The Train from New Orleans

Yours Truly in a Swamp

The Train From New Orleans

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

* * *

The train from New Orleans to Lafayette (and Los Angeles) eased out past the Louisiana Superdome and its little green buddy, The Sports Arena, on time, on D-Day, 2008. The Atlantic / Gulf Hurricane Season had began a few days earlier, on June First.

After The Storms of 2005, we found rooms in Lafayette, "The Hub City" of Acadiana. In order to be back in The City FEMA Forgot for the opening of the 2008 hurricane season, we took Greyhound (Amtrickle runs only three days a week) across the bottom lands of Great Mother Swamp, Atchafalya.

Friends in New Orleans were going to Florida, and we were house sitting their two dogs and spectacular home in the French Quarter. Hurricane season arrived two days after we did. In celebration, the Upper Middle West held its second hundred year flood in two months. Louisiana did nothing to mark the matter -- unless you count the Army Corps of Engineers stuffing New Orleans new levees with old newspapers. Will papier-mâché levees save us? One day, soon after The Storms of '05, we saw a billboard on Interstate-10, near Metairie. It read: "Need help? Go to www.gov.shit."

Last month's multiple tornadoes, up North, had winds matching Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. They sent a wall of Yankee rain water down the Mississippi River, spilling through the Bonnet Carrie Spillway and into Lake Pontchartrain.

An Iowa Boy Scout Camp was hit hard by a twister. The brave young Scouts set up their own triage center utilizing Boy Scout training. Now we know, we should have called the Iowa Boy Scouts instead of FEMA. To paraphrase the Bush Crime Family, "Attaboy, Scouters, you're doin' a heck of a job!"

* * *

As we stepped off the Greyhound Bus in New Orleans, we said to a young man in line behind us, "You been back since The Storm?"

"Naw," he said, "I been locked up." His tone was flat. As he spoke, he looked past us, at the chain link fence separating Greyhound's buses from Amtrak's trains. He was black, light skinned, and not paying white-us much attention. He was reminiscent of the way whites used to look through blacks -- like they were children, irrelevant and powerless.

Sitting on the tracks where the young man looked sat two private rail cars. This is where Amtrak parked evacuation trains, AFTER The Storm. And where Dan Aykyroyd's private car had been, in April, when we arrived for Jazz Fest.

"Before The Storm," we said, to no one listening, "Dan Aykyroyd parked his railroad car down on The River, where Elysian Fields, Esplanade and Decatur Streets meet. Don't know where he keeps it now. But, this Spring, Aykroyd, the jazz lover, parked it right there."

Amtrak and Greyhound share the same station in New Orleans. It is large, airy and clean, and dates from 1954, when rail and highway began their needless struggle.

A spectacular fresco around the inside four walls of the huge waiting room proclaims Louisiana history in a masterpiece of cubist art, by the late Conrad Albrizio. This epic mural is a national treasure that was plagued by lime blooms following Katrina. (The station was commandeered as Orleans Parish Prison, after O. P. P. flooded.) Every lover of Louisiana, of history, of art owes a thank-you to Michael Sartisky and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities for saving this great work of art.

* * *

At the D-Day Museum, on Higgins Drive, we saw our first Sherman Tank, ever. We couldn't wait for the parade that promised to feature the tank -- because we had to catch the Sunset Limited, West. We arrived at the Museum on Featherbike, our yellow feathered pre-K bicycle that is something of its own parade -- and Hurricane survivor.

We were nearly turned away by an ageing warrior in dress uniform and walker. He guarded the glass doors, and looked at us with jaundiced eye. A smiling blond woman saved us. She explained the Sherman Tank was in a warehouse across the street where we were welcome to have a look.

The famous war machine was tended over by a young man in what we took to be the gear needed to drive it. He, too, was smiling and his entourage looked young and full of life. In the ebullience of the moment, we all smiled at each other, patted the tank, and lost our thoughts of what such a machine was built to do.

Later we breakfasted at Mother's, on Rue Poydras, where the food, (like World War Two) was better in memory. Then we visited "White Space Exhibition," Greg Miles great photographs of current New Orleans musicians, at the ultra chic W Hotel.

At Harrah's Hotel, across Poydras, we checked out the new digs of Ruth's Chris Steak House. (The flooded Broad Street location is nevermore.) Nice, but too soon to tell. The hotel's first try, Riche's, failed. Ruth's, with its many names and long history should better understand the New Orleans palate -- and that of its visitors. In the hotel rooms and the lobby were stunning over sized photographs of the French Quarter, by Richard Sexton. We never cease to marvel at images of ourselves and our Great Swamp City.

* * *

Boarding the train, a small man -- the Train Assistant -- with a neatly-trimmed white beard, handed out colored slips of paper on which he penciled in a number. Ours was "26." The process was slow and the line quickly backed up along the loading platform.

"Why don't we just get on board and find our own seat, like we always do?" asked an elderly woman in a black dress trimmed in neat white lace.

"I guess I made a mistake, telling friends my senior ticket to New Orleans was only seventeen dollars."

She had once taught school in Lafayette and had been to New Orleans for a luncheon party with other retired teachers.

"Guess too many of them heard me. A rare treat for a teacher," she said with a small laugh.

At seat number 26 sat a man and wife bound for Houston. I took seat number 16, across and up the aisle. It was soon surrounded by young mothers and young children. The white beard followed them on board and asked if we would not rather be away from the cheering children. We would.

On our way to the back of the car we passed the school teacher, settled into a quiet seat in the rear. She said she had heard all the children she ever wanted to hear.

* * *

We stayed a week in the French Quarter. It is considerably as it was before The Storm. But it feels considerably different.

"The City That Care Forgot," that number one thing New Orleans has always sold to its tourist, is now a harder sell. And upstart Los Vegas has stolen the title "Sin City!" But let me tell you, we had a lunch at Dooky Chase that would have dazzled the gods. The great Leah Chase, cook, greeted us and introduced us to the great Leah Chase, the singer, back from Paris. And at Brennan's, on Royal Street, we sat at table with Alana Brennan and Bridget Brennan Tyrrell. It gets no better than great food and lovely women.

The Sunset Limited slid down the West slope of the sturdy old Huey P. Long Bridge.

We stood at the rear door of the last car and watched the orange-hulled S. S. Phoenix Tucson sail downstream, under our feet.

Nor any better than that!

Friends of Community Library / Herb Festival

Yours Truly in a Swamp

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

* * *

The Friends of Community Library

From the Herbs & Gardens Festival's "Books Abloom," in Sunset, to the Breaux Bridge Crayfish Festival, Louisiana has been up to its neck in what it does best: Festivate!

The Professor said the Breaux Bridge Crayfish Festival was second only to Mardi Gras itself for debauchery.

Books Abloom, a Louisiana book-meet at the sweet and pure Herbs and Gardens Festival in Sunset, was a place to chat and sit in the shade. A place to buy cookies and cakes from nice ladies in Summer hats. A place to sign LOUISIANA IN WORDS and sell ice box magnets destined to save your refrigerator from the wild vermin should we have another killer hurricane.

The Breaux Bridge Crayfish Festival was something else. There we rode the Ferris wheel, bumper cars and the two-dollar 16oz Abita beer wagon till the clouds roared and crowds floated by.

The Herbs and Gardens crowd pulled their favorite plants about on little red wagons, while ageing hippies sold bath salts and perfumed soaps. I'm not sure there was a beer wagon. However, Mellow Joy gave out free yellow cups of coffee. Peace in our times.

The Professor bought herbs for his Spring "parterre," a kitchen garden, a "jardin potager," behind the little Cajun cottage on the prairie. I signed FRENCH QUARTER FICTION and LOUISIANA IN WORDS, the two best-selling Louisiana short story collections edited by New Orleans' latest carpetbag savior, Joshua Clark.

On the drive down to Breaux Bridge we stopped for boudin and beer at Janice's, where we once saw New Orleans' earlier savior, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, buying boudin by the cooler full, just before Obama came to visit. No reports on how the man who would be President took to our spicy links.

We had ours on the Evangeline Freeway tossing skins out the rooftop. Once there were bumper stickers that read: "Be Alert for Flying Boudin."

Once, in the Cajun Camelot.

In Breaux Bridge, a handsome young black cop directed us into the parking lot and took the Professor's five-dollars. He said it was an easy walk to "the fest," for a "young man, like you."

I said, "He has an old coot in tow."

The cop lithely leaned in the window and said, "Hope I'm still doin' it when I'm there, too." He grinned and pointed us to a closer parking spot. Peace and Truth in our times.

Want a magnetized image of LEJ's fat face for your memory board, or to scare future storm vermin from your abandoned refrigerator?

"It'll keep them bugs out'a your icebox, next time, sugar!" ~ L. A. Norma

If you do

Send a self - addressed & stamped envelope, along with $5

to: Leonard Earl Johnson

Box 202

302 Jefferson St.

Lafayette, LA 70501

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* *

Forty Days of Lent

Yours Truly in a Swamp

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans, March 2004

"Ain't nothing in the world time and money won't cure."

~ The late Ernie K-Doe, New Orleans Musician and Emperor of The World

* * *

(Lent 2004)

On Ash Wednesday, all over Louisiana, Carnival lifted its joyous mantle leaving Lent's ashen smudge in its place. At New Orleans' Saint Louis Cathedral, business suits stood cheek-by-jowl with crimson capes and smeared-lipstick ladies waiting for the priests to put the Sign of The Cross on their foreheads, with a thumb dipped in the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday palms.

Outside a soft rain washed The City.

I have many doubts about theological things but none whatsoever about this ceremony.

To ashes we shall return.

Lent is the strangest holiday in all the Christian calendar. Also the longest. Should you need reason to be suspicious of religion's political power consider that fact.

Carnival's joyous length shortens. Lent's never does.

Calculation of Carnival's ever-changing length depends on the ever-changing date for Easter Sunday. Lent is always forty days preceding Easter. Carnival is the season from Twelfth Night after Christmas (January 6, when the Magi came to the baby Jesus with their offerings of incense, myrrh, beads, and King Cake) to Ash Wednesday.

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the last day of Carnival. Next day is Ash Wednesday, first day of Lent.

The Catholic Calendar, by which we measure all this, is not too accurate. The date of Easter changes with the moon. It is calculated (or miscalculated) to foretell Spring with measurements embedded with faith in suffering and suspicion of pleasure. Carnival 2008, will be on February 5, more than three weeks less than this year's (2004).

Suffering is not to be monkeyed with in theological calculations. Carnival's pleasures, however, are reducible things, by God (or His agents with their inaccurate stopwatchs).

Lenten fasting repairs Winter's damage and Carnival's excess, and prepares the believer for Spring's rebirth. Like the jazz man says, "Blow the roof off the sucker . . ."

It is a good Lent we are having this year, with sunny mornings and a warm place in the kitchen to read the papers and sip coffee.

The live oaks outside my dormer windows are Baby Dome green.

Live oaks don't dump their leaves till Spring's new buds arrive (as followers of JFK conspiracies know). Then they change from old dark green to young soft green almost overnight. Today soft green rules Big Swamp City, and old alligators lie on the banks in whatever sun we can find.

* * *

This image. "Bourbon Street #13"

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

available on a Summer-thin

white T-shirt

(S. M. L. xL. & xxL.)

for $22 + $7 postage = $29

Send check or money order

to

Leonard Earl Johnson

Box 202

302 Jefferson Street

Lafayette, LA 70501

* * *

Want a magnetized image of LEJ's fat face for your memory board?

or to scare off future storm vermin from your refrigerator?

"It'll keep them bugs out'a your icebox, sugar!" ~ L. A. Norma

If you do
Send a self - addressed & stamped envelope, along with $6
to: Leonard Earl Johnson
Box 202
302 Jefferson Street
Lafayette, LA 70501

New Orleans Bypass and Mardi Gras

Yours Truly in a Swamp

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

* * *

On our way home from the Atlanta antique show, we took the I-12 bypass around the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, bypassed New Orleans all together, and rejoined I-10 south of Baton Rouge just in time for the swearing in of Louisiana's first Indian governor since Reconstruction.

That is a joke.

Early during the Occupation that followed the War Between the States, blacks were franchised in Louisiana, and whites were demoralized. Thus, together -- so to speak -- they elected a black state government that included a black governor, Pinkney Benton Stewart Pinchback.

In our modern times, when a first-ever black candidate is elected to office, the news reporters say, "Lumpty Dumpty is the first black to hold this office since Reconstruction."

Another minority

Jefferson Parish's late Sheriff Harry Lee (Chinese) gave birth to the joke, e.g., Harry Lee was the first Chinese elected sheriff since Reconstruction. (For Yankee readers, let me say that this was a good spirited joke.) And Bobby Jindal is the first Indian elected Governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction.

Governor Jindal is expected by most to do a fine job. I, too, think him a fine man. He and his lovely wife, Supriya, are Christians, but descendants of the land of Hindu. The Hindu have a prayer that is one of the most beautiful poems ever composed: "I see The God in you."

Govern well, Bobby, as if you see The God in us.

* * *

When we left Atlanta, mid-morning, we drove under, over and passed Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The world's busiest airport, and the only part of Atlanta most Louisianans have ever seen. This is a mistake. Atlanta is great. Not at all as new- New York as we expected.

We planned on stopping overnight in Mobile, visiting the fort on The Bay, and stopping again at Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis' home outside of Biloxi.

But when we hit Mobile we could smell The Swamp, and drove on.

Mississippi came up in no time, and then we crossed the Louisiana boarder and saw a sign saying: "New Orleans 90 miles." So close we thought. We drove on. Then we remembered we were not going to New Orleans this trip.

From a television picture, next day, we watched the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana nearly swear in the wrong man as Secretary of Something. In time he corrected the name of the office being sworn upon.

The ceremony started with the introduction of the Governor and "his lovely wife." They did not appear.

Later they were re-announced and pomp-and-circumstanced down the steps Huey P. Long built.

It should not be fair to criticize any one's renderings of the very difficult Star Spangled Banner. But, what the hell. What we got was a mix of something between Roseanne Barr and Little Richard singing Nina Simone. The band played something else.

Inaugurations and such swearing-ins are usually not nearly as interesting as watching sugarcane grow. This one was.

When the announcer introduced the Governor's Speech, "the governor" smiled, bowed and got through an inspiring portion of it before someone pointed out he was not yet the governor. The speech was halted. The new governor was sworn in, and the speech was resumed.

I would not have missed this inauguration for all the snow in Atlanta.

Mardi Gras

We drove to Opelousas to buy wine glasses and visit the M. Prudhomme Home, on Prudhomme Circle, built circa 1820. This is a third or fourth generation French Creole mansion that took my breath away when we drove up.

The family is the one that gave New Orleans its internationally acclaimed chef Paul Prudhomme. And Opelousas is near the place where locals dress up for Mardi Gras in Medieval costumes and chase chickens from horse back.

* * *

Mardi Gras falls very early this year. On February fifth.

Super Tuesday!
In New Orleans the day will pass more sedately than in Opelousas. In the rest of the nation it will simply be Super Tuesday.

Venez en Louisiane et ayez un Mardi Gras heureux

Wellhead Fires, Canal Street Dinners & Tidewater

Yours Truly in a Swamp

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

* * *
Wellhead Fires, Canal Street Dinners & Tidewater

The rich and powerful, bless their hearts, have long been fed up with the poor and powerless. From ENRON and Halliburton, to the Bush Crime Family, they have come to a single mind to not take it -- slugging and plundering from the little people -- any longer.

Tidewater, an offshore energy service company working in the oil and natural gas business, moved to Houston following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Last week they announced the return of their corporate office to New Orleans, with its "eighty five high paying jobs." Because, according to CEO Dean Taylor, recent elections returned the state to more business friendly politicians. We assume this means the election of a Bush buddy, Bobby Jindal, as the Republican Governor to replace the maligned Cajun Democrat, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Let us pray that he, she and we all find more comfort in the coming years than in the past few. For sure, her Excellency, our retiring Honorable Governor will.

* * *

A jolly Ho Ho Whore, for our consummate seasonal consumerism, and a solid hope your Turkey was tender and your money-maker well rewarded this Thanksgiving. I feasted in Laughingyet with the family that rescued me from Katrina and FEMA.

We heard the Mayor of New Orleans gave out chicken legs, last week, under a Sheriff's Department tent on Canal Street. We heard this from L. A. Norma, over the telephone, from New Orleans. L. A. Norma said she left the line saying it was too long and too like the Great Depression to be worth the wait.

Houston photographer, Frank Parsley, and I were in Town that day, but skipped the Mayor's tent dinner and picked up a whole Muffalata, from Central Grocery, on rue Decatur. We ate it sitting in the massive I-10 traffic jam. Of course you've heard, an oil/gas rig blew up not a hundred yards from The Great Swamp Road, sending its traffic to either the old Top Road or the new Bottom one. They now say it will remain closed and perhaps blazing until December 10, or longer.* Lofty dreams and drilling machines lay broken on the ground.

In time, Parsley and I got back to the Land of Boudin hours late and totally without le Mayor Nagin's blessing. Nor Tidewater's, I expect.

Tidewater's return of its headquarters to New Orleans, with its "eighty five high paying jobs," is a welcome step in a big direction. Thank you, Mr. Taylor, but please remember Bush and FEMA when you are implying blame for what happened to us. Good government ought to include governing good, too. After all, a good governmental climate ought be good for both corporations and citizens.

Now, let us work together to undo Blanco's silly law outlawing cigars in bars and then raise our glass and smoke in celebration of business joy ever after!

*( I-10 reopened.)

* * *
Yours truly in a Swamp,
www.LEJ.org

***

**

*

This image. "Bourbon Street #13"

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

available on a white T-shirt

(S. M. L. xL. & xxL.)

for $22 + $3 postage.

Send check or money order

to

Leonard Earl Johnson

Box 202

302 Jefferson Street

Lafayette, LA 70501

On the Way to The New Orleans Film Festival

Yours Truly in a Swamp

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

* * *

We are back in America's New Lost City, at the 18th annual New Orleans Film Festival, the most lavish festival held in this city since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew the roof off the place.

Last year there were half this year's 117 screenings. That horrible first year after The Storms, when The City was under mandatory evacuation, there was but an unofficial

festival in exile, at Cite des Arts in Lafayette, the "Hub City" of French Louisiana.

This year we watched films, ate, and danced into the cool night with speakers of French and speakers of Y'at, the where-you-at dialect of New Orleans.

The City Care Forgot is slowly forgetting its woes.

A smiling elderly lady from Chicago told me, at a post-screening party outside Canal Place Cinema that she had taken the train, The City of New Orleans, which she had not ridden in 40 years. "The food on board is not as good as it used to be, but this jambalaya," she pointed to our plates, "makes up for it."

Our luxury hotel rooms, fine dinning and helpful information was provided by the family friendly pockets of Harrah's Casino, where we had a view over the Mississippi River, to The City's Westbank, that must have stopped René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, mid-paddle: The sun rises over the Westbank!

Things are indeed different in New Orleans. And they always have been.

The most impassioned plea of the now forgotten anti-gambling debate was that a big central casino should not become a self-contained resort that would suck up all the established restaurant and hotel business. Harrah's compromise was to only have fast-food and gambling, and no lodging. Now, in post Katrina New Orleans, they have it all. And as fine as any anywhere. As the wise know, make lemonade when the levees break.

One morning, breakfasting grandly in Brennan's crowded Royal Street bistro, Ellen Brennan, cookbook author and member of the "Famous Family of Good Food," agreed. "We are all partners in bringing back the tourists."

* * *

Did you hear the street buzz? The only one convicted in the infamous Canal Street Brothel case was a doorman at an unnamed luxury hotel who told the man where the action was? No, not Harrah's. Harrah's luxury hotel was then but a gleam in the promise maker's eye.

Can't you hear the doorman saying: "It's just down Canal Street, next to the FBI sting. You can't miss it."

The out-of-state dentist, who started all this FBI gumshooing, got off from bilking Uncle Sam out'a false Medicare payments. The FBI got employment and infamy. (To their honor, the local police refused to cooperate with them.) And the doorman took the fall.

The madam got a lot of TV time and a sly smile. She recently told Larry Flynt (that old muckraker and Bourbon Street club owner), the Honorable Senator Vitter was a customer of hers between visits with his D. C. madam. Don't those con-servatives have the kinkiest sex? Liberal Bill Clinton only got a simple old fashioned wind-employment, for old fashioned free.

A professor I know took us over to Roberts Cove, Louisiana, for what we expected to be a pathetic imitation Oktoberfest. It was great! Good bier, music, dancers, exhibitions and food. They did have rice in their stews. But, thank Gott, not in da sauerkraut! -- there they had white potatoes cooked down to a gravy. MMMMMmmmm good!

As The Professor said, "What can you expect from Louisiana Germans, who are very prosperous rice farmers."

We went to look at the names in the cemetery just to walk among the white marble and large black, red & gold tricolor flying over each grave. It was beautiful. And the Alpine horns call and response was perfection. The yodeling was too, but even at its best.....

As we arrived a choir was singing that rucksacks song, "I Am A Happy Wanderer." Brought back memories, like the time in Fifth Grade when the music teacher beat the heck out of me. My Mother, the German, said it was my fault.

See you at the New Orleans Film Festival. Till then, keep le faith, speed der day and keep reading and writing, LEJ

New Orleans Film Festival

* * *

***

*

This image. "Bourbon Street #13"

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

available on a white T-shirt

(S. M. L. xL. & xxL.)

for $22 + $3 postage.

Send check or money order

to

Leonard Earl Johnson

Box 202

302 Jefferson Street

Lafayette, LA 70501

Nagin sighted in The Land of Boudin

* * *

Yours Truly in a Swamp
by
Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

Greetings from The Land of Boudin,

My Birthday is August 22, 1943. This year's celebration -- not quite over -- has been a hoot.

Yesterday, in celebration, a friend and I went out to see an old Cajun cottage being moved to a site of loving restoration by another friend. On the way home, we lunched on boudin from Janice's Supermarket, in Sunset.

Best damn boudin this side of the Mississippi, cher! exclaimed a heavyset man next to me.

We went to the Catholic Academy of the Sacred Heart grounds, in nearby Grand Coteau, to find shade for our lunch, then returned to Janice's for more boudin to take home.

In line, buying a cooler full of boudin, was none other than New Orlean's long suffering Mayor Ray Nagin, whipping boy to the displaced, and the fearfully at home.

(Perhaps you know, The City is murder capital, not only of The Swamps, but all the lands plundered by Goofus W. and the Bush Crime Family. Not to mention, it is not rebuilt after two years of largely empty Federal words, and our levees are now built higher on one bank than the other.)

I told him he did not deserve all the criticism he was getting. Nagin's smile was as tender as smiles can be. His Wife nodded. His body guard looked around. I flashed my gold tooth.

Maybe, "On our way home from Alexandria," Nagin was buying so much boudin to share with Barack Obama. "We always stop here for boudin," he said. There were no license plates on his very dark-windowed Ford muscle van, by le way.

Which reminds me, do you recall him saying Goofus W.'s Airforce One was the ultimate pimpmobil? The spirited tongue of Long and Edwards lives!

Hope you be well, un-murdered and full of good boudin.

La vie de bohème, L. E. J., du marais de Lafayette et de Nouvelle-Orléans.

* * *

The New York Times slide show of the new New Orleans.

You may want to fix yourself a stiff drink first.

(Slides 1 & 4 were blank when I posted this.

Yankees can not count right, I guess.)

* * *

And lastly,
Der Will Always Be Dat New Orleans:

"In past years, Decadence has drawn anti-gay protesters, such as the Rev. Grant Storm, but only a handful showed up Sunday. And the only cross in sight was a big red one carried by a man dressed, he said, as Republican Sen. David Vitter, in a coat, tie and tight white underwear. He was accompanied by a group of men in drag wearing "Wendy" name tags. One was posing as Vitter's wife Wendy, another as prostitute Wendy Cortez, who has said Vitter was a customer, and a third as the red-headed poster girl for Wendy's Hamburgers. . ."

Le Donner l' assaut à du jour