What's that about?

You may be wondering about the post with the photo and the unhelpful caption "Two weeks ago in New Orleans."

As you can tell, it was taken on a corner. And it's not exactly in New Orleans proper, but in Metairie. The corner of Clearview Parkway and West Metairie. Who knows, maybe it is still above ground, since it is south of I-10. I took the picture while at a traffic light, on my way home from Mass at St. Christopher's. I know it's not the most picturesque spot in the environs, but it has a story.

When, on my last visit home, I saw a Krispy Kreme opening just across Clearview, I felt a kind of foreboding. Would Tastee Donuts make it across the street from the Wal-Mart of donut shops? That is why I really noticed it on my way home two weeks ago. Tastee survived the Krispy Kreme threat! You see, that particular Tastee Donut shop has a small but meaningful place in my vocation.

When I was 18, a full-time student at Loyola, with an evening job at Schwegmann's (see "Ain't Dere No More"), I used to go to daily Mass at Holy Name Church (on the Loyola campus). So as not to miss Mass on Saturdays, I would ride my bike to the parish church, St. Mary Magdalen (kind of the mother church of Metairie), for 8:00 Mass. But I was a little embarrassed by my own piety: a teenager getting up early enough on a Saturday to go to Mass! What are you, some kind of nun? So to disguise the real reason I was taking my bike out so early on Saturdays, after Mass I biked the mile or so down to the Tastee Donut shop for a dozen (glazed; I'm a purist). When I came home with the Tastee box (at the time, donut boxes were not flat!), my brothers and sisters were more interested in their contents than in my ulterior motive. So I got away with my Saturday morning Mass-capades with the help of Tastee Donuts.

I wonder how it's doing.