by Susan Ellis
Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in the Quarter
By Jerry E. Strahan
Louisiana State University Press, 237 pp., $24.95
hat’s a nice guy like Jerry Strahan doing selling hot dogs in
the French Quarter?
Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in the Quarter is Strahan’s attempt to explain.
The Ignatius of the title refers to Ignatius J. Reilly, the obese, overeducated, obnoxious hero of John Kennedy Toole’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Confederacy of Dunces. In the novel, Ignatius curses Fortuna, whose fickleness leads him to a job peddling wienies from a hot-dog-shaped cart for Paradise Vendors in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
The real-life version of Paradise Vendors is Lucky Dogs, and many of the real-life vendors, as depicted in this book, are up to the challenge of out-weirding Ignatius, who spends his brief tenure at Paradise scarfing most of his product, sometimes dressed as a pirate. But Strahan, who’s been a Lucky Dogs manager for more than two decades, never denounces his fate outright, though he does grumble a bit.
In the mid-Seventies, Strahan held a master’s degree in history and was pursuing his Ph.D. In the previous five years, he’d helped out at Lucky Dogs, filling in for missing managers and working particularly busy periods such as Mardi Gras. But then, something came to him. He writes, “Historians for some unexplainable reason tend to live forever.” It was this epiphany – that the longevity of historians meant fewer employment opportunities for him – that led him back into the folds of Lucky Dogs.
Managing Ignatius is a book for those enamored of New Orleans lore, particularly that of the French Quarter. And while Strahan’s master’s-degree stripes show in his attempts at humor, which are sometimes stiff, his 20 years’ worth of stories don’t need him; they stand on their own.
Strahan has seen it all – theft, murder, marriage, and birth. He’s been there to witness the Quarter change for both better and worse, he’s been there to oversee the company’s expansion into other cities and other countries, and he’s been there to feel the sting when college students began hawking a T-shirt listing the Lucky Dog, along with Port-o-Lets, as one of “2 things that smell bad, but relieve you, that you never want to experience again.”
Strahan’s chief function is demonstrating how Lucky Dogs has served as a bright light, drawing in the alcoholic, the homeless, the deviant, and the general misfits who, for some reason or another, see opportunity in pushing a cart. Many a vendor has abandoned his cart and taken the company’s proceeds with him. Some of the vendors as well as non-vendors have used the Lucky Dog warehouse as a flophouse, while one prostitute was using it as a meeting place for her johns. Some of them are prone to violence, either dishing it out or taking it. One Lucky Dog employee was beaten with a chain by a neighboring flower-cart worker when $2 came up missing. Another was attacked with sprays of mustard and ketchup by a carload of sorority girls.
In one anecdote, Strahan recalls a 65-year-old vendor named David Overstreet. While on duty, Overstreet, a onetime actor, happened upon a movie being filmed and immediately began coaching actors and fiddling with the lighting. A more disturbing event occurred some six weeks later, however, when Strahan encountered Overstreet outside the warehouse standing next to his cart without shoes or socks. When the author enquired about his employee’s missing footwear, Overstreet replied that his feet were cold. According to Strahan, “[Overstreet] reached forward and opened his hot dog steamer. Sitting on the stainless steel tray next to the hot dog buns were two old funky size-ten brown leather shoes and a pair of filthy crew socks. He was getting them nice and toasty before putting them back on his feet.”
Hot dogs, anyone?
Jerry Strahan booksigning
6 p.m. Friday, May 1st
Davis-Kidd Booksellers
Rumors that Meristem has closed have been exaggerated.
The nugget of truth in that rumor lies in the fact that Audrey May, owner of the Cooper-Young feminist bookstore, has decided to sell. In a letter addressed to Meristem supporters, May explains that she’s ready to move on to other projects.
Since it opened in 1990, Meristem has served as a sort of community center for those interested in a variety of subjects – from gay and lesbian issues to paganism. Through the years, May has held booksignings, concerts, and discussion groups. In 1995, she published Resurrecting Roses by local women authors, and in 1993, she and former co-owner Vickie Scarborough won a Vision Award from the Women of Achievement organization. This year, May was a recipient of the Community Peacemaker award from the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center.
While May says she hopes to sell the store to someone who will keep its feminist-friendly atmosphere intact, she will not make it a mandatory part of the sale. In the letter, May writes, “If I find a suitable buyer in the next three months, we will have a big community ‘transition party’ and I will sell the store and move on. If not, we will sell the inventory and fixtures, have a ‘transition party,’ and close the store and Memphis will be without a feminist bookstore.”
Interested parties can contact May at 276-0282. n