Carla's Joke

Just along I-12, traveling westward, Barbara and I spotted a small notice on one of those Interstate “Food Here” signs: Abita Brew Pub. We’d been looking for a place to have a late lunch, and here we were within a couple of minutes of some fine beer. So we pulled off right quick.

A little ways north of the Interstate (about four miles), we came into Abita Springs, Louisiana: “Welcoming Tourists Since 1867.” The Abita Brew Pub’s on the left, before you get to this historic town’s one traffic light. The café and the brewery are in the same little building. It’s a great stop for a fine pub lunch (a wide-ranging menu) and a few beers.

Abita Brewing Company’s probably most famous for its Turbodog, a pretty darn great dark brown ale. Number 2 on my hit parade is its Purple Haze, “a crisp, American style wheat beer with raspberry puree added after filtration.” Very, very good on a hot summer day in southern Louisiana. Barbara and I had a number of different samples along with our lunch, which caused an excessive number of potty stops as we drove on to Houston.

Now before I forget, here’s the joke that our waitress, Carla, told us – if you’re concerned about language, you should probably stop right here.

In all of St. Tammany Parish, you couldn’t find three better friends that Boudreau, Pierre and Thibodeaux. Why, they grew up together, they ran around together. They were just plain inseparable.

One day, though, Pierre was killed when he fell out of the Bobcat he was driving and it ran right over him. The coroner called on his two best friends to come identify the remains.

Boudreau and Thibodeaux went over to the parish morgue. The coroner pulled back the sheet and asked Boudreau if the corpse laying on the table was his friend Pierre. Boudreau looked the corpse over pretty good, then asked the coroner to turn the body over. He looked close, then stepped back from the body saying, “Nope, that ain’t Pierre.”

The coroner asked Thibodeaux if he could identify the body. Thibodeaux looked real close and then asked the coroner if he could turn the corpse over as well. Thibodeaux took a squint at the body’s lower half, stepped back and agreed with Boudreau: “Nope, that sure enough ain’t Pierre.”

The coroner was real puzzled. “Look,” he said, “we got the man’s driver’s license right here out of his back pocket, with his picture on it. How come you can’t identify this body as Pierre’s?”

“Pierre’s got two assholes.” said Boudreau. “This here body’s got only one!”

“Two? How do you know that?” asked the coroner.

“Cause everywhere we went,” answered Thibodeaux, “people were always saying, ‘There goes Pierre with them two assholes.’”

Visit Abita Springs when you’re over that way. You get excellent beer and entertainment along with it.