Reno grinned at her. “Crawfish etouffee, blackened catfish, and bread pudding.”
“Oh, a man after my own heart!” She wrote his choices down. “I’ll turn this in and be back with your sweet tea.”
“Keep it coming!” Reno announced jubilantly.
Journey was so glad to see him happy. If he found himself ‘stuck’ in this time, she couldn’t stand the thought of him being miserable. “You won’t be disappointed in the food. These folks are the real deal. They left New Orleans after Katrina, never went back.”
“Katrina?”
“A storm. A big one. Hit New Orleans a glancing blow, but the rain was so intense that the levees broke. The city was flooded. It was a surreal, true disaster. People on roofs. The dead floating down the streets. The Superdome was full of people who couldn’t evacuate and had nowhere to go. And we watched it all unfold on the TV.” She pointed once more to the television.
“The storm had a name?”
“Yea, they name hurricanes now. Since 1950 or so.” She became very serious. “There have been some really bad ones in the past. In 1900 a huge hurricane destroyed Galveston, killing somewhere between eight to twelve thousand people, they couldn’t get an accurate count. So many were washed out to sea and their bodies never recovered.”
“I can’t imagine such destruction. Galveston is a major port. Many of the immigrants to Texas come through Galveston.”
“Houston is the main port now. Galveston is more for the tourists.”
He looked confused. “But Houston isn’t on the coast. How can it be a port?”
She nodded, understanding his confusion. “After the Galveston Hurricane, about ten years later, the government dug the Houston ship channel. Now, ships from all sail in and out. It’s one of the great oil ports of the world.”
“Oil’s a big deal now?”
“Yea, if you go back in time. Invest in oil. You’ll be a billionaire. I think the first big strike in Texas was in Beaumont. It was called Spindletop.”
As soon as she said ‘go back in time’, his eyes glazed over. She regretted mentioning the possibility. He stared blankly at the table until the announcer’s voice on the TV drew his attention.
“Twenty-eight people are dead and two more are missing after a landslide in Rosas, Colombia.”
Journey took the opportunity to change the subject, explaining how television coverage had made the world smaller. “Nothing happens anywhere that isn’t worldwide news in a few hours or less.” She explained about serial television, reality shows, movies, and how everything was paid for with continuous, sometimes mindless commercials.
“I can see where such a thing could be addictive,” he mused, staring at the screen.
“Oh, yes. Certainly. People who watch too much TV are called couch potatoes.”
This made him laugh and she was glad. Their food came and Reno ate every bite, almost scraping the design off the bottom of the plate. “This is amazing. I thought Boone was a master at Louisiana cooking, but this is even better. Of course, he probably didn’t have access to all the ingredients these folks do.”
“You’re probably right. Boone’s from Louisiana?”
“Originally.” Reno dropped his voice to a near whisper. “He was raised in a brothel. His mother was a prostitute. She died when he was twelve and the owner tried to force him to…go to work in a sexual capacity.”
“How horrible. I’m sorry.”
“Yea, me too. Thankfully, he ran away. He had a hard time, of course. Nearly starved to death. He got a job on a riverboat as a cabin boy and that was how he eventually made his way north to Memphis. He had some wild adventures, I tell you. One time he befriended a slave at a plantation and ended up helping him escape. Later, he was on the ill-fated steamship, Philadelphia, when it exploded. He managed to survive, but he saw things that gave him nightmares, like a steel bar being driven right through a man.”
“Wow. That’s tragic.”
Reno nodded, then smiled sadly. “He had some good times too. Spent a few months with the circus. Finally made his way farther north, settling first in Memphis, where he worked in a cotton mill. A few years later he moved close to me, we spent a lot of good times on the banks of the Tennessee River. I swear, Boone did everything from make moonshine to dig graves for the local undertaker.”
“Sounds like he could be Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer.” At his confused look, she started to explain, but the waitress came with their bill. Reno’s praise was so effusive