Joel's Field Notes

I lived in St. Benard parish for the first 13 years of my life so needless to say I had a pretty good idea about what to expect to see in da parish. When we arrived our first stop was at Rocky & Carloses, Rocky's is a historical marker of sorts in the parish, everybody who lives there has eaten there at least once in there life. I didn't have any cash on me so I didn't eat anything there, but i did notice that they had the same menu now that they did when I was a kid. Rocky's serves homestlye food like fried chicken, macaronie and cheese, stuffed artichoke, and spaghetti. I think this is worth mention because Chalmette is a very family oriented city. After leaving Rocky's we went to RC's tavern, this was my first time here and I was suprised when they kicked us out for being under age. The only group memberes that stayed were Taylor and Darryl the only 2 in our group that were of age. I thought that any observations they made or interviews they conducted would be intersting because they were also both black. It seemed as if they were quick to get them out because we only spent about 5 mins waiting for them outside. They both returned with a vodka and pineapple and little to say about the bar other than the bartender kept saying that they were leaving there friends outside. Our next stop was a bar called Brusters. When we walked up the first thing I noticed was there were two logos on the windows of the bar, a Chalmette Owls logo, and LSU Tigers logo. I think this is significant because it shows that the people of the parish care deeply about sports. I can account for this first hand because when I was a youngster growing up in the parish I played every sport that was offered and the parents were the stereotypical ex-highschool football player pushing there kids way to hard, yelling at officals, and making an ass of themselves. When we went inside the bar they were setting up a kareoke machine, men were playing darts, a table of elderly ladies sat on the restraunt side and smoked, and scattered men and women lined the bar. It appeared as if most people there knew one another so I felt a little out of place. It looked like most of the people there had just gotten off of work and numbing the pain of a hard day. The majority of the parishes population is employeed by the refineries and has only a highschool education. Ben was talking to a man about to damages Chalemette suffered during Katrina, he seemed like a pretty nice guy, but he looked pretty wasted because he was a little slurry and one of his eyes was extremely squinty and the other was fine. We spent about 15 to 20 mins in Brusters before we left. On the way out we crossed the Jackson Barraks National Guard place, its sort of the race boarder of the parish, it seperates Chalmette from the 9th ward.