Bartenders of NO - Home

INTERVIEWS
O’Neil Broyard
Greg Cowman
Gilberto Eyzaguirre
Paul Gustings
Gertrude Mayfield
Bobby Oakes
Michael Santucci
Martin Sawyer
Michael Smith
John Strickland
Floria Woodard

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Drink Recipes

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This project was sponsored by a grant from Southern Comfort.

Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans

Gertrude Mayfield

“I was about the first girl that ever really started coming in here. And my husband would bring me. The [owner] would accept it because I didn’t say much. [I’d just] listen to guys talk. I was learning!"

– Gertrude Mayfield

Miss Gertie, as she’s known to regulars, was a customer at the Mayfair Lounge for years before she and her husband bought the place in 1978. Five years later, Mr. Mayfield passed away, and Miss Gertie wasted no time putting herself behind the bar, mixing drinks and greeting customers. Once a neighborhood hangout for businessmen, Miss Gertie began catering to the younger college crowd to drum up more business. And cater to them she did. Some days you might find the seventy-five year-old Miss Gertie dancing with a student from Tulane, making speeches from behind the bar for someone’s birthday, or even enjoying a little taste of Jagermeister. Miss Gertie likes to have a good time. And while there aren’t a lot of fancy cocktails being handed across the bar here, this is certainly a place filled with history. The Mayfair Lounge is a portrait of what New Orleans bar culture was like when places like this catered to a male-only crowd and buzzers got you in the front door as early as seven in the morning. Today, everyone is welcome, and Miss Gertie will make sure you have a good time.

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

SUBJECT: Gertrude Mayfield, owner & bartender
DATE: March 31, 2005
LOCATION: Mayfair Lounge
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans

Amy Evans: This is Thursday, March thirty-first, two thousand and five. And [its] about one o’clock in the afternoon, and this is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m with Miss Gertie at the Mayfair. Miss Gertie, could you say your entire name and also, if you don’t mind, your birthdate so we can have it for the historical archive.

Gertrude Mayfield: All right. I’m Gertrude Mayfield. I—I was born October the eleventh, nineteen twenty-nine. That makes me seventy-five years old.

And you were just telling me that you were born in Tuscaloosa, right?

In Eutaw, Alabama, right out of Tuscaloosa.

When did you make your way to New Orleans?

When I met my husband. He was going from, uh, New Orleans to South America on the passenger ships—working—and so [short pause] and when we got married, we came to New Orleans…And been here ever since.

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Okay. And then how did you get in the bar business? Your son Joe who was just here was kind of telling me a little bit. That you came in here—

Well, we—my husband and I came in here as customers for ten years. And the guy that had owned the bar, he formerly had had it [for] twenty-five years. And my husband had said one day, he told the owner of the building then that, uh, one day he’d like to take a shot at it if this guy was not able to take care of it anymore. So we built a new home and got a condominium and come back that same year, and he asked us, he said, “Captain, do you still want to take a shot a the bar? Bill can’t handle it anymore.” He said, “Yeah.” We hadn’t even looked at—I said, “Who’s gonna run it?!” And I knew right away.

It was going to be you!

And I had got back—I got back there, and I just learned from the beginning. Uh, and [my husband] lived five [more] years. So then I changed it over into my name and [short pause] When we, uh, when I first had it, they opened at seven in the morning. Professional older men came in.

What was the year that you bought it?

In 1978…Um-hmm. In, uh, August the first. [Short pause] And, uh, I got to thinking, “I’m not going to make this. Those guys are dying and moving into nursing homes.” So I started spending—after [my husband’s] death—spending a lot of time in here. And I met [sound of ice machine] some of these young guys and girls that went to Tulane and Loyola and, uh, they took to liking me at the bar. Eighteen, nineteen and twenty is a large group of young people. But they’d just come from home, and you could just tell right away the ones that had been primed for college and the ones that hadn’t. Primed, that’s not the right word, huh? Prepped for college?...And, uh, they came in until they changed the drinking age in 1994, I believe.

From eighteen to twenty-one?

Um-hmm. And then after—that next year, ninety-five, they put the poker machines in. So that kind of helped things for that three—that age group as far as drinking and partying. But they [the poker machines] won’t ever take place of the young people that I met and made friends with.They met their mates in here, they married, they come back when they’re in town or if they’re still here. Show me their children—their babies, you know. I just feel like part of their life.

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Well can you tell me a little bit about what you know of the history of the bar before you got it? Um, somebody last night told me that it opened in the [nineteen] twenties. Do you know anything about that?

I’m not sure when it opened. I’ve been, uh, thinking about asking the lady. She’s ill.

The widow of the previous owner?

The widow of the—she’s not very well. I know when they—when it first was here, it was named Maxine’s…And it was a restaurant…And I think it burned. And the guy that owned the building must have got a divorce from the first wife and married the one that’s—that he’s married to now. And, uh, they ran a little restaurant up front called Billy’s for a while. It was just a little small place.

And then when was it a stag bar? Or a men’s—men’s bar?

In nineteen sixty—probably before sixty. We started coming in [nineteen] sixty-one.
And so they were just allowing women in here when you first started coming?
Well, they didn’t really just allow women, women just didn’t come in. And the guy that owned the bar really didn’t encourage it.

And is the doorbell out front—is that a holdover from those times?

That—yeah?

And you just kept it up?

Um-hmm, which it helps keeps some people, uh, like feel a little bit more secure…Almost every place up here now has a buzzer.

And so what was it like in here when you first started coming with your husband?

It was older men. We’d come in here for lunch. He’d work seven days and seven off like my son does as a river pilot. And, uh, could have a few drinks, and then we’d go eat lunch. And then we’d come back after lunch and wait until the bridge traffic cleared because we lived on the west bank (of the Mississippi River from New Orleans). The selling point of moving over there was that they was going to build another bridge. And my husband was dead ten years before the bridge got built! [Laughs]

And what kind of food did the restaurant serve.

Oh, I don’t know. That was before the—sixty-one. They—they served food on Monday during Mardi Gras for the, uh, Budweiser guys with the horses.

Oh, yeah?

Um-hmm. They had one come in here. Right there. [Points to the floor near the door, where a pool table stands]

A horse?!

A Budweiser horse.

No kidding.

Named Francis. And I sat up on it!

You did not!

I looked like a flea!

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Well, so you took this over in the seventies then, and your husband passed five years after you got the bar?

Mm, [in nineteen] eighty-four.

And were you tending the bar before he passed or is that—

Yeah.

—something that happened—yeah? And you just—

Just about day and night. [Laughs]

And so you just liked being back there and talking to people and making drinks?

Well I felt like the only was [the business] was going to get built up [was] if I did it…You know? If I can get a person in here, they’ll have a second drink. Because I’ll buy ‘em the first one.

Oh, really?

And by the time I finish talking to them, they’ll be wanting another drink!

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And so now, I—you were talking earlier also about some of the shots that you serve here. And I’ve heard that you have a reputation for a couple of them. Can you tell me about those?

Well there’s a group that came in here, uh, about eight people one day—they were standing right here—they wanted a Partially Shaved Bush [shot]. They wanted the whole bush! No, they wanted a Bush. That’s the way it’s listed in the [bartending] book.

[Short laugh] Okay.

It is in the book. So, we didn’t have one of the ingredients, so they said, “Well give us a Partially Shaved Bush.” [Laughs] So, uh, just for it to be a little off the cuff—it just kind of went over—I think it’s my toast. It might—well, it’s according to the group is what I say in my toast! [Laughs] But it’s usually about the same thing.

Yeah? And how does it go? Your basic toast?

Oh, I couldn’t tell you that! Oh! [Laughs]

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So what is it that you like about tending bar?

It’s the people I meet. I didn’t—I married in a day when a woman kind of lived behind her husband. You know? And, uh, I didn’t have much to say. After he died, I didn’t know like I was a people person. And I love to talk to people, you know?...I’ve tried watching—the reason I don’t remember names when I first meet ‘em—meet them—is, uh, I’m thinking of something to say afterwards. Sometimes it’ll take me forever to remember the name. Amy!

You got it!

And, uh, [short pause] it’s just the friendship, you know. Everybody in here, if they don’t know one another, I like to introduce them. I don’t like them to be embarrassed when they’re alone. And that’s what most people come in a bar room for is to meet someone. Not necessarily to drink and get drunk. But a drink relaxes you, and when you meet someone you become— most of the time—ready for conversation.

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I was just gonna ask you about all the—the famous drinks that come out of the [French] Quarter and some of the restaurants down there and the history—

We don’t do famous drinks.

Yeah. Well, I know but wondered—

I should have a Miss Gertie drink!

You should have a Miss Gertie drink!

That’s what I need to do.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.