#650 – Engulfed by Biloxi #20 – Escape From Biloxi, Part IV

Once I roused myself awake, I realized I was in the New Orleans Airport at 10 AM with nothing to do for 90 minutes. I was also hungry. So I walked the length of the terminal looking for what passed for food in the airport at this hour.

I found a kiosk bearing the sign “Lucky Dogs”. I deduced it was open, based on the overwhelming smell of boiling meat scraps and the proprieter sleeping on a stool leaned up against the cart. He was in a deep, deep sleep, his head leaned forward at an uncomfortable-looking angle, as if he was using his giant stomach as a pillow.

I thought maybe he was just a statute, like a giant lawn gnome, but on my return walk I saw he was ambulatory. I might still have ordered a hot dog, but then I heard him blow his nose. Then he blew it again. And again. And again.

He must have blown his nose continuously for at least 30 seconds. I decided eating an airport hot dog was dicey enough business, without purchasing it from a mucous factory.

Next to Lucky Dogs was the “Live Oak Bar.” This place offered several sandwiches, including one called “Ruben.” (Incidentally, one of the stories of the origin of this sandwich places it in a regular poker game at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha in the 1920s. In none of the accounts, however, is it spelled r-u-b-e-n.)

I had just gotten in line when the woman in front of me leaned toward the men’s room and yelled, “Whadduh ya wanna eat?” A man stepped out of the bathroom and, also yelling, said “I had to pee so bad I couldn’t believe it!”

I decided to pass on the cuisine at the New Orleans Airport, spending the longest hour-and-a-half of my life trying not to look at anyone or touch anything. During that enforced loneliness, I puzzled out the mystery of Biloxi.

It seems like a nice enough place, but that’s want they want you to think. Where they get you is on the way back. Biloxi, it turns out, is like a giant roach motel: you can check in, but you can’t check out.

• No Related Post