TRACKING HAPPINESS: Chapter 8

This is CHAPTER 8 in our series offering gossip, novel backstory, and personal confessions about TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE. We’re working our way through a novel here. If you’re just now discovering us, you can jump in now or go back to the first entry and catch up. If you jump in now, I can’t promise you it won’t be confusing, but it might be interesting too.

Ok. Last we left off: Lucinda is about to prance off on a grand adventure with Augie Green, the stranger she met on the train. Drinks are being served in the club car, and Lucinda is going to the party with Augie.

One very particular action triggers EVERYTHING in this chapter. The train stops. It won’t go forward. Why? Because someone laid down on the tracks to take a nap. THIS is a true story from when I first started practicing law many years ago. In that case, a man died. (Okay, this part isn’t funny, but it’s true.) He died because he lay down on the tracks and went to sleep. He’d been drinking. I think that affected his judgement.

We also have returned in this chapter to the Billy Goat Curse. I’m not going to talk about it. If you want to know more about the Billy Goat Curse, go to the footnotes below. More interestingly, in this chapter there’s a conversation about boudin. Boudin is food. You eat it. Augie, who’s talking about boudin, is from New Orleans, but boudin isn’t really a New Orleans dish. (Augie’s dad who cooks the boudin is from Lafayette, LA). I’m not a particular fan of boudin. It’s sausage with rice, basically. But it’s a good word. I’ve included in the footnotes a video from the Eater series that features boudin at Cochon and Cochon Butcher, two restaurants in New Orleans. Big Disclaimer: Cochon and Cochon Butcher are sister restaurants to our son’s Peche Restaurant, also in New Orleans. So I like Cochon Restaurant. The video shows boudin being prepared, and you can watch that, or you can turn off the video and just listen if you don’t want to, literally, see sausage being made. The video also shows you how to eat boudin so, if you’re in New Orleans and order boudin, you won’t make a fool of yourself. 

I think that’s enough preliminary information. 

Helpful Train Hint

If you ride the train, don’t arrive too early at the train station. It’s not like the airport where a two hour advance time is needed. If you do that, you’ll likely wind up standing outside a closed station that’s not even open yet. On the other hand, make your reservations as early as possible. You might think no one rides the train anymore, but you’d be wrong. Particularly if you want a sleeping compartment. Particularly if it’s around a holiday. Really, call ahead.  

Now go read Chapter 8 of TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE

NOTES SECTION

Billy Goat Curse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Billy_Goat

Eater video on boudin.https://www.eater.com/video/2017/1/11/14238084/boudin-cochon-butcher-new-orleans-meat-show