40
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2014
the
Outdoors
issue
center and the Morial Convention Center,
neither of which were even on the drawing
boards back then.
The fair suffered a legion of logistical
and financial disasters and was largely
considered a failure at the time, but there’s
no question that it eventually set in motion
a dramatic reconfiguration of architecture,
attitude and atmosphere on the riverfront
in downtown New Orleans.
Out from its original footprint, development
exploded. The Warehouse District was
born, the first upscale downtown urban
pioneers were drawn to the city, the very
first sparks of reversing urban blight. Music
clubs, restaurants and hotels followed.
Lesser recognized and lauded are the
changes that would as dramatically
transform the West Bank. No, there would
not be nationally recognized restaurants, no
world class museums, and a far lesser casino
than the Harrah’s gemstone that smothers
downtown New Orleans.
Nevertheless, over the past two decades,
monumental shifts of fortune have
occurred. It’s been nothing less than a
radical explosion of commerce, opportunity
and local pride.
Manhattan Boulevard, once the gateway to
subdivisions with wide-open drug trades
and blighted property and hopes, now
boasts a Barnes & Noble, World Market,
Target, restaurants, movies theaters.
Algiers Point has become the new hipster
enclave; new bars and bistros rise from the
ashes of a once-worn-down neighborhood.
Fourth Street, the ancient main drag from
Gretna to Westwego, used to be known
as the honky-tonk highway, a boulevard
of broken dreams, a land that time forgot.
When I used to travel that road back in
the day, sniffing out true crime stories and
dramas of the human condition, I swear,
sometimes in felt like 1956.
I covered assaults and murders committed by
pool cues, straight razors, ice picks and hub
caps. I was lost in time.And here’s a charming
addendum to the growth, expansion and
industriousness of the West Bank:
Fourth Street still feels like 1956.
And here’s a strange coincidence, a matter of
circumstance that brings this story full circle.
Back in my West Bank Bureau days, I
traveled all roads, but was particularly
seduced as a writer by Fourth Street. I
bellied-up to many a bar rail looking for
stories, asking questions, plumbing the
depths of the human condition.
The Club Kit Kat, The Rabbit Lounge,
the Keyhole Club, the Country Swing. I
dropped quarters in pool tables and dimes
in jukeboxes and paid a dollar for a Carling
Black Label at selected venues.
I had this place I loved, Rod’s Rocket
Lounge. It was the size of an RV, as friendly
as the auto pound and as charming as traffic
court. But still.
But still, it was a place I could go
underground, disappear from the planet,
the diametric opposite of Cheers: Nobody
knew my name. So I went there often, after
hours, after duty, after the rat race.
And here’s the thing, that weird serendipity
that accompanies a good story.
As I began to do research for this story,
to expand beyond just my own personal
experience, here’s something I found out:
Mr. Anthony Rouse, the founder of the
grocery chain, was born and raised on 4
th
Street in Marrero.
While the Roaring ’20’s were happening
everywhere else, times stood still on Fourth
Street as it always had, as it would for as far
as they eye could see.
His grandmother lived in the back of
the house he was born in. She was from
Sardinia, Italy. She wore black every day.
She spoke no English.
Next door, his aunt Anna Mae ran an ice
cream parlor. That business closed in the
middle of last century, and the Rouse family
decided to rent out the space instead of
clawing and slashing for nickels and dimes.
An enthusiastic renter came onto the scene.
He saw that ice cream was not the future of
Fourth Street, not then, not ever.
So he opened a bar. His name was Rod.
And he called it the Rocket Lounge.
And it’s long gone now, by way of hundreds
of Honky-Tonk Highway juke joints,
saloons and parlors of the night.
Gone, like a million other memories of the
old West Bank, before it got changed, got
wired, got dragged into the 21
st
century.
I work for Rouses now. And the opening of
the new West Bank store is a homecoming
for the business dreams of Mr. Anthony,
and a reminder to myself of how, the more
things change ... the more things change.
And that’s the story of the West Bank in
2014. The story of the West Bank, 2.0.
Present Day Old Gretna, Louisiana — photo by
Frank Aymami
photo by
Frank Aymami
