Back in the late nineties, when my wife and I were newly married and stupid and not yet anybody’s parents, we’d think nothing of driving to New Orleans on a random Tuesday in search of something to do. In those early years of our publishing adventure, when the excitement of covering B&Bs and peach festivals from sleepy St. Francisville became too much, we’d exchange the rural idyll for the couch of friends with a rented shotgun in the Lower Garden District, then spend a couple of days acquainting ourselves with as many of the city’s live music, dive bar, and cheap dining establishments our limited budget would allow.
On those NOLA road trips, we stumbled into the habit of exiting I-10 at LaPlace and stopping at Bully’s Half-Way House for a couple of their infamous Bloody Marys. I don’t remember how we learned about Bully’s, but anyone who ever bellied up to that bar, or perched in its vintage barber’s chair at 9 in the morning on their way to Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, knows those Bloody Marys. A quart-sized plastic cup of vodka cut with enough tomato juice, lemons, horseradish, hot sauce, and pickled produce to stave off scurvy for decades—a Bully’s Bloody Mary was a road-trip-ending ritual for thousands of New Orleans-bound revelers, if the number of vehicles and range of license plates in the oyster shell parking lot was any indication. Once you received your Bloody Mary(s), Bully’s etiquette dictated that you should move aside to make space for the next customer. Since the barroom was not large, and the barber’s chair usually occupied, your choices for consuming said beverage(s) were either out in the parking lot, or back on I-10. Then, as now, Louisiana law designated the consumption of alcoholic beverages while operating a motor vehicle to be illegal (drive-thru daiquiri shops notwithstanding). But so good were those Bloody Marys, and so closely associated with the prospect of impending revelry, that even the most law-abiding resident of Protestant Louisiana could feel their Pavlovian pull from around Prairieville. My wife, who introduced me to Bully’s, was one of these. About the time we passed the Tanger Outlet Mall she’d have planned her garnish strategy, and by the time the Gramercy Exit came into view, would have worked herself into a state of delicious anticipation that no quantity of pickled beans could assuage.
Exactly which destinations Bully’s Half-Way House was half-way between never became clear (Baton Rouge and Biloxi, perhaps? McComb and Morgan City?) But since many good road trips terminate in New Orleans, I suppose the genius of the LaPlace location, and a small mercy for law-abiding motorists, was that Bully’s was more like nine-tenths of the way to most customers’ destinations. So, other drivers barreling through Kenner at 9 am didn’t have to share I-10 with sleep-deprived road warriors cradling quart-sized cups of vodka cocktails between their knees and crooning “Life Is a Highway” for longer than absolutely necessary.
In any case, I’ve never had a better Bloody Mary. So, after Katrina, when Bully’s finally closed for good, I’m sure thousands of other New Orleans-bound travelers had the same experience we did, of standing in an empty oyster shell parking lot and staring with dismay at the locked doors. The wonderful fantasy author Terry Pratchett once said “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” That’s true, because while the journey down I-10 lost a little of its magic after Bully’s closed, it didn’t lose it all. These days, on any trip that takes us towards New Orleans or points beyond, my wife and I factor in time for a pit stop at the Cajun Village & Coffee House in Sorrento (exit 182) for café au lait and their ethereal beignets, which are as good as any New Orleans has to offer. Even longer-lived than Bully’s, the Coffee House seems to have only gotten more popular recently, with a line outside long enough to suggest that this beloved landmark of Louisiana roadside entrepreneurialism might have gotten Instagram-famous.The Coffee House doesn’t serve Bloody Marys, but now that we’ve become people-of-a-certain-age, that’s probably a good thing. Some experiences belong in the past. I do wonder whatever happened to that barber’s chair, though.
—James Fox-Smith, publisher
