Fred’s Lounge

Location: an isolated town of not quite 3,500 people where the median income hovers around the poverty line. Hours: Saturday: 8:00 A.M. to noon. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: closed. In fact, if you don't show up by 8:15 A.M., you won't get a seat. After about 8:45, you'll be lucky to find standing room. If you do manage to get in, odds are you'll be four drinks in by 10:30 or so. That's partly because the drinks are dirt cheap, partly because everybody around you is pounding 'em down as though Saturday morning were Saturday night, and partly because the music just makes you want to drink.About the music: It's live, it's rowdy, and it's all in French. Fred's, you see, has been hosting its Saturday-morning Cajun-music broadcast since 1962. Back then, that was just another thing the bar did. Now it's all that's left. Fred, who bought the place just after the war, died 20 years back. His ex-wife, Tante Sue, as everyone calls her, still shows up every week, although when we were there she wasn't working her way through the dancing, drinking, hooting and hollering crowd — farmers, LSU boys, oil workers, professors, sorority girls — dispensing shots of cinnamon schnapps, as was her wont, and she didn't sing with the band. She did, however, bring a big cardboard box full of hot boudin (Cajun sausage), which she passed around while wearing her Mardi Gras cape, stitched together with purple Crown Royal bags