Hot Damn: A Journey to Cajun Country (Fred's Lounge in Mamou)
I’m sweating and it’s only 8 in the morning. The cold beer helps.
It’s winter, but the weather has the effect of donning a wetsuit in a hot car with the windows up. It’s turned my underarms into their own kind of swampland.
I am far from alone. In fact, there hangs in the humid air the feeling of a peculiar far-flung family assemblage, or I should say – rendezvous. It's like being surrounded by cousins who are friendly, but so distant as to be unplaceable.
Perhaps they are amenable because there is a vague bond, but no actual shared history, and so no ancient percolating feuds to revisit. Tante Sue, to be sure, will cotton to no mess.
We are strangers, from around the world, snug, swaying, spinning and stomping with some local regulars and for the next few hours we will share something that one would struggle to recreate anywhere else on the globe.
It’s Mamou, Louisiana. North of New Orleans.
This is Fred’s Lounge, only open for a few hours on Saturday mornings. I’m in Cajun country and the music is live, as it is every week, radiating from the small, windowless, old bar into nearby cars and home radios. This is why everyone is here.
That and an 80-year-old lady – dead Fred’s ex-wife. Tante Sue is abetted by a teenage relative who is running things behind the bar, while she mingles in the crowd like a whirling wave of hospitality.
Booze bottle, at the ready, in a holster on her hip. Not only is Sue taking regular hits off it herself, she, like a munificent quick draw in a western, is doling out shots. Sue shoots from the hip. You will surrender. You will listen pardner and will obey the law. At Fred’s the only four-letter words that are allowed are love and beer. You will leave teeming with both.
She lays down more rules. Some are sensible, like no dancing atop the jukebox (so sensible, it amazes one it has to be specified in writing … but when the cinnamon schnapps is in your system … ain’t no tellin’). Some, like the joint, are particularly parochial. There is to be no mouth kissin’, cause “lip kissing brings something else out of people,” scolds Sue.
According to The New York Times the place’s namesake Fred bought the bar after the war. The live concert has been broadcast on local radio every Saturday morning for at least 55 years. Sue has been running things, post-split and well before Fred’s death and for long after. Fred’s name might be out front, but Sue provides the regulations and the rewards.
She sucks down another shot. “Hot damn!” Sue pumps her fist and jerks her elbow back, like she’s starting an old lawnmower. You will be powerless against her persuasive charm and ornery enthusiasm.
She hands out free shots and boudin sausage. She is Cajun joie de vivre made flesh, the embodiment of tough and spirited Cajun pride. An inspiration to be sure, though I doubt if I subsisted on breakfast beer and sausage, even with copious dancing, would I live, like her, into my 90s. Down here even the po'boys (sandwiches) are rich.
Louisiana’s food, as has been observed, is a fine metaphor for the state. Life there is a gumbo. The region’s people are a spicy mix, a jambalaya, me oh my ah. But history and how this came to be is messy and full of violence and blood and some don’t want to know how the boudin is made.
The music, it too is an appealing reflection of the intermixing of bold but harmonious ingredients in a communal pot. Fiddle, accordion, sometimes a washboard. The results are uniquely regional, yet serve as an ideal symbol of our country on the whole.
Louisiana is both unlike any place in America and America itself. Whereas, somewhere like Salt Lake City may have a famous choir, it and Orrin Hatch couldn’t be counted on to create rock ‘n’ roll--much more likely it could come from a guy named Cosimo Matassa, in what has been called Bulbancha (land of many tongues). When you're homogenized in looks and thought you get milk, not brandy milk punch.
Look at The Meters and Bounce, Louisiana likes to dance. Even funerals cause toe tappin'. New Orleans and its jazz gets more attention, but getting out of the city you will see a similar spirit and its own worthy concoction. Even with the clingy humid weight, Cajun country is made for dancing.
Urbanites and northerners might be suspicious or skeptical, thinking mutated French country and western with an accordion will not be to their liking, but it will show that your spirit has been turned into the hardened concrete of your big city streets, if you aren’t won over.
An ideal time to visit would be Mardi Gras, as southern summers turn more hellish.
Clearly the classic Nola parades must be experienced, but for all the resourcefulness and creativity Louisianians have developed to make things taste good, no amount of cayenne is going to make bead Étouffée appetizing. Rather than watching a parade, why not join in yourself and eat the efforts of your performance?
Cajun country Mardi Gras is entirely different. You can trace back its medieval roots, to ceremonies where participants danced and sang for donations, writes The Washington Post. Other Cajun celebrations feature traditions such as greased-pole climbing.
In Cajun territory it's not just the floats that get to dress up. The parade doesn’t pass by with you watching. Instead, all go in a group to local houses, singing and dancing and drinking, collecting ingredients for a community gumbo and, at the end, all feast together.
Instead of being on the sidelines begging for beads, I know for my next visit, I will include a detour 160 miles north to experience Mamou's version of Mardi Gras too.
I look forward to what sounds, to my ears, like a slightly dangerous adventure, the organized chaos of trying to chase down a chicken through swampy farm fields, costumed and, shall we say, well refreshed.
I should mention the Cajun dialect is such a thick, slurred mix, that it was nearly incomprehensible. And yet this was not a completely debilitating impediment. Still, despite hours of concentration, I understood next to nothing.
There were smiles on both sides. I conveyed my appreciation for their culture. The elderly locals were pleased with my polite interest and enthusiasm, but in a lightning strike of mumbled, to me gibberish-- all guttural and nasal, musical and rhythmic wheezing and grunting.
As near as I learned, to approximate the French, drop half the word – the vowels and the x’s. Take, for example, the name Thibodeaux. Now, imagine Homer Simpson realized he was going to make a mistake and gave up halfway through.
One of the few things I understood, I was sure I had misheard. Sue, after copious hot damnin’ all morning, was shutting down to go pick up her friend from the retirement home. “We’re serving communion at church.”
Well, Sue and Mamou, consider me a convert. I found a kind of sanctuary, spoken in a foreign tongue. A communal chalice of sorts was passed around. My spirit was lifted and I felt a warmth for my fellow citizens and sinners.
At a Glance
Fred's Lounge
Where: 420 6th St. Mamou, Louisiana
What: Cajun Music Capital of the World
Official website: http://www.fredsloungemamoula.com/ https://mamou.municipalimpact.com/
Hours: Live Cajun music and dancing from about 8 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Best way to get there: Fly into New Orleans. Drive 162 miles northwest via I-10 West and US-190 West.
Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday: Feb. 17, 2026
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