AUNT ROSE
LITERATE SUNDAY
5.24.15 LS 67
Aunt Rose
Aunt Rose greeted me with a warm kiss and an accusation that I had changed, lost weight, was trying to be different, and probably didn’t love her anymore. My compliments on her hair, lipstick, dress, shoes, and, most of all, her loss of weight to the point that I hadn’t recognized her, had her giggling and eager to get going. I claimed my luggage plus the box of gifts for my family in New Orleans.
Dear, sweet Aunt Rose really adored Christmas. It was her all-time favorite holiday. For some reason she always turned gravely ill during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish High Holidays every year in September. It wasn’t that she wasn’t religious; it was that she just didn’t like all the praying for forgiveness and having to think about the dead. She was a person for today, not yesterday. She totally vanished on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Bradley was her driver or “man”, as she called him. She trusted Bradley in all matters, except in loaning him money. Aunt Rose made it a firm policy and voiced it often, quite loudly, that the best way to loose a friend or lover was to lend him money.
It was 8 o’clock in the evening and I knew from past experience of working for Aunt Rose what was about to happen. We were going to all of her bars. The order of visitation was up to Aunt Rose. It was not necessarily the closest bar that was visited first and many times, we drove miles across town to a distant neighborhood bar, just to arrive at a different time.
Different indeed, this crafty old street-smart bar operator knew all the tricks of the trade when it came to bartenders who were hired to put the money in the cash register, not their pockets. A surprise visit and her ordering a round of drinks for the house kept the bartender busy and from suddenly paying too much attention to how much money was or wasn’t in the till. During my youth in New Orleans, I was a regular party to her weekly bar hopping and keeping her bartenders honest.
The first stop was The Clouds on Dauphine Street. This bar was new to me, but I had heard Aunt Rose had added a couple of new bars to her investment portfolio. The Clouds was very large with an enormous packed parking lot.
Bradley pulled the Lincoln as close to the big red front door as he could, the trunk immediately sprang open, and I, knowingly, stepped behind the car to retrieve three black NCR cash register tills with the words Clouds on the lids. Each lid was held shut by a giant rubber band. Nothing was going to fall out of Aunt Rose’s tills.
What I was about to witness gave me cause to believe that my dear poor-sweet Aunt Rose had lost her mind and gone completely against her firm convictions of no food, no dancing and no entertainment.
Her appearance in any one of her bars in New Orleans brought cheers and hellos from its patrons.
“Rose is here. Get up, give Rose your seat.”
In New Orleans, most bars opened early in the morning. In fact, any bar in New Orleans may stay open all night if it chooses. If it is late and a large group is having a good time the bar can stay open until the last customer finally staggers home. In Aunt Rose’s bars, food was always served next door in a restaurant she either owned or had a partnership in. She didn’t believe in dance floors in her bars because it involved touching and touching led to improper behavior, which could attract the attention of the vice squad or police. Entertainment was for other bars, not hers. The only extra entertainment Rose allowed was a costume party at Halloween or occasionally permitting some of the more muscular bartenders to wear swimsuits on the hottest day of the year. Waiters who worked serving on the floor were ordered to wear strictly clean Levi’s with no open “worn” holes in them.
“Patched with needle and thread . . . ok,” she preached and short-sleeved shirts showing muscled arms completed her required dress code.
Aunt Rose did her little waltzing movement across the bar floor to the first cash register in the main bar. Drinking and laughing people were everywhere. The floor waiters’ access was to the narrow side of the bar with a thick brass bent pipe separating it from the seated patrons. Everyone was having a marvelous time. The music was loud and booming. I feared I might lose my balance until I could set the money tills on a firm surface.
Bradley lifted the folding part of the bar, which allowed delivery of supplies and the bartenders behind the bar. The top of a large stainless steel beer cooler accepted the money tills. Aunt Rose yelled above the noise of the crowd,
“Welcome to the Clouds everyone. I’m Rose and your next drink is on me.”
The bartender stepped backwards after he had pushed “no sale”, causing his cash register till to spring open. It was crammed with money. I lifted it out, placed the coverlid from one of the tills I had carried in, and snapped a rubber band tightly in place. Next, I inserted the new till with fresh money. The last thing to do was to insert the registers close out key and wait for the long cash register tape to come spilling out. Once this was done and the new cash drawer in place, I smiled at the bartender and said,
“It’s all yours. Count it if you like.”
“Nope! Don’t have to. She never makes a mistake,” the young bartender said with a broad smile.
All tips were put in a common jar or glass container and were shared. Aunt Rose’s rule was no tips in your pocket until the end of your shift. If you were caught by another employee pawning a tip for yourself, you were fired.
To be fired after the dreaded and feared interrogation by Rosalyn Grubber, Aunt Rose, for any type of infractions of her rules, and she had plenty, was painful and long.
I had never been the subject of any of her interrogations for past wrong doings, but the ones I saw with other employees were long and thorough. She always had witnesses, she gave you an hour to think it over before the actual interrogation began and most people took that time to work out either an excuse or their confession. If you were found innocent, then the entire messy affair was ended with her comment:
“Now, let’s get back to work and forget all about this, shall we?”
There was no smoking while on duty. If you wanted a smoke, take a break if the bar was not busy. If a customer wanted to buy the bartender a drink, he was to say that he was not allowed to drink behind the bar. If the customer cared to wait, he could meet the bartender after his shift.
The next NCR cash register was, of all places, in a dance area. Yes, there was line dancing in Aunt Rose’s bar. There was no holding of hands or bodies on the dance floor, just everyone in a line doing exactly the same steps.
Aunt Rose drew hoots and whistles as she raised her arm in the air and placed the other across her stomach in a Carmen Miranda pose. She shuffled toward the bar with her pudgy hips swaying to the loud music. Eager young men repeated her pose and danced in unison with her. She was with her boys. She loved every minute of it and so did they.
With the dance area register now replenished with fresh money, we approached the far end of the building to enter the dining room. Swinging doors keep the blare of the dance music from somewhat disturbing the dining customers.
The dining room was packed with a team of waiters dressed in black pants, long sleeved white shirts and white aprons. They darted back and forth and in and out of the kitchen. A very impressive wine rack was at the far wall where a piano player provided soft romantic music to the guests. I was in total shock as Aunt Rose passed each table, smiled, said hello and introduced herself to every one dining in her restaurant.
The dining room worked on a system of orders written, orders served and checks presented, and the money finally collected. The changing of the till was just a suggestion to the help, especially the cashier in charge of collecting the monies from all the waiters.
As a 1937 immigrant to the United States, Aunt Rose learned quickly about the sins of man, as she called them. She firmly believed that liquor was acceptable, but cautioned many a young person, slightly under the influence of one too many with her comment, “Remember what Mr. Jolson said . . . Get A Little Drunk and You’ll land in Jail.”
What Aunt Rose would not tolerate was drugs.
Caught smoking marijuana or popping pills in any of her bars, you were promptly 86’d, cops were called, and arrests were made. There were no exceptions. Warning signs were posted throughout all of her bars.
Over the years of her ownership of seven bars, she sponsored dozens of young people addicted to drugs to whatever treatment was available. She even locked a few in her home for a lengthy drying-out period complete with supervising nurses and attendants.
Five of Aunt Rose’s original bars remain open today, but under different names and ownership, some on Dauphine Street, Royal, and Burgundy.
To perpetuate her love of the bar business, upon her death she titled, separately, all seven bars to seven faithful and loyal employees and friends.
Her bars were drawing magnets to the rich and famous from all over the world, especially authors.
Truman Capote, born in New Orleans, was a constant visitor to the Vieux Carre (Old Square) and Aunt Rose’s bars. Tennessee Williams, from late 1937 until his death in 1983, considered New Orleans his “spiritual home” and completed some of his finest works there. William Faulkner lived at 624 Pirate’s Alley, and other luminaries of the arts such as Sherwood Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Olen Butler, Andrei Codrescu, Richard Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Piazza, and Julie Smith all knew and enjoyed the antics of Aunt Rose.
