October 17, 2008 Monroe, LA; Ruston, LA; Grambling, LA

When in Monroe, I always like to eat breakfast at the Brandy House restaurant at the Atrium Hotel on Louisville Avenue. The place is never crowded, the waitresses know me from having eaten there so frequently and the breakfast is among the best anywhere in the South. So with the sun rising over a beautiful, blue, chilly fall morning, I headed there for an omelet breakfast before making the rounds of antique malls along West Monroe's Trenton Street. The results were far more disappointing than in previous years, as I didn't find anything pertaining to Grambling in any of the shops, but I continued west into Ruston, and stopped for lunch at Raising Canes, a chicken finger place that I was thrilled to see had put Grambling logos and pictures on their walls as well as those for Louisiana Tech in Ruston. After lunch, and a brief look-through at Acorn Creek Antiques in Ruston, I took the backroad past Rabb's Steakhouse into Grambling. On this Friday before Homecoming, Grambling was beginning to come more to life. Main Street in the Village was lined with cars, and students were beginning to hang out. A new barbershop called the G-Spot had opened, and its proprietors had placed large stereo speakers outside on the sidewalk, which were blasting a hip-hop mixtape of some sort. The quadrangle wasn't all that crowded, other than the group of Que-Dogs gathered around their hill near the sidewalk, but down at the Favrot Union there was a considerable crowd of students hanging around. The bookstore was quite crowded indeed, and there were a number of Grambling items that I would have liked to have purchased, but, with Barnes and Noble having taken over the bookstore, the prices were quite steep. I did buy a new Grambling T-shirt for myself, and a book about Grambling's long-time sports information director Collie J. Nicholson, but I had to leave two other books I wanted behind because they were so expensive. As I headed back up the street toward the quad, I could hear the beat of drums, and thought that perhaps the Grambling band was on their way to a pep rally, but it turned out that they were practicing inside Dunbar Hall, near where a group of student were busy at work on a Homecoming float for the next day's parade. I reluctantly decided not to wait for the pep rally, and headed back to Monroe instead, since I had not visited any of the record stores there yet, and since I wanted to eat dinner there rather than in Ruston. To my surprise, there weren't as many Grambling fans in my hotel as I would have expected. Instead, the football team and some fans of the University of North Texas were staying there, as I assumed their team was in town to play the University of Louisiana-Monroe at their homecoming. I had promotional CDs in my trunk for Li'l DJ (whose album Welcome to the SWAC was a tribute to the Black college athletic conference of which Grambling was a member), Bohagon, Hittman and Donnie Cross, and I dropped these off at Mr. E's Music and Mad Flavors clothing store. Sadly, no other stores remained in Monroe, so after that, I headed to dinner at the Mohawk Tavern in West Monroe, where the radio was broadcasting a pregame show for West Monroe High School's homecoming game. Mohawk Tavern was a seafood restaurant, and I ordered grilled halibut, which was very good. On the other side of I-20, I stopped by the Corner Coffeehouse again for a Reese's cupcake and a cafe latte. I had called my friend Dr. Reginald Owens, the journalism professor who taught at Louisiana Tech, and he was grilling chicken over at his house, so he invited me to drop by and we hung out for awhile talking. Then I parked in the Village and walked onto the campus, still feeling like this year's crowds were smaller than previous homecomings, but there were crowds at the Plush club and at the old Renaissance building. I had heard on the radio that Gravedigga was supposed to be DJing at the Endzone, out southwest of Ruston, so I drove out there, and found that he wasn't there, but one of his associates was, and I left some promotional singles with the DJ there. Then, resisting the temptation to head back to the Plush in Grambling, I drove back to Monroe, where DJ Phat was spinning at a new club on Catalpa Street called Club Envy. There was hardly anybody there, and that was despite the fact that G-Spot from Dallas was supposed to be there to perform their hit single "Stanky Leg." I left DJ Phat a stack of promos, and then drove over to Club Dominos, and, as with the night before, this is where the crowd was gathered, as well as four carloads of Monroe police who seemed to be expecting a problem. I had to pay to get in, and I had never heard of the DJ that was there, who said his name was KC, but I gave him another stack of promos, and then, thoroughly tired, returned to my hotel, hoping to get up early enough the next day to make it to the Homecoming parade.