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In the late
1960’s and throughout the 1970’s the
area around the intersection of
Iberville and Chartres Streets in the
New Orleans French Quarter, so near to
the Mississippi River docks, was a place
burgeoning with bars catering to all
sorts of predilections. Some, like the
infamous Upstairs Lounge on Iberville,
catered to the still-closeted homosexual
community; others catered only to
straights; and still others had a
mostly-straight clientele but turned a
blind eye to homosexual activities
taking place on the premises. Candyland,
located on the corner across Iberville
Street from the old Upstairs, was this
kind of bar.
In the early
1970’s dancers were the main attraction
at Candyland and many who made a living
there, entertaining sailors and men and
women from all walks of life, are still
alive today. Their memories still as
clear as a bell, each of them recalls
the mysterious story of one of their
own, a dancer named Sylvia, and her
association with a strange creature they
all believe was linked to the woman’s
disappearance.
Inside the World of
Candyland
Like most of the Bourbon
Street bars of that area, Candyland
showcased beautiful women dancing
topless with scanty g-strings (city
ordinances of the time prohibited full
nudity) on elevated platforms so that
the patrons could see them better
through the haze of strobe-lit cigarette
smoke and spiraling disco lighting.
Mirrors on the walls surrounding the
dancers showcased them from every angle
as patrons crowded around the huge,
horseshoe-shaped bar that took up most
of the ground floor. Tables and chairs
were scattered here and there, but these
were hardly ever used and no room was
provided for anyone else to dance:
Candyland’s girls were meant to be the
main attraction.
The atmosphere at
Candyland was friendly. There was a
regular clientele who all knew each
other; when a domestic or foreign ship
would dock at the nearby Mississippi
River levee this would often throw
groups of unknowns into the mix. Many
times during its years of operations the
doors of Candyland were kicked wide as
bouncers threw out tangles of fighting
seamen or other unsavory characters into
the middle of Iberville Street.
Touching or hassling the girls was
strictly forbidden and despite the
presence of the large, beefy bouncers,
one man had the job of protecting (or in
some cases avenging) the Candyland
girls. This man was known to one and
all as “Peanut.”
Described as a “short,
Danny DeVito type, with bulging blue
eyes,” Peanut never missed a minute of
what went on in “his” club. With his
weapon of choice in hand – the business
end of a broken pool cue – he would
patrol the club, keeping constant watch
on the dancers, making sure none of
“them squirrels,” as he called the
troublemakers, were giving the girls any
problems. Despite his diminutive size,
Peanut was a force to be reckoned with
and most of the former dancers agree
that he probably tossed out more people
over the years than all the other
bouncers combined. Candyland was his
turf, and nothing came on his turf that
he didn’t know about – with the possible
sad exception of one time.
Sylvia and the Strange
Visitor
In the rear of Candyland
was a secluded courtyard that backed up
to Exchange Alley across which were the
kitchens of the Hotel Monteleone; a
restaurant, an expansion by the club’s
owner, was being built on the Chartres
Street side, but was unfinished at the
time the events related here occurred.
The Candyland girls used
to take their breaks or have meals in
the courtyard because it was recessed
and hard to access, a place where they
could unwind and get away from the
intensity of the bar area. The girls
tried to stagger their breaks so that
friends could eat or have a cigarette
together and this meant that Sylvia, a
new arrival on the scene, was generally
kept out of the loop until the girls got
to know her better. So she would often
retreat to the courtyard to have a smoke
break or catch a quick meal – Peanut
often had meals delivered in from some
of the best restaurants in the Quarter –
and relax before her next show.
Set as it was at the rear
of several buildings, the courtyard was
not only secluded but also quite
insulated from the noise of the traffic
and other nearby bars. Sylvia enjoyed
this immensely because it gave her head
time to stop throbbing to the beat of
the music inside and, because she worked
long hours on stage, provided her with a
little time to herself.
One night she had just
finished eating and was sitting back to
enjoy a cigarette when she suddenly
became aware of a rustling sound in the
ragged undergrowth of what used to be a
garden against one crumbling brick
wall. Sylvia peered into the dark
bushes, watching their branches rustle
ever so slightly; something, as yet
unseen, was definitely nosing around
there. Sylvia’s first thought was rats,
for which the French Quarter was famous
and remains so, ever since the zombies
that used to feed on them were finally
driven out generations ago. She lifted
her legs up onto an adjacent chair.
With her movement, the rustling in the
bushes stopped. There was a long,
silent moment during which the hair on
Sylvia’s arms raised slightly.
Something was in the
bushes, and it was now aware of her.
A sudden fear took hold
and she quickly extinguished her
cigarette and headed for the bar’s back
door. Just inside the narrow back
hallway she caught site of Peanut
approaching through a cluster of people,
on his way to the men’s room.
“I think there’s a rat
out in the courtyard,” she told him.
“What?” he said
incredulously. “You saw a rat?”
“No, I didn’t see it,”
Sylvia told him now, “but it was
scratching around in the bushes in the
back.”
“On the back side?”
Peanut replied, already unzipping his
pants. “Aw, that ain’t nothin’ to worry
about! Probably all that construction
over there has them running around. If
it don’t come at you, don’t worry about
it. Oh,” he said, leaning his head out
the door, “DON’T feed it! It’ll just
bring other ones!”
“Yeah, yeah, alright!”
Sylvia shouted back as the men’s room
door slammed shut.
A few nights later, when
she took her dinner break, Sylvia made
sure to choose a table closer to the
bar’s back door. She figured the rat
wouldn’t bother her if she didn’t bother
it, but she wanted to put the extra
distance between them just the same.
She looked warily over at the bushes;
there on the ground was a rat trap set
with a huge chunk of banana and peanut
butter. She smiled. “So Peanut took me
seriously after all,” she thought.
Tonight’s dinner was a
treat. It was Easter weekend, so the
chef over at the Monteleone had put
together a delicious meal for the girls;
something special he did for the women
who had to work holidays. Sylvia popped
the lid of her Styrofoam container and
the wonderful aroma of ham and candied
yams filled the courtyard; there was
even a salad and a piece of pecan pie,
which she lifted gingerly and placed on
a napkin nearby. “Excellent!” she
thought, but then quickly realized
someone had forgot to include anything
to eat with. “Shit!” she said and,
closing the lid on her container
securely, went inside in search of
plastic utensils.
Barely five minutes had
passed before Sylvia returned and
settled in to enjoy her holiday meal.
She popped open the lid and, spearing a
big chunk of yam on her fork, popped it
into her mouth, savoring every bite.
But suddenly she realized something
wasn’t right. She looked at the table,
moving the container aside, and there,
where the piece of pecan pie should have
been was … nothing.
Her eyes caught sight of
the napkin, still sticky with the
delectable syrup of the pecan pie, lying
in plain sight in the middle of the
courtyard, halfway between her table and
the wall.
“Fucking rats!” she
blurted. “I guess you little bastards
don’t LIKE peanut butter?!” She scowled
in the direction of the bushes. There
was no movement, nothing to indicate
that anything alive was looking back at
her. “God damn it!” she said, and went
back downheartedly to her meal.
Just then Inez, another
of the dancers, came out into the
courtyard. “What’s the matter?” she
asked, pulling up a chair and sitting
across from Sylvia. “Ooh! That looks
good!” she added when she caught site of
the meal. “I can’t eat for an hour
yet.” She lit up a cigarette.
“Well, keep your eye on
your food if you eat out here,” Sylvia
grumbled. “There’s a God-damned rat out
here and it just stole my pecan pie,
nice as you please!”
“What?!” Inez coughed.
“A rat?” Immediately she lifted her
legs up and held them close to her.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, it stole my damned
pie!” Sylvia said. “Has to be a rat!
Peanut said they’re coming from that
building they’re doing over there.” She
nodded at the back wall. Suddenly, she
stopped.
“Wh - ?” Inez started but
then she, too, fell silent.
The bushes along the
crumbled brick wall were rustling, more
aggressively than the previous night.
“Honey, shit!” Inez said
now, jumping to her feet. “That’s a
big, fucking rat! I’m sorry, baby, but
I can’t stay out here. I’m deathly
afraid of rats! Eeewww!” she yelped in
her best “bubble blonde” squeal, and
headed for the door.
Sylvia, alone now, with
the bushes still moving, and hearing in
her mind Peanut’s admonition, “DON’T
feed it!” now completely ignored those
words. Slowly, she broke off little
bits of food from her meal and threw
them in the direction of the rustling.
As soon as the first morsel hit the
ground, however, the rustling stopped.
Just then the back door
opened and Virginia, one of the bar
managers, poked her head out. “Almost
time for you to come back!” she called
to Sylvia. The door slammed shut again.
Still no movement from
the bushes. Casually, Sylvia threw a
few more morsels of food and this time
some made it into the darkness of the
bushes. “Might as well sample the whole
thing you little bastard,” she said.
And with that she got up and went back
inside.
When she arrived for work
the next evening, Peanut was in an
uproar. “Who the fuck threw all that
trash out in the courtyard?” he was
hollering, as Sylvia came in and dropped
her purse and other bags on the bar.
“I’m gonna kill me
somebody!” Peanut was ranting, walking
up and down with a large trash bag in
his hand. “Who the hell put all that
shit all over the courtyard?” He looked
at Sylvia. His bug eyes were unusually
bulgy. “You do that?”
“Who, me?” Sylvia
snapped back. “I ain’t did that!”
“Son of a bitch!” Peanut
was yelling as he headed toward the
narrow back hallway with Sylvia right
behind him.
“I TOLD you there was
rats back here!” she was saying.
“I put a God-damned trap
out!” he yelled.
“One trap ain’t gonna
catch that big bastard!” she hollered,
as they burst out the back door into the
courtyard.
Sylvia stood in shock for
a moment. She could barely believe her
eyes. There was trash everywhere, as if
someone had dumped out two or three cans
of garbage in the courtyard. Peanut was
kicking through some of it.
“This ain’t our stuff!”
he was growling. “This shit here came
from the hotel!” he added, kicking an
empty wholesale size can of Progresso
Clams (In Juice). “And what the hell is
all this?” He bent down and picked up
what looked like a shredded piece of
styrofoam container. Sylvia gasped and
remembered that she had left her empty
meal container on the table the night
before. But it looked like every
container that had been sent over was
mixed into the pile of trash. Still,
she thought it best to say nothing.
Suddenly two bar backers
came through the door, trash bags
flapping. Peanut swirled his arms
around in a motion intended to encompass
the entire courtyard. “I want all this
crap picked up,” he barked, “and NOW!”
Then, suddenly and completely
unexpectedly, he let out a yowl and
jumped up shaking his foot. Everyone
froze and looked at him.
“God damn it! Son of a
bitch!” he was shouting as he pulled
his foot from the rat trap.
Sylvia wanted to laugh –
everyone did but knew better – and then
she noticed a strange thing. The trap
was still baited.
Peanut marched inside,
demoralized, but Sylvia hung around in
the courtyard for a few minutes, having
a last cigarette before going on. She
watched, detached, as the two bar men
filled bag after bag with garbage.
“Man,” said one of the
guys, “this rat must be diabetic or
something! He’s got a freaking sweet
tooth!” He held up a chewed up Hubig’s
pie bag as evidence.
“So what?” said the other
man. “He likes pie!” Sylvia perked up,
remembering her own piece of stolen
pecan pie.
“And Ding Dongs, and
Twinkies, and Aunt Sally’s Pralines,”
the other bar man replied, ticking off
the items as he stuffed the empty
packages into his bag. “I’m telling
you, that rat is addicted to sweets!”
Quietly, Sylvia slipped
inside the bar.
For several weeks after
the trashing incident there was no sign
of any rodent activity in the
courtyard. Determined to overcome his
foe, Peanut had responded aggressively
to the trashing with more traps and
enough D-Con rat bait to kill a small
herd of cattle. The girls told him they
hadn’t seen any sign of rats, but Peanut
made a particular point of asking
Sylvia.
“You seen those
bastards?” he asked her, being now
convinced that no single rat could have
trashed the courtyard as had been done.
Sylvia shook her head.
“I told you,” she said, “I never saw the
thing. I only saw the bushes moving;
they must’ve been keeping in the bushes
until nobody was around.”
“Yeah, well they ain’t
there no more,” Peanut said, slightly
triumphant.
“Yeah?” Sylvia came
back. “You sure?” She smiled as
Peanut, walking away, shot her the bird.
The usual gig at
Candyland was four girls in a line up
dancing a selection of four songs, then
rotating back at the end of the night
for what Virginia and Peanut called the
“Titty Finale” – nude except for a
barely-legal G-string and a pair of
Springform pom-pom slippers. The
off-shift girls had to make do with the
time the rotation allowed to take their
lunch or bathroom breaks; this went on
monotonously into the wee hours of the
morning. When Sylvia was assigned to
this rotation she knew she had “arrived”
and was finally part of the Candyland
family.
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