Smokers “Not Yankees”

It was 2010, and the son, recently graduated and single, had been transferred to the company’s headquarters in Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, more specifically in Galiano and PortFourchon, an hour’s drive south of the New Orleans airport.

When the young man arrived there, he was accommodated in a beautiful communal house (a “student house”?) with six suites, shared with four other foreign engineers (two Germans, one Romanian, and an American from Colorado). One suite was kept “on rotation” for occasional guests, while they got acquainted with the surroundings, or for short stays. Was it in CutOff or was it in LaRose? Somewhere around there.

That was when he decided to “play the father” and show up there to help choose a house, a car, in short, to help him get settled. To his surprise, he was invited to stay in that rotating suite, and for about ten days he lived with that “Babel” of nationalities and languages, in which English was the Esperanto.

He was treated very well by everyone, but his concern was that his son might be mistaken for migrants desperate to stay in the U.S. and obtain the so-called “green card.”

There are many people, all over the world, who treat immigrants with a mixture of contempt and arrogance. Sometimes because they believe they own “the place” simply because some ancestor arrived first, sometimes out of localism, sometimes because they claim that immigrants are stealing their jobs, sometimes because they feel superior, and sometimes out of pure xenophobia. Someone once aptly said that “nationalism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”

So, on the last day of his stay, he thought it would be a good idea to invite a small group from the house and from his son’s workplace out to dinner, with him paying, as if to say: “the kid happens to be here; he is not here to humiliate himself, nor to be humiliated.”

He wanted it to be a “nice” place, with live jazz, as the region called for and the purpose demanded. After some discussion, one of the Germans said:

_ “Then let’s go to Café Milano Bar & Restaurant, in Houma, relatively close to the house, because that’s where the boss usually takes visitors. It’s beautiful, it has a piano bar and a good restaurant.”

And so they did. When they arrived, the smoke-free piano bar was quite well attended, both in terms of quantity and quality. They listened to about half an hour of good jazz, had their whiskies and gin and tonics, and then headed to the restaurant.

To understand the context, it is important to remember that, at that time, the “woke” agendas were beginning to dominate the world, reviving the “Prohibition laws,” but this time starting with smokers. Restrictions on smoking in so-called public spaces, such as restaurants, although privately owned, were beginning to emerge. It seemed like retaliation because, until then, it had been forbidden to prohibit smoking in those spaces. One mistake leading to another; after all, no one is forced to go to a restaurant, whether a smoker or a non-smoker. They go if they want to. The same applies to the employees.

The father, who had, and still has, rather poor English, but can understand and communicate in that “dockside English” (“how many?” and “how much?”), entered the restaurant while the others went to the restroom and hesitated over which of the few available tables to choose. The maître d’ promptly came over:

_ “May I help you?” (posso ajudar?)

_ “I’m looking for the smoking section so I can sit down.”

And the maître d’, completely serious:

_ “We are not Yankees, you can sit anywhere.” (Não somos Yankees, pode sentar onde quiser.)

Those were civilized people and civilized times.

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