker 2:where you like, start making your plate and you get halfway through and you're like my plate is full, full, yeah, and I've got six more items to put on here. So it was a nice little mountainous thing. Someone was like, how's the squash castle? And I'm like I'll let you know when I get to it. Like I got to dig down and get rid of the. It was like a chicken stuffing. She called it something else, I can't remember the name of it. It was like a chicken stuffing, she called it something else. I can't remember the name of it. It was phenomenal, but it was on top of the squash casserole, so it just kind of had to layer at that point. And then, as soon as I was done, I was like why did I do this to myself? I was in so much pain. It was a beautiful thing, it was glorious.
Speaker 1:How many?
Speaker 2:were at your Thanksgiving, Jerry 40.
Speaker 3:No, not that many, I think 39. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10. Oh, that's, small I thought he normally had a big family. Well, his nephew and his wife, and their baby is one year old now, and then his niece and her husband. They all do live in the UP of Michigan, so it's like a seven, eight-hour drive for them to come down.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, and they didn't want to take the boat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so they all stayed up there and had a Thanksgiving of their own and stayed together and everything. So it was a few less than normal.
Speaker 5:Melissa and I had a quiet Thanksgiving. I took care of the meal.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I went over to Kroger and got some deli sliced ham and some deli sliced turkey.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 5:And they had little half cans of cranberry sauce. I'd never seen those before.
Speaker 2:I've never seen that either. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Half can of cranberry sauce. I got some mac and cheese from the deli counter.
Speaker 1:What oh come?
Speaker 5:on they did have stuffing at the deli counter as well. So I did the whole meal from the Kogar deli counter and took it home and laid out a nice spread and we had a nice, quiet Thanksgiving Sounds nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was nice. What I've done before, because I don't like that deli mac and cheese is, I'll go and you know the individual cups of of velveta, shells and cheese okay, yeah get that you say, I had a little water and microwave it and you get the velveta it's wow, yeah, well, I did the deli mac and cheese.
Speaker 5:so nice, yeah. How'd it taste? Um, it wasn't great, none of it. I mean the ham and the ham and turkey. Know, you can't really go wrong with deli ham and turkey, but the other stuff it just wasn't great. So we decided to heck with this. Yes, we're not doing this. Why don't we go to New Orleans and have fun in New Orleans for Thanksgiving? So noon, thanksgiving Day, we flew down to New Orleans, nice, and wandered around Bourbon Street a little bit. How was the traffic?
Speaker 2:Traffic on Bourbon Street. No, on the flying down. It wasn't bad Flying on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5:Our flight was full but traffic wasn't bad. One of the guys there at the airport said that the last flight was at 3 o'clock and the airport wasn't packed. It was very light, very light. When we got to New Orleans. We're walking through, you know, that last exit before you go out of the sterile area into the public area, and we walked past security and it was completely empty.
Speaker 5:It was like a ghost town, the only people there were the TSA officers checking ID and they're just sitting there. There's nobody coming through, coming in. It was completely empty.
Speaker 2:That's new in New Orleans, yeah.
Speaker 1:On Thanksgiving Day, that's a big TSA area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is big, it's huge and it's completely vacant Wow that's crazy, Vince and I laughed.
Speaker 1:We joked I'm like well, this will be completely different when we fly home.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so it was good, I did take care of our Thanksgiving dinner. I stepped up to the host desk and said two, please, okay, as you should, as I should, you know, gave her my name, my phone number. We had a little bit of a wait, so we wandered around Bourbon Street some more and waited and hung out and did the Bourbon Street stuff. Yeah, they went back. When they texted me, they went back and again I took care of business. I typed one return or send to let them know we were on our way. We walked over and I again stepped up to the host desk. Vincent for two. Yes, sir, let's take you up.
Speaker 2:So I went upstairs and you know, you know what's crazy. I didn't realize until just now that Crystal Burger had a host stand.
Speaker 5:You know, on Thanksgiving Day, when they're as busy as they were.
Speaker 2:They get fancy.
Speaker 5:They get fancy. They had to have a host stand.
Speaker 4:Was she in tux?
Speaker 5:There was nobody in the restaurant. Okay, I mean, they made us wait just because they were trying to give that air. And if you walk into a restaurant like that and they seat you immediately, you're like something's wrong Made a mistake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially in New Orleans, especially in New Orleans.
Speaker 5:So they made us wait 45 minutes, but it was 45 minutes to the second too, and we went back to Crystal Burgers.
Speaker 2:Got us some burgers.
Speaker 1:It's funny when we went they had the specialty menu for the night and it was all Thanksgiving stuff and Vince and I glazed over it and I'm like I'm not wanting Thanksgiving stuff and I said the menu and he's like me neither, and we opened up the regular menu. But we did we had a good dinner, finished it off with some good live music.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we did.
Speaker 1:They were some R&B, Little Stevie Wonder. It was just really good music. They all took turns. There was four of them plus the band members that played instruments, so it was nice they all had a different sound.
Speaker 2:Was that at the restaurant or was that like after?
Speaker 1:It was at a different location, gotcha.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anything exciting happen in Louisiana.
Speaker 4:Every year I get to spend time with both sides of the family mom's side and dad's side so I have to spend half my day in the city and the rest of my day in the country. As far as food goes, they have a wide variety of stuff. They did ham and turkey, so I got to experience Eat both, something special about my mom's side of the family. They do rice dressing with liver. I hate liver. Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:You said rice dressing right.
Speaker 4:Rice dressing.
Speaker 2:I thought you said ranch dressing with liver.
Speaker 4:I did too. I was very confused. I did too Rice dressing with liver. So you said ranch dressing with liver. I did too. I was very confused. I did too Rice dressing with liver.
Speaker 1:So do they mix rice with bread, or is it just rice?
Speaker 4:Rice, meat and liver.
Speaker 2:I'd say dirty rice, dirty rice, yeah, with liver and that's what they're calling stuffing.
Speaker 4:No it's not stuffing. No, it's not stuffing, it's different, it's Rice, yeah, okay, so in my world dressing and stuffing are the same, you can stuff it into something if you want. Yes.
Speaker 5:I understand that because I'm from kind of that world too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but.
Speaker 5:I'm also from the world where dressing is different than stuffing.
Speaker 2:Well, let me ask you this Is supper and dinner the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 5:So I understand the dressing thing, because my dad is from Crowley Louisiana which is not far from where Eric is from and he always has to have his rice dressing on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Oh, yeah, and my mom uses the chicken gizzard. She doesn't use liver, she uses the gizzards that come with the chicken.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with the turkey.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that's what she makes her dressing with, so that's why I understand that.
Speaker 1:Are they big chunks of liver, or do they mash them up? I don't know, I don't eat it. They get chopped up pretty fine.
Speaker 5:I mean they're recognizable as pieces of meat.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 4:But if you're just walking by the stove and you saw one without liver, one with liver. You wouldn't notice a difference.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 4:But you go to bite into it. You'll know the difference.
Speaker 1:Yep, so um, I have an aunt who specially makes a bowl of rice dressing without liver, just for me nice and her bowl.
Speaker 4:Her bowl gets bigger and bigger every year. Which? Is not good for me well, you soak it in water and it gets big because it was made for me and nobody else getting this rice dressing uh that's like my sister Melissa.
Speaker 2:She hates, hates Everything, everything. She hates peanuts and walnuts and all that kind of stuff. And so mom would always make this dessert which was delicious and it was kind of like a pudding dish with a crust and there were crushed walnuts, I think, inside of it and there'd always be a. She wouldn't make a whole new dish for Melissa, typically, she would, just There'd just be a square where she just wouldn't put any nuts and so. But it was obvious because it changed the whole color. It went from being like a dark green or whatever it was to being bright because it didn't have any of those walnuts in it. So it was very obvious which was hers. And if you took a slice of that, don't touch hers.
Speaker 2:No, no, no Cause. Then she'd be like all right, who took the my piece?
Speaker 4:And uh, yeah, like I said, my uh portion gets a little bigger each year, so eventually I'm just going to eat rice dressing for dinner. No meats, no beans.
Speaker 1:Do they do anything else? I mean like unique things like that. I just like to hear traditions, Not really.
Speaker 2:No, it's just typical. You know frog legs and jambalaya red beans you know the typical stuff everybody in. America eats Fried gator, fried gator, fried turkey.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask Jerry does Don's family do unique food?
Speaker 3:for up there Ground bologna.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, ground bologna.
Speaker 3:Ground bologna. What are we doing? With it Bologna pre-ground, and then you shove it into a they add other ingredients to it, but it's like a mashed pate type thing.
Speaker 1:Like a pate. Is it for crackers? Yes, okay.
Speaker 5:It's like a bologna salad. We were in Washington Courthouse that time. Yes, and the beef market had the ham salad and all the different meats. So it's kind of like that is my guess.
Speaker 3:Okay, and then they also do meat pie, which is like pork and a couple other kinds of stuff. Say it slower Tons of spices.
Speaker 1:And are these for pre-gaming dinner or during dinner?
Speaker 3:Both, both yeah. Like every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I think last year. This year, excuse me, she did gosh 15 meat pies.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:And they're all gone.
Speaker 1:Are they little hand?
Speaker 3:Like a whole pie.
Speaker 2:I was going to say down in Louisiana crawfish pie comes two ways. One is an empanada kind of looking thing. Or it can be a legit pie Like a 13 inch or whatever diameter crawfish pie. I've seen them both ways. They're both normal and, uh, I like both of them. So I'm assuming the meat pies are probably the same thing, because we do yeah we do meat pies down there.
Speaker 1:So you're doing meat pies and the ham and turkey if you had that and you're doing all of that, do they get the meat?
Speaker 2:pies from barber street, not barber street. What's it called? Uh, barber street Street, is it Barber Street? Yeah, that's it. Edward Scissorhands, sweeney, sweeney.
Speaker 4:Todd Sweeney Todd.
Speaker 3:Sounds like she made it. Sounds like she made it and is it just is it beef?
Speaker 1:You said beef and pork.
Speaker 3:It's pork and other kinds of meat. I don't know exactly what it is.
Speaker 5:Any potatoes or carrots Can we revisit Patrick's question for a second though, yeah. Because Jerry mentioned earlier that the nephew in his family and the niece in her family didn't come down. It didn't make it Because it was such a long did you actually talk to them or have proof of life that they weren't in the meat pie?
Speaker 2:Yes, there was lots of FaceTime going on, Wanted to double check that. You know AI has gotten really good. It has gotten really good.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying I am not a fan of the meat pies. What I've tried, it Not my thing.
Speaker 1:Is there some kind of seasoning that they're using?
Speaker 3:Tons of spices. I think there's like 12 or 15 different spices they put in it.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had a meat pie out of Louisiana?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Okay, you can usually get them at a good gas station. Usually get them at a good gas station.
Speaker 4:That's not sarcasm. You can get them from the store.
Speaker 2:We have some. Yeah, you can get them at my house if you show up. Actually, no, I don't have any. The meat pies I gave them all. I had some and Jimmy McDonald if you're watching this, he came and ate all of my meat pies. Now I have crawfish pies here but not meat pies, and mine are the kind you throw in the deep fryer, but I use them in the air fryer. A little butter on top, yes, sir. Anyways.
Speaker 3:Don actually brought two home with him, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's already ate one, so it's definitely something he's used to.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Because he grew up there. Oh well, tell him to heat it up. We'll come to your house afterwards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, appetizer, yeah, dessert Nice. Speaking of dessert do you all do 50 different kind of pies?
Speaker 4:They do a few different ones, but by the time I'm done with the main course I have no room for dessert, Is it your typical, like pumpkin? Like I said, I have to split Thanksgiving between two sides of the family.
Speaker 1:You have to share your belly food.
Speaker 4:I get it. I have to share space.
Speaker 2:My aunt bless her heart when they get done eating dinner, they have dessert, they're just that family. We get done eating and she's like who wants dessert? He's like I'll take a slice of whatever. She made pecan pie, which she's always made. Forever. She could do it without the recipe.
Speaker 2:Um, she made pumpkin pie for the first time ever in her entire life wow uh, because you know, 71, 22 years old, it's the time to learn how to make pecan pie, um, and she made um, ooey gooey cake, um, and then we had cookies and maybe something else, and she was like, alright, anybody else want a pie. And I was like I need two hours if I had to, the house caught on fire and I had to run to the exit, I'm not confident I'd make it and you're asking can I put no, we need. It's going to be a little bit.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So I did eventually get it. I didn't have any of the pecan pie, I'm sorry. I did not have any of the pumpkin pie, but I did have a couple slices of the pecan pie. It's, I love pecan pie.
Speaker 4:A really good pecan pie?
Speaker 2:I don't mean the one from Walmart.
Speaker 1:I mean like a really good, real nutty.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And Jerry, they have pies.
Speaker 3:Pumpkin.
Speaker 1:That's Sarah's favorite, so that's pretty much it Real whipped cream too, I could see her making real whipped cream, oh she did yeah, I could tell with making the meat pies.
Speaker 2:I love real real whipping cream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, straight from the tub.
Speaker 2:The tub yes and if you eat all of it, then you have a nice bowl. Exactly.
Speaker 5:Take your leftovers with you Absolutely Exactly.
Speaker 1:Nobody's using Cool Whip, I'm talking real whipped cream.
Speaker 5:Cool Whip is real whipped cream.
Speaker 1:It's the stuff in the can.
Speaker 2:It's the can, yeah, ready.
Speaker 5:Whip. Yeah, okay, sorry.
Speaker 1:Still doesn't taste like like fresh whipped cream?
Speaker 2:No, it tastes delicious.
Speaker 3:I love whipped cream when the pies went in the oven, she was pulling out the KitchenAid mixer and she was starting the whipped cream. Yep.
Speaker 1:Does anybody's family do fruit salad, fresh fruit salad with some coconut whipped cream?
Speaker 3:grilled whipped cream. Don's mom makes a Waldorf salad Waldorf.
Speaker 2:Ooh with the mayonnaise and all.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, buddy. No, our family would always have a lime jello salad, or we would have a fruit cocktail jello salad, or we would have a peaches in jello salad.
Speaker 3:So I don't know if you're catching a theme here.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you're like?
Speaker 2:we believe that fresh fruit should be canned and then served in some gelatinous form.
Speaker 1:Sure Vince for you a fresh fruit family.
Speaker 5:My mom would do. A ambrosia is what my dad called it which is similar to a Waldorf salad, I think. I think it's just different parts of the country.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, we did that, but it wasn't fresh, it was all canned fruit, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the only thing we ever did really fresh was like watermelon and that was a special thing, like getting a watermelon and cutting it.
Speaker 5:We're talking seasons too. We're talking late fall, early winter for fresh fruit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom used to make the fresh fruit salad.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of. We were in Italy, remember this. I was with Jerry and Eric and Don and a bunch of other people and one of the ladies we were there with. We went to a grocery store. She brought all this fresh food, our fresh produce, and we're like what are you doing with all that fruit? Get back to the house and she grabs a bowl and she just immediately gets in there with a cutting board and knife and starts cutting and putting all the stuff in the bowl. Bowl. And then she took sprite and um made like a sprite and lemon juice, just to put over the fruit, I guess, to preserve it, keep it from spoiling, so in a lot it's just a little bit and, uh, we ate on that for a couple days wow
Speaker 5:it's nice, yes, so let's circle back around, though, to buttermilk. Uh, we talked about everyone else's traditions.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:But the only one she talked about was her mom's fruit salad fresh fruit salad. So what was Thanksgiving like in your house? Turkey ham.
Speaker 1:It was no ham Turkey you were the ham.
Speaker 1:When I became old enough to cook in the kitchen with my mom so probably 10, 11, 12, she taught me how to make yeast rolls or bread.
Speaker 1:So that was kind of my task to do was making rolls or cinnamon rolls in the morning for breakfast and then rolls for dinner, but we would have the dips and the chips and all that throughout the day and then we'd have a main meal and we'd play cards in between things, cooking or games, um, and for a while we used to have it at our house and then, after my mom passed away, um, my family would to be my ex-husband and my children, my family. We would travel to uh, washington to my mom's sister and her husband's and we would celebrate it there and I always remember it being more pies ratio to people. So my uncle really loved playing with the pecan pie recipe and he would do different types of nuts and I remember one year he did filberts or hazelnuts People know them as either and I got to tell you that's my favorite nut pie of all time the flavor the flavor of the nuts with the caramely the brown sugary filling is still the same oh, everything was.
Speaker 1:The whole recipe was the same for his con, he just changed it up with different nuts oh yep so, but those are the kind of things I remember.
Speaker 1:But, um, in my mom's house, you know, I was a teenager and was there more to help. I think I hosted Thanksgiving once as a young mother in our house. We did the turkey, all the fixings and all that. And then when my sons became teenagers and the oldest went off to the military and he came home for the first time, he said can we break tradition? And I want a ribeye or a T-bone. He wants a big juicy steak done on the grill. And we obliged him with like 12 inches of snow over our grill in the backyard.
Speaker 1:You know he had been out on a deployment and came home, and so that started becoming a new tradition was just what are you craving when you come home, and that's what mom will make is a special well, I sometimes it was enchiladas but, just just made it a little. And that was just a fam, our family of four at the time, yeah so, but whatever the oldest wants we um would do um the, the big fancy Thanksgiving my whole life.
Speaker 2:But I remember the first time I didn't have a normal Thanksgiving. I don't know if you all remember the first time you didn't have a normal Thanksgiving and it was my grandfather had passed away a couple weeks prior in November, and so we're all up in Alabama. Up in Alabama because I used to live in Louisiana, so it was up, now it would be down, but up in Alabama. And we go're up in Alabama because I used to live in Louisiana, so it was up Now it would be down, but up in Alabama. And you know we go through and you do the funeral and everything and big Baptist community up there, so they're just bringing tons of food. I mean like we had so much.
Speaker 1:Had to buy another refrigerator.
Speaker 2:A ridiculous amount, copious amounts. I mean, like you know, those ginormous foil trays and like you see them at catering events. They have the two candles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bunsen burners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever they are. Oh, that's what they're called. What are those things? The wax Starno, starno.
Speaker 5:The two.
Speaker 2:Starnos underneath it, but it's huge, right, Because they have the one with the one, but I'm talking about the one that's big enough, has two, and then you know it's like three, four inches tall. We get like that, just all of mashed potatoes, and then you get another one. It's all green beans and it's like there's like probably 15, 16 of us up here.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So we're not a small group. We're sizable, but we're not a party tray of, and that was every day, like you would just get more of that. You were on the meal tray Tomorrow, you would get more of that.
Speaker 2:And so you know we're all hanging out. I think you know his funeral was like on Tuesday and Thursday would have been Thanksgiving and grandma was like I don't know about y'all, but I'm sick of all this rich, I'm sick of all this food. How do y'all feel about, for Thanksgiving, me doing a lasagna Because she could do a mean lasagna she did from scratch, like she was really good, like Jerry's lasagna, how good it was. That's kind of her level, excellent lasagna. And so we're like, yeah, let's do that. So we did a lasagna, we did, um, I don't remember the sides, but they weren't. They weren't green beans, I think it was like fried okra you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like it was just all the stuff that you wouldn't necessarily think of when you think of uh, thanksgiving, and that was our first night, and then we sat around the table, uh, and I remember it too because us kids because back then I was not allowed at the adults table, I was at the kids table in the sunroom where it was about 118 degrees. I remember sitting around that table After eating and people kind of started clearing plates and all the adults were sitting around the table and us kids kind of came and got around and just hearing about all the stories, both of like my grandfather but also hearing stories about my own dads and uncles and everything, and that's when I realized I come from a group of degenerates. Like just all the stories and I'm like, no, really, Like it was one of the funnest, like people laughing it's such a horrible time, just people laughing their butts off and it was just like it's memorable. I mean that was 2000, 2001,. Something like that, and it's burned into my brain.
Speaker 1:I can still remember it. Probably a good lasagna though, though, for being on traditional Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2:Oh man, well, every if we'd go for the summer she'd make lasagna for us or something like that. But never for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Like those were. You know, like the founding of our not the founding of our country, but the making. You know, peace with the Indians, which we all know is crap now, and like being thankful for what we have. And then, you know, jesus himself ordained dinner, you know, for Christmas, and like going from that to we're going to break tradition was like whoa, what's happening here?
Speaker 1:I think holidays are what you make them, and whatever holiday, and I think, as long as you're together and with those that you love, or you, you know just celebrate good food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think that's what you found. Yeah, I know, for probably six or eight years now, I think we've always been on our cruise for Thanksgiving. This was honestly the first Thanksgiving I've been home and or not home but like with family and years. But we usually, like my dad and sister will come, or you know what I mean, like we'll surround ourselves with friends or whatever, like it was. But it's that you get that, that family, that togetherness, that thankfulness of people I want to be with and yeah, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:So I definitely ate a lot of good food this weekend.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, that's the other thing is so. Right after that, on Black Friday, I jumped on an airplane and headed down to New Orleans.
Speaker 1:You did.
Speaker 2:I did, I didn't know you were there.
Speaker 1:I didn't know you were there?
Speaker 2:What the heck. And what hotel were you staying at?
Speaker 5:Hotel Matzalon or something.
Speaker 2:Me too, fourth floor. I donatlan or something. Me too, fourth floor.
Speaker 1:I don't think it was Mazatlan. It was like Mazalin.
Speaker 2:Mazalin, yes, it was right there in the middle of the French Quarter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were on the fourth floor. I was on the fourth floor.
Speaker 2:Beautiful hotel.
Speaker 1:We were on the fifth.
Speaker 2:Small world, very small world. No, that was a lot of fun. We obviously met up. Eric drove in, met him at the airport, he returned his car and then came and met me. He actually met me at the baggage claim. It was timed out perfectly.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And jumped to an Uber headed downtown and I mean had really not bad traffic at all until we got off that interstate.
Speaker 1:Got down there into all those runways.
Speaker 2:That French Quarter New Orleans is no joke. I mean the last mile was 60% of our time. It's unbelievable how long it took to get to the hotel from there.
Speaker 4:They don't know. You're not supposed to block the intersection for a red light.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't block the blocks, the block of the box. They don't believe that there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, new Orleans isn't fine for that, and then just wanted to have a great time.
Speaker 1:We did.
Speaker 2:My aunt and uncle were like what are you planning on doing while you're in New Orleans? And I'm like eat, like that's, I don't know what else to say. Eat and listen to music. That was, that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And what I do I we may drink. Yeah, we had a couple cocktails we may drink.
Speaker 2:We the first night, so Friday we get there, get the hotel room, get everything set up. It was kind of weird because the hotel room, the hotel was like I'm going to call it 1980 chic room. The hotel was like I'm going to call it 1980 chic. All the furnishings were kind of antique. It kind of reminds me of, like, if you think about Mrs Doubtfire, all right, and you think about the architectural trends that were cool then, the you know, the old fashioned couches with the wood trim on the you know, and the really cheesy looking granite and marble that they used. Yeah, it was all that. It was just, I mean, the building was probably a hundred something years old.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, except for the top two floors.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it had been remodeled. And but it was remodeled like we had pedestal sinks, like it's hard to believe that there was a time where pedestal sinks were so nice.
Speaker 4:Did y'all notice how heavily the tree in the center was trimmed? You can look at where they cut it off and they had to cut two and a half three sections.
Speaker 5:Which I don't even know what that was for. Well, it looks like at some they could have pulled that over and covered the center courtyard, except now the tree is still above where that would have been, it had a tent that you could pull all the way down a long wire across the
Speaker 2:whole courtyard and it would cover the courtyard. Well, it keeps the snow off. It keeps the snow off In South Louisiana, but it doesn't look like it's been used in probably five, ten years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because again the tree has grown that much.
Speaker 2:You know how tarp gets that stale? Look to it. It looks like if they even tried, it would just rip. Isn't that great?
Speaker 4:Like I was saying whenever you go to prune or trim a tree, you're cutting off just the tips right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Well, this, they cut, they cut off the spot where the limb was like two and a half three inches thick.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And it still took up the whole courtyard.
Speaker 2:But it was beautiful, it really was nice and the location was perfect.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 2:We got a car one time and that was because on the first day we actually went up to New Orleans City Park, went to Celebration of the Oaks, which is, you know, they do it here in Columbus at the zoo, where they just light the whole zoo up with lights and everything. Same thing. In New Orleans it's in their city park. You're amongst all these oak trees, all this moss and they have all the Christmas lights and you know the themed stuff. So you'd see, like we watched the Cajun Nightmare, cajun nightmare, cajun night before Christmas, um, and we saw the Christmas tree of poinsettias.
Speaker 2:That's 25 foot tall you know, Um, so we get to see all that stuff, and yes, not to mention the amusement park, the kids amusement park. So that's changed. Uh, since I've been there last the, all the rides were included with our ticket. And they have a little baby. I say baby roller coaster. It's a small roller coaster but it's sizable.
Speaker 2:It's small enough that you go around three times yes, it's small if you go around three times, but it's still big. It's not like a little kitty roller coaster you may think of um. And then they had uh, they have a carousel there which is over 100, 100 years old. That was fun. We did that together. I love those old, old. Like think about how many people have ridden on a carousel that's over 100 years old. Like it's kind of cool to experience something that, like my great-great-great-grandparents may have also experienced at some point.
Speaker 1:We did slides. They're the big slides.
Speaker 2:You cannot believe she got me on that.
Speaker 1:I can't believe he got me on the Whirl-A-Twirl or Whip-A-Twirl, the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Speaker 2:How do you feel about a Tilt-A-Whirl I?
Speaker 1:love them.
Speaker 2:I love a Tilt-A-Whirl. We had so much fun.
Speaker 4:I couldn't have done without the Tilt-A-Whirl. It was a blast.
Speaker 2:Everybody almost busted a gut, except for Melissa, like because I know the tilt-a-whirl rules, which are. You kind of feel which way the inertia is going and you lean in right, absolutely. And so as soon as they release the brake, I'm like, which way do you want to go? And it's slowly moving. I'm like towards me, towards me, towards me. And I'm like lean over, and Eric leans over and we get that baby spinning. And then you go over that one hill and you're like, oh, it's swapping, so you go the other way or whatever. We're going uphill and Eric and I are just zooming around in circles. It's so much fun.
Speaker 4:You have to know when to lean forward too.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then exactly all that stuff. It's a blast. Then we get off of it and Melissa's not happy.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 4:Not in the least bit. Melissa's not happy.
Speaker 1:No, no, not in the least bit Melissa's.
Speaker 2:you know, dry land is not a myth. I've seen it. And Vince is literally pouring streams of tears down his face. He's laughing so hard. So hard I mean, it's just, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:It was fun just to be. The lights were gorgeous, like part of it was quiet in the gardens and you could walk in the lights. And then the other part was the lively part with the amusement rides.
Speaker 4:And Patrick, didn't you say we were there opening night or opening weekend?
Speaker 2:We were there for I think we were there for the first opening night, but there were a couple soft openings before. But I think it would be like a member of City Park to go to those. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like they were like special and it's all like brick sidewalks throughout the whole park.
Speaker 2:So it's it's beautiful New Orleans, it's romantic.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's something fun to do.
Speaker 4:I don't even think they had all of their stuff up and running yet.
Speaker 2:No, there was still few things that were not quite set up and uh, which is different, because I've been there I reckon I've been there quite a few times and so it was kind of jarring is not the right word a little let down that some of the stuff just wasn't 100 ready to go yet. But I guess it's opening day, you're gonna see that like we've uh from past years.
Speaker 4:We've been there uh later on in the season when they've got more stuff up and going. Y'all kept me hearing me talk about the tent, right.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Well, later on in the season they'll have a huge tent up about the size of a house and they'll have local elementary schools, local church choirs, kids coming in and singing Christmas carols on Friday and Saturday nights yeah, and listening to them having hot chocolate trying to stay warm.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a memory for Patrick and I yeah.
Speaker 1:It was warmer there, though, than it was here.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Even though it was cold.
Speaker 2:It was cold, humid cold there. It was humid, cold. Yeah, it was in the like low 50s, so it wasn't even in the 40s yet, but that wind poof had a strong wind, it was super humid and so it just bit, so like when we were out in the gardens that were furthest away from everything it was cold.
Speaker 2:It was cold, but once you got closer and the buildings started blocking some of that wind and stuff, it was quite nice. But I love New Orleans, I love the charm of the city. I love all that moss and those oak trees and the way people talk and like it's just, I don't know, it's one of my favorite, it's one of my favorite cities to go to. But uh, yeah, we had a great night that night, but that so we took the streetcar. If you're not familiar with new orleans, they have these old, like turn of the century and I do mean 1800, 1900 uh street cars, uh running all over the uh the city and you can take that out to city park. It's still a good little hike from there.
Speaker 2:It's probably half a mile or so at least at least, uh, from the streetcar to the entrance and we endured that and on the way back we were like, oh, let's just uber home. So we grabbed an uber back to the hotel instead of sitting through that cold. And that guy was so nice and so friendly and on and on about different things in the city. He could navigate traffic. We hit some bad traffic and he did not do what our Uber from the airport did and just sit there. He was like no, we're not doing this, and just went all around it and got us there quickly. It was a great experience, but that was was it. That was the only time we ever actually had to ride an uber.
Speaker 2:Everything else was just walking distance which was made everything, made it a lot of fun, very convenient. Then the rest of time, just ate restaurants. I made a few reservations and I picked out a few places that didn't have reservations and, um, you know, brunch at the quarter of Two Sisters dinners at Muriel's dinner. At the other place that escapes my head right now, we had brunch at the Red.
Speaker 4:Slipper.
Speaker 2:Ruby.
Speaker 3:Slipper yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is a really famous place down there as well, and just everything we had Like the worst food we had was great. Yes, I think that's the thing that I love is like the worst food was delicious.
Speaker 1:I think we checked off the going to eat and watch live music box.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure did. Y'all also introduced me to this famous building on the corner Sazerac. Oh, we did the corner Sazerac.
Speaker 2:Oh, we did go to the Sazerac house, didn't we? Yeah, that was really fun. Went to the Sazerac house, which is a museum now, but it used to be back in the 1760s, 1700s, 1800s. It was a importer of cognac as they started, and then they started making cocktails that they would sell in a bottle. And then, when cognac in 1800s got destroyed in it was their parasite, right.
Speaker 1:It was a parasite that ate all the grapes.
Speaker 2:So they couldn't get cognac from France, so they changed the recipe to whiskey or rye whiskey.
Speaker 4:Where Pechodes was invented.
Speaker 2:They talked about how Pechodes bitters came around. They explained the origin of the drink. Absinthe is in a Cesarac cocktail, but absinthe was made illegal. It was prohibited by the United States at some point Because they thought wormormwood was a hallucinogenic and people were getting high on it, which is stupid.
Speaker 1:So then they went to.
Speaker 2:Herb Saint.
Speaker 5:Which didn't have the Wormwood.
Speaker 1:No, but it tastes like absinthe.
Speaker 2:So they just talked you through the whole situation.
Speaker 1:It was a walking tour. It was very nice.
Speaker 2:And the Sazerac is the official cocktail of New Orleans. If you don't know, it's literally Louisiana State Legislature Passed a law saying it was or not a law, but a proclamation. It's a good cocktail.
Speaker 4:So if you try to do this somewhere else, you'll get copyright infringement, that kind of thing no because it's not a copyright.
Speaker 5:It's the official cocktail Proc. The official cocktail proclaimed official cocktail in New Orleans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's not a copyright like a, a trademark, a recipe or anything.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm trying to think of the two that I made with rum, one with pussers.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, you're talking about a painkiller.
Speaker 5:Like a painkiller or the other one is.
Speaker 1:A hurricane.
Speaker 5:No, it's made with the other rum.
Speaker 2:Gosling's, dark and Stormy. Yes, so they talk about how Prohibition obviously put these people out of business and then they came back, so we were able to just go see that whole history of everything. It was fascinating. If you appreciate that old culture, classic Americana, which I love, and if you appreciate a good cocktail, it's really fascinating to walk through here and see all this stuff. Again, it's a museum. They have a micro distillery there. I don't know what they actually make, it is tiny, but they have some labs and they do some stuff there. But we weren't there for any of those days.
Speaker 2:And a gift shop and a gift shop and a gift shop, a huge gift shop. That's the main. The gift shop is ginormous, yes. So it was kind of cool to go there and see all that stuff. And then we found out that after Prohibition, the Sazerac Bar, or Sazerac House, reopened as a Sazerac bar in the Roosevelt Hotel, which I'm like, okay, that's cool, and I just figured it's closed. Doing a little bit of research, we found out it's not only not closed it's open, and it was open while we were there, Just up the road we walked.
Speaker 2:I think it was a nine-minute walk over to it. And the Roosevelt Hotel now is a Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
Speaker 1:Oh, they had it all Christmassed up. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Freaking beautiful.
Speaker 1:I mean just that's where. I was walking to there were so many people in there just doing their Christmas photo op for their Christmas cards. Just because it was so glammed up with Christmas, it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:Walk in, get the family photo and leave. It was bananas, but to go there. The bar has not been updated since it was opened in the 40s, so it's still that walnut veneer. The paintings are not paintings, they're wood inlays. It's just gorgeous. Got to have the actual Sazerac made at the Sazerac bar From the original recipe and everything. It was fine.
Speaker 5:It was a Sazerac.
Speaker 2:I tried it with the cognac Because I didn't know it originally was cognac. That was something I learned on the tour and it was terrible.
Speaker 5:I do not like it. It was terrible. It wasn't terrible.
Speaker 4:Eric Cognac's pretty tough.
Speaker 2:It was terrible it wasn't terrible.
Speaker 5:It was perfectly serviceable. It was terrible. I drank two of them. I drank Eric's and mine Because it was terrible it was terrible.
Speaker 1:So you like it better with the rye. So yeah, it was much better with the rye whiskey.
Speaker 5:I think it was better with the rye too, but it wasn't terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the bartender was super, super nice man. He was just on his game.
Speaker 4:Very knowledgeable.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which was great, it was nice sitting in there you go, to those high-end establishments, and usually a lot of them are prudes.
Speaker 5:They really are.
Speaker 2:And they're not welcoming, especially like we were off the street, so we weren't dressed up.
Speaker 5:Sure.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people in that hotel are dressed up.
Speaker 5:All the watchers are wearing white tuxedos. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:So you do have a certain expectation and we don't meet that expectation. And still, super, still, super kind, had a great time Left there and went to dinner.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because again we just ate. The primary goal was food. It was had a wonderful meal the shrimp and grits, oh, the turtle soup, oh.
Speaker 5:Oh, my grandma used to make that. Oh a shame. Amazing, Amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the gumbo was good, but the tomato, the turtle soup, stole the show.
Speaker 4:Talk about having too much to eat. I learned whenever I go to a buffet I've got to take one little spoon of everything. Y'all probably saw that on my plate.
Speaker 5:I wasn't looking at your plate. That's how I have to do it.
Speaker 4:I got to go. I was too self-involved in my own plate.
Speaker 5:So Eric was talking about liver and the stuffing Nope the dressing the dressing
Speaker 1:yeah, and I actually had liver pate at the one restaurant.
Speaker 5:She did Liver pate it was amazing, it was chicken livers.
Speaker 1:It was delicious good.
Speaker 5:You can't see it but Patrick's over there saying no, patrick's over there saying it was terrible, it was not terrible.
Speaker 2:We did sample it. It was not as bad as the Cesarac with the cognac, but it was not my favorite. I'll just put it that way. Eric, of course, ate all of it. He got a carbonara pasta that looked beautiful. He didn't let a single person try it, like literally. I tried the soup, I tried my gumbo, I tried your pate and then, I look over at Eric and it's a clean plate.
Speaker 4:And I'm like wow, overrated. Good for you, eric. The buffet is right behind me. You're welcome to.
Speaker 2:Oh man, but that meal was fantastic. You got a fish dish that was covered in pecans.
Speaker 4:Yes, yeah, the pecan-crusted fish.
Speaker 2:Was it a redfish or something?
Speaker 5:I had a different name Drum Drum yeah redfish.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay, very delicious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it was on top of the sauce.
Speaker 4:I think it was a form of spinach, cooked spinach.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And it was still great.
Speaker 2:And then I got shrimp and grits. You know, I mean, if you're in New Orleans and you're at a place that's known for shrimp and grits, I had no choice, but I got the shrimp and grits and they were phenomenal.
Speaker 5:They were amazing. Shrimp and grits. The next morning, was it? I had the fried catfish and grits. Grits. The next morning, was it? I had the fried catfish and grits you did. That was yummy too, yeah.
Speaker 2:I got the trifecta. The trifecta which is a Everybody listening that's driving down the road is so mad at us right now. They're trying to eat some food.
Speaker 1:They're like it's the end of my shift. It's my 30-minute break. I need to stop and eat.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes that Flangy pasta pizza hits just the right. So it was a fried chicken, eggs benedict, along with a shrimp, a pork, a shredded pork, cochon, cochon benedict Along with a shrimp, and it was like a shrimp sauce. Oh, it was a shrimp with a sauce and a fried green tomato, and all three of them were biscuits. They weren't English muffins and ha.
Speaker 1:They were good. It was the best of all that was on their menu.
Speaker 4:She was like they were good they were good and again so much food was on their menu, she was like they were good. They were good.
Speaker 2:And again.
Speaker 4:So much food, you can't finish it.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was painful. It was painful and again, that was another one where we had. We really had great service this whole weekend too. Like the good food is wonderful. I love good food. Obviously, you don't get to be as fat as I do without loving good food, but we really had some great servers. We really did Muriel's, which is a super high-end restaurant in New Orleans and that's where they've got the drum, that's where we've got the liver pate and the shrimp grits and all. That guy was so nice. He came to the table. He's like all right, what do we have for dinner? And Melissa, he took the stuffiness out of it. He did. And he, he was. He was like melissa was like I'd like to have this or whatever. Or she said, can I have this?
Speaker 2:and I told him I was like one of these days I'd like to see someone just say no and so she went on to order her next thing and he was like can't do it, sorry, like I just wanted to fall on the floor dying of laughter. It was so, so hysterical. Just super nice servers the whole time everywhere we went, and one of them actually at Muriel's we're getting ready to leave and the host was like, did y'all go upstairs?
Speaker 1:And we're like no, what's upstairs, Do we?
Speaker 2:want to go upstairs, and so he that's where the meat pies are made. Yeah, he told us where to go and Muriel's is haunted and we have to go behind the scenes of the hauntedness and then so Eric and I are like the guy points in the right direction. Then he went back to the host stand and I'm aggressively texting Melissa and Vince like don't hurry up and come back now and they're like, well, for what reason?
Speaker 1:And I'm like just do it.
Speaker 2:And so they come back in, Because we were outside on the street waiting for you. Yeah, so they came back in and we go upstairs and it's this beautiful lounge area.
Speaker 1:Is that what you call it? It looks like the recording studio, but four times as big and all plush.
Speaker 2:Way more opulent.
Speaker 5:Fresh red velvet. I would much rather sit in those chairs for the time we do the podcast High back couch.
Speaker 1:That was all the crushed red, gorgeous Red, ruby red, a two-person throne High pile carpet. The beaded lamps.
Speaker 2:It was opulent, it was over the top, it was ridiculously over the top. It was ridiculously over the top. I loved every second of it. So we did a bunch of photos there. They had one of those crystal ball. Thank you. I was going to say the witch lady looks at the crystal ball, but it was battery powered so we were able to take it and use it in the photo ops and stuff. It was a lot of fun, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was a good time.
Speaker 2:Then the next morning we just went and had breakfast and then walked down the river, walked around the French Quarter. Jackson Square. There was a brass band playing on the street, there was another guy playing guitar, doing Prince music, and then all the street art is just beautiful. If you haven't been to New Orleans, if you're not, like I, don't want to go to Bourbon Street and drink. That doesn't appeal to me. It smells like pee. People vomit, you're not wrong.
Speaker 2:No, you're not that is Bourbon Street, but literally a street off of that, and it's beautiful architecture when you get down to the Jackson Square. Have you been to New Orleans, jerry?
Speaker 3:Many a time.
Speaker 2:Okay, so do you know around? Have you hung out in the French Quarter, like around Jackson Square and all?
Speaker 2:That church is gorgeous, the cathedral is gorgeous, it's absolutely gorgeous. The park is beautiful. It's gated, it's closed at night, but during the day you can walk in and out throughout it, and then it's surrounded like especially on the weekends, with all these local artisans and their work is amazing and they're doing it right there in front of you. So it's not like you know. I've been to some of these places where you, where they have artists out but they're not doing anything. You're like, oh you, oh, you just bought these. This is just some Chinese knockoffs or whatever, or prints, but no, you go around New Orleans, around that area in the French Quarter, and they're literally drawing the stuff. It's really cool to see the skill of those artists You've got.
Speaker 1:Tarot readers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have tarot, readers, you have mind readers, you have palm readers, you have.
Speaker 1:All the readers. There was a.
Speaker 2:I was going to say a chicken swarm. That's not right. There was a shaman. There was a shaman. There was a shaman that you wanted to go talk to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not wanted to go talk.
Speaker 2:He was the most interesting looking out of all of them very well dressed, um yeah, and it's so funny too to see the uh, the palm readers like, like, their signs, their advertisement. 30 years experience. 10th generation, 32 years experience.
Speaker 3:Like it's just, they're just, they're trying to one up each other and get your business.
Speaker 4:It's so funny, oh one thing we didn't see was um like street and get your business. It's so funny. One thing we didn't see was street performers. I mean not the band, but did we see guys?
Speaker 2:There was yes, there was a group of street performers but there was a huge crowd and we kind of went around the crowd.
Speaker 1:They had a lineup of people. They had a lot of kids.
Speaker 2:And they were like kids to adults and I think they were about to do some kind of like he was about to jump over him or something.
Speaker 5:Jump over him, or something, yeah, something like that. Okay, I remember that I've seen those guys on Venice Beach before Not those guys, but similar type of guys.
Speaker 2:We saw those guys in London. Yeah, were y'all with us for that.
Speaker 5:No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Were you with us for that.
Speaker 1:Mm-mm.
Speaker 2:I don't remember and I and we watched for like 30 minutes. It was in Piccadilly Circus and they had a huge, huge group of people and they were doing some really cool stuff. So I've seen those around the world. We got there just when they were passing the offering plate and I'm like I didn't watch you, I'm not paying.
Speaker 2:So we kept moving and then we found the Purple Rain guy. But then we go down to the river. Beautiful, a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. If it was, it was one of those white cotton ball clouds.
Speaker 1:It was like 64 degrees on Sunday when we left. Sunday was nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 64 degrees and full sun, so you're like not cold at all. We got there just in time for the Riverboat Natchez, which is a beautiful steam river paddle wheel. It's an authentic one, so there's no propellers. It really is a steam engine running paddle wheel. So we get there and watch it cross in front of us, or whatever. It was, picturesque it was really beautiful. Yeah, we have. I rode on it in middle school Wow.
Speaker 2:We went down to New orleans. We actually played in the french quarter, I played saxophone, played in the french quarter and then put all our instruments on the bus. And then we went and did a jazz brunch thing on the natchez and, uh, I remember it was incredibly hot inside of the natchez and so I spent all my time on the outside of the rails just watching the river, but I haven't been on it since.
Speaker 1:We went in 2020.
Speaker 2:Pre-COVID.
Speaker 5:By a week, a week before COVID, we were down there for Mardi Gras 2020. Oof, after Mardi Gras, everything was shut down.
Speaker 2:That's funny. So y'all were there at the same time. We were in Brazil. Yes, we were.
Speaker 5:We didn't get the Brazil invite, so we did the next best thing.
Speaker 2:We didn't know you that well back then. So Jerry was like don't invite them.
Speaker 1:We weren't part of the inner circle.
Speaker 5:We were on the outskirts of the inner circle.
Speaker 1:Jerry, not to switch subjects, but I'm going to how long does it? Take you to get to Don's parents house by car 7 hours With him driving With me driving.
Speaker 2:No, I'm saying how long with him.
Speaker 5:It's never happening.
Speaker 2:Exactly I was going to say because you drive like 80 on a 55.
Speaker 1:No, you don't. I rode with you to Medina, you drive responsibly.
Speaker 5:Well, the truck was going at 65.
Speaker 1:We were in his car.
Speaker 5:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and when you get into Michigan the speed limit goes to 75, and I was doing 75, 80. That's right.
Speaker 2:I forgot you were in his car. So have you ever been in a car that's two and a half years old, that looks and smells brand new?
Speaker 1:Nope, he takes very good care of his car.
Speaker 3:I just went there and come back and I'm just now like it.
Speaker 2:Your first oil change.
Speaker 3:No, I'm over 10,000 miles.
Speaker 2:Uh-oh, how many do you have for your whole lease?
Speaker 3:36,000.
Speaker 2:And it ends in six months.
Speaker 1:I think you'll be fine. So we should drive to Los Angeles and come back and just be semi-closed. No, we should not.
Speaker 3:Because Acura does a nice thing where if you lease again, that will actually roll up to 15,000 miles to your new car, oh you were talking about that.
Speaker 5:What's it matter? Because you won't drive the new car. Yeah, yeah, I will. When you get to my age and my knee is killing me right now. I'm thinking, wow, this is like old age knee, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh a little bit of arthritis?
Speaker 5:I think so. I think Arthur's knocking at my door.
Speaker 3:I'm leaning towards an SUV next time Because we went this weekend when we got back home and did Christmas shopping.
Speaker 2:At the Acre dealership. At the Acre dealership that's some good Christmas shopping right there.
Speaker 3:But we did buy another Christmas tree and decked the house out.
Speaker 2:Another Christmas tree. Yeah, why didn't y'all go to so you waited until you got here, or did you shop in Bonner?
Speaker 3:We came back home and then went and done.
Speaker 2:You drove right by Frankenmuth, the best Christmas store on the planet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a cute little story. But years and years ago when we lived in Greensboro, before we were on the truck, me and Donna had only been together a little bit and I come home from work. I used to do customer service and billing and I come home from work and we had a one-bedroom apartment. So he had went out and bought a little small Christmas tree that was almost like a pencil you know, like a Charlie Brown.
Speaker 3:Christmas kind of like a Charlie Brown, but it's the kind of pencil shape you know. They're not really big and full or anything like that and it was all decked out and everything.
Speaker 3:I thought that was so sweet and we had that. Well, then we ended up getting on the truck. So we've held onto that all these years and we didn't decorate last year and this year we were like, okay, we're going to go get a nice tree. So, uh, we took my car and that's what I was going to say. We actually had to put the seats down and it barely fit into the back and so I'm ready for an SUV. But, yeah, we, yeah, we got a really nice big tree, put that up in the front part of the house because there's a lot more room.
Speaker 1:And then the small one I was going to ask if you put the small one up still.
Speaker 3:We also put up, and he was like we don't need to put that up, it's small, it's ugly, and I'm like, no, that is our Charlie Brown Christmas tree, because that has meaning to me.
Speaker 2:Is that one in the kitchen? The big one is off the kitchen area, oh, with the fireplace, with the fireplace and all that.
Speaker 3:And then the small one is in our living room area where we have the TV and all that.
Speaker 1:That's cool.
Speaker 3:And then we got garland and put white lights all on the stairs area and decked them all out.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this Were you prepared for the price of the Christmas tree? Yes, oh, very nice, and decked them all out.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you this Were you prepared for the price of the Christmas tree.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh well, okay, good for you.
Speaker 3:Because we got a really, really good deal.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I was going to say we bought our Christmas tree and I was like, huh, like. So I'm thinking I was like I thought a nice Christmas tree, we're going to spend $150.
Speaker 3:I think they really jacked the price up for it because it was right after Thanksgiving and Black Friday and all that. We got it on Saturday, but they said normal price was like $4.99, but it was marked down to $1.29.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that's a good deal. That is a good deal. Well, we will be putting up our three-foot tree, we're not going any bigger.
Speaker 5:When she says we, she means she. Oh, minus I expect to come home from work one day, and it'd be up we being yes.
Speaker 1:What's up right now.
Speaker 2:The French we.
Speaker 1:We, yes, what's up right now? Right now it's still fall.
Speaker 5:Colors I've got leaves and pumpkins and the orange lights in the window.
Speaker 4:She didn't get enough of having leaves outside.
Speaker 5:Our yard is at the end of the cul-de-sac. It's where all the leaves blow. Plus, we have the biggest tree in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:In the neighborhood, all the leaves, all sides of the neighborhood.
Speaker 5:And she loves them so much she brings them inside and decorates the house with them. I don't get it Anyway.
Speaker 2:Your neighborhood is beautiful, though. We went and rode our motorcycle around there at one point, and it was just fall colors like crazy beautiful yeah. I'll save some ornaments for Vince.
Speaker 5:He'll put a couple on. I will Two so she can get pictures.
Speaker 4:Photo ops we had somebody put lights on the front of our house. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice, that might be as.
Speaker 4:Christmasy as it gets.
Speaker 2:I don't think we're going to have time to put anything else up. We were talking about it, but we actually were going to be in Mexico for half of this month Not half this month 10 days and then come back and immediately go to family. So it's like you could still put one up, Kind of what's the point?
Speaker 1:They could do a three-footer. They go to Walmart. It's like $25.99. And you get a little three-footer, even come pre-lit.
Speaker 2:I thought about putting up the tree Just because, being from Louisiana, the tree after Christmas does become a Mardi Gras tree. Oh yes, so we have Mardi Gras decorations that go up and it's purple and green and gold.
Speaker 1:So it does.
Speaker 2:the tree does stay up for a very long time in this house, which is kind of nice.
Speaker 5:It also becomes a July 4th tree after Mardi Gras it does. It's very patriotic. We put the flags up.
Speaker 2:The candy canes work with that as well, because they're red and white.
Speaker 5:And then on Labor Day.
Speaker 2:When the mold fits in, it starts blue.
Speaker 5:They celebrate Labor Day by having their employees go over and take the tree down.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:It's a big party. So, speaking of traditions, let's roll into Christmas really quick. Do you leave the tree up until after the first of the year or do you take it down before?
Speaker 3:I am one to take it down on December 31st or December 30th, because I was always told you don't roll the old year into the new.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. I leave mine up because it brings you good luck.
Speaker 2:I always thought January 1st was the day to take down the Christmas tree. That was always ours. That's why employees have off on January 1st.
Speaker 1:Take the tree down. Or get over the hangover it's one of the two or both Vince what about? You for your tree.
Speaker 5:Ours was usually up for a few days after the New Year. Now, New Year's Day was the last day it was lit. After that it may just be up, because we don't have time just yet to take it down, I get that. But it wasn't lit anymore after.
Speaker 1:New Year's.
Speaker 4:Day. Oh, that's interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I will say I had a friend of mine and I did this multiple times with him. It was a lot of fun. After Christmas they didn't water the tree anymore, yeah. And then for Christmas Eve, for New Year's Eve, they burned it, we would bring it outside and burn it, and it was spectacular.
Speaker 2:There's nothing like watching dry pine needles, if you are curious why everybody is so ridiculous about having to water your Christmas tree. Stop, wait five days and then take it out. This is the part that's important Take it outside To a safe area. To a safe area Not covered. Still in the tree, stand and just throw one match at it. It is spectacular.
Speaker 5:It's like a good old-fashioned cross-burning kind of thing.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't go that far, but it doesn't take long. I mean like 15 minutes, 10 minutes, it's gone.
Speaker 4:It's crazy. You're talking about burning the tree. Well, if you leave Baton Rouge, new Orleans, going more west to Cajun country, they have a tradition of doing fire trees on the levee. Yes, They'll take huge pallets make huge trees equidistant along the levee and they'll light those babies up.
Speaker 1:You can see them from an airplane.
Speaker 4:What was your?
Speaker 1:tradition, Eric. Do you leave the tree up or do you take it down?
Speaker 4:We leave it up as long as possible and the lights and everything on it.
Speaker 2:When all the pine needles are on the ground, they're like. We need to get this out of here.
Speaker 1:Oh, here let's do a vote. How many have actually truly cut down a real live tree in the woods? Raise your hand.
Speaker 4:Cut it myself no.
Speaker 1:Two of us, two out of all of us, and Vincent do his, until like four years ago, five years ago, six years ago.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 4:They're from the West Coast. You cut a tree down in South Louisiana. It's an oak tree or a pine tree. It's a little different.
Speaker 2:It's a little different when it's got a 90-foot diameter on the top of the limbs, to be fair.
Speaker 5:I didn't do this when I was in Los Angeles. I did it with Melissa.
Speaker 2:Not a lot of Christmas trees grow in Los.
Speaker 1:Angeles.
Speaker 5:You could go and get to the Christmas tree farm there were those and cut them down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember we never did because they were crazy expensive. I remember going just as a kid to the Christmas tree lots and getting a tree. Back then We'd get the smallest one they had. It was like five, six foot and doing that. And then when Home Depot started selling them, I remember going to Home Depot. We just get our Christmas tree at Home Depot every year and you know you have to, like, dig through the pack, Right, and they've all been picked through already. Yeah, I remember all that stuff. You know you got to take the tree and run it through the stockings of the fishnets. Yeah, that's a stuffy thingy.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, For many years we would do that Go to the Christmas tree lot every year and pick out a tree and it was the whole thing, where the guy takes it and knocks it on the ground to get the limbs coming down and look at it and find one. This was before they were doing the stocking thing, and then we started going to the railroad tracks downtown where they came in off the train.
Speaker 1:I don't believe that, but that's what they said they do For those of you that can't see him Coming in off the train.
Speaker 5:And then one year my dad got a wild hare and just went out and bought a fake one, and that was it.
Speaker 2:I remember going over to my sister, her best friend Laura. I love Laura, so many good memories with her. I used to pull on her hair when I was younger and they had a fake Christmas tree. But if you remember, like early 90s, late 80s, fake Christmas trees, you know what that meant. You put the stand down, you built the pole.
Speaker 5:And then you had to go in. The pole had holes in it and you put the branches in.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you had to figure out which branch correlated to which thing. And then every one of them has to be fluffed individually.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then that takes about two and a half hours, and then you got to stream the lights, the lights, and then the ornaments, and then the peppermints or the candy canes. And then the star on top or the angel on top, and like it was an ordeal. It was like an all-night affair and I remember doing it and theirs was huge, it was gigantic. Yeah, that was oof.
Speaker 1:Jerry, did you in your area? Did they cut trees in the woods or no?
Speaker 3:No, we would go to the Christmas tree lot and growing up I always, you know, we bought real trees and everything. It wasn't until I got older that we switched over to a fake one.
Speaker 5:Melissa told me one year we were going Christmas tree hunting.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 5:Tell the story.
Speaker 2:Tell how you do it in Oregon. So you got the shotgun, you racked it.
Speaker 5:So how do you do it in Oregon?
Speaker 1:Well, you pack your snacks, your lunch, your hot cocoa.
Speaker 5:Start with the tag.
Speaker 1:Yep, you go by the store and you purchase a tag it's $5 for a tree and then you go out into the woods and you hike around. Normally it's in snow country, so you have to dress appropriately and you take the dogs and maybe you have a fire out in the woods you have dogs that are trained to hunt.
Speaker 2:They just take the dogs. Everybody runs, everybody roams, and you walk around, you walk around the dogs, like the pigs, do the truffles.
Speaker 4:Everybody roams Exactly and you walk around. I knew there was a Christmas tree around here somewhere.
Speaker 1:You walk around, and you walk around until you find the tree that you want, and then you get the chainsaw, because that's how we cut them down.
Speaker 5:Wait, wait, wait, chainsaw.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:You made me use an axe.
Speaker 1:I did not. You got to use the chainsaw.
Speaker 4:And then, you cut it down. She could have rolled with that right. She could have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were not Paul Bunyan.
Speaker 2:So when I did it we had to go to my aunt's house and over her couch she had one of those big giant saws.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, Two-person saws.
Speaker 2:And so we had to do that, yeah, which it was dull because it had been there forever. Of course, it was flesh wound, so I finally gave up on that, which is why I've never cut my tree down.
Speaker 1:It's a good time, it's an outing. It's half a day or three-quarters of a day, it's a good time Usually. Then you bring your tree back Don't be prepared to maybe decorate it that day, because it was covered in snow and kind of wet. So you knock all that snow off, usually set it on your front porch or in an area for it to kind of drip dry, and then it can go up the next day. So it's typically the way christmas tree hunting goes. But it's, it's a whole thing. It's it's um, you make an outing of it and it's fun and it's nostalgic and I remember norman, norman markwell-esque I remember when we would get the tree again from the illustrious Home.
Speaker 2:Depot.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We would go to the Home Depot and get our tree and I remember we'd always come back home you know it'd be the back of the Ranger. You'd choose a year it was always a Ford Ranger and get home, bring it to the back porch. I remember laying it on top of that black wrought iron table that everybody had. You know the one with the scroll legs.
Speaker 2:Yep, yes, and we'd lay it on that thing and it would be wobbly. And then Dad would always cut a couple inches off the bottom, first cut, and then he would go through any loose kind of odd pieces at the bottom. He'd cut those off. So we'd have a nice pretty, you know, uniform.
Speaker 2:Christmas tree base and then put it in the tree holder, but I forgot it actually all started. This whole process started the night before, which is when Dad would get home, and then we would go into the attic. Oh, oh, and I don't know if this was like normal or just a quirk of that house, but the attic stairs didn't go all the way to the floor.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 2:So he had to back his and it was accessed from the outside of the house. So he would back his pickup truck into the carport. Then we would lower the stairs down, they would sit in the bed of the pickup truck and then you go up there and you would pick out the tree stand and we'd get all the accoutrements.
Speaker 1:You'd drag everything down.
Speaker 2:And my family being so environmentally forward, we didn't use plastic totes, we used cardboard boxes, which you know after 20 years of humidity, heavy humidity, and intense heat, had the strength of tissue paper, and then bring all those down and careful, because it's just all fragile, fragile, everything you're touching is fragile.
Speaker 2:And then, uh, and so that would start it, and then the next day, when dad got home from work, we go get the christmas tree, and then we'd have everything already done. That way you didn't have to like do both at the same time because you're right, like even just going to home depot and picking a christmas tree out.
Speaker 2:That's an endeavor you have to dig through all of them and figure out which one you want, your family's needs yes, and there were times we would go and it was like none of these are good and then they'd be like we get a whole other shipment off the train tomorrow, and so you'd come back the next day and try it again we, uh, sometimes would have to make a tree lopsided to fit it where I would want it.
Speaker 1:So meaning you know, the tree was equally three and a half feet span on both sides with the limbs. But on one side. We'd like shave it down to like a foot and then push it up against the wall.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just to get it to fit in the space that we want, or sometimes it would have. It was perfect on the side, we thought, but once you cut it down there was a gaping hole somewhere, because it might've been mixed. So I remember there would be a hole drilled into the trunk and then a branch would be cut off from a different location. And it would be re-inserted just to fill the space that's right so those are some tips and tricks for what we did. We never did that.
Speaker 2:We had, so our Christmas tree always was in the front window of the house, so the living room had a huge window that would face the road right.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And small neighborhood, so you could see right in at the Christmas tree, which means you had to decorate all the way around All sides.
Speaker 2:Yes, Ours sits in a corner of our living room there is glass windows on both sides but it faces nothing the backyard so we don't really do anything with the back of it. But at the house in Louisiana we had to, and so if we had a big hall like that it did end up in the back we would always put like the biggest ornaments. We had to fill that space right, like the ridiculous giant red ball or the manger scene, because we had we had a couple manger scenes you could hang and some of those were kind of big so you could hang that and put that and it would fill that space in, but yeah, ours was in a corner window face the street, but it sat up high because our, our house was kind of up on a hill.
Speaker 5:Yeah, us, but it was in a corner window that faced the street, but it sat up high because our house was kind of up on a hill yeah. But it was in a corner window so it had to be a perfect tree because you could see it from the whole neighborhood it wasn't just the cars driving by, If you imagine your corner where you put your tree.
Speaker 2:Facing the road In the road.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and nothing. You know, everyone had the trees.
Speaker 2:Like a lighthouse. Like a lighthouse.
Speaker 5:Imagine the top of a lighthouse.
Speaker 2:So your house was the shining tree for the neighborhood.
Speaker 5:It really was, it truly was.
Speaker 3:When we went shopping this year for fake trees, I was actually shook a little bit, because they have fake trees now that are made for in the corners.
Speaker 1:Really that are sheared off on the back. They're sheared off on the back, they're squared off. Very nice, very nice, and that makes sense.
Speaker 3:It makes a lot of sense if you're like in New York's mall apartment or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are you going to do with that backside?
Speaker 2:My house, so that was my parents' house. We talked about my house when I lived in Louisiana, my living room. We tried to build a bedroom downstairs and that didn't work out. Then we did an office that didn't work out, then we did a bathroom. So my living room downstairs was always kind of in a weird, funky, odd shape or size and so the big fake Christmas tree I had never really worked right in there and then my corner window was actually the sliding glass door to get out.
Speaker 2:So if it was in just the wrong spot, you'd have to narrowly shimmy past fake razor-sharp-tipped Christmas arms or whatever to get out the door. So I wish that I had something like that, because that would have been perfect too.
Speaker 1:I didn't know. They made them. That's a great idea.
Speaker 2:It is. It was really neat.
Speaker 3:They make flat ones too, for if you're just doing on a flat wall, I didn't see it like that, but we did see the corner made four corners.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That's cool. Well, it sounds like everybody's weekend was really good.
Speaker 2:I had a blast. And then flying home. We did fly home Sunday. We flew home Sunday night. If there's something you don't want to do, it's fly home at night on the world's busiest traveling day. So of course we did. We did, yeah, and I think 20 minutes, I think totally we were delayed 20 minutes. It wasn't bad.
Speaker 1:It wasn't bad at all, I didn't think there was crowds.
Speaker 2:It didn't feel crowded at all.
Speaker 1:It didn't feel like we were elbowing people, but it may have been. By the time we got to Atlanta it was already late, and so that morning rush had already come and gone it could have been.
Speaker 2:It also could have been just the hall we were on as well. That was we're on. That was a hall. That's not could have been it's not one of their busier halls, if that makes sense. Well, I appreciated that um, but we in atlanta in particular has actually made, um, like, one of the things they've been working on is making the halls wider, making the passenger spaces bigger so that they can uh, handle people and not have it feels so crowded.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So maybe we were feeling a little bit of that, because I mean, like for the past few years, every time you go to Atlanta, if you're in the wrong hall under construction, big signs and everything, but like leaving New Orleans. It's funny, we left New Orleans, we went to the lounge because Eric and I fly so much, we get free lounge access and we get in there and we're talking about how busy it's supposed to be and someone made the comment of like I can't believe how empty the lounge was and five minutes later, boy, when we left there people were like standing waiting for seats, it was so packed.
Speaker 2:Waiting like standing waiting for seats, it was so packed. And then, even then, getting down to the gate area in New Orleans, everybody was up huddled around the gate trying to get on the plane. But it was already delayed, so I'm sure people were just anxious to get on and get away but yeah, it wasn't terrible, it really wasn't.
Speaker 1:Sure was refreshing coming out of the airport, whew. Man it was 15 degrees, 19? 19. Let's not get ridiculous.
Speaker 2:19 degrees 19 degrees.
Speaker 1:Who's counting?
Speaker 2:And then we get to the bus thing. So in Columbus, when you get off your airplane, if you didn't park in the garage which who does? Because it's like $40 a day.
Speaker 3:It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:They have these surface lots that are great and they're not too expensive.
Speaker 4:Blue Lot is gone now.
Speaker 2:I saw that they're closing the Blue Lot.
Speaker 3:They're starting the massive construction $2 billion $2 billion. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Which is funny because we just had someone fly into Columbus talking about how great our airport was and I'm like, really, because we're about to rebuild it Anyways.
Speaker 4:For 2B.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for $2 billion. So you have to go out and catch a bus and go to one of the shuttle lots and it's usually not very bad, but when it's 19 degrees we were out there and we were like where is this guy coming? And we get, we get on the bus and the guy, as soon as he rushes to get everybody on the bus, he puts off the luggage up and he's like I just want to apologize, there was someone up where he lets people off. That like was literally had their car blocking three lanes and completely shut everything down and they weren't able to get where they were going or whatever, had to have police interference or whatever to get the guy to move. Just craziness, right.
Speaker 2:I don't know who would think that would be a good idea Aren't airports, the one place where you're on your P's and Q's because they take all that so seriously. We had Edmonton's buttermilk about a joke she cracked, I just Anyways he told me my gate was C4.
Speaker 1:What kind of a joke would you think you'd make? Yeah, see, and you don't make that joke, right, jerry? Jerry understands me, you don't make that joke?
Speaker 5:We all had the joke in our head. Even Eric had the joke in his head. None of us said it.
Speaker 1:I verbalized it.
Speaker 2:He said it with a grimace, which means it was in his head too. Exactly it was but you vocalized it, I was just waiting on the cops to show up, Show up, snatcher Wow but that didn't happen, thankfully.
Speaker 5:I'll come see you on Monday when I get home.
Speaker 2:sweetheart, he was super nice too. He's just the host. So the Sky Lounge in New Orleans, you enter in on the ground floor and there's a host there, scans you in and then you go up an elevator and you are stairs and then you're in the lounge and he was so nice and a lot of times because that's a tough job like especially, a lot of those lounges are super overcrowded You're constantly telling people we're full, you can't come right now or you've got to wait, whatever. It's a tough job and you get a lot of entitled people showing up for it.
Speaker 4:You get a lot of entitled people showing up for it.
Speaker 2:Well, I pay my American Express bill and I want to do all this stuff and it's like I'm sorry, we have fire marshal capacity. You can't enter until someone leaves and you have to wait in line with all these other people who also have American Express cards. But no man, he was so nice and so cool. Even when we got ready to leave he was chatting with us on the way out. Just good people, good people all the way around. So much fun. Oh, my gosh, the taxis. A, we're getting ready to leave and come back. We get into one taxi and another taxi guy's like hey, that's my people, that's my fare. So they're about to fist fight over us, which I'm like.
Speaker 3:I do like being fought over.
Speaker 2:It's kind of nice I haven't been fought over in a long time. They're about fighting over us and then, finally, we get in the cab and we're throwing luggage in and we jump in and close the doors and he's out because we don't want to get in a fight. He ends up being the nicest, coolest guy. We talk all the way to the airport 30-minute ride 30-minute ride, we get his business card. He owns a praline candy-making company.
Speaker 1:He just dropped. I want to order some.
Speaker 2:Yes, he just dropped off Right before he picked us up. He has a store in the French Quarter that he supplies and he just dropped off all of his pralines so he didn't have any for us to buy. He said I can't believe this. He's like normally I always have like 20 of these up here. That way people can buy a couple it's. You know, if you're on the ride you're interested in having some problems, you can whatever. And uh, he's like I just sold out. He's like I'm just so sorry, such a nice guy man. The whole time it was at first. I'm like, oh no, it's one of these talky people like I don't want. I don't want to chat the whole time, especially not all the way to New Orleans Airport, which is a long way from downtown. But he was so cool, it was just fascinating the whole time. And Buttermilk was.
Speaker 2:CIA-level interrogation.
Speaker 1:She was.
Speaker 4:She truly was CIA-level.
Speaker 2:I do.
Speaker 5:This guy now has crazy top-secret government clearance.
Speaker 1:I do that when I go new places. He did the nuclear codes. What are you most proud of about your city? What do you love the most about your city?
Speaker 2:Where's the best food?
Speaker 1:Where's the best food?
Speaker 2:Where do you and your wife go on a date?
Speaker 4:Where do you go? Where do you go on Friday night?
Speaker 1:Do you know where he goes?
Speaker 2:in New Orleans. Where do you shop, for he goes to?
Speaker 1:Longhorns. That one surprised me Out of all the eateries you could eat in.
Speaker 2:I love his reasoning.
Speaker 1:In New Orleans he goes to a Longhorns.
Speaker 2:Do you know why he goes to Longhorns in New Orleans?
Speaker 3:Why.
Speaker 2:They got a parking lot. He's like I get so mad to go to a fancy restaurant in downtown New Orleans the food's great and then I got to wait an hour for my car and I'm like I get that, I get that or get towed Like I've done that.
Speaker 2:I've been down to New Orleans back in the day and then walked back to the truck and the truck's just not there, and there was a food cart and the food cart's like hey, are you looking for that white truck? I'm like, yeah, like they came and towed it, you're going to have to go over to the ramp, whatever, and get it. And I had to go do all that, which was crazy. It's better, it was crazy because it was actually my dad's truck. So I'm like I'm going to have to call my dad and have him come down two hours to get this thing out of an impound lot, right?
Speaker 4:So from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, new Orleans, to pick up his truck Like is this about to be a huge deal?
Speaker 2:I get there, like is this about to be a huge deal? I get there. They're like what is it? I told them what it was. I told them whose name was registered under. They're like it's $500-something. They take credit cards. It's one of the few places that take credit cards. They took credit cards, took my credit card. Saw my name wasn't the name.
Speaker 1:I gave them swiped the card and was like all right, man, you're cool, here's your truck.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, lucky you. And they had some Bentleys, they had BMWs, they had all the nice cars.
Speaker 1:And I'm like this is a racket.
Speaker 2:I love New Orleans. It was so much fun.
Speaker 1:I want to know in the comments what you did for Thanksgiving. Did you cook on the truck? If you are currently driving a truck, what did you cook or what is your favorite meal that you have in your family traditions?
Speaker 2:I saw we had a few teams that actually got the extended stay hotels and cooked in the hotels and we had some other teams that got together with each other and did some tailgate Thanksgivings and it was very exciting to see all the camaraderie that was out there.
Speaker 1:Put those in the comments. What you had, what you did, what's your favorite? Have you had Eric's dressing? Rice dressing Rice dressing with liver have you ever had that before? Or without liver?
Speaker 5:Just rice dressing.
Speaker 2:Liver's a given Rice dressing is delicious Rice dressing is almost the same Not quite, but almost the same as dirty rice.
Speaker 1:I'd eat it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love dirty rice.
Speaker 4:Oh, I forgot my second best food, the green beans.
Speaker 1:There you go oh are they good?
Speaker 4:Those are my favorite.
Speaker 1:My second favorite, yep. And then, are you a hunting for your tree kind of person, or do you get it from Home Depot?
Speaker 5:Or do you get it from Home Depot, or do you just go up to the attic or the garage and pull out the fake one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to know those things. Drop them in the comments.
Speaker 2:And my other question would be if you are pulling out of the garage with a fake one, or the attic or the basement. Do you have one or two fake ones? Because we have an interesting situation where we have two fake ones.
Speaker 4:And every year we have to figure out which one is the correct one.
Speaker 2:We did it wrong. Like two years ago we set the trees up and they were completely. All the ornaments are up and everything. So typically if we do two trees, we'll do one. In the basement it's a black and white or no, it's a? Um colorful ornaments and all that stuff. Upstairs will typically be like a black and white tree or a red tree, some kind of theme, and we got them backwards one time and we're like. We realized that we're like tough, they're just backwards, we're not tearing the trees down to figure this out. That's funny.
Speaker 2:I am curious if you are a multi-tree owner, have you ever gotten them confused and realized after the fact you put the wrong tree in the wrong spot. But until we meet again, jerry, what do we need to know?
Speaker 3:Make sure you hit that thumbs up button. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. It would really really help us out with the algorithm. And if you're interested in learning more about Highfield and all that we do over here, check us out at highfieldtruckingcom or give us a call at 833-HIGHFIELD. One of our lovely people in recruiting would love to talk to you 833-493-4353. 3-5-3. Option 1.
Speaker 1:Option 1.
Speaker 3:And you can also listen to us on your favorite podcasting app. We are streaming everywhere.
Speaker 1:Everywhere.
Speaker 2:If you have any ideas for a topic you want us to talk about, if you have a place that you'd like us to go visit and report back on.
Speaker 5:We'd be happy to.
Speaker 2:We're game for a good time. Just drop us a comment or you can shoot us an email at theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom. That's correct. What is that again? At theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom.
Speaker 3:That's correct. What is that again? Theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom. Melissa, that was theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:And that comes straight to my phone. I'm the one that actually gets all those emails and I've gotten a few over the past season and we've tried to throw those in when we can, but I love to have them. We certainly season and we've tried to do this and we can, but, uh, I love to have them. We certainly love to get those ideas and you know, sometimes like, oh, it's a great idea, we didn't think about even mentioning that. So, uh, we appreciate all y'all.
Speaker 3:Stay safe and make good decisions don't leave money on the table and keep those wells of turning good night bye, we'll be right back, thank you,